In its short history, from 1942 to 1948, Vanport was the nation’s largest wartime housing development, a site for social innovation, a lightning rod for …

Oregon Encyclopedia

No town in Oregon has seen more rapid growth and decline in a single decade than Shaniko. From 1901 to 1911, the town went from …

Oregon Encyclopedia

The skyline of Baker City, at an elevation of 3,440, is dominated by two mountain ranges, the Elkhorns on the west and the Wallowas on …

Oregon Encyclopedia

The Oregon and California Lands Act, heralded as a forward-looking conservation measure when it became law in 1937, has been mired in controversy for most …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Bates was an unincorporated Oregon Lumber Company mill town in Grant County, one mile north of Austin Junction on U.S. Highway 26. In 1906, the …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Since the 1880s, long before the mythical Paul Bunyan roamed the Northwest, the timber industry has been a driving force in the economies of Oregon …

Oregon Encyclopedia

In 1906, E. W. Haines, an Oregon state senator and banker, led the Forest Grove Transportation Company’s efforts to construct a streetcar line between downtown …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Frederic Homer Balch was the first Pacific Northwest fiction writer to cast Native Americans as major characters and the first to celebrate the region's geography …

Oregon Encyclopedia

The first steam locomotive in the Pacific Northwest—the "Oregon Pony"—was used in the early 1860s to portage steamboat passengers and goods past the Cascade Rapids, …

Oregon Encyclopedia

In the early 1900s, the booming economy of Haines earned it the title of the Biggest Little Town in Oregon. Although Astorian expedition leader Wilson …

Oregon Encyclopedia