# Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 7/Jason Lee memorial address by B. L. Steeves

ADDRESS
By Hon. B. L. Steeves,
Lieutenant Governor of Idaho.
I thank you for this cordial greeting. It warms my heart. Coming from entire strangers, it would be an inspiration and would kindle a less halting and more ready tongue than mine to perhaps eloquent speech, for it would denote a perfect sympathy of the audience for the speaker, but coming from those whom, in a certain sense, I still regard as my home people, many of you friends of olden time, it brings with it a keen and added pleasure, for I take it as in some sense an expression of personal interest and perhaps regard.
I deem it a rare honor and privilege to stand before this magnificent representation of the citizenship of the Capital City of Oregon, a city which for so many years I knew as home. For strong and tender ties of sentiment unite me to this beautiful place. It was here I acquired my education. The Old Willamette was the alma mater, the tender mother, who gave me my birth into the literary and professional worlds. For three years I sat at the feet of her instructors. It was here my young manhood was spent. It was here I was married. It was here I held in my arms a tiny atom of humanity and felt the first thrill of paternal affection for a first-born child. But there is another tie more tender even than these, one indissoluble and hallowed. This is the place my mother loved best of any place on earth, It was here she loved to live. It was here she wished to die, and on the green hillside south of town both she and an honored father sleep the sleep that knows no waking. So it is with good reason I look upon the people of Salem as my own, my home people, and it is with a feeling of sadness as well as pride that I arise to address you on this occasion.
​I well remember the last time I essayed a public address before the people of Salem. It was on the occasion of my graduation. The subject of my oration was the Latin adage, "Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis." The times change and we are changed in them. I stood on the threshold of life, wondering what place I could fill in the world's work, vaguely anxious and afraid to take a step for fear it would be wrong. I peered into the future, wondering what changes the passing years would bring, and now returning after years of absence to represent a great state upon a great occasion, the words of my old commencement oration recur to my mind, "Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis."
For this is a great occasion. We have come here to pay honor to the memory of one who made the great Northwest as we know it possible; to one to whom that highest tribute of praise can well be given, "He has done what he could"; to one who builded better than he knew. Well was his name Jason, for, like argonauts of old, he and his little band braved the terrors of unknown seas and the perils of unknown lands, not, indeed, in search of golden fleece or of any material aggrandizement, but to establish civilization and enlightenment upon the then most remote parts of this Western continent; to lay the foundations of an empire upon the Pacific slope, and to establish therein an institution of learning whose beneficent and widening influence should extend to the uttermost parts of the earth, and whose children should rise up and call her blessed. Such, then, have been the results of the work of Jason Lee, greater by far than any man then living would have dared to anticipate. Of the three states secured to the Union by the early advent of the missionary colonists headed by Jason Lee, I am asked to represent the youngest of the trinity, Idaho. I accept the task with alacrity. It is a pleasant duty to perform, ​for to me it is a labor of love. I take it that as the earlier exercises of the day have been devoted exclusively to a fitting eulogy of the character of Jason Lee, and a fitting tribute to his labor and his life, it is equally appropriate that these last exercises should be devoted at least in part to a description of the wonderful country which his efforts were so largely instrumental in saving to the Union, and which now form so important a part of the United States. A land of fertile valleys, of magnificent streams, of broad ranges, of mountains whose everlasting snows have challenged the rising sun since the morning stars first sang together, of lakes whose placid bosoms reflect back the fragrant forests and the summer skies, of forest and field and waterfall, of blue skies and bountiful sunshine—such is Idaho, Gem of the Mountains, Land of Opportunity.
Nature has been lavish in this land of promise. She has given us soil for the plow and water enough for the harvest. Timber enough for our homes and power for our factories. Iron for industry and copper for the arts. Gold for a Nation's commerce and lead for a Nation's defense. Wilderness enough for recreation and winter enough for vigor. Scenery enough for sentiment and sunshine enough for some.
Of the early settlement of Idaho I will say but little. She is a young State, and age has not yet clothed her early history with romance. She was first settled in the early sixties by miners and stockmen. Idaho has been in the past and is now handicapped by the fact that the main line of travel through the State crosses what until lately has been known as the Snake River desert. For fifty years the tide of Western immigration flowed past our doors unmindful of the empire awaiting development in the inter-mountain region. Even yet people passing through the State on the train have no conception, from ​what they see, of what the State has to offer in soil and mineral wealth and scenery and climate, and for the benefit of such I will make a few statements. Though classed as an arid State, Idaho is by far the best watered of the arid States and one of the best watered in the Union. It is the only State, with the possible exception of Washington, which has a river of the magnitude of the Snake flowing 1,000 miles within its own territories. This river has numerous large and important tributaries all available for irrigation. Idaho has the greatest natural water power of any State in the Union, and this time we will not except Washington nor even New York, which has the American Falls of Niagara. Hundreds of thousands of horse power are being developed on the cataracts of the Snake, and thousands more can be developed on the Salmon. One hundred thousand horse power at one cataract, the Augur Falls, and above and below a dozen other falls of greater or less dimensions. Like the rays of a spider's web, electric wires will radiate from the Snake River Valley, carrying the imprisoned energy of the Snake River over hill and dale, propelling trolley cars, lighting distant cities and homes, and turning the wheels of industry in our own and neighboring States.
And now I will make a statement that to the people of Salem may sound like heresy. The Snake River Valley is larger and will support a greater population than the Valley of the Willamette. It is nearly 500 miles long and from two to 40 miles in width. It is being rapidly reduced by irrigation to a high state of cultivation. Over 1,000,000 acres are now in process of reclamation. Think what this means in a country where 40 acres is as much land as one family can properly take care of. If you would have an object lesson of the boundless possibilities of American enterprise, visit Twin Falls, where a town ​of 8,000 people, with modern improvements and buildings, and two banks carrying a combined deposit of $450,000, has been built in one year. The tract itself is a vast plain, dotted with homes as far as the eye can reach, with great irrigation canals like rivers meandering through the land, carrying a volume of water 70 feet wide and 7 feet deep, and capable of being navigated by river steamboats if it were considered advisable. Visit the Minadoka dam, which is just being completed by the Government, and which is designed to irrigate 100,000 acres, if you would learn that there is no mechanical obstacle, however great, that American ingenuity will not overcome. It is one of the wonders of the world. Southern Idaho will in 20 years he the most highly developed agricultural country on earth. Thirty thousand horsepower will be developed at the Minadoka dam alone, belonging to the farmers themselves, and every farmhouse will be lighted by electricity, and every churn and washing machine will be attached to an electric motor.
Idaho is proud of her resources, and she is proud of her citizens. She has a sturdy, independent citizenship, mostly young and mostly American-born. Idaho is proud of her institutions. We are proud that Idaho represents the highest development in civil government. That the great tree of liberty, under whose spreading branches all Nations of the earth will in due time find shelter, which first as a tender sapling struck root at Runnymede, when the rebellious barons forced King John to affix his signature to Magna Charta, and which has grown and developed and flourished through the centuries watered by the blood and tears of earth's bravest and best, has at last reached its highest flower and most perfect fruition in the Rocky Mountain States, the backbone of the American Continent, and that Idaho freely extends the ballot ​to every American citizen, without relation to color or to sex, and does not class our wives, our sisters, and our mothers, politically, with criminals, imbeciles, and Indians not taxed.
Idaho extends her arms to the world. She invites the world to come and participate in her development. She invites the capitalist, and points to the opportunities for manufacture to her great natural water power, to her mines and forests undeveloped and uncut. She invites the farmer and points to the great tracts of arid land soon to be reclaimed by private enterprise or by the reclamation service of a beneficent government. She invites the tourist and points to her great natural beauties of river and mountain and forest and lake. She invites the invalid, for whom in a more rigorous climate, a lower altitude or a more humid atmosphere there is no hope of health, and, last, but not least, she invites the laborer, for labor is the basis of all prosperity. And the people are answering the call. They are coming to Idaho. In the past ten years they have doubled our population and quadrupled the amount of land under irrigation. They are transforming the State. They are converting our arid plains into fertile fields, and are making her to be in fact what her name literally implies—Idaho, Gem of the Mountains.