Willamette, Oregon
unincorporated community that is now part of West Linn, Oregon, United States
The town of Willamette, Oregon was incorporated on October 5, 1908, and is located directly West across the Willamette River from Oregon City, Oregon and upstream from the Willamette Falls.
The area was first called Willamette Falls, but later shortened to Willamette. The first mayor of Willamette was James Downey. The town consisted of approximately 300 residents. The main business within the town limits was the Capen Shoe Company Factory, located at 7th Avenue (now known as Willamette Falls Drive) and 12th Street. Each residence had electricity, running water and a sewage disposal system. Willamette had its own electric trolley service from the Main Street into town to the Willamette Falls Railroad station located at the bridge to Oregon City. Some residents used the trolley service to travel to work at the paper mills on the west side of the Willamette River and in Oregon City.
Typhoid outbreak
In 1910 and 1911, the town of Willamette was struck by a typhoid fever outbreak, first believed to be caused by the spring floods of the Willamette River which poisoned the town well at the bottom of 12th Street. Newspaper reports of the time, state that 10% of the town (35 people) were stricken with typhoid fever and at least one died.
“Willamette, Oregon” enters the record as unincorporated community that is now part of West Linn, Oregon, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Willamette, Oregon and unincorporated can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Willamette, Oregon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Willamette, Oregon and unincorporated provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17108172. Authority coordinates are 45.344, -122.667. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1910 and 1911.
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This entry incorporates text from “Willamette, Oregon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.