The public/city part of Southwest Blaine Street is near the
Linfield campus and can be reached via West Linfield Avenue. The
private/Linfield part, on the college’s campus, intersects with West Linfield
Avenue.
Apparently the City of McMinnville ceded part of Blaine Street from
what was a completely city-owned street. Therefore, it’s a guess Blaine was
named by the city and not by the college.
Archivist at Linfield can find no connection between a person
named Blaine and the college.
There’s a Blaine Street in another Yamhill County city, Newberg.
There are two Blaine towns/entities in the state of Oregon, one
in Curry County and one in Tillamook County.
At one time there was a toll road between McMinnville and Blaine
of Tillamook County. Dr. E. E. Goucher of McMinnville was the “moving spirit in
the construction of the toll road.” There’s a street in McMinnville named for
Goucher.
It appears both the Curry County Blaine and the Tillamook County
Blaine were named for James G. Blaine, who was the Republican candidate for
President of the United States three times. One of those times was 1884 when he lost "by a whisker (only 60,000 votes)" to Grover Cleveland.
Blaine served as U.S. Secretary of State during the presidential
administrations of James Garfield and Benjamin Harrison.
"The Republican League Register, a Record of the Republican
Party in the State of Oregon, 1896" shows a James G. Blaine Club of
Portland.
According to the Portland Tribune, in the early 1960s,
Stewart Holbrook, an Oregon logger, author and popular historian established
the fictitious “James G. Blaine Society.” Goal of the society was to discourage
people from moving to Oregon. "It was named after James G. Blaine, a U.S.
Senator from Maine, who, during his 1884 campaign for U.S. president, visited
every state in the Union except Oregon."
Part of the public/city part of Blaine intersects with Southwest
Taft Street, perhaps named for William Howard Taft.
Taft, as U.S. president, visited Salem in 1909 and 1911,
according to the Willamette Heritage Center. He also visited Salem in 1920.
This was before he was appointed chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
There’s no record that while in Salem Taft made side trips and visited
McMinnville.
Do you know when/what year the City of McMinnville created
Blaine Street and for whom it is named? And, do you know when the city ceded part
of Blaine to the college?
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In May 2023, Wildcatville took the photo (below) of the SW Blaine Street & SW Aspen signs. They are a couple blocks behind Michelbook House (on SW Linfield Avenue), home of Linfield Admissions.
