Now, I grew up on Bull Mountain in Tigard, Oregon and I had heard stories of farmers, ranchers and cattle which all made sense since I did a lot of horse riding up there when I was younger. (This was long before the housing boom) I promise in the late 70s and 80s there were hundreds of acres of farm land still on Bull Mountain and I rode ever inch of them!
So, yesterday, when I took my kids to my old stomping ground we found something new at a Elizabeth Price Park within all these housing developments. What we found was a little monument that told the story of Bull Mountain and how it really got its name. I actually thought this was pretty cool and I learned a lot.
It seems cattle aren’t native to the United States, but were needed for food and milk. So the first herd in the Pacific Northwest was at Fort Vancouver. But, they were being brought up from California through the Willamette Valley in 1837, a few years before Oregon was even a state.
Well, one of these herds was brought up on a barge on the Tualatin River which passes right by what is now known as Bull Mountain and the entire heard escaped. Now, I guess, it could have been called Cattle Mountain but the entire herd was rounded up except one very stubborn bull. This bull roamed Bull Mountain for many years, alone, grazing on the grass of the mountain and it became known as Bull Mountain after that.
I have to say this story was pretty cool to me and I wish I had known it as a kid, not that it would have changed a thing for me and all those days riding horses around, but it would have a least giving me an answer when I asked how it got its name.
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