The city of Eugene is the county seat of Lane County, Oregon, United States. It is located at the south end of the Willamette Valley, at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about 60 miles (100 km) east of the Oregon Coast. Eugene is the third largest city (estimated population 148,595 as of 2006) and has the third largest metropolitan population in the state of Oregon. Eugene had long been the state's second largest city after Portland, but was overtaken by Salem in terms of population around 2004.

Eugene is home to the University of Oregon. The city is also noted for its natural beauty, activist political leanings, alternative lifestyles, recreation opportunities (especially bicycling, rafting, and kayaking), and arts focus. Eugene's motto is "The World's Greatest City of the Arts and Outdoors." It is also referred to as "The Emerald Empire," "The Emerald City," "The People's Republic of Eugene," and "Track Town, USA" or "The Track Capital of the World." The Nike corporation had its beginnings in Eugene.

History

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Eugene is named after its founder, Eugene Franklin Skinner. In 1846, Skinner erected the first cabin in the area. It was used as a trading post and was dubbed as a post office in 1850. At this time it was known as Skinner's Mudhole . Skinner founded Eugene in 1862 and later ran a ferry service across the Willamette River where the Ferry Street Bridge now stands.

Columbia College was founded around the same area as the University of Oregon, a few years earlier, but fell victim to two different major fires over four years, and it was decided not to rebuild it again. Even today, people commonly refer to a part of south Eugene as "College Hill," because it was the former location of Columbia College (there is no college there today).

The town raised the initial funding to start a public University, which later became the University of Oregon, with the hope of turning the small town into a cultural center of learning. In 1872, the Legislative Assembly passed a bill ratifying the University. The nearby town of Albany was Eugene's biggest competitor to provide a home for this institute. In 1873, community member J. H. D. Henderson donated the hilltop land for the campus, overlooking the city. The University first opened in 1876 with regents electing first faculty and naming John Wesley Johnson as president with the first students registering on 16 October, 1876. It would not be until 1877 that the first building would be completed; it would be later known as Deady Hall (for the first Board of Regents President and community leader Judge Matthew P. Deady.) The University of Oregon has been a leader in diversity since its very beginning; its inaugural class included two Japanese students. However, today less than 400 of the approximate 16,000 undergrads are African-American.

Eugene is the home of Oregon's largest publicly owned electric utility, the Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB), which got its start in the first decade...