Lorane is an

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 ...

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 Territorial Road about southwest of Eugene; it is northwest of Cottage Grove. The community is near the headwaters of the North Fork

Siuslaw River The Siuslaw River ( ) is a river, about long, that flows to the Pacific Ocean coast of Oregon in the United States. It drains an area of about in the Central Oregon Coast Range southwest of the Willamette Valley and north of the watershed o ...

in a valley in the foothills of the Central Oregon Coast Range. Local businesses include several wineries, including the King Estate Winery, Chateau Lorane Winery and Iris Hill Winery, and two general stores. Lorane is also home to several notable late-19th-century/early-20th-century buildings, including the Lorane Christian Church, built in 1889, the Lorane Rebekah Lodge, built in 1898, and the Lorane Grange hall, built in 1909. Although Lorane is unincorporated, it has a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

; Lorane's ZIP code is 97451. Lorane is served by the Crow-Applegate-Lorane School District, including Lorane Elementary School, which was established in 1892 but closed in 2011.

History

Lorane was settled by white settlers who participated in the US expansion Westward to Oregon, encouraged by the

Donation Land Claim Act The Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, sometimes known as the Donation Land Act, was a statute enacted by the United States Congress in late 1850, intended to promote homestead settlements in the Oregon Territory. It followed the Distribution-Pre ...

of 1850, which gave 320 acres of free land to any unmarried white male citizen, or 640 acres to every married couple, who moved to the

Oregon Territory The Territory of Oregon was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from August 14, 1848, until February 14, 1859, when the southwestern portion of the territory was admitted to the United States, Union as the Oreg ...

before December 1, 1850. First settler contact in Lorane is thought to have occurred in the early 1850s, with significant colonial landmarks being the Applegate Trail, a stagecoach route, the Cartwright House (Mountain House Hotel), and the original landscape intended for the

Southern Pacific Railroad The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials) was an American Railroad classes#Class I, Class I Rail transport, railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was oper ...

. The Railroad was built in Cottage Grove, 12 miles east of Lorane. The indigenous keepers of the land that Lorane occupies are the

Siuslaw people The Siuslaw are an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest. Their autonym is sha’yuushtl’a. Today Siuslaw people are enrolled with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indi ...

, who are believed to have arrived to the

Oregon coast The Oregon Coast is a coastal region of the U.S. state of Oregon. It is bordered by the Pacific Ocean to its west and the Oregon Coast Range to the east, and stretches approximately from the California state border in the south to the Columbia ...

over 9,000 years ago. They spoke the

Siuslaw language Siuslaw was the language of the Siuslaw people and Lower Umpqua ( Kuitsh) people of Oregon. It is also known as ''Lower Umpqua''. The Siuslaw language had two dialects: Siuslaw proper (Šaayušƛa) and Lower Umpqua (Quuiič). Classification Si ...

, but the last documented speakers of Siuslawan were the Barrett family and Billy Dick of

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

, who were interviewed in the 1950s. However, there are ongoing language revitalization efforts, knowledge of which is exclusive to tribal members. Today, knowledge of the indigenous inhabitants of Lorane has all but disappeared in the community of Lorane. Documented interaction with the first settler-colonizers of Lorane and the Siuslaw people is exceptionally rare, summed up by the statement "there is a tradition of a Siuslaw village in the Lorane Valley, southwest of Eugene." The land that Lorane rests on possesses a history that has been confined to the past due to the lack of Siuslaw people in the area of Lorane and the ease in which white settlers claim land as their own.

References

External links

Images of the historic 1855 Cartwright House near Lorane, which was razed in 1973
(from Salem Public Library)
Cartwright House (Mountain House)
from the

Oregon Historical Society The Oregon Historical Society (OHS) is an organization that encourages and promotes the study and understanding of the history of the State of Oregon, within the broader context of U.S. history. Incorporated in 1898, the Society collects, pres ...

Darius B. Cartwright House
from the

Historic American Buildings Survey The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

Images of Cartwright House
from the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a Public university, public research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1876, the university is organized into nine colleges and schools and offers 420 undergraduate and gra ...

archives {{authority control Unincorporated communities in Lane County, Oregon Unincorporated communities in Oregon