Location: Oregon Length: 17.5 min
At what is now Champoeg State Park in Oregon's Willamette Valley on May 2, 1843, a historic vote of American settlers and former Hudson's Bay Company employees established the first provisional American government on the Pacific Coast. Destroyed by flooding in the 1860s, the community of Champoeg now is coming into sharper focus through archaeological study by Oregon State University. See in this video how painstaking excavation reveals details of pioneer life not described in history books.
Produced and directed by Delight Stone.
Made in cooperation with Oregon State Parks and Oregon State University
Web links:
Association of Oregon Archaeologists
Champoeg State Park, Oregon (Friends of Historic Champoeg)
Early Census, Rosters and Pioneers (Pioneers Early Census Records)
Lesson Eight: Settlement of the Oregon Boundary Question, 1818–1846 (Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest)
Historic Resources Evaluation of a Portion of the Old Champoeg–Salem Road, Marion County, Oregon (Oregon.gov)
Oregon Question (New World Encyclopedia)