Colton

In 1905 a Portland pastor bought 1,960 acres here, cut it into forty-acre farms, and sold them to Swedes. He called it Carlsborg.

Carl J. Renhard ran First Immanuel Lutheran in Portland and had helped found Emanuel Hospital. He set up the American-Scandinavian Realty Company to do the buying and the selling.

Swedes had been coming to Oregon in numbers for decades, mostly into logging camps, sawmills and the fishing fleet. Renhard's offer was different: forty acres of your own, among people who spoke your language.

The name did not stick. The place was already Colton by then, named in 1892 after two men who each tried to name it after the other. It sits on Milk Creek at about 700 feet, in canyon country built out of volcanic rock and ash from the Western Cascades.