Salem in 1962

World Events

• In October, a two-week Cuban Missile Crisis ends as Kennedy announces that Khrushchev will remove Soviet missiles in Cuba. Linus Pauling is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign against nuclear weapons testing.
• John Glenn orbits the earth in Friendship 7. Walter Schirra and Scott  Carpenter complete pioneer space flights. The U. S. Navy SEALS, elite special forces are commissioned for both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.
• Two world-famous American women die: August 5, Marilyn Monroe; November 7, Eleanor Roosevelt. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy takes TV viewers on a tour of the White House.
• Rachel Carson warns of eco-danger. Her book, Silent Spring, gives rise to the modern environmental  movement.
• The term "personal computer" is coined.  AT&T's commercial communications satellite is launched into orbit. "Big Box" stores are created: Kmart, Target and Wal-Mart. Taco Bell opens its doors.
• Wilt Chamberlain scores a record-breaking 100 points in a NBA game.
• Andy Warhol premieres his "Campbell's Soup Cans" art exhibition. The Century 21 Exposition World's Fair, with Space Needle, opens in Seattle.
• Academy Award:"Lawrence of Arabia" (US), "Sundays and Cybele" (France). Prize-winning Books: The Moviegoer, Walker Percy and The Edge of Sadness, Edwin O'Conner.

In Salem
If the 1935 fire that destroyed the State Capitol building is the most remembered event in the city's history, the windstorm of 1962 probably ranks as the second.
The majority of structures in Salem experienced damage during that calamitous storm on Columbus Day. At its peak, between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. that Friday, it brought gusts of 90 M.P.H. and sustained winds of over 70 M.P.H. The $4 million total damages to Salem were higher than for any disaster the City had yet seen. The storm came with little warning and hit hard. It crossed the Oregon-California border on Friday, October 12, at noon, moving north at 48 M.P.H., reaching Salem at mid-afternoon. The ferocity of the winds as they roared through Salem shocked residents. Downtown, pedestrians were hit by glass from shattering windows, and dodged flying debris. Shoppers trying to get home were knocked to the ground. Cars were blown onto sidewalks and yards. The large sign on the roof of the Elsinore Theater was battered and crumpled by the wind and part of a wall at the Capitol Press Building fell onto two cars; rain then poured into the building. The steeple was torn from the Christ Lutheran Church at 18th and State Streets and dropped onto the sidewalk. Trees were blown over and uprooted. On the Capitol grounds, a falling tree knocked over the 3 1/2 ton statue of The Circuit Rider. (The photo seen here is from the Hugh Stryker Collection.)

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A few months later, the statue was repaired and replaced on its plinth.
The Circuit Rider statue was sculpted by A. Phimister Proctor to honor Oregon's circuit-riding ministers. Robert A. Booth, whose father was a Methodist Episcopal circuit rider, presented the statue to the state as a gift in 1924. It was originally placed in an imposing location in front of the 1876 State House. When the Capitol was rebuilt in 1937, facing north instead of west, the Circuit Rider was repositioned among other statuary in a wooded area. The imposing memorial can be seen to the east of the Capitol on the path leading to Waverly Street.

Other Events

Purification ponds on Minto Brown Island, 1965

• Boise Cascade purchases Oregon Pulp and Paper Company, a lumber company that began production at the same site in 1920. (The gabled roof of the Oregon Pulp and Paper Company building was still visible as part of the Boise Cascade plant when it was demolished in 2009.) After 1962 purchase, a yeast plant was added to convert byproducts of paper making into a food additive. In 1964 a container facility supplied cartons for food processing plants. Several improvements were made under Boise both to expand production and to meet air and water quality standards; purification lagoons were built on Minto Brown Island across the slough. Today these lagoons are both a protection from further water contamination and a hindrance to development of that section Minto Brown Island for public use. The industrial abuse of both the Willamette Slough and the island beyond makes urban development adjoining Riverfront Park's south border especially difficult. The plan for a pedestrian bridge from the park (beginning near the Eco Ball) must avoid disturbing the soil beneath the slough and the users of the bridge will have limited access to the island on the other side. A path will lead users to the now public section of the Minto Brown Park.
• The Chemeketa Street property of the Church of Christ Scientist is sold in September, providing space for the future development of the Nordstrom Mall. Meanwhile, church members have purchased property at High and Kearney Streets from Willamette University for the purpose of constructing a new church. This was the site of the 1860 John Carson house. (See 1954)
• Migrant Hispanic workers are employed in Marion County fields, but in Salem itself, the Latino population is small. Isabella Varela Ott moved to Salem in the 1950s to live with her daughter, Mary Varela Martinez, and her husband Pablo Martinez, a native of Peru. Mrs. Ott had a strong work ethic and wanted her children and grandchildren to have the same. She would take them out into the fields in the summers to pick beans, hops, and string beans. She also worked in local canneries. She was proud to be an American citizen and considered it a privilege to be able to vote and would do so at every opportunity. She also respected the people and culture of Mexico and stayed in contact with her son Luis who lived with his wife and family in Guadalajara. As the wife of a railway worker, she had access to a Southern Pacific pass that authorized her to travel free to Mexico. These trips continued every other year until her last one in 1971 at the age of seventy-six, twice taking her grandson David. She made it very clear that the American family should never forget their Mexican relatives. That grandson, Dr. David Martinez of Portland, recalls that theirs was one of only four Latino families in Salem in the 1960s and his social life as a high school teenager was difficult. 

Thomas Kay Mill in last years of operation

• Thomas Kay Woolen Mill closes due to loss of business in a changing market. The mill had been under continuous ownership and management of three generations of the Kay family until it was sold to the Mission Mill Museum Association for $160,000 in 1965, after having been closed for three years. The Mission Mill Association restored it to show authentic manufacturing processes from the time, and to depict the industrialization of America. Its buildings, exhibits and tours are now the centerpiece of the Willamette Heritage Center. The Kay family home on Court Street, only a few blocks away from the mill itself, had been demolished in 1937 when the State of Oregon had appropriated the property for the first building of the North Capitol Mall. The Oregon State Library stands on the former residence site.

Salem in 1896

World Events

• The first modern Olympic games are held in Athens. 13 nations (including the U.S.) competed. Most athletes are from Greece, Germany and France.
• In July, Democrat presidential candidate Willam Jennings Bryan delivers his rousing "Cross of Gold" speech, but it is not enough to win the election: Republican William McKinley, representing Progressives, is elected.
• Plessy v. Ferguson in the Supreme Court introduces  "separate but equal" concept and upholds racial segregation in the U.S.
• Utah is admitted as the 45th state after the Mormons, who were the majority of residents, renounced the practice of bigamy.
• A group of 12 industrial stocks were chosen to establish the Dow Jones Industrial Average to calculate the value of the companies (now 30 of largest public owned) in current trading.
• Perry and Hutchinson begin offering "Green Stamps" to U. S. retailers. Fanny Farmer publishes her first cookbook.
• The first volume of Theodore Roosevelt's The Winning of the West is published. Notable fiction of this year: The Country of Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett, Tom Sawyer, Detective, by Mark Twain.

                              The former School for the Blind becomes Salem's first hospital in 1896

Glen Oaks Orphanage becomes the Salem Hospital in 1899

In Salem

It was time for Salem to have a hospital. A small one (above) opened its doors on January 1, 1896 in the building at 204 12th street (between Ferry and State) that had formerly housed the School for the Blind. Organized by local physicians and private citizens, it was funded with $752 raised in a public solicitation. Salem Hospital treated its first patient, sewing machine salesman Fred Demeler at the five-bed converted school.
The second photograph is of the Glen Oaks Orphanage that was offered by the Oregon Children's Aid Society in 1899 as a new home for the Salem Hospital. It was on ten acres on Center Street, then called Asylum Street, adjacent to the state hospital.

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Neither of these buildings exists today. Ferry Street is now interrupted west of 12th Street by the Willamette University campus. The location of the 1892 photograph of School for Blind, our first hospital, was to the rear of the present Gatke Building. The Center Street location of the former orphanage has also had new development as the Oregon State Hospital expanded to the east. In 2010 the area is being rebuilt with demolition of buildings and landscape, and with alterations to Center Street itself.
In 1916 Salem Deaconess Hospital was founded and the former Capital Hotel at 665 Winter Street was acquired for a new hospital facility. The current Salem Hospital continues to expand along both sides of that street and incorporating Capitol Street between Bellevue and Mission Streets.

Other Events

• Our Capital Journal newspaper joins the Associated Press network.
• The First Church of Christ Scientist is officially organized as meetings continue at a hall at the corner of Court and Liberty Streets.

The Wiggins- Crawford House on Court Street

• A house  built at 1759 Court Street will later be associated with the Wiggins-Crawford family. The Wiggins son Fred ran a farm implement store and sold the first automobile in Salem. He married Myra Albert, daughter of John Albert and Mary Holman, and granddaughter of Joseph Holman, pioneer settler. The house went to a Wiggins niece, Mary Follrick Crawford, who lived there with her family in 1972. The house is a significant contribution to the Court-Chemeketa Historic District in the NEN neighborhood. It is featured on the SHINE walking tour.
• Amos Long builds a house at 774 Winter Street. Historically, it is known as the Moon House and been designated as a Local Landmark. In 1997, during the expansion of the North Capitol Mall, it was preserved by being purchased from the State of Oregon and moved to D Street in the NESCA neighborhood.
• On Owens Street, the Italianate/Eastlake Scovell House may have been built as early as 1889. In this year of 1896 Alexander Daue buys the property and lives here with his wife Ida Mae Turner Daue until their new home was built. The family owned the property until 1945; during that time it was probably the residence of Earl Daue and his wife Dorothy. It is now a Local Landmark in the SCAN neighborhood.

Children and young ladies of Salem made news this year in the Capitol Journal:
In May, Salem's W.C.T.U. took up a new work. Children not in attendance at Sunday School in any of the city's churches were gathered up and brought to the the W.C.T.U. headquarters where Mrs Snelling served as their superintendent.
In December, Salem's new curfew ordinance became effective. No person under 17 would be permitted on streets or in public places after 8 p.m. from September to February. After February, curfew time was extended one hour. A bell in the First Methodist Church would ring at 7:45 p.m. in the winter and 8:45 in the summer months.
In August, Miss Brown drove from the Red Hills south of town into Salem. En route a masked man stepped from the brush, grabbed the bridle of her horse and demanded that Miss Brown surrender her purse and watch. She reached into her pocket, drew a revolver and threatened to blow out the brains of her assailant if he did not desist and vanish. The story said he did both and expeditiously.
In the next month, Miss B. F., daughter of Mrs. J. A. J., a Salem widow, swore out a warrant in Justice H. A. Johnson's court charging B. D. with seduction committed last December. B. D. , known as a hard-working young man with a good reputation, was arrested and lodged in jail since he could not post bail for $200. This morning, on motion of Charles Park, district attorney, the prosecution was dismissed and the pair was married by the justice before whom the case was brought.
(See Ben Maxwell's Salem, Oregon, edited by Scott McArthur, 2006.)