By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member
First there was the empty land. Then there were the people and buildings that became part of that land. Then in difficult times, the land reverted back to emptiness.
Those evolutionary changes began primarily in the 1830s, when settlers moved west to the Oregon Country and in the 1840s when they headed south to Linn and Benton counties, all the time looking for new life opportunities. The arrivals staked out land claims near each other and then they built town sites.
The mini-cities mainly consisted of churches, saloons, post offices, hotels, gristmills, schools, warehouses, blacksmith shops and general stores.
Those towns prospered for a while and then for a variety of reasons, the residents were forced to move on, often leaving no trace that the communities ever existed.
Several of those long-gone towns were located in Linn County. Here are the stories of some of them.
Orleans: Isaac Moore arrived at the future town site in 1848, organizing the layout of the village in 1851, which was across from Corvallis, then known as Marysville, near the present-day Oregon State University crew docks.
The location enabled wheat and livestock to be shipped to markets without having to first ferry them across the Willamette to Marysville.
The town in its hey-day is thought to have consisted of at least one general store, blacksmith and gunsmith shops, a saloon, sawmill and brewery.
Then from December 1861-January 1862 the river rose quickly, wiping out the portions of the town closest to the Willamette. The cemetery remained because it was built on higher ground. When the water receded, there was no interest in rebuilding.
Boston Mills: This town in southern Linn County began in 1856 when Richard Finlay, P.V. Crawford and Alex Grandon started a gristmill on a site along the Calapooia River. The town was platted in 1861. By 1869, the small town had two general stores, a blacksmith shop and the mill.
In 1871, the Oregon and California Railroad bypassed Boston Mills to the west and the town of Shedd’s Station grew along the new rail line. Soon, everyone and everything in Boston Mills relocated to Shedd’s Station. The only trace of the town left was the mill, eventually becoming Thompsons Flouring Mills.
Visitors can still tour the mills.
Thompson’s Flouring Mill. Photo courtesy Museum collection id: 2002.125.0003
Tallman: The once quite-busy railroad center east of Lebanon was located where the east-west Albany-Lebanon tracks crossed the north-south Southern Pacific line.
From the Tallman depot, passengers and freight traveled to Albany, Lebanon, Brownsville and Salem.
By the early 1890s, Tallman named for James Tallman, consisted of a warehouse and livestock pens, two general stores, a café, post office, dress shop, church, school and community halls.
Shortly after World War I, the town began its decline as Albany and Lebanon became regional shopping centers and residents began to move into those towns, leaving Tallman to disappear.
Union Point: The Rev. Wilson Blaine was a Presbyterian minister who came to Oregon in 1849, filing on a homestead south of Brownsville on what was called the Territorial Road.
His goal was to bring all of the major functions of the Presbyterian Church together under the United Presbyterian Church, a building he constructed on his property.
In 1851, he established the Union Academy with the goal of making the school a social and educational center.
When gold was discovered in California, prospectors heading south helped spur construction of two stores, a post office, gun shop, a wagon construction and repair operation, cobbler store, blacksmith shop and a grade school.
The town began its decline in 1856 when the number of students enrolled at the academy began to fall off, and when Blaine died in 1861, so did the town.
Burlington: The town was located one mile downstream from Peoria on the Linn County side of the Willamette River.
The town began with a ferry crossing operated by John Smith and a store overseen by John Donald.
James Freeman platted the new town in 1853, which at the time boasted the ferry, two houses, two stores and a blacksmith shop.
Soon after the town was founded, the river began to silt up, making the boat landings inaccessible so the townspeople moved on. Some of the buildings were shipped to Peoria.
Much of the information for this story was taken from Gil Stewart’s book “Hidden History of the Central Willamette Valley,” published by October Years Press of Aumsville.
The paperback was written in 2014 and is available for $9.95 through Amazon.
Stewart is a retired school district business manager living in Stayton.