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Eugene city officials wanted to get young people interested in local history, so  they condensed it into something that can be downloaded onto an iPhone and played like a video game.

“We thought this would be a way to reach young people,” explained the city’s community relations director Jan Bohman. “People into historic preservation tend not to be young people.”

The city’s free iPhone application enables people to find and research 150 historic places in Eugene. “It’s very cool,” Bohman said. “We’re celebrating the city’s 150th birthday, and were thinking of ways to celebrate.”

Available free through iTunes (search Eugene@150), the application provides a map of the city with location markers, images of the sites and a short narrative about each spot.

Eugene officials developed the application through a $4,500 Oregon Heritage Grant from the State of Oregon Historic Preservation Office.

Kuri Gill, a spokeswoman for the state agency, said the application is fairly unique. “It’s a newish idea. We haven’t seen anything like this happen, at least not through our grant program,” she said.

Nonetheless, it is catching on. Communities in Douglas and Deschutes counties are developing similar applications.

The idea is not new in Portland. The Bosco-Milligan Foundation teamed up with Tagwhat, a Colorado-based software development company, to create a similar application that provides information on more than 80 of the city’s historic buildings.

Bohman said she never heard of that application. “We came up with this idea ourselves,” she said. “This is not an idea we got from someone else.”

Eugene officials have also expanded the idea, creating “Passport to History,” a school program where children under 12 explore the city and learn about its past with the help of the application.

Gill said other communities could do similar projects with state grants. Applications for the next round of Oregon Heritage Grants will be available in July, with grants awarded in the fall, she said.

She loves helping people discover Oregon history, she added. “I think all of this stuff is what makes Oregon unique and a happy place to live,” she said.