Eugene, OR news and local guide

The Chifin band of the Kalapuya were the first people to settle in the Eugene area, which they called Chifin. They made seasonal rounds gathering acorns, wapato and camas bulbs and berries and returned to permanent winter villages to hunt, fish and trade. Other Kalapuya bands also had villages within today's city, and their ancestors may have lived there for 10,000 years. French fur traders and their Native wives began farming the land year-round by 1828 to 1830. American settlers arrived from 1840, and within 20 years more than 11,000 had come. Disease and settlement devastated the Kalapuya, and most were forced onto the Grand Ronde reservation in 1856.

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Eugene Franklin Skinner, for whom the city is named, came to the Willamette Valley in 1846 among 1,200 settlers that year. On Kalapuya advice to build on high ground away from floods, he built the first cabin on the slope of the hill the Kalapuya called Ya-po-ah, now Skinner's Butte. The cabin served as a trading post and became an official post office on January 8, 1850. Settlers called the place Skinner's Mudhole. It was moved and named Eugene City in 1853, incorporated in 1862 and renamed Eugene in 1889. Skinner ran a ferry across the Willamette where the Ferry Street Bridge now stands. Sources Wikipedia: Eugene, Oregon