Housed in the original Brownsville Train Depot, the Linn County Museum has filled every nook and cranny with exhibits. Seemingly transported from the Old West, displays include a doctor's office, Indian artifacts and several historic modes of transport are represented.
   One of only four remaining Oregon Trail covered wagons, pictured here, is housed at the old depot building. Its historic past tells of a captured Confederate, William Drinkard, who was allowed freedom in Oregon as long as he never set foot in his home state of Missouri. His wife Martha had to take on all the arrangements to sell the Missouri farm and purchase horses and a wagon for their trip westward. The Drinkards arrived in Brownsville, Oregon in September of 1865.
   Spending a brief period of time in Brownsville, their covered wagon was eventually discovered in a machine shed in the 1950s by descendants of the Drinkards, passing it on to the Linn County Museum. This original covered wagon is the only authentic covered wagon featured in a public display.
   Brownsville, a small town in the Willamette Valley, was first established in the 1840s. And many of the buildings in the historic district date back to the 1850s. The Moyer House, completed in 1881, is a fine example Italianate Villa architecture. Administered by the Linn County Museum, the elegant home is decorated throughout with meticulous mill work and ornate plaster ceilings and panels. Here in western Oregon, Brownsville guests are rewarded with a small-town atmosphere, plenty of historic sites, cafes, antique stores, and Pioneer Park on the Calapooia River.

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