Praying for Oregon: Back to the Beginning

Original Methodist Church in Oregon City 

…Yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands, Your walls are continually before Me. Isaiah 49:15-16

Prayer Focus: Clackamas County Commissioners: Chair Tootie Smith, Paul Savas, Martha Schrader, Mark Shull, and Ben West.

The County Sheriff’s Office: In 1845 the first sheriff of Clackamas County was William Livingston Holmes. The current sheriff, number 33, is Angela Brandenburg.

Legislator of the week: Lori Chavez-DeRemer represents Oregon’s Congressional District 5 in the U.S. House of Representatives. District 5 covers most of Clackamas County as well as Linn, Deschutes, and parts of Multnomah and Marion Counties. In 2022 she became one of the first Latinas and the first Republican woman elected to Congress from Oregon. She and her husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, are small business owners and the parents of twin daughters.  

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Clackamas County

We have come full circle and returned to the state's western side. Clackamas County and Oregon City are where it all began. Admittedly, Astoria is the oldest settlement in the state, with John Jacob Astor establishing his fur trading post there in 1811, but in 1828 John McLoughlin took out a two-mile square land claim of the area around Willamette Falls and began platting what became the town of Oregon City and the terminus of the Oregon Trail.

The Methodists arrived in 1840, quickly followed by the first of the Oregon Trail emigrants in 1842. Oregon City was the site of the state’s first jail and library by 1845. The first newspaper and mail delivery came in 1846 and the Fountain Hose Company was the first fire department in 1854.

Also in Oregon City, the Methodists started a congregation in 1840 and built a church in 1844. Today the Oregon City United Methodist Church is the oldest continuing Protestant congregation in the state. Another congregation still in operation from those early years is Saint John the Apostle Catholic Church which was built on Main Street in 1846. Dr. McLoughlin and his wife were associated with this church and were originally buried next to it.

Oregon City was the first capital of the state and an Oregon City location, the Rose Farm owned by the Holmes family, was the site of several meetings by both the provisional and the territorial legislature and famously the venue for an 1849 gathering where Joseph Lane, the first territorial governor, addressed 300 people from the balcony of the house – his first official address.

While Oregon City's early days are central to understanding Oregon’s political, social, and spiritual history, the rest of the county also has deep historical roots. Molalla, for example, in the southernmost part of the county, was first settled just after the 1843 wagon train came into Oregon City with the first land claims made by William Russell and William H. Vaughn. In 1850 John Kilgore Dickey and his wife Martha Ann took a claim in what became known as Dickey Prairie. Mr. Dickey, unlike many of his peers, felt guilty about getting free land and made a point of paying the local Molalla Indians for it. He remained on good terms with the local tribes.

As you pray for Oregon this week, remember the many firsts and the precedents set during those early years, especially in Clackamas County. Repent of our errors but remember the good roots our forefathers established as well.