Territory/State of Oregon session laws: title varies, 1844–. var. state printers. At the end of the eighteenth century the phrase “Oregon Territory ”
signified a vast but amorphous area stretching from somewhere above the Spanish settlements in California to somewhere below the Russian settlements
in Alaska, and including everything between the Rockies and the Pacific. Spain, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States all made equally
nebulous claims on the area. By 1818 the lack of forces on the ground having rendered the Spanish claims untenable, the United States and Great Britain
attempted to exclude all other parties by signing a Convention of Joint Occupation. The reality of the latter was confirmed in 1821, when Russia agreed to
limit its settlements to areas within present-day Alaska. The joint U.S./U.K. occupation kept the peace for a decade or two while the area was
virtually unpopulated. A legislature of sorts functioned in the more American part of the territory during 1844-49. The laws adopted by that body can be
found in the compiled laws of Oregon, 1853. By the mid-1840s there were sufficient American settlers in the southern portions of the condominium that
determining who was in charge came near to being a causus belli. Fortunately, in 1846 President Polk negotiated a treaty that conceded everything north of
the forty-nine parallel, and all of Vancouver Island, to Great Britain. In 1848 Congress organized everything south of the forty-nine parallel as
the Territory of Oregon. The Territory of Oregon Legislative Assembly first met in July of 1849. Statehood finally came on February 14, 1959, but only
after the area comprising the present-day State of Washington had been severed off and organized into Washington Territory. The first session of the
Oregon State Legislative Assembly met in May 1859. (Documents that are part of the Early State Records collection, including some second copies, were
digitized from a microfilm copy of title originally held by the Library of Congress and the Oregon Supreme Court Library).
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