Craig Wollner

Craig Wollner was the associate dean of the College of Urban and Public Affairs at Portland State University. He was the author, co-author, or editor of six books on the economic, business, and labor history of the Pacific Northwest, including Electrifying Eden: Portland General Electric, 1889-1965; The City Builders: One Hundred Years of Union Carpentry in Portland, Oregon, and, with Gordon B. Dodds, The Silicon Forest. Dr. Wollner passed away in November 2010.

Author's Entries

  • Associated Oregon Industries

    Associated Oregon Industries (AOI), a private business and advocacy group, was founded in 1895 to advance awareness of products from Oregon. During the twentieth century, AOI evolved into an advocacy organization and is now a statewide, nonprofit business and lobbying association. AOI represents businesses originating in Oregon and those with …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Entek International

    Entek International, LLC—one of Oregon's innovative high-tech manufacturing industries—is a plastics products manufacturer in Lebanon. Its primary business is the manufacture of polyethylene battery separators—sheets of nonconducting porous material made primarily from silica that are placed between positive and negative plates in storage batteries. The separators prevent short …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Gordon B. Dodds (1932-2003)

    Gordon Barlow Dodds, professor of history at Portland State University (PSU), was a leading historian of the westward movement, the Pacific Northwest, and the state of Oregon. Born on March 12, 1932, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Dodds grew up in Pennsylvania, received an A.B. in 1954 from Harvard University, an M.A. …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Intel

    Intel Corporation, the world's leading manufacturer of semiconductors (an essential component of most consumer electronics), is Oregon's top private employer with a work force of approximately 15,500 in 2008.  The company, whose headquarters is in Santa Clara, California, has facilities in nine other states and nine foreign countries, but its …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Silicon Forest

    The Silicon Forest is the name applied to the cluster of high-technology firms (computer and electronic products) in Washington County. The name echoes that of Silicon Valley, the first successful cluster of such firms in the Bay Area south of San Francisco. The high-technology industry accounted for 19 percent of …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Trojan Nuclear Power Plant

    The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, located in Columbia County about twelve miles north of St. Helens, began generating power in March 1976. It shut down in January 1993. The saga of Oregon’s only nuclear-generating plant, however, played out over a period longer than the seventeen years it was in …

    Oregon Encyclopedia