unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
in
Lane County, Oregon
Lane County is one of the Oregon counties, 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 382,971, making it the fourth-most populous county in Oregon. The county seat is Eugene, ...
, United States. It is located on
Oregon Route 126
Oregon OR 126 (OR 126) is a state highway that connects coastal, western, and central parts of the U.S. state of Oregon. A short freeway section of OR 126 in Eugene and Springfield is concurrent with Interstate 105 (I-105).
Rou ...
Rainbow
A rainbow is an optical phenomenon caused by refraction, internal reflection and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a continuous spectrum of light appearing in the sky. The rainbow takes the form of a multicoloured circular ...
. It is in the
Willamette National Forest
The Willamette National Forest is a United States National Forest, National Forest located in the central portion of the Cascade Range of the U.S. state of Oregon.
It comprises . Over 380,000 acres (694 mi2, 1,540 km2) are National Wil ...
, where the Blue River empties into the McKenzie. The community was named after the Blue River, which was named for the striking blue color that apparently comes from its rocky bed. Five miles northeast of the community, a dam on the Blue River forms the Blue River Reservoir.
History
The area was first settled in the late 19th century by the Sparks family.
Gold
Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...
was discovered in the Blue River area in 1863, but by 1912, most gold mining activity had ended. The ore was low grade and the local
stamp mill
A stamp mill (or stamp battery or stamping mill) is a type of Mill (grinding), mill machine that crushes material by pounding rather than Mill (grinding), grinding, either for further processing or for extraction of metallic ores. Breaking materia ...
s have not operated in many years. Records show, however, that the Lucky Boy Mine had extracted more than $1 million from the Blue River Mining District during the brief gold rush. Samuel Sparks and his sons laid out the town of Blue River in 1900 as part of they had acquired. Blue River post office was established in 1886.
The community's volunteer Frances O'Brien Memorial Library was founded in 1928. The library has no running water, does not set due dates on loans, and was originally left unlocked 24 hours a day.
The structures in Blue River were destroyed by the Holiday Farm Fire on September 8, 2020. The Frances O’Brien Memorial Library will temporarily operate out of the Upper McKenzie Community Center in Rainbow, Oregon.
Climate
This region experiences warm (but not hot) and dry summers, with no average monthly temperatures above . According to the
Köppen Climate Classification
The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...
system, Blue River has a
warm-summer Mediterranean climate
A Mediterranean climate ( ), also called a dry summer climate, described by Köppen and Trewartha as ''Cs'', is a temperate climate type that occurs in the lower mid-latitudes (normally 30 to 44 north and south latitude). Such climates typic ...