Jefferson (1938-Now)

McMinnville is the county seat and largest city of Yamhill County, Oregon. According to Oregon Geographic Names, it was named by its founder, William T. Newby, an early immigrant on the Oregon Trail, for his home town of McMinnville, Tennessee. more...

As of January 2006, the city had a total population of 30,089.

History

McMinnville was incorporated as a town in 1876 and became a city in 1882. County residents voted to move the county seat of Yamhill County from Lafayette to McMinnville in 1886.

A tourist attraction located in McMinnville is the Evergreen Aviation Museum, which houses the Spruce Goose, the world's largest propeller-driven airplane, built by the famed aviator Howard Hughes. The museum, a large symmetrical building with a glass front, holds many airplanes used in America's wars during the twentieth century.

McMinnville is also known amongst UFO enthusiasts for photographs published on the front page of the June 9, 1950 edition of the city's newspaper, the News Register, reportedly of an unidentified flying object seen a month earlier. The Oregonian published the photographs the next day, and within a week they were published in LIFE magazine. The photographs were taken on a farm near McMinnville by a farming couple, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Trent. Mrs. Trent was the first to see the object - it resembled a classic "flying saucer" - and she pointed it out to her husband, who obtained a camera from their farmhouse and took two photos before the "saucer" flew away. A debate has raged for decades between UFO researchers, who claim that the photos are genuine and are among the best ever taken of a UFO, and UFO skeptics/debunkers, who claim that the photos are a hoax. Both sides in the debate have hired photographic experts numerous times to do a professional analysis of the photos, but so far neither side has offered convincing evidence to prove their case. The Trent's background was also thoroughly checked, and to date there has been no evidence brought forth implicating the Trents in a hoax. The whole sequence of events has led to a "UFO Festival" being held in McMinnville each year.

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