My Hometown: Corvallis, OR

Editor’s note: this is one in a series of "My Hometown" blog posts written by Zillow employees about the homes and towns where they grew up.

My hometown: Corvallis, OR
Purchase price in 1987: $77,000
Zestimate today: $277,551

When I was 7, my mom, dad, sister and I moved to Corvallis, Oregon, from Bloomington, Indiana, trekking across the country in our Plymouth Reliant station wagon.   I remember being excited to see our new house and to get my very own room after sharing one with my sister.  Corvallis was an adventure and I was ready! 

Corvallis wasn’t too different than Bloomington; both were college towns with a population of about 45,000. In Corvallis, Oregon State University and Hewlett-Packard continue to be the two main sources of employment, although we moved there for my dad’s job at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).   Our house, a 4-bedroom, 2-bath ranch-style home, was perfect for our family. The previous owners converted half of the two-car garage into a room that my dad used as his office and the yard offered plenty of space for my mom to garden and my sister and I to run around in.  We even had our own tetherball “court!” 

Corvallis, which means "heart of the valley," is located about 80 miles south of Portland and is situated at the junction of the Willamette and Marys rivers (Photo of Willamette river, courtesy Corvallis Chamber of Commerce).

Over the years, the city and area surrounding our home changed a great deal. The fields where we played tag gave way to housing developments and strip malls.  I remember that people always joked that we should ban Californians from moving to Corvallis, as they were able to afford much bigger, newer, seemingly massive houses, leaving the smaller, older homes on the market for long periods of time. 

I still enjoy returning to Corvallis and visiting the Saturday farmers’ market, a quintessential Corvallis establishment.  It is always a lively mix of cowboys and hippies, and the conversations tend to focus on the beautiful weather. This was the same as it was many years ago when I first visited and I have no doubts that it will be that way when I bring my kids there someday.