Stephen Coffin

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Stephen Coffin (1807–1882) was an investor, promoter, builder, and militia officer in mid-1800s Portland, Oregon. Born in Maine, he moved to Oregon City in 1847 and bought half of the original Portland townsite in 1849. He invested in projects such as the Tualatin Plank Road, the Oregon Iron Company, a sawmill in eastern Oregon, bridges, and other ventures. In 1856 he and Finice Caruthers started the Pioneer Water Works to bring drinking water to Portland, and he helped found the Oregon Republican Party. He was elected to the Portland city council in 1857. Coffin also invested in transportation, supporting the People’s Transportation Company on the upper Willamette River in the 1860s and the Oregon Central Railroad. In 1863, after providing a steamboat for troops in the Yakima War, Governor Addison Gibbs made him a brigadier general in the state militia. He donated land for Portland’s Methodist Episcopal Church to build a boys academy and a girls seminary, and in 1871 he gave land to the public, including seven park blocks and riverfront land at Jefferson Street for a public levee. He died March 16, 1882, in Dayton, Oregon. He was married to Lucina Coffin.