Oregon State...
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Oregon Counties
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Jefferson County, Oregon
Jefferson County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education
County Seat:
Year Organized:
Square Miles:
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Court House: 75 SE "C" Street
Madras, OR 97741
Clerk: (541) 475-4451
Courts: (541) 475-3317
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Named: Madras, named after the city in India, was incorporated in 1911
and serves as the county seat.
State & County QuickFacts:
History
Jefferson County was created on
December 12, 1914, out of territory that was once part of Crook County. The
county was named after Mount Jefferson, the second highest peak in Oregon with
an elevation of 10,497 feet, which marks the county's western skyline. The
county is bounded on the north by Wasco County, on the east by Wheeler and Crook
Counties, on the south by Deschutes County, and on the west by Linn and Marion
Counties. The county encompasses 1791 square miles.
Madras, named after the city in India, was incorporated in 1911 and serves as
the county seat. A new county courthouse was built in 1961. County government is
administered by a three-member board of commissioners.
The county's population at its first federal census in 1920 was 3,211. The 2000
population of 19,009 represented a 39% increase from 1990.
Principle industries are agriculture, forest products, and recreation. The
fertile North Unit Irrigation District in the central part of the county
produces seed, potatoes, hay, and mint. The eastern part of the county has dry
wheat farming and grazing land for cattle, and the western part is timber
country. Warm Springs Forest Product Industries and Kah-Nee Ta Vacation Resort,
owned by the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, provide many
jobs in the area. The reservation is located on portions of land in four
counties including 236,082 acres in the northwestern corner of Jefferson County.
The county owes much of its agricultural prosperity to the arrival of the
railroad in 1911 and to the development of irrigation projects in the late
1930s. The railroad, linking Madras with the Columbia River, was completed after
constant feuds and battles between two lines working opposite sides of the
Deschutes River.
Neighboring Counties:
Cities:
County Resources:
Enter County Resources and Information Here
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County Resource Guide
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The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we’ve given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the “characteristic features of
our country!”
But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn’t the only reason to explore counties’ role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.
Today’s counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990’s political slogan “Think globally, act locally.” |
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Penn Foster High School
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