The rich soil of the Plains provided excellent potatoes, cabbage, carrots, and other garden produce. Chickens and eggs were raised; hay and grains were harvested; furs and hides were plentiful; salmon and berries, abundant. Timber activity was beginning in the forests, with logging and sawmills. William Hobson wrote in the 1840s to his family in the British Isles to send Scotch Broom seed to beautify his farm. The plant also proved an erosion deterrent when planted on the beach ridge by helping reduce the amount of beach sand blowing onto farmland. Its seed was later marketed and sold to the government. Bulb crops flourished in the moist, sandy soil and became a profitable enterprise. Hyacinth, narcissus, dahlia, daffodil and other bulbs, were marketed; their abundance presaged future events such as the Seaside Dahlia Festival. The prolific Scotch broom soon established its deep yellow bloom throughout the Clatsop country, which became known as The Golden Trail as a result.

Because large gray wolves were destroying livestock and cattle on the Plains in the early '40s, the settlers planned frequent hunting parties at "wolf meetings." These meetings, held at Solomon Smith's farm, gradually became political forums as well, with the settlers forming the district's earliest election board, officers, and petitioning for support in road building and other improvements.

In 1846, Clatsop County population totaled 95 persons, representing 38 families, mostly settled on the Plains. In 1850, the census stood at 462. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 was to have a resounding impact on Oregon and the Columbia. The Northwest became the natural trading partner for a rapidly expanding California population. The Gold Rush caused a major depopulation of men from the county, temporarily seeking gold; it also diverted some immigration from Oregon to California in those years. As a result, the population fluctuated throughout the decade of the '50s. Of 593 residents of Clatsop County in 1854, one-third were women.

Trading with California increased significantly. Settlers sent lumber, agriculture, flour, wool, hides, fish, dairy products, meats and vegetables. In return, they received liquors, glass, iron, tin, tools, and such foods as rice, sugar and molasses. Gold at last offered an appropriate currency, the lack of which had been a impediment to trade in the Clatsop country.

In 1848, Clatsop settlers R. S. McEwen, Calvin Tibbetts, Thomas Owen and Eldridge Trask built a schooner and took it to California with a cargo of eggs, butter, bacon, hides and vegetables, which they sold profitably along with the schooner. Mr. Tibbetts died of a fever on their return voyage.