Down by the River, Part 1: What’s been built in Eugene’s River District so far?

This story is part of KLCC's "Down by the River" series. To read the entire series, click here .

Stand in Eugene’s new Riverfront District today, and it can be difficult to spot signs of its long past.

“We had quite an industrial area. In the middle was the mill race that began four miles that way at the river,” said Randy Gudeika, who goes by the moniker The Walking Historian, during a tour of the area. “They used water wheels to capture the power from the mill race, and that was how they powered the industrial area from the 1870s up until 1928 when they switched to regular electricity.”

Atkins Dame

That switch to electricity came with the building of a steam plant and then the headquarters of the Eugene Water & Electric Board. EWEB’s headquarters and operations yard would stand