Danford Balch Homesite: Oregon Trail's Six Hundred and Forty Acres
Oregon
A cabin once stood near this spot belonging to Danford Balch, who arrived in Oregon around eighteen fifty with his wife Mary Jane and their nine children.
Soon after making the overland journey, Balch claimed six hundred and forty acres under the Donation Land Claim Act of eighteen fifty, a federal law designed to populate Oregon Territory by granting free land to settlers who arrived before eighteen fifty-five.
Balch's claim stretched across ground that today is bounded by Vaughn Street and Saint Helens Road, land that is now fully absorbed into northwest Portland. The claim lines drawn on an eighteen fifty survey map describe farmland that became a city neighborhood within a single generation.
The Donation Land Act transferred roughly two and a half million acres of Oregon land from public domain and, more fundamentally, from Native peoples, to American settlers in the space of five years.
