That Oregon Life · Stories & discoveries
History
Explore History stories, features, and local discoveries from That Oregon Life.
More History stories
Keep exploring
History
Oregon Emptied Its Mental Hospitals but Never Fully Built the Safety Net It Promised
Oregon closed thousands of psychiatric hospital beds with a promise of community care. Historical records reveal what happened when that system never caught up.
Built in 1945, Oregon’s Widest Covered Bridge Has Been Hit by Trucks, Raised Six Feet, and Somehow Survived
There is something wonderfully Oregon about finding an old covered bridge where you least expect one. Drive east from Eugene and Springfield on Highway 58, following the road toward the forested foothills of the Cascades, and…
Oregon’s Drowned Towns Were Abandoned, Flooded, Razed, But Not Forgotten
Most Oregonians and tourists have driven right past them without a second thought. You've fished and boated there. Swam and picniced nearby. Beneath the deep blue water of some of Oregon's most familiar reservoirs lie hidden…
Six Of Oregon’s Greatest Unsolved Mysteries Are Of Lost Gold, Buried Riches, and Shipwreck Treasure
There’s something about Oregon that feels like it was designed for a treasure hunt. Maybe it’s the fog curling through the Coast Range. Maybe it’s the abandoned mining roads disappearing beneath sword ferns, the black-sand beaches,…
A Forgotten Newspaper Clipping Reveals Oregon’s Wildfire Debate Was Already Raging More Than 120 Years Ago
Smoke had drifted into Lane County again, turning the sky a sickly-yellow and the surrounding hills into indistinct hazy blue, when I found myself remembering an old newspaper clipping I’d saved during some research into western…
Oregon’s Timber Crisis Is Real And So Is the Threat to Its Ancient Forests
Part two of two. Read Part One here. At the bottom of Crabtree Valley, the argument seems impossibly far away. Crabtree Lake lies dark beneath the trees. Water gathers along fallen logs. Moss hangs from branches…
A New Oregon Trail Is Transforming a Historic Railroad Corridor Into an 82-Mile Path
Ten years ago, That Oregon Life introduced readers to the Salmonberry corridor, a place that seemed to exist somewhere between Oregon history and an outdoor legend. Back in 2016, the old railroad through the Coast Range…