Sandy Carter

A descendant of Oregon’s 1845 wagon train settlers, Sandy Carter was 1982’s “Outstanding Journalism Graduate” from the University of Oregon Journalism School. She’s been a Clackamas County stringer for the Oregonian, authored articles for Cascades East, Old Oregon and Bowhunter magazines, and published two journal articles in the Oregon Historical Society Quarterly. She taught ”Grant-writing for Nonprofits” for 15 years for Chemeketa Community College and oral history for Clackamas Community College.

More recently Sandy published a family WWII letters collection entitled Letters from the Sewing Box. Her oral history work as Director, then long-time board member of the Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation produced two full length video documentaries and a book containing her full, transcribed interviews with 17 individuals who made paper for Crown Zellerbach International, West Linn, through most of the 20th Century. She’s proud to have saved the stories of their work and to know they’re part of the Library of Congress collections.

Her two decades of advocacy work with the Foundation has centered on the industrial and transportation heritage still represented on West Linn’s Moore’s Island, on the west shoulder of Willamette Falls. She has been active in every successive Willamette Falls Navigation Canal and Locks-focused advocacy effort since the first Lock Fest flotilla in 2002 and was appointed to the Willamette Falls Locks Authority in 2021.