A NEW CHARGE to FIND the WAY The legislature adjourned later in January, 1852, and about two months passed before the citizens decided to take matters into their own hands. On March 31, a meeting was called in Lane County and open to all cutoff supporters. The resulting discussion brought out the feeling that the legislature could not be counted on to complete the task of finding a cutoff route, and so a call for volunteers to scout a new route to the Willamette Valley went out. There were seven young men that responded to the call: William M. Macy, William Tandy, Alexander King, Joseph Meadow, W.T. Walker, John Diamond, and J. Clark. Macy was elected leader and spokesman for the search party, probably because he was an educated, articulate man. A collection was taken to raise funds for the party¹s expenses. Each man would provide his own pack animals and riding horse. As it was late March, it was too early to cross the Cascades, and each of the seven returned home to await word of several preliminary explorations and to work on their farms until such time as it was safe for the whole group to traverse the mountains. The first of these preliminary explorations was relatively unproductive; but in mid July, William Macy and John Diamond succeeded in ascending the mountain now named Diamond Peak to a pass and were able to get their first look at eastern Oregon. These two preliminary sojourns, it turns out, while not ultimately successful, did save the full expedition a good deal of time by allowing them to circumvent unappeasable areas, and proceed directly up the Middle Fork of the Willamette to the new pass when they finally set out on August 20, 1852. This, as previously stated, was the first publicly financed attempt to find a route from the Willamette Valley, east and north to The Oregon Trail. [Information compiled from my own research with portions extracted from "The Oregon Historical Quarterly," articles by Leah Collins Menefee, 1976-1978; and "The Tibbetts Family 1635-1940" compiled by Mrs. May (Tibbetts) Jarvis, New England Historic Genealogical Society Resident Member. ]