Donald: Hops, Hazelnuts, and an Electric Railway
Near Dundee, Oregon
Donald is a small Marion County farming town with a story shaped by a single technology and its disappearance. The Oregon Electric Railway built a substation and depot here in nineteen oh six, linking the valley between Salem and Portland by electric interurban rail. Hops were the dominant crop, and the railway moved them north. The town incorporated in nineteen twelve with a population that never exceeded a few hundred.
When paved Highway Ninety-Nine displaced the electric trains, ridership collapsed and electrified passenger service ended through Donald in nineteen thirty-three. The population dropped from roughly three hundred to one hundred almost overnight. Today Donald sits in hazelnut country, which is fitting, since Oregon grows the large majority of the country's hazelnuts.
