Halfway.com Oregon

Halfway is a small town in Baker County, Oregon with a population 314. The town’s name comes from the historic location of the post office: halfway between the towns of Pine and Cornucopia. 

Notable Halfway alumni include Babette Beatty, the first-ever Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover model. (Other notable alumni include the woman we met in Richland, Oregon who begrudgingly left Halfway to follow her husband and his search for employment. While she misses her hometown, she did admit that anything less than Halfway’s 72 inches of yearly snowfall is a bit “more palatable.”)

Halfway earned a place in the history of the dot-com era in December 1999, when it received and accepted an offer to rename itself as Half.com, Oregon. Joshua Kopelman, Half.com’s CEO, shared the inspiration behind the name, ”we wanted to get on the map, and we said ‘Why don’t we just try to get on the map?’” 

The town earned $110,000 and 20 computers for the school. It became the first city in the world to rename itself as a dot com, which, according to former Mayor Dick Crow, was all about boosting tourism. “Being the first ‘dot-com’ city in America will … introduce our rustic beauty to the country,” he shared.

Halfway, OR. July 2018.

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