Augustus Ripley Burbank traveled overland from Naples, Illinois to Sacramento, California between April and September of 1849. He stayed at Sutter's Fort for a time and built up a business of trading in mules. From July 1850 to March 1851 he lived in Nevada City. He then sold out and returned to Illinois via Panama and New Orleans. In Illinois he was in the "note, land, warrant money trade and land business" in Bloomington. He and with his wife left Illinois in 1853 and came to Oregon by sea, via Panama and San Francisco. They settled first in Lafayette, where Burbank engaged in various businesses, among them agent and treasurer of the Pacific Telegraph Co. In 1857, they moved to Portland, and in 1858 to Monticello, W.T., where they established a hotel.

Burbank was active in politics, serving in the Oregon and Washington territorial legislatures. He was appointed Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue, Second District, Washington Territory in 1863. In 1867, he returned to Lafayette, Oregon and assumed full ownership of a mercantile store in which he had retained half interest. In August 1880, the Burbanks' daughter, Eva, drowned in the Pacific Ocean, and for several years thereafter her memory was the major recurring theme of Burbank's diary. He distributed photographs of her to lighthouse keepers on the north Pacific Coast, received communications from her via spiritualists in Indiana, and was pleased when Charles Bray, Portland, Oregon composer, wrote a song in her memory, "Lost in the Deep, Deep Sea," which was published by Wiley B. Allen of Portland in 1881.

Burbank was an investor in the Oregon Railway Company and in his latter years remained on the fringes of local and state politics, attending conventions and entertaining visiting office holders. He attended the Portland reception honoring President Benjamin Harrison on May 4, 1891.