Near downtown Aurora, Oregon, sits a small eight-sided building that most visitors walk right past. Children pass it on school field trips. Tourists photograph it without a second thought. Yet this modest structure may be the last surviving piece of one of the most famous landmarks in Oregon history. And after more than a century, nobody can say for certain why it was built. was it a chicken coop? A smokehouse? A band hall? Or something else entirely? As this compelling video explains, the deeper you dig into Aurora’s Octagon Building, the stranger the mystery becomes.
Aurora, Oregon UFO: The Evidence
Skeptics love to brush UFO encounters off as Starlink satellites or space junk. But those explanations fall apart under basic physics. That’s because Starlink satellites travel in predictable orbital paths across the sky at a constant speed. They also don’t trip collision alerts. But the UFO that veteran Oregon LifeFlight helicopter pilot Joe Buley observed was performing rapid maneuvers and making sharp turns with a corkscrew pattern.
Plus, Starlink satellites orbit hundreds of miles above the earth. They don’t trigger proximity warnings for helicopters flying a mile or two up. So it’s no surprise that when ‘experts’ are trotted out, dismissing what professional pilots see with their own eyes, their explanations often don’t hold up and should be scrutinized.
Interestingly, at least one of the more vocal voices dismissing UFO events that night over Oregon skies in December, 2024 had direct ties both to NASA and the U.S. military. When experts with institutional loyalties rush to normalize an unexplainable event, it raises an obvious question: Are they voicing what they purport to be factual, or covering up classified operations? One key to remember is that covert operators not only will deny what’s clearly seen. They also tend to try to discredit those who do, even when those observing it have more than 6,000 flight hours, like LifeFlight’s Joe Buley. View the entire episode using the above Youtube video link.
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Aurora, Oregon UFO: The Discovery
Departing Aurora, Oregon’s Aurora State Airport one cold December in 2024, Life Flight pilot Joe Buley guided his helicopter south through a soon darkening Willamette Valley.
Passing Salem, city lights faded behind Buley and his two medic crew members as the outline of Oregon’s coast range emerged ahead. At about 8:40 PM, the pilot observed a strange, reddish light in the distance, between Eugene and the coast. Within minutes, an ordinary medical transport flight transformed into one of the most discussed aviation mysteries in Oregon history.
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Aurora, Oregon’s Mystery Grave
Aurora, Oregon’s Mystery Grave
History is hiding beneath your feet on the outskirts of Aurora, near the former town of Champoeg.With trails, fields and the Willamette River connecting them, it’s helpful to understand their unique and also shared backgrounds, going way back.
Champoeg was located on Aurora’s doorstep and considered a lifeline, connecting Aurora colonists to the outside world, with both postal service and river commerce. Land claims stretched between the two settlements, plus Aurora’s early mills served the surrounding countryside, so the communities shared a tightly connected frontier economy. Aurora survived and Champoeg essentially vanished, yet the two towns weren’t simply neighbors…they were interdependent.
But there’s a mystery around these parts that few have ever heard. Deep inside these woods is a clue. That’s because there’s a grave here, with very little explanation. Most people would ask “Who was this person and why is this headstone located here, in the middle of a forest with its own trail?”A little digging reveals both the story of a young woman living nearby and one of the strangest archaeological searches in Oregon history.
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Aurora, Oregon’s Mysterious Markers
Hidden across the roads, fields, riverbanks and hills around Aurora, Oregon is an often unseen world filled with history, mystery, and the twist of a treasure hunt…in reverse. Most people drive past these deceptively discreet devices every day without noticing. Yet scattered throughout Aurora’s countryside are mysterious metal medallions known as survey benchmarks. Some are hidden beside roads. Others sit near rivers. One reportedly lies atop Aurora’s forested hill near Butteville known as La Butte.
At first glance they’re easy to overlook. And while each can serve unique purposes, why were they placed in these specific locations? The deeper we look, the stranger the story becomes. Because these markers aren’t just pieces of metal. They’re clues.
Treasure hunts usually begin with a map and end with the treasure. But Aurora’s markers turn that idea upside down. That’s because here, you find the treasure first.
A bronze disk beside a road. A marker embedded next to a bridge. A forgotten monument standing quietly in a field. Stamped onto each one is a code. Not directions to the treasure. Directions from it. Decipher those codes and they lead to government archives, century-old survey records, references to other possibly forgotten landmarks and a hidden network stretching far beyond Aurora itself. And with every marker you find, another clue appears.
Our journey begins beside the railroad tracks in rural Aurora, near the intersection of Arndt Road and Klupenger Road. I’d passed through the area before without noticing anything unusual. Then one day, I happened to glance over toward a nearby field. Embedded firmly in the ground was what looked like an oversized bronze coin.
No sign explained it. No plaque marked it. Just a metal disk sitting quietly beside the road. Curious, I walk over and look closely. Stamped into its face is a collection of letters and numbers that mean little to me. But one detail stands out. It’s the year, from another century: 1913. This marker was already in the ground before the First World War, the war said to be the end of all wars, began.
Why is it here? And why does Aurora seem to have similar markers scattered in seemingly random places? The more I search, the more I realize this wasn’t an isolated artifact. This brings us another clue.
Aurora has beautiful countryside, but a charming downtown area, too, with different shops, restaurants and other local businesses. Another day while walking around town, I ventured toward the old Aurora State Bank building. That building greets you as you enter town, near the railroad tracks, set on a knoll. There very close to the old bank building’s entry I noticed yet another marker.
Not long after discovering those first two markers, I recall seeing a clue near the Pudding River bridge…just a few blocks from Aurora’s old bank building. That bridge on Highway 99E over the river gives passersby a glimpse of the water below. Most people drive over it without a second thought. Approaching the bridge’s south end, I confirm something familiar. Embedded there is another bronze disk. At first glance it looks much like the others. But this marker carries a different inscription, including the word GAGE.
Curious, I begin digging for some background. What I discover is that this marker didn’t just help map the landscape. It served as a reference point to measure nearby river conditions. By tying water levels to a known elevation, it’s easier to track floods and monitor changing river conditions over time.
Suddenly these markers seem less random than ever, some helping to define the landscape and others helping to measure water levels. That brings attention to one more yet another Aurora riverside disk. This one sits near the historic Butteville Landing along the Willamette River. Unlike the Pudding River marker, its been badly vandalized, identity nearly erased. Yet even in damaged condition, it hints at another connection between Aurora’s waterways and the hidden network beneath them.
Considering of my questions revolves around ‘Who put these here?’ Surveyors climbed hills, sought key locations and created an elevation network. Moving across the landscape allowed measuring even small differences in height, establishing reference points like some we’ve found that engineers, railroad builders and flood-control planners have used for a century.
Most people never notice these markers. They’ll drive past them. Walk over them. Or like me, if looking down, one might grab somebody’s attention, perhaps realizing they’re looking at pieces of a century-old system mapping around Aurora.
And perhaps that’s the real mystery. Not where the markers are. But how something so important became almost invisible. So the next time you’re exploring around Aurora and spot an old survey disk or concrete monument, don’t dismiss it as a random piece of metal. You might unravel an Aurora, Oregon mystery just waiting to be discovered.
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Aurora, Oregon’s Deepest Mystery
What you’re looking at is more than a decaying old pier. It’s part of Aurora’s past, sitting beside the Willamette River for generations. Yet looking at submerged structures like this from the riverbank is akin to the limited prospects of an angler with no boat, given such limited access…if you can see much at all. But there’s something else hidden here. View the 1 minute preview by clicking the image immediately above.
What we uncovered early on borders on startling. That’s because Aurora’s Butteville Landing isn’t merely a dilapitated old dock. Instead, the State of Oregon has formally recorded it as archaeologically important, with a code all its own: 35MA394. In other words, the Butteville Landing is archaeologically documented as a significant historical site. View the full 9 minute video by clicking on the image above.
When we think about history, it’s easy to imagine museums, dusty books or old black and white photographs. Now imagine delving into a historical mystery…by going where others haven’t…and few have dared. So while books and museums give a limited view of the past, what if you could travel where our area’s history isn’t normally seen to examine what’s usually hidden? This brings us to Aurora’s historic Butteville Landing,…where much of our local history began.
