Lowell Historical Displays 2 - Lowell, OR
N 43° 54.540 W 122° 46.768
10T E 517707 N 4861789
These historical displays are located inside Lowell Covered Bridge along Pioneer Rd, which spans Dexter Reservoir.
Waymark Code: WMFJCE
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 10/25/2012
Views: 8
The Lowell Covered Bridge stands out greatly with its white paint job and invites visitors to pause and take a break from their travels. Visitors are welcomed to a parking lot with restrooms and handicap access. Upon entry into the Lowell Bridge, visitors are welcomed to four free-standing lit displays with information displayed on both sides. Each panel highlights different aspects on the history behind Lowell Bridge.
On one particular historic panel of interest tells the story behind the early emigration of settlers into Willamette Valley:
After lengthy journeys across inhospitable deserts and mountains in the early 1800s, weary travelers arrived in the Willamette Basin. Lane County's first Euro-American settler, Elijah Bristow, arrived in June of 1846, making his 640-acre claim at Pleasant Hill. Others followed, gradually pushing up the Middle Fork of the Willamette River and into the larger side valleys - even though easily-farmed land was scarce above the site of present-day Lowell. Elijah and many of the early settlers were subsistence farmers and ranchers who grew vegetables, tended apple and nut orchards, and raised livestock. In the 1880s about 650 people lived between Lowell and Oakridge.
The eight miles of river bottomlands between Lowell and Oakridge are now deep beneath the waters of Lookout Point Reservoir. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the region was known as "Rush Island," and boasted three towns - Carter, Landax (later called Signal), and Reserve - that were home to an assortment of subsistence farmers, squatters, and workers from logging and railroad camps.
Until the 1950s, the town of Reserve was Forest Service headquarters for the West Boundary Ranger District.
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