Butteville: Oldest Store on the Willamette

Butteville sits on French Prairie, one of the oldest corners of American Oregon. Three former Hudson's Bay Company men, Alexis Aubichon, Joseph LaFerte, and Francis X. Matthieu, settled here in the early eighteen forties to catch the steamboat trade on the Willamette. Historical accounts disagree on whether the town was first platted as Oxford in eighteen forty-four or christened by Methodist missionaries in eighteen forty-five, but either way it is among Oregon's very first settled communities.

At its busiest in the eighteen fifties, Butteville competed with nearby Champoeg for farm-goods shipping supremacy. The Butteville Store still standing here is considered the oldest continuously operating retail establishment in Oregon on record, a remarkable longevity for a village that never grew beyond a handful of buildings.