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The Roseburg News-Review---May 21, 2007
The City of Roseburg has had an interesting and challenging history over the last 150 years since first platted in 1851.
With plans by the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians to add a Convention Center to the city center and population growth coming to the area for the first time in years, Roseburg may rise again in the minds of Oregonians.
By Chris Gray
Roseburg, with an estimated population of a little more than 21,000 people, is the county seat of Douglas County and the center of the Umpqua River watershed.
Sitting in scrub oak hills along the South Umpqua River in the mild weather of Southern Oregon’s “Banana Belt,” the city has a history older than the state of Oregon.
Platted in 1851 by Aaron Rose, Roseburg grew with the rise of the railroad in 1887 and served as a switching point on the Oregon & California Railroad, and later the main line of the Southern Pacific railroad from San Francisco to Portland.
The main line was moved to the other side of the Cascades in 1927, but local passenger service continued until 1951 and today the city is home to the Central Oregon & Pacific Railroad, a small freight line with routes between Eugene and Black Butte, Calif., and Eugene and Coos Bay.
The old railway station, at 700 S.E. Sheridan St., is now a pub run by the McMenamin’s Bros. of Portland, who have decorated the interior with an eye to local heritage.
Roseburg works to maintain its historical heritage through its historic resource review commission, which oversees the city’s three historic districts: Laurelwood, which sits behind Roseburg High School, downtown, in the southeast part of Roseburg, and the Mill-Pine District, a neighborhood founded by railroad workers in the days of the Southern Pacific switchyard
The first path that pioneers blazed through Roseburg was the Applegate Trail, which followed Winchester, Jackson and Main streets when Jesse Applegate, Levi Scott and other pioneers mapped it out in 1846.
The trail became U.S. Highway 99 or the Pacific Highway, in 1926, part of a link that stretched from Mexico to Canada. Today, Interstate 5 has succeeded U.S. 99, and splits the city north to south.
When the railroad all but left town in 1927, Roseburg almost went under with it. Combined with the stock market crash of 1929, a depression loomed over the city.
But the city received a shot in the arm with the arrival of the Veterans Affairs Hospital in the 1930s
A nationwide housing boom after World War II led to opening up the forests of the Umpqua Watershed for logging.
Roseburg expanded west along Harvard Avenue, the old Coos Bay Wagon Road, and north of the river in the Hucrest neighborhood in the 1950s.
But then came Aug. 7, 1959. A 2 1/2 ton van holding diesel fuel, ground walnut shells, prilled ammonium nitrate and 400 pounds of dynamite caught fire and set off a massive explosion.
The Blast, as it’s now called, leveled businesses, decimated downtown Roseburg and killed 14 people, injured more than 100 others and caused $10 million in damage.
Tourists and residents today can take seasonal walking tours to learn about the catastrophe, the third deadliest disaster in Oregon state history.
Roseburg’s downtown was changed forever, and many of the buildings of Roseburg’s early days are gone forever.
But other sites remain, including the neoclassical Douglas County Courthouse at 1036 S.E. Douglas Ave., built in 1929.
In 1955, rectangular additions were built on each end of the structure, and the Justice Building, faced in marble, was built at the rear in 1977.
The Willis House, a two-story Victorian at 744 S.E. Rose St., was built in 1874 and moved to its present location in 1911 from the corner of Rose Street and Cass Avenue. It includes a gabled roof and paired brackets.
Judge W. Willis was a prominent attorney, judge and three-term mayor of Roseburg who played host to such notable figures as President Rutherford B. Hayes and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman.
The Floed-Lane house at 544 S.E. Douglas Ave. is more commonly known as the Joseph Lane House and is the only surviving structure associated with this pioneer soldier and statesman.
Lane, the namesake of Lane County to the north, was the Oregon Territory’s delegate to Congress from 1851 to 1859, and he was the state’s first elected U.S. senator from 1859 to 1861.
The Floed-Lane House is maintained by the Douglas County Historical Society. Visitors are welcome from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays or by appointment.
In late June, look to the skies as Roseburg Regional Airport draws a number of airplanes flown during World Wars I and II and Vietnam for the Roseburg Air Show at the Marion E. Carl Memorial Field.
In July, the Graffiti Cruise-In is the town’s biggest annual festival, drawing classic cars and hot rods.
The Mill-Pine Historic District, once known as a hotbed for crime, has been the focus of a slow but sure gentrification effort on the part of its residents.
With plans by the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians to add a convention center to the west side of downtown and population growth coming to the city for the first time in years, Roseburg may rise again in the minds of Oregonians.