Basic HTML Version
24
TIMES FACT BOOK
November 22, 2012
Tualatin
City Council
By Saundra Sorenson
Pamplin Media Group
Tualatin has its share of triv-
ia, ephemera and fun facts —
the places, events and people
that have made this a colorful
community.
1
Tualatin has its very
own mastodon. It’s no
longer living, of course,
but at 14,000 years old,
the fossil looks good for its age.
Not every city has its own
prehistoric mascot, but 15,000
years ago, Tualatin was at the
crossroads of a massive flood
that started at Lake Missoula
and proved to be literally earth-
changing —which is to say, it
displaced minerals and en-
riched the soil in the Willa-
mette Valley, which is why Ore-
gon has its own respected wine
region.
But back to the mastodon,
which was excavated in 1962.
The process was a long time
coming: Pioneers in the Tuala-
tin region first discovered the
mastodon’s jaw bone in the late
1800s and sent it to the Smithso-
nian Institution for analysis. In
1942, Tualatin marshal Charles
Roberts found more what he
believed to be part of an ele-
phant skeleton, but which was,
in fact, the mastodon’s molar,
which Roberts used as a door-
stop for many years.
This stuck with his
neighbor John
George, who returned
to dig up the rest of
mastodon 15 years lat-
er when he was a geol-
ogy student at Port-
land State University.
The mastodon now
“lives” on display in
the Tualatin Public Li-
brary.
2
Tualatin’s mayor is one
of the longest-serving in
the state. Lou Ogden,
more familiarly known
as “Mayor Lou,” is wrapping up
his 20th year on City Council
and has spent 18 of those as
mayor. Though he’s run largely
unopposed, he runs council
meetings with the straight-
shooting approach of a man
who’s never gotten too comfort-
able with politics-as-usual.
He claims he became mayor
almost by accident — “I did not
have an ax to grind, I did not
have an agenda or a complaint,”
Ogden says
— but when
previous
mayor Steve
Stolze left to
pursue a po-
sition on the
County Com-
mission, Og-
den ran be-
cause, as he
says, “some-
one had to do it.”
Like most mayors in the
state, Ogden’s is an unpaid posi-
tion. He owns his own insur-
ance business, Resource Strate-
gies Planning Group, and with
his wife, helps operate a farm in
Illinois. Somehow, you’ll still
‘Trivia, ephemera and
fun facts’ about Tualatin
The
14,000-year-
old mastodon
bones that
turned up in
1962 — if you
don’t count
the farm who
unearthed the
beast’s jaw
bone in the
late 1800s and
sent it to the
Smithsonian
Institution. It’s
on display
today in the
Tualatin Public
Library.
MAYOR LOU OGDEN
OGDEN
BEIKMAN
BROOKSBY
BUBENIK
GRIMES
TRUAX
Continued on Page 27