<br />13 <br /> <br />How We Got Here <br />Neighborhood planning took place between 2017 and 2023, but it builds on a legacy of community <br />organizing and planning, as well as the natural environment, built environment, and community features <br />that make the River Road and Santa Clara neighborhoods distinct. This section summarizes the path to <br />creating the Neighborhood Plan, beginning with the neighborhood’s history through to plan adoption. <br />Neighborhood History <br />The River Road and Santa Clara communities are oriented around River Road, which now runs on top of <br />an established indigenous peoples’ trail, moving north-south through these communities. In the <br />northernmost portion of Eugene’s UGB, the Santa Clara area encompasses about 2,400 acres and has <br />physical borders that include the Willamette River to the east, Randy Pape Beltline Road to the south, <br />and Northwest Expressway to the west. Just south of Santa Clara is the River Road community which <br />encompasses about 1,700 acres and is bordered by the Willamette River to the east, Beltline Road to the <br />north, Northwest Expressway and Railroad Yard to the west, and Thomason Lane to the south, adjoining <br />the Whiteaker Neighborhood. See Figure 1: River Road-Santa Clara Neighborhood Plan Map. <br />The areas known today as River Road and Santa Clara lie within the traditional homeland of the <br />Kalapuya people. From time immemorial, within the context of the Willamette Valley’s mosaic of <br />majestic landscapes and ecologies, the Kalapuya bands have accessed, the natural resources made <br />available by way of the walamɘt, or what is today known as the Willamette River and the Valley’s fertile, <br />nutrient-rich soils. <br /> <br />Given the available resources and the potential for agricultural land, the area was also attractive to non- <br />indigenous settlers. Beginning in 1840, these settlers arrived in the Oregon territory by way of the <br />Oregon Trail. Diseases, introduced to the Valley by settlers, decimated the indigenous populations. By <br />1850, more than 90 percent of the Native population had died in an onslaught of repeated epidemics. <br />Today, the Kalapuya people are modern Indigenous community members who continue to practice <br />reverence and traditional connection to the Willamette River and Valley. (Learn more about the <br />Kalapuyan people of Oregon at https://fiveoaksmuseum.org/exhibit/this-is-kalapuyan-land/.) <br /> <br />In the 1850s, this area was settled by scattered subsistence farm operations. Over time, commercial <br />agriculture became the preeminent land use especially with the construction of the Oregon and <br />California Railroad in 1871, which was associated with transporting agricultural products. <br />Though residential construction continuously increased throughout the early 1900s, the communities <br />remained predominantly agricultural in character until the post-World War II increases in Eugene’s <br />population spurred the siting and development of more subdivisions and homes within both <br />communities. The rapid increase in population correlated with an estimated 45 percent of the River <br />Road area’s residences being constructed between 1940 and 1959. The result was a continued decrease <br />in average farm size, declining agricultural production, and a checkerboard landscape of homes and <br />farmland. As urbanization accelerated during the late 1940s and 1950s, Santa Clara also experienced <br />increases in commercial development.