Oliver Greeley Hughson (1864-1959) was born in Broome County, New York. He apprenticed as a blacksmith in Stockton, California, before enrolling in the University of Pacific, where he earned his bachelor's degree in liberal arts and classics in 1892. Hughson began his career selling building materials in Oregon in 1896, through which he gained familiarity with the construction and logging industries, which he later described in a piece published in Oregon Historical Quarterly in 1959. He also became a labor organizer under the employment of the Builders Exchange Board of Directors (circa 1913). He and his wife, Rose Hudson (died 1922) had one son, Robur S., who was born in 1893.

During the Depression era, Hughson became alarmed at the lack of opportunities for boys under age 16 to gain experience in building construction. In 1933, Hughson, then a 69-year-old retiree, developed the first Boy Builders Club to teach all aspects of the trade through the creation of accurately scaled minature buildings. He registered his business, the State Building Congress, with Multnomah County in 1937, and initially formed clubs via the state 4-H system. The program moved into the public school classroom and became a model for programs in schools and colleges throughout the United States as well as in British Columbia, reaching an estimated 50,000 young men. Hughson obtained waste lumber from various sources to be used in his "Minimalic Construction" projects, and set up a shop on the Lane County Fairgrounds to produce precision-cut dimension lumber to be distributed free of charge to schools. He worked doggedly at this voluntary labor of love for the remainder of his life.