Hall J. Kelley - Career

Career

Kelley worked as a railroad surveyor in Maine. He also helped design a project for a canal (unbuilt) from Boston to the Connecticut River, which was never built. He designed a railroad between Veracruz, Veracruz, and Mexico City.

As early as 1815, after reading about the Lewis & Clark Expedition and the expedition by Wilson Price Hunt, Kelley became interested in U.S. settlement of the area west of the Rocky Mountains. He tried to organize a group expedition overland to that region in 1828, but they could not get the funds for outfitting. He followed that effort with a failed attempt to colonize the Puget Sound area with an ocean-based expedition.

Also in 1828, he persuaded the Massachusetts Legislature to charter a society to promote U.S. settlement along the Columbia River. At the time, the Oregon Country was under joint administration of the U.S. and Great Britain pursuant to the Anglo-American Convention of 1818. Effectively the area was under control of the British Hudson's Bay Company, which actively discouraged U.S. settlement.

Kelley wrote articles to encourage U.S. settlers to move into Oregon Country. This included a memorial to the United States Congress on February 11, 1828, that laid out plans for a city where the Columbia River meets the Willamette River (present-day Portland, Oregon) and a proposal to name mountains in the Cascade Range after US presidents. In 1830, he published a Geographical Memoir of Oregon, which contained the first map of that territory ever compiled, as well as a settlement guide for prospective emigrants.

Kelley's writings were influential in inspiring Benjamin Bonneville to undertake his 1832 expedition to the West. He also espoused a theory as to the origin of the name Oregon, claiming it came from the Orjon River in Chinese Tartary.