Oregon Nursery Company
 |
|
| Industry | Plant nursery |
|---|---|
| Fate | Bankrupt |
| Founded | 1867 |
| Defunct | 1927 |
| Headquarters | Orenco, Oregon, U.S.A. |
|
Key people
|
Malcolm McDonald; Archibald McGill |
| Products | Fruits, nuts, berries, and nursery stock |
|
Number of employees
|
150 |
The Oregon Nursery Company (also known as Orenco) was a nursery company founded and originally operated in Salem, Oregon, United States. The company later expanded to a site in Washington County, Oregon west of Portland. The entire operation was eventually moved to Washington County, where the company founded the town of Orenco. The company went bankrupt in 1927. Its legacy is the Orenco place name that is still widely used in the Hillsboro area.
The Capital City Nursery company was founded by 1867. It originally operated from a site in Salem just east of the Willamette University campus, along State Street. The company changed its name to the Oregon Nursery Company in 1896 to reflect its expanding business. By 1904, the company was one of the largest nursery companies in the country, shipping nursery stock throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It was well known enough that Luther Burbank chose the company to propagate his Maynard plum and introduce it into the market.
By the early 1890s the Oregon Nursery Company was being run by two Canadian Scots, Malcolm McDonald and Archibald McGill. In 1896, the partners decided to expand their operation into the Portland area. They purchased 640 acres (2.6 km2) of farm land in rural Washington County 17 miles (27 km) west of Portland, in what is now Hillsboro. When a fire destroyed the company’s packing plant in Salem in 1905, the entire business was moved to Washington County.
The first building to be built at the Washington County site was a 2-acre (8,100 m2) packing shed, the largest building of its kind in the country. Because of its size the building was the home of the Washington County Fair for many years. Over the next several years, McDonald and McGill purchased additional farm land adjacent to their nursery, expanding the company’s property to 1,200 acres (4.9 km2). Most of the land was quickly planted with fruit trees, nut trees, shade trees, berries, and other nursery stock. In 1909, the company built a new office next to the packing shed. That same year, the Oregon Electric Railway opened a line to the Oregon Nursery Company site, offering the opportunity to further expand the company’s business.
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