Info on Beaverton

Welcome to Beaverton OR located in Washington County and just west of Portland. Pay attention as you read about Beaverton. Then take the quiz.

Beaverton is the 5^th largest city in Oregon and part of the “Silicone Forest” –the area’s high tech industry. This second largest suburb in the metro area is a great place to live, work and play. From Beaverton it’s a 1-2 hour drive to the awesome Oregon Coast, the beautiful Columbia River Gorge and year-round skiing on Mt. Hood. Take the Max Train or Tri-met buses into Downtown Portland and the airport.

Brief Facts
Schools
Public Transportation
Recreation
Housing
Business and Industry
History
The Quiz

Beaverton is the 3^rd largest school district in Oregon with about 35,000 students. Of its graduating high school students, 91% planned to attend college in 2005. The Beaverton School District  www.beavton.k12.or.us has 46 public schools.

Tri-Met buses and light rail (the Max Line) serve the Beaverton area. The Max line goes west to Hillsboro and east to Portland. It takes about an hour to get from Beaverton to the Portland Airport using Max.</p> <p>Beaverton is also the northern point of WES the west side commuter rail line to Tigard, Tualatin and Wilsonville. Maybe someday it will go south all the way to Salem.

The Tualatin Hills Parks & Recreation District has over 100 parks in Beaverton with 30 miles of hiking trails and 25 miles of bike paths. There are 3 recreation centers, 8 swim centers a regional nature park, a sports complex and a senior center.

Beaverton City Library is located in Old Town Beaverton across from the Beaverton City Park. The City Park gets lots of use. Get the freshest produce there at the farmers market open from May to October. And don’t miss the Flicks By The Fountain when a 30×50 foot inflatable movie screen is used to show movies on August evenings.

Beaverton is the entrance to Oregon Wine Country. There are also more than a dozen wineries in Washington County (2 are in Beaverton). Oregon is 9^th in the country in wine production.

Much of Beaverton’s single family homes were built during the building booms of the late 1970’s, the early 1990’s and 2000-2005. There is a wide variety of homes, town homes and condos—most with easy access to shopping, schools and public transportation. The 2000 Census found 32,500 housing units in Beaverton and 2.44 persons per housing unit.

It’s hard to talk about employment in Beaverton without mentioning high tech companies,  which account for more than 50% of Beaverton’s manufacturing jobs. Larger local employers include Intel, Tektronix & Nike. But there are over 4000 companies in Beaverton, and 6 out of 10 of them have fewer than 5 employees.

While we think high tech when we think of Beaverton, really the service industry and wholesale/retail trade account for more than half the types of industry in Beaverton.

ORIGINAL PEOPLE

Before the Westerners arrived, the native people were Atfalati. Somehow their name was mispronounced by western settlers as Tualatin—and so the river and river valley were named. The Atfalati village name was translated as “Place of the Beaver.” Over time the name was shortened to Beaver Dam and then to Beaverton.

FIRST WHITE SETTLERS

The first land claim was in 1847 in Beaverton. Lawrence Hall received 640 acres where he built a grist mill near present day Walker Rd. (A grist mill grinds grain into flour.) It was located near Walker Rd. Hicklin Denney built the first sawmill in Beaverton in 1849 because logging and wood products were the first industries.

THE PLANK ROAD

To me this is the coolest part of Beaverton’s history. In 1850 the Portland-Tualatin Valley Plank Road Company began it’s big project: a wood plank road extending from Portland to Hillsboro along what is now Canyon Rd. The plank road only got as far as Beaverton in 1860 before the project was abandoned. Now the MAX line from Hillsboro to Portland is in almost the same spot. How cool is that?

In 1893 the official City of Beaverton population was 400.

Beaverton was a farming area and rural neighbor to Portland until the 1960’s and 70’s when urban growth came to the area. From 1960-2000 most of Beaverton’s rural area was developed into single family and apartment homes, shopping areas and industry.