This story is part of KLCC's "Down by the River" series. To read the entire series, click here.
If you travel into the new Riverfront District via Mill Street, you may notice a name change shortly after you cross under Coburg Road. Mill Street ends and Annie Mims Lane begins.
A little ways down, there is an intersection with Wiley Griffon Way.
“They were named for Black pioneers,” said historian Randy Gudeika.
During a tour of the area, he quoted a 2019 editorial in the Register-Guard that noted how Black people were no less pioneers than white people.
“When white people came to Oregon, the worst they usually had to contend with was the wilderness,” he said, reading from the editorial. “Early Black residents of Oregon and Eugene faced the far more pernicious and insidious human edifices erected to prevent them from succeeding. Nature is indifferent. Humans target their cruelty.”
Eugene was a sundown town early in its history, meaning Black people were expected to leave before sunset.
Exceptions were made for Griffon, who was known as the driver of Eugene’s earliest streetcar in the 1890s, and Mims, who ran a safe-haven for Black travelers through the 1950s and 60s.
But other Black residents would cross the Willamette into what is now Alton Baker Park where they lived in a separate community.
“They built their houses of odds and ends with plywood, tarps, that kind of thing,” said Gudeika. “Some of them quite nice, because we had skilled carpenters among them, and they had a chapel.”
That chapel once hosted a performance by singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson, who is known for his portrayal of Joe in the musical “Show Boat.” The role included a performance of the song Ol’ Man River.
“So you can imagine 80-100 people in this tar paper shack of a chapel listening to Paul Robeson sing hymns. That must have been truly amazing,” said Gudeika.
The cultural references in the district go beyond Black pioneers. Farther down Annie Mims Lane is an intersection with Nak Nak Avenue, which uses the Kalapuya word for duck.
In Downtown Riverfront Park, the splash pad includes an art installation that includes more Indigenous culture along with the area’s ecology.
“There are granite tiles that are engraved with patterns from nature, from local species, and those are labeled in some of the tiles,” said Emily Proudfoot, principal landscape architect in the City of Eugene Parks Planning Office. “Around the outside edge of it, we've done some hard work with our local indigenous partners to use Kalapuya language and then have those translated into English.”
The translated phrase: “Water is life.”
“Our Willamette River, we've turned our back from it for so long, and this is just another great reason to come down and experience the natural beauty of our river and our riverfront in Eugene, it's what makes Eugene special,” said Proudfoot.
Integrating history into a project is not uncommon for this area. Just to the west, Brian Obie’s Fifth Street District has similar flares, including an early map of Eugene carved into concrete, to a chicken that tops a fountain in a former poultry facility.
“Part of the development is attaching people to the story,” said Obie. “People understanding where they're at, what they're in, what the background is, and having that history, I think, is helpful. It's a piece of it,” he said.
For Proudfoot, incorporating history is about more than a nod to the past. It can show an evolution from it.
“The goal of these types of installations are really to help folks feel welcome here and that they belong here, regardless of their culture, their nationality, their language, whatever,” she said.
She notes how an area that once welcomed only white people now embraces two cultures that played pivotal roles in building Eugene.
In Part 4 of "Down by the River," a look at what's still to come in the Riverfront District.
