Author's Entries

• Ada Hastings Hedges (1883-1980)

  Ada Hastings Hedges, poetry editor Borghild Lee wrote in the March 14, 1926, Oregon Journal, “is an exquisite artist…one of the most finished poets in America.” A teacher and writer of fiction, Hedges is best known for her poetry about Oregon’s High Desert. Oregon poet Ingrid Wendt described …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Angus Bowmer (1904-1979)

  Angus Livingston Bowmer was the creator of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the largest resident acting company in the United States and one of the biggest tourist and cultural attractions in southern Oregon. Under his direction, the Festival produced the Shakespeare canon in rotation—a tradition that continues, completing the cycle …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Astoria (book, 1836)

  Although Washington Irving (1783-1859) never traveled to Oregon Country, he wrote one of the most widely read and influential narratives of the region. His two-volume Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains, published in 1836, introduced more readers to the Pacific Northwest than any single …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Bayocean

  No Oregon ghost town had a more audacious beginning than Bayocean, "the Atlantic City of the West." The development was the dream of Thomas Benton Potter and his son Thomas Irving Potter, well-established real-estate promoters with offices in Portland, San Jose, San Francisco, and Kansas City. They began the …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Clyde Rice (1903-1998)

  Clyde Rice was eighty-one years old when he published his first book in 1984. Before writing A Heaven in the Eye, he had not thought seriously about writing, but the book won the Western States Book Award for creative nonfiction, judged that year by Robert Penn Warren. USA Today …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Daniel Francis Fouts (1951-)

  Among quarterback recruits for college and professional football, Dan Fouts, a relatively unknown high school player that no other team wanted, was an unlikely choice. Yet during his career, from 1970 through 1987, the 6’3”, 204-pound Fouts set longstanding records for the University of Oregon and the San Diego Chargers, …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Dorothy Lawson McCall (1888-1982)

  Dorothy Lawson, mother of Oregon Governor Thomas Lawson McCall, was born into luxury on October 11, 1888, the daughter of financier Thomas W. Lawson of Boston. He was known as a “boy wonder,” she would later write, “a millionaire at thirty and a thirty-times millionaire in the early 1900s,” …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Eloise Jarvis McGraw (1915–2000)

  When Literary Arts gives the Eloise Jarvis McGraw award to the best Oregon writer of young adult books each year, it is an acknowledgment of the state’s most decorated author in that genre, Eloise McGraw. Among her literary awards are three Newbery Honor Books, won in three different decades; an …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Eric A. Kimmel (1946–)

  Eric A. Kimmel is Oregon’s most prolific writer of children’s and young adult books, with more than 120 books published and over half of them in print in 2015. He has been called “Oregon’s teller of tales” and is known for his adaptations and retellings of folktales, especially Yiddish tales. …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• First Methodist Church (Portland)

  Methodist Episcopal Church, Portland's first church, began with seven members in 1848, and by 1960 it had grown into a forward-thinking congregation of 1,833 members. The congregation's first building, constructed in 1850, was on Southwest Second and Taylor. Under pastor Charles C. Stratton, the church prospered and built its …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• First Presbyterian Church (Portland)

  First Presbyterian Church of Portland, organized in January 1854 just three years after the city was incorporated, was the third Presbyterian church in the Oregon Territory. Among its members were many prominent Portland families, including Ainsworths, Corbetts, Couches, Kamms, Ladds, and Schuylers. The first permanent sanctuary of the church, …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Friendly House, Inc.

  The Marshall Street Community Center, founded by the socially minded First Presbyterian Church of Portland, opened in 1926. For more than eighty years, it has taken the lead or partnered with social agencies and industry in serving populations often discriminated against or ignored. Amelia Anderson, the first director of …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Gilbert S. Seeley (1938-)

  The presentation of choral music in Oregon changed when Gilbert Stewart Seeley arrived in 1975. “He has established a new standard of excellence in this region,” wrote Jacob Avshalomov, director of the Portland Youth Philharmonic. Oregonian music critic David Stabler agreed, praising Seeley's “unsurpassed interpretation.” Karen Kammerer of the …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Hinson Memorial Baptist Church

  The year was 1857, two years before Oregon statehood, when a group of citizens met at the home of merchant Josiah Failing, later mayor of Portland, to form First Baptist Church on October 26. Fifteen years later, First Baptist saw the need to start a mission Sunday school …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• James B. Hall (1918–2008)

  James B. Hall, founder of the creative writing program at the University of Oregon, was “one of America’s most anthologized short story writers,” according to the Encyclopedia of Short Fiction. He published more than fifty stories, many of them reprinted in anthologies such as Prize Stories of 1951: The …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Lauren B. Sykes (1905-1980)

  "Lauren B. Sykes has done as much or more for music in Portland than any individual in the history of this city," wrote Oregon Journal music critic Martin Clark in 1967. Governor Tom McCall described Sykes's significance to Oregon's cultural history this way: "Thousands of Oregonians know personally about your …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Naval Air Station Tillamook / Tillamook Air Museum

  Tillamook is home to the largest free-standing, clear-span wooden structure in the world. Covering more than seven acres, the building is 1,072 feet long, 296 feet wide, and towers more than 15 stories high. Hangar B of Naval Air Station (NAS) Tillamook was commissioned and constructed by the U.S. Navy …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Oceanside

  "It would be one of the biggest and finest resorts of the Pacific Northwest. The seal rocks…will vie in fame with the nationally known 'Seal Rocks' of the Cliff House, at the Golden Gate, San Francisco." Those were the dreams of Oceanside's founders, the brothers H.H. and J.H. Rosenberg, when …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Oregon Literature Series

  “The Oregon Literature Series is a national model,” wrote John Frohnmayer, chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. A project of the Oregon Council of Teachers of English (OCTE), the six books that make up the series, published by Oregon State University Press in 1993-1994 and in print ever …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Oregon Repertory Singers

  Since 1974, no other choral organization has brought more recognition or varied programs to the state than the Oregon Repertory Singers. The ninety-mixed-voice group has commissioned, debuted, and recorded new American compositions; performed around the world; been led by internationally known composers; and been featured on national television specials. Importantly, …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Oregon Writing Festival

  Portland State University (PSU) becomes a pre-college institution every first Saturday in May, when a thousand children, grades four through twelve, descend on the campus to practice and celebrate writing. They come from all parts of Oregon, bringing a sample of their best writing as their admission ticket. The Oregon …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Pittock Mansion

  Pittock Mansion was built high above the city on Imperial Heights in the West Hills of Portland. Built by Henry and Georgiana Pittock between 1909 and 1914, the mansion's bright, red-tiled roof can be seen from many points in the metropolitan area, and is, according to Classic Houses of …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Richard Henderson Wiley (1919-2013)

  Richard Henderson Wiley, one of Oregon’s most successful commercial artists, is best known by millions of people for his illustrations of the Dick and Jane reading series, published by Scott, Foresman & Co. Richard Wiley was born July 26, 1919, in Lynchburg, Virginia, the youngest of five children of Edgar …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Samuel L. Simpson (1845-1899)

  Sam Simpson was a singer of love songs to Oregon. In 1899, Judge John Burnett called him “the [Robert] Burns of Oregon…who could make the Muses smile or weep. What Edgar Allan Poe was to the beginning, Simpson was to the close of the century in America.” Most Oregon schoolchildren …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Shaniko

  No town in Oregon has seen more rapid growth and decline than Shaniko, about forty miles northeast of Madras in Wasco County. Incorporated in 1901, the town was known as the Wool Capital of the World in the early years of the twentieth century, and local farmers and ranchers shipped …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Three Arch Rocks National Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness

  At fifteen acres, Three Arch Rocks lays claim to being one of the smallest wildlife refuges in the world as well as one of the smallest designated wilderness areas in the United States. Yet, with its nesting for a million seabirds of thirteen species, it is one of the most …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Tillamook

  Tillamook, the county seat of Tillamook County and its largest city, is located near the southeast end of Tillamook Bay, seventy-three miles west of Portland. The growth of Tillamook illustrates the development of the northwest corner of the state as a dairyland region during the late nineteenth and …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Verne Allen Duncan (1934-)

  As the second longest-serving state chief education officer in Oregon history, Verne Allen Duncan established the direction for school improvement through his 1983 Action Plan for Excellence, and as state senator he was frequently outspoken in protest of policies of his own Republican Party. He was “a moderate’s moderate,” according …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Willard B. Spalding (1904-1981)

  A nationally recognized and respected educator, Willard B. Spalding held two key positions in Oregon during critical times: superintendent of Portland schools at the end of World War II and administrator at the state’s newest institution of higher education, Portland State University. Spalding was born on February 9, 1904, …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• William Corbin (1916-1999)

  William Corbin McGraw and Eloise Jarvis McGraw, husband and wife, were award-winning Oregon authors of children and young adult books. Corbin was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on January 22, 1916, to Frank Irving McGraw and Grace Corbin. He attended Principia College from 1934 to 1936, where he met …

  Oregon Encyclopedia