[6] Junction City was named by railroad magnate Ben Holladay, who decided that it would be where the rail line on the east side of the Willamette Valley would meet the rail line on the west side.

[5] Junction City later became the meeting point of the east and west branches of U.S. Route 99 (which divide in Portland).

In 1902, real estate developer A.C. Nielsen subdivided 1,600 acres of farmland near Junction City into small farms and advertised them in a Danish-language newspaper in Iowa.

In the early 1990s, Junction City voters considered two ballot initiatives aimed at restricting LGBT civil rights.

[9][10] The initiatives sought to ban the city government from enforcing civil rights protections based on sexual orientation and prohibited public money from being spent to “promote” homosexuality.

[10] From 2003 to 2005, a group of local farmers posed for nude calendars to raise money for the Junction City School District.

[15] According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.36 square miles (6.11 km2), all of it land.

[16] This region experiences warm (but not hot) and dry summers, with no average monthly temperatures above 71.6 °F (22 °C).

As of the census[20][better source needed] of 2010, there were 5,392 people, 2,184 households, and 1,394 families living in the city.

Lochmead Farms, a dairy headquartered in the city, was awarded the top dark chocolate ice cream and the second-best vanilla ice cream at the 2018 World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin.

[24] Lochmead Farms operates a chain of 44 Dari Mart convenience stores throughout the south Willamette Valley.

The Eugene Livestock Auction, the largest in western Oregon, is also located in Junction City.

"[5] The city was the home of Country Coach, a large luxury motorcoach manufacturer employing over 2,000 people.

[5] In March 2015, the Oregon State Hospital opened a Junction City campus with the capacity to serve up to 174 people with severe mental illness.