Sublimity Fire District History
Sublimity, Oregon is a rural residential community, located approximately 15 miles east of Salem. It is situated on the western low foothills of the Oregon Cascades, on a plateau, amid gently rolling hills with the ground dropping down on all its sides into grassy vales.
The earliest inhabitants of the area came a few thousand years ago, and some ethnologists think they may have been distant descendents of primitive Asiatic tribes who entered America by way of Alaska. Indians living in Oregon during the early periods wandered far up and down the country in search of game or fish. Those who lived more or less regularly in and about the Santiam countryside were mostly of the Calapooia Tribe. Those who lived nearest to Sublimity on the south were known as “Santiams,” whereas the Molallas often approached from the north, since the north-south Indian trail led through the Sublimity Country.
The area was vast forest before the 1840s, interspersed by the trails of the Calapooia, Santiam and Molalla Indian tribes. A large burn in the early 1800s cleared the land where Sublimity is now located. The beginnings of Sublimity were an outgrowth of some Indian Village or trading post. Government surveyors were among the first white men to look over the area. However, one Josef Brohn was noted as a white man encountered by the surveyors in the Sublimity area. Mr. Brohn lived in a small log cabin and had a patch of vegetables nearby. It is believed to have been located a half-mile west of town on what was known as the William Smith Place in 1875.