As we began taking a closer look at how some of our local communities got their start, we made our first stop in Coburg.
The town located about 7 miles north of Eugene.
It's a small dot on the map in terms of population—just over 1,000 people—but at one time, it considered itself a rival to Eugene in its industry and its development.
It's a quiet, tight-knit community known as a Mecca for history and antiques.
Mayor Judy Volta tells us the town didn't start out as Coburg—it was actually called Willamette Forks. That is until one day in 1865 when a blacksmith by the name of Charles Payne was shoeing a racing stallion from Coburg, Germany.
"It was a fine specimen and he shod the horse and put the old shoes up on the wall and said a wonderful horse, a wonderful town, I shall dub this town Coburg," Mayor Volta said.
Today, Coburg is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Many of the original buildings still stand, including the Coburg, which is the Van Duyn house.
"Isaac Van Duyn and his ten kids lived there,” the mayor explained. “They say that Alice, one of the daughters, still lives upstairs somewhere, that people see lights go off and on."
The original bell from the first one-roomed school house sits in front of the current day elementary school. A saw from the Booth-Kelley mill hangs on the wall in city hall.
“At one time it was really a bustling place. We had a woolen factory, a glass factory, a skunk farming factory, two mills,” the mayor said.
At city hall we found a tattered book that holds a lot of insight into how the city came to govern itself. A book of original hand-written ordinances—including the one that makes it illegal to let your dog run wild in the city limits. That ordinance was adopted by Coburg leaders back in 1916.
Today, it takes just minutes to drive from Coburg to Eugene on Coburg road. Back in the early days, it was a 3 1/2 hour ride by horse and buggy, so people needed another form of transportation.
"We had four trains that came through our town every day,” said Mayor Volta. “And by the flip of a coin, we got the narrow gauge railway and Eugene got the standard gauge."
That was in 1878. The rail line stretched north to Brownsville and for the first time, farmers could ship their products to Portland and buy things that were not available locally.
By all accounts, Coburg was on track to become a booming city on the river.
"But then because of just a variety of circumstances around the turn of the century, 1910, 1912, the businesses folded up,” the mayor explained. “The water was rerouted because of the Leaburg dam and the town went into a sleep."
Although the city has had some planned growth, it’s remained small and folks here like it that way.
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