The Railroad That Built Downtown McMinnville
Near Mcminnville, Oregon
The prosperity written into McMinnville's brick downtown arrived on iron rails. In eighteen seventy two, a line first built as the Oregon Central Railroad's West Side route, later absorbed into the mighty Southern Pacific system, reached the McMinnville area and connected the town directly to Portland and the wider world. For a valley whose farmers had struggled to move their wheat, hops, and prunes to distant markets, the railroad changed everything almost overnight.
The effect on the town was dramatic. Within a few years of the railroad's coming, merchants replaced their wooden storefronts with the substantial brick and cast iron buildings that still line Third Street. Grain, produce, lumber, and livestock could now be loaded and shipped out efficiently, and goods from the outside world flowed in.
The population climbed, banks and hotels opened, and McMinnville cemented its role as the commercial hub and county seat of Yamhill County. Later the town added an early electric interurban connection as well. The quiet mill village that William Newby had platted in the eighteen fifties became, thanks to the railroad, a confident regional city, and the graceful old downtown it built in those boom years is the one visitors still admire today.
