Lewis and Clark College, a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon, was founded in 1867 as Albany Collegiate Institute by a group of Presbyterian pioneers in the Willamette Valley town of Albany 60 miles south of Portland. The College has always been coeducational, from the first class, which graduated in 1873.

By 1938 enrollment in Portland had outgrown that on the original campus, and all operations were moved to Portland. In 1942 the College trustees acquired the Lloyd Frank (of the historic Portland department store Meier & Frank) “Fir Acres” estate in southwest Portland, and adopted the name Lewis & Clark College as a “symbol of the pioneering spirit that had made and maintained the College.” Today, the three schools of the College and their supporting offices occupy a beautiful campus of 137 acres, centered on the historic Frank estate on Palatine Hill in Southwest Portland.