Cottage Grove

Henry Small’s Claim and the Railroad

The Coast Fork of the Willamette River divides Cottage Grove, a town in south-central Lane County, into an eastern and a western section.^1,2 River Road, Cottage Grove’s first main street, was once a Kalapuya Indian trail, became part of the Applegate Trail in 1846, and served as a stage route in the 1860s.⁵ The town had its beginning on the donation land claim of Henry Small, and the historic context statement dates the first land claims, by J. Cochran and William Shields, to 1851.⁴ The city’s marker says settler Greenberry Pearce coined the name when he set up the first post office, naming it for cottages in an oak grove.³ The post office moved to Cottage Grove from Cresswell in 1867.⁴ The Oregon and California Railroad obtained a right-of-way through town in 1871, and the first train arrived on July 7, 1872.^3,4 Cottage Grove was incorporated on February 11, 1887.³

Slabtown and Lemati

By 1893, the city’s marker says, there were two feuding town centers: “Slabtown” on the west, named for lumber slabs laid in the muddy streets, and East Cottage Grove, later named Lemati, on the east.³ The Federal Writers’ Project guide tells it differently: in 1894 a west-side representative persuaded the legislature to designate the west side as Cottage Grove, and the resentful east-siders incorporated as Lemati, leaving Cottage Grove off the railroad.² In that guide’s account the Cottage Grove marshal had to go to Lemati to meet the mail trains, and when he neglected to remove his badge the Lemati marshal jailed him until Cottage Grove paid his fine.² The city’s marker adds that citizens of Lemati once dragged the post office 600 feet east in a midnight raid.³ The marker dates the reunion as Cottage Grove to 1899, while the guide says only that a reconciliation came after two years.^2,3

Bohemia Gold

In 1858, the city’s marker says, gold was discovered 30 miles east along the upper Row River, while the town was still struggling to establish itself.³ Mill stamps for the mines arrived by rail at the depot, and when the Bohemia Mines boomed in 1902 a short rail line ran daily from Cottage Grove to Disston.^1,3 The blocks around the station at Main Street filled with hardware stores, saloons, groceries, lodging houses, and gambling halls, and the boom swelled the population to 3,000.³

The Chambers Mill and Bridge

As mining disappeared the timber industry grew, and in 1909 thirty-one sawmills were recorded within twenty miles of town.³ John Harvey Chambers, who came to Oregon from Nebraska in 1902, moved to Cottage Grove in 1903 to take charge of a sawmill whose owner had defaulted on a loan.⁶ In 1917 he gained control of the Oregon Pacific and Eastern Railway, built to serve the Bohemia Mining District, and used it for lumber transport.^3,6 The Chambers Mill was established in 1925, and that year J.H. Chambers built a bridge to carry logs from the Lorane Valley timber across the Coast Fork Willamette River to it.^6,7 On August 8, 1942, fire burned the mill to the ground with more than five million board feet of lumber, and the seventy-six-year-old owner rebuilt, dying in October 1944 with the new mill nearly complete.⁶ Under Warren Daugherty the mill burned again, in 1950 by the city marker’s date and in 1951 by the Cottage Grove Sentinel’s, and the rails and buildings were sold for scrap.^6,8 The city marker calls the Chambers Covered Bridge Oregon’s last covered railroad bridge and the chamber of commerce calls it the only one west of the Mississippi; it was restored and dedicated for public use in December 2011.^9,10,11 When the Federal Writers’ Project guide was written, the town of 2,475 stood in the heart of a lumbering region, with stock raising, dairying, and fruit culture also carried on.² The 1940s were the heyday of timber cutting, with dozens of mills operating around Cottage Grove, but by 1979 timber jobs in town had declined by 68%.⁹

Marietta at the East End of Town

In the summer of 1926 Buster Keaton filmed The General here, building a set representing Marietta, Georgia, at the east end of town and a 215-foot trestle across the Row River near Culp Creek for the climactic scene.¹² In 1977 city officials closed Main Street for three days so the homecoming parade scene of Animal House could be filmed there.^4,13 A large mural of the General hangs on Main Street, and the town has a statue and a mural of Opal Whiteley, whose diary the Atlantic Monthly began running in March 1920.^12,14