She Built This City: The Women Behind Oregon City’s Past and Its Present
There is a particular kind of place where history doesn’t stay behind glass. Oregon City is that kind of place. Walk downtown for an afternoon and you’ll feel it; in the buildings that have been standing since before Oregon was a state, in the stories that surface when you ask the right questions, and in the businesses that line Main Street today. Many of them are run by women. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a pattern. And it goes back a very long way.
“The Mother of Oregon” Didn’t Arrive Until She Was 66
Tabitha Moffatt Brown walked the Oregon Trail at 66 years old. She arrived in Oregon country in 1846 nearly penniless (with a single Spanish coin tucked in the finger of her glove) and used it to buy sewing supplies. She bartered with the Kalapuya for buckskin, made gloves to sell to settlers and loggers, and saved enough to do something that would outlast her by centuries.
After her time going between Oregon City and Salem, she opened a school for children orphaned on the trail and during the California Gold Rush. This school is known today as Pacific University. The Oregon Legislature named her “The Mother of Oregon” in 1987, and her gravestone reads: “Mother Symbol of Oregon, Co-Founder of Pacific University.”
She arrived with a single coin. She built an institution. This is an Oregon Trail origin story if there ever was one, and it set a tone that the women who came after her would spend the next 180 years living up to.
Read more about Tabitha and other early Oregon Territory women in this two-page informational flyer produced by the Friends of the Ermatinger House for Women’s History Month.
Eva Emery Dye Changed the Narrative On Paper and In Person
In 1890, author and historian Eva Emery Dye arrived in Oregon City and immediately got to work. Her books argued, with elegant force, for who deserved to be in the story of the American West. Her retelling of the Lewis and Clark expedition centered Sacajawea as a figure of power and intelligence; a portrayal so compelling that suffragists across the country adopted her image as a symbol of the movement.
But Dye didn’t stop at the page. In 1903, she gathered the women of Oregon City and founded the Oregon City Woman’s Club. The club was a civic force that went on to establish McLoughlin Park, fund education, advocate for preservation, and shape the city’s identity for generations. She spent the next four decades writing history and making it simultaneously.
The Mayor Who Brought 14 Businesses to Main Street
Walk Oregon City’s Main Street today and you’re walking through Alice Norris’s vision. As Mayor of Oregon City, Norris helped recruit 14 new businesses to that historic corridor. This was a contribution that helped shift downtown’s trajectory from decline toward the revitalization you see today. A former teacher turned civic leader, she understood that economic development was never just about numbers. It was about people, and the places they chose to gather.
Oregon City has now had three women serve as mayor.
Oregon City’s First Black Mayor Is Proof the Story Isn’t Over
Denyse McGriff made history as Oregon City’s first Black mayor (2023-2026) after she retired as the Principal City Planner from 1988-1996, bringing with her a career built on advocacy for equity, community engagement, and inclusive civic leadership. Her election was a signal that the city’s long tradition of women shaping its future was very much alive and evolving into something broader and more representative than ever before.
And Then There’s This Rockstar
Not every woman who shapes a city does it from within its limits.
Meredith Brooks was born in Oregon City in 1958, the daughter of Clackamas County’s sheriff. She taught herself guitar at 11, joined the music industry in her teens, and in 1997 released “Bitch,” a Grammy-nominated anthem about the complexity of womanhood that went double platinum. She toured with the Rolling Stones. She performed at Lilith Fair. She became one of the defining voices of a generation of women who refused to be flattened into a single story.
Oregon City raised a rock star. Of course it did.
What You See When You Walk Oregon City Today
We could keep going with a long list of incredible women’s stories – and we will! This article is the first of a series called “She Built This City.”
Because here is what generations of this pattern has produced: a city where women are, by every measure, a driving economic force on Main Street, off it, and beyond the city limits.
Come walk its streets. Step into the shops, tasting rooms, and studios run by women who are, consciously or not, part of a 180-year continuum of building something worth staying for. The women who organized the clubs, wrote the books, opened the businesses, and ran this city are the reason it’s still worth coming to. And the women opening their doors today are the reason you’ll want to come back.
Follow us to learn more about the women behind Oregon City’s independent business scene. In “She Built This City,” we will interview the founders, operators, and entrepreneurs keeping the Oregon City visitor economy women-led.
