Gilchrist, OR

Gilchrist is a Klamath County census-designated place on U.S. 97 between Bend and Klamath Falls, in the Deschutes National Forest near the Little Deschutes River. It was built in 1938 by the family-owned Gilchrist Timber Company as the last fully family-owned lumber company town in Oregon. The company needed a self-contained place for a mill far from an established service town, so it laid out homes, a school, shops, and worker facilities around the operation. The mill and log pond sat west of Highway 97; residences and commercial buildings sat east.

The original plan still gives Gilchrist its unusual shape. A central shopping complex once held a grocery, post office, barber, beauty parlor, bowling alley, library, and movie theater, with the 1939 school and teacher housing nearby. The mill employed as many as 300 people before the company sold the operation and timberlands in 1991; homes were sold to residents in 1997-98. Some industry remains, but the company-town frame is still visible in the parallel residential streets, shared buildings, and pine setting. Gilchrist is an Oregon place where a timber business once built an entire town, and the town still carries that blueprint.