Oregon Route 58 - History

History

By the 1850s, Emigrant Pass, slightly south of OR 58's crossing at Willamette Pass, was being used by emigrants to the Oregon Territory as a way over the Cascades. In October 1853, a party of 1500 was almost stranded at the pass, but was saved from a Donner Party-style tragedy by nearby settlers who had begun to improve the route up the Middle Fork Willamette River earlier that year as a shortcut between the Oregon Trail near Boise, Idaho and the Willamette Valley.

In July 1865, the United States Congress authorized the construction of the Oregon Central Military Wagon Road from Eugene to Fort Boise in Idaho. To finance the construction, the government offered land grants along the route. Eventually, the Oregon Central Military Wagon Road Company would build 420 miles (675 km) of road and claim about 806,400 acres (3260 km²). However, scandal and lawsuits regarding the quality of the road and its route reduced the amount of land actually patented by the company to approximately 235,568 acres (953.31 km2). Today, Oregon Route 58 follow the first leg of the Oregon Central military road from Eugene over the Cascades to Central Oregon.

The Oregon State Highway Commission added the Willamette Highway No. 18, from Goshen via Oakridge to Crescent, to the state highway system on November 24, 1922. The road was entirely unimproved when it was taken over, and improvement progressed slowly from the Goshen end. The roadway received the signed Oregon Route 58 designation in 1932, when the Oregon Route system was first laid out. A major realignment, crossing the Cascades at Willamette Pass rather than Emigrant Pass, was designed in 1933, and incorporated a number of "half viaducts" built into the hillside and one tunnel (the Salt Creek Tunnel) in order "not to scar the hillsides more than is absolutely necessary" through the Willamette National Forest. An opening ceremony for the highway, thought at the time to be the last major highway that the state would build, was held on July 30, 1940. The road remained partially oiled gravel until the mid-1960s.