Map Information

Most people look at this map and can't believe there's this many communities in such a small space. I couldn't either! You may find many of them unfamiliar. I did not make them up. This page explains how I decided what to include.

There is no official definition of a "community". Many places have no borders or municipal government. How many homes need to be how close together before a crossroad becomes a village? If I limited the map to incorporated cities, I'd visit some pretty obscure places (Dersham? King City?) and miss many important ones (Aloha, Bethany).

So, I curated my list from three major sources. All have caveats. The Washington County GIS database of "Local Community Areas" is the closest thing to an official map.

It’s terrible.

The database draws heavily from the age of rail. Pioneer towns (Phillips, Centerville) are omitted, modern features (Bonny Slope, Tanasbourne) are absent, but many insignificant, shortl-lived stops along the train line are classified as communities (Christie, Cipole, Lincoln). So are highway interchanges (Davies, Stanley's Junction) and a temporary logging camp that, unofficially, had a silly name (Timbuktu).

As far as Washington County is concerned, you're looking at downtown Lincoln, Oregon.

Despite the ridiculousness and remoteness of some of these locations, I plan to visit them all. I reserve the right to remove some if getting there seems too difficult and I have strong evidence that they were never a town.

For my second source, I used the Historic Post Office Archives to pinpoint population centers from the early days of Oregon history. A post office usually but not always indicates a community. Many towns didn't survive to the railroad era so the post office records are the best proof of their significance.

However, that's not always the case. Some post offices opened on growth speculation and shuttered within a few years. Some were conveniences serving only a few scattered farmers. Still, I plan to track down every one.

The colored areas in italics are CDPs.

My third source is the 2020 Census Designated Places. CDPs are a federal government invention to track areas with a lot of people but without a municipal government (unincorporated). In WashCo, most CDPs are the neighborhoods in the hills between Beaverton and Portland.

Finally, I have been (judiciously) adding to the map. There's a surfeit of great rides in the county (Hagg Lake, Pumpkin Ridge, Chehalem Ridge) and substantial or historically significant communities (Cooper Mountain, Consolidated Camp) that my sources miss. I plan to visit each one.

Taken together, I've got about 150 unique locations to visit so far.

See a place you REALLY think I should visit that's not on the list? I want to hear from you! Reach out to me on Blue Sky or Facebook (links at the bottom).

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