New Date: Saturday, August 8, 2020, 9:00am – 2:00pm
Cancelled: Saturday, April 11, 2020, 9:00am – 2:00pm
Cancelled: Saturday, May 30, 2020, 9:00am – 2:00pm
Wayne Morse Dog Park, 595 Crest Drive, Eugene

Join the Friends of Wayne Morse Dog Park and help take care of our beloved dog park. Projects include renovating and painting the historic perimeter fence, filling holes around the park, and much more. Please bring a pot-luck dish to celebrate the formation of this new stewardship group. Tools and gloves provided.

To RSVP or learn more about the Friends of Wayne Morse Dog Park, contact Steve Piercy, Adoption Group Co-Leader, waynemorsedogpark@gmail.com.

Friendly Area Neighbors (FAN) are invited to recycle their qualifying plastics at the next FAN Plastics Collection event. This event is run by volunteers of the FAN Sustainability Team.

1. Only FAN residents, property owners, or businesses located within our FAN boundaries are invited. You can find another event, or learn how to create your own, on Lane County's Community Plastics Collection page.
2. ​We strongly recommend scheduling an appointment using the form below. Appointments will be honored before walk-ins.
3. When an appointment time block is full, it is removed from the form. Appointments get scheduled quickly due to high demand and our limited capacity. You can still sign up for the wait list to receive updates, and to volunteer. Volunteers must be pre-approved and may recycle their qualifying plastics at the event.
4. Scroll to the bottom of this page for details of how to prepare your qualifying plastics and other relevant information.

Friendly Area Neighborhood Plastics Collection
Tuesday, February 25, 2020, 4:00 to 6:00 PM (before FAN Emergency Preparedness Team Skill Building Session)
Washington Park Community Center, 2025 Washington Street, Eugene

Qualifying plastics

• No "drop-offs". All items must be screened by a Community Collector.
• All items must be clean, dry, and their adhesive labels removed. Items with food residue, rim foil, or other foreign substances will be rejected.
• Presort plastics into these 4 categories. A magnifying glass or loupe is helpful.
  • #2 Tubs and Lids
  • #2 Bottles and Jugs
  • #4 Bottles, Tubs, and Lids
  • #5 Bottles, Tubs, and Lids
• Lane County Plastics #2, #4 & #5 Collection Details and Tips

Welcome to the "new normal" for plastics recycling. You are doing something good for our stressed oceans and the environment.

Tips to prepare plastics and manage yogurt containers

The photo below shows some of our rejects. Note the labels, foil rims, and odd items with no resin code (the number surrounded by three arrows arranged in a triangle). Some single use yogurt containers are oddly shaped, making them hard to clean and dry, especially when the yogurt residue hardens or becomes moldy. Fill them with soapy water and soak to loosen the gunk. Better yet, switch to bulk yogurt and fill a small container with a dollop of yogurt and top with your favorite fruit or granola. Best of all, make your own yogurt and never buy the single use plastics again. It's easy and safe.

by Jim Watson

A century ago Eugene's Mercy Hospital was located on College Hill (see blog post "Eugene General/Mercy Hospital"). To connect the closest College Crest trolley stop on Willamette Street to the hospital, stairs were constructed in 1910. Though both the hospital and the trolley disappeared in the mid-1920s, the stairs remain across Willamette Street from Civic Park.
 
The stairs, perhaps the last of their kind, connected to one of Eugene’s trolley routes that was part of a streetcar system that was once described as the greatest for a small city in the United States. The pioneer railway is remembered for having employed Wiley Griffon, Oregon’s first black trolley operator.

Gwynne McLaughlin spearheaded a project to paint a mural on the stairs to honor their history while preventing the graffiti that has plagued them. Muralist Ila Rose painted the mural in May of 2019. Questions? Interest in helping keep the mural in good shape?  Please contact Jim at watsonjk2000@yahoo.com.

Black and White Images Property of Lane County History Museum. Used by Permission. Historical information compliments of Andrew Fisher.

Monday, January 20, 2020, 9:00am – 12:00pm
Westmoreland Park sports fields and in the surrounding Friendly neighborhood
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Make a lifelong investment in water quality, carbon reduction, and provide shade: plant a tree! This MLK Day on Monday, January 20, 2020, volunteers will improve the environment, community, and economy by planting trees in Westmoreland Park around the sports fields and in the surrounding Friendly neighborhood.

This is a family-friendly event. Rain or shine. No experience necessary. All volunteers will be entered to win a limited edition sequoia sweatshirt and other Eugene Outdoors swag. Tools and snacks will be provided.

Property owners may request to plant a tree on their property, or in the right-of-way adjacent to their property, through Friends of Trees online.

For more information about Friends of Trees, including how to join a tree planting crew to plant trees around Eugene or Springfield, to support the planting crew with hot soup, food, or beverages, or to donate, visit the Friends of Trees website.

The Eugene Carbon Free Challenge is enabling Eugene residents to learn more about their personal carbon footprint and ways to reduce it. Visit the Eugene Carbon Free Challenge (ECFC) website.

Update July 18, 2019: Take the survey to provide feedback on the Central Eugene in Motion process.

​As our greater downtown develops, it is important for Eugene's transportation network to have safe and comfortable connections regardless if travel is by car, on foot, bike, bus, or personal mobility device. The Central Eugene In Motion process will explore planned and potential traffic changes with a focus on three key areas. City staff and the community will work together to identify existing transportation issues, explore ideas, and identify preferred design concepts for projects listed in the 2017 Eugene Transportation System Plan (TSP).

Possible changes to streets may include removing on-street parking, adding bike lanes, changing traffic controls, or reducing the number of travel lanes.

The three Central Eugene In Motion focus areas are:

• Downtown on 8th Avenue
• Amazon to Riverfront
• Midtown Willamette Street

The Midtown Willamette Street focus area is bounded by Willamette Street, 18th and 20th Avenues, and Amazon Parkway and High Street, most of which lies within FAN's boundaries. See the map for details.

The Eugene Drive-In had two different locations during its 40 seasons in Eugene. It opened at 2860 South Willamette Street on July 29, 1948. During the 1960's, while operated by Moyer Theatres of Portland, they began to feature first-run movies. In July and August of 1962, it presented a six-week run of "The Music Man". The theater closed, apparently for good, on September 11, 1962, when its listing dropped out of the Eugene Register-Guard.

It had a replacement, though, because the New Eugene Drive-In had opened the previous July 22 at 1450 Henderson Avenue (in Glenwood). Beginning in the 1963 season, the New Eugene Drive-In, also operated by Moyer, reverted to the name the Eugene Drive-In. According to newspaper ads, while under the Moyer Theatres banner, it closed after 1987.

Greg Giesy, long-time FAN resident, stated, "The drive-in theater took up most of what is Woodfield Station today. The screen faced into the hillside, and home owners above could pay the drive-in a monthly fee to have a speaker (that you normally hooked to your car window) wired in their living rooms so they could watch the movies with sound out their picture window."
 
The demolition date of the theater is unknown. Its location, superimposed on a recent aerial view of Eugene, is shown below. There is still plenty of parking, and still plenty of cars, but the movies aren't as good.

​Before UO and before OSU, there was Columbia College. Opened November 3rd, 1856 by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Columbia was the first college in Lane County, only the fourth in the Oregon territory. Enoch Pratt Henderson, a minister, was hired to serve as president of the college. The first student body consisted of 52 students.

Only four days after classes started,  the building was destroyed by fire under suspicion of arson. Classes continued in a nearby home. A less grand, but serviceable building was rebuilt by November of  1857. By then, the student body had grown to 150 students. On February 26, 1858, a second fire consumed the college again. Attempts were made to rebuild for a third time, but the Cumberland Presbyterian Church withdrew all financial support from the project. This being the eve of the Civil War, the church leadership was itself keenly divided by the issue of slavery, and Columbia College was yet another casualty of that acrimony. The school closed for good in 1860. The last remnants were torn down by 1867, with some of the old sandstone building blocks being used to build a store on Willamette Street (Eugene recycled even back then). 

Few present day reminders of Columbia College exist. The surrounding neighborhood is called College Hill, and there is a city-placed monument at 19th and Olive. ​The plaque reads: "Site of Columbia College 1856-1860". Carved into the stone base are the words "COLUMBIA COLLEGE FIRST SCHOOL OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN LANE COUNTY BUILT IN 1854".

Only in operation for four years (not counting time closed for fires and rebuilding) it is not clear if any degrees were ever granted from Columbia College. However, several notable people did attend classes.

Harrison Rittenhouse Kincaid (January 3, 1836 – October 2, 1920) was an American printer, journalist, Republican politician, and university regent who served as Oregon Secretary of State between 1895 and 1899. In Eugene, Kincaid Street is named after him.

Cincinnatus Heine Miller (September 8, 1837 – February 17, 1913), better known by his pen name Joaquin Miller, was an American poet and frontiersman. He is nicknamed the "Poet of the Sierras" after the Sierra Nevada, about which he wrote in his Songs of the Sierras (1871).

Col. William Thompson (1846–1934) was an American-Indian fighter and journalist, the editor of multiple newspapers in Oregon and California.
​
James Finley Watson (March 15, 1840 – June 12, 1897) was the 25th Associate Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, serving from 1876 until 1878. Previously he served in the state legislature and later served as United States Attorney for the District of Oregon.