Mission Mill Museum

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Mission Mill Museum

Weave through Oregon History. A few blocks east of downtown, Mission Mill Museum presents and preserves the contributions of early missionaries and industrialists—two important groups that gave Salem its start. Jason Lee's Methodist Mission began settling the Salem area in 1834, which was years earlier than the more popular Oregon Trail migration. Tour the big white Lee House and Parsonage and know you’re standing in the oldest remaining frame houses in the Pacific Northwest. Next, peek inside the cavernous red buildings of the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill. Founded in 1889, it’s the only woolen mill museum west of Missouri and one of the few water-powered turbines in the Pacific Northwest that still generates electricity from a millrace. You’ll be impressed by the original turn-of-the-19th-century machinery and working miniature display mill with pulleys, belts and an elevator. Although the mill closed in 1962, descendents of Thomas Kay still own and operate Oregon’s world-renowned Pendleton Woolen Mills.

Keywords: Historic Site, Interesting, Historic, Museum (History), Everyone, Easy to reach