As was the case with Washington, Swedes first arrived in Oregon in significant numbers during the 1880s. The 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland and the work of the Oregon State Commission of Immigration attracted considerable numbers so that by 1910 there were about ten thousand Swedish-born in the state, representing nearly 10 percent of all foreign-born. Swedes were largely "second-stage" immigrants, having settled first in other states.
     The largest contingent of Swedes living in Portland where they tended to be builders and carpenters or employees of various sawmills. The oldest Swedish Lutheran congregation in the Pacific Northwest was organized in Portland by pioneer missionary Peter Carlson. The first important Swedish settlement in the state was Powell Valley, fourteen miles east of Portland. Swedes also lived in considerable numbers in Astoria, Warren, Colton, The Dalles, Ione (north-central Oregon), and along the Pacific Coast, particularly in and around Coos Bay. This survey of Oregon cities begins with Astoria at Oregon's northwestern corner, moves generally southward, juts to central Oregon for Ione and The Dalles, and ends with coastal landmarks near Florence and Coos Bay.

     Salmon fishing and opportunities in lumbering first attracted Swedes to Astoria along with a greater number of Finns, and a midsummer festival draws them back annually. Several of the outstanding historic homes in Astoria have Swedish connections. These include the Captain Eric Johnson house at 960 Franklin Avenue, the Albin W. Norblad House at 1625 Grand, the Benjamin Young House and Carriage House at 3652 Duane Street, and the Dr. Toivo Forsstrom House at 726 Seventh Street. Norblad was first elected governor of Oregon in 1929, and Walter, his son, served as a congressman from 1946 to 1965. Young was one of the leading salmon packers on the lower Columbia, and he expanded his operations, opening canneries in Alaska and on the Fraser River in British Columbia. For a complete description of these homes, many of which are built on steep slopes near the wide mouth of the Columbia River and all of which are privately owned, visitors may consult the brochure, "Walking Tour of Astoria", which may be purchased at the Flavel House at Eighth and Duane (503/325-2203) or at the community's Heritage Museum at 1618 Exchange (503/325-8395).
     Swedish Lutherans in Astoria organized the First Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1880 under the guidance of the Rev. Peter Carlson, making it the second oldest congregation of the former Columbia Conference of the Augustana Lutheran Church. In 1929, this congregation merged with a neighboring German church. The new Trinity Lutheran congregation disposed of the old properties and in 1930 built a sanctuary on the corner of Sixteenth and Franklin. This edifice is now the Performing Arts Center of Clatsop Community College. The old organ and stained glass windows may still be found in the building.
     In 1974, Trinity Lutheran consolidated with Zion Lutheran, a Finnish congregation, to form Peace Lutheran Church. This congregation uses the former Zion Lutheran sanctuary, built in 1947 and modernized, at 565 Twelfth Street. In the narthex is a stained glass window from the Trinity church. Also in the narthex are two glass cases with memorabilia from the two congregations--one with Finnish items, the other with Swedish. A cornerstone made of Finnish marble has been placed near the front entrance with an inscription noting the merger of the two churches.
     In 1919 plans began to be made for what would eventually become Columbia Memorial Hospital with which many Swedes would be involved over the years. Two years after the Astoria Finnish Brotherhood began to consider providing a hospital for Astoria, the Fraternal Hospital Association, Inc., composed of numerous Astoria fraternal organizations, was organized. It eventually sought support for its hospital proposal from the Columbia Conference of the Augustana Lutheran Church, and with its support, ground breaking for the facility took place in 1927. Today that structure is a nursing home, and the hospital now serves the community in a building constructed in 1978.

     Swedes began coming to this wooded hill country in 1877. A Swedish Lutheran congregation was organized in 1886, but neither the colony nor the church flourished. The little white frame church is at least ninety years old, and since the early 1960s has been owned by the Community Church of nearby Birkenfeld. On U.S. Highway 30, near the turnoff for Mist, is a sign noting Swedetown Road.

     
     Bethany Lutheran Church, a white frame church with a central steeple and twentieth-century Gothic-style windows, features Christ in Gethsemane, one of approximately two hundred altar paintings by Swedish immigrant Olof Grafström, an artist who taught in Lindsborg, Kansas, and Rock Island, Illinois. The building at 34721 Church Road as constructed in 1908, a year after the congregation organized, and has been modernized. North of it is the Bethany Memorial Cemetery. Mount St. Helens is visible to the northeast. Nearby on U.S. Highway 30 is the Warren Baptist Church, which was also organized by Swedes.

     Three active churches in Portland have Swedish roots. First Immanuel Lutheran church may be called the "mother" church of the former Columbia Conference of the Augustana Lutheran Synod. Established in 1879 as the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Church, it changed names within a few months to the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Immanuel Congregation. The Rev. Peter Carlson, its founder and first pastor, was born in Småland in 1822 and emigrated in 1854, first residing in St. Charles, Illinois. Five years later he was ordained a minister.
     Immanuel Lutheran's first sanctuary was erected in 1882 at Burnside and Tenth. In that sanctuary the Columbia Conference of the Augustana Lutheran Church was organized in 1893. During the Rev. Carl J. Renhard's pastorate (1904-1910), the present sanctuary was built at the southeast corner of Northwest Irving Street and Northwest Nineteenth Avenue (1816 Northwest Irving Street, 503/226-3659) and dedicated in September 1905. The twentieth-century church in the Gothic style features a tall off-center spire. The sanctuary's stained glass windows represent a number of Christian symbols in memory of various farmer members of the congregation and include numerous Swedish inscriptions. Adjacent to the church on the Nineteenth Street side is the old parsonage.
     The "mother" church of the Pacific Northwest's Swedish Baptists is Temple Baptist Church at 1319 Northeast Seventh (503/233-5953) (opposite the west end of Lloyd Center). Baptists began meeting in 1875, but 1884 is recognized officially as the founding of the First Scandinavian Baptist Church of Portland. In 1878, the Rev. Olaus Okerson, born in Skåne and known as the early leader of Swedish Baptists in the Northwest, had spoken to the group. The sanctuary, built in Classical style and featuring exterior Ionic columns, was dedicated in 1927 and renovated in 1973.
     Another early church, the former Swedish Tabernacle, built in 1912, grew from a congregation formed in 1887 as the Swedish Mission Church. Built at 1624 Northwest Glisan Street (the southeast corner of Northwest Glisan Street and Northwest Seventeenth Avenue), the two-story red brick rectangular tabernacle is said to have been designed by members of the congregation with the idea of its being sold for warehouse use at a later date. The building is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The auditorium features a U-shaped balcony, its face decorated with a repeating motif of plaster rosettes. Eventually called the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant Church, the congregation sold the tabernacle in 1953 and now, a First Covenant, meets at 4433 East Burnside. Since the sale, the building has been used as a theater and a union hall.
     Immanuel Lutheran's minister the Rev. Carl J. Renhard (1870-1946), was the moving spirit in the founding of Emanuel Hospital & Health Center, now one of the largest health facilities in the Pacific Northwest (2801 North Gantenbein). Born in Småland, Renhard immigrated to the United States at the age of ten. Reared in Nebraska, he was confirmed at the Swede Home Church near Stromsburg and was trained at Augustana Theological Seminary. He came west shortly after the turn of the century. In September 1909, he gathered nine Swedish men (that number shortly increased to twelve) and with them formed the Swedish Lutheran Hospital Board. Three years later, in 1912, Emanuel Hospital purchased a three-story residence on the southwest side of Portland at 209 Southwest Taylor Street.
     Four years later, in 1916, the first building at the hospital's present location on the northeast side of the Willamette River (at North Stanton Street and Vancouver Avenue) was opened (this building was razed in 1952 to make way for a 128-bed addition). In 1918, the Nurses Home was opened to serve the Emanuel Hospital School of Nursing, which taught nursing for more than fifty-five years. In 1926, the main hospital was erected at Commercial Avenue and Graham Street, and six years later two more additions were constructed. These parts are the oldest structures still standing at the present side, and numerous additions have been built. In 1977, President Gerald Ford dedicated the Patient Tower, and in 1980, the complex expanded further. The surrounding neighborhood was once known as Swede Hill. At the corner of Rodney and Stanton is the former Augustana Lutheran Church, but now the Lutheran congregation meets at Fourteenth and Knott.
     Two blocks west of Immanuel Lutheran Church is Linnea Hall at 2066 Northwest Irving Street (between Northwest Twentieth and Northwest Twenty-first Avenues). The Swedish Society Linnea was one of the oldest Swedish societies in the Pacific Northwest and the only independent Swedish Lodge in Portland. Organized in 1888 as Svenska Bröderna (The Swedish Brothers), the group four years later changed the name to Svenska Sällskapet Linnéa, and this name appears on the cornerstone laid in 1910. On top of the two and a half-story frame building are a curvilinear gable and square-domed corner pavilions. Wooden pilasters with Corinthian capitals flank a deeply recessed central entrance with double-leaf doors. Above the entrance are two stained glass windows on either side of a painted wood carving of the Swedish national emblem. The rear two-story dance hall was destroyed by fire in 1929.
     The society played an important role in the cultural and historical development of Swedish heritage in Portland. It sponsored a variety of activities, such as picnics and parties, and on all occasions Swedish was spoken, Swedish food prepared, and Swedish folk traditions observed. Though the membership reached five hundred in the early 1920s, it declined in the 1930s. By 1946 it had shrunk to 125, and in 1979 the hall was sold. A Swedish flag continues to be flown over the building, which in 1980 was named a Portland historical landmark.
     One thousand feet above the city of Portland in Pittock Acres Park (3229 Northwest Pittock Drive), is the Pittock Mansion. On the National Register of Historic Places, this home is open 12-4 daily (except major holidays). This twenty-two room mansion was built in the French Renaissance style between 1909 and 1914 by Henry L. Pittock, founder of Portland's The Daily Oregonian (later called The Oregonian), and showcases fine examples of Swedish craftsmanship. In the first floor library is an intricately detailed wood carving above the fireplace, depicting the family crest, hand executed by William G. Klingenberg, one of Portland's Swedish craftsmen. On the second floor is ornate hand-carved Victorian walnut furniture made in the 1880s by Daniel Wennerberg, a Swedish cabinetmaker. Mrs. Edward Atiyeh, an Oregon governor's wife and granddaughter of Wennerberg, made a gift of the furniture to the mansion. Pictures of Wennerberg and his wife are in the bedroom.

     Swedes came to Gresham and Powell Valley as early as 1875, though a larger number arrived in the 1890s. The Trinity Lutheran Church congregation was organized in 1899, originally being known as the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Saron Church of Powell Valley. A building was constructed the same year, but no longer exists. A new sanctuary was erected in 1932 at 507 West Powell Boulevard, and it contains the altar painting of the former church.

     In 1906, the Rev. Carl J. Renhard, the Portland minister who was the leading force in the founding of Portland's Emanuel Hospital medical complex, established the Oregon Swedish Colonization Company in an attempt to encourage more Scandinavian Lutherans to move to the Pacific Northwest. Renhard was looking for people who were Swedish, Lutheran, and Republican. Most of the original settlers came from Nebraska, particularly Oakland, Wakefield, and Omaha. One of the more outstanding families was the Hults from Swede Home Lutheran Church near Stromsburg, Nebraska. Nels P. Hult became a successful lumberman after building the first lumber mill in the area. Two thousand acres of land were purchased to be made available to the settlers. In 1907 the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Carlsborg congregation was formally organized in Hult's home. During the following years the white frame church was built. In 1945, the congregation changed its name from Carlsborg Evangelical Lutheran to Colton Lutheran. The church stands on the south side of State Highway 211 next to the local high school. In nearby Colton Cemetery are the graves of the Rev. Renhard (1870-1947); his wife, Anna (1874-1945), who was Hult's daughter; and other members of the Hult family.
     On Hult Road, west of town is the Lutheran Cornay Chapel has the original pews and altar curtain of the Colton Lutheran Church. The Hults also contributed to other Oregon charities and the arts, including the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene.

     The Fort Dalles Historical Museum at Fifteenth and Garrison streets features three late nineteenth-century log structures--the Lewis Anderson house, barn and granary--all listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Anderson was a Swede and the house was built for him by a fellow Swede. Called "a noteworthy Scandinavia in America vernacular ensemble", the structures were originally on Anderson's homestead on Pleasant Ridge south of The Dalles, overlooking Mount Hood to the west and the rolling Columbia River plateau to the north. The museum commission serving both Wasco County and The Dalles undertook in 1972 to dismantle the structures and move them to the historical museum.
     Made of hewn yellow pine logs with dovetailed corners, the rectangular (thirty-four by twenty-four feet) one and a half-story house rested (as did the other farm buildings) on a half-stone foundation. On the first floor were a parlor, pantry, small bedroom, kitchen, and front bedroom. Stairs led up to a sleeping area. The small hip-roofed shelter for the front entry was added later. The period furnishings include a pump organ and loom.
     The barn (thirty by thirty feet), open only on special occasions, was on a slope at its original location; thus, it has an upper and lower level (hayloft and threshing floor above, central double row of mangers below). Builders used fifty-foot hewn tamarack (evergreen) logs in 1890 for its construction. The granary, which is not open to the public, was built between 1885 and 1890 as a homestead at Rock Prairie. Anderson had it dismantled and moved to his property about 1898. Born in northern Sweden in 1862, Anderson went to sea on an English vessel at age fourteen. After he returned in 1881 to Sweden, he left almost immediately to accompany his sister and a group of settlers to the United States. After marrying in Wisconsin, Anderson went to Minneapolis but then pushed on to Pleasant Ridge in 1885. Although he persuaded other Swedes to follow, Pleasant Ridge's lack of water was a shortcoming that few could overlook. Most drifted on, but Anderson and his family persevered. Finally, after his four children divided the land, he moved to The Dalles and worked in the construction trade.

     Ione is located in a very sparsely populated area of north-central Oregon where the wheat farms are two to four thousand acres each and where some of the last land was available for homesteading in the lower forty-eight states. Swedes first homesteaded land here in 1883, beginning as sheep herders.
     The Rev. Erik Norelius, an emigrant from Hälsingland who helped found and lead the Augustana Synod of Swedish American Lutheran Church, visited this isolated community, then known as Gooseberry in 1886. In April of that year he conducted the first service of the Lutheran church and organized the congregation. Formerly called Valby Evangelical Lutheran, the small white frame building with its short steeple was dedicated in 1897.

     For many years an annual Nordic festival has been held mid-August in Junction City, Danes, Finns, Norwegians and Swedes each have their special day in this four-day festival.

     Heceta Head Lighthouse on U.S. Highway 101 north of Florence is the most powerful beacon along the Oregon coast. The lighthouse and keeper's quarters, now on the National Register of Historic Places, were built by a crew of Swedish-born carpenters between 1892 and 1894. Its location makes it probably Oregon's most photographed coastal lighthouse. Although today it is fully automated, formerly Swedes operated and maintained this lighthouse as they did most of the lighthouses along Oregon's coast.

     In North Bend near Coos Bay, formerly called Marshfield, the former First Lutheran Evangelical Church of North Bend at 777 Florida was built in 1908 by Scandinavian immigrants who worked in the sawmills and logging camps of Coos County. Many were Swedish-speaking men and women who were born in Finland. In 1958, First Lutheran and Trinity Lutheran, a Swedish congregation organized in 1884, merged and constructed a new building at 1290 West Thompson Road in Coos Bay that was dedicated in 1960. Trinity Lutheran's sanctuary at Third and Commercial was torn down.
     Coos Bay historic homes owned and/or built by Swedes include three still in private hands. The three-story white frame Nerdrum House at 955 South Fifth, constructed in 1911 and 1912, is considered one of the finest homes in the Coos Bay area. The house was built by Hjalte Nerdrum who emigrated from Finland and was employed by native Swede C.A. Smith at his lumber company. Nerdrum pioneered a new technique for making pulp with salt water from the bay.
     The Nasburg-Lockhart House at 687 North Third was constructed in 184 by Andrew Nasburg who in the early 1860s owned and operated the first general store in Marshfield (Coos Bay). A second-stage immigrant who had first settled in Illinois, Nasburg came to Oregon in 1859. The National Register of Historic Places includes this house.
     The Myren-Hillstrom House at 353 South Fifth Street was built about 1889 by Norwegian Robert Myren. His daughter Rose married into the Hillstrom family (Swedish-speaking Finns).
     The two-story Queen Anne-style Patrick Hughes House built in 1898 stands in Cape Blanco State Park in Curry County. Designed and constructed by Sweden Peter John (Per Johan) Lindberg (1851-1920), a Port Orford building contractor, the house was home to pioneer rancher and dairy farmer Patrick Hughes.