Milwaukie-Portland Elks Lodge installs youngest female exalted ruler in Oregon history

Published 11:22 am Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Milwaukie-Portland’s Elks Lodge has elected the youngest woman to lead a chapter in its 134-year history of the club in Oregon.

Lynsie Winstead, 26, who was named the Milwaukie-Portland club’s exalted ruler for 2023-24 in February, might be the youngest woman to ever lead an Elks Lodge nationally, and club members are currently researching with clubs in other states to determine whether she is also making history nationally. She was installed into the position at a ceremony at the lodge at the end of March.

“My goal is to make people feel like the Elks is their home like it feels for me and to encourage others to join the Elks, young or old,” Winstead said in her inaugural remarks. “I want us all to come together and work to better our lodge and community.”

Winstead began her association with the Elks Lodge as a volunteer in 2013 at its annual haunted house in Oak Grove. She went on the serve as the first president of the lodge youth auxiliary at the age of 19 before joining the lodge at the age of 21.

Winstead worked her way through the chair officers of the lodge before being elected exalted ruler for 2023-24. She will lead one of the largest Elks Lodge buildings in the country, with 63,000 square feet of indoor space, which includes a swimming pool, dance halls and eight-lane bowling alley housed on 5.7 acres on McLoughlin Boulevard.

Portland’s Elks Lodge was founded in 1889 and merged with the Milwaukie Elks Lodge in 2014. For most of the history of the Elks, women were not allowed to join the formerly all-male organization, which voted at the national level of the club in 1995 to allow women to join.

The Elks annually contribute millions of dollars in charitable support to communities all over Oregon. To learn more about how you can get involved, visit join.elks.org.