Pacific University

The Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns used Pacific University's facilities for football training camps in the late 1950s to early 1960s. Most of the camps were held in conjunction with exhibition games in Portland. Anecdotal evidence from alumni suggests that the teams chose Pacific University for housing because it was located in a dry town that had limited access to urban distractions, yet was withing driving distance of games in Portland. This encouraged the players to stay focused on their training. The players were usually housed in Walter Hall, which was at the time the newest student dormitory, ate meals in the student cafeteria, and used the university's atheletic facilities.

An association of Presbyterian and Congregational ministers established Pacific University as first high school in Oregon's Willamette Valley (1849). First known as Tualatin Academy, it became Tualatin Academy and Pacific University when college courses were added to the curriculum (1854). Academy was later dropped (1914). Town of Forest Grove grew up around college.

May Day, a festival in honor of spring, was held annually on the Pacific University campus for over 50 years. It first began in 1914 with a full schedule of folk dances, singing, athletic and Greek letter society competitions, plays and luncheon at Herrick Hall along with a pageant where a different queen was crowned every year. Women participants would wear elaborate white dresses and form a court for the Queen, and would perform a dance around a maypole. 1966 was the final year of May Day on the Pacific campus and since has not been revived.

Pacific University, founded in 1849, began to advertise itself through promotional publications around the year 1900. Starting then, the University issued viewbooks once every several years, which could be mailed to prospective students. They featured images of campus and descriptions of student life and academics that would entice students to apply. After the 1960s, these viewbooks were issued regularly on a yearly basis. The University's publicity and marketing departments issued other promotional materials, including brochures for fundraising campaigns, booklets describing specialized programs on campus, fliers for events, calendars and blank stationery. These items show how Pacific University promoted itself to various groups over time, up through the present.

Various departments and individuals at Pacific University have collected newspaper clippings about the school since the 19th century. By the 1920s, clippings were being systematically collected and compiled into scrapbooks. Most of the scrapbooks were probably compiled by the Publicity Department or related departments of the University. By the 1940s, the University was subscribing to a clippings service, which supplied clippings about the University, accompanied by tickets stamped with the date and title of the newspaper where the articles appeared. These clippings were normally compiled into scrapbooks, but were sometimes left loose. This process of acquiring clippings from a commercial service and then creating scrapbooks appears to have continued from the 1940s through the early 1990s.

In the late 1990s, the Publicity Office began saving its press releases, and filing them with clippings of any articles that were published based upon them. They appear to have discontinued making scrapbooks at that time.

In addition to the scrapbooks and press release files, various individuals associated with Pacific University independently collected loose clippings. Several people who may have been involved in saving clippings include Irene Story and Rick Read, who were involved with the Old College Hall Museum. Female students in the Herrick Hall dormitory may also have collected some of the earliest clippings records, though the records are unclear.

Oregon's Pacific University is the oldest chartered university in the West. The Oregon Territorial Legislature granted its original charter as the Tualatin Academy on Sept. 26, 1849. The charter predates statehood by 10 years, and was the first formal act of the territorial government.

Pacific founders were also instrumental in the 1843 vote at Champoeg, which resulted in the formation of the Oregon Provisional Government, the first American government on the Pacific Coast.

The school traces its roots to a log cabin meeting house in Forest Grove where the Rev. Harvey Clark, a Congregationalist minister, and Tabitha Brown, a former teacher from Massachusetts, cared for and educated orphans of the Oregon Trail. The University issued the first baccalaureate degree in the region in 1863 to Harvey W. Scott, later the editor of The Oregonian . Pacific's Old College Hall, built in 1850, housed the original academy and is the oldest educational building in the West.

Today, Pacific is a comprehensive liberal arts and healthcare university with 3,200 graduate and undergraduate students attending classes at the original campus in Forest Grove, and campuses in Eugene, Hillsboro and Portland.

Source: Pacific University website