It was a cold Saturday in late October, 1888, when M.K. McGown climbed up inside the bell tower in the Baptist College at McMinnville building and committed an act of vandalism. The building, only five years old at the time, would not come to be known as Pioneer Hall until decades later. Over those decades, and all the ones since, a few dozen resourceful students have found their way into the locked spaces of the cupola to carve or scrawl their names next to McGown’s on the unfinished walls and wooden beams. It’s a seldom-seen and little-appreciated piece of Linfield history I decided to explore for the pages of Linfield Magazine.
Timothy D. Sofranko
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