William Reid, the Scotsman Who Named Dundee
Near Dundee, Oregon
Long before the vineyards, this town got its name from a Scotsman with railroad dreams. William Reid was born in Dundee, Scotland, and worked there as an attorney before he set his sights on Oregon. In the eighteen seventies Reid promoted Oregon to Scottish investors, then crossed the Atlantic himself to build the Oregonian Railway, extending rail lines through the western Willamette Valley.
He gathered so much Scottish money for Oregon ventures, including a mortgage company capitalized at half a million dollars, that people simply called him Dundee Reid. When a railroad settlement grew up here, it was named Dundee in his honor, after his Scottish hometown. There was a bigger plan, too.
Around eighteen eighty-seven a post office opened called Dundee Junction, named in anticipation of a railroad bridge across the Willamette River that would join an eastern and a western line right here. The bridge was surveyed but never built, so the grand junction never came. The town incorporated in eighteen ninety-five and settled instead into a quiet life of prune and walnut orchards.
The junction failed, but the Scottish name stuck, and it carries a piece of Scotland to this day.
