Oregon Emigration and Immigration

Online Resources

 * 1882-1903 Portland, Oregon, Chinese Immigrant Case files, 1882-1903 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1888-1956 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index & images
 * 1888-1963 Oregon, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1888-1963 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1895-1954 Border Crossings: From Canada to U.S., 1895-1954 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1949-1955 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index & images
 * Paper Trail, index

Early Migrations

 * Early 1800s, traders and trappers came into the area from Canada, Russia, Latin America and the United States.
 * 1811, John Jacob Astor, an American, established the first white settlement in Oregon.
 * 1830s and 1840s, other settlements were created in the Willamette River valley. These settlers generally came from Midwestern and eastern states, Canada and Russia.
 * 1843, a provisional government was set up by American settlers.
 * In the same year, over 900 more Americans arrived, mostly from Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri and Iowa.

Oregon Donation Land Claim Act

 * see, a federal act.
 * The Oregon Donation Act of 1850 guaranteed free land to those who settled and cultivated the land before 1 December 1855. 7,437 patents were issued before the expiration of the Act.
 * New settlers surged into the Oregon Territory, primarily from the Mississippi River valley, the Midwest and the South.
 * Foreign-born immigrants came mainly from Canada, Germany, Scandinavia, England and Russia.

Gold Discovery

 * 1860, gold discovery at Pierce, in northern Idaho made Portland an important trade depot.
 * 1862, gold discovery at what was Auburn, Oregon by Henry Griffin and David Littlefield opened up settlement of the Eastern Oregon.
 * The completion of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883 going up north from California, brought many new settlers into Oregon. This was Oregon's first transcontinental rail connection.
 * Later immigrants came from China, Japan, the Philippines and Latin America.
 * By 1889, the Oregon Short Line connected Union Pacific Railway with Oregon Railway and Navigation Company at Huntington, Oregon brought in more settlers faster in more direct link from the East Coast.
 * A helpful source on overland migration is William Adrian Bowen, The Willamette Valley: Migration and Settlement on the Oregon Frontier (Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 1978) ;

Records

 * There are no known lists of passengers arriving in Oregon ports (such as Astoria, Coos Bay (then Marshfield,) Portland and Tillamook).
 * Records of ethnic groups and shipping enterprises are available at the Oregon Historical Society Library.

Trails

 * The Oregon-California Trails Association is an educational organization that promotes the story of the westward migration to Oregon, among other places. Their site includes a personal name index to trail diaries, journals, reminiscences, autobiographies, newspaper articles, guidebooks and letters at A Guide to Overland Pioneer Names and Documents.


 * 1853 Routes to California and Oregon in the Hayward's United States Gazetteer.

Minorities

 * Records of minorities, such as the Basques, Swedes,and Chinese.

African Americans
Nokes, R. Gregory. Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trail in the Oregon Territory. Oregon State University Press. c. 2013 WorldCat

Native Americans

 * For records of Native Americans, see Indians of Oregon. Some of these tribes are the Cayuse, Klamath, Modoc, Nez Perce, Paiute, Tillamook, and Umatilla.