Category:Lane County agriculture (1920s)

From Lane Co Oregon

During the 1920s, a small group of Ukrainian families emigrated to the rural areas of Springfield from southwestern North Dakota. Most of the people were farmers who had lost their Dakota homesteads in the early years of the Depression; their move to Oregon was to be a new beginning. Similar to the pioneers who settled the Willamette Valley, the Ukrainian emigrants encouraged further movement of their relatives left behind in North Dakota, such that even larger parties arrived in Springfield in the 1950s and 1960s. The cohesive group established a Ukrainian Catholic Church in the city and remained a distinctive community throughout the modern period (Anheluk pers. com. 1990).

Springfield at this time was called “a splendid area of rich farming and fruit country.” Farm crops that were consistently produced and marketed between the years of 1921 and 1936 included livestock, wool, wheat, oats, hay, fruit and hops. By 1920, 39 dairies were located in the Springfield locality, and in 1936, there were 86 poultry breeders (Polk 1921:241; 1925:347; 1928:439; 1936:469). Dairies were operating as early as 1912, and the Oregon Almanac first lists poultry farming for Springfield in 1915 (Oregon State Immigration Commission 1912:28). Besides chickens and turkeys, pheasants were raised near the Eugene Game Farm at Gateway from the 1930s through the mid-1940s. The game farm’s program stocked hunting areas with birds and provided eggs to 4-H Clubs (Neill 1990:4-5).

By 1929, 55 percent of the hops exported abroad by the United States came from Oregon even though the United States was in prohibition.

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