Oregon History Online 5

The year was 1910. The economy was developing slowly in the Yaquina Bay country since the formation of Lincoln County in 1893. A number of small sawmills had located in the area, mostly adjacent to the river and mostly near the Toledo community. There was some agriculture confined to the narrow flat lands along the river and stretching into the rich Siletz Valley.
But development was painfully slow and had not nearly matched the aspirations of community leaders. Everyone knew of the rich stands of timber in Lincoln County. Surveys had shown tremendous tracts of Douglas fir and spruce, untouched by man and of a quality unmatched in the Pacific Northwest.

And nearly everybody had come to believe also that inadequate transportation was the one thing that hobbled the full development of these timber resources.
It was true that the Oregon Pacific Railroad had arrived in Toledo as early as 1884. The next year, steel had been pushed on to Yaquina City, at that time the lusty, booming port for Yaquina Bay. Construction of the railroad had been heralded by the early squatters as the solution to the fast, prosperous development of the Yaquina country. But it had not proved to be. The firm was beset by financial problems from the very beginning and despite the bright prospects of a transportation bonanza, little had really happened. Twenty-five years had passed since the arrival of the railroad. By now business people had convinced themselves that the key not in a railroad or better highways but in the development of ocean shipping. They saw the California country to the south growing rapidly, opening a vast new market for Oregon lumber. And costwise water shipping was obviously the cheapest way to tap this market. The Panama Canal was under construction and many reasoned this would open vast East Coast markets.
Then, too, to the west Hawaii was growing and for some visionaries the vast lands and hordes of people in teeming Asia offered tremendous prospects for the sale of West Coast lumber. Of course, water transport was the only answer.
Actually Yaquina Bay had enjoyed a reasonably brisk business in ocean shipping for many years. Ocean schooners put in regularly to docks at Yaquina City to load out cargoes of lumber and rock from the Pioneer Rock Quarry near Elk City and other sundry cargoes. Many sailed up the river all the way to Toledo.

Indeed as early as 1884, jetties had been constructed by the government at the Yaquina Bay bar to aid ships in and out of the harbor. They were short jetties, and according to local seamen, inadequate from the beginning. But they did permit ships to enter and leave the harbor relatively safely.
Ships grew in size as time went on requiring more depth of water under them. Fewer of them attempted to reach Toledo and Yaquina City, and Newport with its natural deeper water became the harbor area.
The bar gave shippers troubles as well. Jetties were short and the shorter North Jetty permitted ocean currents to carry sand into the channel. At times, depending on the season of the year, the bar would have little more than ten to 12 feet of water at the harbor entrance.
These situations discouraged larger ocean freighters from scheduling Yaquina Bay on their itineraries and as a result, local shippers saw themselves being bypassed regularly by profitable ocean transport. Knowledgeable local seamen insisted that the harbor would never realize its fullest potential until the North Jetty was lengthened and the rock shelf on the bar blasted out, providing a channel of 16 feet or more to the open sea.
It was in this climate of frustration that business people decided that the time had arrived when they must take their story to the federal government and exert political pressures to achieve their objectives of creating a bright, new deep water harbor for the West Coast and especially Oregon.
The frustration and ambitions of local people was melded into action in early 1910.
Leadership for the port movement was spawned in Toledo. Most of the area's lumbering operations were centered at Toledo and it had at the time the most extensive business mix of the county. Newport, while developing as a port, was more occupied, as it still is at times, with the development of tourism as a basic industry.

So it was in March 1910 that a group of Toledo's business leaders set out to improve the Yaquina Bay harbor. And in their discussions, the idea of the creation of a port commission to give official voice to their ideas and plans was devised.
Another event had happened also which gave fuel to the port concept. In 1909 the Oregon legislature passed an act which made it possible for citizens to create port districts with powers of taxation and the ability to develop marine oriented activities within the district.
Actually there was already some precedent for the district concept of port development. Portland was governed by port commissioners and had become one of the larger of the West Coast shipping centers.
Presumably Coos Bay had already organized a port district and even Siuslaw Port District had been formed and residents had already accepted a bond issue to finance an improvement program.
The legislature made the creation of a port district comparatively simple. To call an election leaders had only to secure the names of eight percent of the total number of votes cast for justice of the supreme court of Oregon within the boundaries of the proposed district in the last election. The election happened to have been held on June 1, 1908.
On March 9, 1910 a petition requesting formation of the Toledo Port District was carried to the county commissioners at the courthouse in Toledo.
It contained 46 signatures, including most of the town's business people and some citizens in outlying areas as well.
The records are not entirely clear but it seems that the port movement had been coordinated with leaders in Newport and Waldport at the same time. So after some delay in securing petitions from the other districts, county officials accepted all three areas and set May 5 for elections which citizens would vote on the port proposals.
County officers at the time were: Charles H. Gardner (1855-1920), judge and John Fogarty (1853-1922) and John Kentta, commissioners. Ira Wade (1875-1940) was county clerk and James H. Ross (1856-1935), sheriff.
The election on May 5 carried easily in all districts and the governor was asked to appoint the first commissioners.
This was done by May 26 and the very same day the new Port of Toledo commissioners met, elected officers, voted on organizational procedures and set some priorities for future projects.
Original commissioners were: William Scarth (1863-1956), president; J. F. Stewart, vice-president; A. T. Peterson, treasurer; Lee Wade (1866-1921), secretary, and William Clark Copeland (1845-1918), board member.
Among other business handled in that first Toledo meeting was the decision to push for a 14 feet deep channel from Toledo to deep water in the harbor, to start work on a float or dock on Depot Slough, dredge a channel in the slough to the Yaquina Bay Lumber Company mill located one mile west of Toledo, to hold all meetings on the second Wednesday of each month at 2:30pm; authorize Lee Wade and J. F. Stewart to go to Portland to talk to army engineers about a channel survey; approved borrowing $250 from the Lincoln County Bank to pay early bills and named the bank as depository for port funds.
It is interesting to note that port leaders in Toledo had definite objectives when they proposed establishing a port district. One of the most important, as stated at its first meeting, was to obtain a ship channel on the river from Toledo to the sea. The Toledo group never wavered from this goal over a period spanning at least 40 years during which it worked tirelessly but futilely to achieve and spent sizable sums of money in the effort.
The story of the Toledo port's quest for a ship channel is really the total story of the port for it was this single minded objective that spawned its formation in the first place and served as a long range goal for the men on its board down through the years.
Neither of the other two companion districts formed at the same time held any ambitious objective or sought to work such vital improvements for its community and its industry.

Newport officers named at the May 26 meeting were Royal A. Bensell (1838-1920), president, John A. Olsson, Edward P. Stocker (1858-1918), George King (1844-1916), and Thomas Leese. Although the port was formally organized, it had difficulty getting into operation. While Toledo was off and running from the first day, Newport could not get its commissioners together. June, July, August, September, October and November went by without a quorum being assembled and without a single official meeting being held. It was not until December 28, 1910 that a meeting was finally put together with enough commissioners present to conduct business.
First order of business was to vote a .5 mill tax on property within boundaries of the port, consisting then mostly of land lying within the city limits of Newport.
On June 30, Toledo’s president Scarth hurriedly called a special meeting. Already the port district was having to face some of the facts of life in municipal operation. It was going broke. Stewart and Wade had been to Portland to discuss port business with army engineers and submitted bills of $13.25 and $12.50 respectively to cover out-of-pocket expenses. E. J. Avery had submitted a bill of $18.75 for placing iron pipes on all transient corners of the district and engineer Eugene Schiller had a bill of $225 for surveying the district and for making soundings and platting for the port.
Commissioners quickly authorized the borrowing of another $250 from the bank to meet current expenses.
The commissioners initiated a program designed to cure its money problems which was to be continued for the next 30 years and one which kept it in a perpetual state of indebtedness during the same period. They authorized a bond issue totaling $25,000 at six percent interest, due and payable after 20 years.
Things moved slowly and by the time October rolled around no bonds had been sold and indeed they had not yet been offered on the money markets. On October 18, commissioners withdrew the resolution authorizing the $25,000 bond issue, then voted to increase the issue to $50,000. The interest and pay off schedules were to remain the same.
On November 10, 1910 commissioners accepted a bid of the S. A. Kean & Company of Chicago to buy the bonds, effective November 1, with repayment scheduled to be completed November 1, 1830.
Now with money in the bank, the newly formed commission moved rapidly to get some constructive improvement work underway. By January 11, 1911, members had drawn specifications for two small jetties on Depot Slough and a new barge to carry a dredge port officials proposed to buy. Advertising was published calling for bids on the work.
One thing and another went wrong. First bidders for the jetty job as well as the barge construction work proved too high. This meant the port rejected all of them.

Next the S. A. Kean Company defaulted on its plan to purchase the port's bonds and another buyer had to be found. This turned out to be the Charles S. Kidder Company, also of Chicago.
Finally in April 1911, the bond problem had been resolved and the port signed a contract with the Joseph Swearingen Company for the jetty work at $8,400, awarded Lambert Hoisting Company $8,873 for dredge equipment and contracted to have it installed for $933 by the Modern Improvement Company.
Port commissioners realized early that it would be advantageous to own property, especially on Depot Slough and adjacent to the main channel of the river in Toledo. Early in 1911 moves were initiated to acquire certain tracts.
At a meeting on April 28, commissioners established what they considered fair prices for 12 separate parcels, mostly located on Depot Slough. Members agreed to write letters to each property owner stating the port’s offer and at the same time declaring condemnation proceedings would be initiated against any owner refusing the cash offer.
J. F. Stewart and A. T. Peterson were named to contact property owners.
Among the property holders were Jacob Burkel, Elin Ofstedahl (1861-1933), Lee Wade, Gust Olson, Almon Taylor, Hooker & Payne, and Catherine Grady (1852-1937). The cash offer for lots ranged from $75 to $200.
Ms. Ofstedahl and Hooker & Payne were the first to accept the port’s proposition. Others accepted as time went on but one owner, Gust Olson, carried his case into court declaring three lots had been $425. The circuit court agreed with Olson, and awarded him $837 which the port paid. In addition, it paid Weatherford & Weatherford, Albany attorneys, $366.90 to carry the case in the courts.
By mid-summer of 1911, the new barge had been completed, the dredge equipment installed, and the port embarked on the experience of operating—and financing—a dredging project on the bay.
It was a unique experience, to say the least. Each of the port commissioners was a businessman himself and must have anticipated problems connected with the operation of a pseudo private enterprise. But apparently they didn’t, and soon the reality of life burst upon them like a fire storm.
The needs of an operating dredge were too numerous to detail. But it is suffice to say that every meeting for months brought new demands for materials, changes in crews, wood for the fire box and a hundred and one other requirements.
The first crew for the barge consisted of Claude Davies as leverman at $5 per day. E. W. Stanton, fireman, $3 per day and Robert V. Mann (1877-1945), deckhand and watchman, at $2.50 per day.
The commissioners now had a regular payroll to meet each month, in addition to maintenance costs, paying interest on bonded debt and attempting to finance the many other improvements needed in the district.
The big need was for money. In December 1911, the port had received from the county clerk an estimate that the assessed value of land in the port district totaled $1,300,000. Commissioners agreed to levy 2.5 mills on the dollar to meet the constantly rising bills of the port. As a small gesture of economy, it hired a new leverman for the barge at a rate of $4 per day. This was a savings of $1 per day under the rate formerly paid.
Despite efforts to keep things on an even keel, the crew of the barge was a constant source of problems. Port officials found one crewman "ballooning" time to get more hours and money. He was promptly fired but had to be replaced quickly to keep work progressing. It was found that crewmen were keeping liquor on board the barge and were making regular visits to the caches for refreshments. The port had large signs printed prohibiting liquor and posted these on the barge.
The liquor may have had something to do with it though it was never admitted but on several occasions that the port paid damages the barge had done to private houseboats in the area. Damages to houseboats were not the only problems. The dredge itself apparently suffered in these encounters as well. It wasn't long before it became apparent that a dry dock would have to be built so the dredge could be pulled from the water for repairs to its hull.
Community leaders who created the port district in 1910 obviously and sincerely hoped to generate new life into the economic future of the Yaquina Bay region. They envisioned the development of ocean shipping of Lincoln County's abundant timber reserves to growing markets of the nation. They foresaw a booming spinoff in the establishment of new sawmills and lumber camps with hundreds of men on payrolls and new homes for families and new businesses to serve these people.
The district fell considerably short of achieving all of these goals immediately. But at the same time the mere activity of founding a new port and setting into motion projects such as channel dredging and improving dockage facilities at Toledo and elsewhere on the bay spawned all kinds of aspirations in the minds of people.
It wasn’t long before hopeful entrepreneurs revealed plans to take advantage of the impending boom. Numerous requests came to the port for land on which to establish small businesses. McCaulou & Gildersleeve asked to lease lots five and six owned by the port on which to locate a manufacturing firm, and Montgomery & Gill wanted space to locate a shipyard for construction of a steam schooner. The ship would be used in the lumber trade, have a capacity of around 500,000 board feet and cost between $70,000 and $80,000 to build. The Toledo Cooperative Creamery Association (a group of local dairymen) proposed to build a collection and processing plant on the Port dock. The port agreed to lease the dairymen waterfront property at a rate of five percent per month for a period of 20 years.
Events were now moving rapidly in the bay country. Hopes rose and ebbed on decisions of the Corps of Engineers and members of the port commission grasped at every opportunity to build the economy of the district.
In October 1913, the Corps' dredge Oregon arrived in Toledo and launched some minor channel work. The district obligated itself to payment of 60 percent of the cost of a $37,430 project. Engineers picked up the tab for the remainder.
Their lack of money was a constant bugaboo for the Port. It had itself so obligated In bonding and interest payments that there was no money left for day to day operations. On October 20, 1913, the port agreed to assess an additional 2.5 mills on property in the district to pay interest on bonds and another .05 mil was levied to build a reserve to pay off the bonds as they came due. Assessed valuation within the port district now stood at $1,382, 380.
It was early in 1913, too, that the first change came in makeup of the board since the inspection of the port in 1910. The name of newspaper publisher and vice-president J. F. Stewart was dropped from the board February 12, never to appear again. N. F. Nulton was immediately named as a replacement. But the appointment lasted only one month. In March the name of Charles R. Hoevet, manager of the Wheeler Lumber Mill, replaced Nulton as a boardman.
Port minutes give no hint of the obvious disagreements which were taking place on the board. But the breach was complete. The port immediately moved its offices from Stewart's print shop to the Schenk & Wade Building
At least two other resignations of boardmen were accepted during that summer as well, and new appointments made to fill out unexpired terms.
Early in 1914, the steam schooner Bandon pulled into the harbor at Newport and asked for a pilot to bring it up river to Toledo to load lumber. It had been the first vessel of this type to venture upstream in a long while and citizens saw it as a break brought in the Yaquina Bay shipping picture. The port hired R. A. Anderson as pilot at $10 per trip and to keep him busy, He was also given some work setting up ranges in the navigation channel. By August 12, he had made three trips as pilot on schooners and most of the ranges had been completed.
By late 1916, the port finally came to the point of admitting that its dredge operation simply was not working. The dredge from the very start had been a heavy financial drain on the port and its accomplishments certainly minimal. On August 23, the port passed a resolution to sell the dredge to the Umpqua Improvement Company for $5,500. It would be many per day before any commissioner brought up a proposal for the port to get into the dredging business again.

By the autumn of 1916—six full years after creation of the ports of Toledo and Newport—commissioners finally agreed that neither port was financially able to achieve all the improvements needed on the river, in the harbor and on the bar alone. Indeed both ports were up to their necks in bonded indebtedness, neither was making much progress, and both had already obligated itself to its legal financial limits.
It was obvious that more taxable area had to be brought into the port districts. As a matter of fact, boundaries of the two ports had never been clearly defined but generally were limited to the environs of the city proper. Toledo had gone some beyond its boundaries in creating its district but Newport had designated only the area of the city itself as port territory.
Apparently the idea of enlarging the ports was born in Toledo and relayed to Newport as a suggestion. It was pointed out that the two cities had gone to their legal limits in financing the ports and while they had done a good job the problem was really a county one. Port improvements would help the entire county and for this reason the entire county, at least that portion laying north of Alsea River, should share the cost of these developments.

Combined, the assessed valuation of the Toledo and Newport ports was $2,483,488. Land areas lying outside the port districts had at that time an assessed value of $6,227, 549. The picture was clear. To secure more tax monies for port improvements it would be necessary to bring the unappropriated lands into the port districts.
The first combined meeting of the ports was called for Toledo on November 8, 1916. Oscar F. Jacobson (1864-1935) and B. F. Jones of the Port of Newport came while representing Toledo on the committee were Port members A. T. Peterson, Lee Wade and citizen Walter E. Ball (1864-1969).
Results of that first meeting were the agreements to increase the size of the ports to include all the county lying north of Alsea River, planning of a campaign to sell the proposal to the public, circulation of petitions for the required number of signatures of voters and asking the county court to set a date and call a special election.
Other meetings followed. For instance, on April 3, 1917 at a meeting in Newport, committee men agreed to a special election to establish boundaries, that the ports share the cost of bar improvements equally and that local harbor improvements should be borne by each port individually. Strangely nothing was said about sharing the cost of channel deepening on the river. F. R. Wishart and Lee Wade signed for Toledo and O. F. Jacobson and Thomas Leese for Newport.
An event in national history was developing which now spurred local port officials to greater efforts to get work underway. Some watched events in Europe and were convinced that eventually the US would be embroiled in the war going on there. They foresaw tremendous demands for lumber from forests of the Northwest and wanted desperately to be ready to supply it.
Congress declared war on Germany April 5, 1917. The die was cast, the ports must move now—and fast.
In May, the ports agreed to bond themselves for $209,000 each or half the estimated cost of $836,000 which engineers said would be necessary to deepen the bar to 20 feet and make improvements on the jetties and channel.
The problem was ponderous and Washington DC moved like molasses on a zero morning. Already the nation was in war and the need for Oregon's timber growing. Port officials decided on a strategy to shake the by project loose. They sent letters to Oregon’s representatives and senators telling them of the willingness of local people to bond themselves to get the harbor work underway and urged the government to start work, using local money, until Congress could appropriate its share of the funds. At least, in this way, they pointed out, they would be helping the war effort.
The maneuver did not work. Government attorneys informed Oregon's legislators that the Corps of Engineers could not legally start projects nor spend money not yet approved by Congress.
As a result, the two local ports withdrew their bonds from the market for the time being, but emphasized they wanted engineering studies continued.
In September, the secretary of war suddenly and unexpectedly approved a permit for harbor work on the Yaquina. Immediately, following a rash of special meetings, the joint Toledo-Newport committee petitioned col. George A. Zinn of the division engineer office to release C. R. Wright, a corps engineer located at this time in Idaho, and assign him to Yaquina Bay. The ports agreed to pay him $200 per month and pledged to put up $75,000 in bonds each to finance early work in the now apparently assured by improvement program.
Despite hopeful signs for harbor improvements and new economic activity locally, the financial picture of both ports was anything but bright. Both were bonded heavily and little income was being generated.
For instance, the budget for Toledo Port for 1918 revealed that expenses for the year would run over $10,000, mostly interest on bonds. Anticipated income from port business was estimated at a mere $276.
The commission did what most public agencies do when they find themselves wanting for cash—it added another 2.5 mills to the tax rolls to balance the budget and went on to other business.
Few paid much attention to costs now for things were moving at a dizzy, pall-mall pace in the Yaquina country.
In November 1917, Keeler Brothers of Portland bought $418 in bonds from the ports of Toledo and Newport at six percent interest with the understanding the firm would furnish all printed bonds free and the money as needed. Ironically a few days after local port officials awarded the bonds to the Portland firm, an offer arrived by mail from Chicago to buy at five percent. But the deal had already been signed.

On January 5, 1918 at Toledo the Miami Quarry Company of Portland was awarded the job of building the South Jetty.
On May 21, Warren Spruce Company asked the board to grant permits to build railroad bridges across Depot Slough to join Southern Pacific and the Toledo-Siletz Railroad.
On June 27, the port voted to purchase a 65 acre tract lying across the slough from the city and owned by A. T. Peterson and W. E. Ball at $250 an acre. Total cost was $16,250. On June 29, it was revealed publicly that the government planned to build a huge sawmill in Toledo on the tract the port had purchased two days before. A Maj. Hickock carried on negotiations for the government and apparently drove a hard bargain. For instance he received agreement from the port to lease the entire 65 acres to the government for $100 per year with an option to purchase the entire tract at anytime in the future for a mere $50.
Slowly details of the government's plans for the new sawmill filtered out to the public. The government, preparing for what might be a long war in Europe, intended to construct a huge sawmill on the Yaquina to supply spruce timber for the manufacturing of military aircraft. It would be the largest spruce sawmill in the world, designed to meet the requirements of the military's new air force and those of our European allies as well.
Creating industry and new jobs was costing everybody money but community leaders justified the expenses on the basis that industry and jobs and new people would repay the cost many times over. It would be, they reasoned, the springboard that would vitalize the economy of the region and send it zooming into a dazzlingly prosperous future.
Even the City of Toledo was having troubles keeping up with events. On August 24, attorney George B. McCluskey (1879-1968) appeared at a port meeting seeking money to install a new water system. He pointed out that the city could sell bonds but this would require considerable time in touching all legal bases. And since the water was needed to supply the new spruce sawmill time was at a premium.
Port officials agreed that this was no time to let technicalities slow things down. In time the port reached into its own reserve funds and loaned the city $50,000 at six percent interest.
The rush of events continued through the autumn of 1918 and winter and spring of 1919 for member the Port of Toledo. On September 17, the port leased a lot on the port dock to Toledo Creamery for five years at $5 per month. November 22, the port sold $90,000 in bonds for harbor improvements; December 12, it deeded 65 acres to US Spruce Production Corporation, dating the deed back to July 1, and it hired an engineer to survey for a railroad from the Toledo-Siletz Railroad to the head of tidewater on Siletz River.
In January 1919, the Toledo-Newport joint committee pressed district army engineers for channel dredging from Toledo to Oysterville, in April negotiated with engineers on North Jetty work, suggested that the federal government hire engineer C. R. Wright and raise his salary by $100 per month.
work progressed on the South Jetty project at what appeared to be a satisfactory rate during the summer of 1919, rumors of an impending crisis began making the rounds. Following a joint meeting of the ports November 8, it was revealed that the Miami Quarry Company, prime contractor on the jetty job, was bankrupt and was being forced to halt work.
These were perilous times for bay proponents. The great was in Europe was over and the pressure to secure spruce for construction of airplanes had virtually collapsed. Now the prime contractor on the important jetty project was declaring himself over extended and the creditors would no longer lend him money to carry on the operation.
Many feared the Army Corps of Engineers would, under the circumstances, throw up its hands, write Yaquina Bay off and revert to prewar status. They viewed this as a calamity in the making.
Port officials quickly launched programs to avert such events. A mass meeting of citizens was scheduled for 1pm on November 15, at the Newport City Hall to discuss the problem and alternatives.
In the end both ports agreed there was nothing left to do if they hoped to save the project but to take over the materials and equipment and the Miami firm and continue the work themselves. It seemed a hazardous gamble for local citizens but there seemed no alternative. Port officials agreed to pay Miami $50,000 for tangible assets and permit them to continue on the job under Port supervision, while the ports sought new contractors.
One of the first actions of the joint ports was to insure the continued services of its engineer, C. R. Wright. They gave him a $50 raise, hiking his salary to $250 per month.

Although the war was over, jetty work was progressing as well as might be expected and many of the pressures had been lifted from the shoulders of commissioners of the ports of Toledo and Newport.
It was time to give a bit more attention to internal affairs within the respective ports.
At Toledo, despite the hubbub and prosperity created by the construction of the big spruce plant, it was recognized that little had been accomplished In bolstering the long range timber production of the area. The big mill, fully equipped and spanking new, stood idle and there were rumors that the government was dickering to sell the property to private firms.
On March 20, 1920, port officials pointed out in a resolution that large sums of money had been and were being spent to improve the harbor, yet most of the timber reserves of the area lay locked in the inaccessible Siletz Basin. A mere 20 mile stretch of rail from Toledo would open this timber. No private firms had stepped forward offering to build such a railroad though several syndicates had expressed interest in locating in the area if such a railroad existed.
In February 1920, the port approved the formation of the Lincoln County Drainage District Number 1, including a dam and dykes on Depot Slough as a means of reclaiming 400 acres of prime bottom land owned by some 20 citizens so it could be put into agriculture production.
In the autumn of 1920, the port sold $130,000 more in bonds to carry its share of the harbor work as agreed, the Newport port did the same.
In March, the port purchased a tract of waterfront property for $1,700 lying between the Ellsworth Hotel and city docks (known as the old bakery property) to add to its small holdings on the slough. The old bakery building was razed and the port agreed to spend upward to $10,000 improving the city dock if the city would turn ownership over to the port. The city agreed.
As an additional improvement, the port asked Southern Pacific to run a spur line in on the dock and install switches. This was agreeable to Southern Pacific providing the port furnished the steel rails.
But once again the port had to raise money. It had stashed away $5,000 in a wartime Liberty Bond and this was cashed. Later, members voted to borrow $10,000 at eight percent interest to pay debts not covered by taxes coming up at the end of the year.
Indications that something was stirring in government plans for the idle spruce mill came in January 1921 when the port was offered $16,250 for the property it earlier had turned over to the US Spruce Production Corporation. The port accepted the offer.
In October 1921, port officials paused to take a look at their finances. They found that the combined ports had outstanding indebtedness of $432,000 which was costing $23,460 per year in interest.
Despite the improvements on the harbor, opening it to the largest ships sailing the Pacific, no great surge of activity developed on the bay. This not only puzzled port officials in both Toledo and Newport, but did great injury to their pride as well.
Nettled, perhaps, and feeling that the answer to the lack of interest in the shipping industry's attitude toward Yaquina Bay, might be corrected by more aggressive action on the part of the ports themselves, the Port of Toledo in mid-1921 launched a program to plunge headlong into the shipping business.
Commissioners authorized the sale of bonds up to $80,000 at six percent interest (if needed) and let the word out that the port was in the market for a lumber steamer. Nearly immediately a W. R. Buoy contacted the port with the proposition that he would lease and operate the steamer if the port purchased one.
A number of possibilities developed rather quickly. The port had representatives of the American Bureau of Shipping to evaluate the San Jacinto, the Nehalem and finally the 152 feet Pioneer in Honolulu. One delay followed another, however, and as time went on, commissioners cooled to the idea of becoming lumber shippers. The post-war recession of 1921, no doubt, affected their judgment as well.
Port commissioners at Toledo knew now, more than ever, that despite all development in the harbor and on the Yaquina Bar, none of this would be fruitful to the development of the county's interior timber industry unless the river channel was improved. From the very start, of course, even while supporting and helping finance harbor improvements, Toledo had beaten the drums for more river maintenance.
It was generally agreed that what was needed was a minimum of a 16 feet (at low water) between Toledo and Newport, 200 feet wide in the straight always and 250 feet wide on the curves. Indeed these had been the specifications of experienced port officials for many years.
Early in 1922, the port sent W. E. Ball to Portland to discuss the matter with the army engineers. He returned to report that the engineers were favorable to the project but wanted assurance that the port was willing and able to finance its share of the cost.
Members of the port were determined that something be done. Local lumber industry leaders as well as East Lincoln County business people were demanding action. Port officials discussed once again buying a dredge but remembering the sad experience in that field a few years earlier, soon dropped the idea.
They also discussed contracting the work as a private project. But this idea was rejected also. Performing the work without the help of the army engineers would be entirely too costly for the limited resources of the local ports.
So in the end the port decided to keep pressure on the engineers and await developments as they came. But to be in a position of moving quickly in event the engineers did go ahead on the project, the Toledo port approved a plan to assess $100,000 in bonds against property in the district.
Rumors that the army engineers might at last look favorably on construction of the ship channel from Toledo to the sea, stirred the imagination of local residents and business people. They stood solidly behind port officials and offered total support.
The same situation was to be repeated many times in the years that lay ahead. Often the public, caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment, demanded that port officials pressure government agencies in an effort to gain their objectives. Many failed to realize that port members actually were working constantly on the channel program and were knowledgeable about the workings of the engineers and other agencies.
But this was one of the early waves of public enthusiasm for the project and both port officials and citizens were caught up in the excitement.
In an effort to cover all bases in preparing for the influx of business the channel improvement program was expected to bring, port commissioners developed the most extensive rate schedule yet devised to cover shipping over its docks and in its storage sheds.
A wide variety of merchandise was listed: asphalt, cement, brick, coal, automobiles, canned fish, flour, livestock, such as bulls, cows, horses dogs, goats, hogs and sheep, paper, piling, wood shingles and wool. Charges would be by the ton, or by the head as in the case of livestock, by the 1,000 board feet in lumber, or by the barrel for gasoline and oil.
To further cover the field and put the operation on a business basis, R. A. Anderson was retained as dockmaster. He would earn 25 percent of the first $100 in business each month and 15 percent of each $100 of business done thereafter in the same month. A complete accounting was to be given commissioners at the end of each month.
And because shortly both ports—Toledo and Newport—would take their places as viable shipping centers on the Oregon Coast, port officials decided they needed to become members of the recently organized Pacific Coast Association of Ports. Membership was $5 per year. Toledo and Newport joined as the Joint Ports of Toledo and Newport at an assessment of $2.50 each.
The year passed quickly and despite high hopes of the community for the development of ocean shipping, little really happened. The port busied itself with other matters. In February 1923, it hired Warren R. Hall (1877-1937) at $10 per day to produce right-of-way for the proposed railroad into the Siletz country.
In May $65,000 in Port of Toledo Gold Bonds Series "G" issued in 1920, came due but the port had no money with which to claim them. Its only alternatives was to refinance—issue Refunding Bonds, it was called—for the full sum of $65,000 at six percent interest payable between 1931 and 1937. The Lincoln County Bank bought them, taking the port off the hook.

Soon another year had slipped by and still no work had been completed on the channel.
During 1924, state political leaders began to interest themselves in port development, and in January 1925, Gov. Walter M. Pierce (1923-1927) called a meeting in Portland of coastal citizens to study harbor development. Toledo sent its president James Wiley Parrish (1857-1927). Records do not reveal what was accomplished, but obviously little since no additional sessions wee ever scheduled.
In the summer of 1925, the port again petitioned the Corps of Engineers for channel improvements on the river. Apparently little interest was shown by engineers and it was not until April 1927 that the subject flared up again.
Reason for the renewed activity was a rumor that Maj. R. T. Coiner, head of the Portland District Corps of Army Engineers office, was to be transferred. Local port officials had been working closely with Coiner for several years. He was familiar with the Yaquina and sympathetic as well, commissioners believed.
It was at a port meeting on April 4 that commissioners first heard of the proposed transfer and this information came from a man whose name was Dean Johnson. It was the first mention in port records of the Johnsons who earlier had taken control of the big sawmill from the government. The family was to become important members of the community and to operate the plant continuously until the early 1950s when it was sold to Georgia-Pacific Corporation.
In any event, the Johnsons also wanted the river channel maintained so they would have another outlet to markets for their lumber in addition to the railroad.
The future of the railroad was anything but bright. There had been persistent rumors for years that Southern Pacific would like to abandon its line over the coastal hills between Albany and Toledo. Indeed it already had turned its back on the Toledo-Yaquina City section, had torn up the rails and let the property revert to the county.
As a result of the April 4 meeting, the port agreed that D. L. Peterson, an employee of the Johnson mill, should go to Portland and talk to Maj. Coiner about all phases of the Yaquina development. They felt that a new voice representing industrial interests on the bay might be more effective.
He appeared at a port meeting on April 20, full of confidence and enthusiasm, to report he had conferred with the engineers and they stood ready to start work on both the river channel and the bay in May. He confidently advised port officials in Toledo and Newport to have money ready for their share of the coast.
The summer came and went but the engineers never showed up. In December, the Toledo port directed Peterson to return to Portland and again talk to the engineers.
Up to this time and for several years in the past, Toledo had been financing all expenses for the Portland contacts relative to harbor work and upon Peterson's return, Newport commissioners were invited to share the information as well as the cost of the trips. Newport agreed to help and wrote a check for $25. Peterson had submitted bills for a total of $251.
Peterson told port officials that army engineers had been dragging their feet on the Yaquina projects because they were not convinced the work would benefit other areas of the state.
Nothing was done at the December meeting but Toledo port officials evidently got to thinking over Peterson’s information and decided to take the bull by the horns. January 11, 1928 they voted $300 toward getting support for the harbor projects from other communities of the state, and voted $200 to attorney C. L. Starr, Portland, to assemble information and prepare for a trip to Washington DC.
Starr, after some investigation, told port officials that the Yaquina projects were bottled up in committees in Congress and it would take a great deal of effort and politicking to shake them out of committee. The port was desperate. Members offered again to finance representatives to Washington DC and indeed sent Peterson back to Portland for the umpteenth time to confer with army engineers on strategy.
While the port project lay in limbo for the immediate future, commissioners busied themselves with other matters. For instance, it was at the February 1928 meeting that first mention was made of a state plan to construct a bridge across the Bay at Newport on Roosevelt Military Highway.
At the outset, the port approved the project and wrote a letter supporting it. Later, at the request of Newport interests, the approval was rescinded pending more definitive information on the location and construction of the bridge. It was not until June that port officials in both Toledo and Newport were satisfied with the state's engineering and gave official approval. Greatest concern naturally was that the proposed bridge would not hamper or obstruct any present or future navigation on the bay and river.
Fully a year later, and presumably in concert with the Port of Newport although this is not made clear in the minutes, Toledo again objected to new bridge plans since the state had not provided for anticipated growth of water commerce. Evidently these differences with highway engineers were ironed out satisfactorily for the problem was never again mentioned.
In May 1928, the Toledo port received an offer from John L. Thomas (1851-1925) to rent land on which the Lincoln County Farmers Cooperative building was located. The co-op had gone bankrupt and Thomas wanted to set up a feel mill and farmer's store in the building. He explained that because of our climate, many nutrients were missing from local pastures. He proposed to supply these nutrients to farmers, and especially dairymen, in a feed product he named Home Brew. Twenty-four farmers of the area had signed a petition backing Thomas’ venture and the port rented the ground to him for $5 per month.
By autumn, the port began once again to busy itself with the river and harbor. In November, it voted $150 to D. L. Peterson to pay the cost of his visiting cities and community groups in the adjacent valley to get support for the Yaquina improvements project.
Local port proponents at about this time began to reevaluate their approach to the harbor program. The jetty and bar improvements of the early 1920s had not materially increased shipping from the region. And Newport's plan to acquire the North Bank Railroad from Yaquina City to Otter Rock, then the lumber would have to come from the production facilities already located in the upper bay.

And again Toledo proponents pointed out this would require improvements on the river channel to Toledo. Interests in the upper bay had always looked upon any improvement program on the Yaquina as including river projects. But things had not worked out this way. Lower bay interests had an allegiance to harbor and bar projects and believed them to be of paramount importance. The US Army Corps of Engineers apparently held the same attitudes for all money allocated to the Yaquina region was nearly always earmarked for lower bay programs.

The Toledo group, while supporting harbor and bar projects down through the years with moral land financial help, nonetheless found itself nearly single-handedly carrying on a lonely fight to get any river improvements.
Time and again when representatives went to Portland to discuss the matter with army engineers, the answer was that no funds existed, or that the engineers were ready to start work and awaited only the share of money to be supplied by the ports.
From time to time dark mutterings were heard from upstate that Portland's powerful politicians did not intend to let any other port challenge Columbia River's dominance in shipping. This could never be proved, of course, and the charge was never expressed as an official complaint. But it was widely and honestly believed by many community leaders on the Oregon Coast.
For one of these reasons or another channel work never seemed to get started. It is small wonder that port commissioners were often driven to the point of considering buying their own dredge to do the work they hoped the army engineers would and should do. They knew the hazards of this program since early in the history of the port, a dredge had been built and operated for a period of nearly six years without yielding a single day of productive work and at a cost which nearly bankrupted the then new district.
The reply was understandably a bit sharp and laced with sarcasm when the Toledo commissioners responded to a representative from Newport in mid-1929 asking cooperation in sharing expenses on a dredge the downriver district planned to buy. The Newport commissioner was told that it would be a waste of money to spend on dredging at Toledo until channel work was done. He was told, however, that Toledo wanted a joint meeting with Newport to discuss a new application to the army engineers for extensions of the jetties.
At its January 20, 1930 meeting Toledo voted to finance attorney C. L. Starr, Portland, at $2,200 salary plus expenses to go to Washington DC to appear before army engineers in behalf of Yaquina projects. On February 5, not only Starr, but Bert Geer, president of the Toledo commission, and R. H. Chapler, US forester, appeared in Washington and presented the "Yaquina story" to the engineers.
Starr and Geer were at the commission meeting in Toledo on February 20 to report on the Washington hearing. The board president told commissioners he held little hope for early success on the river channel project, but at least, he declared, the door had been opened, even if only slightly.
The Depression era dragged on but hopes of local people for the development of a busy Pacific Coast port on the Yaquina never faltered. Despite the fact that the federal government was spending vast sums of money on a wide range of public works projects across the nation, none of them was being allocated for the Yaquina.
In mid-1930 while the army engineers still spurned the river deepening program, Toledo port officials again probed the feasibility of buying and operating their own dredge on the river. Some went to Longview to look at the dredge Kentucky but the plan was eventually rejected.
At this juncture, one of the port's own commissioners, O. R. Altree, offered to build a dredge for the port for $37,950 providing a specific type of diesel engine was available. Despite the fact that port dredges had a history of failure, the plan now appealed to many people. It seemed the only way that anything would ever be done. The port voted to pay Altree's expenses to Seattle to search for the diesel engine he wanted.
In preparation for the river project, the port approved a budget in the autumn for the upcoming year of 1831 of a walloping $55,610. In addition, it created a new river improvement fund and hired Portland attorney John N. Pipes at $1500 per year to get whatever help for the project that could be wrangled from the army engineers. The port also authorized issuing $25,000 in River Improvement Bonds repayable January 1936 at five percent interest.
On December 26, Altree's dredge building plans hit a snag. He had brought his specifications and drawings to the port meeting and commissioners approved them. But the vote was not unanimous. Two commissioners abstained from voting, contending that while they had faith in Altree's ability, they felt nonetheless that because they were handling public money the port should have the plans approved by a qualified registered engineer and the entire project cleared by an attorney.
The proposal generated considerable heat in the meeting and later among business people around town who know of the incident. Some sided with the two commissioners who wanted safeguards imposed on commissioners’ plans and some backed Altree.
Altree himself fumed. He wrote a letter to the port, declaring he did not object to an engineer checking his plans but insisted that the engineer should come to Toledo where questions could be answered readily and discussions could be held between him and the engineer.
He also declared that he had $700 invested in the work and expected to be paid. The port countered by agreeing to pay him $500 for his plans if he did not win the bid to construct the dredge and $300 if his bid was acceptable. They called for a bid opening on the dredge and on sale of $25,000 Improvement Bonds on February 6, 1931.
The state was the only bidder on the improvement bonds and the port accepted. Altree's bid at $43,847.65 was the only one on the dredge construction. Commissioners wanted time to consider matters before awarding the work.
Evidently Altree took this to mean commissioners were rejecting his bid and he resigned from the port immediately. Port officials named Cassius H. Bogert to the commission. At a special meeting on February 11, members formally accepted Altree's bid for the project.
Port minutes are vague and shed no light on the final disposition of Altree's home-built dredge. Apparently nothing was ever started and in time the entire matter was forgotten.
By mid-summer 1931, citizen groups and port officials were once again laying siege at the door of the army engineers for a 16 feet channel from Toledo to the sea.
The new movement got underway at the June 10 meeting when a group of Toledo business people and citizens brought a petition to the meeting asking for channel deepening. They pointed out that the area was not sharing in the growth of the state because of lack of water transportation. There was much unemployment, they said, and many vacant homes and abandoned ranches because people wee leaving the area. A box factory and pulp mill had expressed interest in locating in Toledo but had been forced to look elsewhere because of a lack of water transportation, the business people complained.
A Committee consisting of A. T. Peterson, B. F. Updike (1888-1956) and Guy Roberts was named to go to Portland to tell engineers that the community stood ready to pay half the cost of the river deepening project and to urge that it be started immediately.
By late summer, however, the corps filed an adverse report on the river project. Immediately the business community rose in arms demanding a reversal. Peter Frederick (1863-1938), grocer and president of the Toledo Chamber of Commerce, urged the port to send a representative again to Washington DC to plead the case and ask for a change in corps recommendations.
Port commissioners pointed out that this would prove unproductive and urged that the river deepening project be made a part of larger harbor development on the entire bay. While it would take longer, they said, it was more natural and would receive more favorable attention.
But the chamber was insistent. In the end, the chamber sent attorney W. H. Waterbury to Washington, paying a large share of his expense. It did little good and the attorney returned empty handed.
The port kept pressure on the Portland Division of Engineers and late in 1931 when Washington announced a new massive, nationwide public works program, it sent members on several occasions to Portland to discuss the Yaquina program.
Engineers turned deaf ears on the river project but did approve in 1933 and 1934 projects to lengthen the north and south jetties. Toledo helped in getting these projects underway, carrying its share of the financial load and supporting the work from the start.
But the depression years had begun to effect port operations. In May 1932, the port learned that the Toledo Box Company had closed its doors. In August of the same year, the port passed an emergency ordinance to sell $1500 in bonds to finance dredging Depot Slough. Shallow water in the slough was adversely affecting the creamery company's and other operations in the area. There was only one bidder for the bonds, a local man, Paul Zedwick, who advanced the money. As if to protect his investment, and perhaps as a part of the deal, he was named to the commission and served until the $1,500 was repaid.
On January 1, 1933 notes and bonds totaling $11,065 came due but the port had no money to meet the debts. In the end the local bank loaned cash to pull the port out of the hole.
In April, the port issued $10,000 in bonds to pay debts due but found no takers on the first advertising. The state of Oregon stepped in on the second offer and bailed the port out of its financial squeeze.
Early in 1934, J. T. Mahoney of Siletz appeared before the port with a proposal that it buy for $10,000 property in the Siletz area for an airport. Once the property was acquired by the port, the government would then construct the airport and put it into operation, he explained.
But port officials were wary of bond issues and called a public hearing on February 24 to probe the wishes of citizens. A large delegation turned out and the sentiment was unmistakable. People simply did not want to finance an airport from public funds. The vote was nearly 100 percent against the proposal. In April, the port had issued $5,000 in refund bonds to meet obligations which had come due and again the state stepped in to bail it out.
Indebtedness of the sport at this time was $109,086 on an assessed value of property of $4,077,198. Practically the entire indebtedness had been built up paying the Toledo port's share of improvements in the lower bay.
An indication of the temper of the commissioners and the toughness of the times is seen in an action taken at the April 11, 1934 meeting. Because the port office was never used at night, and it had to pay $1 minimum fee per month for electrical service, commissioners voted to have West Coast Power Company remove the only light in the port office. It meant a savings of $12 per year.
Despite the lack of success over the years in convincing army engineers to dredge a deeper channel in the river between Newport and Toledo, commissioners were still firm in their beliefs as late as 1939 and the early 1940s that lumber ships would come upriver to take on ocean cargoes. It had been a dream of Toledo business leaders for years and it was hard to shake the concept.
In the 1930s, C. H. Bogert, Toledo businessman and lumberman, had been appointed to the port. He became a leader in the drive to bring ships upriver. At the May 10, 1939 meeting he reported enthusiastically to the port that he had arranged with the Shafer Brothers shipping firm to send a vessel to Toledo to load out 500,000 board feet of lumber from the local docks. He further reported that Shafer had indicated it would set up a buying agency in Toledo to handle future lumber sales and shipments.
To Toledo port officials this seemed a breakthrough in the shipping picture. For years Toledo had produced practically all local cargo for ocean transit. Yet productive, large scale shipping out of Yaquina had failed to materialize.
Toledo had also shouldered its share of the costs of developing the lower bay, the turning basin, the bar and the jetties over the years until its tax burden was extremely high.
None of the federal money had been spent by army engineers in improving navigation on the river.
One cannot honestly say that interests in the Newport area opposed river development, but over the years little encouragement had been noted and, of course, residents of that port district were never called upon to help finance channel projects. At the same time upriver residents, knowing that success in river transport depended on adequate bar and jetty development, bonded themselves to the hilt to help pay for Newport area projects.
Bogert's work in contacting and getting commitments for shipping out of Toledo served as a shot in the arm for local business/men and lumbermen. Hopes for a future in ocean shipping soared once again to new heights.
In the autumn of 1939, the port passed and sent to Washington a resolution calling for an 18 feet channel at low water from the harbor entrance to half a mile up stream above Toledo and a turning basin in the vicinity of Depot Slough.
It also directed Bogert to contact Olsen Boat Company in an effort to get a ship to Toledo for the C. D. Johnson account alone if other business could not be secured at this time. Arrangements were made for Frank V. Wade (1896-1967) and his tug to serve as pilot for visiting ships.
Dean Johnson appeared at a port meeting in the autumn to urge the commissioners to lend their support in a renewed effort to get the jetties extended, the bar deepened and the turning basin in Newport improved.
With momentum not seen in recent years, port officials pressed for action from the US Corps of Engineers and Congress.
At the March 1940 meeting a resolution was passed which declared:

• The port would employ John C. Kendall, Portland, to represent Toledo in Washington before a hearing of US army engineers. Cost $1,500.
• Employ Gust Carlson for $250 to make a Yaquina Bay Resource Survey and traffic and rate analysis for the Washington hearing.
• Named commissioners C. H. Bogert and Harold Farrington to appear at the Washington hearing, representing Toledo.

Total cost of the project was estimated at $5,000. Commissioners debated expenditure of the funds. But sniffing success finally for river development, a group of citizen business people appeared at the May 8 meeting and urged the port to follow through with its program. Among those backing the expenditure at that meeting were attorney W. H. Waterbury, C. P. Moore, banker; Charles B. Crosno (1845-1917), insurance broker; F. M. Woodson, automobile dealer; F. M. Hellworth, physician; L. G. English, attorney; and Terrance W. Gaither (1899-1978), automobile dealer.
The port commission attacked the river development program from every possible angle. It hired people knowledgeable in the Washington bureaucracy to guide its program, it directed surveys to secure accurate data on shipping figures and potential and sent its own people to Washington to see that the port was served properly in the governmental jungle in the hearing rooms.
With usual foresight, it went even further. Long before the 1940 assault on Washington the port financed the activities of two of its members, Bogert and Farrington, to entice new business into the Yaquina country. These men ranged far and wide over the Northwest talking up the advantages of locating factories in the Yaquina Bay country.
They talked to sawmill operators, plywood makers, pulp manufacturers, shipping firms and specialty wood product plants. Their combined expenses often ran upward of $1,000 per month for months on end as they took time from their own businesses to pursue what many viewed as a "now or never" effort to break the shipping jinx on Yaquina Bay. In the entire effort Newport remained quietly in the background, offering no help and contributing no planning to the campaign.
But in the middle of all this Toledo and Newport got their heads together in June 1940 to host a two-day convention of the Northwest Rivers and Harbors Congress. Most of the activities of the convention were centered in Toledo although some of the field tours were conducted in Newport and both ports shared the costs of entertaining delegates.
Toledo sent representatives to Washington in 1940 and again in 1955 when port official Harold Farrington and lumberman L. G. McReynolds made the trip. The last Washington trip was made in 1962 when Toledo dispatched Farrington once again, accompanied by Terrance Gaither.
Despite all the effort over many years, success on Bay development obviously was only nominal.
On the river, the first maintenance work was completed in 1910 (the year the ports were formed) when engineers dredged 46,698 cubic yards in the channel. No other dredging was done until 1957.
On this project, 254,543 cubic yards of spoilage was taken from the channel at a cost of $94,054. It was at this time that the Toledo airstrip was created in the tide flats south of the city and considerable numbers of acres of tide flats along the river filled. Toledo's port financed the securing of spoil disposal sites. The influence of Georgia-Pacific Corporation was undoubtedly important in the 1957 project. Georgia-Pacific Corporation at this time was getting its big paper mill in Toledo into production.
Again in 1962 and in 1968 additional channel work was done in small and restricted areas.
Harbor work was carried on with vastly more consistency. South Jetty work started in 1887 when a 3,748 feet jetty was built. The project was finally completed in 1896. Additional work was done in 1919-1922, 1933-1934, and 1971-1972. In the 1919 project, Toledo and Newport financed the work themselves and placed 222,501 tons of stone on the South Jetty extension when the Miami Quarry Company went bankrupt. The engineers took over the work in 1921 and finished the project by adding another 13, 334 tons of rock.
Engineers between 1889-1896 built a North Jetty of 2,300 feet New extensions and maintenance were done on the North Jetty regularly over the years—1921-1925, 1933-1934, 1939-1940, 1956-1957, and 1964 and 1967.
So while the harbor benefited from fairly regular projects, the river channel remained the same or indeed deteriorated over the years from neglect.
By the 1950s Toledo's interest began to realize that a ship channel up the Yaquina was a hopeless cause. Vessels had become larger with vastly deeper drafts. The plan seemed no longer feasible or practical.
After WWII, a new development got into the picture which gave local residents hope for a renewal of Corps of Engineers interest in the river, however. At least, two shipping firms started experimenting on the West Coast with ocean barging of lumber. They were the Souse Brothers and the Oliver J. Olsen Company. Both firms were having moderate success with the experiment and indeed sent their huge war surplus shallow draft barges to the Cascadia Lumber Company and port of Toledo docks to take on cargoes on numerous occasions.
In addition, the Georgia-Pacific Corporation Paper Mill, first constructed in the mid 1950s, used oil at the outset to fire its pulp digesters and the firm was bringing in barges at least once a month carrying enormous gallonages of furnace oil.
The channel was in poor shape. But the US Army Corps of Engineers did respond to the need and the first maintenance work on the channel was done in years during this period. But the engineers turned a deaf ear to pleas for a deeper channel.
The last public hearing for the deep channel project was held at the Toledo City Hall on April 20, 1967. The port covered its ground well, spending months preparing its arguments favoring the channel project. There was no mention of a ship channel at this hearing. Now the emphasis was on an adequate barge channel. The specifications were essentially the same—18 feet channel, 100 feet wide.
Upshot of the entire hearing was that army engineers declared once again that the cost to benefit ratio did not justify the channel deepening project at that time. From the mid 1950s on, port interests slowly began to change direction. Port officials began directing their energies more to the development of projects affecting the public such as establishing boat launching ramps, moorages, and river cleanup programs. The port also turned its attention to acquiring available land on which dredge spoils might be dumped and where industry might eventually be located. In this area it purchased a tract of land from the city in 1973 adjoining the athletic field in Toledo and spent nearly $20,000 filling it so that it might be immediately usable for industrial use. It also purchased from a private owner in 1975 over 30 acres fronting the Bay south of the city usable for spoils disposal and industrial development.
To a lesser degree, the overriding interests of the Port of Newport also underwent changes during the same years.
Down through the years, a major interest of the port had been to develop ocean shipping. Because of this such projects as the jetties, the bar and inner harbor were of paramount importance to the district. It had far less interest in seeing a ship channel develop to Toledo. It's answer to proponents of the ship channel was that a railroad from Toledo to Newport would do the job more economically and efficiently.

Indeed as early as 1920 the Port of Newport attempted to buy a standard gauge spurline that ran from Yaquina City (then the railhead) to the east edge of the city and then turned north to Otter Rock. The development fell through when the community had trouble raising the $400,000 necessary to buy it and the sellers could not supply proper proof of ownership. Eventually the spurline as well as the mainline between Toledo and Yaquina City were torn up.
Prospects for ocean shipping flared brightest during the 1940s and 1950s. The harbor had had extensive improvements and considerable lumber moved out of the Bay. As a matter of fact, Newport's chamber of commerce touted the city as the "Lumber shipping capitol of the world." The title was later claimed by Coos Bay and it faded in Newport.
Commercial fishing was developing by leaps and bounds and following WWII, a recreational boom swept the nation. Yaquina Bay was a natural for both these activities. Port officials responded by developing extensive moorages for both commercial and private boats until today it is one of the most active on the Oregon Coast.
And the development goes on. The Port of Newport is now developing a huge 600 recreational boat moorage in South Beach. Because of past harbor improvement, it was possible for Oregon State University to set up its Marine Research Center on the bay.
So while Yaquina Bay has failed to meet the expectations of its early proponents as a major shipping center, it nonetheless is playing an important role in the economy of the region and Oregon. A creditable amount of ship and barge shipping, all lumber or logs, is generated in the county. In addition, recreational and commercial fishing interests have expanded beyond all concept of a few years ago.
Further than that, rail shipping into and out of the county is at an all time high, transporting products produced in Toledo's industrial plants. A paper mill manufactures upward to 1,500 tons of paper each day and its lumber and plywood mills produce vast tonnages of wood products, much of which is moved on the river by huge ponderous ocean-going barges.
Ocean shipping never quite attained the grandiose scale envisioned by past leaders of the Yaquina Bay country but commercial shipping today has far exceeded the goals predicted in the past. And it came from a combination of transport facilities. Ocean, yes, but also and perhaps more importantly by rail and highway as well.

After an illness of about a year, William Mackey (1941-1974), passed away at Saint Joseph's Hospital, Portland, at 6pm, Tuesday, May 22.
Mackey was born near Ottawa, Canada, August 10, 1841. He lingered about his place until he reached his majority.
On April 29, 1866, he married Teresa May McGrath. From this union came eight girls.
In 1863, Mackey and wife came to the US and located in the state of New York where they remained only a year.
In 1864, they came to Oregon by way of the Isthmus of Panama and located in Corvallis, Oregon.
The year 1865 found him still moving westward, this time homesteading across the bay from Toledo on the farm now owned and occupied by Nellie C. Harrison (1849-1939).
In 1866 the family came to Corvallis and a permanent home was established, and the task of converting the rough hillside and tideland into a profitable place of abode became his major enterprise. The cash compensation derived by the backwoods ranch in those pioneer days was not entirely in agreement with Mackey's requirements.
To supply this want he did considerable ox team walking. Thus, he was occupied until 1866 when his domestic friends in the convention in Corvallis nominated him for sheriff of Benton County.
Although pretty well isolated from that populace section of the county, and not generally known in some sections, he went into the campaign with his characteristic good nature and businesslike manner and won the election, and thereafter two reelections.

With the expiration of his third term, the gold excitement of the Upper Yukon attracted his attention and drew him to that locality. For several years he battled the elements common to life in the far north amidst the metropolitan population of the mines.
Upon his return to the states he engaged in the hop business for two years and retired from the business field and made his home with his several daughters.
Providence was unusually kind to William Mackey in that he was permitted to sojourn among us almost to the century mark with his unusual vitality and sunny disposition. He is survived by his daughters, Ms. Edward Owen of Independence, Ms. James J. Gaither (1861-1943) of Toledo, Ms. Frank Wadsworth and Ms. C. Bradley of Portland, Ms. Kate St. Clair of Moosejaw, Canada, and Ms. Edward McMasters of Astoria.
Funeral Services were held in Portland and internment will be held at noon today at Corvallis beside his wife and father.

Death claimed one of Lincoln County's oldest pioneers Wednesday morning, writing the final chapter in the life of James Jefferson Gaither, 81, who came West from Arkansas to this territory over 56 years ago.
Funeral services are to held here Friday afternoon at 2pm at the Mason Lodge with internment in Toledo Cemetery.

Born July 21, 1861 in Harrison, Arkansas, Judge Gaither came West in 1887 with his father, Beal Gaither, who became one of the first Indian agents for the new Siletz Reservation a few miles north of here. He later moved to Fort Simcoe1 on the Yakima Reservation and was employed in government services until 1902 when he returned to Toledo where he resided until the time of his passing.
He was married in 1891 at Corvallis to Nellie Mackey (1866-1958), first white child born on Yaquina Bay.
Gaither served as postmaster in Toledo for eight years and as county judge six years, retiring in 1838.
He was a chapter member of Yaquina Chapter Royal Arch Masons and a member of Lincoln Lodge 124 AF and AM of Toledo.
Beside his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Ms. Joel B. Booth of Corvallis, and a son, Terrance Gaither of Toledo. Two brothers, Elijah Gaither of Kalama, Washington and John of Chicago, Illinois, a sister, Ms. E. Graule of Kalama, Washington, and four grandchildren.
His death followed a long illness.

Del: These are impressive articles, Terrance. Your mother was the daughter of Toledo's co-settler and your dad was an Indian agent and county judge.
Terrance: I also served as Lincoln County judge in 1961 after Judge MacLaine passed away and Gov. Mark Hatfield appointed me county judge because he knew I wouldn’t run for the office and it was a term to fill out MacLaine’s unexpired one.
Del: Did you have any memorable experiences while you were judge?
Terrance: Well, I was primarily a juvenile judge, and the delinquents were the saddest part of the job.
Del: What were some of the cases?
Terrance: I can’t tell you specifically because of confidentiality, but they weren’t very nice. Most of them were the result of broken homes and child neglect.
Connie: Did you have to removed any children from their homes?
Terrance: Not too many. Social services tried to keep families in tact.
Del: I suppose you had to send some kids to reform school?
Terrance: Yes, a few went to McClaren.
Del: Did you have a rule book you went by? This crime is worth this punishment and that crime is worth that punishment?
Terrance: No, it was pretty much up to the juvenile judge. There was a juvenile director who would bring the cases to me. It was a Woman. I felt some of the kids needed more home supervision. Most of them were acting out do to their home environments. I used to counsel the parents a lot.
Connie: Did the home lives of these children ever change with the intervention of the Juvenile Department? Were you successfully able to counsel the parents?
Terrance: Not significantly. Parental neglect is at the core of juvenile delinquency.
Del: Do you remember they types of crimes the kids were committing?
Terrance: Mostly drinking under age, breaking and entering, and stealing.
Connie: Did you find it too painful to stand in judgment of others? That's how I would have felt.
Terrance: Yes, it was hard. There were sanity cases, too, which were not pleasant. Of course, they were easy, because in a sanity case you have three doctors and you go on their recommendation. If they recommend a person be sent away to a mental hospital you just take their recommendation at face value.
Connie: That seems rather severe. Did you ever dispute the doctors' decisions?
Terrance: No, never. I trusted them implicitly.
Del: Your dad was county judge for six years. I assume he liked his job. Did you like that kind of work?
Terrance: No, definitely not. I just filled in. I was still in the Ford business at the time. Hatfield and I were good friends, so I did it as a personal favor to him. I didn’t agree at first, because I really didn't have time, but he called me three or four times, and finally I accepted the position.
Del: How did you happen to get in the automobile dealership business?
Terrance: Well, I lived in California a few years, and then I entered Oregon State University in 1923. I graduated in 1929 with a degree in business administration. Peters Motor Company went broke and the First National Bank of Toledo owned the agency when he bought it. He owed a lot of money, so the bank took it over. I was working for Leo Goetz in Corvallis at the time, but I came over here to run Peters Motor Company for the bank.
Then the "bank holiday" hit in 1933 and the bank went broke! So I bought the agency from a liquidator corporation in 1934. I worked there until I sold out and retired.
Del: Let’s talk about some of the old-timers. Do you remember any stories about Leo Bateman (1886-1973), the funeral director? I remember some of the old pioneers telling stories about him walking up and down the street with a ruler implying he was sizing them up for coffins!
Terrance: I remember one story about him. Some old Indian's squaw died. He said to Leo, "I don't have any money for the funeral. All I've got is 40 acres." So he gave Bateman the deed to the 40 acres and it had a tremendous amount of timber on it. Leo turned around and sold it for quite a bit of money. Thousands and thousands of times more than the damned funeral was worth!
Del: Do you remember a local character by the name of Hugh Murray?
Terrance: Quite well.
Connie: Supposedly Bateman's sold him a hearse with silver wings on it or something. His daughter, Lucy Marrs, told us something like that.
Terrance: It sounds par for the course, but I don’t recall that particular incident. But I know his wife was Minnie Murray (1868-1939), and one of his daughters is Alice Green. She used to lived in Toledo.
Marguerite: There was another couple as odd as the Murrays who came to town in a wagon up until just a few years ago. I believe they lived near Olalla Reservoir. Can't remember their names, though.
Connie: Do you recall Doc Burgess? According to Harry Hawkins and Violet Updike he was also quite a colorful character.
Terrance: That he was.
Del: What kind of medicine did he practice? Kind a "sawbone?"
Terrance: No, not at all. He was a regular doctor. Trained as well as anyone for his time.
Connie: Harry told me he was one of the more meticulous and sanitary doctors. He believed in scrubbing a place down before he’d enter and tend the patient.
Terrance: I remember one winter vacation from school when I was 12 or 13. We lived up on the hill, and I walked down town to his office, and he was busy playing cards. I said, "There's a little drift of snow on the ground and you have to take out my tonsils now." He said, "Wait till I finish this game of cards." So he finished the game of cards and we went up to his office. He heated a tea kettle and put his tools in there and I sat up on the chair. He gave me a local anesthetic and I had my tonsils removed. I got up out of the chair and walked home! They wouldn't let you do that today, would they?
Del: Not on your life!
Connie: I’ve been reading about the government spruce camps and realize now that they were scattered all over the Northwest—not just Toledo—and that basically the whole thing was a farce and an example of government extravagance and waste.
Terrance: Well, it was a war effort that happened too late.
Connie: A bungling war effort.
Terrance: It was a war effort to produce spruce for airplane wings. Sitka spruce is a very lightweight wood. But the war ended and the government abandoned all of the mills. They never really got under production in Toledo and, as you know, C. D. Johnson bought the plant here from the US government.

Connie: Jim Scarth said they demonstrated the mill to the public at some gala event, but did they actually get any logs cut?
Terrance: Not very many if they did at all.
Connie: From what I understand the workers were a bunch of greenhorns.
Terrance: They were soldiers and knew nothing about logging.
Connie: It must have looked quite peculiar to the townsfolk.
Terrance: Probably so. I was in the service myself and away from home.
Del: Toledo is a ghost town compared to Newport now. Why do you suppose Penneys and Sears and other businesses moved to Newport?
Terrance: I think it all had to do with the moving of the courthouse in 1905. Of course, the businesses went as well. And Newport is geographically better located with Highway 101, the Coast Highway.
In the 1940s, there was a Chevrolet garage, a Ford garage, a Pontiac garage, and a Plymouth garage in Toledo and there were none in Newport. This despite the fact that Newport has more room to expand and grow than Toledo does.
Marguerite: There was really no stopping it; it was inevitable. Some people blame judge Gaither for not building a new courthouse here. They believe that would have prevented the move to Newport and the loss of business in Toledo. I’ve heard that criticism. I agree with you, Delbert. Toledo isn't much more than a bedroom community now. Most people who don't work at the mill work in Corvallis or Newport.
Connie: Leonard Grant said when he was county commissioner he was warning everybody the move was going to take place, and they thought it wouldn't happen; they thought he was crazy. So apparently some people were wise enough to realize it was coming.
Terrance: Beside the rumor about my dad, another story was told. Supposedly politicians made people believe Toledo would get to keep the county courthouse if it would relinquish the county fair to Newport. Now Newport has both the courthouse and the fair!
Marguerite: Don't you think there is a vast difference in personalities between people on the coast and people inland? We used to call them ten cent millionaires! Their values were different.
Terrance: I don’t think I had more than a dozen NSF checks in my garage in Toledo in all the years I was there. I moved to Newport and the first year I bet you I got more than 150. It was always that way there.
The people of Toledo come into a place and say, "I'll give you a couple hundred dollars down, and the first of next month I'll pay you the balance." We just wrote a slip of paper and that's all we had on it. In Newport we had to tie them down with everything at our disposal. Their word was no good.
Del: Do you think it had to do with the fact that Newport was always a resort town with a transient population?
Terrance: Yes, that's true, and I think times have changed. People do business differently now than before. Years ago, a man's word was worth a hell of a lot.
Marguerite: An of course there's the bay front people—the fishermen—and they're a breed apart.
Del: It has been my observation that all those "hippy" types are flocking down to the bay front to do their thing. I noticed just a few days ago they were out making a big public show of mending their nets.
Marguerite: Well, we're so old we don't keep up with things. It's hard to even accept that you're recording this conversation.
Del: I'd give anything now if I'd had the opportunity to record the many tales my dad had to tell. But unfortunately portable tape recorders are a new innovation. Years ago they had those big reel to reel things that would scare the crap out of you to watch the things work. And it was too hard for most people to just write stuff down, so much in the way of historic information has been lost forever.
Marguerite: Your little one scares me something awful. It must be the generation gap.

In the year 1866, the region of Yaquina Bay and river was opened for settlement, as the Siletz Reservation had been established and Indian families now lived there.

John Graham (1805-1883), the founder of Toledo, originally lived in Toledo, Ohio. The family came to the bay country in the spring of 1866 and homesteaded near the junction of Depot Slough and Yaquina River. The town was plotted by his children, Joe, Elizabeth, Catherine (1852-1937) and Margaret A. Graham Rosebrook (1851-1877).
The first white child to be born in this region was Nellie Mackey, mother of Terrance W. Gaither. The Mackey home was later Judge Skelton's home across the river. It was near this place that the Toledo Blockhouse was built, which at one time offered protection to the white settlerswhen an uprising was threatened among the Indians at Siletz. (There was no uprising!)
The first school was opened in 1868 by Margaret A. Graham (1851-1877).
St. John's Episcopal church was established in 1887.
Toledo and the rest of the region was then a part of Benton County. On February 20, 1893, it became Lincoln County.
People coming to Toledo, Siletz and Newport traveled by wagon from Corvallis, to Elk City, then by row boat from the river; going west one day and back to Elk City the next. The mail was carried the same way.
Of course, a new county needed lumber for houses, bridges, etc., so it was necessary to have a mill soon. Royal A. Bensell (1838-1920), who was an officer at the reservation, brought a sawmill from San Francisco by boat to Toledo and up Depot Slough to what is know known as the David M. Everest (1888-1967) place. The mill was called Pioneer Sawmill. Other mills soon followed. Toledo has always had several mills.
The railroad was begun in the late 1870s and completed in 1884. The western terminus was Yaquina City which is now a ghost town.
It was during WWI that Toledo became known as the Spruce Capitol of the World. A big mill was built to furnish spruce lumber to build airplanes, including Howard Hughs' (1905-1976) famous Spruce Goose. Soldiers were brought in to work in the woods and the mill.
The first high school was built in 1909—there were four graduates.
Since early times, the chief industry has been lumbering with fishing running a close second. Also, the damp, mild climate is favorable for small fruits and vegetables.

St. John’s Episcopal Church is 100 years old. Although its first church structure wasn't built until 1887, its congregation dates from 1833. A rectory was built in 1926 and a new church in 1937. The first church cost $500 to build. With the help of Eleanor Grady Bogert and Bill McCluskey, the records at the bishop’s close in Lake Oswego, and microfilm records of the Lincoln County Leader,... an attempt will be made to recreate some of the early history of the Toledo church.

The church began holding services in the homestead of John Graham, who arrived at the present location now called Toledo in 1866. The Graham household was the local meeting house and post office. With the coming of the railroad, Graham's large, 16 room house became a hotel.
The first services were interdenominational, with a monthly visit of a circuit riding preacher, minister or priest. In 1880, Newport built its own Episcopal church and many of the Toledo residents went there for monthly services.
In 1886, with the help of the Graham family, the Rev. Charles Booth resigned his position in Corvallis to devote full energies to the Yaquina Bay mission and began plans to build an Episcopal church on property donated by the Grahams. The original church took over two years to complete and cost around $500. In 1888 Booth reported in The Annual Journal of the Missionary Jurisdiction of Oregon that

St. John's Episcopal Church, Toledo, is occupied but unfinished. The people at this place are far from being rich in this world's goods, but of their little [sic] have contributed generously to the work. Extreme depression in business has lessened the ability of the people to contribute, but this condition, we have hopes, many, with the completion of the Oregon Pacific Railroad, be improved.

after two years of incessant efforts the church has been completed and was consecrated by the bishop on the first of September. It is a remarkably neat building, the finish inside being in the natural colors of the wood.

The people are, many of them, settled widely apart, and the roads extremely difficult to travel, on account of the mountainous or hilly character of the country.

He must have been glad not to travel from Corvallis but to settle in the rectory at Newport as the first school superintendent as well as missionary for Toledo, Newport and Yaquina Bay.
The life of Catherine Graham was linked to that of the old St. John's. She placed a sealed box in its cornerstone when the church was built, was married the same year to Daniel Grady and died within two days after the old structure was razed to the ground in 1937.
Her daughter, Eleanor Grady Bogert, remembers that the Rev. Charles Booth was

a small man and he had a large family. He baptized me. He had to come up from Newport and stay in the rectory. He had a girl my age. My dad had him home for dinner.

Bogert remembers asking her father, a devout Roman Catholic, if he didn't want her to become one. "Eleanor," he said, "your mother's church is best for you." She remembers Sundays when the Roman Catholic priest, the Episcopal minister and the Methodist minister used to meet and talk at their house. "The whole idea of religious differences was quite foreign to us," she explains.
The Rev. Booth was followed by a Scotsman John Dawson and a Welshman, the Rev. Francis Jones in 1901. It was from the Rev. Jones that Bogert, then Eleanor Grady, learned her catechism in 1910.

He taught the whole catechism: the commandments, the creed, the Lord's Prayer, the meaning of advent and the seasons. We were raised on the long catechism and rolled oats. We used to walk back and forth from Newport. Being a Welshman, that wasn't hard. My folks were Scottish and Irish, so there was a bond between them. He would say, "If only I could set this country down in Wales." He used to like to smoke a pipe by the fire. He liked tweed and his accent was different and so was his laugh.

The old church had ... steep flights of stairs and was difficult to get into. As Bogert explains, "It was very difficult with a funeral and when it rained, those steep stairs would be wet." Bill McCluskey put it another way: "I believe it was bishop Summer who once said of our old church

Why should it be more difficult to get into a church than into a tavern? Those places are on the ground and level, but the church has 40 steps.

When the new church was built in 1937, it faced away from the street to afford easy access to both the church and the parish hall underneath. Combined with its hilly location, add the fact that the roads in front of St. John’s were not paved until 1930, and one gets a picture of a determined people.
The old church weathered many storms. It had a gilded cross at the top that would blow off occasionally and in the spring members would put it back up.
McCluskey remembers going to church with his grandmother, Elizabeth McCluskey.

She had the only kneeler in church. For a long time, we just knelt on the floor and when we did get kneelers, it was some time before they were padded. There was quite a comeuppance when we had our kneelers padded.

A new rectory was built in 1926 to attract a permanent priest for the mission. Pacific Spruce Corporation donated a thousand dollars worth of lumber. The building attracted little attention from the local press, most of its attention going to the building of the Ross Theater. The Rev. A. W. Bell moved into it quietly in the first weeks of June. The last rector to live in the rectory was the Rev. Thomas Park (1969-1973). The rectory was owned by parishioners Linda and Michael Gibbons who purchased it in 1982, and later by Michael Gibbons and Judy Ross, who turned it into an art gallery for the famous landscape painter.

On May 18, 1937, the old Episcopal church which had stood for 50 years was torn down, dragged into the street nearby and burned to ashes to make way for the new construction. The box was removed from the cornerstone and placed in Eleanor Grady's possession. Two days later, her mother, Catherine Grady, died.
The new cornerstone was laid by Bishop Dagwell on Saturday, May 29, and in it was laid a small copper box containing the following items:

A small Bible and modern prayer book, a journal of the proceedings of the Episcopal church, taken from the files of the church in Portland of July 1887, describing the laying of the original cornerstone 50 years ago by Bishop Benjamin Wistor Morris, a copy of the deciphered history of this church, written by Catherine Graham Grady and found in the cornerstone, clipping from the various papers concerning prominent people of the church who had passed away during the past 50 years, a picture of the Graham family, current issues of the Lincoln County Leader, Oregonian, Oregon Churchman, Episcopal Church Paper, an Oregonian of June 22, 1887, a 1887 copy of the Newport News, first paper of this section and edited by J. J. Aldrich, numerous small coins, a collection of modern postage stamps, and a list of present church board and members of the guild.

By the following July the building was rapidly reaching completion. The contractors, Shelton & Murty, were also hard at work pouring the foundation for the nearby Toledo Library, and had recently finished work, in the same block, on the residence of prominent church members, Dr. and Ms. Hellworth.
On September 11, 1937, Bishop Dagwell dedicated the new structure with the Rev. Noel Murray of the local church and the Rev. D. V. Gray of Corvallis assisting. By the following December, the Rev. Hale Eubanks had arrived and on Christmas Eve celebrated midnight mass.

One of the recent highlights of the church's history was its short stint as a parish under the Rev. Michael Moynihan. When a church changes its status from mission to parish it means that its membership is high enough and its resources great enough to become self-sufficient. "When we became a parish," Bill McCluskey explained, "We had several families in key positions in Georgia-Pacific Corporation." Later, when the company acquired new mills, these people moved away to new positions of authority. Then years later the church found itself returned to its mission status.

Under the stringent rules of the Roman Catholic church, the notion of a woman priest has never been acceptable.
Any Catholic woman wanting to give her life to her creator could become a nun, but never a priest.
However, the Episcopal church—an offshoot of the Catholic church dating back to the time of King Henry VIII (1491-1547)—changed these rules on July 29, 1974—the Feast Day of Mary and Martha— when 11 women deacons shook the walls of their church right down to the foundations. They were ordained priests of the Episcopal church in a ceremony that is as controversial now as it was that hot summer day.
The "irregular ordinations" which were eventually "regularized" or recognized officially by vote of the church in general convention included: Carol Anderson, Julia Sibley, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Maria Moorefield, Barbara Schlachter, Susan Hiatt, Merrill Bittner, Jeannette Piccard, Betty Schiess, and Katrina Wells Swanson.
In the words of The Reverend Carter Heyward, a lesbian feminist:

I see women as the single most creative force within the Christian church. We, as a group, are those challenged most immediately with the task of renewal—of making new what is old—within and beyond ourselves in the church and elsewhere.
We are asked to bring something new to the world around us—as workers, wives, daughters, mothers, scholars, artists, politicians, priests. We are called to tell our stories, and in telling our stories we manifest a new reality—the new reality of being female and speaking up and being heard and reshaping—on the basis of who we are—those institutions that matter most to us. Where we cannot be heard and where we cannot reshape, we are called to the reality of building new community.

Three years after the decision, the author and a gay deacon at St. John's Episcopal church, Toledo, discussed the groundbreaking event during a taped interview:

Connie: Gee, the Catholics are loosing a lot of members; they're all becoming Episcopalian.
Will: The Catholics and the Lutherans. I got irritated with the Episcopal church while I was in the service, and was Catholic for a while.
Connie: After having been raised Episcopalian?
Will: I was born and raised Episcopalian, and, at the time, I didn’t like the way they were doing things. I took Catholic instructions, but I was never confirmed. I went to church and was "accepted" and voted with them for a while. I came back to Toledo and got back into the Episcopal church again.
Connie: Even though I'm not happy with some of the things that are going on in the Episcopal church right now, I'm still happier with it than I am with Roman Catholicism.
Will: That's what I tell myself.
Connie: I'm not happy about the church ordaining lesbians!
Will: Well, I don't approve of ordaining women.
Connie: Period?
Will: I could see where they have some purpose; I'm not rabid on the subject, but I think that if a woman "comes out" as a gay activist she's stepping over the line. That goes for both sexes. If they're gay and just mind their own business about it, that's fine with me.
Connie: Yes! I agree.
Will: But, if they "come out" as gay activists and they're marching in parades and making speeches and things like that, I think they're trying to blend two things together.
Connie: Yes. I think that was a case of adding insult to injury for those of us who are having trouble accepting women like Carter Hayward as priests; I felt it was just too much. Why didn't the whole bunch of them just keep their mouths shut?
Del: Aren't there passages in the Bible condemning "that type" of individual?
Connie: Homosexuality? There probably are!
Will: I have read quite a bit on the subject in the past few years. It's in the translation. Because, as I understand it, at the time the Bible was put together, they didn't understand homosexuality as we do today.
Connie: What is there to understand?
Will: The fact that some people have "different genes."
Connie: Do you honestly believe that? That they have different genes?
Will: Well, I don't know if its their genes, but their "composition" is different to the point that it is "wrong" according to "normal" standards.
Connie: I think that's propaganda.
Will: In the Old Testament, they were so busy they wanted to build up their race because it was a tiny group, and any wasted seed was considered an abomination.
When we come to Saint Paul, the pagans had male prostitutes in their religious rites. That is very much what he was against. It was the "perversion" of a heterosex life to participate in those rites.
Del: Well, we had better go home; it's getting late.

Six years after the decision, native Oregonian Susan Church was asked by her father what she would do with her life.
Recently graduated with a degree in art history and a passion for biology, Church looked her father in the eye and spoke directly. "I would really like to be a priest" was her answer. And with that, she knew that her calling had come.
Today, after attending seminary school in Berkeley and overseeing an Episcopal church in Corvallis for four years, Church is the priest at St. Luke's-by-the-Sea Episcopal church in Waldport and St. Stephen's Episcopal church in Newport.
In 11 years, Church has kept a watchful eye on Lincoln County's changing population. When she observed a growth in the Hispanic community, church decided to keep up with the times.

She learned Spanish and now preaches an entire sermon in Spanish each Sunday at 5:30pm at St. Stephen's. At times, this congregation has topped off at 50, but usually ranges between 10 and 40 members.
Noticing and celebrating the differences in people and living under the "laws of love that Christ showed us" is a major part of her religion, said Church. "I like to say that we're Catholics in love with freedom."

Connie: Tell me a little bit about yourself, Harry—when you were born, when your folks migrated West and settled in Oregon.
Harry: My dad, Tom Hawkins (1891-1970), was born in Albany in 1891, and he moved to Toledo in 1898.
My mother, Cecil Lutey, was born in 1896. She came here from La Pine, Michigan for a year, and then they came back here because she couldn't stand the Great Lakes region of the country.
Bill McCluskey and I are first cousins, as he probably told you when you interviewed him. My granddad, Charles E. Hawkins, and Bill's granddad, John McCluskey (1839-1931), came here from Arkansas.
Aunt Annie Hawkins was born here in Toledo, and Bill's mother, Aunt Aileen Hawkins McCluskey (1889-1976), was born in Albany. Uncle Chancy Hawkins was born in Arkansas; he is in his 90s now.
Grandpa Charles Hawkins was an attorney. He told me one time he was in Lincoln County that he held every city and county office at some time or another except for sheriff and city marshal. He didn't want that. He had been a US marshal when he was back in Arkansas, but he had had enough of the marshaling business. That was when Oklahoma was still a territory.
Connie: Did Grandpa Hawkins have any interesting tales to tell you about his life as a US marshal?
Harry: He sure did! The crooks in those days, according to Grandpa, used to run out of Arkansas and that part of the country over into Oklahoma Territory (1890-1907), and the US marshals couldn't legally chase them down. But for some reason, Grandpa wanted to get a particular bad guy, so he went over and got him. That crook was packing a derringer on his hip, which Aunt Annie has. Anyway, Grandpa took it away from the guy and dragged him back over the line, which was illegal as hell. But that was all the "lawing" he wanted to do after left Arkansas and married my grandmother.
Connie: So he gave up "marshaling" and moved out West. How did he make a living in Albany?
Harry: He went to work in a furniture factory in Albany when he first arrived in Oregon. He was making wicker furniture, and was doing quite well—until he went hunting down by Halsey, somewhere south of Albany. He accidentally kicked the shotgun he was carrying and it went out of his buggy and shot his hand right off! So, he decided couldn't make furniture any more and started thinking about a new career.
Connie: And that's when he decided to go into law?
Harry: Right. That accident decided for him. He couldn't make furniture any more, so he studied law with old J. K. Weatherford. As a matter of fact, I think the two of them were partners for a while.
Connie: Where did he attend school?
Harry: In those days, if you didn't go to formal law school—of which there were very few—you had to read so many years of law under some other attorney in an apprenticeship, which is what Grandpa did instead of going to school. Then you had to pass your state bar examine, just like now.
Connie: Grandpa Hawkins was a banker too? Tell me about that.
Harry: He and Bill Scarth—a Scotsman—owned a bank together. It was called the Lincoln County Bank. The first bank building was located where Western Auto Supply is now. The old vault is still in the back of the building, which is called the Masonic Building. My grandfather erected that building in 1906. It had a cupola that stuck out over the street, and that was his law office. Later on, it was my Uncle George McCluskey's office. That was so Grandpa could look clear up and down Main Street both ways. He never missed a beat!
Connie: You mentioned that the old bank is called the Masonic Building. Why is that?
Harr