Baker City is a city in and the county seat of Baker County, Oregon, United States. Take a look below for 20 awesome and great facts about Baker City, Oregon, United States.
1. It was named after Edward D. Baker, the only U.S. Senator ever killed in military combat.
2. The population was 9,828 at the time of the 2010 census.
3. Platted in 1865, Baker City grew slowly in the beginning.
4. A post office was established on March 27, 1866, but Baker City was not incorporated until 1874.
5. Even so, it supplanted Auburn as the county seat in 1868.
6. The city and county were named in honor of U.S. Senator Edward D. Baker, the only sitting senator to be killed in a military engagement.
7. He died in 1861 while leading a charge of 1,700 Union Army soldiers up a ridge at Ball’s Bluff, Virginia, during the American Civil War.
8. The Oregon Short Line Railroad came to Baker City in 1884, prompting growth; by 1900 it was the largest city between Salt Lake City and Portland and a trading center for a broad region.
9. In 1910, Baker City residents voted to shorten the name of the city to simply Baker, the name change becoming official in 1911; Another vote in 1989 restored the name to Baker City.
10. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Baker was established on June 19, 1903, after which the Saint Francis de Sales Cathedral was built in Baker City.
11. In 1918, Baker was the subject of national interest when the 1918 solar eclipse took place and the U.S. Naval Observatory based its observations there.
12. The path of totality of the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 included Baker City as well.
13. One of its former councilors Adam Nilsson who also served for the Baker City Public Arts Commission was charged with criminal mischief for graffiti on August 1, 2017 while holding office.
14. The officer made connections through the tag “Provolotus” which has been found in graffiti complaints as well as on Nilsson’s Instagram profile.
15. The graffiti was on a Baker County owned property when Nilsson and his friend Ashley E. Schroder were cited.
16. On November 20, 2017 Nilsson pled guilty to one count of criminal mischief in the third degree and was sentenced to one year bench probation and was ordered to pay $150 in fines and perform fifty hours of community service.
17. Nilsson, who has pled guilty to spray painting graffiti at the Lime plant contends his constitutional rights were violated and has filed a $1.3 million lawsuit against Baker County and the county sheriff in August 2019. In this lawsuit, Nilsson wrote that he was negotiating with the artist, whose moniker is “Thrashbird” to obtain art as “public art” for Baker City.
18. Baker City hosts many annual festivals, including the Miners’ Jubilee on the third weekend of July, which celebrates the mining history of the area and the filming of the 1969 Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood musical comedy Paint Your Wagon in the city.
19. The Miners’ Jubilee was originally launched in 1934 as the Baker Mining Jubilee, but lapsed after 1941 because of World War II and a declining interest in mining. The event was revived by Richard and Marge Haynes in 1975. The couple organized the celebration for two years before handing it over to the Baker County Chamber of Commerce.
20. The National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, about 5 miles (8.0 km) east of the city, offers exhibits, theater performances, workshops, and other events and activities related to the Oregon Trail, the ruts of which pass through the center’s 500-acre (200 ha) site
