 He left in May and arrived in November of what was still the unorganized Oregon Country. At this time the region was under the jurisdiction of the United States after the settling of the Oregon boundary dispute with Great Britain the previous year. In Oregon, Chapman settled first in what was then Marysville, and is now Corvallis, in the Willamette Valley. In 1848, he relocated to Salem, where he learned of the California Gold Rush while at court at Knox Butte. Chapman went to California for a brief time and had some success in the gold fields before returning in 1849 to Oregon, which had become the Oregon Territory in 1848.
