Welcome to Clackamas County ORGenWeb

 
 My name is Bob Jenkins and I am the Clackamas County Coordinator.

 We have many genealogical resources available here.

 We would appreciate any contributions you would like
 to make to this site.  
 

Clackamas County, Oregon

Clackamas County’s history begins with the Clackamas people, a Chinookan-speaking nation whose villages lined the Willamette River and its tributaries. Their economy centered on fishing, trade, and seasonal gathering, and their territory formed one of the most culturally influential Indigenous regions in the Pacific Northwest. Epidemics in the early 1800s devastated Native populations, but their presence remains foundational to the county’s story.

American and European settlement accelerated in the 1830s–1840s, when the lower Willamette Valley became a focal point for missionaries, fur traders, and early homesteaders. The area around Oregon City emerged as the political and commercial center of the region. In 1843, the Provisional Government of Oregon was organized here, making Oregon City the first incorporated city west of the Rockies and a hub for early land claims, probate records, and pioneer activity.

Clackamas County was officially established in 1843, one of Oregon’s original four counties. Its early communities grew along river routes, wagon roads, and fertile valley lands. Oregon City’s mills, powered by Willamette Falls, attracted workers, merchants, and families, while outlying areas developed around farming, logging, and small rural settlements.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the county expanded through timber operations, railroad development, and agricultural production. Towns such as Canby, Molalla, Estacada, Sandy, and Milwaukie grew around sawmills, hop yards, dairies, and transportation corridors. Rural schools, churches, granges, and post offices — many now vanished — generated the records genealogists depend on today.

Clackamas County remains a region where Indigenous heritage, pioneer migration, industrial growth, and long-standing farming communities intersect. Its early land claims, probate files, church registers, cemetery records, and local histories offer rich resources for tracing families who helped shape Oregon’s earliest political and cultural landscape.