The North Bank Pub dates only to the late 1970s, but its location has links all the way back to Eugene's earliest days. The pub stands along a lazy stretch of the Willamette River where in the 1850s, a ferry crossing was established by Eugene's founder, Eugene Skinner. Skinner's land claim on the opposite side of the Willamette evolved into Downtown Eugene. By the 1880s, Skinner's Ferry had given way to the more permanent Ferry Street Bridge, which today crosses the river at virtually the same location.
From the late 1800s through the mid 1900s, the land now occupied by the pub and its neighbors, was used almost exclusively for agricultural purposes — a leading hop farm, cattle grazing, and vegetable cultivation. That's not to say developers didn't have an eye on the riverside land. In 1901, devoted angler and former Eugene mayor, J. H. McClung, platted the area as the Linton subdivision, but development came slow and sporadically. Early on, the Eugene Country Club was created on the back portion of McClung's subdivision, but many of the water's edge lots remained agricultural for decades to come.
In 1979, The North Bank Pub became one of the first buildings constructed along this stretch of the Willamette. John Costello opened the restaurant in April of that year with riverside dining and live jazz by Eugene legend Emitt Williams and others. After a successful 21-year run, Costello handed over the torch to McMenamins, who reopened the North Bank on May 10, 2000.
