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History · Arlington · established 1885

Arlington’s history is mostly unwritten

The public archives hold only 4 old photos of Arlington. The rest are in attics, shoeboxes and the historical society. Help start the collection.

1885established
4old photos & papers
1famous people
From Arlington’s archive · credits on each photo

What stands out about Arlington’s past

Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.

★ What stands out · Help out

Start Arlington’s collection

The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Arlington’s history is told.

Decades since 1900 with photos
00s10s20s30s40s50s60s70s80s90s
2 of 10 decades. The empty ones are waiting for someone’s album.
The story

How Arlington came to be

From Wikipedia’s history of Arlington.

Read it all →

The account of how the city received its name varies; one tradition claims it was named after the lawyer Nathan Arlington Cornish, while another tradition claims that the Southern inhabitants of the city had enough clout to rename the city after Arlington, Virginia, home of general Robert E. Lee. Originally named Alkali, Arlington came into existence as a place for shipping cattle down the Columbia River. It was incorporated as Arlington by the Oregon Legislative Assembly on November 20, 1885.

The original townsite was demolished beginning in 1965 due to the scheduled inundation of Arlington by the rising waters of the Columbia River to form Lake Umatilla behind the John Day Dam. A new townsite was completed two years earlier.

Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Timeline

Arlington, 1885 to 1939

Woven from the archive, the National Register and the people born here.

  1. 19th century
  2. 1885
    FoundingArlington is established
  3. 20th century
  4. 1906In the archiveMountain Gem ad 04091906 MO
  5. 1927Born hereDoc Severinsen is born here
  6. 1939In the archiveOn transportation outskirts of small Oregon town on the Columbia River. Arlington, Gillia…
By decade

Arlington, decade by decade

2 decades in the archive, from the 1900s to the 1930s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.

1940s–1990snothing yet
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
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Then & now

Stand where they stood

No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.

Mountain Gem ad 04091906 MO
Retake this viewMountain Gem ad 04091906 MO, 1906

Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Arlington’s page.

Retake this view · +15

Memory lane

What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.

Town Square →
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From Wikimedia Commons (3), the Library of Congress (3), Wikipedia and Wikidata for famous people. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.

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