Linn City was a community in Clackamas County, Oregon, United States, that existed from 1843-1861 and was destroyed in the Great Flood of 1862. The former site of Linn City was incorporated into the city of West Linn. [1]
Robert Moore founded Robin's Nest in 1843, near the banks of the Willamette River. Originally, the town was platted on about 50 acres (200,000 m2) of land. By 1845 the town had two log houses and a number of tents. Robin's Nest was renamed Linn City on December 22, 1845 in honor of Lewis F. Linn, a United States Senator from Missouri. [1] Later, by 1846, the town's citizens had constructed fifteen homes. In addition, Linn City was home to a tavern, a chair manufacturer, a cabinet shop, a gunsmith shop, and a wagon shop. [2]
Over the next few years Linn City grew. In 1849 the town held a hotel and two general stores among its businesses. The same year, James Moore, Robert's son, built a lumber mill and a gristmill. The mills provided at least 20 jobs to the people of Linn City. The mill complexes sprawled over the landscape. Many of the mill buildings were connected by docks nearly one mile in length. The town's post office opened in 1850, the same year that Robert Moore founded the local newspaper, the Spectator.
During the California Gold Rush, the men of Linn City began to leave in search of gold. A couple of years passed and the same men who left Linn City returned, many of them with their fortunes. Some of the miners were so rich they refused to work and began to spend the money that their gold hauls brought in. Money changed hands quickly as many gambling tables became available all over town. It was during these years that Linn City was at its height. [2]
By the 1860 United States Census, Linn City had a population of 225. [1]
The demise of Linn City came as a surprise over several months in 1861. During October a heavy and constant rain began to fall. Though heavy rains during October in Oregon are not out of the ordinary, the rain that continued into November was. By the end of November, the Willamette River overflowed its banks. By December, the water had risen over some of the town's streets. Citizens watched, helpless, from their windows as the water rose at a rate of nearly one foot per hour. The resulting great flood destroyed Linn City. The walls of the houses and stores began to shudder and cave in. Other buildings were picked up and swept away by the powerful deluge. When the flood ended on December 14, only three homes remained standing in Linn City.
No one died in the Linn City flood, but the destruction was simply too great for the town to recover. The citizens gathered what few possessions were not swept away by the floodwaters and moved out of town. Linn City was abandoned as a ghost town. Today the city of West Linn stands about where Linn City once was. [2]
Gladstone is a city located in Clackamas County, Oregon, United States. The population was 12,017 at the 2020 census. Gladstone is an approximately 4-square-mile (10 km2) suburban community, 12 miles (19 km) south of Portland, the largest city in Oregon, and located at the confluence of the Clackamas and Willamette rivers.
The Willamette River is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is 187 miles (301 km) long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward between the Oregon Coast Range and the Cascade Range, the river and its tributaries form the Willamette Valley, a basin that contains two-thirds of Oregon's population, including the state capital, Salem, and the state's largest city, Portland, which surrounds the Willamette's mouth at the Columbia.
West Linn is a city in Clackamas County, Oregon, United States. A southern suburb within the Portland metropolitan area, West Linn developed on the site of the former Linn City, which was named after U.S. Senator Lewis F. Linn of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, who had advocated the American occupation of the Oregon territory as a counterclaim to the British.
Lebanon is a city in Linn County, Oregon, United States. Lebanon is located in northwest Oregon, southeast of Salem. The population was 19,690 at the 2020 census. Lebanon sits beside the South Santiam River on the eastern edge of the Willamette Valley, close to the Cascade Range and a 25-minute drive to either of the larger cities of Corvallis and Albany. Lebanon is known for its foot-and-bike trails, its waterside parks, and its small-town character.
Sweet Home is a city in Linn County, Oregon, United States, with a population of 8,925 at the 2010 census. Built near the site of a prehistoric petrified forest, Sweet Home experienced substantial growth during the construction of the Green Peter and Foster dams in the 1940s. The town's main attraction nowadays is the Cascade mountains through Santiam Pass.
The Eastbank Esplanade is a pedestrian and bicycle path along the east shore of the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States. Running through the Kerns, Buckman, and Hosford-Abernethy neighborhoods, it was conceived as an urban renewal project to rebuild the Interstate 5 bicycle bypass washed out by the Willamette Valley Flood of 1996. It was renamed for former Portland mayor Vera Katz in November 2004 and features a statue of her near the Hawthorne Bridge.
The Willamette Falls is a natural waterfall on the Willamette River between Oregon City and West Linn, Oregon, in the United States. It is the largest waterfall in the Northwestern United States by volume, and the seventeenth widest in the world. Horseshoe in shape, it is 1,500 feet (460 m) wide and 40 feet (12 m) high with a flow of 30,849 cu ft/s, located 26 miles (42 km) upriver from the Willamette's mouth. Willamette Falls is a culturally significant site for many tribal communities in the region.
This is a list of properties and historic districts in Oregon that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There are listings in all of Oregon's 36 counties.
The Willamette Falls Locks are a lock system on the Willamette River in the U.S. state of Oregon. Opened in 1873 and closed since 2011, they allowed boat traffic on the Willamette to navigate beyond Willamette Falls and the T.W. Sullivan Dam. Since their closure in 2011, the locks have been classified to be in a "non-operational status." In 2023, work began to repair the locks, which are expected to reopen in 2026.
The town of Willamette, Oregon was incorporated on October 5, 1908, and is located directly West across the Willamette River from Oregon City, Oregon and upstream from the Willamette Falls.
Robert Moore was an American politician and pioneer in the Oregon Country. A Pennsylvania native and veteran of the War of 1812, he also participated in the early movements to form a government in Oregon Country and founded Linn City, Oregon. Before traveling to Oregon in 1840 he had served in the Missouri General Assembly.
Gazelle was an early sidewheeler on the Willamette River in what is now the U.S. state of Oregon. She did not operate long, suffering a catastrophic boiler explosion on April 8, 1854, less than a month after her trial voyage. This was the worst such explosion ever to occur in the Pacific Northwest states. The wrecked Gazelle was rebuilt and operated for a few years, first briefly as the unpowered barge Sarah Hoyt and then, with boilers installed, as the steamer Señorita. A victim of the explosion was D.P. Fuller, age 28, who is buried in Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland, Oregon.
Onward was an early steamboat on the Willamette River built at Canemah, Oregon in 1858. This vessel should not be confused other steamboats named Onward, including in particular the Onward of 1867, a similar but somewhat smaller vessel built at Tualatin Landing, which operated on the Tualatin River under Capt. Joseph Kellogg.
James D. Miller was a steamboat captain in the Pacific Northwest from 1851 to 1903. He became well known for his long length of service, the large number of vessels he commanded, and the many different geographical areas in which he served.
Rival was a sternwheel steamboat that ran on the Willamette River between Oregon City and Portland, Oregon from 1860 to 1868. Rival was intended to be a boat which would promise low fares in an effort to beat a steamboat monopoly which was then in formation.
The Great Flood of 1862 was the largest flood in the recorded history of California, Oregon, and Nevada, inundating the western United States and portions of British Columbia and Mexico. It was preceded by weeks of continuous rains and snows that began in Oregon in November 1861 and continued into January 1862. This was followed by a record amount of rain from January 9–12, and contributed to a flood that extended from the Columbia River southward in western Oregon, and through California to San Diego, and extended as far inland as (now) Idaho in the Washington Territory, (now) Nevada and Utah in the Utah Territory, and (now) Arizona in the western New Mexico Territory. The event dumped an equivalent of 10 feet (3.0 m) of water in California, in the form of rain and snow, over a period of 43 days. Immense snowfalls in the mountains of far western North America caused more flooding in Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, as well as in Baja California and Sonora, Mexico the following spring and summer, as the snow melted.
The Willamette Valley is a 150-mile (240 km) long valley in Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The Willamette River flows the entire length of the valley and is surrounded by mountains on three sides: the Cascade Range to the east, the Oregon Coast Range to the west, and the Calapooya Mountains to the south.
Portland was a side wheel steamer built at Portland, Oregon in the summer of 1853. This vessel was chiefly remembered for its dramatic destruction in 1857 by being washed over Willamette Falls, an incident which killed its captain and a deckhand. The death of the captain, Arthur Jamieson, was one of at least four brothers, all steamboat officers, who were killed in three separate steamboating accidents occurring between 1857 and 1861 in Oregon and in British Columbia.
The Burnside Nest was a temporary outdoor sculpture by Swedish artist Hannes Wingate, installed in Portland, Oregon, United States, in 2014.
George Anson Pease was a well-known steamboat captain in the Pacific Northwest region on the United States, who was active from the earliest days of steamboat navigation on the Willamette River in the 1850s. He worked in various roles until the early 1900s, commanding numerous vessels during that time. During a flood in 1861, while in command of the sternwheeler Onward, Pease rescued 40 people from a flood in the area of Salem, Oregon.
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