Willamette Street, Eugene
The Oregonian's handbook of the Pacific Northwest, c. 1894
Eugene Oregon
Willamette Street, Eugene
The Oregonian's handbook of the Pacific Northwest, c. 1894
Basic Facts:
Named after founder, Eugene Franklin Skinner, who in 1846 erected the first cabin which in 1850 dubbed a Post Office.
Incorporated in 1862
In 2003, had a population of 142,185 people, making it the 3rd largest city in Oregon.
| Eugene. This is the chief town and county seat of Lane county,-one of the largest, most diversified and important counties of the State. it extends from the summit of the Cascade range on the east, clear across the Willamette valley and Coast Range to the ocean, and includes a large area of the finest grain and fruit and grass land on the coast. For variety of productions, for every-changing scenery, for clearness and abundance of streams, it is doubted if any county of the Northwest can equal Lane. It has mountains and valleys, hills and plains, prairies and woodlands, everything to charm the eye, or furnish the aliment on which the Caesars of a growing civilization need to feed. Snugly embowered in the fir and oak foliage that fringe the easternmost point of "Grand Prairie," just where it touches the river, lies "Eugene." Around it on the east and south swings a cordon of hills, with timbered crests, swelling upward from either side, until they terminate directly south of the city, and about four miles away, in "Spencer's Butte," a sharp mountain peak that rises 1,500 feet above the plain on which the city stands. in appearance it is the "Lookout mountain" of Oregon, and the general aspects of the scene always remind us of the older "Lookout" that sentinels Chattanooga, and we feel like turning our ear to listen to the thunder of the "battle above the clouds." Eugene is of the same grade of cities as Albany. Much that was said of that place would be equally well said of this. Perhaps, it lies father from the great commercial metropolis, it has a more distinct business and social life of its own than the former city. Its business blocks, churches, residences, school houses are about the same, nor do their populations greatly vary. But that in which the citizens of Eugene take most pride, is the State University, which the people of the place was enterprising and energetic enough to secure. They may well be proud of it, as it gives tone and character to the intellectual life of their fine and growing city. The buildings of the university are situated on a gentle hill, fairly overlooking the city, and from its streets present a very attractive appearance. The addition of its corps of professors and teachers, and of the three or four hundred young people, who resort there for intellectual training, imparts a decidedly intellectual flavor to the society of the place. The location of this city of seven or eight thousand people, near the head of the Willamette valley, and in one of the most productive counties of Oregon, pledges it a sure and rapid growth. An Illustrated history of the state of Oregon, 1893 ©Shauna Williams |