Not long ago on a visit to the Midwest, a relative asked me to describe Philomath, the place I’ve chosen to call home. In the moment, I did the best I could, but in hindsight, I missed a lot of the highlights.
So I’m going to give it another try, this time in words. I’ve always been better at writing than talking anyway. And I’ll just email this to my cousin.
Philomath is a small city in western Oregon, tucked between Corvallis and the Coast Range along Highway 20. Travelers heading to the coast have probably driven through without giving it much thought. I’d like to change that.
By the way, U.S. 20 is the longest highway in the country. It runs coast to coast for 3,365 miles, from Newport to Boston. One of these days, I plan to drive its entire length on a road trip with my sons.
The town’s name came from Philomath College, which the United Brethren Church opened in 1867, and the community grew up around it. The city was incorporated in 1882. Enrollment fell sharply in the years that followed, and the college closed in 1929. The old brick college building still stands on Main Street and today houses the Benton County Historical Society’s Philomath Museum.
In its early years, Philomath was a farming and ranching town. Local growers shipped crops and wool to warehouses in Corvallis and, eventually, to bigger markets beyond. By the early 1900s, loggers were working their way into the timberlands in the hills around town, and Philomath became a major logging and lumber center. After World War II, sawmills dotted the countryside, providing good-paying jobs in the woods and the mills. The industry took a hard hit in the early 1980s when mills closed, and Philomath gradually became home to more people who work elsewhere. But the timber heritage runs deep. You can see it in the giant-log “Welcome to Philomath” signs.
I could write a whole lot more about the town’s history from the formerly enslaved man who helped establish a cemetery to a successful lumberman who made remarkable contributions to the community.
Education has remained at the heart of the community. Philomath has long been known for its schools. The teachers and coaches here take pride in their students, and the community turns out to support them, whether it’s a state playoff game, a band concert or a graduation ceremony.
If you look west, you’ll see Marys Peak. At 4,097 feet, it’s the highest point in the Oregon Coast Range. On a good day, from the top you can see the Cascades to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Plenty of us have hiked it, driven it and photographed it more times than we can count.
We know how to throw a party, too. The Philomath Frolic and Rodeo has celebrated our Western and timber heritage for several years on the second full weekend of July. It features three days of Northwest Professional Rodeo Association-sanctioned rodeos, the popular Grand Parade on Saturday morning and entertaining post-rodeo dances with live music leading up to midnight. Several other popular events dot the calendar throughout the year with music, art, crafts, food and various fundraisers by local organizations in the spotlight. One of my favorites involves tasting chili, and you can’t go wrong with the farmers market.
Downtown has a new look, too. After years of planning, the Oregon Department of Transportation and the city completed the Downtown Safety and Streetscape Improvements Project in late 2024. The $18 million project rebuilt Main and Applegate streets between Seventh and 14th. It added wider sidewalks, new lighting, benches, landscaping, public art, a two-way bike lane and curb extensions that make it safer to cross the street. It took patience from everyone, especially our downtown businesses.
But the thing I’d most want you to know about Philomath is its people. This is a town where folks still wave, where volunteers show up when something needs doing and where neighbors look out for one another. I’ve been writing about this community for years, and it never runs short of good stories.
The dictionary says Philomath means “lover of learning.” But ask the people who live here and you’ll get a different answer from each of them. For some, it’s the town where their grandparents worked in the mills. For others, it’s where they found a good school for their kids, a Friday night under the lights or a quiet street to settle down on. For me, it’s the place I chose to call home. So if you ever make it out to Oregon, stop in and I’ll show you around. Maybe you’ll come up with your own definition.
2. Rolling along
Dax and I go back a long way.
Earlier this month, longtime mid-valley journalist Hasso Hering, who spent many years at the Albany Democrat-Herald and now writes at hh-today.com, had his own encounter with Philomath’s well-known robot. In an Oct. 12 column, Hering wrote that he stopped by the Albany Bottle Drop just after 7 on a Monday night to return two bags of empty soda bottles. He found a Dax security robot on duty.
The robot didn’t make a sound, Hering wrote. Its lights came on, it turned its head toward him and it kept a respectful distance. As he left, he told the robot he’d see it around, then caught himself: “Imagine that. Talking to a machine.”
Reading that took me back to the first time I wrote about Dax, more than nine years ago. At an August 2017 Philomath City Council meeting, local entrepreneur Joseph Sullivan of Nova Dynamics introduced councilors to a prototype he envisioned delivering groceries and other goods around town.
The delivery idea eventually gave way to other work. The company now goes by Daxbot, and its robots appear to have two main jobs.
One is security. Dax robots patrol commercial and industrial sites such as logistics yards, construction sites, shopping centers and office parks. They use a 360-degree camera array, a lightbar and voice warnings to deal with minor problems on their own. Operators at a command center review alerts in real time before anything is escalated. Daxbot says the patrols deter up to 90% of break-ins. Closer to home, the robots have been patrolling Salem Center mall in addition to the Albany Bottle Drop.
Another job is measuring sidewalks. Cities and universities hire Daxbot to send robots along sidewalks, curb ramps, crosswalks and transit stops. The robots use lasers, high-accuracy GPS and an inclinometer to collect data on cracks, uplifts and slopes. Communities use the results for Americans with Disabilities Act compliance plans and for deciding which repairs to make first. Dax has worked in cities across the country.
The latest example is South San Francisco, California, where Dax robots began rolling along city sidewalks earlier this week and will stay through the end of November. The city is using them for its ADA self-evaluation. In a news release, South San Francisco said the robot can measure up to 8 miles of sidewalk in a day, compared with about 2 miles for a two-person crew doing it by hand.
It’s fun to see how far the little robot that I first met at a council meeting has come.
3. Late night
Each year when Halloween rolls around and we get ready to take our kids out for treats, my thoughts always seem to drift back to a trick-or-treating outing from when I was 7 or 8 years old. The memories have faded quite a bit over the past 50-plus years — this was probably 1973 or 1974 — but a few details have stuck with me.
For whatever reason, my mother didn’t take me out that year. I don’t recall why. Maybe she had to work — she had a job at a country club out at the golf course and it’s possible there was a Halloween party going on. So the responsibility fell to my big brother, who was eight years older than me and 15 or 16 at the time.
As I remember it, we got a late start. I couldn’t tell you exactly what time we headed out, but I’m guessing it was 8 or 9 p.m., maybe even later. Our routine went like this — I’d walk up to each house by myself and call out “trick or treat” while my brother hung back, hidden around the corner or standing on the sidewalk in the darkness.
As we went from house to house, I started to sense that people weren’t exactly thrilled to hear a knock on the door at that hour. I also noticed there weren’t many other kids out collecting candy.
But here’s the part I remember best. At some of the houses, the person who answered the door would tell me to take as much candy as I wanted. Looking back, it was an obvious attempt to get rid of the leftovers. A few people didn’t even bother with that. They simply dumped the entire bowl into my bucket.
Not a bad haul for a kid who showed up late to the party.
Thinking about it now, I suspect my teenage brother wasn’t too excited about having to take his little brother trick-or-treating, and that might explain the late start. Or maybe he’d been out with his friends earlier in the evening and was just running behind. Either way, I came home with a whole lot of candy and a Halloween memory that has stayed with me ever since.
(Brad Fuqua is publisher/editor of the Philomath News. He can be reached at News@PhilomathNews.com).
