McLoughlin Area Plan: HOME

About the Plan

Clackamas County is working with citizens, the business community and other agencies to enhance and revitalize the neighborhoods and communities in unincorporated Clackamas County between the cities of Milwaukie and Gladstone and between the Willamette River and Webster Road. The area of interest includes McLoughlin Boulevard in unincorporated Clackamas County as well as residential areas to the east and west of the corridor.

The McLoughlin area will experience investments in multiple public improvements over the next 10 years, including transportation, parks and greenspace, environmental health and housing.  The timing of these activities, including the construction of the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail project to Park Avenue and the Trolley Trail, presents a rare opportunity to plan in an integrated fashion to ensure maximum benefit to the residents and businesses in and near the boulevard, and the larger community.

The first phase of the McLoughlin Area Plan process is devoted to developing the community's vision forthe area. Part of the process is focused on defining the exact boundaries of the McLoughlin Area as well. The community will also play a key role in establishing values and guiding principles to help guide future planning, programming, and development within the area.

History

Oak Grove was named at the suggestion of Edward W. Cornell, a member of the surveying party that platted the townsite in the 1890s. The company that was developing the property had not been able to come up with a good name for the place and Cornell suggested Oak Grove after a crew ate lunch in a stand of oak trees in the northwestern part of the tract.

According to Oregon Geographic Names, Jennings Lodge was platted as a townsite in 1905 and named after Berryman Jennings, an Oregon pioneer, one of whose children still owned Jennings' house in 1927.

“McLoughlin Boulevard was originally US Route 99E, part of the major north-south Pacific Highway through Oregon’s Willamette Valley to California. US Route 99E had its heyday just after WWII until it was eclipsed by Interstate 5, finished in 1966. Thereafter, the Boulevard, demoted into Oregon Route 99E, declined as Portland grew.” – June Underwood, Painting Portland

McLoughlin was named after Dr. John McLoughlin, one of the most influential figures of the fur trade and settlement periods of Pacific Northwest history. Chief Factor of the Columbia District of the British Hudson's Bay Company, he reigned as a benevolent autocrat, befriended Americans, and eventually became an American citizen at Oregon City. In 1842 he surveyed and laid out the town site of Oregon City (formerly called Willamette Falls), and was mayor of Oregon City from 1851 until his death in 1857.

Until 1964, U.S. Route 99 was the main North-South highway on the U.S. West Coast running from Calexico, California at the U.S. Mexico border to Blaine, Washington on the U.S. side of the Canada border. In 1926, it was signed as a route of the United States Numbered Highways system, and remained in use until it was replaced for the most part by Interstate 5. Large portions are now California's State Route 99, Oregon's Route 99 and Washington's State Route 99.