Here is installment #2 of the Orenco History Comes To Life series I am writing- If you missed part 1, here is the lead in-
Long before I became a local Realtor, Coach, father, builder, community leader, writer, scallywag, or hellraiser, I was a little kid growing up in a historic craftsman 2 BR home at 22950 NW Dogwood Street in Orenco, Oregon. Oh, the fun we had and the stories I can (and will) tell about those Golden days in the old Dogpatch. The home sat on 5 acres on the South edge of the original 1908 Orenco Townsite- a City platted in Washington County and recognized as a legal Oregon City for several decades. Our home and farm were built by the Oregon Nursery Company for Fred and Alice Sergeant. Fred was the master grafter for the Company that, at one time, was the largest Nursery in the United States. Our orchards included over 50 fruit trees with dozens of varieties that Fred had helped the company perfect and sell worldwide. The Seargants were as old as dust when we met them, and I was such a young kid that I only remember how sweet she was and that he was kind, thin, and seemed as ancient as time itself.
- Read the Rest of Part 1 Right Here: https://hillsboroherald.com/orenco-history-comes-to-life-through-new-map-photos-and-stories/
Installment #2 and the latest addition to the Orenco Google Map I am making are complete. Today, we look at the big packing shed! See the Map here: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit…
In this Photo, we see the massive Oregon Nursery Company Packing shed or warehouse as it was known, where hundreds of men would work sorting and packing fruit trees and other ornamental root stocks trees that had been grown in the fields around the town of Orenco into sawdust and burlap! The Oregon Electric Railway had an alignment that would have had the train running West down Baseline Road directly into Hillsboro, Oregon. The Oregon Nursery Company ownership, including founder Malcolm McDonald, lobbied the railway to swing the railway’s alignment to the North to bring the train to this spot, allowing millions of fruit trees to be shipped from the warehouses to distribution points in Portland and beyond!
This OER line was used until about 1933, when the electric rails were discontinued. Many years later, in 1998, the MAX Westside rail began running in this exact spot. Seen in the photo on the left is the original Orenco Station that sat on NW Alder Street (Now NE Alder Street) between 67th and 68th Avenues. The Orenco Office is on the right in this photo, and the fields behind the warehouse ran for over a mile to the Imbrie Farm and what we now call US Highway 26. Notice the wooded plank walkways along the train line! The Warehouse was one of the largest of its kind in Oregon! Bonus Feature: A photo I shot of the remainder of the packing shed wall, which now sits along the tracks at the Orchards At Orenco Apartments – you can sit on it, and there are a few plaques in the walkway there.
As a kid, we crawled through the ruins of the old packing shed. We found coins, tools, old windows, pocket knives, you name it! One thing I remember is that a massive open well. It was full of cans and bottles and debris and we used to dig things out trying to get to the bottom, It was brick lined and probably 5 feet across. Water was still in it at the 6 to 8-foot mark, and it was dangerous. Rusty rebar pipes strained skyward like sentinels of the bygone era, and they were to be respected lest we were impaled on them while hoping about. Grafitti was scribbled on the sections of the low wall that still stood. When we reached the old shed walls, we knew that miles of open fields lay ahead to the North. Ronler Acres, in all of its vacantness and sorrow, was a childs dream playground. 1,500 acres of pure wildness it was- bit that story will be for another time!
Part 3 is coming next week!
