In 1845 when Samuel K. Barlow and his party traveled over the Oregon Trail, Barlow decided to find a better way between The Dalles and the Willamette Valley than the route pioneers were currently using, which was to float down the treacherous Columbia River. He scouted a route up and over the Cascade Mountains and […]
H. Russell Albee House
Harry Russell Albee was born in Rockford Illinois on September 8, 1867. In 1890 he married June Lewis. In 1895 he sold his Michigan business, the Bay City Lumber Company and moved to Portland. He won a seat on the Portland City Council in 1903. In 1910 he was elected to the Oregon Senate. In […]
Augustus Fanno House
Augustus Fanno was born in Maine on March 26, 1804. He worked as a seaman and then a teacher. While teaching in Missouri in 1933 he married Martha Ferguson. In 1846 they traveled the Oregon Trail with their five-year-old son, Eugene, and settled in Linn City, across the river from Oregon City. Martha, who had […]
Doriot/Rider Log House
Harry Garfield Doriot was born in Columbia City, Indiana on July 30, 1881 and Delpha Loy Rouch was born there on 30 April 1886. They married there on 28 September 1907 and at some point (it is not known when) moved to Oregon. In 1925 Harry Garfield and Delpha Doriot built a log house on […]
Francis Ermatinger House
The Francis Ermatinger House is the oldest house in Oregon City and the third oldest house in the state of Oregon. In the photo below (a Lorenzo Loran photo that was the first ever taken of Oregon City) the house can be seen. Flat-roofed Ermatinger House circled in this 1857 Oregon City photo (Oregon State […]
West Linn City Hall
Prior to 1936, West Linn’s city offices were housed in one room of the train station for the Willamette Falls Railway. Willamette Falls Railway station, c1909 (Historic Photo Archive) The interurban line was shut down in 1930 and the station torn down in 1936 to make way for a new building that would become the […]
Asa Sanders House
Abby and Asa Sanders moved from Connecticut to Oregon in the early 1850s. In 1858 they bought more than half of the Mathias Sweigle land claim, which had been one of the earliest donation land claims in the Molalla area. The Sanders made their living growing wheat and fruit. Asa, Abby, and several infants are […]
West Linn Inn
The West Linn Inn was built in 1918 by the Crown Zellerbach Corporation. Stories differ about the original purpose of the place. One story says that it was built to provide homes for the mill employees as well as other workers in West Linn. Another story says it was built to house strikebreakers that were […]
Church of the Annunciation
In 1946 a log-cabin-style church with knotty pine paneling, gothic beams, and a 40-foot steeple was built in Milwaukie, at 2615 Harrison Street. The church was beautifully situated amongst the trees near Crystal Lake. Crystal Lake Church, c1983 (Oregon State Historic Preservation Office) After membership declined, Crystal Lake Church closed in 1986. A developer bought […]
Johan Poulsen House
If you have ever driven south on Highway 99E (McLoughlin Blvd) out of Portland, you may have noticed a beautiful Queen Anne style house just south of the Ross Island Bridge (3040 SE McLoughlin Blvd). It is striking for its beauty and also because of its unfortunate placement by a busy highway and a busy […]