French Prairie facts for kids
French Prairie is a prairie located in Marion County, Oregon, United States, in the Willamette Valley between the Willamette River and the Pudding River, north of Salem. It was named for some of the earliest settlers of that part of the Oregon Country, French Canadian/Métis people who were mostly former employees of the Hudson's Bay Company. French Prairie is also known as an early Métis settlement in the Pacific Northwest history.
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History
European American settlement
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The European presence in the French Prairie area began with Wallace House in 1812, near the present city of Keizer, Oregon. The station was a fur trading post built by William Wallace Matthews and John C. Halsley of the Pacific Fur Company. The Willamette Trading Post was established in 1814 by the North West Company near the site of Champoeg.
In the 1830s the French Canadian settlers, who were Roman Catholic, petitioned to Norbert Provencher, the Bishop of Juliopolis at the Red River Colony (present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) to have a priest sent to them. Two of these petitions were sent in 1836 and 1837. Bishop François Norbert Blanchet finally arrived in the French Prairie area in 1838. These first French Canadian settlers built hewn log homes in the French style and started wheat farms. The homes were built with clay and stick chimneys, ash bark roofs, and animal skin windows that were similar to the homes built on the eastern Canadian frontier. By 1843, approximately 100 French Canadian/Métis families lived on the prairie.
The St. Paul Roman Catholic Church, in St. Paul, was built in 1846 by the settlers of French Prairie and is the oldest brick building still standing in the Pacific Northwest.
Later settlement
For a short time in the 1880s the Oregonian Railway Company had a station named French Prairie about two miles southeast of the city of St. Paul.
French Prairie today
The French Prairie area is still an important agricultural area of the Willamette Valley, and there is concern about urban development encroaching on arable land.
Geography
Generally, the French Prairie is bounded by the Pudding River on the east, the Salem-Keizer metropolitan area on the south, and the Willamette River on both the north and west as the Willamette makes a 90 degree turn to the south near Newberg. Settlements on French Prairie founded by French Canadians include Butteville, Champoeg, Gervais, Saint Louis, and St. Paul.
Notable residents
