Talk:Cottage Grove, Oregon

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The city of Cottage Grove incorporated in February 1887, more than thirty years after the first settlers arrived at what is now Dorena Reservoir. The small town developed as the center of a struggling agricultural community, a place where people often settled because better lands in the northern valley had been taken. Most newcomers hailed from the Midwest. While they found winters in the valley mild, settlers had to acclimate to months of rainy weather and annual floods.

Settlers supplemented subsistence agriculture with livestock and dairies but more importantly with logging and mining. Some of the earliest logging activity in Lane County occurred on the Upper Coast Fork Willamette River (now the location of Cottage Grove Dam) where settler William Payne built the area's first mill in 1867. By the 1890s, loggers used this Willamette River tributary to transport logs to the new mills that lined the shores.

Further north, along the Row River, mining became a significant economic activity after gold was discovered in the Cascade Range in the mid-nineteenth century. By 1902, 2,000 mining claims existed in the Cascades near Cottage Grove. The Row River Valley provided the easiest access to the Bohemia mining area and eventually became the site for the area's first railroad, built in 1899. The railroad ended Cottage Grove's isolation and incorporated the city into western Oregon's transportation corridor. It also launched a logging boom that would not subside until the 1980s.

From http://www.ccrh.org/comm/cottage/settlers2.htm. Great info, needs a substantial rewrite. Katr67 (talk) 05:34, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Lovely history section without sources
It's sad that this is completely unsourced. I personally hate looking for sources for other people's stuff. Source as you go, people! Valfontis (talk) 02:02, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

History
The first white settlers came to Cottage Grove in 1848 via the Oregon Trail and then the Applegate Trail. Until that time, only the Kalapuya Native Americans occupied the southern territory of the Willamette Valley. The first post office was established in the house of Greenbery C. Pearce, who lived near Creswell, in 1855. As was common in Oregon pioneer days, post offices for locations would move with each new postmaster, and it wasn't until the later 1860s that the Cottage Grove post office arrived at its final location, in the extreme southwest of present-day Cottage Grove. When the Southern Pacific Railroad built their line through the area, they built their station more than half a mile to the northeast of the post office, starting a bitter neighborhood disagreement. Since the inhabitants near the post office would not allow it to be moved next to the railroad station, a post office was established near the station, called Lemati, after the Chinook word lemiti for mountain. In 1887, Cottage Grove was incorporated as a city, but the eastern community still used the name Lemati intermittently until both communities were merged on July 12, 1898.

In 1863, gold was discovered in what became known as the Bohemia mining district on the Calapooya Divide southeast of the town, which was named after James "Bohemia" Johnson. Gold mining activities died down in the 1920s. A small mining village, Bohemia City, was built on the top of Bohemia Mountain. Later abandoned as mining dwindled, the Bohemia Saddle became a ghost town. The Cottage Grove Prospectors group now host a pancake breakfast each year at the top of the Bohemia Saddle.

Originally, the town of Cottage Grove ran alongside the west side of the Coast Fork of the Willamette River. Early settlers referred to the area as "Slab Town", due to the slabs of wood that were used to cover deep ruts in the muddy roads along the Applegate Trail. The wood planks allowed the wagons to continue safe passage during the rainy season. The railroad came in 1872 and helped develop the downtown business district along Main Street. In 1902, the Oregon Pacific and eastern Railroad hauled logs, ore, supplies, and passengers along the tracks that once ran beside Dorena Lake. Then in 1971, that stretch of tracks was known for scenic excursions, taking passengers along the lakeside, in a train called “the Goose”. Economic factors in the late eighties terminated rides on the Goose. In 1994 BLM acquired the abandoned stretch of tracks. Under the “Rails to Trails” program, 16 miles of former railway were paved to create the current Row River cycle trails. The City of Cottage Grove later acquired a three-mile stretch of land linking the Row River Trail to the historic downtown district.

In 1926, Buster Keaton's The General was filmed in Cottage Grove and the surrounding countryside. The movie included a spectacular locomotive crash, and the wrecked train became a minor tourist attraction until it was dismantled for scrap during World War II. The 1973 movie Emperor of the North Pole was filmed in and around Cottage Grove, as were parts of the 1978 movie Animal House. The 25th anniversary of Animal House's release was celebrated by the citizens with a toga party on August 30, 2003, on Main Street. Main Street is where the climactic parade sequence from the movie was filmed. Portions of the movie Stand By Me were filmed along the railroad tracks east of Cottage Grove, which are now the Row River National Recreation Trail, a bicycle and walking trail. Ricochet River, starring Kate Hudson, was filmed in Cottage Grove in 1997.

The only existing covered railroad bridge west of the Mississippi River, the National Register of Historic Places-listed Chambers Railroad Bridge, is located in Cottage Grove. The City of Cottage Grove restored the bridge in 2011, reopening it on December 3.

Cottage Grove has been awarded the All-America City Award by the National Civic League twice, in 1968 and 2004. Cottage Grove has been recognized as a Tree City USA by The Arbor Day Foundation for over a decade. In October of 2008, Cottage Grove was also the 17th city in the United States to be recognized as a Green Power Community.

Working on cites. So far:

Animal House
The fact that the city is the locale where the homecoming parade in Animal House was filmed is noteworthy and should be included.

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"Cottage Grove Police Department (Oregon)" listed at Redirects for discussion
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