Boring is an unincorporated community in Clackamas County, Oregon, United States. It is located along Oregon Route 212 in the foothills of the Cascade mountain range, approximately southeast of downtown Portland, and northeast of Oregon City. A bedroom community, Boring is named after William Harrison Boring, a Union soldier and pioneer whose family built a farm in the area in 1856, before Oregon had received statehood. The community was officially platted in 1903 after the Portland Railway, Light and Power Company constructed an electric rail line, which operated from Portland to Cazadero. The former railway is now part of the Springwater Corridor, a rail trail which begins in Boring and ends at the Eastbank Esplanade along the Willamette River in southeast Portland. The Boring Lava Field, an extinct volcanic field zone that comprises terrain spanning between Boring and downtown Portland, took its namesake from the community. Boring was a hub of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest prior to and during World War I due to the abundance of surrounding temperate coniferous and evergreen forests, as well as its proximity to the Port of Portland. In addition to logging, plant nurseries and agriculture have also historically been major economic forces in Boring. Boring has often been included in lists of places with unusual names. In 2012, Boring was named a sister city of the village of Dull, Scotland, and later Bland, Australia. History Timeline The land on which Boring was built was a former lava field. The Boring Lava Field, which takes its namesake from the community, is located just north of Boring. There are approximately 80 lava vents across the area, remnants of the volcanic activity that occurred there roughly 2.6 million years ago. The lava field extends across surrounding Portland and Vancouver, Washington, though the volcanic centers are extinct. The land that would later become Boring had no known inhabitants, though the Clackamas Tribe had a camp located south of Boring, near present-day Oregon City, along the Willamette River. By 1855, the remaining members of the tribe had relocated to the Grand Ronde. Settlers began to arrive in the Oregon Territory in mid-1800s via the Oregon Trail, after the establishment of Portland. Boring takes its name after William Harrison Boring, an Illinois native and early resident who began farming there in 1874, and subsequently donated land for the community's first schoolhouse to be built. He was a