Detroit, Oregon wants a name change

**Pcm** · October-25-10, 11:38 AM

Detroit, Oregon To Vote On Name Change

Chris Lehman | October 25, 2010 | Detroit, OR

Business leaders of a small town in Oregon are tired of their lakeside village being confused with the Motor City. Voters in Detroit, Oregon will decide in this election whether to change the name the town has held since 1891.
Detroit, Oregon is not a crumbling rust-belt city. And it has nothing to do with Motown Records. It's a resort community nestled on the shore of a lake in the Cascade foothills.
But hotel owner Doug DeGeorge thinks the name is a turn-off to some potential visitors.
Doug DeGeorge: "The name Detroit doesn't bring positive thoughts to anybody's mind."
So he convinced the City Council to put a measure on the ballot that would change the town's name to Detroit Lake.
He believes adding that word shifts the mental image. In fact, the lake that borders the town is called Detroit Lake and some highway signs already use the term.
Dean O'Donnell runs Mountain High Grocery in Detroit. He says there's support for the change in the business community. But....
Dean O'Donnell: "I believe the older residents are going to be totally against this."
However the election turns out, it's going to come down to just a few votes. There are only 122 registered voters in Detroit.
© 2010 OPB

http://news.opb.org/article/16568-de...e-name-change/

Interesting...

**Detroitnerd** · October-25-10, 11:40 AM

Oh, geez, who cares about these folks anyway.

**Hermod** · October-25-10, 11:49 AM

Well, East Detroit became Eastpointe.

Detroit, Oregon probably got its name the same way Rochester, Utica, and Troy, Michigan got their names, from settlers naming the new cities after where they came from.

**iheartthed** · October-25-10, 11:58 AM

That's pretty funny. Sounds like all the people who hail from the generic-sounding "Michigan".

DetroitPole · October-25-10, 12:00 PM

Originally Posted by Pcm

Detroit, Oregon To Vote On Name Change

Chris Lehman | October 25, 2010 | Detroit, OR

Business leaders of a small town in Oregon are tired of their lakeside village being confused with the Motor City. Voters in Detroit, Oregon will decide in this election whether to change the name the town has held since 1891.
Detroit, Oregon is not a crumbling rust-belt city. And it has nothing to do with Motown Records. It's a resort community nestled on the shore of a lake in the Cascade foothills.
But hotel owner Doug DeGeorge thinks the name is a turn-off to some potential visitors.
Doug DeGeorge: "The name Detroit doesn't bring positive thoughts to anybody's mind."
So he convinced the City Council to put a measure on the ballot that would change the town's name to Detroit Lake.
He believes adding that word shifts the mental image. In fact, the lake that borders the town is called Detroit Lake and some highway signs already use the term.
Dean O'Donnell runs Mountain High Grocery in Detroit. He says there's support for the change in the business community. But....
Dean O'Donnell: "I believe the older residents are going to be totally against this."
However the election turns out, it's going to come down to just a few votes. There are only 122 registered voters in Detroit.
© 2010 OPB

http://news.opb.org/article/16568-de...e-name-change/

Interesting...

Weird. Does anybody really confuse Detroit, Oregon with Detroit, MI? You'd have to be from overseas and have no knowledge of the US to confuse the two. East Detroit was a different story, being adjacent to Detroit.

I'm wondering if their tourist sector has been suffering from the recession and they're looking for a scapegoat/anything to boost it.

The city is also 96% white, and ZERO black people live there according to the census, so I'm also wondering if there isn't a touch of race in the discussion.

It seems like people would be more likely to get it confused with the actual lake if they called it Detroit Lake. Not like any city here is named Lake St. Clair.

Maybe they should just change their name to "Pointe". I thought Detroit should have done that when East Detroit changed its name. East Detroit isn't doing so hot nowadays despite their name change...and I don't think anyone is confusing it with Grossey Pointey.

**iheartthed** · October-25-10, 12:10 PM

Originally Posted by DetroitPole

Weird. Does anybody really confuse Detroit, Oregon with Detroit, MI? You'd have to be from overseas and have no knowledge of the US to confuse the two. East Detroit was a different story, being adjacent to Detroit.

I'm wondering if their tourist sector has been suffering from the recession and they're looking for a scapegoat/anything to boost it.

The city is also 96% white, and ZERO black people live there according to the census, so I'm also wondering if there isn't a touch of race in the discussion.

It seems like people would be more likely to get it confused with the actual lake if they called it Detroit Lake. Not like any city here is named Lake St. Clair.

Maybe they should just change their name to "Pointe". I thought Detroit should have done that when East Detroit changed its name. East Detroit isn't doing so hot nowadays despite their name change...and I don't think anyone is confusing it with Grossey Pointey.

Detroitpointe, haha...

My guess is that they are scapegoating their performance during the recession on being associated with their more famous name source. And it's completely ridiculous. Even the foreign theory doesn't really hold water because I doubt there are many[[any?) foreigners calling from Paris or Milan to reserve a suite at Motel 6 Detroit, Oregon.

Or maybe being called Detroit is mysteriously inflating their insurance rates. Actually, I could buy that...

**gnome** · October-25-10, 12:21 PM

this is no surprise that a small town would want to ditch their name; the question is why don't we change our name?

Woodward, Michigan sounds nice.

Our we could name ourselves like those subdivisions ... you know, deer run, phesant hollow, evergreen heights, cherry valley glenn ...

think of all the insurance companies who'd be caught off guard.

**gazhekwe** · October-25-10, 12:50 PM

I've been to Detroit, Oregon. I thought the full name was Detroit Lake, Oregon, since it is right on the shore of Detroit Lake. I remember the road signs do call it Detroit Lake. It's a really small town, in an area where there are mountains, woods, fruit orchards. Pretty place.

**BrushStart** · October-25-10, 01:02 PM

It's like they're trying to take the pig off the lipstick.

**Gistok** · October-25-10, 01:52 PM

I think they should call themselves Westpointe... but leave their school district and high school name alone!

**rb336** · October-25-10, 02:03 PM

detroit lakes is MN

**Hypestyles** · October-25-10, 02:22 PM

what did it take for "east detroit" to change to "Eastpointe"? were the Grosse Pointes always separate cities?

**Gistok** · October-25-10, 02:27 PM

Originally Posted by Hypestyles

what did it take for "east detroit" to change to "Eastpointe"? were the Grosse Pointes always separate cities?

1st Question.... The long term work of a very determined East Detroit retiree....

2nd Question.... Yes... in fact the Village of Grosse Pointe Shores city hall at Vernier and Lakeshore dates to 1915 and is an Albert Kahn design. So their independence goes back a long way.... although their names might not have been as they are today.... some were originally townships of different names.

**Ray1936** · October-25-10, 06:27 PM

I've been to Oregon. You can't even pump your own gas there. Screw 'em.

**gazhekwe** · October-25-10, 06:33 PM

It's Detroit LAKE, one lake. And the road signs do already say Detroit Lake. Our friends in Salem said it was Detroit, OR, but when we went there, all the signs say Detroit Lake, so we thought that was the real name of the place. It is really small.

**Patrick** · October-25-10, 07:24 PM

Doesn't Detroit really mean de troit or "the straights" in French?

**gazhekwe** · October-25-10, 07:53 PM

Yes, it does. The strait. FWIW, the pre-French name here was Wawayetoning, indicating a place where it [[the waterway) goes around. Although Detroit, OR is surrounded by water in a big curve, that once was the Santiam River, it is now a lake created by a dam. The town was named for Detroit, MI in the late 1890s because a lot of Michigeese had settled there, according to Wikipedia.

lilpup · October-25-10, 08:14 PM

So the Oregon-born jihadist has freaked them into changing their name so they don't get attacked?? Must have been someone from there who ticked him off

**rbdetsport** · October-25-10, 08:25 PM

^ lol. that is hilarious.

**English** · October-25-10, 08:28 PM

One day, Detroit is going to be a really cool city again. Then all these little townships and hamlets are going to be sorry!

I'm only half kidding, too. Birmingham in England, Michigan, and Alabama have very different connotations, but they're all Birmingham. Imagine if people in Birmingham, Michigan [[arguably the only one of three with upper class connotations) decided that they didn't want to be associated with the other Birminghams and renamed themselves Paris, Milan, or London.

I've been to Toledo, Spain -- Toledo, Ohio is nothing like it.

The issue is that places need to develop their own identities apart from their names.

**Khartoum** · October-25-10, 08:55 PM

I left the interstate just to see Detroit, Maine because of its name.

**Patrick** · October-25-10, 09:22 PM

Detroit, OR sounds like a redneck Tea Party kinda place...am I wrong?

**agirlintheD** · October-25-10, 09:56 PM

I seem to remember that there are eight states that have a Detroit city [[I think I retained this bit of "useful" info from a trivia game)...Alabama, Illinois, Oregon, Texas, Kansas, Tennessee, Maine and of course our Detroit. They will just never be as famous as us!

**CLAUDE G** · October-25-10, 11:04 PM

I think its silly to change the name of the city. Why go through all the hassle to change it from "Detroit" to "Detroit Lake"

If they think they are too good to be associated with Detroit, then why don't they just come up with something origional that doesn't have Detroit in the name?

**blackmath** · October-26-10, 12:53 AM

Portland Oregon was almost called Boston but a group of settlers from Massachusetts lost a coin toss to a group of settlers from Maine, and the name Portland was chosen. True story.

We should change the city's name to Detroit Lake - just to screw with those Oregonians