Asahel Bush and the Power Behind Salem
Near Salem, Oregon
The park just south of downtown is one of the more unusual public spaces in Oregon. Bush's Pasture Park covers more than ninety acres and was once the private estate of a man who, for several decades in the mid-nineteenth century, was arguably the most powerful political figure in Oregon. Asahel Bush founded the Oregon Statesman newspaper in Oregon City in eighteen fifty-one and ran it until eighteen sixty-three, using it as an instrument of Democratic Party politics in the new territory. He moved the paper, and himself, to Salem by eighteen fifty three, when the territorial capital relocated there, and almost immediately began building his influence. He then co-founded the Ladd and Bush Bank in eighteen sixty-seven, the first bank in Salem, with Portland financier William S. Ladd. That bank building, at three hundred two State Street, still operates as a bank branch today.
In eighteen sixty, Bush and his wife Eugenia purchased one hundred acres of rolling farmland on the southern edge of Salem. When he died in nineteen thirteen at the age of eighty-nine, his son donated a portion of the estate to the city. That gift became Bush's Pasture Park.
The house Bush built in eighteen seventy-eight is a twelve-room Italianate structure with marble fireplaces, elaborate woodwork, and original wallpapers. It opened as the Bush House Museum in nineteen fifty-three, managed by the Salem Art Association, making it the oldest museum in Salem. Members of the Bush family had lived there for seventy-five years.
Power in pioneer-era Salem ran through newspapers, banks, and land. Asahel Bush had all three, and this park is what remained when the family let go.
