Lewis & Clark College: Oregon's “Cinderella College”

Abstract

After seventy-five years of tenuous financial security, insufficient facilities, and dwindling enrollment, in 1942, Albany College trustees took “a leap of faith into an uncertain future.” In what Jean Ward describes as a “kairotic moment,” the trustees purchased a new campus and renamed the school Lewis & Clark College. Ward documents the early history of Albany College through its transformation on the Fir Acres campus in Portland's southwest hills, when it was described by journalists as “Oregon's Cinderella College.” In 2018, Lewis & Clark College celebrates its 150th anniversary and seventy-fifth year on the Fir Acres campus. This “story of survival and renewal” is a fitting tribute to that anniversary, and it would not have been possible without the help of “loyal trustees, alumni, and other friends of the school.”