Cottage Grove & Eugene
Cottage Grove is the third largest city in Lane County, just behind Eugene (population 126,325) and Springfield (50,150) which lie less than twenty miles to the north. While there have long been economic ties between Cottage Grove and its northern neighbors, since the 1980s the number of Cottage Grove residents who commute to the Eugene-Springfield area for work has grown as the number of good-paying jobs in town decreases. Some residents resent the pull its larger neighbors have while others enjoy being so close to the services and entertainment of two mid-sized cities.
[Cottage Grove has grown] from kind of a backward town to a pretty lively little town to one right now when there’s a lot of empty buildings on main street and everybody wants to go to work in Eugene and down to the fact that they want a bus line on the transit system out of Eugene to haul everybody back and forth to Eugene and then charge most of the people in Cottage Grove for operating the bus line.
Carlton Woodard is the son and grandson of important regional timbermen. The Woodard family founded the Woodard Lumber Company which was in operation near the eventual site for the Cottage Grove Dam until 1957, when the family sold the company to Weyerhaeuser. The family retained ownership of Kimwood Industries, a timber products plant still located in Cottage Grove. The Woodard’s have left their mark on their town by helping to found a hospital, library, resort, and a retirement community. Mr. Woodard continues to work toward a stable and diversified economy for the town.
You look out here at seven in the morning and you see a lot of cars driving to Eugene.
Evelynne Plueard
But for the people it’s nice. If we want to go to the Holt Center or someplace like that, it’s about thirty-five minutes. I think it’s a good thing. As I say, maybe it doesn’t help the merchants too much but they seem to be doing all right.
Isabelle Woolcott
It’s like a bedroom area for Eugene. Now there’s a lot of senior citizens live here. And it’s like a bedroom area. The Middlefield Golf Course out their with all those mobile homes, most of those people have moved in here from California. They’re retired seniors. At lot of them moved here because we had a hospital and now that the hospital’s gone they’re upset about that. But I worked at the museum a lot and people would come in and say well, they were here from a certain place and I would say, what brings you to Cottage Grove. Well, it’s just a pretty little town and they bought a home here and most of them are retired but there are some people who lived here and work in Eugene and teach in Eugene and then we have people in Eugene that come to Cottage Grove and teach here and so we’re really kind of a bedroom area for Eugene.
Next Page: An Oregon Story: Cottage Grove and the Willamette River
