40 Fun Facts About Eugene, Oregon

Which 1978 comedy set at fictional Faber College was shot on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene?

Animal House got its campus because the university's president had once turned away The Graduate at Berkeley and regretted it. He even lent the crew his own office for the dean's scenes.

The University of Oregon's mascot is based on which Disney character, thanks to a handshake deal with Walt Disney?

Donald Duck kept his college job when studio lawyers queried the deal in the 1970s, because the university produced a photo of Walt Disney wearing a jacket with the mascot on it.

Which kitchen appliance did University of Oregon coach Bill Bowerman ruin while inventing a new running-shoe sole?

The waffle iron was his wife's, and he wrecked it by pouring in rubber around 1971. The tread it made earned an early model the name Moon Shoe, after the footprints astronauts left.

Which animated series is set in a town its creator says he named after Eugene's next-door neighbor in Oregon?

The Simpsons live in Springfield, and Matt Groening confirmed the Oregon link to Smithsonian magazine in 2012. He had already sent the city a plaque greeting it as the real one.

Which rock band played a 1972 benefit concert near Eugene to save the Springfield Creamery, a struggling local dairy?

The Grateful Dead played in a field at Veneta, and the show was filmed as Sunshine Daydream. The creamery survived and still makes Nancy's Yogurt.

Which fitness habit did a University of Oregon coach bring home from New Zealand and spread with a best-selling book?

Jogging was the title of the short guide Bill Bowerman co-wrote with a cardiologist in 1966, which sold over a million copies. He had watched New Zealanders of all ages run for fitness in a club.

Which musical act did John Belushi create after befriending singer Curtis Salgado while filming in Eugene in 1977?

The Blues Brothers dedicated their debut album, Briefcase Full of Blues, to Salgado, and Cab Calloway's character in the 1980 film is named Curtis after him.

Which footwear, woven from sagebrush bark about 10,000 years ago, is a star exhibit at a University of Oregon museum?

Sandals dug from Fort Rock Cave in 1938 are among the oldest shoes known anywhere. They lay under ash from Mount Mazama, the volcano whose eruption formed Crater Lake.

Eugene's hill-ringed valley records some of the highest counts in the United States of which seasonal allergen?

Grass pollen is so thick here that miler Jim Ryun, who was allergic to it, was flown in by helicopter for the 1,500 metres at the 1972 Olympic trials. He won the race.

Eugene's unofficial goodwill ambassador is a costumed queen, crowned each August, named for which garden creature?

Slug royalty began in 1983 as a send-up of pageant queens picked for beauty. The title is spelled as an acronym, for the Society for the Legitimization of the Ubiquitous Gastropod.

Which sportswear giant grew from a 1964 handshake between a University of Oregon track coach and his former miler?

Nike began as Blue Ribbon Sports, a distributor of Japanese running shoes. Phil Knight made most of the early sales from his car at track meets.

Which runner set American records at every distance from 2,000 to 10,000 metres before a fatal 1975 crash in Eugene?

Steve Prefontaine was 24, and the roadside outcrop where he died is now a memorial that fans still visit. Thousands filled Hayward Field for a service in his honor.

Which novelist, raised in Springfield beside Eugene, crossed America in 1964 with the Merry Pranksters in a school bus?

Ken Kesey was a champion wrestler at the University of Oregon, graduating in 1957, five years before One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest made his name.

Which north-flowing river, a tributary of the Columbia, runs through Eugene on its way to Salem and Portland?

The Willamette drains a valley that holds two-thirds of the state's people. Eugene's founder ran a ferry across the river in the settlement's first years.

In which sport did the University of Oregon's Tall Firs win that sport's first NCAA tournament in 1939?

Basketball's first NCAA tournament ended with Oregon beating Ohio State 46–33 in the final. The university did not reach another Final Four until 2017.

Eugene is the southern end of the Amtrak Cascades corridor, which runs north through Seattle to which Canadian city?

Vancouver, British Columbia, lies 460 miles up the line. Eugene's 1908 depot, restored in 2004, is also a stop for the Coast Starlight.

Which gemstone gives its name to both Eugene's minor league baseball team, founded in 1955, and a nickname for the city?

Emerald City and Emerald Valley are both nicknames for Eugene. The baseball club, known to fans as the Ems, moved in 2010 into PK Park, the University of Oregon's ballpark.

Tinker Hatfield, an architecture graduate and track athlete at the University of Oregon, designed which sneaker line?

Air Jordan models III through XV were his work, along with the first cross-training shoe. His college coach was Bill Bowerman, a tireless shoe tinkerer himself.

Which best-selling 2021 memoir by Michelle Zauner, singer of Japanese Breakfast, recalls her upbringing in Eugene?

Crying in H Mart grew from a New Yorker essay about shopping at a Korean grocery chain, and it spent more than a year on the New York Times best-seller list.

A Eugene summer festival co-founded in 1970 by German conductor Helmuth Rilling honors which Baroque composer?

Johann Sebastian Bach still anchors the festival, which began as informal classes at the University of Oregon. Its recording of Penderecki's Credo won a Grammy in 2001.

Which Honolulu-born quarterback became the University of Oregon's first Heisman Trophy winner in 2014?

Marcus Mariota was also the first Hawaii-born player to take the award. Weeks later he led Oregon past Florida State in a playoff semifinal before losing the title game to Ohio State.

Which NFL quarterback, the 2020 Offensive Rookie of the Year, was born in Eugene and played at Sheldon High and Oregon?

Justin Herbert co-founded the fishing club at Sheldon High and served as its president. His grandfather had taught biology at the same school.

Which Eugene-born guard won two NBA titles with the Boston Celtics after playing second base for the Toronto Blue Jays?

Danny Ainge starred in three sports at North Eugene High and was named a prep All-American in each. As an executive he later assembled the Celtics' 2008 title team.

Eugene-born golfer Casey Martin won a 2001 Supreme Court case giving him the right to use what on the PGA Tour?

A golf cart was what he needed because a circulatory disorder in his right leg made walking a course painful. The justices sided with him 7–2, and he later coached the University of Oregon's team.

Until 2020, the annual football game between the University of Oregon and its Corvallis rival went by which name?

Civil War had been the game's label since 1929, but both schools retired it amid the protests of 2020. First played in 1894, it is the most-played rivalry in the western United States.

Before taking its founder's first name, the settlement that became Eugene was known to settlers by which nickname?

Skinner's Mudhole was moved and renamed Eugene City in 1853, honoring Eugene Skinner, who had staked his claim here in 1846. The name was trimmed to Eugene in 1889.

Which Native people lived in the valley around present-day Eugene and knew the site of the future city as Chifin?

Kalapuya ancestors may have lived here for as long as 10,000 years. Most of their descendants are now enrolled in the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde.

Eugene's Wayne Morse was one of only two US senators to vote against which 1964 measure widening the Vietnam War?

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution vote cost him dearly: he kept speaking out against the war and lost his 1968 re-election bid to Bob Packwood, who attacked that stance.

In 2022 Eugene's Hayward Field became the first venue in the United States to host which global track and field event?

The World Championships had reached their eighteenth edition without ever being held on American soil. The home team marked the occasion with 33 medals, a record for a single edition.

Eugene's Saturday Market, launched in 1970, is the oldest weekly open-air market in the United States for which goods?

Crafts filled just 29 stalls when artist Lotte Streisinger opened the market in May 1970. It went on to inspire the larger Saturday Market in Portland.

Which Mexican-style fast-food chain did Ron Fraedrick found in 1960, starting beside the University of Oregon campus?

Taco Time served its first customers in January 1960, more than two years before Glen Bell opened the first Taco Bell in California.

Which software company behind Carmen Sandiego and Prince of Persia did Doug and Gary Carlston found in Eugene in 1980?

Broderbund was started to sell Galactic Empire, a strategy game Doug Carlston had written. Its made-up name blends Danish, Dutch, German and Swedish to hint at the family tie.

Which swing-revival album of 1997, a two-million seller, came from a ska band formed in Eugene in 1989?

Zoot Suit Riot gathered the swing numbers from the band's earlier, ska-heavy records onto one disc. Its title track became a radio hit at the peak of the revival.

Which small aquarium fish did University of Oregon biologist George Streisinger turn into a staple of genetics labs?

Zebrafish are now studied by thousands of researchers in dozens of countries, many of them trained in Eugene. His wife, Lotte, founded the city's Saturday Market.

Hendricks Park, the oldest city park in Eugene, is best known for a 12-acre garden devoted to which flowering shrubs?

Rhododendrons fill a garden inside the forested hilltop park, which the city created in 1906 after the Hendricks family donated 47 acres.

Lane County, which surrounds Eugene, has more of which historic structures than any county west of the Mississippi?

Covered bridges in the state mostly date from 1905 to 1925. Six stand near Cottage Grove, south of Eugene, which bills itself as the Covered Bridge Capital of the West.

In which event did Ashton Eaton set a world record at Eugene's Hayward Field during the 2012 US Olympic trials?

The decathlon mark of 9,039 points made Eaton only the second man ever to pass 9,000. Weeks later he won Olympic gold in London.

University of Oregon teams once used which nickname, said to be first applied to fishermen of the Revolutionary War?

Webfoots was affirmed by a student vote in 1932, beating suggestions such as Wolves and Yellow Jackets. The 1939 national champions still played under that name.

Which athletic conference did the University of Oregon join in 2024 after leaving the Pac-12 along with Washington?

The Big Ten reached from New Jersey to the Pacific once Oregon, Washington, UCLA and USC arrived, giving a league named for ten schools eighteen members that year.

Champ-a te, the Native name for Spencer Butte on Eugene's southern edge, refers to which creature?

Rattlesnake was the meaning of the butte's first name. One story holds that its English name recalls a Hudson's Bay Company man killed after he climbed the hill alone.