Arrival in “Amerika” - on to Oregon

Above: Joesf Hackenberg

“After landing in New York on October 7, 1883, Josef first went to Altoona, PA, where he had friends and worked in a train car shop.  He didn’t like the climate and moved to Plano, Ill, and worked for a farm machinery company.  Too much thunder and lightning and he moved on.  Nebraska was the next stop where he worked on a farm.  More thunder and lightning and time to leave the Midwest.”

Otto Hackenberg, 1985

He worked in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and in Illinois where he took out his first citizenship papers (Yorkville).  The climate of the eastern states did not agree with him, and having heard a great deal about the west and the Pacific Coast he came to (Portland) Oregon January 16th in 1886, a very cold winter day, and found conditions in Oregon were very discouraging for a poor man with 15 cents in his pockets, incapable of using English except to swear, wages 50 cents a day of 11 hours work, work scarce and short lived, and pay uncertain.  However, in spite of all the difficulties, he loved the country with its mountains, hills, forests, and hospitality of the people, congregated from all states of the Union.

First he tried to locate in the Willamette Valley, but land prices, being incorporated the year before, were out of sight, and homestead land left was not worth taking.  He therefore turned towards Astoria, and on June 8, 1886, landed in Rainier, a hamlet of about 11 houses, a few barns and outbuildings, several wharves, a sawmill, one store and post office, and two saloons.  The streets were dirt roads, the boardwalks were full of holes, some places tilting, some places missing.  Fences were much dilapidated and refuse heaps, tin cans, and bottles were scattered.

The town consisted of two units.  Rainier and Cedar Landing, now West Rainier (also referred to as Kentucky Flat).  Between the two lay the Winchester place, in the bottom near the mouth of Fox Creek, and southwest of it the Nice place.  There were no other dwellings between Rainier and Cedar Landing, a distance of nearly half mile.  There were two connecting links, the old Beaver Valley road over a low log bridge, now the cement bridge across Nice Creek, and over an old wooden bridge across Fox Creek near the present school house, which road was planked, and a trail on the site of the railroad grade, bridging the creeks by log, impassable in high water.

There were altogether about 150 people in Rainier then.  The families in Rainier 1886 were easily enumerated:  There were the Dibblees, Pomeroys, Silvas,  Weatherwaxes, Dobbins, Suttons, Woodruffs, Winchesters, Moecks, Merrills, Lelands, and two families near the blacksmith shop.  There were quite a number of unmarried men; and only three girls of marriageable age, very desirable objects, and known among the young men by outrageous nicknames:  Edith Dibblee, ‘The Wild West’, Dora Winchester, ‘The Mudhen’ ( to become Mrs. Hackenberg in June 1891), and Emma Kettering, ‘The Swamp Angel’.

The main occupation was fishing, and many lived in houseboats.  Some worked in the woods, in stores, and on the docks.  The articles in trade were fish, cordwood, lumber, and shingles.  Farm products cut a small figure.

Aside of the slow steamers (fueled by cordwood) there were no communications.  There was a steamer everyday to Portland, and one to Astoria, carrying passengers, mail, and freight, landing at Rainier about noon, while the Kellop and Toledo went up the Cowlitz to Castle Rock every other day and the Manzanillo to Clatskanie twice a week.  The fare to Portland was one dollar and the time consumed five hours.

Roads leading out from Rainier were poor excuses and part of the year almost impassable.”

(Rainier Review article 1936)