1846 - The first pioneers arrive in Brownsville: Alex Kirk, Hugh L. Brown and James Blakely.

1847 - Albany's first log cabin is built.

1849 - Albany's first frame house is built.

1850 - Creating the Hackleman addition, settler Abram Hackleman lays out 70 acres on the east side of Albany for future development; W.N. Griffith and Nancy Shaw are wed in Brownsville, the first marriage in Linn County.

1851 - The first settlers arrive in Sweet Home: William Clark and Samuel Powell; Albany's first flour mill is built; also, its first riverboat arrives.

1857 - The first church in Linn County is established.

1858 - The Monteith Store is built.

1861 - The worst flood in Linn County history puts waters 36 feet higher than normal.

1862 - Stagecoaches come to Albany: Portland to Albany costs $10, and the trip from Portland to Sacramento takes six days and five hours.

1863 - Jeremiah Driggs finds gold in Quartzville.

1864 - Willamette Valley/Cascade Mountain Road is formed.

1867 - Albany Collegiate Institute is constructed and opens for enrollment in the fall at Ninth and Broadalbin, where Central School is located today.

1871 - A bank opens in Albany at 431 First Ave. W., where the Masonic Temple is now; railroad arrives in Albany.

1878 - Telegraph arrives in Albany.

1881 - Railroad reaches Brownsville.

1884 - Albany's population includes 118 Chinese-Americans living in the area around First Avenue and Baker Street, which was known as "Chinytown."

1885 - The Albany Fire Department Hose Team begins serving the city; Albany's first opera house opens.

1888 - Urban Albany is electrified; bicycles appear in Albany as novelty rather than transportation; the Willamette River freezes solid; College Hall in Corvallis houses the General Museum (later known as the College Museum, then the Horner Museum). The collection is moved to the third floor of the Agricultural Hall by Dean Bexell in 1913.

1889 - The building that now houses the Corvallis Arts Center is built as a church.

1893 - Albany's first steel bridge is built over the Willamette River at the foot of Calapooia Street; a toll gate is built in Sweet Home as a stage stop on the road across the Cascades.

1894 - Albany's first telephone exchange is established with 36 phones installed. The first is in the rear of the Odd Fellow building on First Avenue and Ferry Street.

1899 - The Corvallis Public Library is started by nine women members of the Coffee Club, later the Corvallis Woman's Club. The first two books purchased are "Pilgrim's Progress" and "The World Almanac."

1900 - The Albany Brewing Company opens; Albany gets its first public transportation system: a steam trolley.

1902 - The first automobile in Oregon is built by W.E. Richards of Albany. It tops out at 12 miles per hour.

1905 - Albany's downtown meat market opens.

1907 - Downtown Albany is flooded; a public library opens in Albany.

1908 - Albany Southern Pacific Passenger and Freight Station is built.

1909 - Albany streetcars are electrified.

1914 - The Albany Carnegie Library opens.

1915 - Philadelphia's Liberty Bell visits Albany.

1923-24 - John B. Horner succeeds in getting large, private collections of anthropological, geological, zoological and historical artifacts, which he adds to the remnants of the Commerce Museum and assembles as a museum in the basement of the library. The College Museum opens in 1925.

1925 - The first building on the new campus for Albany College is completed at Queen Avenue and Broadway Street.

1926 - Auto dealers come to Albany.

1931 - The first train arrives in Sweet Home.

1932 - A new 5,200-square-foot Corvallis Public Library building, designed by renowned northwest architect Pietro Belluschi, is dedicated.

1933 - The Horner collection is moved to the OSU Women's Gymnasium, lower level; Horner dies. A letter is found in his typewriter - a proposal to Henry Ford requesting $1 million to create the finest museum on the Pacific Coast.

1934 - Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest man, visits Albany. Born in 1918, Wadlow died in 1940 of a foot infection. At the time, he was 8 feet, 11 inches tall. When he visited Albany as a teen, he was about 7-foot-10.

1939 - Albany's Pacific Boulevard overpass is built at the railroad depot, and the fill dirt required creates a pit that becomes Waverly Lake; Santiam Highway is completed; the original Swanson Park swimming pool is built in Albany.

1940 - Albany's World Championship Timber Carnival is held for the first time.

1951 - Albany holds its first Veterans Day parade; the Benton County Historical Society begins preserving historical artifacts, photographs and manuscripts.

1954 - Linus Pauling, OSU class of 1922, is awarded the Nobel Chemistry Prize.

1962 - Pauling receives the Nobel Peace Prize and becomes the only person in history to receive two unshared Nobel prizes; Typhoon Frieda triggers the Columbus Day storm, which causes $10 million in damage in Linn County alone.

1964 - The mid-valley experiences a 100-year flood.

1965 - A 17,000-square-foot addition is completed, enlarging the Corvallis Public Library to 22,200 square feet.

1967 - Former OSU English Department faculty member Bernard Malamud (1949-1961) wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel "The Fixer." The book's title comes from the name of a shop in downtown Corvallis.

1968 - The Black Student Union is organized and the Lonnie B. Harris Black Cultural Center opens. Other campus cultural centers follow in the years to come.

1980 - The Linn-Benton Loop bus service starts; the Monteith Historic District is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

1981 - After Philomath citizens prevent the demolition of the 1867 Philomath College building and place it on the National Register of Historic Places, the Benton County Historical Society opens the building to the public as a museum, research library and art gallery.

1984 - The Albany Regional Museum is founded; Albany's River Rhythms concert series starts.

1987 - Knute Buehler (OSU class of 1986, with a B.S. in microbiology and a minor in history) becomes OSU's first Rhodes scholar.

1989 - The Heritage Mall opens in Albany; an arson fire burns Albany's historic St. Mary's Catholic Church to the ground.

1990 - More expansion work begins on the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library.

1993 - Dr. Jane Lubchenco is selected to receive the McArthur fellowship, the first ever given to an OSU faculty member and only the second ever awarded to an Oregonian.

1995 - The Philomath Community Library, built by community volunteers, opens.

1996 - The mid-valley experiences its largest flood since 1964. Areas of North Albany and southwest Albany are evacuated.

1997 - A big November wind comes through Albany; planes at the airport take the brunt of it, and some are flipped upside down.

1998 - The Albany Municipal Airport Historic District is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

2005 - The Benton County Historical Society accepts the responsibility of preserving the Horner Collection, formerly owned by OSU. To house this vast collection and the society's accumulation of historical objects, it builds a 13,500-square-foot Collections Care Facility in 2007 on the Philomath campus for its growing collection of more than 100,000 objects.

2006 - The Pix Theater re-opens in downtown Albany; it had started operating in the late 1960s and closed in the early '80s; Phillip "Brad" Bird, who graduated from Corvallis High School in 1975, wins Oscars for best original screenplay and best animated feature for his 2005 animated film "The Incredibles," about a family of superheros.

2008 - Bird's animated film "Ratatouille," about a rat that dreams of being a chef, wins the Oscar for best animated feature film.

Compiled by Theresa Novak, Nancy Raskauskas and Amanda Robbins from sources including the city of Albany website, the East Linn Museum, the Linn County Historical Museum, the Albany Regional Museum and the Benton County Historical Museum.