WUpedia
Welcome to the Willamette University Archives’ history project!
Recent Posts
-
Kimball School of Theology
Written by Lilly Thies, Class of 2026 Many students are aware that Methodist missionaries founded the Salem landmarks of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1841, and Willamette University in 1842. But fewer know that where the modern building Ford Hall stands now, for thirty-five years, there was once the Kimball School of Theology, a pioneering
-
Wulapalooza
Written by Lilly Thies, Class of 2026 Wulapalooza, Willamette’s Earth, Art, and Music festival, was a hallmark of student life from its conception in 1998 to its last show twenty years later in 2018. In the first week of May, students, momentarily freed from studying for exams, would stream out onto Brown Field to bask
-
Leonard Jackson Powell
Written by Monte Remer, Class of 2026 At the age of fifteen, Leonard Jackson Powell left to work in the California gold mines. He parted with his family’s newly-tilled homestead outside of Portland, Oregon and his grieving father. The family had already traveled half a year from Missouri, trudging across “the then trackless desert”1 and