"Life Before Woodburn"

SETTLEMIER WASN’T FIRST TO DREAM OF PROSPERITY

1989 Woodburn Independent Special 100 Year Anniversary Edition

Jesse Settlemier wasn’t the first settler to walk French Prairie land and dream of prosperity. 

Centuries before Settlemier bought land that later became Woodburn, some of the area’s earliest settlers – Calapooya Indians – looked on the valley’s fertile lands with hopes of eking out a living.  They were replaced by French Canadian trappers and American wagoneers.

Early settlers shared the valley with the Calapooyas, a group of relatively peaceful Indians who wandered the region in search of vegetation and game.  Campsites have been found south Woodburn along the Willamette and Santiam rivers and east along Butte Creek.  Their only remains are chiseled arrowheads and stone tools. 

But for hundreds of years, the Calapooyas wandered the valley, creating campsites, exhausting its resources and moving on to a new location.  Fish or large game weren’t always available.  Indians survived by collecting roots, berries, and insects.

In 1822 epidemics and disease brought to them by white settlers nearly destroyed the Calapooya people.  But even before Lewis and Clark cam to the Northwest, Indians had suffered from imported diseases.  The few survivors had little effect on valley settlement.

Fewer than 500 Indians were founding the valley by the time of the first census.  In 1855, they were moved to the Grand Ronde Reservation.  The last known Calapooya survivor, called Aunt Eliza, died in 1922.

However, the Calapooyas left their mark on the landscape.  They burned the prairie land to flush out small game.  Each fall during the dry season, they burned hundreds of square miles, destroying trees and shrubs.  Deer were forced to feed on lands left purposely unmarred, where the Indians found them easy pickings.

Early explorers had difficulty finding grass to feed their horses and complained of smoke during burning season.  But vast stretches of cleared land proved to be fine farmland.

Retired trappers from the Hudson’s Bay Company came to the area in the 1830’s with their Indian wives and children.  By 1840, Catholic missionaries settled at the area’s north end and Methodists came at the south.

Within the next 10 years, the American fur trade collapsed, and American trappers descended from the Rockies to the Willamette Valley, brining their own Indian wives and children.  Before long, huge numbers of settlers loaded up wagons and headed west for Oregon where many settled on fertile valley land.  By 1846, the bickering British and American governments had decided the land was American.

In 1845 an early French Canadian settler, Jean B. Ducharm claimed land that is today east Woodburn.  He was soon joined by settlers Bradford Bonney, George Leisure and Eli Cooley.  Much of Woodburn today sits on land claimed by those early settlers.

A settlement called Belle Passi spring up in an area now a few miles south of Woodburn.  People rode from as far as Elliott Prairie and Monitor to come to Belle Passi.  Ten years before Woodburn was even a dream, the town was bustling with its own stores, a post office, a school, and a church.

All that remains of Belle Passi today is a cemetery.

Belle Passi was named by its first church pastor, the Reverend N. Johnson, who arrived in 1851 and quickly established the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.  Legend has it Johnson was reading a book about Italy and was so taken with the description of the Italian Belpassi that he chose the name for his town.

Fledgling towns that would become Hubbard and Gervais were also sprouting along the north south highway.  But Belle Passi’s days were numbered.

In 1862, Ducharme lost his 2 acre claim in a sheriff’s foreclosure sale.  It was snatched up by an ambitious young man named Jesse Holland Settlemier.  In 1863, Settlemier moved to his land with wife Eleanor E. Cochran, built a comfortable home and established the Woodburn Nursery Company.

At that time, the city site was unfenced country covered with wild brush and forest.  But that was soon to change.  Settlemier slashed and burned timber and sowed timothy in its place.

By some accounts the town was originally the town was originally called Halsey after a railroad official.  But Settlemier soon discovered there was already an Oregon town with that name, and changed it to Woodburn.

Railroad construction ended in 1871 and soon after Settlemier platted the first four blocks of his town just West of the mainline.  He gave the railroad free land to build a station and gave away most of his lots to attract builders.

Woodburn rapidly became French Prairie’s social and economic center, being the junction of the Springfield-Natron branch of the Oregon and California Railroad and the mainline.  It became the shipping point for grain, lumber and farm supplies.  It was centrally located on the road to Portland.

As Woodburn began to take shape, Belle Passi withered.  Johnson moved his church to Woodburn as his flock moved North.  He became Woodburn’s first pastor.

Woodburn was growing.  By 1878 there were 145 people.  The town had its own church, a blacksmith shop, a grain storage, and several stores.  Settlemier had several employees and their families came to town and built homes and a schoolhouse followed.

Before long, Settlemier’s dream of building a city on the French Prairie land was on its way to becoming a reality.

Back to the Top