In the late 1970s, a young woman received a call from a friend about a building in Lake Oswego that was being cleared out. The young woman was interested in the history of properties around Lake Oswego. Her friend alerted her that there were items she might be interested in that were being discarded. She hurried to the building, climbed into a dumpster, and retrieved several old documents, including four leather-bound volumes of board meeting records of The Oregon Iron and Steel Company from 1882 to 1960
The documents are a valuable source of information about the company’s operations, lending and borrowing, investments, and the occasional conflict between its directors. The young treasure-hunter found the books fascinating and useful to her work because they detailed land sales, property boundaries, and other aspects of Lake Oswego’s development. She used these books for nearly 40 years before donating them to the Lake Oswego Preservation Society.
Local Partnerships
The Lake Oswego Preservation Society partnered with the Lake Oswego Public Library and the Oswego Heritage Council to preserve, catalog, digitize and transcribe this collection and make it accessible for public use. The project received partial funding through a grant awarded by the Oregon Heritage Commission. Volunteers from the Lake Oswego Library, Oswego Heritage Council and the Preservation Society worked over three years to complete the project.
“The moment I opened these books and read the handwritten meeting notes from the 1800s, I knew that these had to be made available to the public”, said Gail Toft-Vizzini, a preservation society board member and project leader. “I read entries about the Willamette Meteorite that had details that to my knowledge had not been written elsewhere, that was a hook for me.”
The original books, photocopies, and printed transcriptions will be on display at the Iron Worker’s Museum during May’s Preservation Month.
