Lake Oswego Public Library

Fifteen thousand years ago, the Missoula floods roared out of the Columbia River Gorge and sculpted a lakebed out of an old river channel. In 1847, Albert Durham built a home and mill at the lake's outlet, calling the area Oswego. In the 1860s, iron ore mined from the surrounding hills gave rise to the hope that Oswego would become the "Pittsburgh of the West." Two decades after its hillsides had been logged and the iron industry failed, the city...