Coburg Oregon
Coburg began in 1847, when John Diamond and Jacob Spores settled near the site of a Kalapooya Indian village on the McKenzie River. The Donation Land Act drew early pioneers to farm the fertile soil. It was the Willamette of their dreams, the Promised Land at the end of the Oregon Trail. The first blacksmith, Charles Payne (c.1865), named the town after a prize stallion imported from Coburg, Germany, a city well known for its prized horses.
Coburg was incorporated in 1893, and began its Golden Years period during the same time as Booth-Kelly leased a small mill in the center of town, increasing the size of the mill and employing 300 men working round the clock. Four trains came into Coburg each day, a passenger train and three trains to take finished lumber to other markets.
Coburg exploded to 1,200 residents in the first decade of the new century and boasted a state bank, five stores, a bakery, a hotel, hardware and furniture store, restaurant, theater or public hall, moving picture show, schools, churches and its own newspaper, the Coburg Journal.
Twenty years later, fires, dam-building and other lumber-affecting decisions caused the Coburg Mill to close, with hundreds of people immediately left without work. In the months and years that would follow, Coburg citizens moved to find work, or moved their houses onto bottom land and returned to their farming pioneer roots.
Today, Coburg retains much of its historic character with the houses in Coburg’s Historic District representing three architectural styles: Rural, or Carpenter Gothic houses, sometimes called farmhouse style, were common from 1860 to 1900.This style often features gabled roof lines, centered doors, equally placed horizontal windows, and front verandas.
Italianate structures were fashionable from 1875 to 1910 and feature square shapes, a flat-hipped roofs, and covered porches. Elaborate Italianate houses display routed corbels, projecting brackets that support structures above them.
Cottages or bungalows, built from 1910 to 1930, are small, well-constructed buildings with low-pitched roofs, tapered porch posts, and exposed eave rafters.
