Independence, OR

31 2 Bedroom Apartments for Rent with Washer-Dryers

A suburb of nearby Salem, Oregon, Independence is home to about 8,500 residents. It was founded by honest-to-goodness pioneers (you know, the ones you killed with dysentery on the _Oregon Trail _on your elementary school's Apple IIe). Elvin A. Thorp founded a town called Thorp's Town of Independence in 1845. Two years later, Henry Hill founded Henry Hill's Town of Independence. Someone wised up to this nomenclatural inefficiency and incorporated both areas as Independence. As late as the 1950s, Independence's economy was largely based on its position as a shipping port on the Willamette (that's Wi-LAM-it) River, a hub for both rail and boat for lumber and agricultural products. These days, Independence is a thriving community along with its neighbor and twin Monmouth. And since progress took a bit of a holiday from Independence, its great historic core was saved from modernity's bulldozer approach to city redevelopment in the 1950s and '60s. See more