Linn County Towns
and populated places

 

 

 

"...A good deal of town making going on"

 A correspondent for the Oregon Spectator wrote in a letter to that paper in 1852:

 “ ... There is of course a good deal of town making going on, particularly on paper. The ‘store’, that notable place in the county, usually denotes the piece of ground, on which hope has pictured a fairy city. ... Albany is a beautiful town site and is making pleasing progress. ... Some ten or twelve miles above Albany the village of Burlington is situated ... though it scarcely can be said to have commenced to assume the appearance of a village, there is small doubt but it soon will. Aside from these two places, there is nothing as yet in the way of town or village property worthy of notice. ...” (44).

Though the correspondent may be wrong about there being no other settlements besides Albany and Burlington, he was quite right about the “store” in many instances meaning the start of a town, since stores generally were established at strategic and central points. In this fashion Brownsville, Albany and other communities had their birth. However, towns may also be said to have originated when the first settler arrived, or when they were deliberately laid out and platted. In order to do no town an injustice, it might be well to accord to several of them the honor of being “first”, particularly since they were all the result of the emigration into the county in 1846.

 

 

The  text above and town histories were abstracted from:

History of Linn County
Compiled by Workers of the Writer’s Program
Of the Work Projects Administration
In the State of Oregon
Sponsored by the Linn County Pioneer Memorial Association
Published 1941

Other source materials are listed where appropriate, and a bibliography is provided.  Photos and links to other articles are included with town histories.  For a complete list of photos, articles and links, see the photos page.

 


See More Towns for: Oakville, Peoria, Alford, Berlin, Foster, Holley, Lacomb, Lyons, Mill City, Shelburn, Tangent, Fox Valley, Jordan, Munkers, Burlington, Pine, Plainview, Rowland, Santiam, Spicer, Tallman, and Thomas
 

Town histories were  abstracted from:  " History of Linn County", Compiled by Workers of the Writer’s Program, Works Progress Administration, 1941.  See bibliography for above-cited references.  All photos from the collection of Lisa L. Jones, unless otherwise noted.  Lisa L. Jones contributed and is solely responsible for the content of these pages.  Copyright 2001.