Chaining Oregon: Surveying the Public Lands of the Pacific Northwest, 1851-1855

... is a comprehensive history of the early federal surveyors of the Pacific Northwest, the work they performed for the US General Land Office between 1851 and 1855, the contribution their efforts made to the westerly movement of American settlement, and the order they imposed on the land of the western valleys and adjacent mountains in what are now the states of Oregon and Washington.

When Oregon Territory's Surveyor General John B. Preston and his cadre of engineers arrived in the Oregon r...