Standing in the Gap for Oregon

Yamhill County, Oregon They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat of their fruit…And my elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands . Isaiah 65: 21, 22 The West Central Region of Oregon is made of Yamhill, Marion, Polk, Linn, and Benton Counties and includes some of the oldest settlements as well as some of the richest agricultural land in the state.  Pray for the elected officials of Yamhill County including  Commissioners Lindsay Berschauer, Chair; Kit Johnson; Mary Starrett. The  County Sheriff is Tim Svenson. Commissioner Kit Johnson is the newest member of the commission, beginning his term in 2023. Kit is a farmer and fifth-generation Oregonian, making him an advocate for the agricultural resources of Yamhill County. His own business has included poultry, berries, and apple rootstocks, and has been working in the agricultural sector since 1994. He’s a huge supporter of ag training programs such as FFA. Other county o...

Blockhouse in Dayton, in honor of General Palmer There He makes the hungry dwell, that they may establish a city for a dwelling place, And sow fields and plant vineyards, that they may yield a fruitful harvest. Psalm 107:37-38    Yamhill County, like Clackamas, Champooick, and Twality, was one of the first four districts created by the Oregon Provisional Government in 1843. It was, of course, huge, as the British and Americans has not yet determined who would control the Oregon territory, or where the boundaries should be. Ewing Young, whose untimely and intestate death in 1841 actually precipitated the creation of the Provisional Government (in order to settle his estate), settled in Yamhill County in the 1830’s. As one of the earliest locations in Oregon to be settled, Yamhill County is rich in history. We have written a little about Yamhill and Lafayette here, but there is another small town in Yamhill that has an interesting backstory – Dayton. General Joel Palmer...

  Yamhill County Therefore with joy will you draw water from the wells of salvation . Isaiah 12:3 We are taking a little detour from our review of the North Coast counties to visit one of the oldest counties in the state: Yamhill . It isn’t that much of a detour since Yamhill, when originally established in 1843, extended from the Willamette River to the Pacific Ocean and from the Columbia River to California. As other counties were created it grew smaller but remained a coast county until Tillamook County took a piece of it around 1887. The county seat originally was Lafayette , but later was moved to McMinnville, which is the largest city in the county. Second in size is Newberg, also the home of George Fox University, a school established by and for Quakers (The Religious Society of Friends) in 1891. It has over 4,000 students and is the largest private university in the state, and highly regarded. I was once accepted into a graduate program at George Fox but had to drop tha...