shoe.html

The Dalles Chronicle, The Dalles, OR., June 2, 1959, page E2
Includes an illustration map of North Dalles

SHOE FACTORY: A STORY OF BOOM AND BUST

One of the shrewdest of the fortunate-seekers who flocked into the West before the turn of the century, lured by a raw land and the hope for quick profits, was a minister turned entrepreneur who came to The Dalles in 1880.
Wasco County in Oregon and Klickitat county in Washington knew the Rev. O.D. Taylor not as a man of God but as the "Father of Grand Dalles," the promoter of what has been called one of the greatest land swindles in the mid-Columbia region since the Indian treaties.
Taylor's ambition was to build a city where Dallesport now stands, to sell "lots" to investors at premium prices, to create industry and commerce and presumably to retire as overseer and patron saints of the growing community.
And he prayed on the restlessness and the loose, long-boned spirit of the times by proclaiming his vision and pamphlets and brochures crafted to attract the capital of rich and modest investors alike.
The city was never built. The hulk of an enormous boot and shoe factory, erected by Taylor and abandoned after several weeks of production, stood for many years. Taylor did, however, acquired the savings of investors lured by his advertisings of the visionary city. And he went scott-free when a case brought against him was thrown out of court.
Taylor came to The Dalles as a representative of the Baptist Missionary Society. He was pastor for a time of the small Baptist church and a leader in church missionary work.

Bought 2,000 Acres

But while he preached in The Dalles, Taylor was buying land across the river. He borrowed lavishly from local banks to finance his acquisitions until by 1890 he held some 2,000 acres of land on the north bank of the Columbia.
Taylor's plan was simple. Here, on the dry, open country broken by an occasional outcropping of basaltic-rock and rising in rolling hills to the steep gorges of the Cascade foothills to the west, he proposed to develop "a great city," a "hive of industry," a metropolis to rival Seattle and Spokane. He called it North Dalles, then Grand Dalles.
In 1890 Taylor incorporated the Interstate Investment Co. in Portland, with a capital stock of $150,000, under his personal direction as a general manager. The company was authorized to buy land from Taylor and his wife and sell it to any and all as lots in the future city, North Dalles.
Interstate Investment circulars began to appear in Oregon and middlewestern cities, announcing that "North Dalles is the natural outlet of a country RICH in RAW MATERIALS which has only waited the MAGNETIC TOUCH OF CAPITAL."
"9,500 Square Miles of Valuable Farming Land must pay tribute to - North Dalles, North Dalles, North Dalles," the brochures trumpeted. "DON'T BE A CLAM!" One leaflet warned: "Buy a lot in this property now."
And people, for the most part small investors from the Middle West, read and bought. Preachers, school teachers, a would-be newspaper publisher, whose descendants still live in the area, and others who wanted a small safe investment bought up lots in the "city."

Map Published

Taylor drafted and published a map of North Dalles, showing imaginary railroads converging on the city and strangely, locating the city within a stone's throw of the mouth of the Klickitat river, whereas the river actually spills into the Columbia nine miles downstream from the site of the North Dalles.
"We deal only in facts," one of Interstate pamphlets explained.
Appearing on the map were parks where only dwarf oaks were growing, arterials and boulevards where there was nothing but dry stubble and sand dunes.
To Taylor's credit as a salesman, he gathered some $9,000 from people of Wasco and Klickitat counties, even though the contrast between his inaccuracies and assumptions and the barren land which was graced only with several stunted oaks was apparent to any causal observer.
Taylor quickly gathered the reins of his growing corporation into his own hands. As president and general manager of Interstate he paid his wife and himself handsomely for the land the corporation sold as lots.
In 1891 he revamped Interstate Investment, renamed it Interstate Improvement Co. and put up for sale of half a million dollars more stock. He abandoned the name "North Dalles" as too modest a descriptive title to contain his vision, and "Grand Dalles," began to appear on company literature.

Was Chief Salesman

Taylor opened offices in Mid-western cities, installed himself as chief salesman and collected 25 percent on every lot he sold. Besides his commission on sales, he appropriated $300,000 worth of stock to himself and his wife as "trustees" of the corporation.
And in 1881 Taylor announced to the world that "A MAMMOTH BOOT AND SHOE FACTORY will be an operation … employing OVER 500 WORKMEN."
Interstate collected a $10,000 "bonus" from people in Wasco and Klickitat counties, and a huge frame building began to rise on a promontory overlooking the Columbia.
Mechanical lathes an awls were ordered and installed, some 50 expert shoemakers were imported from the east, and the factory began to turn out shoes and boots.
But several weeks later work stopped when employees learned they could expect no money for their time. The Portland contractors who built the factory clamored for payment, and a factory supply company demanded money for the equipment installed in the building. Neither received any money from Interstate.
The failure of the great shoe factory foreshadowed the fate of the Grand Dalles.
In 1892 two men arrived from Michigan to survey and develop "lots" each had bought within "city limits" at Grand Dalles. Apparently neither liked what he saw. The two, Dr. Daniel Cornell and J.P. Rorick, obtained an indictment of Taylor on 60 counts.

Ordered Released

In 1895 Taylor was arrested, and soon afterward released on a cash bond furnished by attorneys he hired. Trial action dragged on until the Supreme Court in 1902 ordered Taylor released on a legal technicality.
What remained after Taylor's gamble was little enough: A visitor to the site of Grand Dalles reported in 1904 "A drearier, more desolate looking array of shacks and rock piles and drifting sand banks, cannot be found in the Northwest … Not over a score of people living in the immediate vicinity of the Grand Dalles."
The only lasting change wrought by Taylor's venture is the small group of men and women who are descendants of the investors and who still live in and around The Dalles.
Grand Dalles, "Destined to rival its sister cities of Spokane, Tacoma and Seattle," somewhere got lost in the shuffle.