Salem in 1982

World Events

• Canada's Constitution Act severs political ties to Great Britain and establishes a Bill of Rights.
• British territory, the Falklands islands, is invaded by Argentina. Two months later, the Argentines surrender to British forces.
• The Vietnam Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. The eye-level, marble panels list names of 58,000 Americans who died or are MIA in combat that ended in 1975.
• An Air Florida flight crashes into Washington, DC 14th Street Bridge, killing 78. The same day, a Washington Metro train derails and 3 passengers die.
• Princess Grace dies in Monaco when the car she is driving summersaults over a cliff.
• Three deaths near Chicago are traced to poison inserted in Tylenol capsules, criminal never identified.  Tamper-proof, sealed tops now protect consumers of foods and medicines.
• The Commodore 64 8-bit home computer is released, becoming the best-selling computer model. The first computer virus is found, infecting Apple II via floppy disk.  Sony launches first CD player.
• "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" is released in movie theaters.  The Academy Awards: "Gandhi"(US), "To Begin Again" (Spain). Prize-winning Book: Rabbit is Rich, John Updike.

In Salem
Keizer is incorporated as a city in this year. Many times the City of Salem tried to annex the growing community adjacent to its city limits. Beginning in 1964, a number of Keizer residents tried to convince the others that it would be cheaper and better to form their own city. It was not until November 2, 1982, when, with the support of the nearby Clear Lake, residents voted to make Keizer a city.

The original settlement was at Keizer Bottom, near the banks of the Willamette River. The community was named after Thomas Dove Keizur, one of its first settlers. Somewhere in the translation of donation land claim records, his name was misspelled. The settlement suffered in the flood of 1861, and the inhabitants rebuilt their homes on higher ground. Other early settlers of the area were the John Zieber family, whose home was on Clear Lake, St. Paul Road. Zieber bought rights to the property in 1854 and completed the claim. Part of the house was originally a log cabin built in the late 1840s. He was the maternal grandfather of A.N. Bush, who used to stay there as a boy. Stuart Bush demolished the house in the late 1940s to replace it with a modern dwelling.

When you visit
The annual Iris Festival takes place in May and showcases Keizer's iris-growing industry. The festival was founded by Schreiner's Iris Gardens, one of the country's largest retail iris growers, and has been facilitated by the Keizer Chamber of Commerce since 1987. Events include a carnival, a beer garden, craft and food vendors, a 5k walk/run, a vintage car show, and a parade.
The Keizer Heritage Museum is inside the Keizer Heritage Community Center (above), which was formerly the 1916 Keizer School. The original location was the northwest corner of North River and Chemewa Roads, now Schoolhouse Square, a shopping mall. With city support through urban renewal funds and generous contributions of volunteer time and money, the building was moved between 1996-9. It has been completely restored and is the only public historic building in Keizer. Other tenants of the building include the Keizer Community Library, the Keizer Art Association and gallery, and the Keizer Chamber of Commerce.

Other events

• Susan Miller, our first female mayor, is elected. In an interview for Salemhistory website, she attributed her successful campaign to the incredible commitment of hundreds of campaign volunteers and the campaign’s ability to excite Salem citizens about the community’s future. Her accomplishments as mayor included her efforts to acquire 22 acres of waterfront property on the Willamette River, known today as Riverfront Park. On an international level, sister-city relations were established with Simferopol in the then Soviet Union and with Kawagoe in Japan.
• Governor Atiyeh dedicates the new pagoda/bandstand in Willson Park. This new structure is similar to the original bandstand given by Joseph H. Albert. His home was on Winter Street, just across Court Street from the park.

Former First National Bank

• The imposing First National Bank at Chemeketa and Liberty Streets, designed by Pietro Belluschi, becomes the First Interstate Bank. This institution closed in 1996 and it has remained empty. The owners, wishing to demolish this prominent building in the Salem Historic Downtown Historic District, obtained permission from the Historic Landmarks Commission. The architects presented plans for new mixed-use development that would include the lot to east where the former City Hall stood. By 2014, the project had not begun.

• After 1982, housing developments took over most of the land in south Salem formerly used for prune orchards. Salem's involvement with prunes was chiefly with Italian, or "purple plum," prunes. In the depression of the 1930's, these canned prunes were the cheapest fruit one could buy, but in later years the market swung to pears and peaches, and fewer prunes were canned in Salem depressing the value of the orchards. Many residential homesteads in the Morningside neighborhood contain at least one old tree to recall the orchard that thrived there.
• The YWCA receives the Salem Human Rights Award for its work with Southeast Asian refugees.
• Mission Mill Museum Association and Salem Art Association enter an agreement to turn the mill into a center for research and development of textiles known as Northwest Textile Center.
• As enrollment grew at Chemeketa Community College, so did the number of programs offered. In the eight years between 1974 and 1982, the campus added six new buildings to house the growing enrollment and the new programs. To better serve the district's population, the Dallas, Santiam, McMinnville and Woodburn campuses were established.
• Waldo Middle School, in the Lansing neighborhood, was selected to pilot computer assisted instruction at the middle school level, receiving four Apple II+ computers, the first in the district. Apple distributed many computers to schools across the nation at this time, fostering a loyalty among teachers that continues thirty years later.
• The Statesman Journal records that Ernest Clark, Sr., Salem's oldest native-born son, rode as Grand Marshall in the city's celebration of the 125th anniversary of its founding by Methodist missionaries.

Salem in 1946

World Events

• President Truman officially ends hostilities of WW II. The UN holds its first General Assembly. The Nuremberg Trials begin. ("Judgement at Nuremberg" film, 1961)
• As Soviets enforce control of East Germany and eastern European countries, Churchill pronounces: "The iron curtain has descended in Europe."
• King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of British Administration in Palestine, is bombed by radical Zionists, killing 91 persons.
• U.S. Army's ENIAC, which used decimal arithmetic, is first general purpose electronic computer. A Tokyo engineering firm, later named Sony, is  founded with 20 employees.
• The navy tests an improved atomic bomb over the tiny Bikini Island. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission is established.
• A shared Nobel Peace Prize: to Emily Greene Balch as Honorary President of the Women's International League for peace and Freedom; to John Raleigh Mott, President of the World Alliance of the YMCA.
• "Annie Get Your Gun" is a hit musical. This year's movie about lives of three returning servicemen, "The Best Years of Our Lives", wins an Academy Award.  Also popular is the now-classic, "It's A Wonderful Life".

In Salem

Shopping returns to importance for the ladies and in April a new supply of nylon hose for sale at Miller's Department Store causes a line to form out into Chemeketa Street. The Office of Price Administration set a goal of producers supplying six pairs of nylon hose for every woman in the country by June. 
Returning servicemen discover finding a place to live is among their biggest problems immediately after the war. Veterans housing was hastily put up in Salem and their families moved in. But soon new small "tract houses" began appearing in former farmlands as new subdivisions multiplied on the edges of town. The city grew to meet the demand for services and patches of land were annexed where the developments were growing. Young parents with children (who later became known as Baby Boomers) found a community of their own outside the core of the city. Their interests in common were based on the husband's job security, a social life based on church going, back-yard neighborhood barbecue parties and looking forward to prosperity their own parents had lost in the Depression.

When you visit
Miller's Department Store of that year is now restored to its original name as Reed Opera House. It contains many specialty shops, cafes and offices, serving as a true "mall" in a local heritage site. Many illustrated panels in the hallways describe the events of the building's history.

Other events

• A small country school south of Salem, founded by the Pringle family in 1856, has an opportunity in 1946 to add classes on Battle Creek and Boone Road corner. The Pleasant Point School was divided into two sections and dragged two miles up Boone Road to be attached to Pringle School. Growing school populations would make new building an urgent concern for the next generation. A 1956 photograph shows a bus dropping students off in the 100th year of this busy school. In 1987 the public school was built in a new location. This site has recently been utilized as a private institution and as offices. It is the most historic structure in the South Gateway neighborhood.
• The site is selected for Detroit Dam. The dam and its reservoir transformed the North Santiam Canyon. Nearly 200 residents of the unincorporated town of Detroit were moved, and Oregon State Highway 22 and the North Santiam River were realigned. Over 1,000 dam workers and engineers labored on the project, many of whom moved into nearby towns, including Mill City, Idanha, Gates, and a new town of Detroit.
•  
  
•  Two residences of prominent earlier residents are demolished: the home of former Governor Stephen Chadwick at Capitol and Center Streets (above); and the pioneer John Zieber's house in the area that would become Keizer (below right)
• 
• Another old-timer having a portrait this year is the Star Exchange on the northwest corner of Commercial and Chemeketa Streets. In the 1890s (or earlier) it had been the State Insurance Company with the YMCA upstairs - where the first Salem basketball game was held in its gym. It was also the first Salem Elks Lodge and housed many other civic ventures. This venerable building lasted until at least 1981. (below)
  
  
• The Capitol Journal newspaper gets a new home on Chemeketa Street.
• A rail strike closes train traffic out of the local station.
• David Duniway, who will become the leader in local historical preservation, becomes the Oregon State Archivist. To quote Elisabeth Walton Potter, “David was recruited from a National Archives field supervisory position in San Francisco to head the newly created Archives Division within the Oregon State Library. He was a great repository of facts concerning the capital city. The figures of early Salem and Oregon history were his familiars. He knew them from their papers, journals, published writings, and the documents they signed. Who better to write the entry about “Salem” for the 1964 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica?"
• Miss Sally Bush dies at the age of 86 and is buried with her family in the I.O.O.F Cemetery, now the Pioneer Cemetery. Before her death this year, the sale of Bush family land to the city of Salem was completed by Henry Compton, trusted friend of Bush family and officer of Pioneer Trust Company. The purchase of the upland 47 acres was made subject to a life estate in the home site for Sally and A. N. Bush. The home site was the area from the south side of the barn to Mission Street and High Street to the top of the hill going down into the lowlands. Effective on the purchase date, the city gained possession and control of the uplands except the life estate area and the 53 acres of the lowlands less the area sold by the city to Willamette.