A few days ago I had the experience
of touring the former Blue Heron Paper Plant, at Oregon City, with members of the
media, to discuss this history of this incredible site at the Willamette Falls on
the eastern shore of the river. This is
the place, in the 1820s, where Dr. John McLaughlin established what would
become the capital of the Oregon Territory.
The Falls have been a draw since prehistoric times and as the second
largest waterfall, by volume, in the United States (after Niagara), they
quickly became the focus of a variety of Oregon’s earliest industries. McLaughlin himself had a small race cut out
of the bedrock to power a sawmill and by 1865 what became the Oregon Woolen
Mills was located here. In 1908, having
left his position at what is now the West Linn Paper Company, across the river,
W. P. Hawley established his own firm, the Hawley Pulp and Paper Company, on
McLaughlin’s old claim and soon was producing 200,000 tons of paper products on a daily
basis.
Willamette Falls, from the old Hawley Powerhouse site, June 2012 |
Hawley built a booming business,
based on his own decades of expertise, a ready supply of timber, and the abundant
power of the Willamette Falls. He rented
PGE’s old “Station A” out at the head of the falls, built his own buildings for
paper machines and mills, and the business spread out along Oregon’s Main
Street, sharing the block with a hotel, a laundry and McLaughlin’s decrepit
house. As he grew the business (and gave
the house to the city, which moved it up the hill), Hawley’s structures became
larger, more sturdy (concrete, not wood) and slowly took over the entire
block. In the late 1920s Hawley built
two new massive, concrete and glass buildings on the east side of the street (known as Mill B and Paper Machine No. 4),
creating a clean streetscape of multi-story industral buildings. Eventually Hawley's paper company took over the
old Woolen Mill property too, occupying over twenty acres lining everything on
both sides of Main Street between the railroad line and the river.
Hawley sold the business to
Publisher’s Paper in the 1940s and then a series of ownership changes in the
1980s and 90s culminated with the formation of employee-owned Blue Heron Paper Company,
which sadly closed its doors about a year ago.
The future of the site is unclear, though Metro has expressed interest
in providing the public better access to “Niagara of the Pacific.” That is why the media was interested and that
is why there is a lot of discussion on-going about the opportunities, and the
liabilities, that result from over 180 years of industrial uses. Last week, on Wednesday, it was a
beautiful day at the Willamette Falls.
A lot of people are working to try figure out to create a situation
where more Oregonians can enjoy the view McLaughlin did.
I'm happy to hear that Metro wants to create greater access to this natural and historic wonder.
ReplyDeleteWe live near the Falls on the West Linn side of the river, but due to the 100% domination of the river's flank y industry, there's no good place to view the scene, much less hike, picnic and so on.
Let's fix this Oregon.