Byron Pengra and the Oregon Central Military Road

Once the emigrants to Oregon survived the plains and the Rockies, they still had to traverse Oregon Territory. I’ve written before about some of their choice—raft down the Columbia River, take the Barlow Road around Mount Hood, or take the Applegate Trail to the south then up the Willamette Valley. Each of these choices presented its own problems.

After Oregon became a state, the residents continued their search for a better route. Byron Pengra was one of the leaders of this movement in the 1860s.

Pengra had an ideal background to promote road development in Oregon. He emigrated to Oregon in 1853, and became active in the Republican party (Lincoln’s party), so had the connections to advocate for a new road. He established the first Republican newspaper in Oregon in 1858, giving him a platform to promote his road project. And in 1862, he was appointed Surveyor General of Oregon, giving him the resources to develop the road.

Pengra set out to build a military wagon road up the middle fork of the Willamette River, from Eugene, Oregon, where he lived. The Army had done an early survey of the pass through the Cascades on the middle fork of the Willamette in 1853, near Diamond Peak. Pengra marketed the road as a supply line for troops stationed in southern Oregon, but the road would also serve a valuable commercial purpose in easing the movement of miners and settlers. The road would be constructed to handle mule pack trains and wagons, as well as military troops, weapons, and their support vehicles.

Meanwhile, the transcontinental railroad was under development in California. The Oregonians of the 1860s also wanted a railroad to connect them to the East. Various developers in Oregon proposed rail lines along the Columbia River and elsewhere in the northern part of the state. Pengra, however, wanted his road to serve as the forerunner of a line through southern Oregon toward what is now Winnemucca, Nevada.

Pengra obtained investors and incorporated the Oregon Central Military Wagon Road in 1864. Some of the leading citizens of Oregon were among the stockholders. He did a preliminary survey in 1864. However, because the regular Army troops in Oregon were called back to the States to fight in the Civil War, and because the militia troops in Oregon were occupied with protecting settlers and miners from Native Americans, Pengra could not complete his survey until the summer of 1865.

One of the major characters in my current work-in-progress invests in Pengra’s company. The slow progress of the surveying in 1864 frustrates him, but he recognizes the road’s importance for the future of Oregon. Pengra is one of the real historical characters who appears in my novel.

The company Pengra developed constructed and maintained the road, and the company remained in business until 1877. In the late 1860s, Pengra developed the town of Springfield, Oregon, including mills, farmland, and ranching.

However, Pengra’s poliltical connections were not sufficient to make his road the primary route from Oregon to the east. Another road south of his through Jacksonville, Oregon, and the Umpqua and Rogue River valleys won that distinction. Pengra argued hard for his road, and when Congress voted to select the alternative route, he had a mental breakdown. He challenged a U.S. Senator to a duel and otherwise threatened his opponents. Pengra was committed to a mental asylum for a year, and his wife later divorced him. He lived out his later years in relative peace, and died in 1903.

Do you enjoy poring over old maps? I do.