Douglas County County


Douglas County was named for U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln’s opponent in the presidential election of 1860 and an ardent congressional advocate for Oregon. Douglas County was created in 1852 from the portion of Umpqua County which lay east of the Coast Range summit. In 1862, Douglas County absorbed what remained of Umpqua County.

Mapped Location

Douglas County: The mapped location is an approximation and should not be used for navigation or wayfinding.

 

Information

General information on Douglas County

  • Feature Type: County
  • County Seat: City of Roseburg
  • Established: Wednesday, January 7, 1852

 

Official, historical, colloquial and alternative toponyms for Douglas County

A brief list of names that this geographic feature has been named

Name Description
Douglas County Official

 

Related Catalog Titles

A Bibliography for Douglas County, County

Umpqua the lost county of Oregon by Jerry Winterbotham

Authored by local historian Jerry Winterbotham, Umpqua: The Lost County of Oregon chronicles the short-lived history of a vast territorial district established in 1851 that eventually vanished from the map through political reorganization and county consolidation. The book details the struggles of early homesteaders, miners, and river merchants who attempted to build permanent communities along the rugged Umpqua River basin before the shifting political tides of the Oregon Territory absorbed their jurisdiction. Through legislative records and pioneer accounts, the text resurrects the forgotten administrative history of a frontier region swallowed by bureaucratic evolution. A keen insight drawn from the work is how county boundaries in the American West were ephemeral political constructs that often bore little relation to actual human geography; by tracing how a once-proud political entity was erased by administrative decree, the book reveals how early state-building frequently treated historic communities as mere ink on a map to be redrawn at the whim of distant territorial lawmakers.

iv, 156 pages : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm

CIRC [ 1 ]

 


Land of the Umpqua a history of Douglas County, Oregon by Stephen Dow Beckham

285 pages : illustrations ; 29 cm

CIRC [ 1 ]

 


Umpqua Valley, Oregon, and its pioneers by Harold Avery Minter

290 pages illustrations, map (on lining papers), portraits 23 cm

CIRC [ 1 ]

 


 

Last updated: 2013-01-08