Pulling Down Strongholds: Oregon North West Region - Clackamas

Pray for Oregon families

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.                                 II Corinthians 10:4

We have come full circle yet again, and have covered the 36 counties of Oregon over the last few weeks. While a county-by-county focus has brought an organization and focus to our prayers, it seems time to delve deeper into other areas.

The North West Region includes Clackamas, Multnomah, Washington, and Columbia Counties and we will be exploring parts of this area.

We still want to focus prayer on a specific county each week. This week we are back in Clackamas County. At this point (we just had the primaries and the November election is in a few months) the County Commissioners are: Tootie Smith, Paul Savas, Martha Schrader, Mark Shull, and Ben West. The County Sheriff is Angela Brandenburg.

You can read previous blogs about Clackamas County here, here, here, and here.

Clackamas County, OR


NORTH WEST REGION

So, what is unique about the North West Region? What events happened in the early days of settlement that might still be having an effect over the area? 

Tabitha Moffat Brown (1780-1858), known as the "Mother of Oregon," established the Oregon Orphans’ Asylum in 1848, soon after she arrived here via the Oregon Trail. This later became Pacific University in Forest Grove, which is in Washington County and part of the North West Region of the state.

The early establishment of an Orphans’ home and school – which had 30 students the first year – points to something unique about the early settlement of Oregon: the number of children who arrived over the Oregon Trail orphaned. Between 1843 and 1869 (when the railroad became available) about 400,000 people traveled the Oregon Trail, seeking a better life in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, or in Washington and California. About 20,000 died along the way. There was a cholera epidemic along the Oregon Trail, as well as other illnesses, childbirth, and accidents. While the best-known orphans seem to be the Sager children, who finished the trail without their parents and were taken in by the Whitmans, there were many more. Numbers on just how many arrived here without parents is difficult to discover, but there were enough that Mother Brown was compelled to start an asylum for them as early as 1848.

Another event during those early days contributes to the trauma of the early years in Oregon: the California Gold Rush. Gold was discovered in California in 1849 triggering a mass immigration to California from all over. Oregon settlers could head south down the “California Trail,” a route established by the Hudson Bay Trappers, and get to the gold fields. About a third of the population in the Willamette Valley did just that (around 3,000 of the white settlers.) It was the men who left, of course - some were single, others left the wife and children to hold down the homestead while they went to bring back a nest egg in gold. Some actually did that, but many did not. Some returned broke, some never returned at all.

Another event that took the menfolk out of the Willamette Valley in the early days was the Cayuse War from 1847 to 1855, triggered by the Whitman Massacre. Many able-bodied male settlers volunteered for the war and so once again the women and children were left to fend for themselves.

Those who seek to do "spiritual mapping" of Oregon communities have mentioned an “orphan spirit” or a “fatherless spirit” over places in Oregon. That would certainly fit the North West Region, the earliest settled and the destination for the orphans, and the abode of abandoned (even temporarily) wives and children.

Pray for children, families, and marriages of the North West Region, and for the removal of any spiritual stronghold left by the trauma of those very early days.