Eugene arguably gets more national media attention than any other Oregon city, town, burg or hamlet -- maybe even more than Portland, the state's largest city, or Salem, its capital.
That's largely a result of Eugene's status as home to the University of Oregon and its multifaceted athletics, which regularly attract hordes of sports writers and talking heads.
But few pause to ponder whence came the name Eugene, which is the only municipality on Earth of that name listed in several world atlases.
For the record, and because several readers have asked, Eugene is named for Eugene Franklin Skinner, its founder.
Skinner is the same fellow for whom landmark Skinner Butte -- known to the natives as Yapoah or Ya-po-ah, and still to longtime Eugenians as Skinner's Butte -- is named.
Although he was the prime mover in Eugene's earliest years, details on Skinner are relatively scarce. "There are a lot of things we don't know about (Skinner)," said Bob Hart, executive director of the
.
Most of what we do know comes from public records and history books, added Cheryl Roffe, the society's archivist. For a public figure, Skinner was a pretty private person.
He was born Sept. 13, 1809, in Essex, N.Y., and moved to Wisconsin with his family when he was 14. He returned briefly to New York before settling in Hennepin, Ill., where he served as sheriff.
He married Mary Cook in 1839. The couple lost three daughters in Illinois before migrating to California in 1845. They came to Oregon in 1846. Skinner parked the pregnant Mary with friends near Dallas, in Polk County, while he went off in search of greener, or at least more readily available, pastures.
The trip, with Elijah Bristow and others, took him up the Willamette River to Yapoah, which rises 682 feet just north of downtown.
One account says Skinner and company scaled its heights, where he looked around and announced, "Well, boys, this beautiful spot is good enough for Eugene F. Skinner."
He staked out his claim mostly on the flatlands below. On the butte's south slope he built a primitive log cabin with no windows and an animal skin for a door.
The histories say Skinner selected the site on advice of a couple of Kalapuyans who happened by. As they talked on the flatlands below, the natives pointed to Yapoah.
"Build high up," they told him, perhaps in Chinook jargon. "Big waters come some day."
Skinner brought Mary and baby Mary Elizabeth to the cabin in spring 1847. For their comfort, and that of four more children to come, he added a couple of rooms and put in some windows and two proper doors.
Skinner farmed and ran a ferry across the Willamette. In 1852, with Judge David M. Risdon, he laid out Eugene City, the name suggested by his wife. Risdon occupied the first house in the new town.
In the ensuing decade, during which Eugene City came into physical being (the "city" wasn't dropped until 1889), Skinner served as postmaster and county clerk, occupied several increasingly upscale houses and practiced some law. He died at age 55 in December 1864.
was formed in 1851. A couple of years later its leaders were casting about for a courthouse location. Skinner wanted it on his property. So did Charnel Mulligan, who owned the land just south of Skinner's. Two other sites were also in contention.
A popular vote failed to reveal a clear choice. Skinner and Mulligan kicked in $2,500 apiece plus 40 acres each for "county lands." And that, according to the 1949 "The Story of Eugene" by the Wilkins sisters -- Gladys McCready, Nina McCornack and Lucia Moore -- is how Lane County's first courthouse came to straddle the line between the men's claims, smack in the middle of Eighth Street.
The county in 1869 paid $1,000 to have the building moved out of the right of way.
"Had (Skinner) been alive then," the sisters wrote, "he might have been allowed a smile behind his beard at sight of the courthouse perched upon his side of the dividing line."
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, Special to The Oregonian