Women’s Tour
“Go west young man and grow up with the country.” While many men did heed this call to the western frontier seeking adventure and fortune, most women came with their families– as children, as wives and often as mothers caring for children. This tour will highlight their unique stories and their roles in the community as Portland transitioned from a rough and tumble frontier town to an early 20th century city.
As we walk through beautiful Lone Fir Cemetery, we will visit the gravesites of women whose names you may recognize as Portland’s founding families: Terwilliger, McLoughlin, Macleay, as well as lesser-known women whose contributions through civic, philanthropic, and religious organizations improved the lives of Portlanders.
After the tour you will be able to answer the following questions:
- In her role as the first women to hold the position of City Health Officer in a major US City, who is credited with preventing an outbreak of bubonic plague by implementing an aggressive rat extermination program that included a nickel bounty on rats?
- In the 1870s, despite discriminatory laws, who was the first black women to own her own house in Portland?
- Who was the face of the 1908 US Supreme Court case that upheld Oregon’s law that limited women’s factory shifts to 10 hours a day?
- Who lost her mother on the Oregon Trail only to be left a year later with her new stepmom while her father when down to the California gold rush?
- How many generations of Oregon women actively worked on the state’s suffrage movement? (hint: it took over 40 years)
- Who was the first women convicted of murder in the Oregon Territory?
- What highly successful woman painter was posthumously name “The Oregon Artist” by the Oregon legislature?
Suggested donation is $10 and you can reserve a spot in advance on our website.
The Women’s Tour will be held on the following 4th Saturdays of the month (10:00 am- noon) and begin at the Soldiers Monument (center of the cemetery)