Resting Place

About 10,000 years ago, Native Americans called "Kalapuya" began harvesting camas roots and berries and hunting game here, the place now called the "Willamette Valley." Their name for it was "Chemeka" which means "resting place."

Trappers arrived around 1800 and missionaries a few decades later. A new town was laid out in 1844 which the missionaries named "Salem", after the Hebrew word "shalom" which means "peace."

Beginning in 1843, pioneers from the east began the dangerous cross-country trek on the Oregon Trail to find this place which was said to be a new "Eden."

When you spend time here, you understand how "resting place" and "peace" and "Eden" came to be applied to this land. Today, the valley has far too many very busy people to fully deserve those old labels, but the fertile land still retains its beauty and its call.

See Sabbatical Crosses (and others). Order prints, etc.