Salem in 1966

World Events

• China's "Cultural Revolution" leads to mass executions and displacement of millions as urban populations are sent to labor in rural communes. It continued until the death of Lin Biao in 1971. It paralyzed China politically and economically.
• American military initiates a "Search and Destroy" strategy in Vietnam combat. Anti-war protests sweep US.
•  Miranda Rights are read to criminal suspects during arrest.
• The Lunar Orbiter 1, first US spacecraft to orbit moon. Carl Brasher, first African-American U.S. Navy diver loses leg in recovery of lost H-bomb. (See movie" Men of Honor").
• Masters and Johnson publish Human Sexual Response. Miniskirts appear. The National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded.
• Walt Disney dies. Ronald Reagan is elected governor of California.
• LSD is made illegal in US. "Love Pageants" take place in Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco. Star Trek debuts on TV.
• Academy Awards: "A Man for All Seasons" (US). "A Man and a Woman (France). Prize-winning Book: The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, Katherine Anne Porter.

In Salem
Four years after the Columbus Day windstorm, the Waite Fountain reconstruction is complete in Willson Park. As a crowd gathers for the dedication ceremonies, Ben Maxwell photographs the scene. In the background are buildings that characterize Salem's downtown: the Methodist Church, a symbol of the missionary beginning of the community; the Livesley Building, representing the local business enterprise; and the Marion County Courthouse, reminding us that Salem is part of a larger political administration. Willson Park is important to Salem, being part of the first city plat and, literally, the political and intellectual center of the city as it grew: adjacent to both the Oregon State Capitol and our premier educational resource, Willamette University. In this year of 1966, the city loses its authority over the park, as it had over other city property: ownership passes to the state of Oregon.

When you visit
Ownership of the park makes little difference to the visitors who are there to enjoy walking in the beautiful landscape of lawn, trees, flowers and fountains. For those who also might like to learn about Salem's history and pay respect to historical events and personalities, the opportunities are becoming more challenging. The early park featured a concert bandstand for residents, many living within walking distance in surrounding residential neighborhoods. The Waite fountain offered colored lights that gave evening strollers a visual treat. Now the bandstand, no longer in use, is relocated to the margin of the lawn and fountain, seen above as rebuilt after the 1962 windstorm, has lost its original Technicolor effect that made it such a magnet of visitor attention. The Circuit Rider was once prominently displayed before the entrance to the State House as a tribute to Salem's religious founders, is hidden is a grove of trees at the east side of the Capitol. The Breyman Brothers Memorial, standing at the park's Cottage Street entrance, was originally a memorial to local men who fought in the Spanish American War and was topped with a statue of an American military serviceman. The statue is gone and what remains of the memorial is the trough at the base that once supplied water to horses ~ a lower trough on the park side was intended for dogs. Eugene and Werner Breyman, who donated the memorial, lived in elaborate residences, now demolished, on Court Street and State Street, both within site of the memorial.
Taking prominence in Willson Park today are state flags, tributes to Native American tribes and a modern statuary group. The park is currently designed as an attraction for tourists as well as residents. In 2010, state began a plan to make improvements in the area encompassing Willson Park and North Capitol Mall as far as Center Street (originally the four Piety Hill residential blocks). This new landscaped, visitor area will be the State Capitol State Park.

Other events

• Five fires cause property loss throughout the city: In January, the Senator Hotel on High Street; in March, at Keith Brown Lumber Plant on Front Street; in May, the Berkheimer Building on Church and Trade Streets; in November, Waters Field at 25th and Mission Streets; and (date unknown), the Peerless Bakery on North Commercial Street.
• Douglas Hay resigns his office as Municipal Judge, being elected to the Marion County Circuit Court. In this year the term of the Salem Municipal Judge is extended to four years. Dale Pierson is appointed by the Council and later elected to the office.

Patton Building on State Street, 1886

US Bank extended (left section under tree branches)

• The former Ladd and Bush Bank Building (now US National Bank) has been completely reconstructed and enlarged. In order to expand the bank building along State Street, the 1869 Patton Building was demolished in the previous year. The photographs above show the Patton enterprise when it was a center of local business and the 1966 US Bank extension.
• State Street gets a new look as the historic Patton Building is demolished for the extension along State Street of the US National Bank. Formerly the Ladd and Bush Bank, the new owners completely gutted the building as it had been from 1869 to 1940, renovating the structure. However, to honor its past, the bank lobby displays many historic photographs representing Salem's downtown and the Bush family's association with the bank. The public is welcome to visit these exhibits. (To the left in both photographs is the alley beyond which the Gill Building was already a popular meeting place in the 1870s.)
• West of 12th Street, in the University residential area of town, the Ferry-Oak Street residential neighborhood continues to change with urban growth and the expanding hospital. Only one residence remains in place and another survives by being moved.
• Plans are made to preserve another historic building, the Methodist Parsonage, in a Mission Mill Museum location.
• Aldrich Park in the SESNA neighborhood is getting new playground equipment this year. The park was named for Lewis Aldrich, a banker with the former Ladd and Bush Bank and first Chief Executive Officer with Pioneer Trust Company. He and his wife Donna had no children, but the trust she established in his name still benefits Salem though bequests to three parks (Grant, Northgate and Aldrich) and two grants to the Deepwood property. The first grant was for the house, gardens and land to the street on the south. Deepwood II was for the area to the west of the Deepwood I grant to Pringle Creek. This effort would not have been possible without Mary Eyre’s leadership. Through the efforts of Stuart Compton, the Walton Foundation joined the Aldrich Fund to fund the project. Financially, Deepwood was the Aldrich Funds largest commitment. It preserved a unique area, physically joined Deepwood and Bush property and today funds Deepwood's Youth Interpretive Program.
• When the first new 35-passenger Cherriots bus arrives in Salem, it rolls off the railroad car and city administrators climb aboard for a photograph.
• Salem has a marina on the Willamette River. Several private "yachts" accompany the Marion County Sheriff's Marine Patrol. In the next October, a windstorm demolishes the boathouse and damages the boats ~ for the third time in five years.

• The Prime Rib Restaurant is constructed at Pine Street on the Willamette River. Fine dining and beautiful views of the river made it popular with Salem families. However, by the mid-1980s the original owners had sold the property and the restaurant had gone into foreclosure. In 1998 the building became the Stars Cabaret, a strip club. The windows that had offered a river view were masked with black paint. This enterprise closed within a few years. By 2011, the empty structure had been renovated and reopened as the Club Illusion Sport Bar and Restaurant. A fire destroyed the building the next January.

Salem in 1894

World Events

• Japan invades Korea, beginning the first war between China and Japan.
• The International Olympic Committee is established in Paris.
•  New Zealand enacts the world's first minimum wage law.
• Russian emperor Alexander III is succeeded by his son, Nicholas II.
• After the queen of Hawaii is overthrown, a republic is proclaimed by Sanford B Dole.
• Coxey's Army, a protest march by workers, unemployed because of the national financial crisis that begun the year before, moves through the northwest commandeering a Northwest Pacific train on their way to Washington, D.C. Two months later, 3000 Pullman factory workers go out on a strike in Illinois.
• Oil is discovered on vast prairie land of the Osage reservation, making them the "richest people on earth." This brought wealth, but problems to the tribe as the Bureau of Indian Affairs allowed non-tribal people to claim membership to their profit. 
• Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time.
• Notable new book: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling and Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain. Stephen Crane's Civil War novel, Red Badge of Courage, is published as a serial in the Philadelphia Press, a newspaper.  The drama, Arms and the Man by Bernard Shaw, is staged in London.

In Salem


Dr. Luke Port, pharmacist and speculator, completes his new Queen Anne style home designed by William Knighton, but lived there with his wife Lizzie only 16 months. Perhaps the memories were too sad. The stained glass window over the fireplace in the parlor was dedicated to a teenage son lost at sea while sailing to Europe to study chemistry. It depicts three fully blooming roses representing the living Port family members and a rose bud symbolic of the son that was lost. The house was sold to the Bingham family the next year. Judge George Bingham, his wife Willie lived in the house until their deaths in 1924. Their daughter Alice married Mr. Keith Powell in 1915. Upon the death of her parents, she sold her childhood home to the Brown family ~ Clifford, his wife Alice and their two sons, Chandler and Werner. Mr. Brown died suddenly only three years later in 1927. In 1929, Alice Brown commissioned the new firm of Lord-Schryver, the first female owned landscape architecture firm in the Northwest, to design the gardens. They continued to advise this owner almost forty years. In 1935, Alice Brown named the estate "Deepwood" after a favorite children's book of her sons. The Deepwood Scroll Garden earned the nickname "Lower Wedding Garden" following her 1945 marriage to Keith Powell, Alice Bingham Powell's widower. The couple lived at Deepwood until they moved into a smaller, one-storey home in 1968. Following a community campaign to save the property from demolition, Deepwood became a City of Salem owned park and museum in 1971. 

When you visit

The house is located at the southwest corner of Mission and 12th streets, near Pringle Creek. With its Lord and Schryver garden, it is now a premier attraction for local social events and tourists. For more information about this National Register property in the SCAN neighborhood, refer to the Deepwood website.  It is also on the route of the SHINE Pringle Creek self-guided walking tour.

Other Events
•    In September, Company E, 3rd Regiment of Coxey's Industrial Army from Sacramento arrived in Salem 49 strong. At the depot, they set up camp and flew the national flag. They were reported as respectable American citizens on the way to Washington to protest the loss of American jobs due to immigration. Mayor Claude Gatch reluctantly agreed to feed the group at the Boston and P.Q. restaurants at a cost of $6.25 to the city. When the group left for Portland on the freight train that night, about 20 Salem men had joined the company. (See Ben Maxwell's Salem, Oregon, edited by Scott McArthur, 2006.)
•    Two Salem religious congregations build in this year: the German Methodist parsonage is erected on Winter Street. In 1944 the church sold the residence to Charles Warren. In 1977 the State of Oregon purchased property on the east side of that block for construction of the North Capitol Mall Office Building. A private builder bought this house and the one next door (the Moon house) and moved them to D Street in the NESCA neighborhood. Both historic homes have been renovated. (The story of these houses is found here.)
The Evangelical Church is built on the corner of Chemeketa and 17th Streets and the adjacent parsonage was built the following year. Both are in their original 1894-5 locations, but the function of the church has changed: it is now a private home with a large, ground floor living area and a place for sleeping in the former choir loft. They are in the Court-Chemeketa Historic District of the NEN neighborhood. See this house on the SHINE Court-Chemeketa Walking Tour.
 

From the left: Gray and Eckerlen Buildings as they appear today

   
•    The Gray family constructs another commercial building on Liberty Street adjacent to their own, the mustard-colored building at left above. The new building is seen here with three bays of windows on the second floor. In 1909 it was sold to Eugene Eckerlen who owned a saloon on Commercial Street. He rented this new building to merchants and it was known as the New Eckerlen Building. From 1936 to the 1960s, it housed Bishops' clothing store, a popular establishment for men. A fire in 1999 partially destroyed the building, but it has recently been renovated. It is located on an especially handsome block of historic buildings in the Salem Downtown Historic District.
•    Dr. W.Carlton Smith, the first attending physician at the Fairview Training Center, builds a residence on Oak Street near Willamette University. As the Salem Hospital expanded in that area, the house was moved to Canon Street in the Morningside neighborhood. Photographs of this Local Landmark in both locations are found here.
•    In her parents' Court Street parlor, Myra Albert Wiggins lights a fuse, then rushes to join her wedding group for a self-photograph. She had returned to Salem after three years of study at New York's Art Students League. In future years she would choose a professional career as well as being a wife and mother, becoming an internationally recognized photographer.

Original building of the Oregon School for the Deaf

In this year bids property was selected by the state for a school for deaf students and the first building erected. Later used as a tuberculosis sanitarium, it is now a part of Corban College.