Also sometimes written as Calapooia or Calapooya, the people maintained the valley and their main food sources by controlled burning.

[10] Elias Briggs along with William Stevens ran a ferry on the nearby Willamette River.

Another early arrival in the Springfield vicinity was Captain Felix Scott Sr., who settled between the McKenzie and Willamette rivers in 1847.

In May 1992 the municipality became the first in the United States to include anti-gay legislation in its city charter after a campaign by the Oregon Citizens Alliance.

[12] For years, the economy of Springfield hinged on the timber industry, with the largest employer being Weyerhaeuser Company.

Weyerhaeuser opened its Springfield complex in 1949, and after years of aggressive logging was forced to downsize as old growth lumber became less available.

The city used to be sponsor an annual Filbert Festival in early August as a general summer celebration, featuring music, food, and family fun; it was canceled in 2007 due to withdrawal of a key sponsor, and the future for the festival is uncertain.

The current mayor of Springfield is Sean VanGordon,[1] and the city manager is Nancy Newton.

[20][21] The Springfield police department is currently under investigation due to allegations of sexual misconduct made by a female former officer.

Unofficial neighborhood areas include: As of the census[30] of 2010, there were 59,403 people, 23,665 households, and 14,737 families residing in the city.

After some years of wandering (described in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe), Kesey bought a farm in nearby Pleasant Hill and remained a prominent local celebrity until his death in 2001.

[32][33] The seal and its creator, Russell Ziolkowski, were featured on The Tonight Show and On the Road with Charles Kuralt.

[35] The Springfield Renaissance Development Corporation spearheaded the six-year renovation project, completed for $3.1  million.

[42] The city took third in the voting to choose one of the sixteen possible Springfields in the U.S. to host the premiere of The Simpsons Movie.

He also confirmed that he intentionally left it a secret to allow people the enjoyment of assuming it was based on their own Springfield.