Celebrating the true saga of hardy German and Swiss immigrants who founded the first Christian communal society on the West Coast in 1856, Aurora Mills, in the historic heart of Oregon’s French Prairie, the Aurora Colony Historical Society, established in 1963, and its members are stewards of eleven 1800s buildings on the National Registry of Historic Places, historic documents, photographs, maps, and artifacts. Exhibits interpreting this rich history greet Old Aurora Colony Museum visitors .