Witch Hazel, Oregon

Witch Hazel is a neighborhood of the city of Hillsboro in Washington County, Oregon, United States. Formerly an unincorporated community, and considered a separate populated place by the United States Geological Survey, it is on the Tualatin Valley Highway and the Southern Pacific railroad line a mile (1mi) west of Reedville.HistoryA small cemetery for the Stewart family dating to 1856 was discovered in Witch Hazel when the land was cleared for development. According to An Illustrated History of the State of Oregon by H. K. Hines, the Stewarts lived on "Hazelwitch farm" beginning in 1849. Former Portland mayor Van B. DeLashmutt had a farm there in the 1880s and supposedly named the place for one of his racehorses, however. But according to racehorse authority Governor Oswald West, he had never heard of a racehorse named "Witch Hazel". Mayor DeLashmutt did once own a building at Southwest Front and Madison streets in Portland that he called the "Witch Hazel Building". Apparently he liked the name, although the witch-hazel plant, Hamamelis virginiana, is not native to Oregon.The Portland, Eugene and Eastern Railway had a station at Witch Hazel with the line later becoming part of the Southern Pacific.