new acquisition THE REMNANTS OF UTOPIA

The Remnants of Utopia

The Aurora Colony was a 19th-century utopian community in Oregon. The Conservancy has obtained a site containing the remains of an 1867 hotel built by members of the community.

At the behest of William Keil, the Oregon and California Railroad Company built a stop next to the Aurora Colony Hotel.

The collaboration between a conservation-minded California investment firm, an Oregon archaeologist, and the Conservancy has resulted in the preservation of the Aurora Colony Hotel site. The town of Aurora, Oregon is one of the historical gems of the Pacific Northwest. Situated within a veritable agricultural Eden midway between Salem and Portland, Aurora boasts 20 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

There were a number of 19thcentury utopian communities, such as the Shaker and the Oneida, in the Eastern United States, but the Aurora Colony was the only utopian settlement on the West Coast. William Keil founded the Aurora Colony on the same principles—the members of Keil’s colony worked and lived together, and shared all property—that made his first community in Bethel, Missouri a success. With the Bethel community flourishing, Keil decided to start another. In 1853, Keil sent members of his Bethel Colony on the Oregon Trail with instructions to find a suitable home for a satellite community in the Oregon Territory. In 1856, Keil settled his colony in the Willamette Valley in northwest Oregon.

Unlike other Utopian leaders of the 19th century, Keil recognized the economic benefits of interacting with the outside world. For this reason he negotiated with the Oregon and California Railroad company to make Aurora a stopping point on the line. The colony’s members began construction of the spring • 2009

The Aurora Colony was known for its band, which often performed from the widows walk on the roof of the hotel.

hotel in 1864 and completed it three years later. The Aurora Colony Hotel was especially appealing to Portlandbound passengers. Lifting the spirits of weary travelers, the colony’s acclaimed band welcomed them with lively music played from the widows’ walk atop the hotel, and the colony’s women prepared delicious, authentic German fare for the hotel’s guests.

The Aurora Colony disbanded in 1881, and the hotel was purchased by a private owner, who made extensive improvements to it. After 1921 the building ceased to be a hotel, serving as a butcher shop, saloon, and pool hall. The building was demolished in 1934.

In 1993, Heritage Research Associates (HRA), a cultural resource management firm based in Eugene, began test excavations at the site in advance of a proposed construction project. During the testing, HRA determined the original locations of the hotel, a bricklined well, the privy, and the concrete foundations of a septic tank. HRA recovered artifacts and exposed cultural features in all of these locations. In 1995, HRA returned to the site to perform more extensive excavations. The excavations primarily sampled the portion of the hotel that dated to the post-Colony period (1881-1920s), finding much in the way of intact deposits.

“The Aurora Colony Hotel site retains significant archaeological potential,” according to Rick Minor, the senior archaeologist for HRA. “Much of this potential relates to the earlier, historically more important, Colony period. Further investigations have great potential to yield significant new information about the original Aurora Colony Hotel and the unique position of the Aurora Colony in Oregon history.”

In 2005, the Conservancy received a call from Mike Gilbert and Nancy Conger, the president and vice president of EMIC, a small California limited partnership that invests in commercial properties. They proposed to purchase historic sites and donate them to the Conservancy when economic conditions were favorable. “The premise is a desire to give back to conservation organizations and to preserve land that may in the future be inappropriately developed,” Conger said. EMIC subsequently purchased the site, and donated it to the Conservancy in December of 2008. The Conservancy is grateful for this generous donation. —Julie Clark