SHINE on Salem

Butteville Store

Neither Butteville or Champoeg is a city today. They were both destroyed by flooding in 1861. However, except for that dramatic force of nature, Butteville might have been an important Oregon city. The community shipped wheat to the world between 1850-1880 and its future looked bright...

       The Hubbard community you see from 99E is a bustling commercial corridor. The historic city, now a quiet neighborhood of less than a square mile in size with about 3,000 residents, began with a log cabin located about a mile west of the highway. In the 1870s it flourished along the rail line, several blocks away from the present highway...

We were surprised to learn that the history of the Idanha includes a Salem pioneer, John Minto. In 1873, before the failed attempt of the railroad builders to cross the Cascade Mountains in the 1880s, John Minto was appointed by Marion County authorities to discover if there was an Indian pass through the Cascades as reported by trappers...

1940s photograph of Fernhazel, the Zieber family home

Late in October of 2012, we met Evelyn Melson Franz, a volunteer at the Keizer Heritage Museum. Her father’s farm was near the intersection of Cherry Avenue and River Road. She remembers the 1930s Russell Ward and Keizer Feed stores, first in that rural area...

Cars line Wall Street, Mill City, 1961

   Slow down as you pass Mill City on North Santiam Highway. You don’t want to miss the turn into 1st Avenue. Continue around a curve, then take a left at NE Wall Street. You are now in the one block that was the heart of the historic city with the “wall” of a hill to the left and the fall of land to the river at right...

Mount Angel 1961

         A visit to Mt. Angel can be two different experiences. The city has cultivated a Bavarian atmosphere of community good will and celebration. On the hill above, the Mount Angel Abbey reminds us of the spiritual aspects of our lives...

Have you ever been to Scotts Mills? If you haven’t, I suggest you are missing a fascinating, one afternoon time-trip into basic Marion County history.

        For instance, mills were once big business: did you know that their Country Park is the site of what was once one of the most productive grist mills west of Minneapolis?..

         One of the first things we learned about Silverton is that it may be the only Oregon city named by a woman. A widow, Polly Crandall Coon (she married Stephen Price a year later) actually selected the name Silverton in 1854, planning the city streets around a large old Oregon White Oak tree that, by local legend, had previously been a meeting place for the Native Americans...

      On this travel adventure, we discovered that Marion County history starts here in the French Prairie with the French Canadian men who had worked for the Hudson Bay Company. We learned that it had been the policy of the company that their employees once retired had to return from whence they came...

 

Florence Street in Stayton, 1914

         Waterpower has always been a major component of this area of Marion County. Stayton was founded by Drury Smith Stayton, who purchased 29 acres of forest land in 1866 and, with his son, began digging a ditch off the North Santiam River to bring water to the industries of the town that would be named for him. ..