Cottage Grove is a city of contrast, partly old and partly new.
Golden Was the Past
Cottage Grove is a small town of a little over 8,000 people. Originally known as “slabtown” for the rough plank walkways on the nearby Row River, the town balances the remnants of its frontier character with population growth and urban development. It celebrates both simultaneously.
In 1884, 250 people lived in what was to become the incorporated town of Cottage Grove three years later. One historian described early Cottage Grove as “a pastoral community with fourteen stores, three saloons, one livery stable, one hotel, one doctor and a flour mill.” By the 1890s, the town had grown into a city of 3,000 thanks in large part to the Bohemia mining boom.
In 1969 Cottage Grove began another transition. Look Magazine named it one of eleven “All American” cities. With sales of timber still high, optimistic residents believed that the community could only grow. But those optimistic times dissipated by the 1980s when the timber decline, felt throughout Oregon and the West, hit the small community hard. In a single decade (1979-1989), the city’s most important industry saw a 68 percent drop in jobs. Since that time, residents of Cottage Grove have been struggling to rebuild their community.
