[1] It has been listed as a National Register of Historic Places since 2013, under the name Odd Fellows Rural Cemetery.

The earliest burials center around the Methodist missionary pioneer David Leslie.

After the end of the mission period, settlers poured into the Willamette Valley to take advantage of the land that was being granted due to the passage of the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, brought to Congress by early pioneer Samuel R. Thurston, Oregon's first delegate.

He was a leader in the movement to organize the provisional government of Oregon, and a lifelong trustee of the Methodists' Oregon Institute, which was charted as Willamette University by the Territorial legislature in 1854.

The Friends of the Pioneer Cemetery consists of a group of concerned citizens working together to raise awareness of the rich local history and to raise funds to supplement the limited public monies available to maintain this historic site.