This site reflects my work in exploring the landscape, culture, and people of the Eugene area. I started observing the area in the early 1970s when I moved here from Houston, Texas to pursue my studies in Art History at UO (MA, 1974) and where I lived on the western side of downtown Eugene for seven years and took many walks in the old neighborhood and newly installed urban mall in the center of downtown.
Later I started my career working in art museums in the West, serving as director of Amarillo (Texas) Art Center, Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and finally University of Oregon Museum of Art, now Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. After retiring from museum profession in 2007, I continued my interests in teaching in higher education and am now a Senior Instructor in Arts & Administration program at University of Oregon. Throughout my professional career, I was immersed in story-telling, either through organizing exhibitions, museum education programs, and teaching a variety of college-level classes. Learning about the arts and the natural world came most easily to me by looking at the history and meaning of their context.
When my family moved back to Eugene, we settled on a beautiful 17 acre spot on Owens Creek, part of the Long Tom River watershed, outside of Junction City. While living in Colorado and New Mexico, we also lived in a rural area with plenty of room to roam the land and watch the natural world. This new location for us provided a wealth of new opportunities to learn the stories of this area that make it so special.
So far four publications about this area have emerged from my experiences and research here. I depend heavily on the historic photographic record to help tell these stories, as well as original sources and my own observations recorded with photography and digital recordings. I share some of those finds with you on this site.
David Turner
eugeneareastories@gmail.com
Books now available:
Eugene, David Turner, Arcadia Publishing, 2012.
Along the Long Tom River, David Turner, Paw Print, 2017.
Neighbors, Friends & Family: Portrait of a Rural Community in Oregon, David Turner and 6 others, published for the P.U.L.L Club by Paw Print, 2020.
Fish Lake in the High Cascades: A Historic Legacy, David Turner and Rolf Anderson, published for the Friends of Fish Lake by Paw Print, 2022.
Eugene Area Stories 