Baker Historic District

In 1875, the first boom was well underway. A correspondent for the BedrockDemocrat described the city as follows: "Baker City is the base of supplies for all mining towns in the vicinity. Five stages arrive and depart each week. Several sawmills are within ten to twelve miles of the town and lumber is plentiful and cheap. The total population is over 1,200. There is a bank, several brick stores, and a number of good hotels---the principal one being the Cosmopolitan, being a splendid brick building the only brick hotel in Eastern Oregon. Notre Dame Academy for girls and St. Joseph's College for boys are located there. The Baker City Academy and a large public school offer education to Baker City. There is a fine race course a mile from town."

In 1880, the population was 1,258. Wesley Andrews, an early settler, writing in "Baker City in the Eighties", states that Baker City had "three breweries, twenty-one saloons, gambling houses that never close, a flour mill, church, school, four blacksmith's shops, and 'fast' houses." A large number of emigrants from the agricultural states (Nebraska, Iowa, and the like) were beginning to settle in Baker City.
In 1882 the First National Bank of Baker City opened. In 1883, a Joss House, or Buddhist temple, was built. In 1884, the Oregon Western Railroad and Navigation Company completed the railroad through Baker to both Portland and Salt Lake City. The business community was thriving but major fires in 1884, 1886, 1888, and 1889 burned entire blocks of large frame buildings. Waterworks were not completed until 1888. By 1885-87, most of the Chinese population was leaving; the Eldorado Ditch was long completed, the railroad/Completed, and changes in mining and milling technologies no longer required "coolie" labor. In 1888, electricity was brought to most of the city's area, and the right-of-way was surveyed for a "street railroad" or trolley. The trolley eventually ran down Main Street.

By 1890, the population was 6,663. During this decade, Baker City was larger than Spokane (Washington) or Boise City (Idaho). The city was known as the "Queen City of the Inland Empire." President Harrison whistle-stopped there. Lumber and cattle were, by this time, substantial parts of the local economy (in the 20th century, these two industries would replace mining as the mainstay of the local economy). In 1891, the Sumpter Valley Railroad was completed to bring logs into Baker City. The Oregon Lumber Company employed 200 men and had lumber yards in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Washington.

In 1893, the White Swan mine was claimed. The rest of the nation was experiencing a depression, but Baker City was entering its second boom. The First National Bank of Baker City was solvent with the benefit of the new mining activity, but its owner-- the Chase Bank of New York--called for its assets to meet demands in the East and the local bank failed. At the time, the bank was handling $300,000 per month in gold dust.

In 1895, the mines near Baker shipped $1.3 million worth of gold and employed 1,000 miners. In 1897, the city received phone service. In the same year, there was a flood that caused substantial damage--$ 200,000 worth of construction took place.

Baker City at the turn of the century is best described in the 1899 edition of "This Will Interest You Webfoot Bonanzas," a promotional pamphlet of the time. "Since 1896 between forty and fifty handsome business buildings of brick and stone have gone up... costing between $10,000 and $30,000 each. A seventy-room hotel and several smaller ones have been added to the fifteen that were already offering hospitality. Scores of new mercantile and industrial establishments have gone into operation; including a smelter, two planing mills, a steam laundry employing thirty-two people, two cigar factories, two wholesale grocers, two wholesale liquor and tobacco houses, and over four hundred residences have been erected. The Masons have just finished a $20,000 temple and an Opera House... will soon be completed. The little city is equipped in metropolitan fashion with water works, gas and electric light plants, a street railway, and two daily and half-dozen weekly newspapers." This promotional material is no doubt slightly exaggerated, but it presents a reasonable image of the city at the time.

From 1900 to 1920, most of the city's prominent buildings of today were erected. The former Post Office (1909), City Halí (1903), the County Courthouse (1908), the Cathedral (1905), the YMCA (now the VFW Hall), 1912, and a variety of commercial and fraternal buildings were built, most of them in a rusticated rock-faced ashlar.

In 1907 the Sumpter boom collapsed. That city (to the east of Baker) lost the majority of its population and never revived. Baker City suffered from the collapse as well but was still receiving the benefits of mining activity in other areas. As gold production declined through the 1910s, the city was forced to rely on its well-developed lumber and cattle industries. An indication that the city was ready to move forward from its past can be seen in the change of the name of the town from Baker City to "Baker," a usage thought to be more up-to-date when the change occurred in 1911.

In spite of the loss of mining revenues, the town's social and economic underpinnings were strong enough to prevent the community's decline. Since the late 1910s, the town has grown from 6,700 to 10,000 to the present day. While it experienced a decline in growth during the 1960s, the city is revitalizing itself today.