Halsey: A Vice President's Name in the Valley

Halsey owes its name to a railroad executive. When William L. Halsey, vice president of the Oregon and California Railroad, filed the first map of the town's streets and the depot grounds in eighteen seventy-one, the station naturally took his name. The railroad was building south through the valley toward California, and Halsey's station became one of its early stops.

The community incorporated in eighteen seventy-six. By eighteen seventy-eight, annual wheat shipments out of Halsey were running roughly four hundred thousand bushels per year, an enormous volume for a small valley town. Like most of its neighbors along this stretch, Halsey grew up as a grain-shipping depot, a necessary link between the farms of the Willamette Valley and the markets to the north.