La Grande: Where the Oregon Trail Rested

The Grande Ronde Valley, a broad fertile bowl in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon, was a welcome sight for exhausted Oregon Trail emigrants. In eighteen sixty-one, Benjamin Brown built a log cabin here and called his settlement Brownsville. Immigrants bound for the Willamette Valley but drawn by the richness of the valley began settling around him.

When the Post Office opened in eighteen sixty-three, a new name was required because there was already a Brownsville in Oregon. They chose La Grande, the grand one, for the sweeping valley around them. The town was incorporated in eighteen sixty-five.

In eighteen sixty-four Union County was carved out of Baker County, and La Grande won the permanent county seat in nineteen oh five. The railroad arrived in eighteen eighty-four, cementing La Grande as the commercial hub of northeastern Oregon, a role it still holds today.