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Eugene, Oregon

Eugene is a city in and the county seat of Lane County, Oregon, United States. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about 50 mi east of the Oregon Coast.

The second-most populous city in Oregon, Eugene had a population of 176,654 as of the 2020 United States census and it covers city area of 44.21 mi2. The Eugene-Springfield metropolitan statistical area is the second largest in Oregon after Portland. In 2022, Eugene's population was estimated to have reached 179,887.

Eugene is home to the University of Oregon, Bushnell University, and Lane Community College. The city is noted for its natural environment, recreational opportunities (especially bicycling, running/jogging, rafting, and kayaking), and focus on the arts, along with its history of civil unrest, riots, and green activism. Eugene's official slogan is "A Great City for the Arts and Outdoors". It is also referred to as the "Emerald City" and as "Track Town, USA". The Nike corporation had its beginnings in Eugene. In July 2022, the city hosted the 18th World Athletics Championship.

Indigenous presence
The first people to settle in the Eugene area were the Kalapuyans, also written Calapooia or Calapooya. They made "seasonal rounds," moving around the countryside to collect and preserve local foods, including acorns, the bulbs of the wapato and camas plants, and berries. They stored these foods in their permanent winter village. When crop activities waned, they returned to their winter villages and took up hunting, fishing, and trading. They were known as the Chifin Kalapuyans and called the Eugene area where they lived "Chifin", sometimes recorded as "Chafin" or "Chiffin". Other Kalapuyan tribes occupied villages that are also now within Eugene city limits. Pee-you or Mohawk Calapooians, Winefelly or Pleasant Hill Calapooians, and the Lungtum or Long Tom. They were close-neighbors to the Chifin, intermarried, and were political allies. Some authorities suggest the Brownsville Kalapuyans (Calapooia Kalapuyans) were related to the Pee-you. It is likely that since the Santiam had an alliance with the Brownsville Kalapuyans that the Santiam influence also went as far at Eugene.

According to archeological evidence, the ancestors of the Kalapuyans may have been in Eugene for as long as 10,000 years. In the 1800s their traditional way of life faced significant changes due to devastating epidemics and settlement, first by French fur traders and later by an overwhelming number of American settlers.

Settlement and impact
French fur traders had settled seasonally in the Willamette Valley by the beginning of the 19th century. Their settlements were concentrated in the "French Prairie" community in Northern Marion County but may have extended south to the Eugene area. Having already developed relationships with Native communities through intermarriage and trade, they negotiated for land from the Kalapuyans. By 1828 to 1830 they and their Native wives began year-round occupation of the land, raising crops and tending animals. In this process, the mixed race families began to impact Native access to land, food supply, and traditional materials for trade and religious practices.

In July 1830, "intermittent fever" struck the lower Columbia region and a year later, the Willamette Valley. Natives traced the arrival of the disease, then new to the Pacific Northwest, to the USS Owyhee, captained by John Dominis. "Intermittent fever" is thought by researchers now to be malaria. According to Robert T. Boyd, an anthropologist at Portland State University, the first three years of the epidemic, "probably constitute the single most important epidemiological event in the recorded history of what would eventually become the state of Oregon". In his book The Coming of the Spirit Pestilence Boyd reports there was a 92% population loss for the Kalapuyans between 1830 and 1841. This catastrophic event shattered the social fabric of Kalapuyan society and altered the demographic balance in the Valley. This balance was further altered over the next few years by the arrival of Anglo-American settlers, beginning in 1840 with 13 people and growing steadily each year until within 20 years more than 11,000 American settlers, including Eugene Skinner, had arrived.

As the demographic pressure from the settlers grew, the remaining Kalapuyans were forcibly removed to Indian reservations. Though some Natives avoided transfer into the reservation, most were moved to the Grand Ronde reservation in 1856. Strict racial segregation was enforced and mixed race people, known as Métis in French, had to make a choice between the reservation and Anglo-American society. Native Americans could not leave the reservation without traveling papers and white people could not enter the reservation. Eugene Franklin Skinner, after whom Eugene is named, arrived in the Willamette Valley in 1846 with 1,200 other settlers that year. Advised by the Kalapuyans to build on high ground to avoid flooding, he erected the first pioneer cabin on south or west slope of what the Kalapuyans called Ya-po-ah. The "isolated hill" is now known as Skinner's Butte. The cabin was used as a trading post and was registered as an official post office on January 8, 1850.

At this time the settlement was known by settlers as Skinner's Mudhole. It was relocated in 1853 and named Eugene City in 1853. Formally incorporated as a city in 1862, it was named simply Eugene in 1889. Skinner ran a ferry service across the Willamette River where the Ferry Street Bridge now stands.

Educational institutions
The first major educational institution in the area was Columbia College, founded a few years earlier than the University of Oregon. It fell victim to two major fires in four years, and after the second fire, the college decided not to rebuild again. The part of south Eugene known as College Hill was the former location of Columbia College. There is no college there today.

The town raised the initial funding to start a public university, which later became the University of Oregon, with the hope of turning the small town into a center of learning. In 1872, the Legislative Assembly passed a bill creating the University of Oregon as a state institution. Eugene bested the nearby town of Albany in the competition for the state university. In 1873, community member J.H.D. Henderson donated the hilltop land for the campus, overlooking the city. The university first opened in 1876 with the regents electing the first faculty and naming John Wesley Johnson as president. The first students registered on October 16, 1876. The first building was completed in 1877; it was named Deady Hall in honor of the first Board of Regents President and community leader Judge Matthew P. Deady.

Other universities in Eugene include Bushnell University and New Hope Christian College.

Twentieth century
Eugene grew rapidly throughout most of the twentieth century, with the exception being the early 1980s when a downturn in the timber industry caused high unemployment. By 1985, the industry had recovered and Eugene began to attract more high-tech industries, earning it the moniker the "Emerald Shire". In 2012, Eugene and the surrounding metro area was dubbed the Silicon shire.

The first Nike shoe was used in 1972 during the US Olympic trials held in Eugene.

Activism
The 1970s saw an increase in community activism. Local activists stopped a proposed freeway and lobbied for the construction of the Washington Jefferson Park beneath the Washington-Jefferson Street Bridge. Community Councils soon began to form as a result of these efforts. A notable impact of the turn to community-organized politics came with Eugene Local Measure 51, a ballot measure in 1978 that repealed a gay rights ordinance approved by the Eugene City Council in 1977 that prohibited discrimination by sexual orientation. Eugene is also home to Beyond Toxics, a nonprofit environmental justice organization founded in 2000.

One hotspot for protest activity since the 1990s has been the Whiteaker district, located in the northwest of downtown Eugene. The Whiteaker is primarily a working-class neighborhood that has become a cultural hub, center of community and activism and home to alternative artists. It saw an increase of activity in the 1990s after many young people drawn to Eugene's political climate relocated there. Animal rights groups have had a heavy presence in the Whiteaker, and several vegan restaurants are located there. According to David Samuels, the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front have had an underground presence in the neighborhood. The neighborhood is home to a number of communal apartment buildings, which are often organized by anarchist or environmentalist groups. Local activists have also produced independent films and started art galleries, community gardens, and independent media outlets. Copwatch, Food Not Bombs, and Critical Mass are also active in the neighborhood.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 43.74 sqmi, of which 43.72 sqmi is land and 0.02 sqmi is water. Eugene is at an elevation of 426 ft.

To the north of downtown is Skinner Butte. Northeast of the city are the Coburg Hills. Spencer Butte is a prominent landmark south of the city. Mount Pisgah is southeast of Eugene and includes the Mount Pisgah Arboretum and the Howard Buford Recreation Area, a Lane County Park. Eugene is surrounded by foothills and forests to the south, east, and west, while to the north the land levels out into the Willamette Valley and consists of mostly farmland.

The Willamette and McKenzie Rivers run through Eugene and its neighboring city, Springfield. Another important stream is Amazon Creek, whose headwaters are near Spencer Butte. The creek discharges into the Long Tom River north Fern Ridge Reservoir, maintained for winter flood control by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Eugene Yacht Club hosts a sailing school and sailing regattas at Fern Ridge during summer months.

Neighborhoods
Eugene has 23 neighborhood associations:

 * Active Bethel Citizens
 * Amazon Neighbors Association
 * Cal Young Neighborhood Association
 * Churchill Area Neighbors
 * Downtown Neighborhood Association
 * Fairmount Neighbors Association
 * Far West Neighborhood Association
 * Friendly Area Neighbors
 * Goodpasture Island Neighbors
 * Harlow
 * Industrial Corridor Community Organization
 * Jefferson Westside Neighbors
 * Laurel Hill Valley Citizens
 * Northeast Neighbors
 * River Road Community
 * Santa Clara Community (including Irving)
 * South University Neighborhood Association
 * Southeast Neighbors
 * Southwest Hills Neighborhood Association
 * Trainsong Neighbors
 * West Eugene Community
 * West University Neighbors
 * Whiteaker Community Council

The River Road and Santa Clara sections, which make up the northwestern part of the city, are within the urban growth boundary and generally perceived as part of Eugene, but are largely outside of the city limits.

Climate
Like the rest of the Willamette Valley, Eugene lies in the Marine West Coast climate zone, with Mediterranean characteristics. Under the Köppen climate classification scheme, Eugene has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csb). Temperatures can vary from cool to warm, with warm, dry summers and cool, wet winters. Spring and fall are also moist seasons, with light rain falling for long periods. The average rainfall is 40.83 in, with the wettest "rain year" being from July 1973 to June 1974 with 75.59 in and the driest from July 2000 to June 2001 with 20.40 in. Measurements taken by NOAA over the past four decades have indicated a significant decline in average annual precipitation. From 1981 to 2010 inclusive, the reported annual average precipitation was 46.1 in, but for the thirty-year period ending in 2020, the annual average had declined 5.27 in, to 40.83 in. The figures from the second half of that period, or 2006 - 2020 inclusive, pointed to a further decline of more than 4 in, down to an annual average of 36.58 in.

Winter snowfall does occur, but it is sporadic and rarely accumulates in large amounts: the normal seasonal amount is 4.9 in, but the median is zero. The record snowfall was 41.7 in of accumulation due to a pineapple express on January 25–29, 1969. Ice storms, like snowfall, are rare, but occur sporadically.

The hottest months are July and August, with a normal monthly mean temperature of 67.8 to 67.9 °F, with an average of 16 days per year reaching 90 F. The coolest month is December, with a mean temperature of 40.6 °F, and there are 52 mornings per year with a low at or below freezing, and 2 afternoons with highs not exceeding the freezing mark. The coldest daytime high of the year averages 32 F, reaching the freezing point.

Eugene's average annual temperature is 53.1 °F, and annual precipitation at 40.83 in. Eugene is slightly cooler on average than Portland. Despite being located about 100 mi south and at an only slightly higher elevation, Eugene has a more continental climate than Portland, less subject to the maritime air that blows inland from the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia River. Eugene's normal annual mean minimum is 41.9 °F, compared to 46.2 °F in Portland; in August, the gap in the normal mean minimum widens to 51.1 and 58.0 °F for Eugene and Portland, respectively. Eugene's warmest night annually averages a modest 62 F. Average winter temperatures (and summer high temperatures) are similar for the two cities.

Extreme temperatures range from -12 °F, recorded on December 8, 1972, to 111 °F on June 27, 2021; the record cold daily maximum is 19 °F, recorded on December 13, 1919, while, conversely, the record warm daily minimum is 71 °F on July 22, 2006.

Air quality and allergies
Eugene is downwind of Willamette Valley grass seed farms. The combination of summer grass pollen and the confining shape of the hills around Eugene make it "the area of the highest grass pollen counts in the USA (>1,500 pollen grains/m3 of air)." These high pollen counts have led to difficulties for some track athletes who compete in Eugene. In the Olympic trials in 1972, "Jim Ryun won the 1,500 after being flown in by helicopter because he was allergic to Eugene's grass seed pollen." Further, six-time Olympian Maria Mutola abandoned Eugene as a training area "in part to avoid allergies".

2010 census
According to the 2010 census, Eugene's population was 156,185. The population density was 3,572.2 people per square mile. There were 69,951 housing units at an average density of 1,600 per square mile. Those age 18 and over accounted for 81.8% of the total population.

The racial makeup of the city was 85.8% White, 4.0% Asian, 1.4% Black or African American, 1.0% Native American, 0.2% Pacific Islander, and 4.7% from other races.

Hispanics and Latinos of any race accounted for 7.8% of the total population. Of the non-Hispanics, 82% were White, 1.3% Black or African American, 0.8% Native American, 4% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 0.2% some other race alone, and 3.4% were of two or more races.

Females represented 51.1% of the total population, and males represented 48.9%. The median age in the city was 33.8 years.

2000 census
The census of 2000 showed there were 137,893 people, 58,110 households, and 31,321 families residing in the city of Eugene. The population density was 3,404.8 /mi2. There were 61,444 housing units at an average density of 1,516.4 /mi2. The racial makeup of the city was 88.15% White, down from 99.5% in 1950, 3.57% Asian, 1.25% Black or African American, 0.93% Native American, 0.21% Pacific Islander, 2.18% from other races, and 3.72% from two or more races. 4.96% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 58,110 households, of which 25.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.6% were married couples living together, 9.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 46.1% were non-families. 31.7% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.27 and the average family size was 2.87. In the city, the population was 20.3% under the age of 18, 17.3% from 18 to 24, 28.5% from 25 to 44, 21.8% from 45 to 64, and 12.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 33 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.0 males. The median income for a household in the city was $35,850, and the median income for a family was $48,527. Males had a median income of $35,549 versus $26,721 for females. The per capita income for the city was $21,315. About 8.7% of families and 17.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 14.8% of those under age 18 and 7.1% of those age 65 or over.

Economy
Eugene's largest employers are PeaceHealth Medical Group, the University of Oregon, and the Eugene School District. Eugene's largest industries are wood products manufacturing and recreational vehicle manufacturing.

Corporate headquarters for the employee-owned Bi-Mart corporation and family-owned supermarket Market of Choice remain in Eugene. Many multinational businesses were launched in Eugene. Some of the most famous include Nike, Taco Time, and Brøderbund Software.

The footwear repair product Shoe Goo is manufactured by Eclectic Products, based in Eugene.

Run Gum, an energy gum created for runners, also began its life in Eugene. Run Gum was created by track athlete Nick Symmonds and track and field coach Sam Lapray in 2014.

Burley Design LLC produces bicycle trailers and was founded in Eugene by Alan Scholz out of a Saturday Market business in 1978. Eugene is also the birthplace and home of Bike Friday bicycle manufacturer Green Gear Cycling.

Organically Grown Company, the largest distributor of organic fruits and vegetables in the northwest, started in Eugene in 1978 as a non-profit co-op for organic farmers. Notable local food processors, many of whom manufacture certified organic products, include Golden Temple (Yogi Tea), Merry Hempsters, Springfield Creamery (Nancy's Yogurt), and Mountain Rose Herbs.

Until July 2008, Hynix Semiconductor America had operated a large semiconductor plant in west Eugene. In late September 2009, Uni-Chem of South Korea announced its intention to purchase the Hynix site for solar cell manufacturing. However, this deal fell through and as of late 2012, is no longer planned. In 2015, semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom purchased the plant with plans to upgrade and reopen it. The company abandoned these plans and put it up for sale in November 2016.

Luckey's Club Cigar Store is one of the oldest bars in Oregon. Tad Luckey Sr. purchased it in 1911, making it one of the oldest businesses in Eugene. The "Club Cigar", as it was called in the late 19th century, was for many years a men-only salon. It survived both the Great Depression and Prohibition, partly because Eugene was a "dry town" before the end of Prohibition.

The city has over 25 breweries, offers a variety of dining options with a local focus; the city is surrounded by wineries. The most notable fungi here is the truffle; Eugene hosts the annual Oregon Truffle Festival in January.

In 2012, the Eugene metro region was dubbed the Silicon Shire for its growing tech industry.

Top employers
According to Eugene's 2017 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the city's top employers are:

Homelessness
Eugene has a growing problem with homelessness. The problem has been referenced in popular culture, including in the episode The 30% Iron Chef in Futurama. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the city experienced a controversy over its continuing policy of homeless removal, despite CDC guidelines to not engage in homeless removal.

Arts and culture
Eugene has a significant population of people in pursuit of alternative ideas and a large original hippie population. Beginning in the 1960s, the countercultural ideas and viewpoints espoused by area native Ken Kesey became established as the seminal elements of the vibrant social tapestry that continue to define Eugene. The Merry Prankster, as Kesey was known, has arguably left the most indelible imprint of any cultural icon in his hometown. He is best known as the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and as the male protagonist in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

In 2005, the city council unanimously approved a new slogan for the city: "World's Greatest City for the Arts & Outdoors". While Eugene has a vibrant arts community for a city its size, and is well situated near many outdoor opportunities, this slogan was frequently criticized by locals as embarrassing and ludicrous. In early 2010, the slogan was changed to "A Great City for the Arts & Outdoors."

Eugene's Saturday Market, open every Saturday from April through November, was founded in 1970 as the first "Saturday Market" in the United States. It is adjacent to the Lane County Farmer's Market in downtown Eugene. All vendors must create or grow all their own products. The market reappears as the "Holiday Market" between Thanksgiving and New Year's in the Lane County Events Center at the fairgrounds.

Community
Eugene is noted for its "community inventiveness." Many U.S. trends in community development originated in Eugene. The University of Oregon's participatory planning process, known as The Oregon Experiment, was the result of student protests in the early 1970s. The book of the same name is a major document in modern enlightenment thinking in planning and architectural circles. The process, still used by the university in modified form, was created by Christopher Alexander, whose works also directly inspired the creation of the Wiki. Some research for the book A Pattern Language, which inspired the Design Patterns movement and Extreme Programming, was done by Alexander in Eugene. Not coincidentally, those engineering movements also had origins here. Decades after its publication, A Pattern Language is still one of the best-selling books on urban design.

In the 1970s, Eugene was packed with cooperative and community projects. It still has small natural food stores in many neighborhoods, some of the oldest student cooperatives in the country, and alternative schools have been part of the school district since 1971. The old Grower's Market, downtown near the Amtrak depot, is the only food cooperative in the U.S. with no employees. It is possible to see Eugene's trend-setting non-profit tendencies in much newer projects, such as Square One Villages and the Center for Appropriate Transport. In 2006, an initiative began to create a tenant-run development process for downtown Eugene.

In the fall of 2003, neighbors noticed "an unassuming two-acre remnant orchard tucked into the Friendly Area Neighborhood" had been put up for sale by its owner, a resident of New York City. Learning a prospective buyer had plans to build several houses on the property, they formed a nonprofit organization called Madison Meadow in June 2004 in order to buy the property and "preserve it as undeveloped space in perpetuity." In 2007 their effort was named Third Best Community Effort by the Eugene Weekly, and by the end of 2008 they had raised enough money to purchase the property.

The City of Eugene has an active Neighborhood Program. Several neighborhoods are known for their green activism. Friendly Neighborhood has a highly popular neighborhood garden established on the right of way of a street never built. There are a number of community gardens on public property. Amazon Neighborhood has a former church turned into a community center. Whiteaker hosts a housing co-op that dates from the early 1970s that has re-purposed both their parking lots into food production and play space. An unusual eco-village with natural building techniques and large shared garden can be found in Jefferson Westside neighborhood. A several block area in the River Road Neighborhood is known as a permaculture hotspot with an increasing number of suburban homes trading grass for garden, installing rain water catchment systems, food producing landscapes and solar retrofits. Several sites have planted gardens by removing driveways. Citizen volunteers are working with the City of Eugene to restore a 65-tree filbert grove on public property. There are deepening social and economic networks in the neighborhood.

Annual cultural events

 * Asian Celebration, presented by the Asian Council of Eugene and Springfield, takes place in late July at Alton Baker Park. The festival was changed to an outdoor venue after the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
 * The KLCC Microbrew Festival is held in February at the Lane County Fairgrounds. It provides participants with an introduction to a large range of microbrewery and craft beers, which play an important role in Pacific Northwest culture and the economy.
 * Mount Pisgah Arboretum, which resides at the base of Mount Pisgah, holds a Wildflower Festival in May and a Mushroom Festival and Plant Sale in October.
 * Oregon Festival of American Music, or OFAM is held annually in the early summer.
 * The Oregon Bach Festival is a major international festival in July, hosted by the University of Oregon.
 * The nonprofit Oregon Country Fair takes place in July in nearby Veneta.
 * The Lane County Fair occurs in July at the Lane County Fairgrounds.
 * The Eugene/Springfield Pride Festival is held annually on the second Saturday in August from noon to 7:00 p.m. at Alton Baker Park. A part of Eugene LGBT culture since 1993, it provides a lighthearted and supportive social venue for the LGBT community, families, and friends.
 * Eugene Celebration is a three-day block party that usually takes place in the downtown area in August or September. The SLUG Queen coronation in August, a pageant with a campy spin, crowns a new SLUG Queen who "rains" over the Eugene Celebration Parade and is an unofficial ambassador of Eugene.

Museums
Eugene museums include the University of Oregon's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and Museum of Natural and Cultural History, the Oregon Air and Space Museum, Lane County History Museum, Maude Kerns Art Center, Shelton McMurphey Johnson House, and the Eugene Science Center.

Performing arts
Eugene is home to numerous cultural organizations, including the Eugene Symphony (whose previous music directors include Marin Alsop, Giancarlo Guerrero, and Miguel Harth-Bedoya); the Eugene Ballet, a professional full-time touring company; the Eugene Opera, the Eugene Concert Choir, the Bushnell University Community Choir, the Oregon Mozart Players, the Oregon Bach Festival, the Oregon Children's Choir, the Eugene-Springfield Youth Orchestras, Ballet Fantastique and Oregon Festival of American Music. Principal performing arts venues include the Hult Center for the Performing Arts, The John G. Shedd Institute for the Arts ("The Shedd"), the McDonald Theatre, and W.O.W. Hall.

The University of Oregon School of Music and Dance also attracts world class performers and teaching artists throughout the year, many of whom perform at Beall Concert Hall. The university campus also frequently hosts performances at Matthew Knight Arena and the Erb Memorial Union ballroom.

A number of live theater groups are based in Eugene, including Free Shakespeare in the Park, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, The Very Little Theatre, Actors Cabaret, LCC Theatre, Rose Children's Theatre, and University Theatre. Each has its own performance venue.

Music
Because of its status as a college town, Eugene has been home to many music genres, musicians and bands, ranging from electronic dance music such as dubstep and drum and bass to garage rock, hip hop, folk and heavy metal. Eugene also has growing reggae and street-performing bluegrass and jug band scenes. Multi-genre act the Cherry Poppin' Daddies became a prominent figure in Eugene's music scene and became the house band at Eugene's W.O.W. Hall. In the late 1990s, their contributions to the swing revival movement propelled them to national stardom. Rock band Floater originated in Eugene as did the Robert Cray blues band. Doom metal band YOB is among the leaders of the Eugene heavy music scene.

Eugene is home to "Classical Gas" Composer and two-time Grammy award winner Mason Williams who spent his years as a youth living between his parents in Oakridge, Oregon and Oklahoma. Mason Williams puts on a yearly Christmas show at the Hult center for performing arts with a full orchestra produced by author, audio engineer and University of Oregon professor Don Latarski.

Dick Hyman, noted jazz pianist and musical director for many of Woody Allen's films, designs and hosts the annual Now Hear This! jazz festival at the Oregon Festival of American Music (OFAM). OFAM and the Hult Center routinely draw major jazz talent for concerts.

Eugene is also home to a large Zimbabwean music community. Kutsinhira Cultural Arts Center, which is "dedicated to the music and people of Zimbabwe," is based in Eugene.

Visual arts
Eugene's visual arts community is supported by over 20 private art galleries and several organizations, including Maude Kerns Art Center, Lane Arts Council, DIVA (the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts) and the Eugene Glass School.

In 2015 installations from a group of Eugene-based artists known as Light At Play were showcased in several events around the world as part of the International Year of Light, including displays at the Smithsonian and the National Academy of Sciences.

Film
The Eugene area has been used as a filming location for several Hollywood films, most famously for 1978's National Lampoon's Animal House, which was also filmed in nearby Cottage Grove. John Belushi had the idea for the film The Blues Brothers during filming of Animal House when he happened to meet Curtis Salgado at what was then the Eugene Hotel.

Getting Straight, starring Elliott Gould and Candice Bergen, was filmed at Lane Community College in 1969. As the campus was still under construction at the time, the "occupation scenes" were easier to shoot.

The "Chicken Salad on Toast" scene in the 1970 Jack Nicholson movie Five Easy Pieces was filmed at the Denny's restaurant at the southern I-5 freeway interchange near Glenwood. Nicholson directed the 1971 film Drive, He Said in Eugene.

How to Beat the High Cost of Living, starring Jane Curtin, Jessica Lange and Susan St. James, was filmed in Eugene in the fall of 1979. Locations visible in the film include Valley River Center (which is a driving force in the plot), Skinner Butte and Ya-Po-Ah Terrace, the Willamette River and River Road Hardware.

Several track and field movies have used Eugene as a setting and/or a filming location. Personal Best, starring Mariel Hemingway, was filmed in Eugene in 1982. The film centered on a group of women who are trying to qualify for the Olympic track and field team. Two track and field movies about the life of Steve Prefontaine, Prefontaine and Without Limits, were released within a year of each other in 1997–1998. Kenny Moore, Eugene-trained Olympic runner and co-star in Prefontaine, co-wrote the screenplay for Without Limits. Prefontaine was filmed in Washington because the Without Limits production bought out Hayward Field for the summer to prevent its competition from shooting there. Kenny Moore also wrote a biography of Bill Bowerman, played in Without Limits by Donald Sutherland back in Eugene 20 years after he had appeared in Animal House. Moore had also had a role in Personal Best.

Stealing Time, a 2003 independent film, was partially filmed in Eugene. When the film premiered in June 2001 at the Seattle International Film Festival, it was titled Rennie's Landing after a popular bar near the University of Oregon campus. The title was changed for its DVD release. Zerophilia was filmed in Eugene in 2006.

The 2016 Tracktown was about a distance runner training for the Olympics in Eugene.

Religion
Religious institutions of higher learning in Eugene include Bushnell University and New Hope Christian College. Bushnell University (formerly Northwest Christian University), founded in 1895, has ties with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). New Hope Christian College (formerly Eugene Bible College) originated with the Bible Standard Conference in 1915, which joined with Open Bible Evangelistic Association to create Open Bible Standard Churches in 1932. Eugene Bible College was started from this movement by Fred Hornshuh in 1925.

There are two Eastern Orthodox Church parishes in Eugene: St John the Wonderworker Orthodox Christian Church in the Historic Whiteaker Neighborhood and Saint George Greek Orthodox Church.

There are six Roman Catholic parishes in Eugene as well: St. Mary Catholic Church, St. Jude Catholic Church, St. Mark Catholic Church, St. Peter Catholic Church, St. Paul Catholic Church, and St. Thomas More Catholic Church.

Eugene also has a Ukrainian Catholic Church named Nativity of the Mother of God.

There is a mainline Protestant contingency in the city as well—such as the largest of the Lutheran Churches, Central Lutheran near the U of O Campus and the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection.

The Eugene area has a sizeable LDS Church presence, with three stakes, consisting of 23 congregations (wards and branches). The Church of Jesus Christ announced plans in April 2020 to build a temple in Eugene.

The greater Eugene-Springfield area also has a Jehovah's Witnesses presence with five Kingdom Halls, several having multiple congregations in one Kingdom Hall.

The Reconstructionist Temple Beth Israel is Eugene's largest Jewish congregation. It was also, for many decades, Eugene's only synagogue, until Orthodox members broke away in 1992 and formed "Congregation Ahavas Torah".

Eugene has a community of some 140 Sikhs, who have established a Sikh temple.

The 340-member congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Eugene (UUCE) purchased the former Eugene Scottish Rite Temple in May 2010, renovated it, and began services there in September 2012.

Saraha Nyingma Buddhist Temple in Eugene opened in 2012 in the former site of the Unitarian Universalist Church.

The First Congregational Church, UCC is a large progressive Christian Church with a long history of justice focused ministries and a very active membership. Three years ago, the congregation coordinated with the Connections Program of the St Vincent DePaul organization to provide transitional homes for two unhoused families on the church's property. Through life - skills support and training and a more stable housing situation these families are then able to make their way into independent living.

Sports
Eugene markets itself as "Track Town USA". There are close links between the University of Oregon's successful track & field program, the Oregon Track Club, and Nike, Inc, who were founded by University of Oregon track athlete Phil Knight and his coach, Bill Bowerman.

Eugene's miles of running trails, through its unusually large park system, are among the most extensive in the U.S. Notable trails include Pre's Trail in Alton Baker Park, Rexius Trail, the Adidas Oregon Trail, and the Ridgeline Trail. There is also an extensive network of trails along the Willamette River that reaches into neighboring Springfield, as well as along Amazon Creek in the southern and western parts of town.

Jogging was introduced to the U.S. through Eugene, brought from New Zealand by Bill Bowerman, who wrote the best-selling book "Jogging", and coached the champion University of Oregon track and cross country teams. During Bowerman's tenure, his "Men of Oregon" won 24 individual NCAA titles, including titles in 15 out of the 19 events contested. During Bowerman's 24 years at Oregon, his track teams finished in the top ten at the NCAA championships 16 times, including four team titles (1962, '64, '65, '70), and two second-place trophies. His teams also posted a dual meet record of 114–20.

Bowerman also invented the waffle sole for running shoes in Eugene, and with Oregon alumnus Phil Knight founded shoe giant Nike. The city has dozens of running clubs. The climate is cool and temperate, good both for jogging and record-setting. Eugene is home to the University of Oregon's Hayward Field track, which hosts numerous collegiate and amateur track and field meets throughout the year, most notably the Prefontaine Classic. Hayward Field was host to the 2004 AAU Junior Olympic Games, the 1989 World Masters Athletics Championships, the track and field events of the 1998 World Masters Games, the 2006 Pacific-10 track and field championships, the 1971, 1975, 1986, 1993, 1999, 2001, 2009, and 2011 USA Track & Field Outdoor Championships and the 1972, 1976, 1980, 2008, 2012, and 2016 U.S. Olympic trials. Eugene is the host of the delayed 2021 World Athletics Championships. The city bid for the 2019 event but lost narrowly to Doha, Qatar.

Eugene's Oregon Ducks are part of the Pac-12 Conference (Pac-12). American football is especially popular, with intense rivalries between the Ducks and both the Oregon State University Beavers and the University of Washington Huskies. Autzen Stadium is home to Duck football, with a seating capacity of 54,000 but has had over 60,000 with standing room only. The basketball arena, McArthur Court, was built in 1926. The arena was replaced by the Matthew Knight Arena in late 2010.

The Nationwide Tour's golfing event Oregon Classic takes place at Shadow Hills Country Club, just north of Eugene. The event has been played every year since 1998, except in 2001 when it was slated to begin the day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The top 20 players from the Nationwide Tour are promoted to the PGA Tour for the following year.

Eugene is also home to the Eugene Emeralds, a short-season Class A minor-league baseball team. The "Ems" play their home games in PK Park, also the home of the University of Oregon baseball team. The Eugene Jr. Generals, a Tier III Junior "A" ice hockey team belonging to the Northern Pacific Hockey League (NPHL) consisting of 8 teams throughout Oregon and Washington, plays at the Lane County Ice Center. Lane United FC, a soccer club that participates in the Northwest Division of USL League Two, was founded in 2013 and plays its home games at Civic Park.

The following table lists some sports clubs in Eugene and their usual home venue:

Parks and recreation
Spencer Butte Park at the southern edge of town provides access to Spencer Butte, a dominant feature of Eugene's skyline. Hendricks Park, situated on a knoll to the east of downtown, is known for its rhododendron garden and nearby memorial to Steve Prefontaine, known as Pre's Rock, where the legendary University of Oregon runner was killed in an auto accident. Alton Baker Park, next to the Willamette River, contains Pre's Trail. Also next to the Willamette are Skinner Butte Park and the Owen Memorial Rose Garden, which contains more than 4,500 roses of over 400 varieties, as well as the 150-year-old Black Tartarian Cherry tree, an Oregon Heritage Tree.

The city of Eugene maintains an urban forest. The University of Oregon campus is an arboretum, with over 500 species of trees. The city operates and maintains scenic hiking trails that pass through and across the ridges of a cluster of hills in the southern portion of the city, on the fringe of residential neighborhoods. Some trails allow biking, and others are for hikers and runners only.

The nearest ski resort, Willamette Pass, is one hour from Eugene by car. On the way, along Oregon Route 58, are several reservoirs and lakes, the Oakridge mountain bike trails, hot springs, and waterfalls within Willamette National Forest. Eugene residents also frequent the Hoodoo and Mount Bachelor ski resorts. The Three Sisters Wilderness, the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, and Smith Rock are just a short drive away.

Government
In 1944, Eugene adopted a council–manager form of government, replacing the day-to-day management of city affairs by the part-time mayor and volunteer city council with a full-time professional city manager. The subsequent history of Eugene city government has largely been one of the dynamics—often contentious—between the city manager, the mayor and city council.

According to statute, all Eugene and Lane County elections are officially non-partisan, with a primary containing all candidates in May. If a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote in the primary, they win the election outright, otherwise the top two candidates face off in a November runoff. This allows candidates to win seats during the lower-turnout primary election.

The mayor of Eugene is Lucy Vinis, who has been in office since winning the popular vote in May 2016, and who was re-elected in May 2020. Recent mayors include Edwin Cone (1958–69), Les Anderson (1969–77) Gus Keller (1977–84), Brian Obie (1985–88), Jeff Miller (1989–92), Ruth Bascom (1993–96), Jim Torrey (1997–2004) and Kitty Piercy (2005-2017).

Eugene City Council
Mayor: Lucy Vinis
 * Ward 1 – Emily Semple
 * Ward 2 – Matt Keating
 * Ward 3 – Alan Zelenka
 * Ward 4 – Jennifer Yeh
 * Ward 5 – Mike Clark
 * Ward 6 – Greg Evans
 * Ward 7 – Lyndsey Leech
 * Ward 8 – Randy Groves

Public safety
The Eugene Police Department is the city's law enforcement and public safety agency. The Lane County Sheriff's Office also has its headquarters in Eugene.

The University of Oregon is served by the University of Oregon Police Department, and Eugene Police Department also has a police station in the West University District near campus. Lane Community College is served by the Lane Community College Public Safety Department. The Oregon State Police have a presence in the rural areas and highways around the Eugene metro area. The LTD downtown station, and the EmX lines are patrolled by LTD Transit Officers. Since 1989 the mental health crisis intervention non-governmental agency CAHOOTS has responded to Eugene's mental health 911 calls.

Eugene-Springfield Fire Department is the agency responsible for emergency medical services, fire suppression, HAZMAT operations and water/Confined spaces rescues in the combined Eugene-Springfield metropolitan area.

Eugene used to have an ordinance which prohibited car horn usage for non-driving purposes. After several residents were cited for this offense during the anti-Gulf War demonstrations in January 1991, the city was taken to court and in 1992 the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned the ordinance, finding it unconstitutionally vague. Eugene City Hall was abandoned in 2012 for reasons of structural integrity, energy efficiency, and obsolete size. Various offices of city government became tenants in eight other buildings.

Politics
Being the largest city by far in Lane County, Eugene's voters almost always decide the county's partisan tilt. While Eugene has historically been a counter-culture-heavy and left-leaning college town, the county's partisan leanings have intensified in recent decades, mirroring the general polarization of Oregon voters along urban (pro-Democratic) and rural (pro-Republican) lines.

Lane County voted for Bernie Sanders over eventual 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton by 60.6-38.1%, and Eugene offered Sanders an even larger share of its vote.

Tertiary education
Eugene is home to the University of Oregon. Other institutions of higher learning include Bushnell University, Lane Community College, New Hope Christian College, Gutenberg College, and Pacific University's Eugene campus.

All of Lane County is in the Lane Community College district.

Schools
The Eugene School District covers around 85% of the Eugene city limits. The remainder of Eugene's northwestern neighborhoods are in the Bethel School District.

The Eugene School District includes four full-service high schools (Churchill, North Eugene, Sheldon, and South Eugene) and many alternative education programs, such as international schools and charter schools. Foreign language immersion programs in the district are available in Spanish, French, Chinese, and Japanese.

The Bethel School District serves children in the Bethel neighborhood on the northwest edge of Eugene. The district is home to the traditional Willamette High School and the alternative Kalapuya High School. There are 11 schools in this district.

Eugene also has several private schools, including the Eugene Waldorf School, the Outdoor High School, Eugene Montessori, Far Horizon Montessori, Eugene Sudbury School, Wellsprings Friends School, Oak Hill School, and The Little French School.

Parochial schools in Eugene include Marist Catholic High School, O'Hara Catholic Elementary School, Eugene Christian School, and St. Paul Parish School.

Libraries
The largest library in Oregon is the University of Oregon's Knight Library, with collections totaling more than 3 million volumes and over 100,000 audio and video items. The Eugene Public Library moved into a new, larger building downtown in 2002. The four-story library is an increase from 38000 to 130000 sqft. There are also two branches of the Eugene Public Library, the Sheldon Branch Library in the neighborhood of Cal Young/Sheldon, and the Bethel Branch Library, in the neighborhood of Bethel. Eugene also has the Lane County Law Library.

Print
The largest newspaper serving the area is The Register-Guard, a daily newspaper with a circulation of about 70,000, published independently by the Baker family of Eugene until 2018, before being acquired by GateHouse Media, (now owned by Gannett Company). Other newspapers serving the area include the Eugene Weekly, the Emerald, the student-run independent newspaper at the University of Oregon, now published on Mondays and Thursdays;The Torch, the student-run newspaper at Lane Community College, the Ignite, the newspaper at New Hope Christian College and The Beacon Bolt, the student-run newspaper at Bushnell University. Eugene Magazine, Lifestyle Quarterly, Eugene Living, and Sustainable Home and Garden magazines also serve the area. Adelante Latino is a Spanish language newspaper in Eugene that serves all of Lane County.

Television
Local television stations include KMTR (NBC/The CW), KVAL (CBS), KLSR-TV (Fox), KEVU-CD, KEZI (ABC), KEPB (PBS), and KTVC (independent).
 * KEZI (channel 9) (ABC)
 * KVAL (channel 13) (CBS)
 * KMTR (channel 16) (NBC/The CW)
 * KEVU-CD (channel 23)
 * KEPB (channel 28) (PBS)
 * KLSR (channel 34) (Fox)
 * KTVC (channel 36) (independent)
 * KHWB-LD (channel 38) (TBN)

Radio
The local NPR affiliates are KOPB, and KLCC. Radio station KRVM-AM is an affiliate of Jefferson Public Radio, based at Southern Oregon University. The Pacifica Radio affiliate is the University of Oregon student-run radio station, KWVA. Additionally, the community supports two other radio stations: KWAX (classical) and KRVM-FM (alternative).

AM stations
 * KOAC 550 Corvallis – NPR News/Talk (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
 * KUGN 590 Eugene – NEWS/TALK (Cumulus)
 * KXOR 660 Junction City – Spanish Religious (Zion Media)
 * KKNX 840 Eugene – Classic Hits (Mielke Broadcasting)
 * KORE 1050 Springfield – FOX Sports Radio
 * KPNW 1120 Eugene – NEWS/TALK (Bicostal Media)
 * KRVM 1280 Eugene – NPR News/Talk (Eugene School District) (JPR affiliate)
 * KNND 1400 Cottage Grove – Classic Country (Reiten Communications Inc)
 * KEED 1450 Eugene – Classic Country (Mielke Broadcasting)
 * KOPB 1600 Eugene – NPR News/Talk (Oregon Public Broadcasting)

FM stations
 * KWVA 88.1 Eugene – Freeform (University of Oregon)
 * KPIJ 88.5 Junction City – Christian (Calvary Satellite Network) (Calvary Chapel)
 * KQFE 88.9 Springfield – Christian (Family Radio)
 * KLCC 89.7 Eugene – NPR News/Talk/Jazz (Lane Community College)
 * KWAX 91.1 Eugene – Classical (University of Oregon)
 * KRVM 91.9 Eugene – Adult Album Alternative (AAA) (Eugene School District)
 * KKNU 93.3 Springfield – Country (McKenzie River Broadcasting)
 * KMGE 94.5 Eugene – Adult Contemporary (McKenzie River Broadcasting)
 * KUJZ 95.3 Creswell – Sports (Cumulus)
 * KZEL 96.1 Eugene – Classic Rock (Cumulus)
 * KEPW-LP 97.3 Eugene - PeaceWorks Community Radio (Eugene PeaceWorks)
 * KEQB 97.7 Coburg - Regional Mexican (McKenzie River Broadcasting)
 * KODZ 99.1 Eugene – '90s/'00s Hits (Bicoastal Media)
 * KRKT 99.9 Albany – Country (Bicoastal Media)
 * KMME 100.5 Cottage Grove – Catholic Program (Catholic Radio Northwest)
 * KFLY 101.5 Corvallis - Country (Bicoastal Media)
 * KEHK 102.3 Brownsville – Hot Adult Contemporary (Cumulus)
 * KNRQ 103.7 Harrisburg – Alternative Rock (Cumulus)
 * KDUK 104.7 Florence – Top 40 (CHR) (Bicoastal Media)
 * KEUG 105.5 Veneta – Adult Hits (McKenzie River Broadcasting)
 * KLOO 106.3 Corvallis – Classic Rock (Bicoastal Media)
 * KLVU 107.1 Sweet Home – Contemporary Christian Music (K-LOVE) Educational Media Foundation
 * KHPE 107.9 Albany – Contemporary Christian Music (Extra Mile Media)

Bus

Lane Transit District (LTD), a public transportation agency formed in 1970, covers 240 sqmi of Lane County, including Creswell, Cottage Grove, Junction City, Veneta, and Blue River. Operating more than 90 buses during peak hours, LTD carries riders on 3.7 million trips every year. LTD also operates a bus rapid transit line that runs between Eugene and Springfield—Emerald Express (EmX)—much of which runs in its own lane, with stations providing for off-board fare payment. LTD's main terminus in Eugene is at the Eugene Station. LTD also offers paratransit.

Greyhound Lines provides service between Los Angeles and Portland on the I-5 corridor.

Cycling
Cycling is popular in Eugene and many people commute via bicycle. Summertime events and festivals frequently have valet bicycle parking corrals that are often filled to capacity by three hundred or more bikes. Many people commute to work by bicycle every month of the year. PeaceHealth Rides, a bike share system formerly operated by Uber subsidiary JUMP, and currently operated by non-profit Cascadia Mobility, offers 300 city-owned bicycles available to the public for a small fee. Bike trails take commuting and recreational bikers along the Willamette River past a scenic rose garden, along Amazon Creek, through the downtown, and through the University of Oregon campus. Eugene is close to many popular mountain bike trails, and Disciples of Dirt is the local mountain bike club that organizes group rides and promotes trail stewardship.

In 2009, the League of American Bicyclists cited Eugene as 1 of 10 "Gold-level" cities in the U.S. because of its "remarkable commitments to bicycling." In 2010, Bicycling magazine named Eugene the 5th most bike-friendly city in America. The U.S. Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey reported that Eugene had a bicycle commuting mode share of 7.3% in 2011, the fifth highest percentage nationwide among U.S. cities with 65,000 people or more, and 13 times higher than the national average of 0.56%.

Rail
The 1908 Amtrak depot downtown was restored in 2004; it is the southern terminus for two daily runs of the Amtrak Cascades, and a stop along the route in each direction for the daily Coast Starlight.

Air travel
Air travel is served by the Eugene Airport, also known as Mahlon Sweet Field, which is the fifth largest airport in the Northwest and second largest airport in Oregon. The Eugene Metro area also has numerous private airports. The Eugene Metro area also has several heliports, such as the Sacred Heart Medical Center Heliport and Mahlon Sweet Field Heliport, and many single helipads.

Highways
Highways traveling within and through Eugene include:
 * Interstate 5: Interstate 5 forms much of the eastern city limit, acting as an effective, though unofficial boundary between Eugene and Springfield. To the north, I-5 leads to the Willamette Valley and Portland. To the south, I-5 leads to Roseburg, Medford, and the southwestern portion of the state. In full, Interstate 5 continues north to the Canada–US border at Blaine, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia and extends south to the Mexico–US border at Tijuana and San Diego.
 * Officer Chris Kilcullen Memorial Highway: Oregon Route 126 is routed along the Eugene-Springfield Highway, a limited-access freeway. The Eugene portion of this highway begins at an interchange with Interstate 5 and ends 2 mi west at a freeway terminus. This portion of Oregon Route 126 is also signed Interstate 105, a spur route of Interstate 5. Oregon Route 126 continues west, a portion shared with Oregon Route 99, and continues west to Florence. Eastward, Oregon Route 126 crosses the Cascades and leads to central and eastern Oregon.
 * Randy Papé Beltline: Beltline is a limited-access freeway which runs along the northern and western edges of incorporated Eugene.
 * Delta Highway: The Delta Highway forms a connector of less than 2 mi between Interstate 105 and Beltline Highway.
 * Oregon Route 99: Oregon Route 99 forks off Interstate 5 south of Eugene, and forms a major surface artery in Eugene. It continues north into the Willamette valley, parallel to I-5. It is sometimes called the "scenic route" since it has a great view of the Coast Range and also stretches through many scenic farmlands of the Willamette Valley.

Utilities
Eugene is the home of Oregon's largest publicly owned water and power utility, the Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB). EWEB got its start in the first decade of the 20th century, after an epidemic of typhoid found in the groundwater supply. The City of Eugene condemned Eugene's private water utility and began treating river water (first the Willamette; later the McKenzie) for domestic use. EWEB got into the electric business when power was needed for the water pumps. Excess electricity generated by the EWEB's hydropower plants was used for street lighting.

Natural gas service is provided by NW Natural.

Wastewater treatment services are provided by the Metropolitan Wastewater Management Commission, a partnership between the Cities of Eugene and Springfield and Lane County.

Healthcare
Three hospitals serve the Eugene-Springfield area. Sacred Heart Medical Center University District is the only one within Eugene city limits. McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center and Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend are in Springfield. Oregon Medical Group, a primary care based multi-specialty group, operates several clinics in Eugene, as does PeaceHealth Medical Group. White Bird Clinic provides a broad range of health and human services, including low-cost clinics. The Volunteers in Medicine & Occupy Medical clinics provide free medical and mental care to low-income adults without health insurance.

Eugene is one of the few municipalities in the US that does not fluoridate its water supply.

In popular culture

 * The DC Vertigo comic book series iZombie is set in Eugene.
 * Eugene is mentioned in The Simpsons episode Margical History Tour and the Futurama episode The 30% Iron Chef.

Sister cities
Eugene has four sister cities:
 * 🇷🇺 Irkutsk, Russia (suspended in 2022)
 * 🇰🇷 Jinju, South Korea
 * 🇯🇵 Kakegawa, Japan
 * 🇳🇵 Kathmandu, Nepal

title: Eugene, Oregon


text:
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (née Moulton-Barrett; 6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861) was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime and frequently anthologised after her death. Her work received renewed attention following the feminist scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, and greater recognition of women writers in English.

Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Elizabeth Barrett wrote poetry from the age of eleven. Her mother's collection of her poems forms one of the largest extant collections of juvenilia by any English writer. At 15, she became ill, suffering intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life. Later in life, she also developed lung problems, possibly tuberculosis. She took laudanum for the pain from an early age, which is likely to have contributed to her frail health.

In the 1840s, Elizabeth was introduced to literary society through her distant cousin and patron John Kenyon. Her first adult collection of poems was published in 1838, and she wrote prolifically from 1841 to 1844, producing poetry, translation, and prose. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery, and her work helped influence reform in child labour legislation. Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate on the death of Wordsworth.

Elizabeth's volume Poems (1844) brought her great success, attracting the admiration of the writer Robert Browning. Their correspondence, courtship, and marriage were carried out in secret, for fear of her father's disapproval. Following the wedding, she was indeed disinherited by her father. In 1846, the couple moved to Italy, where she lived for the rest of her life. Elizabeth died in Florence in 1861. A collection of her later poems were published by her husband shortly after her death.

They had a son, known as "Pen" (Robert Barrett, 1849–1912). Pen devoted himself to painting until his eyesight began to fail later in life. He also built a large collection of manuscripts and memorabilia of his parents, but because he died intestate, it was sold by public auction to various bidders and then scattered upon his death. The Armstrong Browning Library has recovered some of his collection, and it now houses the world's largest collection of Browning memorabilia.

Elizabeth's work had a major influence on prominent writers of the day, including the American poets Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. She is remembered for such poems as "How Do I Love Thee?" (Sonnet 43, 1845) and Aurora Leigh (1856).

Family background
Some of Elizabeth Barrett's family had lived in Jamaica since 1655. Their wealth derived mainly from slave labour from their plantations in the Caribbean. Edward Barrett (1734–1798) was owner of 10000 acre in the estates of Cinnamon Hill, Cornwall, Cambridge, and Oxford in northern Jamaica. Elizabeth's maternal grandfather owned sugar plantations farmed by slaves they bought from Africa, mills, glassworks, and ships that traded between Jamaica and Newcastle in the United Kingdom.

The family wished to hand down their name, stipulating that Barrett always should be held as a surname. In some cases, inheritance was given on condition that the name was used by the beneficiary; the English gentry and "squirearchy" had long encouraged this sort of name changing. Given this strong tradition, Elizabeth used "Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett" on legal documents, and before she was married, she often signed herself "Elizabeth Barrett Barrett" or "EBB" (initials which she was able to keep after her wedding). Elizabeth's father chose to raise his family in England, and his business enterprises remained in Jamaica. Elizabeth's mother, Mary Graham Clarke, also owned plantations farmed by enslaved people in the British West Indies.

Early life
Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born on (it is supposed) 6 March 1806 in Coxhoe Hall, between the villages of Coxhoe and Kelloe in County Durham, England. Her parents were Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke. However, it has been suggested that, when she was christened on 9 March, she was already three or four months old, and that this was concealed because her parents had married only on 14 May 1805. Although she had already been baptised by a family friend in that first week of her life, she was baptised again, more publicly, on 10 February 1808 at Kelloe parish church, at the same time as her younger brother, Edward (known as Bro). He had been born in June 1807, only 15 months after Elizabeth's stated date of birth. A private christening might seem unlikely for a family of standing, and while Bro's birth was celebrated with a holiday on the family's Caribbean plantations, Elizabeth's was not.

Elizabeth was the eldest of 12 children (eight boys and four girls). Eleven lived to adulthood; one daughter died at the age of 3, when Elizabeth was 8. The children all had nicknames: Elizabeth was Ba. She rode her pony, went for family walks and picnics, socialised with other county families, and participated in home theatrical productions. Unlike her siblings, she immersed herself in books as often as she could get away from the social rituals of her family.

In 1809, the family moved to Hope End, a 500 acre estate near the Malvern Hills in Ledbury, Herefordshire. Her father converted the Georgian house into stables and built a mansion of opulent Turkish design, which his wife described as something from the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.

The interior's brass balustrades, mahogany doors inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and finely carved fireplaces were eventually complemented by lavish landscaping: ponds, grottos, kiosks, an ice house, a hothouse, and a subterranean passage from house to gardens. Her time at Hope End inspired her in later life to write Aurora Leigh (1856), her most ambitious work, which went through more than 20 editions by 1900, but none from 1905 to 1978.

She was educated at home and tutored by Daniel McSwiney with her oldest brother. She began writing verses at the age of four. During the Hope End period, she was an intensely studious, precocious child. She claimed that she was reading novels at age 6, having been entranced by Pope's translations of Homer at age 8, studying Greek at age 10, and writing her own Homeric epic The Battle of Marathon: A Poem at age 11.

In 1820, Mr Barrett privately published The Battle of Marathon, an epic-style poem, but all copies remained within the family. Her mother compiled the child's poetry into collections of "Poems by Elizabeth B. Barrett". Her father called her the "Poet Laureate of Hope End" and encouraged her work. The result is one of the larger collections of juvenilia of any English writer. Mary Russell Mitford described the young Elizabeth at this time as having "a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam."

At about this time, Elizabeth began to battle an illness, which the medical science of the time was unable to diagnose. All three sisters came down with the syndrome, but it lasted only with Elizabeth. She had intense head and spinal pain with loss of mobility. Various biographies link this to a riding accident at the time (she fell while trying to dismount a horse), but there is no evidence to support the link. Sent to recover at the Gloucester spa, she was treated – in the absence of symptoms supporting another diagnosis – for a spinal problem. This illness continued for the rest of her life, and it is believed to be unrelated to the lung disease which she developed in 1837.

She began to take opiates for the pain, laudanum (an opium concoction) followed by morphine, then commonly prescribed. She became dependent on them for much of her adulthood; the use from an early age may well have contributed to her frail health. Biographers such as Alethea Hayter have suggested this dependency have contributed to the wild vividness of her imagination and the poetry that it produced.

By 1821, she had read Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and she become a passionate supporter of Wollstonecraft's political ideas. The child's intellectual fascination with the classics and metaphysics was reflected in a religious intensity which she later described as "not the deep persuasion of the mild Christian but the wild visions of an enthusiast." The Barretts attended services at the nearest Dissenting chapel, and Edward was active in Bible and missionary societies.

Elizabeth's mother died in 1828, and she is buried at St Michael's Church, Ledbury, next to her daughter Mary. Sarah Graham-Clarke, Elizabeth's aunt, helped to care for the children, and she had clashes with Elizabeth's strong will. In 1831, Elizabeth's grandmother, Elizabeth Moulton, died. Following lawsuits and the abolition of slavery, Mr Barrett incurred great financial and investment losses that forced him to sell Hope End. Although the family was never poor, the place was seized and sold to satisfy creditors. Always secret in his financial dealings, he would not discuss his situation, and the family was haunted by the idea that they might have to move to Jamaica.

From 1833 to 1835, she was living with her family at Belle Vue in Sidmouth. The site has now been renamed Cedar Shade and redeveloped. A blue plaque at the entrance to the site attests to its previous existence. In 1838, some years after the sale of Hope End, the family settled at 50 Wimpole Street, Marylebone, London.

During 1837–1838, the poet was struck with illness again, with symptoms today suggesting tuberculous ulceration of the lungs. The same year, at her physician's insistence, she moved from London to Torquay on the Devonshire coast. Her former home now forms part of the Regina Hotel. Two tragedies then struck. In February 1840, her brother Samuel died of a fever in Jamaica, then her favourite brother Edward (Bro) was drowned in a sailing accident in Torquay in July. These events had a serious effect on her already fragile health. She felt guilty as her father had disapproved of Edward's trip to Torquay. She wrote to Mitford: "That was a very near escape from madness, absolute hopeless madness". The family returned to Wimpole Street in 1841.

Success
At Wimpole Street, Elizabeth spent most of her time in her upstairs room. Her health began to improve, but she saw few people other than her immediate family. One of those was John Kenyon, a wealthy friend and distant cousin of the family and patron of the arts. She received comfort from a spaniel named Flush, a gift from Mary Mitford. (Virginia Woolf later fictionalised the life of the dog, making him the protagonist of her 1933 novel Flush: A Biography).

From 1841 to 1844, Elizabeth was prolific in poetry, translation, and prose. The poem The Cry of the Children, published in 1842 in Blackwood's, condemned child labour and helped bring about child-labour reforms by raising support for Lord Shaftesbury's Ten Hours Bill (1844). About the same time, she contributed critical prose pieces to Richard Henry Horne's A New Spirit of the Age, including a laudatory essay on Thomas Carlyle.

In 1844, she published the two-volume Poems, which included "A Drama of Exile", "A Vision of Poets", and "Lady Geraldine's Courtship", and two substantial critical essays for 1842 issues of The Athenaeum. A self-proclaimed "adorer of Carlyle", she sent a copy to him as "a tribute of admiration & respect", which began a correspondence between them. "Since she was not burdened with any domestic duties expected of her sisters, Barrett Browning could now devote herself entirely to the life of the mind, cultivating an enormous correspondence, reading widely". Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate in 1850 on the death of Wordsworth.

A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque now commemorates Elizabeth at 50 Wimpole Street.

Robert Browning and Italy
Her 1844 volume Poems made her one of the more popular writers in the country and inspired Robert Browning to write to her. He wrote "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett," praising their "fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought."

Kenyon arranged for Browning to meet Elizabeth on 20 May 1845, in her rooms, and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature. Elizabeth had produced a large amount of work, but Browning had a great influence on her subsequent writing as did she on his: Two of Barrett's most famous pieces were written after she met Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora Leigh. Robert's Men and Women is also a product of that time.

Some critics state that her activity was, in some ways, in decay before she met Browning: "Until her relationship with Robert Browning began in 1845, Barrett's willingness to engage in public discourse about social issues and about aesthetic issues in poetry, which had been so strong in her youth, gradually diminished, as did her physical health. As an intellectual presence and a physical being, she was becoming a shadow of herself."

The courtship and marriage between Robert Browning and Elizabeth were made secretly as she knew her father would disapprove. After a private marriage at St Marylebone Parish Church, they honeymooned in Paris and then moved to Italy in September 1846, which became their home almost continuously until her death. Elizabeth's loyal lady's maid Elizabeth Wilson witnessed the marriage and accompanied the couple to Italy.

Mr Barrett disinherited Elizabeth as he did each of his children who married. Elizabeth had foreseen her father's anger but had not anticipated her brothers' rejection. As Elizabeth had some money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy. The Brownings were well respected and even famous. Elizabeth grew stronger, and in 1849, at the age of 43, between four miscarriages, she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. Their son later married, but had no legitimate children.

At her husband's insistence, Elizabeth's second edition of Poems included her love sonnets; as a result, her popularity increased (as did critical regard), and her artistic position was confirmed. During the years of her marriage, her literary reputation far surpassed that of her poet-husband; when visitors came to their home in Florence, she was invariably the greater attraction.

The couple came to know a wide circle of artists and writers, including William Makepeace Thackeray, sculptor Harriet Hosmer (who, she wrote, seemed to be the "perfectly emancipated female") and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In 1849, she met Margaret Fuller; Carlyle in 1851; French novelist George Sand in 1852, whom she had long admired. Among her intimate friends in Florence was the writer Isa Blagden, whom she encouraged to write novels. They met Alfred Tennyson in Paris, and John Forster, Samuel Rogers and the Carlyles in London, later befriending Charles Kingsley and John Ruskin.

Decline and death

After the death of an old friend, G. B. Hunter, and then of her father, Barrett Browning's health started to deteriorate. The Brownings moved from Florence to Siena, residing at the Villa Alberti. Engrossed in Italian politics, she issued a small volume of political poems titled Poems before Congress (1860) "most of which were written to express her sympathy with the Italian cause after the outbreak of fighting in 1859". They caused a furore in Britain, and the conservative magazines Blackwood's and the Saturday Review labelled her a fanatic. She dedicated this book to her husband. Her last work was A Musical Instrument, published posthumously.

Barrett Browning's sister Henrietta died in November 1860. The couple spent the winter of 1860–1861 in Rome where Barrett Browning's health deteriorated, and they returned to Florence in early June 1861. She became gradually weaker, using morphine to ease her pain. She died on 29 June 1861 in her husband's arms. Browning said that she died "smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl's...Her last word was...'Beautiful' ". She was buried in the Protestant English Cemetery of Florence. "On Monday July 1 the shops in the area around Casa Guidi were closed, while Elizabeth was mourned with unusual demonstrations." The nature of her illness is still unclear. Some modern scientists speculate her illness may have been hypokalemic periodic paralysis, a genetic disorder that causes weakness and many of the other symptoms she described.

Publications
Barrett Browning's first known poem "On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man" was written at the age of 6 or 8. The manuscript, which protests against impressment, is currently in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library; the exact date is controversial because the "2" in the date 1812 is written over something else that is scratched out.

Her first independent publication was "Stanzas Excited by Reflections on the Present State of Greece" in The New Monthly Magazine of May 1821; followed two months later by "Thoughts Awakened by Contemplating a Piece of the Palm which Grows on the Summit of the Acropolis at Athens".

Her first collection of poems, An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems, was published in 1826 and reflected her passion for Byron and Greek politics. Its publication drew the attention of Hugh Stuart Boyd, a blind scholar of the Greek language, and of Uvedale Price, another Greek scholar, with whom she maintained sustained correspondence. Among other neighbours was Mrs James Martin from Colwall, with whom she corresponded throughout her life. Later, at Boyd's suggestion, she translated Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound (published in 1833; retranslated in 1850). During their friendship, Barrett studied Greek literature, including Homer, Pindar and Aristophanes.

Elizabeth opposed slavery and published two poems highlighting the barbarity of the institution and her support for the abolitionist cause: "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point" and "A Curse for a Nation". The first depicts an enslaved woman whipped, raped, and made pregnant cursing her enslavers. Elizabeth declared herself glad that the slaves were "virtually free" when the Slavery Abolition Act passed in the British Parliament despite the fact that her father believed that abolition would ruin his business.

The date of publication of these poems is in dispute, but her position on slavery in the poems is clear and may have led to a rift between Elizabeth and her father. She wrote to John Ruskin in 1855 "I belong to a family of West Indian slaveholders, and if I believed in curses, I should be afraid". Her father and uncle were unaffected by the Baptist War (1831–1832) and continued to own slaves until passage of the Slavery Abolition Act.

In London, John Kenyon introduced Elizabeth to literary figures including William Wordsworth, Mary Russell Mitford, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Tennyson and Thomas Carlyle. Elizabeth continued to write, contributing "The Romaunt of Margaret", "The Romaunt of the Page", "The Poet's Vow" and other pieces to various periodicals. She corresponded with other writers, including Mary Russell Mitford, who became a close friend and who supported Elizabeth's literary ambitions.

In 1838 The Seraphim and Other Poems appeared, the first volume of Elizabeth's mature poetry to appear under her own name.

Sonnets from the Portuguese was published in 1850. There is debate about the origin of the title. Some say it refers to the series of sonnets of the 16th-century Portuguese poet Luís de Camões. However, "my little Portuguese" was a pet name that Browning had adopted for Elizabeth and this may have some connection.

The verse-novel Aurora Leigh, her most ambitious and perhaps the most popular of her longer poems, appeared in 1856. It is the story of a female writer making her way in life, balancing work and love, and based on Elizabeth's own experiences. Aurora Leigh was an important influence on Susan B. Anthony's thinking about the traditional roles of women, with regard to marriage versus independent individuality. The North American Review praised Elizabeth's poem: "Mrs. Browning's poems are, in all respects, the utterance of a woman — of a woman of great learning, rich experience, and powerful genius, uniting to her woman's nature the strength which is sometimes thought peculiar to a man."

Spiritual influence
Much of Barrett Browning's work carries a religious theme. She had read and studied such works as Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno. She says in her writing, "We want the sense of the saturation of Christ's blood upon the souls of our poets, that it may cry through them in answer to the ceaseless wail of the Sphinx of our humanity, expounding agony into renovation. Something of this has been perceived in art when its glory was at the fullest. Something of a yearning after this may be seen among the Greek Christian poets, something which would have been much with a stronger faculty". She believed that "Christ's religion is essentially poetry – poetry glorified". She explored the religious aspect in many of her poems, especially in her early work, such as the sonnets.

She was interested in theological debate, had learned Hebrew and read the Hebrew Bible. Her seminal Aurora Leigh, for example, features religious imagery and allusion to the apocalypse. The critic Cynthia Scheinberg notes that female characters in Aurora Leigh and her earlier work "The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus" allude to Miriam, sister and caregiver to Moses. These allusions to Miriam in both poems mirror the way in which Barrett Browning herself drew from Jewish history, while distancing herself from it, in order to maintain the cultural norms of a Christian woman poet of the Victorian Age.

In the correspondence Barrett Browning kept with the Reverend William Merry from 1843 to 1844 on predestination and salvation by works, she identifies herself as a Congregationalist: "I am not a Baptist — but a Congregational Christian, — in the holding of my private opinions."

Barrett Browning Institute
In 1892, Ledbury, Herefordshire, held a design competition to build an Institute in honour of Barrett Browning. Brightwen Binyon beat 44 other designs. It was based on the timber-framed Market House, which was opposite the site, and was completed in 1896. However, Nikolaus Pevsner was not impressed by its style. It was used as a public library from 1938 to 2021, when new library facilities were provided for the town, and is now the headquarters of the Ledbury Poetry Festival. It has been Grade II-listed since 2007.

Critical reception
Barrett Browning was widely popular in the United Kingdom and the United States during her lifetime. Edgar Allan Poe was inspired by her poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship and specifically borrowed the poem's metre for his poem The Raven. Poe had reviewed Barrett Browning's work in the January 1845 issue of the Broadway Journal, writing that "her poetic inspiration is the highest – we can conceive of nothing more august. Her sense of Art is pure in itself." In return, she praised The Raven, and Poe dedicated his 1845 collection The Raven and Other Poems to her, referring to her as "the noblest of her sex".

Barrett Browning's poetry greatly influenced Emily Dickinson, who admired her as a woman of achievement. Her popularity in the United States and Britain was advanced by her stands against social injustice, including slavery in the United States, injustice toward Italians from their foreign rulers, and child labour.

Lilian Whiting published a biography of Barrett Browning (1899) which describes her as "the most philosophical poet" and depicts her life as "a Gospel of applied Christianity". To Whiting, the term "art for art's sake" did not apply to Barrett Browning's work, as each poem, distinctively purposeful, was borne of a more "honest vision". In this critical analysis, Whiting portrays Barrett Browning as a poet who uses knowledge of Classical literature with an "intuitive gift of spiritual divination". In Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Angela Leighton suggests that the portrayal of Barrett Browning as the "pious iconography of womanhood" has distracted us from her poetic achievements. Leighton cites the 1931 play by Rudolf Besier The Barretts of Wimpole Street as evidence that 20th-century literary criticism of Barrett Browning's work has suffered more as a result of her popularity than poetic ineptitude. The play was popularized by actress Katharine Cornell, for whom it became a signature role. It was an enormous success, both artistically and commercially, and was revived several times and adapted twice into movies. Sampson, however, considers the play to have been the most damaging cause of false myths about Elizabeth, and particularly the relationship with her, allegedly 'tyrannical', father.

Throughout the 20th century, literary criticism of Barrett Browning's poetry remained sparse until her poems were discovered by the women's movement. She once described herself as being inclined to reject several women's rights principles, suggesting in letters to Mary Russell Mitford and her husband that she believed that there was an inferiority of intellect in women. In Aurora Leigh, however, she created a strong and independent woman who embraces both work and love. Leighton writes that because Elizabeth participates in the literary world, where voice and diction are dominated by perceived masculine superiority, she "is defined only in mysterious opposition to everything that distinguishes the male subject who writes..." A five-volume scholarly edition of her works was published in 2010, the first in over a century.

Works (collections)

 * 1820: The Battle of Marathon: A Poem. Privately printed
 * 1826: An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems. London: James Duncan
 * 1833: Prometheus Bound, Translated from the Greek of Aeschylus, and Miscellaneous Poems. London: A.J. Valpy
 * 1838: The Seraphim, and Other Poems. London: Saunders and Otley
 * 1844: Poems (UK) / A Drama of Exile, and other Poems (US). London: Edward Moxon. New York: Henry G. Langley
 * 1850: Poems ("New Edition", 2 vols.) Revision of 1844 edition adding Sonnets from the Portuguese and others. London: Chapman & Hall
 * 1851: Casa Guidi Windows. London: Chapman & Hall
 * 1853: Poems (3d ed.). London: Chapman & Hall
 * 1854: Two Poems: "A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London" (by Elizabeth Barrett Browning) and "The Twins" (by Robert Browning). London: Chapman & Hall
 * 1856: Poems (4th ed.). London: Chapman & Hall
 * 1856: Aurora Leigh. London: Chapman & Hall
 * 1860: Poems Before Congress. London: Chapman & Hall
 * 1862: Last Poems. London: Chapman & Hall

Posthumous publications

 * 1863: The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets. London: Chapman & Hall
 * 1877: The Earlier Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1826–1833, ed. Richard Herne Shepherd. London: Bartholomew Robson
 * 1877: Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Addressed to Richard Hengist Horne, with comments on contemporaries, 2 vols., ed. S.R.T. Mayer. London: Richard Bentley & Son
 * 1897: Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 2 vols., ed. Frederic G. Kenyon. London:Smith, Elder,& Co.
 * 1899: Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett 1845–1846, 2 vol., ed Robert W. Barrett Browning. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
 * 1914: New Poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. Frederic G Kenyon. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
 * 1929: Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Letters to Her Sister, 1846–1859, ed. Leonard Huxley. London: John Murray
 * 1935: Twenty-Two Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning to Henrietta and Arabella Moulton Barrett. New York: United Feature Syndicate
 * 1939: Letters from Elizabeth Barrett to B.R. Haydon, ed. Martha Hale Shackford. New York: Oxford University Press
 * 1954: Elizabeth Barrett to Miss Mitford, ed. Betty Miller. London: John Murray
 * 1955: Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Hugh Stuart Boyd, ed. Barbara P. McCarthy. New Heaven, Conn.: Yale University Press
 * 1958: Letters of the Brownings to George Barrett, ed. Paul Landis with Ronald E. Freeman. Urbana: University of Illinois Press
 * 1974: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Letters to Mrs. David Ogilvy, 1849–1861, ed. P. Heydon and P. Kelley. New York: Quadrangle, New York Times Book Co., and Browning Institute
 * 1984: The Brownings' Correspondence, ed. Phillip Kelley, Ronald Hudson, and Scott Lewis. Winfield, Kansas: Wedgestone Press

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Elizabeth Barrett Browning


text:
Enlil

Enlil, later known as Elil and Ellil, is an ancient Mesopotamian god associated with wind, air, earth, and storms. He is first attested as the chief deity of the Sumerian pantheon, but he was later worshipped by the Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hurrians. Enlil's primary center of worship was the Ekur temple in the city of Nippur, which was believed to have been built by Enlil himself and was regarded as the "mooring-rope" of heaven and earth. He is also sometimes referred to in Sumerian texts as Nunamnir. According to one Sumerian hymn, Enlil himself was so holy that not even the other gods could look upon him. Enlil rose to prominence during the twenty-fourth century BC with the rise of Nippur. His cult fell into decline after Nippur was sacked by the Elamites in 1230 BC and he was eventually supplanted as the chief god of the Mesopotamian pantheon by the Babylonian national god Marduk.

Enlil plays a vital role in the ancient near eastern cosmology; he separates An (heaven) from Ki (earth), thus making the world habitable for humans. In the Sumerian flood myth Eridu Genesis, Enlil rewards Ziusudra with immortality for having survived the flood and, in the Babylonian flood myth, Enlil is the cause of the flood himself, having sent the flood to exterminate the human race, who made too much noise and prevented him from sleeping. The myth of Enlil and Ninlil is about Enlil's serial seduction of the goddess Ninlil in various guises, resulting in the conception of the moon-god Nanna and the Underworld deities Nergal, Ninazu, and Enbilulu. Enlil was regarded as the inventor of the mattock and the patron of agriculture. Enlil also features prominently in several myths involving his son Ninurta, including Anzû and the Tablet of Destinies and Lugale.

Etymology
Enlil's name comes from ancient Sumerian EN (𒂗), meaning "lord" and LÍL (𒆤), the meaning of which is contentious, and which has sometimes been interpreted as meaning winds as a weather phenomenon (making Enlil a weather and sky god, "Lord Wind" or "Lord Storm"),  or alternatively as signifying a spirit or phantom whose presence may be felt as stirring of the air, or possibly as representing a partial Semitic loanword rather than a Sumerian word at all. Enlil's name is not a genitive construction, suggesting that Enlil was seen as the personification of LÍL rather than merely the cause of LÍL.

Piotr Steinkeller has written that the meaning of LÍL may not actually be a clue to a specific divine domain of Enlil's, whether storms, spirits, or otherwise, since Enlil may have been "a typical universal god [...] without any specific domain."

Piotr Steinkeller and Piotr Michalowski have doubts about the Sumerian origin of Enlil. They have questioned the true meaning of the name, and identified Enlil with the Eblaite word I-li-lu. As noted by Manfred Krebernik and M. P. Streck; Enlil being referred to as Kur-gal (the Great Mountain) in Sumerian texts suggests he might have originated in eastern Mesopotamia.

Worship

Enlil was the patron god of the Sumerian city-state of Nippur and his main center of worship was the Ekur temple located there. The name of the temple literally means "Mountain House" in ancient Sumerian. The Ekur was believed to have been built and established by Enlil himself. It was believed to be the "mooring-rope" of heaven and earth, meaning that it was seen as "a channel of communication between earth and heaven". A hymn written during the reign of Ur-Nammu, the founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur, describes the E-kur in great detail, stating that its gates were carved with scenes of Imdugud, a lesser deity sometimes shown as a giant bird, slaying a lion and an eagle snatching up a sinner.

The Sumerians believed that the sole purpose of humanity's existence was to serve the gods. They thought that a god's statue was a physical embodiment of the god himself. As such, cult statues were given constant care and attention and a set of priests were assigned to tend to them. People worshipped Enlil by offering food and other human necessities to him. The food, which was ritually laid out before the god's cult statue in the form of a feast, was believed to be Enlil's daily meal, but, after the ritual, it would be distributed among his priests. These priests were also responsible for changing the cult statue's clothing.

The Sumerians envisioned Enlil as a benevolent, fatherly deity, who watches over humanity and cares for their well-being. One Sumerian hymn describes Enlil as so glorious that even the other gods could not look upon him. The same hymn also states that, without Enlil, civilization could not exist. Enlil's epithets include titles such as "the Great Mountain" and "King of the Foreign Lands". Enlil is also sometimes described as a "raging storm", a "wild bull", and a "merchant". The Mesopotamians envisioned him as a creator, a father, a king, and the supreme lord of the universe. He was also known as "Nunamnir" and is referred to in at least one text as the "East Wind and North Wind".

Kings regarded Enlil as a model ruler and sought to emulate his example. Enlil was said to be supremely just and intolerant towards evil. Rulers from all over Sumer would travel to Enlil's temple in Nippur to be legitimized. They would return Enlil's favor by devoting lands and precious objects to his temple as offerings. Nippur was the only Sumerian city-state that never built a palace; this was intended to symbolize the city's importance as the center of the cult of Enlil by showing that Enlil himself was the city's king. Even during the Babylonian Period, when Marduk had superseded Enlil as the supreme god, Babylonian kings still traveled to the holy city of Nippur to seek recognition of their right to rule.

Enlil first rose to prominence during the twenty-fourth century BC, when the importance of the god An began to wane. During this time period, Enlil and An are frequently invoked together in inscriptions. Enlil remained the supreme god in Mesopotamia throughout the Amorite Period, with Amorite monarchs proclaiming Enlil as the source of their legitimacy. Enlil's importance began to wane after the Babylonian king Hammurabi conquered Sumer. The Babylonians worshipped Enlil under the name "Elil" and the Hurrians syncretized him with their own god Kumarbi. In one Hurrian ritual, Enlil and Apantu are invoked as "the father and mother of Išḫara". Enlil is also invoked alongside Ninlil as a member of "the mighty and firmly established gods".

During the Kassite Period (c. 1592–1155 BC), Nippur briefly managed to regain influence in the region and Enlil rose to prominence once again. From around 1300 BC onwards, Enlil was syncretized with the Assyrian national god Aššur, who was the most important deity in the Assyrian pantheon. Then, in 1230 BC, the Elamites attacked Nippur and the city fell into decline, taking the cult of Enlil along with it. Approximately one hundred years later, Enlil's role as the head of the pantheon was given to Marduk, the national god of the Babylonians.

Iconography
Enlil was represented by the symbol of a horned cap, which consisted of up to seven superimposed pairs of ox-horns. Such crowns were an important symbol of divinity; gods had been shown wearing them ever since the third millennium BC. The horned cap remained consistent in form and meaning from the earliest days of Sumerian prehistory up until the time of the Persian conquest and beyond.

The Sumerians had a complex numerological system, in which certain numbers were believed to hold special ritual significance. Within this system, Enlil was associated with the number fifty, which was considered sacred to him. Enlil was part of a triad of deities, which also included An and Enki. These three deities together were the embodiment of all the fixed stars in the night sky. An was identified with all the stars of the equatorial sky, Enlil with those of the northern sky, and Enki with those of the southern sky. The path of Enlil's celestial orbit was a continuous, symmetrical circle around the north celestial pole, but those of An and Enki were believed to intersect at various points. Enlil was associated with the constellation Boötes.

Origins myths
The main source of information about Sumerian creation mythology is the prologue to the epic poem Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld (ETCSL 1.8.1.4), which briefly describes the process of creation: originally, there was only Nammu, the primeval sea. Then, Nammu gave birth to An, the sky, and Ki, the earth. An and Ki mated with each other, causing Ki to give birth to Enlil. Enlil separated An from Ki and carried off the earth as his domain, while An carried off the sky. Enlil marries his mother, Ki, and from this union all the plant and animal life on earth is produced.

Enlil and Ninlil (ETCSL 1.2.1) is a nearly complete 152-line Sumerian poem describing the affair between Enlil and the goddess Ninlil. First, Ninlil's mother Nunbarshegunu instructs Ninlil to go bathe in the river. Ninlil goes to the river, where Enlil seduces her and impregnates her with their son, the moon-god Nanna. Because of this, Enlil is banished to Kur, the Sumerian underworld. Ninlil follows Enlil to the underworld, where he impersonates the "man of the gate". Ninlil demands to know where Enlil has gone, but Enlil, still impersonating the gatekeeper, refuses to answer. He then seduces Ninlil and impregnates her with Nergal, the god of death. The same scenario repeats, only this time Enlil instead impersonates the "man of the river of the nether world, the man-devouring river"; once again, he seduces Ninlil and impregnates her with the god Ninazu. Finally, Enlil impersonates the "man of the boat"; once again, he seduces Ninlil and impregnates her with Enbilulu, the "inspector of the canals".

The story of Enlil's courtship with Ninlil is primarily a genealogical myth invented to explain the origins of the moon-god Nanna, as well as the various gods of the Underworld, but it is also, to some extent, a coming-of-age story describing Enlil and Ninlil's emergence from adolescence into adulthood. The story also explains Ninlil's role as Enlil's consort; in the poem, Ninlil declares, "As Enlil is your master, so am I also your mistress!" The story is also historically significant because, if the current interpretation of it is correct, it is the oldest known myth in which a god changes shape.

Flood myth
In the Sumerian version of the flood story (ETCSL 1.7.4), the causes of the flood are unclear because the portion of the tablet recording the beginning of the story has been destroyed. Somehow, a mortal known as Ziusudra manages to survive the flood, likely through the help of the god Enki. The tablet begins in the middle of the description of the flood. The flood lasts for seven days and seven nights before it subsides. Then, Utu, the god of the Sun, emerges. Ziusudra opens a window in the side of the boat and falls down prostrate before the god. Next, he sacrifices an ox and a sheep in honor of Utu. At this point, the text breaks off again. When it picks back up, Enlil and An are in the midst of declaring Ziusudra immortal as an honor for having managed to survive the flood. The remaining portion of the tablet after this point is destroyed.

In the later Akkadian version of the flood story, recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enlil actually causes the flood, seeking to annihilate every living thing on earth because the humans, who are vastly overpopulated, make too much noise and prevent him from sleeping. In this version of the story, the hero is Utnapishtim, who is warned ahead of time by Ea, the Babylonian equivalent of Enki, that the flood is coming. The flood lasts for seven days; when it ends, Ishtar, who had mourned the destruction of humanity, promises Utnapishtim that Enlil will never cause a flood again. When Enlil sees that Utnapishtim and his family have survived, he is outraged, but his son Ninurta speaks up in favor of humanity, arguing that, instead of causing floods, Enlil should simply ensure that humans never become overpopulated by reducing their numbers using wild animals and famines. Enlil goes into the boat; Utnapishtim and his wife bow before him. Enlil, now appeased, grants Utnapishtim immortality as a reward for his loyalty to the gods.

Chief god and arbitrator
A nearly complete 108-line poem from the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2900–2350 BC) describes Enlil's invention of the mattock, a key agricultural pick, hoe, ax, or digging tool of the Sumerians. In the poem, Enlil conjures the mattock into existence and decrees its fate. The mattock is described as gloriously beautiful; it is made of pure gold and its head is carved from lapis lazuli. Enlil gives the tool over to the humans, who use it to build cities, subjugate their people, and pull up weeds. Enlil was believed to aid in the growth of plants.

The Sumerian poem Enlil Chooses the Farmer–God (ETCSL 5.3.3) describes how Enlil, hoping "to establish abundance and prosperity", creates two gods Emesh and Enten, a shepherd and a farmer, respectively. The two gods argue and Emesh lays claim to Enten's position. They take the dispute before Enlil, who rules in favor of Enten; the two gods rejoice and reconcile.

Ninurta myths

In the Sumerian poem Lugale (ETCSL 1.6.2), Enlil gives advice to his son, the god Ninurta, advising him on a strategy to slay the demon Asag. This advice is relayed to Ninurta by way of Sharur, his enchanted talking mace, which had been sent by Ninurta to the realm of the gods to seek counsel from Enlil directly.

In the Old, Middle, and Late Babylonian myth of Anzû and the Tablet of Destinies, the Anzû, a giant, monstrous bird, betrays Enlil and steals the Tablet of Destinies, a sacred clay tablet belonging to Enlil that grants him his authority, while Enlil is preparing for a bath. The rivers dry up and the gods are stripped of their powers. The gods send Adad, Girra, and Shara to defeat the Anzû, but all of them fail. Finally, Ea proposes that the gods should send Ninurta, Enlil's son. Ninurta successfully defeats the Anzû and returns the Tablet of Destinies to his father. As a reward, Ninurta is granted a prominent seat on the council of the gods.

War of the gods
A badly damaged text from the Neo-Assyrian Period (911–612 BC) describes Marduk leading his army of Anunnaki into the sacred city of Nippur and causing a disturbance. The disturbance causes a flood, which forces the resident gods of Nippur under the leadership of Enlil to take shelter in the Eshumesha temple to Ninurta. Enlil is enraged at Marduk's transgression and orders the gods of Eshumesha to take Marduk and the other Anunnaki as prisoners. The Anunnaki are captured, but Marduk appoints his front-runner Mushteshirhablim to lead a revolt against the gods of Eshumesha and sends his messenger Neretagmil to alert Nabu, the god of literacy. When the Eshumesha gods hear Nabu speak, they come out of their temple to search for him. Marduk defeats the Eshumesha gods and takes 360 of them as prisoners of war, including Enlil himself. Enlil protests that the Eshumesha gods are innocent, so Marduk puts them on trial before the Anunnaki. The text ends with a warning from Damkianna (another name for Ninhursag) to the gods and to humanity, pleading them not to repeat the war between the Anunnaki and the gods of Eshumesha.

title: Enlil