Creswell: Named for a Postmaster General
Near Eugene, Oregon
Creswell sprang up in eighteen seventy-two when the Oregon and California Railroad pushed south through Lane County. A store opened at the station that year, and the railroad named the stop for John A. J. Creswell, who was serving as Postmaster General of the United States at the time. It was an era when railroad companies freely honored government officials by putting their names on maps.
The settlement grew steadily as a small agricultural and timber service town about twelve miles south of Eugene. It did not incorporate as a city until nineteen oh nine, the same year the Creswell Chronicle began publication. Nearly forty years passed between the first store and the first incorporated government, a common enough gap in communities where the railroad arrival outpaced the paperwork by a generation.
