Oregon History Online 6

James Craigie (1813-1895), Presbyterian, humanitarian and fur trader, was born August 11, 1813, in Rousay, Orkney Islands, Scotland, and died at Ocean House, the home of his daughter, Mary Craigie Case, September 29, 1895, in Newport, Oregon.
Craigie came to America on board the Prince Albert in 1835. At the age of 22, he went to work for the Hudson's Bay Company.
Capt. Nathaniel J. Wyeth had built a trading post where the Portneuf River flows into the Snake River in 1834, which he named Fort Hall. The Rev. Jason Lee (1803-1845), a Methodist missionary, preached a sermon there to Wyeth's men and the fur traders, while Lee was on his way to establish his mission in the Willamette Valley.

When Wyeth sold Fort Hall to Dr. John McLoughlin, James Craigie was sent there.

John Minto (1822-1915) of Salem, who was a pioneer of 1844, spent the winter here in the Ocean House in Newport some years ago. He told Mary Case that the first time he met her father was at Fort Hall in the autumn of 1844. Craigie was in charge of Fort Hall at the time, and sold Minto some flour. Minto drove an ox team across the plains for R. Q. Morrison for his board, and later he married Martha Morrison, R. Q.'s daughter.
Craigie helped build a trading post at the mouth of Boise River known as Fort Boise. He stayed there until 1852, when he moved to Waldo Hills, where he lived for six years and where he renewed his acquaintance with John Minto.
In 1845, Craigie married Indian Princes Mary Ann, the daughter of Bannock Chief Toya Pampe Boo. The name means "Mountain Head Road," and the non-indians often called him "Bloody Chief."
In their book, The Women's West, feminist historians Susan Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson wrote it is significant that

the rituals for marriage à la facon du pays [according to the custom of the country] conforms more to Indian custom than to European. There were two basic steps to forming such a union. The first step was to secure the consent of the woman's relatives; it also appears that the wishes of the woman herself were respected, as there is ample evidence that Indian women actively sought for trade spouses. Once consent was secured, a bride price had then to be decided; this varied considerably among the tribes but could amount to several hundred dollars worth of trade goods. After these transactions, the couple were usually conducted ceremoniously to the post where they were now recognized as husband and wife. In the Canadian West, marriage àla facon du pays became the norm for Indian-white unions, being reinforced by mutual interest, tradition, and peer group pressure. Although ultimately "the custom of the country" was to be strongly denounced by the missionaries, it is significant that in 1867, when the legitimacy of the union between chief factor William Connally and his Cree wife was tried before a Canadian court, it was found to have constituted a lawful marriage. The judge declared a valid marriage existed because the wife had been married according to the customs and usages of her own people and because the consent of both parties, the essential element of "civilized marriage," had been proved by 28 years of repute, public acknowledgement, and cohabitation as husband and wife.

James and Princess Mary Ann were the parents of nine children—seven girls and two boys. Jane Craigie (Ms. Thomas Ferr), Rachel Craigie (Ms. George King) and Mary Craigie (Ms. Samuel Case) still survive.
The Craigie family moved to Yaquina Bay in October 1866, after living six years on a donation land claim in Waldo Hills. A record has been found in Salem, Marion County, Oregon, of their regularized (i.e. Christian) marriage vows to substantiate their claim to donation land and was without doubt a pleasure to Craigie who was a staunch Presbyterian church member.
In their book, Writing The Range: Race Class, and Culture In the Women's West, Armitage and Jameson comment that in the 1921 Oregon Supreme Court miscegenation case

decided after the death of Fred Paquet (a white male), Ophelia Paquet (his Indian wife), lost control of her husband's estate to her late husband's brother John (a white male), who challenged her for its control. The language of Oregon's miscegenation law was broad: it declared null and void marriages between "any white person" and "any Negro, Chinese, or any person having more than one half Indian blood." Under the provisions of this law, the Oregon Supreme Court declared the Paquet's 30 year marriage invalid. To do so, the court dismissed Paquet's claim that the miscegenation statute denied Indians the same rights as whites. Echoing state courts all over the country, the Oregon court held that the statute did not discriminate against Indians because, as the judge said, "It applies alike to all persons, either white, Negroes, Chinese, Kanakas (Hawaiians), or Indians."
The elements of this decision—the primacy of the issue of property, the tug-of-war between women of color and their white opponents for control of white men's estates, and the willingness of courts to invalidate long-term marriages in proceedings not directly related to the marriages themselves—were quite standard in miscegenation case law. The only unusual note in this decision was that, having deprived Ophelia Paquet of her inheritance, the court went out of its way to express "sympathy" for her, suggesting to the victorious John Paquet that because Ophelia had been "a good and faithful wife" to his brother "for more than 30 years," he should consider offering her "a fair and reasonable settlement."

The trip to Toledo was by horseback over the old trail. The couple first lived on Olalla Slough. Then the family moved to the spot by the dedication marker which is also near Mary Ann Craigie's grave.
For a time, this home was a dinner stop for the rowboat mail service to Elk City.
Princess Mary Ann died when the children were small. Violet Updike said the older, married sisters took the younger girls into their homes, which included her late mother, Rachel Craigie King.
Craigie cultivated soil at Fort Boise with great difficulty because of weather conditions, but he produced all the foods possible for his family, and, according to Lincoln County historian Steve Wyatt, he might even have been the first to plant Monterey cypress in the Yaquina Bay region.
James Craigie took a doctor or nurse's place caring for their injuries, met wagon trains of Americans and guided them safely through the dangerous stretches, then furnished the fort's large canoe for ferry. P. V. Crawford's journal, Journal of a Trip Across the Plains: 1851, tells more about his train assistance.
Historian Wells says, "Craigie's fort was a real haven. Fort Boise was famous for hospitality." Also summarized as "animated by a sense of Christian duty."
Lincoln County is most honored to be the last resting place for this family, the James Craigies.

Del: Tell me about your grandparents, Mary and James Craigie.
Violet: Both my dad and granddad were naturalized citizens. Grandpa Craigie came here when he was about 21 from the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland to work for the Hudson's Bay Company. That was the habit of the Hudson's Bay Company to recruit young men from there because there wasn't very much to do there except fish, and they were rather poor.
So he came and he signed a contract of which I have a copy. It shows he was a bonded slave. He made all of those commitments and he had to stay with them for the duration which I think was 20 or 25 years. They paid his passage and of course gave him the work he was promised. He was stationed at Fort Hall II in Idaho. Afterwards he assumed more authority and ran the place for a while. He worked up. He raised crops and sheep besides his office work. When his term was up he left.
He had been at Fort Hall II during the 1840s when people were going to Oregon Country (1542-1847) and thought he’d like to go there, too.
In the meantime, he married my grandmother, Mary, an Indian princess of the Shoshone tribe, and that was long before reservations, so he married her right from her father's home. I don't know anything about that at all, but I imagine he married her by the Shoshone ritual. It could have been he was married by Roman Catholics because they were coming through there at the time. Very few of the Protestant ministers were coming through until the Methodists who came a little bit later. Later on, they had to remarry in order to take out donation land claims in Salem.
So Grandpa Craigie took his family directly to Salem. They had a friend there, John Minto. He and his wife and his oldest son had donation land claims in the south of Salem. It used to be wonderful fruit country. She got her 360 acres and he got his 360 acres. The son and his wife also got theirs. They all worked hard and proved up on their land.
But in the meantime he contracted asthma or something of that sort, and he thought it was the dampness there. His health began to fail, so he thought he should get back to high country. He went to Walla Walla, and that’s where my mother was born in 1859. My mother, Rachel Craigie (1859-1954), was second from the youngest. My aunt, Cecilia Craigie (1866-?) was born there just before we moved to Lincoln County. While the family was in Walla Walla, he put my aunt, Jane (1851-? Idaho Territory) and my uncle, James Jr. (1854-? OR) in school.
Grandpa Craigie never forgot his love of the Oregon Coast and wanted to go back. This time he came directly to the coast when it was open for settlement in 1866 to the Robinson place on Olalla Slough.
He had this friend in Salem, John Minto, who would come over to fish. He offered the use of his shack to Grandpa while he looked for a place to homestead.
He went down the bay here to what is now Craigie Point on the opposite side of the Yaquina River and settled there.
Old George Luther Boone—I suspect you've read about him—was right across the river from him, and my grandparents befriended this family.
Grandma died of tuberculosis soon after they arrived, but Grandpa raised the younger children and taught them to cook and knit and keep house. And then when they got to the point where they had to go to school, he taught them French.
Connie: Tell me a little bit about your dad.
Violet: My father's name was George King (1844-1916). He was born in Yorkshire, England, and he was the third or fourth son down. You know what the caste system was like in England, I suppose, and the prospects were rather poor for a young man to make a living.
So, at the age of 21, he emigrated to America and settled in Michigan. I don't recall what drew him to Michigan, unless it was through friends. He acquired land for a peach orchard and became a
logger.
In those days logging was done by cold decking the logs in the winter, and when the spring freshets came, they floated the logs downriver to the mills.
Dad was a big man: six feet two inches tall and very sturdy. At the age of 21 he was doing the dangerous job of riding logs downriver.
He contracted rheumatism and was almost crippled in his hips after that. He decided he needed a change of climate and to leave the bitter cold of the Great Lakes region for the Sandwich Islands.
Well, he landed in Portland during the late 1860s, following the Civil War. In those days he wore quite a bit of money in a belt around his middle.
There was one building on the east side of Portland, and it was called Doctor Hawthorne's Insane Asylum. And of course the real estate guys got hold of him and wanted him to invest his hard-earned money in Portland interests like that and others. They told him Portland was going to be a major, world class port. Dad laughed at them and said it would not be a world port because it was 100 miles from the sea!
Although his destination was the Sandwich Islands, he was stuck in Portland because he couldn't get passage at the time. The vessels didn't run very regularly, and it would be a several month wait.
In the meantime, he heard about some government work going on in Newport. They were building a lighthouse and preparing to make jetties in Yaquina Bay in 1871. He immediately got a job superintending the masonry work on the foundation of the lighthouse. Later on, he was a steam engineer and superintended the building of the south jetty.
During the course of that government work he married my mother, had two children, and his younger brother arrived here from England.
Del: How did your family end up at Oyster City?
Violet: The oyster business was flourishing up the bay, and Oyster City was being platted, and his brother wanted him to move there and go into the oyster business with him.
So that's where Dad moved and that's where I was born, May 24, 1893. My sister, Mary Gladys Burgess, was also born there.
Connie: Do you carry the famous Craigie name?
Violet: No, but my older sister, Elizabeth Craigie King, and several of our cousins do. It's a beautiful name, one that I’m proud of. "Nellie" is also a family name and the one I inherited.
Connie: What was Oyster City like when you lived there?
Violet: Oyster City was a little community on the far side of the Yaquina River, and was established in 1865 by independent oystermen. It consisted of 13 plots of oyster grounds and is located directly across the river from Oysterville. It had about 20 families and included a daily newspaper, a school, but no post office. Later, a post office was built on the north side of the bay at the railroad tracks. People wanted to call it Oysterville, but there’s an Oysterville, Washington, that also shipped oysters. The government didn't think it was wise to have a second Oysterville, so they called our post office Winant. It was so complicated: We had the name Winant for the post office, Oysterville for the city itself—even though technically it wasn't legal—and Oyster City on the south side of the Bay!
Del: That's not much different than the situation we're in: We live on the Elk City-Harlan Road, the nearest community is Elk City, the post office is at Eddyville, and the telephone exchange is Chitwood!

Connie: Wow! Life get's complicated! When did Oyster City get telephone?
Violet: Every little community eventually had its own little company phone. We got ours in 1912. We could call Newport but we couldn't call Toledo. The trees would fall over on the wires and the company wouldn't come and fix them. That's the kind of service we had.
Connie: Did you gravitate towards Toledo or Newport as your center of operation?
Violet: My family gravitated to Newport. But with the courthouse in Toledo, dad would get on the train when he had court business. But our pleasure place was Newport. My aunt owned the Ocean House in Newport where we stayed. We did most of our shopping at Yaquina City, and went to Toledo for business matters.
Connie: Did residents have other sources of income in addition to oyster farming?
Violet: The community's money crops were salmon and oysters. There was little logging done there except on Wright Creek and Beaver Creek.
The road from Oyster City goes all the way through to Poole Slough. A lot of the boys worked in Toledo and Newport and a lot of the girls attended Toledo High School.
Del: Did you go to school with my dad in Newport?
Violet: Yes, I did as a matter of fact. All my early life I went to little one room schools, and that's where I got the idea I wanted to be a teacher. I used to help my teachers out so much with the little fellows coming up through the grades. I'd read to them and have them read to me.
My married sister moved to Newport and she had two small children at the time, and they thought it was a good idea for me to move to Newport and attend a graded school. I think it was a four room school with two grades in each room. So I moved in with my sister when I was in the sixth grade.
By the way, it was the first time I got a ready made coat. I remember that so well; it was a gray. My mother always made our things; she'd turn old things over and make them out.
Connie: Was the store bought coat as nice as the things your mother made for you?
Violet: Well, I thought so! Anyway, I moved in with my sister and her family and Dell Hodges was living there, too. He was in the sixth grade and probably went through the same one room school routine that I had at Bear Creek. He moved to Newport and got a job at the Abbey House washing dishes for his board. You didn’t know that, Delbert?

Del: I just vaguely recall him saying he went to school in Newport. I never knew he washed dishes for his board.
Violet: Did you ever notice anything in particular about his gait? I think you’ve got a little bit of it.
Del: Kind of a little fast walk?
Violet: Yes! We called him Quick Step! And he was good in school.
Del: How old would he have been?
Violet: Well, I was a little bit old for sixth grade by today’s standards, about 13 or 14, and he was probably the same age. We didn't advance the way kids do now because we only attended three months of school out of the year.
Connie: How did you know when you were in the next grade? Was there a next book up or something?
Violet: Yes. Our readers were Reader One, Reader Two, and so on.
I have a theory I'd like to share with you. Today's school children don't handle the same amount of books we handled. Their work is transposed onto sheets of paper and work books. We used our books and we loved our books. We had to pay for them, just as parochial school students do today. So we valued and cherished them. They weren't furnished in those days like they are in modern public schools.
Connie: Did you write in your books?
Violet: No. We went to the board. And that's a good deal. There's a certain pride and incentive when you see yourself doing better than your neighbor at the board. There's a little healthy competition going on there too, which is good. The teacher can see at a glance what a student is doing and what her problem is. I don’t think we use the board like that now. For the most part, it’s the teacher at the board while the students passively look on.
Speaking of competition, I don't think my mother ever suffered from discrimination because she was a "half-blood." At least she never said so. But I had the feeling all the time. When I was in school I felt I had to excel to beat a certain white girl and I did. Of course, that made her angry anyway, whether I was a "quarter-blood" or not.
But getting back to this book idea. The next year the children would say, "I'll begin second grade with a new book." We had arithmetic and reading books. I think our language and health books were pretty general, pretty loose. Geography was pretty interesting. We had two geography books: a little one and a big broad one with maps. Lots of things could go one behind those books, and they did.
Anyway, children today lack incentive and they aren't learning their tables like I learned mine.
Connie: It appears as though children today aren't learning much of anything.
Del: They can't read or write when they get out of high school. How can they attend college?
Violet: This is my contention and you can apply it to any area of endeavor that you like. To become an expert at anything you have to drill—whether you like it or not.
Connie: It takes a lot of effort to learn how to do anything well.
Violet: The child has to be motivated, and if she isn't motivated she gets disinterested. I know something that will "motivate" students pretty well—right on the behind. If they get "motivated" often, they will sit up and take notice. I was a disciplinarian and I'm not ashamed of it.
Drill, drill, drill! And then I had a dad who had us recite our tables when we got home from school.
Del: When I was going to Bear Creek I was among the first ones paddled before the school district discontinued it. I also remember when Laura Mack was teaching, she had everyone at the chalk board. The older kids helped the younger kids. So there was a totally different feeling in the classroom. Today, if you spank a kid you can go to jail for it.

Slowly and patiently, with infinite care, the oyster builds upon the grain of sand—layer upon layer of a plastic milky substance that covers each sharp corner and coats every cutting edge ...and gradually ...slowly ...by and by a pearl is made ...a thing of wondrous beauty wrapped around trouble.

Connie: Tell me some more about the family oyster business.
Violet: My dad and my uncle were raising mostly native Yaquina Bay oysters. Their outlets were primarily Portland and San Francisco, and they were shipped in gunny sacks. At times, they sent oysters half way across the continent before there were refrigerator cars. The oyster in the shell would stay fresh for ten days. Once opened, outside, in cool conditions, they don’t need to be iced. But once they're opened, they don’t last very long.
My dad was the first person in Oyster City to be interested in importing the eastern oyster from Chesapeake Bay. He didn't finance the venture himself. A man in Portland financed it, and my dad donated ground for an oyster bed. They brought them in and planted them. They usually brought in a two-year-old oyster and figured it would grow and be on the market in another two years.
Del: Were oysters a staple of the coastal Indian diet?
Violet: Actually, there's an opinion that the Indians didn't eat oysters, but I disagree.
Connie: Then what are the kitchen middens?
Violet: That's the point! As I said, oysters don't preserve well, like some of the other shell fish do. Clam and mussel can be smoked, dried and used later. So can salmon and meats. But oyster is very delicate: it's very watery and small, and it takes extra rigs to dig them up out of the water. The oyster may not have been that attractive to Indians as a source of food.
The question arose why the oyster wouldn't propagate better in Yaquina Bay. So the University of Oregon Biology Department came over and undertook all sorts of projects in an attempt to determine if and how they could propagate. They still don't propagate to the extent that it's profitable.

Since then, the idea grew of importing foreign oysters, the "Jap" oyster in particular. The native oyster suffered even more from this because the Jap oyster is large—shelled. The oystermen were so greedy to plant this area with Jap oysters, they dumped them in the Bay on top of our native oyster because the native oyster wasn't plentiful enough to be profitable.
As I said, the native oyster is very delicate! It has to breathe and has to be cultivated and managed just about like a vegetable garden!
Connie: How do the oystermen take care of their crop?
Violet: Well, you stir them up. The oystermen in those days had long tongs with hooks on the inside. They would stick that down into the water and bring the oysters up into their floats and cull them on board. They would take out all the debris, but couldn't keep the debris on the floats very long because it had baby oysters in it that couldn't take the heat.
Del: Were the floats steam operated?
Violet: No, they were hand powered.
Connie: Do oysters do better in warm or cold water? Is there a rule of thumb about this?
Violet: I haven't heard that was the problem. But if they're in an area like Lincoln County that has excessive rainfall and too much fresh water runs into the bay, that was bad for the oyster.
Also, silt, mud, and industry, like the big mills, have been blamed for the oyster's failure to thrive. Environmentalists said it was the sawdust and the bark, because when that gets wet, it falls to the bottom of the bay, and covers and smothers the oyster.
Another factor added to the decline: the old-fashioned oystermen and the young people particularly found other things to do that were more profitable.
There's a young Indian man, Joe Lewis, and his wife, who are raising oysters on the bay, has his own bed, and is operating according to "old scripture." ("I think he's making a nice living. Wouldn't it be! What is it now? $15 a gallon?")
Connie: More than anything we can afford. Definitely a delicacy.
Violet: I think a little pint jar is $10 to $12 these days.)
Connie: Was there an oyster packing plant or cannery at Oyster City?
Violet: No, but there was a salmon cannery at Oysterville. My father's markets were all high class restaurants and they were transported daily on trains going to Portland in 12 hours and to San Francisco in one and a half days.
Connie: How does the oyster breathe?
Violet: Well, I don't know anything about their love life, honey! I think that's all done within the shell. What do you call that? You've really started something, Connie!
Connie: I didn't say "breed" I said "breathe!" You said earlier the oyster had to breathe or it would smother!
Violet: Oh, I thought you said breed!
Connie: No, that was going to be my next question!
Violet: Well, I don't know. They open their little mouths to take in air, and that's the way they eat, too.
Connie: But you don't know anything about their love life?
Violet: I know they weren't loving very much when they wouldn't propagate!
Connie: When did they quit loving and the industry die out?
Violet: I think the industry reached its peak in the early 1920s.
Connie: What are your memories of Yaquina City ?
Violet: My memories were of a flourishing little place. We'd go across the river by boat and walk down the railroad tracks to town. We had friends there. We had heavy shopping to do, since there were some really nice dry goods stores. They didn't have a bank there nor in Oyster City.
But It had one hotel and six saloons! During the time of "local option," people had to vote about being "wet" or "dry." They passed a law that the city could only have so many saloons per capita.
Anyway, someone wanted to build another saloon in Yaquina City, so he built a walk out to a float that rose and fell with the tide, and that was his saloon! They had to walk out to the saloon when the tide was right. People came over on the train with empty suitcases from Corvallis and Philomath which were "dry" towns. They would get their liquor and take it back on the train in their suitcases.
As I recall, Philomath just passes a liquor ordinance a few years ago. They had the "high" religions that just wouldn't let it in.
Connie: What was the religious life of the community like during your childhood?
Violet: In those days we didn't have organized churches. Circuit riders came and preached to us. This was kind of wonderful! When They'd come in, regardless of their faith—Presbyterian, Methodist or Episcopalian—they would hold service in some hall or big home and everybody went. Of course, the Catholics didn't do much to speak of. And if it was summertime we'd hold a picnic and everybody would go, men, women and children, Catholics, Protestants or what have you.
Then they'd preach the sermon and everybody would sing hymns and wait until the next minister. Families had to wait to have their babies baptized until the next minister came. And marriages—if lovers could wait that long!—were put off until the next preacher came along too.
Connie: How often did the ministers come through?
Violet: Oh, every three or four months, depending on the weather. Not much in the wintertime. They'd stay on a week and go around to different little communities and visit.
The Episcopal church in Toledo, which was built in 1883, was one of the very early churches here, and so was the Catholic church. The Methodist church came in a little bit later. There were church services at the Siletz Reservation too, you know, but they were just like ours—mostly Protestant.
Del: What are your earliest recollections of the Bateman family's funeral business?
Violet: We had many morticians before Leo Bateman. One of our very earliest ones was a woman, Clarinda Copeland, who owned a general store in Siletz. She afterwards moved to Newport.
Bob Bateman bought the funeral home from Frank Parker, and there were several owners before him.
In the olden days there was no embalming. Everything was done by neighbors. My dad was efficient on that. He prepared bodies.
Connie: How did he prepare them?
Violet: Bathing and dressing mostly. I can remember what happened to my own dad. I don't think he went through the hands of a mortician. That was in 1860. They had poultices they put on their faces to cover up discoloration and things like that. They didn't draw the blood but there was a certain amount of fumigation that went on. Neighbors would build a casket for the grieving family and sit up with the body, which was retained at home, until the time of the funeral.
It was a long time that Frank got over the fact that he couldn't assist at the grave side—dig the hole, fill in the dirt.
Connie: Was that a cathartic type of thing to do?
Violet: It was the last thing you could do for your neighbor.
That’s what disturbs me about cremation. I'm not opposed to it at all, but it's so incomplete. I think it's sensible and the time is coming when more of it will have to be done. Burial is just more natural. Dust to dust. Go through the process all life goes through.
Del: Do you remember anything about there being a Ku Klux Klan in Toledo?
Violet: Vaguely. I must not have paid much attention to it at the time. There were crosses burned, I think.
Of course, You've got the "Jap" story, but you're not going to do anything about it, are you?
Del: I’d love to hear a complete version of it. I've heard they were trucked out, shipped out in box cars, and what have you. What do you recall about it?
Violet: My version is very opinionated. First off, they were American citizens [sic]. C. D. Johnson when out and hired them and brought them in to work on the green chain. If you know what the green chain is, you know it was a man killer.
The Jap was a very small man. He brought his family along. There were no other Japs around here to build community. I don’t think it would have ever worked out. The importation of Jap laborers definitely would have increased. I think that under the circumstances, that, as an ethnic group, they would have become very unhappy and just move on. And, because of their small stature, they wouldn't be very efficient on the green chain.
Connie: Was it like California's farm program—the Mexicans nationals were going to work in the fields for a season and then they were going back to Mexico?
Violet: I don't know what the motive was. I just don't know if they were using them at the other mills, or if they were successful, or if it was a trial, or what.
Connie: You'd think with something like that, there would have been a plan or a program to successfully integrate them into the community.
Violet: Well, there probably was. They may have had ideas the "Japs" would branch off into other jobs, too.
In those days, Ethnics were not very popular in Lincoln County. I don't think we were racists. We had Chinese laborers who came in here and worked on the railroad. They were always ignored. Nobody made an issue of their being here. They worked in our salmon canneries in Waldport and Oysterville. But they lived off to themselves. They were here during the pack season and then they were gone.
But my remembrance of the Jap incident was a sad, sad thing. I'd never seen anything like that before, and of course they took a suit on it.
The people who shouldn't have had to have paid—and took the brunt—was a married couple, Rosemary and George Schenck, and they were quite old at the time.
It was a riot plain and simple. Those kids that entered that riot didn't have a nickel in their pocket, but you couldn’t do anything with them in court.
Del: Was the actual physical moving them out done by a younger group?
Violet: Practically.
Del: Did the mob put them in box cars?
Violet: I think they used cars.
Del: But it was more or less headed by some influential people who were racial bigots?
Violet: The couple that went in with this group were very strong politicians. But I don't know what their politics were. They may have had feelings about ethnics coming in and taking jobs away from whites. I don't know why "mature people" like that would behave that way. I don't think they promoted the riot per se; I'd like to think they didn't. But they’re the ones who got "abused" for it.
Connie: Was there a problem getting pallid people to work on the green chain?
Violet: Oh, yes!
Connie: Well, then the mill might have been acting out of self-defense.
Violet: That's what I thought. My contention was that the mill had a right to take care of its own business. I didn't see why anybody else had to butt in.
We were boycotted. Frank and I were in the wholesale business at the time. We were handling grain, hay, coal and building materials, and we had a big old building in Toledo where this building sits.
We were also handling chicken feed. There was a certain man who had a very profitable plant on the Olalla where he was making lots of money on eggs and chickens, and he was one of our best customers. He got more results from our food than any he had. He was one of the fellows who boycotted us. We had a lot of them that boycotted us, because they knew where we stood on it. But, you know, in about two weeks this guy was back! His chickens cut down on their production and back he came.
Everything smoothed over but it was a disgraceful thing; it really was.
Del: It must have been brewing quite a while to get every one so involved in it.
Violet: Well, it doesn't take very long. We've got race riots today right in our midst and we'd probably find that there's more of that than we think there is. All it takes is a drop of a hat. It's like throwing a match in a hay stack. One little thing will ignite it.
Connie: What happened to some of your siblings later in life? Were any of them oystermen?
Violet: My oldest sister, who is 13 years older than I, married Don Shirmer quite early in life. She had four children, three of which lived to maturity.
My brother, like a lot of young fellows, left home when he was about 16 and got a job on the ferry to Newport. He worked on that passenger service ferry for quite a while. Then he joined the coast guard and he made that his career. I think he was in the coast guard for 30 years. He was living in Santa Rosa when he retired.
There’s an interesting story surrounding his career. He continued to advance in the coast guard and was shipped to California and had several stations there. Finally he ended up at Fort Point at the Presidio of San Francisco. He had gone as high as he could as a noncommissioned officer. He stayed there until his term ended in March 1941.
When he was separated from the service, he wasn't entirely released from duty. The coast guard kept him on reserve. The second world war was brewing and they had ideas. So, the next day after Pearl Harbor (August 14, 1941) the coast guard called him into active duty again. They did compensate him, however. He was promoted to the commissioned rank of lieutenant and had an office right next to the admiral—the big guy—at the Port of San Francisco. He was the assistant there for the rest of the war. Five years in all.
He paid for it. Those extra years of service were quite a drain on him, and he had a heart attack when he got out. Up until then he'd always been a very healthy man, so the family always attributed it to his wartime service.
The responsibility was tremendous. Night after night he rarely slept. He had to make important decisions by himself if the captain or major happened to be away. And there was so much sabotage going on that every boat that entered or left the harbor had to be scrutinized to the "unth" degree.
After he was released he went back to Santa Rosa and lived there until his death in 1974. He was 88 years old.
My youngest sister, Mary Gladys, married Dr. Burgess, and moved to Toledo.
And, as you know, I married Frank Updike. You know him, don't you Delbert?
Del: I remember my dad talking about him from time to time.
Violet: Well, his dad, who was from Colorado, had a little place across from the Bear Creek School.
Frank was quite a guy. I guess he'd visited every state in the Midwest. So, his dad wanted him to come out West to live. He fell in love with the country, and he thought Frank would like it too.
Well, Frank was working at the sugar beet processing plant in Colorado, but he did come out and visit his dad. Then he went back. I don't know exactly what year. I met him in 1912. He got the place on Bear Creek after his dad moved away.
Del: Where was it from Mary and Walter Parks' place?
Violet: Do you know where the Bear Creek Falls are?
Del: Let me think...
Violet: It had a great big barn on it. The Updike place isn't very far from there.
Del: Maybe pretty close to where Dick and Judy Parks are living now...
Violet: Maybe. I don't know for sure. They call that end of it the Updike Road. Frank was there until WWI. His mother was living with him. He made arrangement to send her back to Arkansas where her daughter was living.
Then he sold his place and got property in Portland, and eventually we sold that. We married just before he went into the service. Think of it. He was one of those fellows who wasn't going to get married!
I was teaching school by then and there was sickness in the family, and I had all the obligation I thought I could handle.
Connie: What changed your mind?
Violet: I don't know. Love at first sight? Mama thought it was foolish.
Del: So you met him while you were teaching at Bear Creek?
Violet: Yes. He was chairman of the school board, if you please! Twenty years old!
Del: That's hard to believe.
Violet: Remember the young couple in the area that had the big family—Anton Jung and his wife? They were German immigrants. My students were Jungs.
Del: Tell me about your teaching career. Which schools did you teach at besides Bear Creek?
Violet: I taught ten years in one room schools. My first term was at Bear Creek School in 1912. I was just out of high school, so I went back to college in Salem. I did my practice teaching there. That was the time when you could teach with a two year certificate.
Connie: Normal School?
Violet: Yes. Normal School. And I was really lucky to get my practice teaching in Salem. I was offered a contract there, but at the time my family was sick. I had a sister who had become an invalid. My dad was old and still had his rheumatism. I finished at the Normal School in 1915, and he died the following year.
I came back to Lincoln County and taught in one room schools. I had to be near the folks. Wherever I taught I tried to spend weekends with them. I taught at Moody and Storrs, which is the Evelyn (1906-1994) Glen Parry place. There was a school there in 1918. Frank came home from the war in 1919.
Anyway, I was still in the Toledo area and that's what mattered. By then mother had left Oyster City and moved to Toledo. Frank was in the service, and I lived with my mother.
Then we bought a little ranch down at Rocky Point. We had about 60 acres down there, and he logged off the timber and supplied the fuel for the old electric light plant in Toledo. He had a crew of 12 men working for him, cutting timber with a drag saw, and I taught school at Moody and Oysterville and walked the railroad tracks back and forth to work, and he got out the wood. He used to transport about 20 cords of wood to Toledo in big barges about three times a week. That's how great the demand was.

He kept this up for several years. He was involved in other enterprises too. Finally, his health began to fail, so he wanted to get into something less physically taxing. That's how he got into selling life insurance.
Although he sold other types of insurance, Frank started with life insurance, and I think it was his first love. He felt as though he were really serving people when he's go to their homes. His companies were marvelous in helping him. People were pretty independent in those days—not very much insurance minded at all. The pat answer was, "I can save my own money and take care of my family's future." But how many really can? Not very many. It's pretty hard. I think people are a little more insurance minded today than they were then, even though I don't think there's the service there used to be.
Franks’s mother died in 1954 and Frank died in 1956. We had already acquired this building in 1926, which is called the Updike Building. After I quit teaching I went into the insurance business and continued until about five or six years after his death.
Del: What were thing like when you were principal of Burgess School in Toledo?
Violet: I already had a reputation for being a strict disciplinarian when I accepted the job as principal of Burgess Grade School. I loved my superintendent, I loved my own teaching and I had wonderful teachers.
But I found the tendency growing from year to year of teachers not wanting to assume their own disciplinary measures. One teacher in particular would way, "I'll sent you to the principal's office," and that was not a good image to hold up to a child—that she had done something bad enough that she had to be sent to somebody higher up to be corrected. I firmly believe the time to make the correction is while its fresh and the incident is clear and the child knows exactly what's what. By the time they got to me, I didn't know the particulars. I used to ask teachers, "Couldn't you have taken care of this," but so many of them didn't want to do it themselves.
Connie: What was the issue? Was it timidity?
Violet: No, it was political. They were thinking about their jobs. This way, I had to take the brunt from higher ups.
Do you remember the Kosydars, Delbert? They had a big family in Siletz. They were a very frank and outspoken family. They called a spade a spade. Well, Carrie Kosydar was my fifth grade teacher. On Fridays we always tried to relax a little bit. I let my pupils chew gum in class. Of course, it wasn't nearly as much fun to chew gum in class with permission as it was without.
Carrie would have her students tell riddles during that same Friday afternoon relaxation period. Fifth graders are beginning to get wise pretty quick. She came into my room during our relaxation session and she said, "A boy just told an "off-colored" riddle in my room." Her face was flaming and she continued, "I know darned well his dad put him up to it." I said, "I bet his dad did it too." Of course, the kid didn't know what the riddle meant. So I told Carrie, "You just go back and change the subject; do something else for a while."
Del: I started school in Toledo in the seventh grade. Wayne was in the fifth grade. I graduated In 1958. And that was at a time people believed that if you were born and raised in Big Elk Valley you'd never amount to a damn. I remember hearing those painful undertones.
Violet: Burgess kind of had that reputation too. You see, the professional people in Toledo all lived around here—doctors, lawyers and what have you. Their kids all went to Stanton School. Burgess was isolated. When they started bussing kids from the country they picked up all those little schools like Bear Creek that were up the Siletz Road and down the Newport Road. We had at one time an enrollment of 360 students. We had to take part of our basement and put in an extra first grade. Our classes were big. It wasn't anything unusual to have a class of 35 all through the grades. But in the first grade we did split them; we didn't overload the 1st grade. As principal, I always taught 7th and eighth grade.
So the Stanton kids kin of looked down on those Burgess kids because most of them were from the country, and they considered themselves the elite. But our superintendent had to make some changes, so he moved some of the Stanton kids to Burgess.
Connie: Were the kids from the snob school feeling bent out of shape?
Violet: Oh, yes! The girls cried and the boys threw their weight around. The boys were a little bit harder to handle, but I finally got some of them in and said, "Just look at that playground out there. You don't have anything like that over at Stanton School." And I said, "Get with it! Why don't you start a couple of baseball teams?" After all, we had plenty of kids. We could start two baseball teams. After that they changed their attitude. They got out there and they played everything you could think of on that wonderful playground. We didn’t have any equipment to speak of. Not for the little folks either. In fact, had the little folks portioned off. The playground was big enough that we could put the little girls in one place and the boys could have the big area. That was the beautiful thing about it; that had all this space to play during recess.
But the situation with the busses was bad. We didn't have the busses we have now that pick up the small ones first then pick up the big ones on the second run. We had to wait until the big kids were dismissed after school. And in the morning, the poor little 1st graders would have to get up so early to catch that bus.
Del: That's where I was at! I had the longest bus ride in the county!
Connie: We'll be dealing with that next year with Heather when she enters first grade.
Del: The way transportation is now we'll run her in in the morning so we don't have to get up so early and let her come home on the bus in the evening. But when Wayne and I were milking cattle, hell, we'd get up at 4am. In the morning, go out and find those cows, get them milked, and catch the bus by 6:45am.
Violet: We used to have teachers taking turns watching those little children who arrived so early in the morning.
We had a soup kitchen. In fact, we had the first soup kitchen in Lincoln County because we needed it. There again, the circumstances were wonderful because we supported our own soup kitchen; we were never in the red. People, when they butchered, would provide part of their meat for the program.
Connie: Was this lunch?
Violet: Yes. This was hot lunch. We always had one hot dish and some kind of fruit. Sometimes merchants would be overstocked on oranges or something else and would bring it out by the crate to the school and donate it.
If there was a road kill or a deer killed in season, people would dress it out and hang it in the cooler and we'd have that.
Connie: If that was an innovative idea at the time, what did most schools do for lunch?
Violet: It wasn't necessary at Stanton because they all lived near enough they could either go home for lunch or carry their own cold lunch. But coming distances like the country children were made it seem advisable to have a hot dish. And the little folks had to have a glass of milk.
Connie: Considering it was the Great Depression (1929-1939), it sounds like they had things better over at the "poor" school than they did at the "rich" school.
Violet: They did! And I'm not opinionated!
Del: How far back were they establishing the hot lunch program?
Violet: I started teaching at Burgess in 1927 and they had it immediately.
Del: Right now in the news there's the big ballyhoo about the government's hot lunch program. They're making a big spectacle of the original idea now.
Connie: Some schools are serving breakfast now, and cooks resent the extra burden.
Violet: You know, Dr. Callendar wasn't in favor of those fancy lunches at Burgess. It was almost a three course meal. Do you ever read the menu for the week in the Lincoln County Leader?
Connie: I do, and it's quite elaborate.
Violet: Dr. Callendar said it's a detriment to their study.
Connie: You mean the food going to their stomachs would make them too tired?
Violet: Yes. What we did at Burgess—I'm proud to tell it on every occasion was this: We were more or less isolated, as I said before; we were a brand new school; we were right in the middle of the Depression; and we just made due with lot of things. We had entertainment at the school; we had a beautiful PTA with 200 members. We had 75 to 80 coming to every meeting. Now there is no PTA.
Connie: My mother was president of the PTA on several occasions while I was attending grade school in Grants Pass. It was certainly big when I was in grade school. Parents supplied elaborate classroom parties for the various holidays, we put on school programs, had picnics at our teachers’ homes, and there was a much, much greater sense of community than there is now. You could go home for lunch, bring a cold lunch, or have a hot lunch prepared by school cooks.
I’m curious, Violet. During the Depression was the hot lunch at Burgess the only meal the kids were being fed? I ask this because my mother, who lived on a farm and attended a one room school, spoke of children walking long distances to school with gunny sacks wrapped around their feet for shoes and potato peelings in a bag for lunch. Do you remember any real "hard luck" stories?
Violet: Yes, many. We sent letters to the service clubs down town asking if they'd buy meal tickets for indigent children. And almost every service club in town would agree to buy at least three months worth of tickets.
Connie: Then the kids were paying a little something for their lunch every day?
Violet: Yes, we had to hire a cook, and she had to be paid. It was very, very reasonable. The older girls who couldn't pay helped clean up the kitchen. We had about three shifts of children eating, and we had to clean and change the tables. Having students help now is taboo now because of health regulations.
Connie: I'm 32 and I'm already starting to feel the generation gap because when I was attending Notre Dame High School for Girls in Salinas, California I worked in the kitchen and got free burritos and what have you. I know that was parochial school and there were slightly different standards, but probably not that much.
Violet: I just don't know what things are coming to!
Connie: They're going to h-e-l-l!
Violet: I guess so. I don't know if we had any reports of food poisoning.
Salmonella is the big thing now. "Salmonella bugs are goanna come and git ya!"
Violet: The food was hot, the milk was sealed, the fruit was fresh. If they wanted sandwiches, they brought their own. Considering better than 50 percent of our people were bussed in from outlying areas, we strongly felt they needed a hot meal.
Connie: Did you apply for the position of principal at Burgess or did the school district seek you out?
I’ll tell you how I came to teach in Toledo. I got a letter from the city superintendent who was, of course, working under the county superintendent. The letter was direct and to the point. It said, "We would like very much to have you come to Toledo as we need a teacher who is a strong disciplinarian. We just kicked out one who wasn't." It wasn't just those words, but that was the gist of it. That's a funny way to invite a teacher to come and take over.
Connie: Then you already had a reputation for being a strong disciplinarian?
Violet: I guess I did. But I didn't have to use it much out in the sticks. Kids were better behaved in the sticks than they were in town. They had more responsibility on the farm, more things to do, and were accustomed to hard work and settling down.
Connie: I think Del would probably tell you he thinks that's still true.
Violet: I think two thirds of our youth problems are because they don't have anything to do.
Connie: I believe it's a form of apathy. Our youth have no hope for the future, no direction, to meaning to their lives. They are alienated from their communities, their homes and themselves.
Violet: Yes. You can't curb a child and tell her she can't do this and she can't do that, and then turn around and offer her nothing constructive to do.
On a farm, children have responsibilities according to age and ability. I don't imagine you were "killed," Delbert, because you had to go get the cows, even though you thought you were!
Del: Yes, sometimes. However, I think my brother Wayne was the one who always though that he was "killed," whereas I usually took everything in stride.
Violet: You've come a long way—from farm boy to MFA. When did you make up your mind you were going to go to college and do something, Delbert?
Del: Well, I never had that much orientation towards higher education. However, I do recall my dad telling me that if he'd had the education he'd have wanted to become a teacher. But it was not until my senior year in high school when I was in Mr. Kaiser's class that I understood there were possibilities beyond working at the mill. He wrote in a survey, "There are three tracks of vocational training. What do you want to do?" Because I was always woods oriented, I put down "I want to be a game warden." So in the course of following through on that I wrote to OSC in Corvallis and decided to study Fish & Game Management. Oregon State University has one of the best schools in the nation for that. That really got me into possibility thinking. At that time, only rich people went to college.
About that time I got a couple of little scholarships. One was through the Oregon State Grange, and the other one was from the Sears-Roebuck Foundation. They weren't enough to stick in your eye, but they were enough to get me motivated.

Delbert Hodges, son of Claudine and Dell Hodges of Elk City, has been named winner of one of the top awards in agriculture at Oregon State College.
Hodges has been picked to receive a $250 scholarship offered annually by the Sears-Roebuck Foundation to an outstanding student in agriculture. Selection is based on high scholastic [achievement] and promise of future achievement.
Hodges is a freshman this year.

A $200 college scholarship was awarded to a Lincoln County student recently by the Oregon State Grange in Portland. Winner was Delbert L. Hodges of Elk City.
Each year the State Grange gives six such awards to college students, whose names are drawn at random, during the annual convention each June. This year additional money made it possible to draw the seventh name. Hodges' name was drawn. The awards are reserved for Grange member students who have previously had at least one term of college.

So the last semester of my senior year I took college prep English, but by that time it was too late to learn much.
Of course, the folks were behind me on anything I wanted to do. They never discouraged me in the things I had chosen to do. I was always a very self-reliant individual, and I always did what I felt I needed to do. And I was always fairly active socially, so I wasn't too timid or bashful to try college, even though it would be a brand new experience for me.
So I went to Corvallis during the summer and lined up a job working at the dairy barns.
That autumn, I moved to Corvallis just totally blind and knowing absolutely nothing. Zero. I had no preparation whatsoever, and just blundered my way through.
Then I found out Fish & Game Management was really not my bag. At least, I wasn't "academically orientated" enough. It was a highly technical curriculum, and I wasn't prepared for it. It almost would have been premed, and now I wish I had the aptitude for medicine. We had Ichthyology—all the "ologies"—and every thing to do with plants. The first couple of years all you learned to do was identify everything by its Latin name.
I was taking some art courses and it soon became apparent that that was where my aptitude was. Those were the classes I was getting good grades in—not all that "ology" stuff. So finally, after a couple of years, I wanted to build up my GPA because I haven't developed the savvy to figure out the system of being in college where it's so political.
One experiment I heard of was about an English teacher who wrote a paper and then secretly turned it in to another English teacher who gave the first teacher a "D."
So while I was in the Art Department instructors came along and talked me into going to the Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles.

Delbert Hodges, local art student, will leave Saturday for the Los Angeles Art Center School of Design where he will attend college for the next year or more. Hodges has been employed for the past several months with Georgia-Pacific Corporation. He has finished three years at Oregon State University. He will l spend one week with relatives in the bay region en route South.

Not giving it any more thought than that I said I would try it, so I laid out a year, worked and saved up the money, and went down there. After running out of money in Los Angeles, I came back here and worked another year and went back to Los Angeles again.
I had a mental block towards learning foreign languages. I had always heard that in order to earn a degree in art from the University of Oregon you had to have two years of a foreign language because it was humanities. I didn't have brains enough to know I could get a BS instead of a BA in art.
Connie: You didn't have brains enough to look it up in the catalog?
Del: I just recently started getting smart.
Connie: The man's he's describing, Violet, is not the man I know!
Del: But you can see where my environment had such a strong influence on me. I have always finished what I started. I remember way back when telling myself: "If you don't get out of school by the time you are 30 you’re going to have to flick it all in and go to work."
To make a long story short, I finally got my MFA degree on my 30th birthday, June 14, 1970.
Violet: That's unreal! I watched your progress; I knew what you were doing over the years. And I always asked your mother about you.
Del: My dad was a little skeptical about my going into art. He couldn't relate to that until I sold my first painting and brought home a few bucks from it, and then it was okay. He could relate to that.
Violet: Yes, that was quite a switch from the old thinking.
Del: Still, there are an awful lot of people right around here who cannot relate to art as a profession. They have no idea how I'm staying alive; making a living.
There are those who can understand working at the pulpmill or farming or messing with their cows and horses or whatever, but every time I see some of those folks they want to know if I'm really making it.
Connie: Our lifestyle is a mystery to most people.
Del: You mentioned earlier that you didn't think your mother suffered from racial discrimination but that you yourself felt a twinge of it from time to time.
Violet: All of this in your childhood comes from the father and mother. It doesn't come from the child herself. Racism, stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination is injected into the children through the parents.
One of mother's sister's, Jane, married an Italian, Thomas Ferr, so of course my cousins were more dark complexioned than I am.
Connie: I'm Italian and I'm certainly darker than you are.
Violet: They lied and said they were Spanish.
Del: They preferred Spanish to Italian?
Violet: To Indian! But I never lied! They told Frank, "Did you know Violet is a "quarter-blood?" "Well," he told them, "I've been going to her house for over a year, so I guess I would know."
Del: Well, my mom said when she was getting ready to marry my dad that people came up to her to tell her all the family scuttlebutt. She said, ":He's 46 years old, so he's bound to have done something in that length of time!"
Violet: I've done a lot of reading about cultural assimilation versus separatism.
Connie: This is true today, because there are those who want to retain their ethnic ways and there are those so anxious to jump into the melding pot they completely abandon their old ways. My grandparents were that way. They spoke Italian in front of the children when they didn't want to be understood, but they didn't teach them to speak it, so my dad and his siblings can't speak.
Violet: Do you think it's going to get back to middle ground?
Connie: With everyone's interest in their roots it will be interesting to see what happens.
Violet: I think communication and education have a lot to do with it. People read and see a lot about this issue and they make up their minds. One thing I know is people can be very unkind to one another.
Connie: Looking at the broader scope of things, I don't think we can have every ethnic group in America living separately on communes or reservations. There has to be some cohesiveness in order for us to even claim to be a nation.
Violet: I was the one who was interested in my father's past and he didn't want to talk about it. He told me, "You're more of an Englishman than I am Violet," because he was trying to forget some things, I guess. He left all his family in England. He went back after he'd been here about 40 years with the intentions of staying six months. He came back home in six weeks.
Connie: He had become an American.
Violet: Yes, He was one hundred percent American.

Yaquina City, now a ghost town, was situated on the southeastern shore of Yaquina Bay, about four miles from its mouth, and was the terminus of the Willamette Valley & Coast Railroad, where the company had a large dock and two warehouses, and a great amount of material, giving employment to many workmen. At Yaquina City wheat, and much other produce, would be shipped to the San Francisco market, en route to the wide world. The history of town is the history of railroading and tourism in Lincoln County and the development of the greater Newport area. Yaquina City, now only a memory of its boom town days of the late 19th and early 20th Century was in its heyday the largest population center in Lincoln County with almost 2,000 citizens. It was also a thriving tourist center. Although first platted just a brief seven years earlier, in 1889 Yaquina City boasted of:

Good school and church privileges, a fine hotel, a sawmill, three salmon canneries, the only banking house in the county outside of Corvallis, a shipyard, custom house, telephone office, large warehouses and docks with equipment for handling freight, railway depot and yard with the company's machine shops and a number of other business establishments.

Other business establishments included Jacob's & Neugass' General Store as well as a drug store and a meat market. The grade school at one time reached an enrollment of 35 students, and a teacher daily crossed the bay to teach at the rapidly growing school. The Custom House, erected in 1881, was presided over by custom's collector Collins Van Cleve and was situated about a quarter of a mile to the north of the dock of Yaquina City. The interests of the place being ably kept before the public by the Yaquina Post, a newspaper originally established in Newport by Van Cleve in April 1882, and was moved to Yaquina City a month later. The paper consisted of eight pages, each with five columns, and its force was directed chiefly to "the benefit of the bay country."
Van Cleve was born in Morgan County, Illinois, August 26, 1833. His father, Dr. John Van Cleve, was a Methodist minister. At the age of 14, Van Cleve apprenticed for the printer's trade until the Civil War. Following the war, he worked for the Oregonian and Portland Times. In 1868, Van Cleve founded the Albany Register, which he edited until 1882.
Directly across the Bay from Yaquina City was the town of South Yaquina, but this area apparently was never developed to the extent of its sister city to the north. Fagan is quoted as saying: South Yaquina is "a town that as yet has only its name to boast of."
Yaquina post office, located about three miles miles southeast of Newport, was established July 14, 1868, with William Wallace Carr first postmaster. The post office was discontinued October 25, 1869, and reestablished July 24, 1882. The office was discontinued again May 10, 1883, and reestablished once more on December 30, 1885. The office became a rural station of Newport on July 31, 1961.
Yaquina Bay and Yaquina River, which heads near the Benton-Lincoln county line, and flows into the bay, bear the name of the Yaquina, a small tribe of the Yakonan family, formerly living about Yaquina Bay. Hale gives the the name as Yakon and Yakone, in Ethnology and Philology, 1846, p. 218; Lewis and Clark give Youikeones and Youone; Wilkes' Western America, 1849, gives Yacone. Another form of the word is Acona.
Yaquina John Point is on the south side of the entrance to Alsea Bay just southwest of Waldport. It was named for Yaquina John, a chief or councillor of the Yaquina, who lived in the vicinity of Alsea Bay. Yahal was a Yaquina Village on the north side of the Yaquina. In 1912, there were a few survivors, for the greater part are of mixed blood, on the Siletz Reservation.
Located at Toledo, the world's largest spruce sawmill was built by the US government in 1918 to cut spruce lumber for airplane manufacture. The mill was later sold to C. D. Johnson Lumber Company (now Georgia-Pacific Corporation). The 1,500 soldiers of the Spruce Division who were stationed here were headquartered at Yaquina City.

Oneatta is a ghost town on the northeast bank of the Yaquina, a mile and a half upstream from Yaquina City, and about a mile west of Winant.
There are few names indelibly connected with the history of Yaquina Bay than Capt James J. Winant (1838-1895), who was born in upstate New York, April 12, 1838. In the fall of 1856 he followed his brother Mark to California where they began dealing in oysters in San Francisco Bay; they were the real pioneers of the oyster trade on the Pacific Coast. Winant was master of vessels on the Pacific Coast for nearly a third of a century. He had command of the schooner Anna G. Doyle, running between Shoalwater Bay and Oysterville, Washington, and San Francisco in the 1860s. In 1862 or 1863, they began the oyster trade on Yaquina Bay. In June, 1882, Winant married Amy A. Peck in Alameda County, CA. They had one child, Anita. Winant was located at Oysterville Station on the Corvallis & Eastern Railway, about two miles due south of Yaquina City, on the north bank of the Yaquina. The post office was established November 17, 1902, with Emma Leabo first postmaster. The office closed to Yaquina City November 30, 1946.
The first schooner was built by Peck & Company, and named the Oneatta, by Kellogg Brothers, but the first steamer to ply on the Bay was the Pioneer, in charge of George Kellogg, MD. The first sermon was preached by elder Gilmore Callison of Lane County, his audience being seated on the driftwood opposite the present site of Newport.
On the completion of the Central Railroad, they brought from the East several car loads of eastern oysters, planting one car load in San Francisco Bay and the other in Yaquina Bay, and reaped a harvest from both beds. He traded pearls in the South Pacific and hunted walrus and whales along the shore of Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and the coast of Siberia. A salvage voyage to the coast of Mexico, where he explored the sunken steamship City of San Francisco and recovered $22,000 of her treasure, was the climax of his legendary career.
A little hamlet of about 60 people, Oneatta was located on land owned by Judge Allen Parker, who was born in Ross County, Ohio, in 1828. His family crossed the plains in 1852, first settling in Linn County. In 1872, Parker was elected sheriff of Linn County and mayor of Albany in 1876. He moved to Benton County in 1878, and purchased considerable property in Oneatta, on Yaquina Bay, where he owned a large sawmill. In 1880 and again in 1882, Parker was elected to the house of representatives.
The town was first settled and named by Siletz Indian agent Ben Simpson in 1871, and consisted of a furniture store, two saloons, a book and shoe store and the post office, which was established May 17, 1876, with John. E. Peterson first postmaster. The Oneatta Sawmill, owned and operated by Parker, was originally built in Simpson. It was driven by steam and had a capacity of 20,000 board feet per day, and gave employment to 14 men—most of the time—the timber cut being chiefly fir.
In 1893, the Lincoln County Leader wrote:

Owen C. Simpson is making his parents in Elk City a visit during lay off of Parker Mill at Oneatta on lower bay near Yaquina City.

The post office was discontinued July 13, 1877, and reestablished January 24, 1879. The office closed to Toledo on September 29, 1886.
Charles Schmidt, one of the 60 inhabitants of Oneatta, was born in Seidelinghousen, Westphalia, Prussia, in 1843. He emigrated to America in 1867, and spent his first year in Galena, Illinois. From there he moved to Sioux City, Iowa. Smith relocated San Francisco in 1872, where he owned a popular resort called Saint Ann's Rest, located on Eddy Street. In 1880, he settled in Oregon. After a short stay in Portland, he settled at Oneatta on Yaquina Bay.
Moses Gregson, another Oneatta settler, was born in Lancashire, England, March 4, 1836. At an early age, he learned the trade of carpenter and joiner, which he mastered. At the age of 20, he emigrated to America, first settling in Lockport, New York, where he resided until 1863 when he moved to Michigan. In the spring of 1877, Gregson moved to Benton County, Oregon, and first took up a claim near Mary's Peak. In 1880, he purchased 35 acres of land near the Custom House at Yaquina City and opened a carpenter's shop is at Oneatta. The Custom House is situated about a quarter of a mile north of the dock at Yaquina City, and was erected in 1881. The port collector was Collins Van Cleve.
In 1873, the trip from Corvallis took from early morning till dusk at night by stage (drawn by four horses, changed at noon for a fresh double team) which bumped and climbed over the 49 miles to Elk City where the mail boat waited for the 25 mile trip down the river and bay to Newport; leaving the next morning on the first of the ebb tide. Twelve miles down, the boat stopped at Toledo, then at Oneatta, and finally at Newport, at a rickety wharf in front of Bay View Hotel (latter renamed the Abbey). At the other end of town was Ocean House, which is the Coast Guard station now. In between were four saloons, a store, over which was a hall used for dances, political meetings, and—more rarely—church services whenever a minister of the Gospel happened along. Near the sand path up the hill to the beach of land occupied by the Ocean House, took a building quite imposing when compared to the rest of the town. The community was named for an Indian princess of legendary beauty and virtue, described by Alfred B. Meacham, in Wigwam and Warpath. A possible candidate for Princess Oneatta is Oneatta Reynolds Jones (1885-1912) who is buried at Toledo Cemetery. She was the wife of Everett Jones and the grandmother of Julia A. Parker. Col. Meacham was a member of the Modoc Peace Commission. In 1863, he established the Blue Mountain in the Eastern Oregon town that bears his name, just outside the borders of the Umatilla Reservation. In 1873, he was wounded when he and fellow peace commissioners, Canby and Thomas, were advancing under a flag of truce in an effort to reach peaceful settlement to the bloody and costly Modoc War. His life was saved by the intervention of the peace loving Winema, at the risk of her own. Married at an early age to a non-indian, Winema mastered the English language and became an interpreter and intermediary in negotiations between her people and their conquerors. For her devotion to th cause of peace, Congress later voted her a life pension. The Klamath Falls chapter of the DAR has erected over her grave in Schonchin Cemetery a tablet bearing the inscription, "Winema—The Strong Heart."

The railroad from Corvallis made this bustling population center possible—and 500 Chinese laborers working for minimal wages made the railroad possible. Construction of the Corvallis & Eastern Railroad, which had its eastern terminus in Corvallis, but with eventual plans to extend it east of the Cascades, was begun in 1877. It was built by a corporation called the Willamette Valley & Coast Railroad—later changed to the Oregon Pacific Railroad—and was directed by Colonel T. Egenton Hogg and his brother, William Hoag. While the two brothers had convinced the population of the feasibility of eventually extending the railroad to Newport, they apparently had no intention of ever extending the track beyond Yaquina City. By platting and subdividing the city for themselves, it appears that they probably expected or hoped to make a fortune on real estate sales.
After considerable difficulties involving mismanagement of funds, striking workmen and natural disasters such as land slides, as well as tunnel cave-ins, the railroad was finally completed in 1884. Not until 1885, however, did a train complete the trip over the whole line.

Financial problems continued to plague the venture in 1892. In 1894, A. B. Hammond purchased the railroad as the highest bidder of $100,000. He renamed it the Oregon Central & Eastern Railroad. However, in 1897, when he gave up the idea of extending the railroad east of the Cascades, he once again renamed it as it was originally known—the Corvallis & Eastern Railroad.
John Henry Penn was the first mail clerk on the train and was assisted by Charles L. Litchfield (1867-1950) whose son, George Kenneth (1906-2000), is a prominent Newport attorney today (1976).
Among the early residents of Yaquina City were the parents and grandparents of Lucy Blue, who has written much of the history of this area.
With the advent of the railroad, tourism in Lincoln County became an established fact which has lasted as an important industry to the present time. On July 4, 1895, the Oregon Pacific announced its first grand excursion from Corvallis to the coast. On many weekends for years thereafter the steamer meeting the train at Yaquina City could not carry all the tourists down the Bay to Newport where it docked directly across the street from the old Abbey Hotel. Small launches, and even rowboats, would take up the overflow of tourists heading for Newport. Also, the steamer meeting passengers at the end of the railroad in Yaquina City eventually made connections in Newport with a coastal steamer to San Francisco.
The revolution in the transportation industry with the coming of the automobile brought about the decline of Yaquina City. In the 1950s, the post office, located for many years in "Yaquina Pete" Rasmussen's general store, was finally phased out; and later the store itself was closed. This weathered old building still stands.
Yaquina City was situated behind where Sawyer's Landing is located, and near Fairline Marine, where 500 ton vessels are lifted out of the bay for maintenance and repairs.

The Chitwood area was a primeval wilderness in the 1860s when Meeky M. (1846-? IA) and Mathias L. Trapp (1838-? MO) settled on a land claim a short distance below where the town was located. Life was lonely for Meeky Trapp until the Barney Morrisons settled nearby. In the years to come, more hardy pioneers came to cut the trees and till the soil. Some already had families and more children were born after they settled. The need for a schoolhouse soon became evident. A house with one large room half a mile west of Chitwood was used for that purpose. It had a fireplace at one end, which served as the only source of heat. Because nobody had time to cut firewood the approximate length to fit the fireplace, the teacher, Thomas J. Brannan, poked the ends of large branches into the blaze and moved them farther in as they burned, much like a Yule log. There were no desks or work tables. The students sat on benches and did their schoolwork on slates propped in their laps.
Hardships caused some of the settlers to move out of the area; and the student population dropped. Trapp offered the use of a room in his home and hired a teacher who lived in.
In 1887 a schoolhouse was built. It was located near Chitwood, and was built by volunteer labor. The building became a community center where box socials, committee meetings, formal group get-togethers, Christmas parties and weddings were held. Evangelists held revival meetings in the schoolhouse. A collection of books donated by residents became the nucleus of a growing library shortly after the turn of the century. Grace Davis served as librarian.
During the early years, Seventh Day Adventists wanted a church which could double as a school. Lumber was scarce, and the dream had to be postponed. Then the old church at Storrs was dismantled and the material was hauled to Chitwood by a sturdy pair of oxen owned by Flora May Akey (1864-1948) and Lafe F. Pepin (1850-1917)—Lep and Lion—which were best for hauling on the deeply rutted, muddy roads. That is, until the railroad came, bringing Paer A. Miller (1854-1915 Sweden) with it.

He had been Paer Anderson in Sweden, but for the sake of simplification in America, he became Paer A. Miller for the rest of his life.
He lived at Chitwood while the Corvallis & Eastern Railroad was being built, but was soon transferred to Mill City, a lumber camp near Albany in the Willamette Valley and helped build some of the bridges crossing Santiam River. He became dissatisfied with this job because it kept him away from home where his wife was expecting their first child. He applied for a job of track maintenance on the Chitwood line. His request was granted six months after his daughter was born. P. A. Miller and his family moved to a train stop called Morrison Station, located below Chitwood. It was close enough for Lillie Miller to go to school.
Miller did well on his job and improved his small home. When his family expanded with the birth of two sons, he built a larger house.
The wagon road was a mud hole in winter, and a dust bowl in summer. When the first automobiles began to filter in, one car would raise so much dust that another couldn't follow behind it. But the mud in the winter didn’t stop the section foreman. He had access to a handcar, which was a tiny, four-wheeled platform that ran on rails, powered by a handle bar worked up and down like a see-saw. For one man, the see-sawing was backbreaking; for two men, it was a breeze.

It was P. A. Miller's job to take care of any emergencies. When called upon for illness or birth, he would jump on the handcar and pump madly to Elk City where the doctor, Franklin M. Carter, lived. Then he and the doctor would see-saw back to the crisis center. Most of these calls came at night, so there was little danger on the rails from trains. When Elk City no longer could support a doctor, Miller had to pump the handcar all the way to Toledo.
When Lillie Miller started school in Chitwood, she and other children walked the railroad ties to avoid the muddy road.
Coming home from school one day, the children came upon a pile of glowing embers where the section crew had been burning old ties. The children put more wood on the dying fire and fanned it to a blaze. As Lillie stooped low over the flames, her dress caught on fire. She ran back to school in a panic. It was fortunate the teacher was still there. She tore off the little girl's clothing and rolled her in a coat. Lillie's recovery from the severe burns was slow.

Around that time, a San Francisco prospector discovered a fine vein of sandstone at Pioneer Quarry near Elk City. The material was deemed most suitable for construction of the mint and post office in the bay area city. The Corvallis & Eastern Railroad ran a spur line into the quarry. The sandstone was cut and loaded by hand on flat cars and hauled to Yaquina City. From there, it was transshipped on vessels to San Francisco. The sandstone industry caused quite an influx of workers for a time.

In 1905 a movement was started for a telephone line to serve Chitwood, as the telegraph was felt to be inadequate. It was P. A. Miller's responsibility to see that the long stretch of track was kept in good repair. In order to do his job well, Miller needed better communications with those who lived along the route. So on December 14, 1905, the Rural Telephone Company was organized. The list of members included P. A. Miller, Lafe F. Pepin, Charles S. (1857-1941), Dudley Trapp, and Willmore N. Cook (1864-1946). The office and switchboard was set up in the W. E. Durkee house. Grace Davis took over the switchboard as operator. At first the line went only to Morrison Station. Soon it expanded and connected to the outside world for long distance calls.
For years, the Chitwood post office was in the store was owned by Hattie A. (1838-1890) W. E. Durkee (1838-1928 WI), a crippled Civil War veteran. George T. Smith (1864-1942) was postmaster and general store manager. Later the post office was transferred to a little building. The post office is no longer there, but the pigeon-hole racks still hang on the walls where they held letters.

More than any other factor, the coming of the Corvallis & Eastern Railroad changed things for Chitwood, which was named after Joshua B. Chitwood, who lived near the site where the railroad was built between 1881 and 1885.
In 1879, Chitwood, a widower, bought 160 acres and his son Albert filed on a nearby homestead. Chitwood became the first postmaster, railroad station agent, and started the first grocery store facing the tracks. He sold this store to Laura A. Parker (1855-1900 IL) and Marion T. Whitney (1846-1927 IN) whose daughter, Maude (1879-1954), married George T. Smith. The store was bought by the Smiths and moved to the end of the bridge. It is now closed to business but is trying to tell stories.
Chitwood's daughter, Alisa married David Turnicliff (1812-1885) who lived in or near Chitwood. Turnicliff, a Civil War veteran from Illinois, died and was buried in the Elk City Cemetery. By 1885, Albert's wife, Nancy, had died. Their children, Frank and Bertha V., were taken to Alisa Turnicliff who was running a boardinghouse in Chitwood.
In 1892, Albert married Onie Allphin, the sister of Emma A. McBride (1862-1952). They moved to a homestead on Simpson Creek, now the home of Mabel Parker and Ernest Cook. They had the misfortune of a fire that destroyed the entire household and Albert was burned. In a letter, Onie tells of the help she received from the Cook family, Hattie and Ed Durkee, her aunt, Margaret Lewis (1838-1910 Wales), Emma McBride, Sarah Barnes (1846-1913), P. A. Miller and the Whitneys. Pioneers cared for the unfortunate though it may have been a sacrifice to their needs.
When travel was confined to the wagon road, the stagecoaches sometimes got through and sometimes they didn’t, all depending, of course, on the weather.
When the stages did get through, they were useful. A man with a freshly killed deer carcass who lacked flour could wrap up a hind quarter in a sack, take the stage to Corvallis, make a trade in the store for flour, and return home by stage.
In his October 11, 1977 letter to the author, Ernest E. Chitwood of Sylmar, California, wrote:

I spent my childhood in this area. I was born on his fathers homestead near the hamlet of Chitwood in 1894. Franklin M. Carter, the Siletz Reservation doctor, was "master-of-ceremonies" at my birth, and also facilitated my sister's birth. My father was the first Chitwood to locate on Yaquina River. My grandfather, Joshua B. Chitwood—for whom the settlement was named—followed him there shortly afterwards. When the Southern Pacific Railroad began operations, he was the first general store owner, railroad station agent, and postmaster. My paternal uncle and aunt also moved to Chitwood, and later my grandfather's brother, James Chitwood, and his son, Delman J. Chitwood, who was both a carpenter and a teacher, made their homes there. He and his family lived there until 1905, at which time they moved to Eddyville, where they lived until 1909.

Ira O. Chitwood of Corbin, Kentucky has prepared records on all four Chitwood brothers who came to the US. He plans to publish one huge or four smaller books on the four branches of the family. The Lincoln County branch, according to Ira Chitwood, descends from Joshua Chitwood's brother James T. (1825-1902 IN).

When the railroad from Corvallis to Yaquina City was completed, Chitwood became an important stop. The little depot was close by the general store and the post office. Train time was always the highlight of the townspeople’s day. Outgoing mail sacks were thrown on board, and the incoming ones were taken off.
Since George Smith was a butcher as well as a grocer, there was always a smelly bale of cowhides ready for shipping. Sacks of dried and crushed cascara bark and cords of wood were stacked beside the tracks for train crews to load as fuel for the boiler. Cutters got 90 cents a cord. And trains brought large shipments of good for the store.
Most of the items were available at George Smith's general store. If he didn’t have a particular item, he would send for it, and it would come in on the train from Corvallis.

Like so many early settlers, bee keeping was an important part of the economy of Chitwood. George Smith owned an apiary and sold a complete line of supplies—hives, supers and Queen bees—to his neighbors, all of whom had orchards like the Eddys, Grants, Hodges and Millers.
He sold meat, but allowed customers to use his facilities for their own slaughtering.

Smith's son, Morris, grew up and went to school at Chitwood. When he was old enough to work, he did odd jobs. At the age of 24, he got a steady job at another, later stone quarry, where the stone was regularly blasted out of a solid vein.
One day, Morris Smith went to the cook shack for lunch which had been delayed for the scheduled noon blast. This time a shower of badly placed rocks overhead came hurtling down through the mess hall roof. His leg was pinned to the floor, and was crushed from the ankle to above the knee, which was left rigid, and the ankle almost as after a year of hospitalization.
When Morris Smith left the hospital, he found the Great Depression (1929-1939) in full swing. He was happy to accept his father's offer to take him into the store business, while his leg gradually improved. He cultivated berries and orchard fruit near the store. The produce was sold locally or—with honey—sold to the coast resort at Newport.

Like Morris Smith, the tragedy that struck Lillie Miller took a long time to heal.
She attended Toledo High School, 13 miles away, when she graduated from the Chitwood Grade School. After the fist lonely year, she took courses at home. Later on, she taught in several of the small area schools. She saved her money and took a summer course at Oregon Agricultural Collage at Corvallis. Later, she taught school at West Linn across the Willamette from Oregon City, and graduated from the University of Oregon at Eugene. A few years later she married Charles A. Nutt and moved to Portland.

When the old wagon road was rerouted and paved, the improvement was welcomed in Chitwood. Cars used the new, shorter route to the Pacific Coast, and soon nobody was riding the train. With increasingly large tonnage of freight shipped by truck, the railroad reduced service to a minimum and completely discontinued passenger service. The depot at Chitwood was torn down. Many people moved away. Now the larger stores and markets were readily reached by automobile, and the general store owners were forced to close their doors. The general stores at Blodgett, Burnt Woods and Elk City are still open, offering gasoline and alcoholic beverages for the tourists who pass by—in automobiles.
Although a few faithful residents remain, Chitwood is virtually a ghost town.

Lillie and Dudley Trapp, descendent of pioneer settlers, were married December 16, 1889, in a farmhouse by a Methodist minister named Smith.
Lillie's parents crossed the plains in 1846. She was born February 25, 1867 at Mount View near Corvallis.
The pioneers of 1847 who eventually staked claims currently encompassed, wholly or partially, by the Corvallis city limits included Dudley's grandfather, John Trapp, J. P. Freidly and David Butterfield. John Trapp settled his claim in 1847. Dudley was born January 17, 1864, on his grandfather's donation land claim.
Dudley Trapp grew up on a ranch In Lincoln County near Chitwood. The stream running through their place, called Trapp Creek, was named for his family. It is located in the Coast Range a little over one mile west of Chitwood.

In 1881, Dudley left home and worked farms and other jobs.
In the summer of 1884, he drove stagecoach over the main route between Corvallis and Pioneer, near Elk City. He drove a spring wagon—a two-horse rig—which tipped over easily.
There were plenty of Indians along the route, and they were friendly and peaceable.

On his fourth trip, he had five men and an Indian woman as passengers. The coach hit a bump and the passengers and mail bags were thrown in one heap on the road. By the time Dudley got straightened out on the ground, the Indian woman was sitting right smack dab on Charley Hogue. They loaded up mr Hogue, the Oregon Pacific's paymaster, who swapped seats and got a gentleman for a partner.
Charley Hogue was not related to the promoters of the railroad company, but it reminds one that two of them were Colonel T. Egenton Hogg and his brother, William Hoag, who changed his name to Hoag to avoid embarrassment. The colonel wouldn’t consider such an alteration, stating emphatically that "I was born a Hogg and will die a Hogg!"

After three years driving the stagecoach, Trapp went to Philomath College. Although their families knew one another, Lillie and Dudley never met until they attended college together.
Dudley was employed as a logger during the summers. He worked for the Oregon Pacific Railroad for five years, following three years of work in Roseburg for the Southern Pacific Bridges & Buildings Department. He homesteaded 35 years at Chitwood where he ran a Roan Durham dairy. In 1931 he went to Orlando, Washington, and worked a fruit orchard with his brother for six years.
The couple moved to Portland in 1937. They both loved gardening: Dudley raised vegetables, and Lillie raised flowers.
The Trapps were avid followers of world events. They remembered Grover Cleveland (1885-1889; 1893-1897) and Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) as good presidents. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945), who they considered an average, run-of-the-mill president, did not impress them.
The couple's children, Della and Walter, were employed as eighth grade teacher and locomotive engineer respectively, until their retirement.

The homestead of early pioneers Meekey and Mathias Trapp is located where the Macombers live now, and their son Dudley lived across the Yaquina. Later on, there was a barn where the stagecoach stopped and brought passengers and mail. I remember the barn. It was later torn down and a big dairy barn was built in its place.
Trapp knew the value of having a teacher for his children, Dudley (1864-? OR), Effie (1868-? OR), and Chauncy, but no school district had been organized. There was no schoolhouse in Chitwood, so he hired a teacher from town who lived right there at the house to teach them. Eventually the neighbors decided they'd like to have their children take advantage of this opportunity too. They made an agreement with Trapp that, for a small fee to help out with board and room and wages for the teacher, their children could be educated too.

Near Chitwood where Harringtons raise garlic now, there was a one-room house with a fireplace that wasn't occupied at the time. In the meantime, more families moved to the area with grade school children, and the little house was converted into a community schoolhouse.
In the wintertime when they needed fire for heat, nearby farmers cut wood for the school. Fallen fir trees, vine maple, alder and wild cherry was loaded up in wagons and taken to the school. In the morning they'd start the fire. Then they'd drag a long log in and stick an end in the fireplace. When that was burned off and they needed more heat, they'd push the log in further.
There used to be a planing mill near the railroad. There's still an old metal coal-type burner there. That's where the first schoolhouse sat. My mother, whose name was Maude Whitney, was in the first eighth grade that graduated from Chitwood.
When she came there in 1892, she was nine years old. My mother, one or two of her sisters, and some of the Pepin boys all went to school together.
This is interesting. I've got an autograph book made in Germany that belonged to my mother. The first entry reads:

My dear daughter, if anyone speaks evil of you let your life be so that no one will believe him. Your dad, Marion T. Whitney, Chitwood, Oregon, February 23, 1896

Dear schoolmate, may your life be full of sunshine or just enough alloy to teach you to appreciate the blessings you enjoy. Your friend, Iva Rogers

This one was written by Elijah Gaither, the grandfather of Terrance Gaither who operates the Ford Motor Company in Newport. He was a Lincoln County judge for a long time:

This one was written by Maggie Hampton, one of the very first primary schoolteachers in Lincoln County. She passed away within the past two or three years:

If you meet with one pursuing ways the wrong have entered in working out its own undoing with sin, think to this sinful disposition would a kind word be in vein? Will you look with cold suspicion, will you back the truth again? Maggie L. Hampton, Rocca, Oregon, July 17, 1899

Rocca isn't even written up in the book, Western Ghost Town Shadows, because it didn't last very long as a post office, and there isn't very much information about it. If you're coming from Siletz it's located east towards Logsden on Rock Creek just before Valsetz in Polk County.

What I do know is that when the office was first proposed it was planned to have Sam Center act as postmaster, but as he was moving from the neighborhood, other arrange, Mary Rocca Center. This girl had been named for a friend of her mother who had married an Italian. The office was established April 30, 1895. It closed to Nortons on August 31, 1918. It was one of the many offices to serve an isolated group of homes with mail three times a week. Gertrude Chamberlain Phillips said her grandfather, Richard James Robinson, carried the mail from Nortons to Rocca on horseback during the winter and by buggy during the summer. Maggie Hampton was the postmaster for several years.

Pictured is one of the last remaining buildings in Rocca, Polk County, Oregon, in 1950, if not the last. Rocca was in the extreme SW corner of Polk County, and the post office was established there in 1895. It was named after the daughter of the man who was expected to be the first postmaster. The office was closed in 1918. The entire time of its existence it was in the home of a Maggie Hampton on Rock Creek. The photo is of a wooden building with a decidedly sagging roof. It is two story with probably four rooms and a roofed front porch. Windows are all missing and you can see clear through the missing front door and out the opposite side window. It appears to be only 8-10 inches off the ground and simply set on beams. There is a separate shed or other wooden structure in back. The building is in a small clearing with tall fir trees beside

Maggie Hampton and her sister lived there in their parents' old home. She hauled the lumber for the house from Nortons.
I remember an orchard on the Hampton with all varieties of apples, filberts and hickory nuts. There was a chicken yard up on the hill. I went deer hunting up there one time with a friend of mine.
This is a good one:

We shall part but not forever. There'll be a glorious bond. We shall meet to part no never on the resurrection morn. From the darkest peaks of ocean, from the mountain and the plain, from the hillside and the valley, countless storms shall rise again. Yours truly, Lulu Harrington, 1898

When the golden sun is setting and your mind from care is free, when of others you are thinking, will you sometimes think of me? Your Schoolmate, Elsie Logsden, April 22, 1893

I slept and dreamt that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was beauty. Your sister, Neva J. Whitney

My sister, Neva, taught one or two years. She went to school at Monmouth and got a job teaching grade school in Tillamook. The first year there she got sick and passed away. She's buried along with my parents, Maude and George Smith, my grandparents, and my brother at Chitwood Cemetery.
M. L. Trapp had two sons. One was Chauncy. In later years, he was the conductor on the freight train. He operated a steam locomotive and every day I'd see him go by. The oldest son was Dudley. When he was 14 or 15 years old, he rode a saddle horse and delivered the mail from Corvallis to various stations in the area. The line didn't come by way of Burnt Woods so it didn't pass through Summit, Nashville and Nortons. Chitwood wasn't a mail station then. We got our mail at Eddyville, Elk City, or perhaps Toledo. Later on, Dudley delivered the mail by stagecoach.
The old stagecoach crossed the river at the Raymond Kinion place and from there to Trapp Creek. It followed a southeasterly course up over the hill past the old Larsen place, and from there on to Elk City. Before it came down the ridge by Elk City Cemetery which located on a hill above the home now owned by Evelyn Schriver. It turned up another ridge at the Seymour Scoville place, three miles up the Yaquina from Elk City. Down at the river bottom were two hotels at a place called Pioneer and that was the end of the stagecoach line.
Pioneer is also the head of tidewater. Finally, Elk City replaced it as the end of the stagecoach line because many times people would have to wait there. Boats couldn't pick them up because of low tide. At Elk City you could get out with boat service just about any time, because the Yaquina is deeper there.
Pioneer City sat on the inclined base of a hill, sandwiched between two rock bluffs, overlooking the bend of the river just below the site Pioneer. The Southern Pacific track now runs along the front of the site where boats were docked while people made their way up the steep bank a 100 feet or so to the settlement. Pioneer was later named Morrison.
Something happened one time, and the stage coach turned over and several passengers were hurt. The road was probably rutted out as usual. Some of the iron from the wheels and other parts can still be found at the site of the accident. One of the local trappers said he has seen some of the parts at the bottom of the ridge along his trap line.
Lillie Miller went to school at Chitwood. Her father, P. A. Miller, worked for the Corvallis & Eastern Railroad as a section foreman when it was first being built. After the tunnel across the bridge there's a slope, and the old house there belonged to Millers. Like many old European houses, the first floor was a stable for cows and horses. The second floor was where the family lived, and the bedrooms were on the third floor. Across the hill it leveled out to an area that looked like a park in the summertime. The place used to be called Strope Creek because of the first settlers, Nancy B. (1836-? IL) and A. (1832-? OH).
In 1911, Lorena and Will Cook built a house on an early homestead above Strope Creek. In the 1920s, their son, Ernest, logged with a team and wagon, and dumped his logs at the mouth of Cougar Creek, about a mile west of Chitwood. He explained that it was the place above Molls, now owned by Eleanor and Ralph Moiser on Pioneer Mountain. The Cook family moved here in 1893. In later years, Will Cook enjoyed everyday chores like feeding and caring for stock, weeding the garden and repairing fences that filled his life with worthy activity. The grounds were lush with beautiful flowers.
Anyway, for eight years, Lillie walked up through that railroad tunnel. The first time or two she got caught with the train inside the tunnel.
I heard her tell of the time the crew was replacing ties. They didn't put gravel between the rails then, just dirt. So they put the ties on the ground and they'd space them out and the next rail would be offset. And they'd build a fire in the openings in the afternoon and burn the old rotten ties out of the railroad bed. Before morning they'd just be smoldering.
Anyway, she was coming home from school, and the fire that day was flaming pretty good. You know how children are. Very curious. They throw caution to the wind. Lillie got too close to the flames and her dress caught on fire She had some pretty serious burns. She knew enough to lie down and roll and that put the flames out and saved her life.
She finished high school in Toledo and went out to Monmouth and became a schoolteacher. She returned to Toledo and taught school there for a few years. Then she moved to Portland and married Charles Nutt. She taught school there for many years and retired. Lambert Florin, who wrote Western Ghost Town Shadows, interviewed Lillie Miller, Grace Davis and me for the piece on Chitwood which is a good six pages long.
We had two ways of going to school—down the railroad tracks a mile or across the bridge on down the highway a mile. In the summertime, there was dust from the few cars there were in the area, and in the wintertime there was mud up to the hubs of the wagons. There was a trail along side the road, but it was narrow and kids didn't want to walk "Indian fashion;" they wanted to walk in a group.
One time there were two boys. One was twice as big as the other, because one was in the eighth grade and the other was in the fourth or fifth grade. The older boy didn't like the younger boy, so he bought a can of red pepper at my dad's store. We were coming home on the highway one night, and the bigger boy wrestled the younger one down into the mud and sprinkled red pepper in his eyes. There was trouble high and wide then. Investigation. Punishment. Both are still living. One lives in Yuma, Arizona and is in charge of irrigation on a big ranch. The other lives at Milton-Freewater up the Columbia.
If I took my shoes off in the school yard, my sisters would tell my folks and I'd get a licking when I got home. So us older boys would cross the county highway on the north side of the schoolyard and climb up the hillside where there were lots of trees, logs and stumps to play follow the leader. We'd take our shoes and socks off out of sight of the girls. The first one who got his shoes and socks off got to pick a tree. He'd climb to the top of it, lean over and catch hold of another one and swing onto it. If someone didn't have the strength to swing from tree to tree, he could get down and climb the next one. We would cover the full length of the hillside this way.
We also had cone fights in the corner yard just beyond the girls' toilet in a field of daffodils. That big fir tree we got them from still stands next to the highway. One of us would climb up on a boy's shoulders to reach the cones or we'd climb the tree and pick green cones and drop them to the ground. We'd get a pile of cones and everybody'd get two or three in their hands and maybe one or two in their pockets for spares. Then we'd start circling around. Soon everybody'd start throwing. You'd see the darned things coming like torpedoes and you'd jump this way and that. If you got good at it, you could get in hits quite often. You could even decide which way the "enemy" was going to duck, and when he ducked you could throw your cone in the opposite direction and get him anyway.
One morning before school started I had half a dozen green cones on me. Pretty soon the big boy who put red pepper in the little boy's eyes came around the corner and we were on a collision course. I cut loose with a fresh big cone and hit him right smack in the cheek. I wish I'd never done that because several other bigger boys ganged up on me and really got the best of me.
Colgate sent toothpaste samples to schools for teachers to distribute to their students. They were little tubes as long as your finger, and the kids were supposed to take them home. That was before "swish-swash" in the classroom.
One time Johnny and Henry Udall, King and Count Pepin and I cut out of sight from the girls on the way home and took the cap off a tube of toothpaste and squeezed it on the tracks. By the time we got home, none of us had any toothpaste left.
That night after supper, my sisters were brushing their teeth, and my mother asked me, "Where's your toothpaste, Morris? Get your toothpaste, it’s time to brush your teeth." Well, she soon discovered that I didn't have it. My dad pulled out the leather strap and boy did I ever get a licking.
On the railroad side of Chitwood there was a bridge crew that replaced rotten piling and braces or what have you. They had a flat car that hauled timbers and tools to the work site. There were also two big passenger cars painted red. Inside there were bunks for the men to sleep in. And, of course, there was a cook car.
The crew had a Chinese cook. At noontime, he loaded the men's lunch up on one of those three-wheel speeders and took it to them, and when the lunch hour was over he went back. Now, generally if you appreciate a Chinese cook's food he's very generous. He knew kids liked pastries, so he made more cakes and pies and donuts than the men could ever eat. He always managed to get back to the schoolhouse gate ten or 15 minutes before 1pm and before the lunch bell rang and we had to go in. When we'd see him coming the gate would fly open and there'd be 20 or 25 kids eagerly waiting there. We'd flock around him, and it didn't take long for the pastries to disappear.
One year, we had nine or ten inches of snow on the ground. Some of us older boys started rolling balls at the railroad tracks and made an immense big snowman in front of the gate. When the teacher came to school he couldn't get through. He had to crawl over the fence to get in.
Henry Udall, the one who got the red pepper in his eyes, had a younger brother, Johnny. During the school year we had holiday programs just like you do now. We'd have pieces to speak and maybe a little act or something. I'll never forget the time Johnny had a recitation. He was standing there kind a bashful; kind a moving back and forth and said:

Just beyond the side track of the railroad was Section Station 108. The section foreman lived in the house. Then there was the tool shed. In the morning when we’d be walking by, the foreman would be standing outside. The men would be coming to work with their lunch buckets and they'd unlock the door. They had a handcar. It had four little wheels and a flat bed. Some men would stand on one side and some on the other and they'd pump the bars up and down and it would move down the track. They'd put their tools, maybe a ladder and two or three extra ties and their lunch boxes on the flat car and go to work. They would kid us as we went by.
The Golden Sweet apples were ripe about the time school started in the autumn. I had one of those ten pound bags that rolled oats used to come in half full of those apples and I'd be going down the railroad tracks with them and my lunch.
Jake Jacobson (1865-1942 Finland), who was the grandfather of Clay Jacobson of Elk City was the foreman of the rock quarry at Morrison and the track walker. He had a wrench and the same kind of three-wheeled speeder the Chinese cook was using. It had a seat and stirrups you put your feet in. You pumped it to make it go. He’d put his lunch box, spike maul and a wrench on the wooden platform the cook used to carry the lunches. Every day—including Sunday—he'd go up and down the tracks and do the little things that needed to be done so the train wouldn't derail. He would always be coming down the track sometime between my leaving home and arriving at school. I'd have my lunch and little bag of apples. He'd pull a lever and put the brake on the speeder so I'd stop. Like a big old muskrat he'd beller, "What you got in that sack?" Of course I was bashful and didn't reply; I hadn't been around strangers too much.
A little farther down, the railroad went through a cut and across the bridge. On the banks of this cut was Elkhorn moss which gets very long and grows in clay and dirt. It had a fuzzy part on one end, and it never grew up in the air—just long and snake-like and close to the ground. We'd take one end of it—and it just kept unraveling like yarn —to see who could get the longest piece. That was one of the ways we entertained ourselves on our way to school.
Of course, along in the springtime wild flowers were starting up and each one of us boys wanted to see who could bring some spring beauty—trillium or daffodils—to school first. The old desks had inkwells in them and we’d take white trillium and break them off at the stem and set them in the ink. Before long the ink came up through the stems into the blooms and colored them.
When we came to this railroad bridge on our way to school, there was a ripple in the river which made quite a bit of noise. The older kids would take the first graders by the hand and walk them across the bridge, or they’d go across the bridge first to see if the train was coming. It was quite a large span, there was quite a bit of noise from the ripple, and we couldn’t see very good. Just around the corner we'd be in the school yard.
The old schoolhouse had three windows on each side—three facing the railroad tracks and three facing the highway. Later on, the three windows on the highway side were moved to the railroad side and spaced in between those three. Some people speculated that they moved the windows because the kids were spending too much time watching the farmers go by with their teams. I believe it was so we could practice penmanship without being in our own shadows.
When I was in the sixth grade, there were three rows of seats and I sat in the back seat next to a window. Paul Phillips (1908-1940) sat in the center row and Harry Rawlson, who was my neighbor, sat next to him. Paul was sort of stocky and Harry was kind a long and gangling. About five or ten minutes before noon, Harry was slouched way down in his seat with his nose in a book. Paul was looking around waiting for lunch and spotted one of those great big carpenter ants on the floor. He reached down, picked it up and put it down Harry's collar. If you'd put a fire cracker down there you wouldn't have gotten a better response. He just let out a big old beller and sat straight up. The seat, which was bolted to the floor, lifted up and he went down flat on his bottom. There was real pandemonium in the classroom for a while.
When it was raining in the wintertime you'd get really wet and cold if you didn't have too good of clothing and a hat.
The teacher stacked empty wooden chalk boxes near the chimney to use as feet warmers. When kids came in wet, she would have the little ones take their shoes and stockings off and put them by the stove until they dried out and they could put them back on again. Then she'd take these boxes and put them on the stove—top down—until they got real warm. The kids put their feet on those boxes and warmed up in no time.
One morning, it was blowing terribly and rain was coming down quite a lot. My dad had a big old umbrella that he would use to go from the house to the store with. He decided I was going to take it to school so I wouldn’t get so wet. None of the other kids had umbrellas and I knew they'd be making fun of me, so the last thing in the world I wanted to do was carry it.
When I came to the end of the bridge, instead of going on the highway with the rest of the kids, I went up to the edge of the highway. I got hit by the full force of the wind which tugged on the umbrella. I pulled it right down to my head and hung on to it tight, but a big gust of wind picked me and the umbrella right off the ground! It turned inside out and broke the ribs and poked holes through the cloth part. I knew I was in for it when I got home. Of course, my sisters didn't have to tell at home what happened. When I got home dragging that mutilated umbrella, boy did I ever get a licking.
There were 11 of us kids in the family. Four of my sisters were older than me and four were younger. We had an immense dining room table so all of us could eat together. Often times at supper after a day at school, one of my sisters would say, "Well, I saw Morris do this in school today." And another one would say, "That's nothing, I saw him do this today." At last they'd say, "I saw him do this or that on the way home." It was a contest, and they kept upping the ante. Finally, Dad would turn to me and say, "Did you do that, son?" What could I say?
So, right after supper Dad would get the strap from the back porch and take hold of my left hand and strap me. It didn't make any difference if I hollered or cried or jumped or fought. I had to do something because it hurt so bad. He's say, "It hurts! Hurts! I'll give you something to cry for." I used to think they did that to see who could tell the biggest one on me, but I guess it really wasn't quite that as I look back on it now. You know, some of the jobs I've worked at I've often heard men say, "I wish my parents had been more strict and had given me a few lickings and taught me this or that." Others were glad they were not.
In talking things over, my older sisters say that I never got half the lickings that my brother did. He's the oldest in the family. Seems like my parents spoiled him at first—even though they were very strict—but as more children came along the older ones could help take care of the younger ones, and you kind a straightened things out amongst yourselves. The parents became more lenient and didn't meet out quite so many lickings. And the lickings were for just little things.
Years later, my sisters wondered what became of the leather strap; they wanted it for a souvenir.
The old house was leaking and rotting and the roof was caving in because it was built too close to the ground. So in 1927 or 1928, my dad had one of the men in the neighborhood who owned the old Sam's Creek Sawmill remodel it.

The mill was owned by Grant Hart and Renos Wood (1889-1912), who were sawing second growth timber. On May 20, 1912, 23 year old Wood was killed in this mill.
As far as anybody can figure out, the strap disappeared about that time and most of my sisters—especially the older ones—think to this day that I disposed of it. I never would have done that. I might have at the time, but now the strap would be a souvenir that would have some value to it because it had a special design; it was made for giving lickings and it really did it's work really well.
Anyway, getting back to education, the old Chitwood schoolhouse still stands near where the old planer mill is and that old coal burner. At one time school was held in the Adventist church that was rafted here from Storrs in pieces and rebuilt on Pepin land. The little white church knew many funerals, weddings, teachers and school children and the useful needs of the community. The county school system had a conversion clause, and that property, when it was no longer being used as a school, reverted to its original ownership. The man who was living on the property at the time moved the schoolhouse, which is now surrounded by blackberry vines, down west of there to a spot where an orchard stands.
The Lincoln County Historical Society, of which I am a member, was interested in it, and the man who owns the property says he's willing. So they're going to try and find somebody to move the building to Newport near the Historical Society's log museum. We have property there that's available from the county and can restore it. There's probably going to be a problem moving it; it's too high, so we'll probably have to take the roof off of it.
In the springtime before school was out, wild strawberries ripened. Just before that cut I told you about was a place wild strawberries grew. Kind of a little flat place nestled in there. When they needed dirt to make a fill and they didn't have enough, the Chinese crew that they hired to build the railroad grade would take it out of cuts. They'd have what they called a "barrel pit" and they'd dig and haul dirt out of there in carts to make the necessary fill. In the evening on our way home from school we'd go through there and look for strawberries. Then we'd turn around, come back, and go through again and find one or two we'd missed the first time through. We'd really comb the place. There weren't very many berries, but they sure tasted good.
At this spot, we could climb over the fence and walk the rest of the way home on our neighbor's place. We could walk down the railroad tracks. Or, we could throw rocks in the river.
I was in the class of 1925, the last eighth grade to graduate from Chitwood. That was before the county school system came into being. From then on, we rode the school bus. My youngest sister, who was born in 1918, was the only one in the family who didn't start the first grade at Chitwood School.
My sister Maude, Mary Alice Brighton, whose mother had the post office up behind the railroad, Johnny Eagleson, Boyd Eagleson's older brother, and Carl Jacobson, Glen Jacobson's younger brother all entered first grade at Eddyville together and they stayed together through grade school and high school. There was never another student—just those four. That's really something, isn't it?
My oldest sister and brother graduated from Chitwood grade school. They went to Portland for high school. Another sister went to Corvallis for high school, and another one went to Newport.

Simpson Creek School at Chitwood, Oregon 1908
Back Row L to R Alvin Cook, Ernest Cook, Mabel Cook, Elsie Wilson,
Beulah Wood, Iva Twinidge (teacher)
Front Row L to R Albert Cook, Elbert Cook, Leland Wood

There was one year we didn’t have a high school here, so the grade schoolteacher had me and four others take some ninth grade work from Christmas on, but we didn't finish, so we didn't get much credit. The years 1928 and 1929, high school was held in the Grange Hall which has since burned down. That was where the community hall in Eddyville is now.

We'd play baseball at the Grange. There were nine boys in school—just enough for a team. Bob Eagleson and I were the ones who could pitch in the group, so we played about four games and returned four games. We won most of them. A neighbor of mine said, "No wonder they won. All Morris ever did was throw rocks off the railroad tracks. Every year the railroad would have to put a new pile of gravel in front of his house!"
I was always throwing things. In our apple orchard behind the house the sapsuckers would peck holes in the bark, and my dad didn't like that. He wouldn't let me use the .22. I'd have to go over to the post office and tell him," there's a sapsucker in the Golden Delicious tree, or the King tree," and he'd come over to the house and get the .22 and shoot the bird. Later on, I didn't have time to go over and tell him there were sapsuckers in a tree. There'd be hard green apples on the ground or I'd find a rock or a stick or something. The sapsucker would be up in the tree pecking holes in the bark and drinking sap, and I'd get up so close, you know, so I could hit them and kill it. Then of course I had to take it over and show him. He'd say, “Did you shoot that, son?" I'd say, "No, Dad." He told me I wasn't old enough to shoot, so he'd look at it for bullet holes.
I got so I could throw pretty good. Throwing rocks was one of my main practices.
Many times I would pitch a whole ball game. The first game we ever played was at Newport where the high school is now. I think we beat them by about 34-0. Then some of the boys would say, "How about letting Bob pitch for a while?" instead of me pitching all the time, we'd give him a little practice time.

The Oregon Historical Society began as the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1873. It was organized as a nonprofit corporation and chartered by the state legislature in 1898 to "collect, preserve, exhibit and publish" the history of the Oregon Country. The society is an educational institution funded both privately and by the state. It holds all property in trust for Oregonians. Headquartered in the Oregon History Center in downtown Portland, the society also has 70 affiliate historical societies throughout Oregon.
Anyone may join the Oregon Historical Society. However, the society's resources, including access to the Oregon History Center to view exhibits and use the library, are open to all.
Attractions include exhibits covering a wide range of historical topics; lectures and special events; a book shop; and the regional library, with its research books, maps, documents, oral histories, photographs, and film footage. The library is open five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday.
The Oregon Historical Society also publishes books about the history of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest; operates educational programs for children and adults; provides outreach services to other historical societies and every five years presents Century Farm awards.
The society provides an interpretive program at the James F. Bybee pioneer homestead on Sauvie Island, northwest of Portland. Restored by the society but owned by Multnomah County, the 1857 house, grounds and pioneer orchard are open to the public from June 1 through Labor Day.
I’ve been interested in pioneer orchards most my life. Larry McGraw, who lives in East Portland, worked with the Oregon Historical Society in establishing the pioneer orchard, which currently has about 130 pioneer varieties of apples.
On their annual Apple Squeezing's Day, many people were invited. They asked McGraw to bring up a variety of apples to display. I took about 30 different varieties and he had about 60 to 65 on display at the fire hall.
Across the street In a different lot they had two old Army camps. In on of the tents there were nine old cider mills in operation. One of them was run by gasoline, two by electric motors, and the others were hand-powered. Mugs of hot spiced cider were being served and people there were making small amounts of cider for themselves to take home. In the other tent there were five mills all operated by hand-power.
People could bring their apples to grind. You could grind three boxes or make three gallons of cider, whichever came first. The reason for this was, the year before, people were bringing in truck loads of apples and some just enough to make a gallon or two, so when the day was over, many people were waiting in line with apples that weren't going to get ground.
One of the features of the program was the opportunity to bring in your unidentified apples and have Larry McGraw identify them. He is quite an authority on apples, but he needed six or eight samples to work with. It was really quite interesting.
Also, in the fire hall they had a big pot of apple butter, pots of homemade jam and jelly and thick slices of bread. There was apple pie and apple fruit cake too.
Israel Eddy was postmaster of Little Elk in 1888. He was also fond of trees and had a large apple orchard of his own.
From what I understand he was kind of a practical joker and pulled pranks like many people did in those days.
When the train stopped at Little Elk he put the outgoing letter pouch in the mail car and took the incoming pouch in the post office.
One time something held up the train—people getting on and off or what not—so the train didn't take off right away. The postman in the mail car was leaning on the door talking with Eddy. Pretty soon he looked down and noticed the mail pouch was moving. He took the lock off the pouch and inside was a coon! Mr. Eddy had trapped this coon and put it in the bag knowing it was going to cause trouble once the train was moving. If the train had left on schedule, they’d have been a mile or so down the track before they opened it up. As it turned out, the joke was over and the postman turned the coon loose right then and there.
Incidentally, there's another Israel Eddy who might be a nephew to the older one. He passed away about two or three years ago. He lived south of Kings Valley. He grew up there, married, and raised a family. He worked on the railroad that runs from Kings Valley up towards Valsetz for a good many years. Eventually, his dad sold the place. Later on, Israel bought the old place back and rented it for a while. In later years, he moved back there to live.

The reason I was interested in it was because there were some pioneer apples in his orchard.
Larry McGraw wanted any Oregon farmer who had Olympia or Kahlotus apples to please contact him. My dad brought that variety to Chitwood from Kahlotus country, which is in Southeastern Washington. It is named for the Indians there and is a spur off the King apple. The color and stripes resemble the King. It's a good eating apple, but I don't know how it is for cooking.
Since I've become acquainted with McGraw, there is a list of ten to 12 apples we'd like to include in the Oregon Historical Society's orchard on Sauvies Island for which we are yet looking. The 130 to 140 old-time varieties that are there now have been in cultivation since the Oregon Territory and some that originated a little later also have historical significance.
No one responded to McGuire's request for new varieties. Since then he has found one new variety in Everett or Tacoma, Washington.
Looking around for old apples, I went to Kings Valley in July or August for their old-timer's picnic. I went there with the express purpose of gleaning information. I found three from just that one visitation.
The Eddy orchard had a nice big buttered pear and another old one or two. There was a nice big apple which Israel said was a Maiden Blush. It had smooth, blended colors rather than stripes and when the sun shone on it, it was just like gold. And it was a good eating apple too.
Anyhow, when I went to the show at Sauvies Island in September I asked Israel if I could get some samples. So I picked a few and had them labeled. During the show McGraw came by and said, "Are you sure that's a Maiden Blush?" "That's what Israel Eddy said," I told him. "I'm no so sure," he said.
That night at his place we looked at the two volume set, Apples of the New World. He showed me a picture of a real Maiden Blush. Come to find out what I had was a another variety, so my dream of finding a Maiden Blush was gone.
Fruit growers are getting out new varieties of apples and strawberries that can stand mechanical harvesting without regard to old varieties and their finer flavor. That is why the Oregon Historical Society—and people like me and Larry McGraw—have given so much care to the pioneer orchard project.

The Grange is a national fraternal and sororal association made up of farm men and women. It has its roots in ancient Roman paganism with its pantheon of agricultural gods and goddesses, such as Ceres, the Goddess of Agriculture, Flora, the Goddess of Flowers and Pomona, the Goddess of Fruit.
In the political history of the US since 1876, the West has played a leading role. With all his great production in the mid-1870s, the Western farmer was having hard times. His indebtedness was given added weight by the contraction of the currency and by high interest rates. Low prices negatived the increase in his crops, so that in many cases rising production meant less income. He resentfully contrasted his low prices for agricultural products with the profits of the Eastern manufacturer and capitalist.
So, in the Granger era, the farmers formed independent parties or made alliances with one or the other of the two great parties in the Middle West of the day, won legislatures and governors in several states of the Old Northwest, and enacted laws fixing maximum rates and restraining discriminations by the railroads. The untrained farmer of the 1870s had no preparation for grappling with economic statistics or with legal problems.

The Patrons of Husbandry, known generally as "The Grange" is proving to be an educator of the most practical and useful character. Never before noticed in any history of the state, the Grange has quietly, steadily and conscientiously pursued the object of its membership and still greater benefit to the State of Oregon. By its continued discussion of public questions within the gates by its continued and unselfish appeals to the patriotic spirit of all citizens of the state without regard to sex, and by the conscientious use of the ballot the Grange has protected the public treasury from the corrupt schemes of selfish politicians and the useless fads of impractical schemers.
This nationwide organization of farmers and their wives was founded December 4, 1868; attained great popularity in Oregon as early as 1875, with 183 subordinate Granges in the state.

In 1877, Wallis Nash wrote that in Oregon, women took their share of public duties:

We made the acquaintance of a pretty, lively girl of five and twenty. A farmer's daughter, and educated at the Corvallis State Agricultural College, she had passed most creditably through the classes there, and then went home to her father's house. There she kept the accounts and transacted the business of the farm, whilst she kept up with her accomplishments, and was the life and soul of the household. The farmers round required a new secretary for their "Grange," or union. One suggested that Miss— would do first rate. The idea took at once, and a unanimous invitation was shortly given to her that she should take the reins of office.
The idea, if pleasing, was bold; however, she assented. Now think of her in office, transacting the business and keeping the accounts of the Grange.
This involves the affairs of perhaps 30 farms, whose owners make common sales and purchases of produce of all sorts; meet at stated times to discuss the price of wheat, the inquiries of the grain-ring, the rise in freights, and the rest of the farmers' topics; they have storage in common for their corn, and a corporate life involving power to see in common at law, and liability to be sued.
Never was the Grange business better looked after than when the young lady secretary was in office.
The cares and duties of the secretaryship did not engross her entirely. A friend of ours went to visit her father in harvest-time. Our heroine's younger brother had fallen ill while driving the reaper. But she would not permit a check; so, jumping on the reaper, she drove the horses all that afternoon, and, as her father proudly said, did as good a day's work as any man on the place. Then she came in, presided at the supper table, and afterwards played and sang all the evening.

The Populist movement of the western half of the Middle West was a complex of many forces. In some respects it was the latest manifestation of the same forces that brought on the crisis of 1837 in the earlier region of pioneer exploitation. That era of over-confidence, reckless internal improvements, and land purchases by borrowed capital, brought a reaction when it became apparent that the future had been discounted. But, in that time, there were the farther free lands to which the ruined pioneer could turn.
The demand for an expansion of the currency has marked each area of the Western advance. The back Movement of Ohio and the eastern part of the Middle West grew into the fiat money, free silver, and land bank propositions of the Populists across the Mississippi.
Efforts for cheaper transportation also appear in each stage of Western advance. When the pioneer left the rivers and had to haul his crops by wagon to a market, the transportation factor determined both his profits and the extension of settlement. Demands for national aid to roads and canals had marked the pioneer advance of the first third of the century. The "Granger" attacks upon the railway rates, and in favor of governmental regulation, marked a second advance of Western settlement.
The Farmers' Alliance and the Populist demand for government ownership of the railroad is a phase of the same effort of the pioneer farmer, on his latest frontier. The proposals had taken increasing proportions in each region of Western Advance.
Then followed a relapse produced by the career of the Populist Party and the rise of direct legislation propositions which promised great reforms in the public service; so that by the year 1898 the number of local Granges had decreased to 61 in the state. But time and discussion soon convinced the farmers that mere political parties and professedly political reformers were not a reliable substitute for the Farmers' Alliance, and reorganization of old Granges and formation of new ones rapidly took place; so that by 1910 the number of local Granges had increased to 144; and in 1912 the number had risen to 192 local Granges with 10,000 members. The order was then the most influential, as it was the most conservative and patriotic organization in the state; and had repeatedly shown its power and disposition to protect the taxpayers from the rapacious demands of professional exploiters of selfish schemes.

In the early 1900s, Oregon voters overwhelmingly approved a series of groundbreaking political reforms based on the premise that Oregonians possessed the aptitude to make their own laws. William U'Ren, Oregon's leading progressive reformer of this era, felt a corrupt system made people corrupt, and the way to reshape the system was to change the machinery of government.
U'Ren, a trained blacksmith and member of the Populist Party, entered Oregon politics in 1896. By 1898 he was the leader of the state House of Representatives and the organizer of a lobbying group called the District Legislation League. He and his followers worked to reshape Oregon politics so the will of the people would emerge clearly and decisively.
Basically everyone in Oregon with a political agenda felt that if the voting public had a greater say, the state would be a better place. U'Ren's followers included farmers and city folk alike who were disenchanted with the tremendous behind-the-scenes political control exerted by railroad interests. Conservatives, seeking an avenue to minimize government, also favored Populist reforms—as did Suffragists and Prohibitionists.
The Populists had faith that voters were capable of understanding complex issues and determining what is best for the state as a whole, rather than short-term or special interest gains.
Their first victory came in 1899 when the Oregon legislature approved an amendment to the Oregon constitution creating the initiative and referendum. The initiative gave the people the power to initiate new laws and challenge the constitution through general elections. The referendum gave the Oregon legislature the option to refer decisions on statutes and constitutional amendments to a popular vote. In 1902, this amendment went before Oregon (and Lincoln County) voters who approved it by about a 12-to-1 margin. This was Oregon's first constitutional amendment.
The initiative and referendum amendment, known as the Oregon System, was copied by states across the nation. The Populists went on to initiate other reforms, including the presidential primary, voter recall of elected officials, and the creation of a public utility commission. Ironically, the power of the people turned against U'Ren. He drafted measures for a single tax on unearned gain through land speculation. This was rejected by Oregon voters five times. U'Ren's measure to eliminate the Oregon Senate was also given the implementation of the Oregon system in this state, 651 initiatives and referendums have gone before the voters. They have approved slightly less than half of them.
Taken as a whole, Populism is a manifestation of the old pioneer ideals of the Indian, with the added element of increasing readiness to utilize the national government to effect its ends. This is not unnatural in a section whose lands were originally purchased by the government and given away to its settlers by the same authority, whose railroads were built largely by federal land grants, and whose settlements were protected by the US Army and governed by the national authority until they were carved into rectangular states and admitted into the Union. Its native settlers were drawn from many states, many of them former soldiers of the Civil War, who mingled in new lands with foreign immigrants accustomed to the vigorous authority of European national governments.

Ona is located on Beaver Creek, three miles east of Seal Rock. The community of Ona is on Beaver Creek, which winds through Ona Beach State Park, where a charming footbridge crosses the creek to sandy beach. Ona is not on the seashore and not near clam beds. However, the word ona comes from the Chinook jargon word ee-na, but may mean either "razor clam" or "beaver" for the two words have similar transliterations. If ee-na means beaver in this case, it is appropriate to the location of this place on Beaver Creek.
Ona post office was established April 17, 1890, with William H. Hulse first postmaster. On June 11, 1890, Lucidettie C. Grant became the postmaster, and took care of the mail until February 14, 1898 when Jacob Blazer took the job. He held it until April 14, 1898 when Thomas Harrison held the position. It reverted back to William Hulse July 7, 1902. Mary Lewis (1871-1951) was postmaster April 12, 1907 through July 13, 1909, when A. L. "Levi" Commons was awarded the position. George Selby was appointed postmaster October 12, 1912, and Clara Commons took charge October 14, 1915. Enos Wilson (1886-1956) was the next postmaster, appointed July 16, 1919. Lillian P. Puram became the last postmaster on January 12, 1920, and the office closed to Toledo August 31, 1920.
The Ona post office was kept in a small room of the Hulse house in 1912. Then it was moved to a small building on the Wilson ranch. Later on it was again moved back to a small building built for this purpose on the Hulse place.
The proliferation of post offices in the early days of Lincoln County probably can be attributed to poor or even nonexistent roads. Home delivery was challenging, if not impossible, and travel to a distant, centrally located post office for mail pickup was impractical. Quite often the post office was nothing more than a small corner of an isolated store that served a rural area rather than a real town. Store owners coveted a post office contract, as that amounted to a guarantee of a steady flow of foot traffic. A store with a post office instantly became a community's social center and gathering place.
In 1891, the lumber vessel, General Butler, wrecked off shore and the lumber washed only to the beach just north of Beaver Creek near Seal Rock. Upon hearing of this, the Beaver Creek neighbors decided to build a Baptist church. A scow was built for the purpose of transporting this lumber up Beaver Creek to what is now known as the Harvey Howell and Paul Keady places.
Alzina Hulse donated one acre of her land for the church and once acre for the Beaver Creek Cemetery, which is also known as Ona or Schoolhouse Cemetery. The church did not continue long. It then was used for the Ona Schoolhouse until school children were bussed to Waldport. The location is on the hill above Lincoln Grange Hall No. 395 at the forks of the road to North Beaver. The original patent was taken by Samuel Newton Warfield. After the death of Ellen Warfield Webber, Gus Webber married Alzina Hulse, a widow.
Ona has a connection with one of Lincoln County's famous sons. L. D. Nash, the son of Louisa A. Desboroughs and Wallis Nash, the English writer and railroad builder who settled Nashville, was born in Corvallis, June 7, 1880. In 1916, he married Fay Commons of Ona. Nash worked for American Steel and Wire Company in San Francisco from 1900 to 1905, after which he engaged in farm and livestock operations. He served in the Oregon State Legislature, and represented Polk and Lincoln counties in 1931, and Lincoln County in 1939. Ben Horning taught at the Ryan School, 1909. His students were Oscar and Chester Ryan, and Evelyn, and Filiz Gatens.
Horning also taught at the Storrs School and probably others to earn money for his higher education. For many years, he has been an eminent physician. He was the younger brother of the late Fred (1880-1969) and Elmer Horning of Toledo, and the son of Mary F. Jones (1860-1945) and Thomas H. Horning (1856-1940).
In 1919, a new Ona schoolhouse was built by Horrey Wood, replacing the Baptist Church building, erected in 1891. In 1943, this school was closed and the children were transported by bus to schools in Waldport.

Yamada was located on South Beaver Creek, three miles north of Alsea Bay and two miles due south of Ona. Yamada post office was established March 26, 1898, with Newton L. Guilliams (1866-1932) first and only postmaster.
The story of Yamada is an interesting but brief chapter in Lincoln County's postal past. The rise and fall of Yamada took place in a span of about 21 months. Yamada's story has its roots in Japan, where there are at least two places by that name. It is reported that Yamada post office was established as the result of some feuding between people on South Beaver Creek against the patrons of Ona post office, which was on the main Beaver Creek, or north branch. It is unfortunate for inquiring minds that the crux of the controversy was not recorded for posterity. Whatever the dispute, it probably came to an end when Guilliams persuaded postal authorities to established a post office on South Beaver Creek.
The name of a new post office usually was selected by the first postmaster. Whether Guilliams had ever been to Japan is not certain, but his brother, Rufus F. Guilliams (1862-1894), was a ship's captain who in the year prior to his unexpected death in December 1894 had been sealing off the coast of Alaska and cruising off the coast of Japan.
The Japanese word yamada means a mountain field. He liked the sound of the word and later applied it to the Lincoln County post office.
The Guilliams family had lived in Lincoln County since 1879 when Newton's parents, Rachel Evelyn Barnes (1840-1932) and John L. Guilliams (1833-1917), and their eight children settled in South Beaver Creek.
For reasons unknown, the Yamada post office was discontinued on December 26, 1899, less than two years after it opened. The rival Ona post office, three miles east of Seal Rock, was established April 17, 1890 and closed to Toledo on August 31, 1920. Guilliams apparently lived out his years in Lincoln County. In the 1910 census he is listed as a farmer. Newton Guilliams, his parents and many of his siblings are buried in Fern Ridge Cemetery at Seal Rock.

John Ross Coovert (1880-1929) bought the place now known as the Harvey Howell ranch in 1909. Coovert was a very enthusiastic Granger. Thinking this organization would be a wonderful thing for the community, he made the required arrangements and the first meeting, which was held in the Baptist church on August 2, 1909. John M. Bowers (1847-1936) was chosen as the first master, Mildred Alice Phelps, Overseer, and Swan A. Holmgren (1850-1937), the first secretary. This Grange was given the name "Lincoln" and the number "395." It has remained in continuous organization since its beginning date 57 years ago.
The first Grange Hall was a two-story building. It had to be reconstructed because the first frame was blown down by a hard windstorm.
In 1909, Lincoln Grange was organized, with 31 charter members: Jessie Bowers, John M. Bowers, A. L. "Levi" Commons, Margaret Commons, Hester Hill Coovert Rogers, Carroll Davis, Lillie Dodge, Walter Dodge, Ella Fallman, Fritz Fallman, Andrew Gallagher (?-1916), Marcus J. Guilliams (1880-1932), Rev. Rhys R. Gwynn (1835-1917), John W. Hall (1872-1913), John Hanlon (1844-1896), Iva B. Hewitt, D. W. Hewitt, H. M. Hewitt, Harriet E. Patterson Hill (1847-1931), Samuel Patterson (1839-1916), Arthur Holmgren (1890-1944), Christina Holmgren (1858-1938), Swan A. Holmgren (1850-1937), Guy E. Lewis (1873-1957), Mary A. Lewis (1871-1951), Adolph Peterson, Ace H. Phelps, Mildred Alice Phelps, Mary A. Ryan, George B. Ryan, and P. E. Shepherd.
Levi Commons and his wife, Margaret, were the only living charter member in 1966, live in Coos Bay. Hester Hill Coovert remained a continuous member until her death, February 8, 1966.
In 1910, 15 more people joined Lincoln Grange: Ambrose Cook, J. A. Coovert, John Ross Coovert (1880-1929), Hattie Phelps Coovert Edwards (1891-1944), the wife of Clarence Edwards (1890-1909), Newton L. Guilliams (1866-1932), C. C. Gwynn, Helga Holmgren, Merle C. Jones (1910-1979), Edith McKensey, Henry McKensey, James F. Roberts, Conrad Thompson, L. T. Thompson, Guy Twombly, and Herbert Twombly.
In 1911, one new member, Mark Gallagher, joined Lincoln Grange, and John A. Coovert was elected Master.
That same year, Toledo Grange No. 426 and Eddyville Grange No. 428 were organized. S. F. Louden helped organize and assist Grange work in Lincoln County. Brown Wakefield was the last master of the Eddyville Grange before it disbanded in 1923.
In 1912, the eight new Lincoln Grange members were: Charles Banner, Isabelle Banner, Frank Gatens, George Selby, Laura Webber, Walter Webber, Bella Wright and, Archibald Zeek, who transferred from Charity Grange No. 103, Linn County.
In 1913, there were six new members: Agnes Gatens, Joe Lissy, Ms. Lissy, Martha Roberts, Fay Selby, and Suzanne Selby. John W. Hall (1872-1913), a charter member of Lincoln Grange, passed away that year, and was buried at Fern Ridge Cemetery.
In 1916, Lincoln Grange Number 395 was increased by four new members: C. M. Myers, Nellie Myers, Horace Wood, and Pansy Mae Wood.
Samuel Hill (1839-1916 KY), who was a charter member of Lincoln Grange No. 395, died that year and was buried at Fern Ridge Cemetery.
In 1917, Siletz Valley Grange and Big Elk Grange were organized, and a fair was held at Harlan. A Grange picnic and dance at Deer Creek raised $60 for the fair, which was held in the empty store building.
Again in 1918, Harlan had a lively fair with games, races and interesting exhibits.
In 1918, Lincoln Grange gained five new members: James L. Gatens (1850-1938), Lena M. Guilliams Gatens (1868-1940), E. S. Hall, Lena Hall, and C. W. Stone.
That same year, Hester Hill Coovert Rogers, a charter member of Lincoln Grange and Lincoln Pomona Grange, was elected secretary of Lincoln Pomona Grange and served in that capacity until 1920.
In 1919, Lincoln Grange grew by an additional four new members: Martha Baker, Sadie Baker, Thomas Barker, and Herman Webber.
That same year, Taft Grange No. 575 was organized, and in 1920, Lincoln Grange was blessed with four new members: Ms. C. W. Lewis, Enos L. Wilson, Marie Wilson, and Mamie Wolkau.
An acre of land near Ona post office was purchased from Alzina Hulse for a new Grange Hall. The lumber was to be purchased from a Waldport lumber company, the Ludeman-McMillin Mill near Tidewater. This lumber had to be scowed by Bayview and hauled by ox team from there to Ona, a distance of four miles. The ox team, known as Nig and Blackie, was owned by the Guilliams family.

In May 1921, the Payne family moved to Beaver Creek. They owned the original patent of Sam Warfield. It was spoken of as "Mrs. Hulse's Place" from that time until the final papers were turned over to Charles Zeek and his wife in 1955 or 1956.
Dances were frequent in the downstairs of the house. It wasn't long before the building was becoming unsound for the activity of a room full of dancing. After some worry, they decided to use heavy iron rods across the downstairs ceiling which took out the sway.
Horrey Woods and George Ryan played the violin, as did many others. Herman Webber played piano, and Neta Phelps was very good to play long hours on the piano. Frank Gatens called many of the square dances. Guy Twombly could call a dance when things were dull. The most fascinating dancer Florence Payne Howell could remember was an elderly woman who really danced with glee! Howell thought the dances were a bit noisy, but after she learned all of them she really loved them.
That same year, Lincoln Grange increased by 16 new members: Pete Byme, Cora Gray, D. C. Gray, Bessie Hassman (1861-1938), Charles Hassman (1862-1944), Ellen Hassman, Fred Hassman, Effie Hubble, Evelyn Hubble, Frank Huntsucker, Chauncy Smith Ohmart I, Gertrude Ohmart, Clifford Phelps, Earl Wolkau, and Hope Wolkau.
In 1922, Herbert Hassman was the only new person to join Lincoln Grange, but 1923 saw six new members: Laverna Payne Bell, Elmer Cook, Fred Cook, Wilbur Collins (?-1942), Reynolds W. Ohmart, and Benjamin Twombly.
That same year, Tidewater Grange was organized. It folded in 1972.
In 1923, Louis T. Thompson died and was buried in Fern Ridge Cemetery [sic].
In 1924, the Payne sisters parents, Minnie Stuivenga Pollard (1887-1975) and Irvin Ross (1878-1955) Payne, joined Lincoln Grange. Minnie and Irvin were also the parents of Evelyn Payne Parry, the "Keeper of Toledo's Memory."
In 1927, Lincoln Grange increased by seven new members: Ruby Holznagle-Conger, Florence Payne Howell, Kathleen McClure, Harry Nicholson, Jeannie Nicholson, Wolkau, William C. Wolkau I (1862-1937), and William C. Wolkau II.
In 1928, there was only one new member, Clarence L. Cook (1903-1958), and Leola Clark was elected Lecturer of Lincoln Grange.
The only new member in 1929 was Benjamin Leathers. That same year, John R. Coovert, who joined the Grange in 1910, died.
In 1930, an unidentified couple, possibly Gladys and Rev. Virgil Howell (1880-1943). joined Lincoln Grange.
In 1931, there were four new members: Maude C. Keady, L. J. Rickard, J. E. Savage, and William Perry Thomas (1868-1972).
The Roosevelt Military Highway was under construction, and garages were built at the end of the gravel road.
Irvin Payne tore down the small building referred to as the Post Office Building and rebuilt it for his own garage. It was barely big enough for that purpose.
That same year, Harriet E. Patterson Hill (1847-1931), who was a charter member of Lincoln Grange in 1909, died and was buried at Fern Ridge Cemetery.
In 1933, Lincoln Grange increased by three new members: Sarah Fulp, Warren B. Hartley, and Elena Rickard. The Yachats Grange was organized that same year.
Jeannie Nicholson, who joined Lincoln Grange in 1927, died that year, and was buried at Fern Ridge Cemetery.
In 1934, Lincoln Grange was increased by 14 new members: Laura Ahlstrom, C. C. Clay; Mildred F. Colvin (1915-1933), Arsina Evans, Desmond Fulp, C. E. Hall, Betty Keady, Marion Keep, Lillie Lathrop, William Lathrop, Helen Savage, Ed Williams, Stella Williams, and Herman Wilson.
In 1936, Lincoln Grange increased by two new members: Albert P. Boone (1872-1955), and Helen Zeek.
Harry Nicholson, who joined Lincoln Grange in 1927, died that same year. He was buried at Fern Ridge Cemetery.
John M. Bowers (1847-1936), a charter member of Lincoln Grange, and Lincoln Pomona Grange, died and was buried at Eureka Cemetery.
In 1937, North Lincoln Grange and Bayview Grange were organized, and Lincoln Grange grew by six new members: Perry Adams, Wilma Adams, Dan Blivan, Kathleen Johansen, Milton Johansen, and Ruth Jones.
Swan A. Holmgren (1850-1937), a charter member of Lincoln Grange, died that same year, and was buried at Eureka Cemetery.
In 1938, Christina Holmgren (1858-1938), also a charter member of Lincoln Grange, died, and was buried at Eureka Cemetery.
In 1940, Hattie Phelps Coovert Edwards and H. S. Hull were the only new members of Lincoln Grange.
However, the following year, in 1941, Lincoln Grange gained ten new members: Myrtle Alborn, Beauford F. Branson (1888-1959), Gertrude Branson, Harvey W. Curry (1896-1977), Mildred Phelps, Franklin O. Parker, Thomas G. Sexton, Erwin Wiedman (1892-1960), Ora Wiedman, and Helen Zeek.
That same year, the Oregon State Grange was held in the Newport Natatorium, and Sunnyridge Grange in Toledo was organized.
In 1942, six new members joined Lincoln Grange: Eleanor Dick, Guy Dick, Frank Gilkey, Vivian Wiedman, Alvin Zeek, and Kenneth Zeek.

In recognition of her years of attendance and involvement with the Lincoln County Fair, Pearl Zeek was honored with the 1986 Old-Timer Award.
The honored Old-Timer Award was established in 1983 by the Lincoln County Fair to honor people who have given many years of service to the fair.
Zeek, an Old-Timers Club member who lives in Lebanon, has attended the Lincoln County Fair since 1929, when her children entered 4-H. She and her family have been active in every phase of the fair, and she has been involved with the Lincoln Grange.
At one time Zeek managed the restaurant at the fair. Fair involvement seems to run in the family, as her son, Ken, a candidate for county commissioner, at one time served on the fair board.
The first honored Old-Timer was Ella Wagner of Newport, recognized in 1983.
The 1984 winners of the Old-Timer Award were Hans and Alvina Johnson of Toledo. Last year's winner was Helen Niemi of Rose Lodge.
To be members of the Old-Timers Club, a person must have attended the fair for 50 years or more. The club now has 37 members.
Members of the club include Dorothy and Tony Fieber, Ruth Conner, Jean and Jeff Garton, Jim Lancaster, Mary and Mike Brumbaugh, Opal Bates, Raymond Schirmer, Margaret and John Shirmer, Dan Wagner, Margaret Parton, Ray Gray, Alton G. St. Clair, Iva Parks Allen, Bill Loomis, Verlin Rhoades, May Chatfield, John Tompkins and Bob Buel, all of Toledo; Bessie Buker of Waldport; Dorothy Grover, Claude Hall, Alfred Amundsen, Edith Potwin and Grace Thurston, all of Newport; Dorothy Bittler and Glen Jacobson, both of Eddyville; Ken Zeek of Seal Rock; and Frank Gray of Siletz.

The most likely month for cold and white weather in the Central Oregon Coast is the month of January. Substantial accumulations of snowfall on the coast occurred during the first month of the years 1930, 1943 and 1969.

In January 1930, 12.5 inches of snow fell on local beaches with heavier accumulations inland. When Waldport experienced what the local paper called "a giant blizzard... like those experienced in the Midwest," two old-timers taken aback, swearing they never before had seen such intemperate weather on the coast. When the thermometer dipped to 19 degrees, pipes froze and many found themselves with no water supply.
Thirteen years later, in January 1943, snow plows returned to the Central Oregon Coast after ten inches of snow fell on the roads.
When show blankets this area, coastal denizens, accustomed to basking in the area's temperate climate, usually find themselves unprepared. Driving on icy roads and shoveling snow are burdens they've been able to avoid simply by living on the coast. While snow is a rarity, a review of last week's events proves it is not impossible.
Like the storm of 1930, the snow was followed by a solid freeze; this time thermometers dropped to ten degrees below zero. Most of the county endured the wrath of Jack Frost for two days without telephone and electrical service. All exposed water pipes were frozen solid, and virtually every car and truck that was left outside transformed into a useless ice cube. One Newport resident, determined to thaw his car, built a fire under his automobile. He successfully burned up the electrical wiring before extinguishing the blaze (no word on when, or if, the vehicle ever ran again). Several other minor fires were started when pipes thawed and the water mixed with electricity.
In 1951, deep snow and the teacher's illness closed Bear Creek School for several days. Hardine and Earl Roberts and children of Toledo, trying out their new four-wheel drive station wagon in the deep snow that has covered Big Elk Valley for past ten days, visited at the Dell Hodges home one day during the storm.
In January 1969, after a 26-year absence, the ice and snow returned to the Central Oregon Coast—in a big way. All previous records were buried when 19 inches of snow brought the area to an unexpected halt. Coastal residents quickly learned to make due: Clam shovels became snow shovels as the white stuff remained for nearly a week. Dishpans, truck inner tubes and wheelbarrows were converted into sleds by local children, who received a new year’s bonus vacation from school. The Toledo Police restricted many streets to sleds-only after cars and trucks lost traction, stopping only after they plowed into another vehicle. Siletz residents witnessed a man skating though town and a child riding in a homemade sleigh pulled by a Saint Bernard.
For most folks, snow on the coast is a mixed blessing—beautiful to photographers but a nuisance to drivers and homeowners. The best defense is to be prepared. Considering how stormy this winter has been already, and the fact that January—the historical Month of White—is just around the corner, it might be a good idea to know where your clam shovel is.
In 1944, there was a funeral for Arthur Holmgren, a 1909 charter member of Lincoln Grange, who was killed in a bus accident. Also, Hattie Phelps Coovert, who joined the Grange in 1940, died. There was a fallen tree on the highway, causing havoc for motorists.
In 1958, Verba Croston of Elk City Grange, became the insurance agent for Elk City vicinity for the Grange Mutual Company. She replaced Vernon Folmsbee who had given up the position. Minnie McFarland was elected Lecturer of Lincoln Pomona Grange, and Lois Dawson was elected Lecturer of Yachats Grange
In May 1958, Claudine Hodges and her son, Delbert, attended the regular meeting of Yaquina Head Grange in Agate Beach. Both assisted in the Mother's Day program during the literary hour arranged by Lecturer Ida Quick. Hodges brought home of the three prizes offered during the evening.
In 1966, five Lincoln Grange members were still living when this report was written in 1966: Lena Hewitt-Hurt, Gertrude Phelps-Inglehart of Salem, Fred McWillis of Monument, Chester L. Ryan of Waldport, and Dexter Twombly, Vernonia.

In 1914, the Salmon River Grange No. 516 was organized.
Hard work and inconveniences were compensated in recreational activities that were centered around the Salmon River Grange Hall, which was the hub of the social life for the area.
During the intervening years, Salmon River Grange was dissolved and then reorganized. At one time, while the Grange was inactive, the hall was being dismantled, but the Grange quickly reorganized and a building program started.
Roy Merritt was Master when they started a building program to add a kitchen, and restrooms were added a few years later.
There used to be a high school at Rose Lodge which was started in 1920 and had about eight or ten pupils. The Grange Hall was used as a schoolhouse. At that time, it was a two-story building and the upstairs was used as a gymnasium where basketball games were played. Donated labor partitioned the building for school use. Water was carried from nearby Slick Rock Creek. The toilet facilities were outhouses.

Elmer Calkins of Otis said that in the early days there were seven important fords on the trail down Salmon River. The last was at Slick Rock Creek and was so named because the smooth, mossy rock of the streambed was a bad spot for horses.
After Rose Lodge had their school building, graduations were often held at the Grange Hall.
Dances were held regularly in the early years and romances blossomed while schottisches and fox trots were played. The young girls living in the outskirts of town walked down muddy rutted roads to get to the dance hall. Boots were worn with their dancing shoes carried under their arm to be changed when they reached the hall. The dance floor was slickened with soap flakes or wax. Families also attended, many with babes in arms.
Dances were orderly as a rule, but some young bucks consumed too much bootleg whiskey which was available outside the hall, and this resulted in some fist fights. One young man wearing two black eyes on Sunday morning was questioned where he got them. He responded, "They give those away at Rose Lodge!"
Another recreation that aided courtships was the box social. The girls would bring fancy box suppers to be auctioned off and interested suitors would bid to the hilt to get to eat with a certain girl.
It is interesting to note in 1930 a hand-quilted quilt made by Grange women would sell for $7.50. Other bills in the early era of the community were 45 cents for coffee, sugar and tea for a dance supper, and five cents for floor wax! Light bills were around $1 per month.
The Oscar Niemis joined the Grange in 1937 and have been active to this date.

When Mo Niemi died in 1992, moved to the coast in 1940 and found herself in the restaurant business, first as a partner in Freddie and Mo’s, then as proprietor of Mo's Restaurant, a fixture on the Newport Bayfront to this day. She was remembered around the state as Oregon's "Clam Chowder Queen." As proprietor of Mo's Restaurant, which she opened in 1949, she established a business which became renowned for its good food, casual and family atmosphere, and good value for the dollar.

Mohava Marie Niemi (1912-1992) was named for the Mojave Desert by one of the Mexican midwives who attended her birth on December 12, 1912 in Maxwell, California.
In 1940, she moved to Lincoln County, and was soon involved in the restaurant business, first as a partner in a restaurant, and then as proprietor of the famous Mo's.
In a 1988 interview, Mo recalled the days when you couldn't even give chowder away on the Bayfront—locals made their own at home, and the Bayfront wasn’t exactly a visitor draw. But she kept going with the restaurant, and was eventually rewarded with a reputation which spanned the entire state—celebrities such as Robert F. Kennedy, Paul Newman, and Henry Fonda ate at the restaurant.
Mo Niemi was also involved in the community of which was she a part, hosting a daily radio show, "Mo's Meanderings," and trying to promote the Oregon Coast with her friend, Tom Becker. Becker founded the county's first radio station, KNPT, in 1948.
She also served as a Port of Newport Commissioner and involved herself in the planning of numerous activities, including the Blessing of the Fleet, the Crab Festival, and the Seafood and Wine Festival. She later founded the Newport Pacific Corporation to develop the growth of the oyster industry.
Today her granddaughter, Cindy McEntee, carries on the Original Mo's and Mo's Annex on the Bayfront, and at Mo's West at Otter Rock. Says McEntee, "I've been married for 27 years, and I have two children, Gabrielle and Dylan. My inspiration was my dynamic, enthusiastic, irrepressible and enterprising grandmother, Mo Niemi."

In 1942, Salmon River Grange developed a mattress factory.
Community service had been the by-word of the Salmon River Grange from the time they received their first charter. During both WWI and WWII they aided the Red Cross, bought war bonds, and sent Bibles to their members who were serving in the armed forces. At one time, they had a mattress factory in the hall to help take care of the necessities of families during WWII. Grange members and volunteers cooperated with the Oregon State University Extension Service in the mattress making project. Home Extension meetings have been held for many years in the Grange Hall.
Community fairs were held each autumn and this is still a yearly event open to the community for viewing and exhibiting. In 1949, an exhibitor brought in a two-quart jar of Bing cherries that had won her first place in 1905 at the State Fair in Salem.
In the late 1970s, the Salmon River Grange Hall was still the center of activities in the area, but had to undergo another extensive building program as the entire kitchen was destroyed by fire on April 4, 1976. The members were already making plans for repairs to the then 60-year-old building that has added so much to the Rose Lodge community throughout the years.

In 1914, Elk City Grange No. 515 was also organized, with 31 charter members: Clara E. Bristlin (1875-1961), Almond B. Clark, James Chester Dixon (1871-1932), Lizzie Dixon, Ed Preston Gillespie (1864-1936), Flora Gillespie, E. B. Graves, Rosa Bly Hoffman (1866-1945), August Holmes, Anna E. Jacobson (1884-1967), Victor Jacobson, M. Jacobson, George F. Kimball (1888-1975), Ethel Norton, Harry A. Norton, Chelsey L. Morrison (1859-1940), Ms. Charles Rice Parks, Nellie Parks, Paris J. Parks, Clara Ramsdell, John Ramsdell, Dorsey Rochester, Lydia Ryerson, C. H. Saddleman, H. Saddleman, Elnora "Miss Valentine" Scoville (1865-1969), W. Seymour Scoville (?-1949), J. A. Silver, Ms. J. A. Silver, Julia Handel, and S. J. Whitford (1866-1942).
In 1934, Enos W. Wilson of Lincoln Grange, acting as district deputy, was reportedly instrumental in reorganizing Elk City Grange, although this may not have been entirely correct.
Elk City's records are complete in terms of the older members; they did in fact receive their 50 year membership pins. However, they were not actually having meetings at that time, but someone sent in membership dues to Oregon State Grange anyway, which was technically an infraction of Grange policy.
In 1956, the Elk City Grange met in regular session and Thor Linden (1900-1968) was re-elected Master.
The meeting place was the Frank Knight residence. Twenty members were present to cast their ballots during the election of officers for the coming year.
The committee chairmen who reported were Virgil Folmsbee, youth; Vernon Folmsbee, fire insurance; Clyde Schriver reported on progress of the new hall and Violet Brown reported on activities of the Home Economics Club.
The Grange was also in receipt of a certificate showing participation in last year's Community Project, and it was represented in the parade by a colorful float which brought a second place award in its class. Claudine Hodges, a correspondent for the Lincoln County Leader, wrote with obvious pride that all work, some 200 hours,

...was done by Delbert Hodges, member of the local Grange and his family. Parade judges admitted they had had a problem on their hands. Not only were the entries more numerous than ever, but the floats were certainly of much better quality... Sweepstakes winner Beta Sigma Phi, with a very elaborate float, chose the theme of "town pride" and "civic duty." The prize here was a beautiful ribbon and $50. But the Elk City Grange had constructed a beautiful float, showing an elk in a field of green. It was very effective and undoubtedly required a great deal of work. Thorwald Linden (1900-1968 Taft) is Master of the Grange there.

That year, the election results for Elk City Grange were as follows: Thor Linden succeeds himself as Master; W. N. Parks succeeds himself as Overseer; Claudine Hodges succeeded herself as Secretary; Grace Lantz succeeded Helen Foley as Lecturer; Delbert Hodges succeeded Frank Hodges as Steward; Clyde Schriver succeeded himself as Assist. Steward; Lennie Linden succeeded herself as Chaplain; Evelyn Brown succeeded herself as Treasurer; Frank Knight succeeded Dell Hodges as Gatekeeper; Mary Parks succeeded herself as Ceres; Frieda Folmsbee replaced Nellie Jacobson as Pomona, Viola Pepin replaced Verba Croston as Flora; Olive Schriver replaced Earline Hodges as Lady Assistant Steward; Hazel Moore replaced Vera Cumbo as Musician; on the Executive Committee, C. P. Moore succeeded himself as Chairman; Jesse Pooree replaced Guy Lantz, and Vernon Folmsbee succeeded himself as a committee member.
Lecturer Helen Foley was in charge of door prize tickets. The prize was won by Dell Hodges. Refreshments were served by the Women at a late hour. Out of town guests during the social hour were Ed Burch and Ralph Woolcott, Toledo. They were with Jackie Miller, member of the order.

In 1915, Lincoln Pomona Grange was organized by B. G. Reedy. The 17 charter members were: Verla Banta, Archibald W. Brooks (1881-1921), Donald Brooks, Dora E. Bowers (1862-c1900), John M. Bowers (1847-1936), Clifford Buckner, Hester Hill Coovert, John A. Coovert, N. G. Louden, R. V. Louden, S. T. Louden, Mary C. Powell Parrish (1861-1944), M. W. Parrish, George Rowen, C. I. Shumway, E. B. Shumway, and Lois Louden Wakefield. The first Master of Lincoln Pomona Grange was Archibald W. Brooks (1881-1921), Hester Hill Coovert Rogers was Lecturer, and H. O. Boynton was Secretary.

At least 100 Grangers from all over Lincoln County met Saturday for the quarterly meeting of Lincoln Pomona Grange. Host Grange and place of meeting was Siletz Valley Grange Hall. Pomona master Neal Maw (1888-1968); presided.
Following a pot luck dinner at noon, Pomona Lecturer, Minnie McFarland, presented a full program which featured several events. Ben Buisman, editor of the Oregon Grange Bulletin of Portland, talked of juvenile problems. Olga Wilson explained current legislative measures in which the Oregon State Grange is interested. She is Executive Secretary of Oregon Electric Consumers Council, and is, by the way, state master Elmer McClure's secretary.
Mildred Norman, State Grange Secretary, was also present and she was featured by singing a vocal number on the program. Others on the program were the two Dodson sisters from the Big Elk Grange, and they sang a duet and accompanied themselves on the piano. From Elk City Grange, Master Thor Linden and his nephew, Eddie Linden, presented a humorous skit and Delbert Hodges, also from this Grange, led the entire assembly in singing "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling."
Several new Pomona members were initiated in the Fifth Degree. This part of these sessions is always colorful and impressive as all officers are formerly attired for the affair.
Another highlight of this meeting was the presentation of a Past State Grange Deputy's Pin to retiring deputy, Jesse Reeder of Siletz Valley Grange, Mildred Norman. His replacement is Neal Maw, Toledo Grange.
The county deputy whom Reeder replaced several years ago was also on hand. He was Timothy P. Welp, Toledo, who served as Deputy Master from 1934 to 1936.
Representative Thomas McClellan, was also present and discussed several things of interest in the legislative world.
Several resolutions were presented to the body. Some were accepted and others were set aside for further study.
It was announced the next Pomona session will be on June 14 at Reed Creek Grange. This meeting started at 10:30am as usual.
Master Maw also announced the forthcoming Pomona Grange Conference which was to be held at Big Elk Grange on April 19. The conference started at 10:30am with a potluck dinner at noon. All secretaries, lecturers and home economics Chairwomen are to meet in the morning for special instruction for these respective offices. Leona Krenz, District No. 2 chairwoman of the State Home Economics Department will preside over those of this group.
Also at this meeting the final count was taken in the year-long Rodent Contest among the 13 Granges of the county. The contest was sponsored by the Pomona group and, the first prize winner was Elk City Grange, winning $15; the second prize winner was Siletz Valley Grange, winning $10; and the third prize winner was Tidewater, winning $5. The winners had 4,003 points.
That same year, Elk City Grange raised funds for a new hall. They held an auction sale and served a dinner. The dinner proceeds were $6.

The real big day in Elk City, as far as the new Grange Hall was concerned, was last Sunday. The cement for the foundation was all mixed and poured when ten men and six women turning out for the session. Jesse Pooree, Frank Knight, Delbert Hodges, the Thor Lindens, and Claudine and Dell Hodges, Frieda and Vernon Folmsbee, the Clyde Schrivers, Iva and Alfred Allen and Don Schriver were on the list of workers. The women, of course, served the bountiful dinner at noon. Cliff Jarvis and LaVonne Richter, of Lebanon, were dinner guests. Alfred Allen (WOW Lumber Company's woods foreman of Eddyville) was responsible for the Grange using the cement mixer belonging to the firm.
In 1958, 25 people turned up at the Grange Hall in Elk City Sunday to speed up progress toward the first organizational meeting in the new building on June 6. Verba and Albert Croston and many of their 4-H Club members did much sealing and general work on the project. Many oldsters were on hand and some finish work was done, some floor-laving, and shakes were nailed on. Bob Neave, Siletz Granger, was on hand.
Also, Violet King Updike left for Ona to teach school.

Passed at the height of political power for the progressive agenda, the Smith-Lever Act 1914 and the Smith-Hughs Act 1917 encouraged vocational education by providing federal funds to match those of states. Congress was particularly concerned with aiding farmers by teaching agricultural science, but the legislation also took cognizance of the farmer's wife—and of women generally—by encouraging the new field of Home Economics.
Eventually the acts resulted in a host of home economics agents who worked alongside agricultural agents in thousands of field offices locate in the county seats of rural areas. The agents visited Home Demonstration Clubs that taught women—usually farm women—the new household skills needed after the invention of electrical appliances and other 20th Century changes.
These acts and the funding they provided was justified many times during the century, but the gender-based division of funding was seldom questioned. When tax dollars were spent on programs that benefited primarily Women, it was most likely that these monies were aimed at domesticity.

The late 19th Century saw a surge of the academic "sciences," as the national mindset, under the influence of evolutionist, Charles Darwin (1809-1882), psychologist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), and others, began to form scientific "methods" and "attitudes." This was especially evident in the growth of "social sciences," where entirely new fields developed during the last decades of this century. Home Economics strove to be part of this movement.
The most significant adoption of "home lore" by professional educators came after the Civil War, with implementation of the Morrill Act of 1868 that created land-grant colleges, especially in the Midwest. These institutions—unlike older, Eastern colleges—were often designed for both male and female students. Moreover, their emphasis was on "practical," rather than "classical," education, and state school officials assumed most men would study agriculture, and most women would study Home Economics. Variously called Domestic Economy, Domestic Science, or Household Arts, their curricula emphasized cooking and sewing, with less attention to more subtle aspects of "cultured" Homemaking.
As biologists and physiologists discovered vitamins and developed concepts such as caloric values, it became increasingly more difficult to deny the scientific aspects of life in the kitchen. When the US Department of Agriculture authorized nutritional research in 1894, Home Economics came of age. The American Home Economics Association was formed in 1908, after a series of educational conferences begun in 1899 by Ellen H. Richards; her credentials as the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave additional credence. Federal programs on the subject were expanded into the Bureau of Home Economics in 1923, and Home Economics remains under the aegis of the Agriculture Department today.
Congress put a stamp of approval on the Home Economics movement, passing various bills between 1914 and 1937 that appropriated funds to support Home Economics for women in the same way that agricultural appropriation supported for men. This gender-based educational approach stood largely unquestioned until the revived Woman's Movement of the 1970s, when feminists sought to break down Home Economics stereotypes—seldom noting that the field was considered an overdue innovation a century earlier and was eagerly promoted by progressive women.

Under the aegis of the Cooperative Extension Service, which includes the Home Economics function of the Department of Agriculture, Home Economists began early in the century to educate homemakers via the era’s club movement. Variously known as Home Extension Clubs, Home Demonstration Clubs, or, most often, simply HD Clubs, they featured a monthly demonstration by a professional Home Economist on some improved method of housework.
Food preservation demonstrations were especially likely to draw women to these clubs during the 1920s and 1930s, as more and more American homes converted to electricity and women wanted to learn how to can (and later, freeze) the produce from their vegetable gardens and fruit orchards. Home Economists demonstrated the techniques necessary to preserve food safely, and in some communities, HD Clubs established clubhouses with communal kitchens that could be used by those who did not own canning equipment or whose homes lacked electricity and plumbing. Particularly as the Great Depression worsened, HD Clubs provided women with helpful information that assisted them in withstanding economic stress, and in the following decade, they helped women cope with the stress wartime rationing.
Because HD Clubs were subsidized by the federal government through the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, membership in them cost little or nothing. Therefore, they were largely composed of poor women who most likely would not be either "welcome" or "comfortable" in those clubs with civic improvement aims that functioned under the umbrella of the General Federation Women's Clubs. A woman whose spouse would "object" if she joined an GFWC club (with their aims of telling city fathers what needed to be done) or a temperance club (with their goal of outlawing "traditional male behavior" could almost always join an HD Club, where she could assure her spouse that he would be the beneficiary of new recipes and household economizing.
Clubs usually met monthly, which enabled the professional Home Economist associated with them to serve many clubs in different geographic communities. Each club elected officers and scheduled activities, which also was important to women who otherwise had little opportunity to exercise leadership abilities.
With funding from both the federal government and from the agricultural departments of state universities, these clubs continue to be an uncommon instance of women’s organizations being subsidized with tax dollars.

In 1851, the territorial legislature of Oregon took action founding the Territorial University of Marysville. Material was assembled to erect the first building of the university on the Dr. Margaret Snell (1844-1923) site, within the next three years. The 1855 action of the legislature removing the state capitol from Salem to Corvallis was accompanied by parallel action relocating the territorial university at Jacksonville, the property of the incipient institution at Corvallis was ordered sold at auction. The state capital was soon restored to Salem.
In 1856, Corvallis Academy was established near the corner of 5th and Madison streets. The state legislature issued it a charter in 1858 under the name of Corvallis College (CC). Then years later, it was designated the land-grant institution of Oregon. In 1860, the college was controlled by the Methodist-Episcopal church south.
President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act of 1868, a piece of legislation that brought about the receipt of 30,000 acres of federally owned land for each representative of each state in the union. The Morrill Act provided funds for a designated college, thus giving birth to the land-grant colleges. Oregon received 90,000 acres.
Corvallis College teacher, W. W. Moreland, who was also clerk at the Oregon legislature, together with B. F. Burch, who was on the board of trustees of the college and president of the Oregon senate, were influential in having Corvallis College chosen to be the official land-grant institution in 1868.
A number of presidents have directed the development of OSC since its establishment in the 1860s.
Their terms of office have varied from a single year to more than a quarter of a century.

Rev. William A. Finley, MA, was the first president of Corvallis College in 1865. His term of office lasted seven years. During that time he saw the college make the change to a land-grant institution and become Oregon State Agricultural College (OSAC). The suggested curriculum included mathematics, English, agriculture, and moral philosophy. Money was not available to make these suggested adjustments while Finley was in office, due to debts and slow state support. He resigned from the presidency in 1872.

B. L. Arnold, a noted classical scholar, was his successor. He was more able to cut corners as head administrator than Finley was. President Arnold had visions of incorporating the ideals of the Morrill Land- Grant College Act (1862), which were "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes." Arnold organized two venereal departments—the library and the scientific—with the appropriation of $5,000 made by the legislature. The literary department was divided into schools of ancient languages, modern language story, and literature. The scientific department was divided into schools of mathematics, engineering, practical mechanics and technology, physical science and moral science. Impressive as this curriculum sounds on paper, it was hardly more than Arnold and a faculty of three could handle.
President Arnold was not discouraged. With the help of such board members as T. E. Cauthorn, J. T. Apperson, and John Knox Weatherford, he worked to strengthen the framework of OSAC. In 1891, he went from three assistants to 13 well-trained specialists. He conducted the first soil research which 14 years later grew into the Agricultural Experiment Cooperative Extension Station. Along with the subsequent Federal Cooperative Extension Service, this is the foundation for the tie between Oregon State University's research achievements and the community.
Arnold saw the need to make a well-rounded educational opportunity by strengthening the curriculum in directions other than agricultural. A mechanical department was recommended in 1884. It began with classes in engineering, mechanical drawing, surveying, mechanics of engineering, and shop. G. A. Corvell arrived from Cornell University in 1889, and became the first dean of the school in 1907.

At this time came another distinctive field for OSAC. Administrators felt it was time to get women into the educational picture, with men preparing for work in farming and other areas. On July 2, 1888, the Board of Regents established the school of Household Economy and Sanitation, also known as "euthenics," meaning "the scientific study of the home." According to Pres. Arnold, in a report he made to the legislature, December 28, 1888:

Household economy and hygiene are subjects of prime importance to the welfare of the family, and through the family, to the community, and this department should be filled as soon as convenient.

As a result of this report, Dr. Margaret Snell, in 1889, was brought to Corvallis and filled the seat which became the first west of the Rocky Mountains.
Her words reveal her belief in women's education:

A woman can have no higher work than to help create a Garden of Eden... Here, with the background of hill and sky, you can work out your destiny clean air, unconfined by walls and ceilings. Here you may be free... or a slave, according as you use your mental powers and spiritual force to enable yourself and those around you.

With these ideas in mind, Dr. Snell worked through 18 years and five presidents. The courses being cooking and sewing. Later on, the included hygiene, home furnishings, gardening, and even social etiquette. The emphasis on “culture” was never lacking.
Pres. Arnold’s administration applauded the of notable educators like Dr. Snell. It also saw the small campus of one building on 5th and Madison its present site on Campus Hill, with a half dozen buildings. The first administration building was given to the school by the residents of Benton County.

John M. Bloss, MD, president of OSAC from 1892-1896, was followed by H. B. Miller, a member of the Board of Regents, who took charge for one year, 1896-1897. He was followed by Thomas M. Gatch, PhD, a widely known college president, who had already served in a similar capacity at the University of Washington and Willamette University. He continued in control until his retirement in the spring of 1907, a ten year period of notable advancement for the college in income, property, faculty personnel, research, and curricular development.

Then came the long and distinguished administration of William Jasper Kerr, LLD. He served as president from 1907--1934. During his administration and that of his successor, George W. Peavy, who had already served on his faculty for 24 years, the OSAC made remarkable advances in all phases of educational and scientific activity in which it was engaged. Dr. Edward C. Elliott, president of Purdue University, in public address, expressed the evident and distinctive fact that OSC had become known the world over for its laborship and leadership.

It would be almost an act of dismemberment to separate the three and a half years of George W. Peavy's administration from the preceding 27 years Kerr served. Dr. Peavy, LLD, who had already served on Kerr's faculty for 24 years, was appointed the first dean of forestry in 1913. He directed the division of forestry at OSC for more than a quarter of a century. In addition to that principal function, Peavy also served for many years as head of the Student Affairs Committee. This position made him keenly aware of Kerr's standards and ideals for enriching students living on campus. He was also the most immediate and potent factor in determining and applying administrative politics concerning students.
Peavy retired from the Students Affairs Committee when the office of dean of men was established.

Student enrollment in 1907, exclusive of sub-freshmen and short-course students numbering about 300, totaled less than 600; the enrollment of the past year, all high school or college graduates, of course, numbered 4,150.
Courses of study in 1907 differed little from the actual classical experimental superstructure of agricultural science and home economics—the first to be developed in the Pacific Northwest—and a similar program of engineering—first in the Northwest—had been bravely struggling for parity with the more accepted types of higher education.
Later, Oregon State College, as the scientific and technical institution of the state system of higher education, offered a standard collegiate program leading to baccalaureate and superior degrees in science, including the biological and physical sciences and mathematics; in agriculture, in education, in Engineering and industrial arts, in forestry, in home economics and in pharmacy, and a four-year curriculum leading to the bachelor's degree in secretarial science, a technical division of business administration.
In addition to these facilities for instruction, agencies for research include the General Research Council, the Agricultural Experiment Station, the Engineering Experiment Station, and agencies for extension include the General Extension Division and Cooperative Extension in Agriculture and Home Economics, conducted jointly by the US Department of Agriculture, OSC, and the state of Oregon and its several counties.
Evidence of results of the leadership of the college are many and convincing, such as the notable results of research, the sweeping effects of the county agent and home demonstration leadership, county in the state supporting and receiving the benefits of this service; the remarkable progress of the 4-H movement, with its membership, its summer camp program, and its unprecedented record of leaders in national contests.

On March 6, 1961, Oregon governor Mark Hatfield signed the now historic House Bill No. 1262 which changed the name of Oregon State College to Oregon State University.
According to OSU president August LeRoy Strand,

The new name "more properly describes" the institution, which in fact has been a true university for some 50 of its 93 years, with its nine major schools and its graduate school.

OSU Extension Service 1922-1974: Agriculture, Forestry,
Home Economics, 4-H Youth, Marine Advisory

Although, Home Extension study groups, as we know them today, did not take that form until 1946, Extension programs for women were conducted as early as 1922 in Lincoln County.
The early Home Extension programs were conducted by visiting Home Economists from Oregon State College.
In 1922, sewing classes were conducted at Toledo, Siletz, Ona and Yachats. Nutrition classes were conducted in Toledo, Chitwood, and Eddyville resulting in hot lunches being served at the Toledo public schools. This was also the year J. R. Beck, county agent, interested young people in club work.

A 4-H Cooking Club was formed Saturday, April 1, at the home of Maude Shewey, adult supervisor. Nine members were present. The club elected following officers: Donald Shewey, president; Delbert Hodges, vice-president; Rose Folmsbee, secretary; Evelyn Folmsbee, reporter; Betty Colby and Ina Mae Parks, song and yell leaders. The name of the newly formed club is the Bear Creek Country Club. The next meeting will be held at the home of James Parks on Saturday evening, April 15, at 7:30pm.
This club is for all girls and boys from the ages of 9-18. All interested please contact Maude Shewey, or be present at the next meeting.

Sixteen hats were made at Millinery Schools in 1923.
Mable Mack, was one of those specialists from OSC who taught clothing remodeling in 1928. The first workshop was held in Yachats. She had to rent a car and driver in Corvallis to take her to Yachats because the county agent lost his on the beach the week before. In those days, the only way to get to Yachats was to drive the beach at low tide. Over 35 women attended this meeting.
She returned sometime later and went south of Yachats this time escorted by the county agent. They drove as far as they could then carried heavy suitcases with instructional materials three miles to a farmer's home. She conducted her meeting, they stayed all night and returned a day or two later. She found these journeys gratifying because the Women appreciated the program so much.
Under the strain of WWII, Extension Programs were conducted to help take care of the necessities of families. In 1942, the Lincoln Pomona Grange and Lincoln County Extension Office in Newport co-sponsored a program resulting in the production of 650 mattresses and 500 comforters. Izola Jensen, OSC, taught 58 project leaders who taught techniques in their communities.

Community service had been the by-word of the Salmon River Grange from the time they received their first charter. During both WWI and WWII they aided the Red Cross, bought war bonds, and sent Bibles to their members who were serving in the armed forces. At one time, they had a mattress factory in the hall to help take care of the necessities of families during WWII. Grange members and volunteers cooperated with the Oregon State University Extension Service in the mattress making project. Home Extension meetings have been held for many years in the Grange Hall.

The Junior Red Cross of the Bear Creek School recently received a letter from the Lincoln County Junior Red Cross chairwoman in which she complimented them on the box they packed to ship to European children. It was considered one of the three best in the county, graded on choices of material and method of packing.

In some families, the annual ritual of "putting up" canned fruits, meats and vegetables is a tradition, passed on from generation to generation.
"My family has been canning for the past 100 years," said Wayne Hodges of Big Elk Valley, who works with his wife, Jean, to preserve "in the neighborhood of 1,000 jars each season."
As common as the method is today, canning as a means of food preservation was literally unknown until the turn of the 19th Century.
More than 150 years ago, according to the 1983 edition of the Ball Blue Book, an obscure French confectioner, Nicholas Appert, discovered that food heated and sealed in glass bottles kept safely for months or even years. Appert didn't know his process destroyed molds, yeasts, bacteria and enzymes—he only knew it worked.
The publication of his principles in 1810 earned him a 12,000-franc prize from Napoleon Bonaparte, who was seeking a means of providing wholesome food for his undernourished troops.
Since that time, canning has been thoroughly and scientifically researched. Today, home canning is as safe and easy as cooking a meal for immediate use.
In the days before refrigeration, canning was a necessity. In some areas of the world, it was virtually the only economical method of preserving a wide variety of nutritious foods.
New developments in food distribution and technology have made home canning less necessary. The interest in home food preservation techniques, however, has grown tremendously in recent years. Many share Hodges' belief that there is something intrinsically rewarding in preserving home-grown food.
"Canned food from my garden just tastes better," said Hodges, who has about an acre under cultivation and is raising a wide variety of vegetables and herbs.
Jean Hodges, who doesn't approve of what she believes is the increasing overuse of food preservatives and additives, said, "We like to know what we are eating."
"I'm not what you'd call an organic gardener," Hodges was quick to point out. "I use chemical fertilizers and insecticides when it's necessary, because, to my way of thinking, it isn't very practical to send out the ladybug [and praying mantis] to eat the aphids.
Hodges also has a herd of about 60 cattle. An avid hunter and sometime fisherman, he buys very little supplementary meat for the family table.
"We eat a small amount of poultry and even less pork," he said. "The fresh tuna (that) we buy off the dock every year is taken home and canned. It's fresher and tastes better than anything you can get from a store."
With the exception of staples, Hodges estimates a whopping 95 percent of his food is preserved at home. The pantry reveals rows and rows of canned meats, fish, fruits and vegetables, and two large freezers are packed to capacity.
"If I lost my job tomorrow," Hodges said, "we could live comfortably for about two years with the preserved food we have on hand right now."
Not all the food the Hodges put up is raised in their own back yard, however. "What we don't raise ourselves, we buy in bulk from the valley," Jean noted. "We get a variety of fruits and several kinds of berries for juices, pie fillings, jellies and jams."
Each year they purchase approximately four bushels of peaches and two bushels each of pears and plums from Willamette Valley orchards.
Some foods are particular favorites, both for canning and eating.
Tomatoes are especially popular with home canners, and the Hodges family is no exception. Jean Hodges puts up about 100 quarts of tomatoes each year.
Pickles are another specialty in the Hodges household. "They're great for snacks and with sandwiches," Hodges commented. They put up 62 quarts of pickled beets and a total of 226 quarts of various other pickled items. "And we grow our own dill," he added.
When asked about the cost of their "home grown" program, Jean Hodges pointed out that "with more expensive items, like asparagus and tuna, there is a considerable savings by putting it up yourself. But living off the land is a way of life for us. The money saved is a secondary consideration."
Like the harvest itself, canning season is a moment to share together for Wayne and Jean Hodges—and a time to be thankful for Mother Nature's abundance.

In 1944, the Lincoln County Extension Office had three pressure cookers available for a rent of ten cents a day.
In 1943, employment of full time Home Demonstration Agent was approved. Because of no available person to fill the position, Lincoln County did not get a Home Economics Agent until September 1, 1946. Dorothy Tolleth was the first Home Demonstration Agent.

Six chapter extension units were formed in 1946: Beaver Creek, Yachats, Depoe Bay, Wecoma, Neotsu, and Siletz. Four other units were organized that year: Seal Rock, Tidewater, Cutler City, and Lobster Creek Valley.
In 1947, Nashville, Toledo, Newport and Eddyville were organized, and 1948, Salmon River organized.
In 1956, South Beach organized, and in 1971, the Yaquina unit organized.

The programs studied in the early years were taught by the Home Economics Agent. The 1950s brought the system of the Home Economics Agent training one or two group members to teach the topic to their group each month. Leadership development and personal growth resulted for all participants.
The programs have always been planned by the participants and have throughout the years reflected the interests of Homemakers. Food preparation, nutrition, home furnishings, clothing and textiles, care of the home, gardening and landscaping, and home management related topics are frequent repeaters in the programs. Recent programs show a growing concern for community in such topics as land use planning, county government, consumer rights and topics affecting family life such as venereal disease and communication.

The local Home Economics Club of Elk City held its monthly meeting the 25th of January at the Grange Hall, with chairwoman Olive Schriver presiding. After a potluck luncheon at noon, the club attended to several business matters, the most important being ways and means of raising money to kitchen for the Grange Hall, and the entertaining of Siletz Grangers, the winners in a recent contest between the two Granges.

In 1967-1968, Mable Mack retired, returning to Lincoln County and helped assess senior adult needs and set up a programs. The Lincoln County Council on Aging has had a close tie with Oregon State University Extension Service ever since and has given real leadership in Aging Programs throughout the state.
Today there are eight active Extension Study Groups in the county. Many people get information from their local home extension office by calling about a specific problem, receiving pamphlets or fact sheets on topics in interest, receiving a newsletter, or through Oregon State University Extension Service produced television programs.

• 1947 Corinne Hansen
• 1948 Eleanor Purcell
• 1949 Lorena Logan
• 1951 Ardis Edgy
• 1952 Doris Brodersen
• 1955 Damaris Brandish
• 1959 Evelyn Stowell Brown
• 1971 Evelyn Brookhyser
• 1973 Joyce Brown
• 1974 Evelyn Brookhyser

Connie: What was it like when you first come to Big Elk Valley?
Claudine: When I first came to this area, three months out of the year you could come up our valley. We didn't have any rock road, so walking or horseback was the common mode of transportation.
Dell said it was always local petty politics that kept the Big Elk Valley being so late and backwards in developing to the state of having a good rock road. What comes first? The rock itself has to come first.
After we got the rock, we got the daily school bus to pick up the kids from Toledo. For a long time, it only went to Elk City.

School for another year got off on a good start the last of last week for this part of the county. It is something vastly different for our little valley for the children of the entire community to be going clear into Toledo schools, which they are now doing. Everything seems to be running smoothly at present with the (Elk City-Harlan) road in its best condition of the year. We are hopeful the road condition can stay the same the year around, but that is too much to expect, we are afraid, having (gravel and) no pavement.

Connie: You've lived in this remote area a good many years now. How did you get here?
Claudine: I took the bus from California to Eddyville. My brother, Laurel Truitt, came out to meet me. He had a cute little Ford coop which he had driven it up from California. I should have gone on to Toledo, but I was trying to save money.
Laurel and I lived in the old schoolhouse on the Hodges cattle ranch. It had been out of use for several years.
Connie: Did Laurel stay out on the ranch?
Claudine: No. He eventually moved to Sutherlin and started a nutria ranch. At one time, he had 100 nutria.
In 1957, he visited two nutria ranches in Santa Rosa, California to learn more about the business.
Connie: How did you meet the Hodges family?
Claudine: Dagmar Anderson, Dell Hodges and I were picking hops around Independence in 1933. There used to be a lot of hops grown in Oregon at that time, but that’s an era in the past.
Connie: What did Dell use for transportation?
Claudine: Dell had a 1923 Dodge. The top was off of it. He could only drive when it wasn’t raining. A trip always meant three or four flat tires. You had to get out and under to patch the tires. He and old man Douglas used to drive under one tank of gas [sic]. The old man had kind of a panel rig, and it was good for the two men to travel in, and bring back some of their feed and other supplies.
Road trips weren't a great deal of pleasure. It wasn't a great lot of pleasure for any of the woman folk to go along, because you never could tell when anybody would get back.
The grader did smooth the road down from time to time, but not nearly enough.

Connie: Was there any entertainment for young people in the valley?
Claudine: Before Dell and I were married, somebody was having a dance. A good part of the young folks were someplace else. I walked over the hill with Alice Washburn. The shortcut to Toledo was only about seven miles, and we could walk that.
Ivan Clark had not a bad Ford at that time. He drove down and the fellows he was taking to the dance helped push him through the Bear Creek grade down to Jim Parks place. There was not much light, and it was muddy, and I walked up to my knees in the mud. I took my high heels off and tried to walk close to the edge where it was kind of hard. I was scared to death of slipping off the bank down into the river. Some fellow was hanging on to me because I was afraid I'd slip and stagger one way or the other.
Dances were a major form of recreation, so people were willing to go to such extremes to attend them.
We were coming home from the dance, and Ivan Clark had gone into town to pick us up.
Connie: Did you find yourself walking to where you needed to go much of the time?
Claudine: One time I walked from the schoolhouse just above my place there, and I borrowed Dell's hip boots because I knew what I was going to have to contend with. It was in the fall and the rains had started. I put the boots on over my shoes. As a result of that, I had ruined the boots. They weren't very good in the first place. I walked five miles down there, and five miles back, down to where Pauline Parks lives now.
Connie: I heard Dell was quite a fiddler. Did he play at many dances?
Claudine: Dell played the fiddle a good part of the time at dances. All through the years, he played along with two or three of his brothers. His timing was never quite as good as it could be, so he kind of "seconded" along.
The dances were held almost every Saturday night. There was always the organ and sometimes harmonicas. Sometimes there would be a guest musician. In those days, almost everybody had an organ. The dances were held from house to house. Dell had a very fine old organ. It finally got broken and was moved upstairs, and I think the mice got into it, and that was the end of it. Unfortunately, I didn't value it enough to take care of it myself.
Connie: Florence Howell wrote that the farmers were into square dancing. Did any of the Hodges brothers call?
Claudine: Dell used to call for the square dances. He always had a good voice. Almost everybody knew how to two step, fox trot, and waltz.
Connie: Edith Modlin wrote about alcohol being a problem at the dances at Rose Lodge. Was it a problem in this part of the country?
Claudine: Some of the fellows would go out and "nip" some of their homemade strawberry vino. The dances were pot luck; people brought cake and sandwiches.
Connie: It sounds like people took their kids to the dances at Eddyville. Did folks in the Elk City vicinity take their kids to dances too?
Claudine: Yes, the beds were always loaded with kids, young and small. Mary Parks (1877-1948) used to ride a horse carrying her baby, Harold, in her arms. That's how much dances meant to folks in the valley.
Walt and Dell were good friends all their lives. They lived up where the motor cycle races are held now (WOW). I remember Mary riding a horse with two or three kids on it sometimes.
Connie: How did people communicate with each other in between dances?
Claudine: There was no telephone at all in the valley when I first moved out there. If you lived on the Central Oregon Coast in the 1940s and you wanted a telephone line, you had to hook it up yourself. We call them farmer lines. People would get together and string their own lines, over trees and things.
Connie: Were there any bona fide telephone companies in existence at that time?
Claudine: Oh yes. The Coast Telephone Company was in existence, but most residents in rural areas had to connect their own lines to the company's main switches. When I came into the country, every time I had a child—which was three times—the next door neighbor would help Dell get a telephone line installed clear down to Elk City so he could call through. Different people put in lines from time to time.
Connie: So there was a switchboard at Elk City?
Claudine: Yes, there was already a switchboard at Elk City when I moved out here. Elk City was a post office then and for that reason had it to have phone service, but individual farmers had to hook up to it.
Connie: What were some of the other concerns rural telephone customers had then?
Claudine: In the 1950s, the focus of the telephone industry was much simpler than it is today. They were concerned with voice.
Connie: Voice? You mean the quality of voice over the lines?
Claudine: That too, but the main concern was the number of voices. Those were the days of rubbernecking a line—when the phone would ring and you'd pick it up and there would be 12 people talking. Eventually Pioneer developed ways of bringing the voices down to eight, then six, then only three on the line. Then it was, finally, down to your own personal line.
Connie: Thank goodness, you have your own private line now, and that means the Big Elk Valley has a connected telephone infrastructure. Do you remember when that happen?
Claudine: Around 1949, when the boys were seven and nine, Pres. Truman decided to expand the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) to include telephone services to rural areas, as well as electricity. Suddenly, low-interest loans were available for rural areas to build a connected telephone infrastructure. Before this, the banks wouldn't loan money for rural telephone lines because they couldn't take the risk.
The REA expansion created what was then called the Rural Telephone Cooperative. When the government funding came in, this cooperative purchased the Coast Telephone Company.
Connie: How widespread was the Coast Telephone Company's service?
Claudine: This blending of farmers, union members, residents and customers of the Coast Telephone Company covered rural areas around Waldport, South Beach, Eddyville and east to Philomath.
Connie: It must have been a major challenge to string lines over rugged rural terrain, and I can't begin to imagine how they strung them across the rivers and bays.
Claudine: Well, they weren’t just free floating; they were strung alongside the outside the bridges. I remember before the construction of the current Alsea Bay bridge, Pioneer workers created a device—similar to a scaffolding—to attach to and hang over the bridge, in order to repair and install the telephone lines that ran along the outside of the bridge.
Connie: Along the outside of the bridge? Considering the high winds we get on the coast, it sounds dangerous.
Claudine: It was very dangerous. During this time, many linemen, hovering precariously above Alsea Bay, would feel the bridge heave from side to side in the wind. I've heard it told that these linemen called the state and told them about the swaying of the bridge, and not too long afterward, the bridge was replaced. Now Pioneer telephone lines are kept inside the structure.
Connie: When did the Rural Telephone Cooperative become the Pioneer Telephone Cooperative?
Claudine: In 1950—about the same time we got electricity—it changed its name from the Rural Telephone Cooperative to the Pioneer Telephone Cooperative.
Connie: I’ve got a pretty good notion of how food co-ops function. How does a telephone co-op work?
Claudine: As a cooperative, Pioneer is owned by its customers and controlled by a board of directors and a general manager. Any profit made, over the operating costs and costs for improvement, are returned to customers in the form of a check. In other words, the job of the cooperative is to provide telephone service at cost.
Connie: Is service through a small cooperative more expensive?
Claudine: No. Low rates and high technology are two of the things Pioneer has always been known for. Basic rates for cooperative members run around $10 per month, much lower than most of the larger telephone companies in Oregon.
Connie: When Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1933, he assembled a group of advisors known as the “brain trust” and developed administrative and legislative reforms known collectively as the New Deal, a program that brought new spirit to our weary and discouraged nation. The New Deal included social security, better housing, equitable taxation, and farm assistance and rural electrification. You said earlier that pres. Truman expanded the REA to include rural telephone service around 1949. Does that mean the Big Elk Valley had electricity before then?
Claudine: It was in June of 1940, when the REA was presented as a possibility for this valley, and the very thought of the possibility seemed so farfetched that only two representatives from the entire route met with the and discussed the plans with REA representatives, in Toledo. Those people were Dell Hodges, from Big Elk Valley, and Ms. George Lemons, of Mill Creek. These two people got right busy and took up subscriptions all through the district.
Then the WWII came along, and copper and steal wire were hard to get. In fact, almost impossible, and we were ten years later in getting our electricity than we should have been. The business manager of the REA Department in Corvallis thought it was better business to send the electricity over towards Siletz because it was more densely populated than up our way.
But after all these years, it was especially gratifying to the folks out here, as well as to all who had helped on the project in later years.
Connie: How did the REA go about putting up such an extensive line?
Claudine: First the line poles were distributed along the right of ways, and men started digging the holes. A week later, three miles of holes had been dug, from this end of the valley only. The contractors worked at several points, towards the middle, which was Elk City.
Connie: It sounds like the dreams of the people of this valley had actually come true, and electricity had become a reality.
Claudine: Yes. To many people this may not have been such a wonderful thing, but to so many in this vicinity, who were pioneers, it was the first time they had had the conveniences which electricity brings to their own homes. They considered it was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to them in this valley.
Connie: I imagine that means the little Bear Creek School also got electricity:
Claudine: Bear Creek School got electricity a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. November 9, I think it was. In anticipation of this wonderful event, a Portland woman named Kathryn Hoyt donated an electric phonograph to the school and community. Having music in the classroom brought so much enjoyment to
the pupils and their teacher, Laura Mack.
Connie: After so many years of not having electricity, was it hard to get used to?
Claudine: In certain respects it was. Whenever electricity came to an area for the first time, people were just "blessed" with salesmen of every kind. More vacuum cleaner salesmen knocked on my door than you can shake a stick at!
Connie: When did you and Dell move into your current and—very electrified!—house?
Claudine: It was after we got electricity, around the first of February in 1951. We celebrated the holidays by moving into the new house, which we'd been building for the past two years. The house was not complete in every detail then, but it was very warm and comfortable. We had a house-warming party later in the spring when the weather was better.

Connie: I know the Hodges are famous for their hunting. Did they or any of the valley folk hunt with hounds?
Claudine: Yes, some did. I remember shortly after Dell and I were married, we went on a little weekend camping-fishing trip, and we could hear hunting dogs making noise in the early morning. They used the dogs as "jump dogs." They'd run down through the brush and disturb the animals, and the men would be stationed here and there. Then somebody would "play dog" and drive the deer through so somebody else would be alert and kill the deer.
"Dog run" deer weren't fit to eat. It got their adrenaline up and the meat was slimy. It took the men a long time to realize that they were actually driving the deer out of Big Elk Valley with dogs.

1949: Claudine and Dell Hodges and two boys, Delbert and Wayne, returned Monday night from a hunting trip into Eastern Oregon. They brought home a fine two-point buck and a coyote pelt.

1954: Local fellows going to various parts of the state for the opening of deer hunting season were Ed Parks, Buster Brown, Alfred Allen, Dell Hodges and his son, Delbert. Perhaps there are others too, but we have failed to hear of it.

Dell Hodges and son, Delbert, returned early Sunday morning from a week-long hunting trip in the Ochoco Mountains north of Prineville. They report a fine trip, but returned unsuccessful in getting their bucks. Hodges says there is still plenty of time. We'll see!

1956: Marvin Branstiter spent the weekend with Delbert Hodges. The young men put in two days of hard hunting, but with the same results as so many others in this rugged section of the country.

1957: Delbert Hodges, Elk City, Marvin Branstiter and Lloyd Moffitt, Toledo, were a group of hopeful hunters who joined in the great exodus from this vicinity Friday afternoon. They spent the weekend at Sisters. They had a nice trip but got no bucks.

1958: Among those who had fine camping trips but not bucks were Claudine and Dell Hodges who hunted near Paisley for one week on Bald Mountain and on up near Paulina Lake. They were gone ten days.

1959: Delbert Hodges came out to his home (from OSC) over the weekend and brought Ed Lieb of Corvallis with him. They bagged a nice forked horn. Jean Lieb accompanied her husband.

Connie: Were there game wardens in those days?
Claudine: Yes. Frank R. Wright (1878-1954) was the first game warden in the area as far as I know. Dell tells of a time when Frank shot the tip of his fishing pole off!
Connie: Was there a lot of trapping going on in the area?
Claudine: I went with Dell one time when he was attending old man Moore's son's bear trap, and there was a bear in it. Dell put himself out an awful lot to take care of this bear. I went to one of those houses with him, trying to locate old man Moore or something, and it was quite a walk show [sic] from our car over there.

Feb. 1951: Dell Hodges caught another lynx cat in a trap on his range land this week. Elmer Parks of Elk City, recently caught a cat, and also a coyote. It is understood that Jim Hodges (Dell's brother) trapped a bobcat recently on his old homestead up Rush Spring Creek.

Mar. 1951: The trapping season has proved to be quite successful along the Big Elk and Upper Yaquina River this winter. It is understood Reuben Embree of Elk City has around 25 mink to his credit. This is good. Embree is busy logging all the time and trapping is a sideline for him. Then Fred Hodges has specialized in muskrat with many to his credit. Dell Hodges (his uncle) goes in for predatory animals as well as mink with a huge bobcat and another coyote to his credit.
Speaking of Hodges and his bobcat—on request of his son, Delbert, the two fellows made a visit to the Burgess School and the boys' room, showing the dead bobcat, still unskinned, to his teacher and classmates. Before Hodges could get away he had visited all the rooms by request, and gave talks on his various trapping and hunting activities and the destruction of the wildcats and other predatory animals.

Sep. 1952: On the display table were several objects of interest from India, owned by Claudine Hodges, various articles made by Delbert and Wayne Hodges while attending the Bear Creek School, a beautiful fox pelt caught by Dell Hodges and a tanned elk hide owned by Dell, and two oil paintings done by Claudine Hodges...

Connie: Did the Hodges have horses at their disposal?
Claudine: We had saddle horses, and often he and I would ride places like that. Almost everybody had a saddle horse for transportation. Until I moved out to the valley, I didn't have access to a saddle horse, and It was a wonder that I didn't kill myself. I didn’t know what side to get on to!
Dell always had high spirited horses. At one time, he had sort of a half racehorse. It had some racing blood in it. It darned near killed him, though, when it was running. Dell was a young fellow with not much sense of danger.
There used to be a lot of bridges over the creeks. Now they've all been replaced with culverts. Between Jim Parks and the Bridges place, there used to be a rattling wooden bridge. Dell hit that with his horse and splayed his legs all out. It was frosty. It practically ruined the horse, if I remember right.
Dell’s diaries tell about taking so many hours to ride horseback to Philomath. He told me years ago about how far he had to travel to see thee dentist. He suffered with terrible pains with his teeth. In that day and time, people never went to a dentist unless they were dying with a toothache. Usually it meant pull it or just suffer.
I remember him talking about his brother, Pat, who rode a good horse back home from Independence in 16 or so hours. No doubt they had a trail. That would mean a long, hard drive as a rule. If a guy had a jaw as big as a bucket out here to boot, every little jolt would just about kill him.
Connie: Violet Updike said Dell Hodges got some of his education in Newport. Did he tell you about it?
Claudine: Dell went to school for a while down in Newport. The old Abbey Hotel was run by the Abbey family. Dell was general handyman for the hotel. In that day and time, when a fellow was trying to get out of the eighth grade, it would mean he'd have to go and live in and work for his board, just like now when kids go to high school—or college—and there doesn't happen to be one close by.
Connie: What were his duties as handyman for the Abbeys?
Claudine: As handyman, Dell milked the cows for the people at the hotel. This was when his folks lived up the Big Elk.

The Pioneer Days Celebration was a big event in Toledo during the 1950s and early 1960s.
Local pledged their support of the event and merchants were asked through the Chamber of Commerce to participate financially and by decorating their store windows for the annual holiday weekend that took place June.
The Toledo Junior Chamber of Commerce staged the Miss Lincoln County Pageant to select a winner to send to the Miss Oregon event in July, and soap box derbies were held on Main Street.
The 49ers Square Dance Club led free street dancing and gave demonstrations. An orchestra provided music for the public dancing.
On more than one occasion, Claudine Hodges of Elk City, was chairwoman of the annual Old-Timers Party which was headquartered at the Toledo Furniture Store on North Main Street. The annual event brought scores of folks from all sections of the state here for the celebration.
A prince regent and Queen were named each year, and in 1960, Claudine Hodges, rural correspondent for the Lincoln County Leader wrote:

Delbert Hodges did the solo work on the memorial service conducted for the departed members of the royal court for the past eight years. Pam Snyder accompanied him on the electric organ.
Deceased "royalty" honored were (Queen) Rachel Craigie King (1859-1954), (Prince Reagents) Earl Nye, George Lewis (1871-1956) and most recently, J. C. Huntsucker.
The Old-Timers Party, under the direction of Claudine Hodges, was its usual gala, chatty, get-together, attracting visitors from wide areas. Ida Bensell, 80, Siletz was named Queen and Jack Fogarty, 83, Newport was the Prince Regent.

The Toledo Business and Professional Women (BPW) sponsored a pet parade for children under 12 during the morning hours. Entries were distributed through the schools.
The Rotary Club organized and staged the big parade which usually got under way at 1pm.
In 1956, Elk City Grange was represented in the parade by a colorful float which brought a second place award in its class.
Hodges wrote with obvious pride that all work, some 200 hours,

The Elks Lodge organized a number of afternoon athletic events, including boxing, wrestling, and tugs-of-war, on Memorial Athletic Field.
The Lions Club took on the tremendously important job of serving the annual baked beans and barbecue beef dinner during the afternoon when hundreds were given a free dinner.
The Eagles Lodge handled all phases of entertainment which started early and ended late and kept the crowds occupied with street acts, clowns and music between the special shows, soap box derbies, parades, the bean feed and other major features.

The Pioneer Days Celebration also featured "strong man" Elmer Back (1906-2000), who was known along the West Coast for his theatrical feats of strength. Back performed for the Elks, Eagles and Moose Lodges as well as other gatherings in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California. In 1934, he bent a piece of cable from the Golden Gate Bridge. For four years, he traveled with a carnival to perform his feats of strength.
Toledo's Mike O'Donnell remembered what a show Back put on:

When I talked to [Elmer], I was always carried back to the 1950s in Toledo and the celebration of Pioneer Days.
What a celebration it was. I remember the heat, the excitement, the baked bean and corn bread feed, the Native American dancers led by Archie Ben, the town packed with people, and the pioneers who settled this area being honored by all of us.
And I remember Elmer. Dressed in a Viking uniform, sweat pouring off his muscular body, he would entertain us by driving spikes through planks with one grunting punch, and he would bend pieces of steel, held in front of him like a strong wishbone, as we gasped in amazement. He would show us all the steel, rap it on the side of the flatbed stage he was on, then slowly turn it into the shape of a pretzel.
Sometimes a lucky kid would take a bent piece home as a souvenir.
Always friendly, always strong—I hope that Elmer will continue working on his boat, wherever he is, and, in between painting the deck and working on the hull, he will occasionally drive an iron spike through a thick plank, or bend a piece of steel.

Back was born in Sandsvall, Sweden on March 2, 1906 to Beda Stronberg and Elmer Kallback.
He migrated to America in 1923 at the age of 17, worked in sawmills in Bend, and was granted US citizenship after WWII.
In 1936, Back relocated in Toledo and went to work for C. D. Johnson Lumber Company.
He married Sallie Rebecca Casey Austin in 1929; she preceded him in death in 1971. After his wife's death, he divided his time living in Sweden and Toledo.
He was a member of the Assembly of God for 69 years.
Elmer Back, the West Coast's strongest man, died on March 25, 2000. He was survived by his daughters Beda Tribbett of Newport and Alma Brown of Toledo; grandchildren Mark Gwynn of Bandon, Debi Holt of Vancouver, WA, and Rhonda Barton of Florence; stepsons Billy Austin of Gervias and David Austin of Los Angeles; a stepdaughter, Ethel Harvey of Gervias; 14 great-grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren.

A county-wide talent show was staged on Memorial Athletic Field in the evenings from which top entrants appeared on TV in Portland. The station sent a number of acts to Toledo to participate in all phases of the entertainment. A Toledo elimination talent show was held at the Eagles Hall, and the best of those acts appeared in the county show.
In 1960, the entrants for the FOE talent show were xylophonist Jane Skinner of Newport, vocalist Delbert Hodges of Elk City; and pianists Gary Snyder and Dorothy Ramseyer, both of Toledo. Deb Dahl was Master of Ceremonies for the event that year.
A water show, featuring water skiing and skin diving, was presented at the docks at the end of Main Street. Notices went out to airports of the Pioneer Fly-In, and the event attracted a considerable number of flying enthusiasts from sections of the state.
The annual Pioneer Dance was held at the American Legion Hall with a well known valley orchestra during the evening and most organizations in Toledo planned dances and special events.
In addition there was a merry-go-round and pony and other rides for the youngsters.
Connie: I know the Pioneer Days Celebration must have kept you hopping, but Delight Kapfer, co-manager of the Lincoln County Fair & Rodeo, said you also had time to win the Homemaker Award several times. If that’s true, your energy takes my breath away.
Claudine: It’s true! I won the Homemaker Award three times. Each time, I accumulated a lot of ribbons and things. The woman who would win the largest number of points in textiles, and or baking, became homemaker.
But the rules have changed. Now there have to be so many entries—at least five the last I remember—in the two categories, which are textiles and baking.
All needle work, sewing, rug hooking, etc., comes under the category of textiles.
After I won the Homemakers Award two years in succession, I suggested that no person should win more than once in a three year period. That rule I instigated is still in effect. The fair board voted on it, and it became law.
Connie: I don't understand why. If someone wins she wins!
Claudine: The fair board thought it was a good idea. Really and truly, Connie, when it comes right down to it, a winner is not overly popular. If one person consistently win, people would say, "What's the use in entering? So and so always wins anyway."
Connie: You do have a point there, Claudine. When did you start getting involved with the Lincoln County Fair?
Claudine: I started participating in the Lincoln County Fair before Delbert and Wayne were born. I had to learn how to do a lot of things over the second time, because I just didn't know that things had to look as beautiful on the underside as on the top; the judges were judging the underside too! When it comes time to judge the "cream of the crop," you have to be pretty good.
A lot of women are afraid of competition, so they don't enter. That makes for a poor exhibit. This is in baking, needle work and fine arts. When they get to the fair, they end up saying that they could have done better than what they saw winning all the awards, but the point is they didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to actually enter and compete. A lot of this has to do with the way women are raised—not to have confidence in themselves.
Connie: Was the Lincoln County Fair & Rodeo always held in Newport?
Claudine: No. The first time I went to the fair, it was held over in Siletz. The road was a gravelly dirty road at that time. The fair was located to the left as you enter Siletz. That used to be a big open space. There was a big building there, but not nearly as big as it is now.
They usually had a ferris wheel. As the years went by, there was a good, dependable circus and rides for kids. The fair is definitely advertised as family entertainment.
Connie: When did the fair move to Newport?
Claudine: They built the fairgrounds buildings in Newport around 30 years ago.
Our Lincoln County Fair is one of the few that has survived over the period of time. It is of interest to the whole family.
Connie: Florence Payne wrote quite a history of the Grange. Were you active in the Elk City Grange?
Claudine: I didn't come into the area until 1932, but I did a lot of reporting about Grange activities:

The social meeting Friday night held by Elk City Grange was well attended with 50 people being present.
Master Thorwald "Thor" Linden (1900-1968) opened the session then turned the evening over to Verba Croston, local 4-H leader of the Elk City vicinity. This being the time of year to review past activities of the 4-Hers all over the county, it was the time for all local 4-H Club members to shine, and shine they did.
Scott P. Clevenger, 4-H agent of the extension staff of Newport was present to make awards and address the group assembled.
Clevenger stated the county's enrollment of 4-H members was 800 and the completion of projects by these young folk was 88 percent.
Also during his addressee revealed an overall personal investment of $35,000 by club members themselves, showing the vastness of the program.
Clevenger stated $1,200 had been paid out in premiums in August by the Lincoln County Fair Board to these young people. The Oregon State Fair Board had paid out $100 to Lincoln County 4-H exhibits of winning classes at the State Fair.
Much credit goes to Leaders of the clubs. Verba Croston finished her fourth term as Leader of the Elk City Livestock Wranglers. Ms. Clyde Thissell finished most of the work for the first year for the Elk City Chef's cooking class. She moved away and co-leader, Ms. Weldon Davis, finished the term.
There are 103 leaders of 4-H clubs of many kinds in the county, Mr. Clevenger stated. There will be a banquet given these folks and their spouses in December by the Bank of Newport showing the evaluation of their services in the various committees.
Yearly awards, pins and certificates are presented the leaders and members by the First National Bank of Portland. In this county, the Waldport Branch makes the awards. This year, manager, John Fisher, was unable to attend the Elk City meeting as before. Clevenger very capably made the numerous presentations.
Those receiving first year pins were R. Wayne Hodges, Abraham "Abe" Hall, Anne Gholson, Jon Howry, Fern Thissell, and Cathy Thissell; second year awards were presented to Delbert L. Hodges (1940-1999), Nancy Parks, Bryan Jackson, Richard Embree, Sandra Croston and Peter Davis; third year pins were presented to Janice Embree and Donald Brown; fourth year awards went to Bonnie Parks, Bobby Parks and Karen Croston; sixth year award went to Adrian Croston.
There was one grand champion award winner from each of the two clubs. R. Wayne Hodges received one for his livestock entry at the Lincoln County Fair and Peter Davis received one for his entry in the Cooking Club.
Other special awards received by members were the second premium Oregon State Fair ribbons and checks presented to Delbert L. and R. Wayne Hodges for their serving on the three-member county team on the crops identification contest at the Oregon State Fair.
Clevenger stated, "this was the first representation from Lincoln County at the Oregon State Fair in this division, and I was well pleased with the three boys who so ably represented the county." Third member of the team was Bill Smith of Harlan. The Lincoln County Fair Board also presented the boys with cash awards.
One member of the Cooking Club went to the Oregon State Fair with an exhibit but failed to place among the winning classes. Peter Davis received an exhibitor's green ribbon on his muffins.
Other special awards were presented to Ann Gholson, Nancy Parks and Sandra Croston for their work in Cooking I. They received cookie cutters.
Special ribbons were given the secretaries of the clubs, Catherine Thissell, and Adrian Croston for the Cooking Club, a blue ribbon, and Bonnie Parks for the Livestock Club a red ribbon.
Delbert Hodges was president for the Livestock Club and Fern Thissell was president for the Cooking Club for the year.
Each member gave reports on his project and the outcome at the Lincoln County Fair. Delbert L. Hodges reported on his five day trip to Camp Lane as a counselor and Peter Davis reported on his trip to the same camp as a member.
Verba Croston will again serve as leader of the local Livestock Cub.
Potluck refreshments were served to all. Lennie Linden (1901-?) assisted in the kitchen along with other Grange ladies. The leaders and several young hostesses supervised with the serving.
Folks in the Elk City vicinity are receiving annual Christmas seal letters. Ms. Lee Parks is the local chairwoman. The letters come from the Lincoln County Tuberculosis & Health Association and the letters speak for themselves.
Elk City Grangers came forward in great response this week when they donated food, clothing and household linens for the Walter Mabe family who lost everything in their recent fire Elk City Grange relief chairwoman, Grace Lantz, was assisted by Frieda Ullman Folmsbee when they gathered the articles on Saturday and delivered them at the receiving depot in Toledo.
Much work has been done on the new Grange Hall in Elk City this week. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday men working on the project were Thor Linden, Walter Parks, Frank Knight (1884-1964) of Elk City and Arthur Cumbo. Parks, who is chairman of the building committee, stated there would be plenty of work for anyone available to assist with the carpentry work. Parks said, "Don't wait till someone calls, there will be work going on at the hall today, but get there any time weather permits." All assistance will be greatly appreciated it was stated.

Wallis Nash, a friend of Gladstone, Darwin and other celebrated figures of history, was a lawyer in England in 1887 where one of his clients became interested in checking up on a financial proposition in the United States. It had to do with the proposition of the Oregon Pacific Railroad and Nash was sent to make an investigation. He was so impressed with the possibilities of the country that when he returned to England he wrote a brochure entitled, "Oregon, There and Back in 1877." The Gazette of that time was only 15 years old. His report to this client was so satisfactory and his impression of the country so remarkable that though he was reared in London and had moved among the best social circles of that capital of the world, he and his wife and children packed up their effects and joined the trek to the underdeveloped section of the New World.

“Nash's life is impressed on the Willamette Valley history especially that of Benton County (and Lincoln County) and in 1918 at Nashville, Oregon, he wrote a book entitled, A Lawyer's Life on Two Continents. Because that book contains in one of its chapters a very vivid account of Corvallis as it appeared in 1877, we thought it of interest to reproduce it here. The following account, therefore, is Nash's own description of Corvallis and its environs as they existed in that early period.
On May 17, 1879, we arrived in Corvallis at the end of our months journey from England. We traveled up the Willamette River from Portland on a stern wheel river boat, which carried a motley collection of passengers, some horses, a cow or two, more than one hack or buggy, some wagons and plows, and filled up with groceries and good stuffs.
The season was unusually late, and the streets of the little town were ankle deep in mud, crossed by plants a foot wide. From the boat landing we crossed to the board hotel on the far side—the mud-filled gutter being cluttered up with the just cut off heads of a dozen hogs from the butcher's shop adjoining the hotel, thrown in there to get them out of the way. No one took account of the hogs' heads in those days, not of calves heads, nor of sweet breads, or other internal organs of the slaughtered animals. They were just thrown away regardless of where they might fall.
A house was being built for us on the slope above the town, but it was not quite ready. Meanwhile, we stayed at the Vincent Hotel, except out two selves who were taken to a friends's house who had been advised of our coming. And in the face of all this my wife lost neither her poise nor her courage, and actually prospered on hardships and discomforts.
Ms. Vincent proved to be a very friendly soul, and soon made the whole crowd welcome. They all ate heartily and there were no complaints of the food. In those days Corvallis consisted of a wide street built up with one or two story houses, four saloons, and half a dozen churches; a courthouse, surrounded by oak and fir trees, and a two story schoolhouse for the public schools, and another schoolhouse and a church owned by the south Methodist church, the school being called the Oregon Agricultural College (OAC), and receiving the emoluments provided by the US. The majority of the storekeepers were of Jewish nationality, as was commonly the case in Oregon in those days. Oregon was a young state indeed, 1859 being the year of its state-nativity; its population was small, and largely of recent immigration from the Southern states following the Civil War. To this day the people are wonderfully, reasonably, proud of their pioneers, a group of whom still survive. In the community were several lawyers and physicians, a couple of dentists, some schoolteachers, many store keepers, four or five saloon keepers, two flout millers, barbers, whose shops were, in winter and summer, the clubs of the community. There was a minister and his family for nearly every church, who eked out a living on the contributions of their church members. The Firemen's Club was an active organization and a Coffee Club Auxiliary supplied coffee to the men when there was not infrequent fire. Saturday was the busy day of the week, when the neighboring farmers came into town and tied long rows of wagons to the hitching posts near the courthouse. The most prosperous were the saloon keepers, for they took in the larger part of the farmer's earnings—and there were card games in nearly all the saloons. There were two newspapers, and how they survived and managed to pay for paper, ink, and compositor's wages was a standing mystery to me.
Most of the early settlers had taken out donation land claims. Under those laws a man could settle on the claim 320 acres. Surveys of the land were in progress but by no means complete, and the earlier maps showed the oddest jumble of lines and cross lines. Conflicts of claims were not rare; but the settlers were not, as a rule, contentious and disputes were generally peacefully settled. The 12 mile belt between Corvallis and Yaquina Bay had all been surveyed, the mile sections marked, and the alternate sections set apart for the Land Company. So my earliest duty was to examine these alternate sections and determine which should be prepared for immediate sale and settlement. Roads and byroads and wagon and horse trails must be opened up.
Of course each of the boys must have a horse, and then the working party must be fitted out. This being done we all started for the section of land, some 12 miles west of Corvallis where the work would probably be begun. There were seven in the party besides myself, eight horses—one a pack—and a tent. An ax for everybody, a "grub hoe" or two and a few shovels were the tools, and food for a week at least. Every boy had his rifle, except the known workers—for the English set believed, I think, that Indians or at least bears and cougars, were lurking in every foothill wood.

Along the road was a sign nailed to a tree, Blacksmith Shop. At a settler's house of fray old boards and mossy shingles I found the blacksmith, old Mark Savage (1825-1904), an ancient settler. He was not at all glad to see the men. I wondered why. He made it plain when he said, "You fellers goin" to settle this place up?" I told him, "Maybe, but it won't be now." He answered in soliloquy, "Well, it don't matter much, I can move on in further, I guess—the darn place is getting took thick for me anyhow—there's folks within a half a mile of me whichever way I turn." I comforted him and he stayed on till the gangs of the railroad construction came, and his old shop was much used, for he was a good workman.

Near our house, on lots which were afterward the site of the new Corvallis public school stood a two storied while boarded structure in which a week day school was held for pupils who paid a pittance for their teaching. The lots had been donated by an old resident of the Bishop Benjamin W. Morris, for the benefit of the Episcopal church. The ground floor room was used for the school, the upper room given over for services of the Protestant Episcopal Church. It was bare enough, save for rough wooden benches, and an equally rough alter rail. There was no organ or other instrument, and a scanty supply of prayer and hymn books. Services were held when a minister of the church came over from his headquarters in Albany, 12 miles off. There was a small and irregular attendance from two or three families of dyed-in-the-wool Episcopalians, but the heads of those families were devoted to the English church. Naturally as members or attendants of the English church we found our way to that old building on the first Sunday after our arrival in Corvallis. Fortunately the Albany minister had come over for the service so familiar to us. He preached and then made friends. Doubtless he advised Bishop Morris of the addition of folks to his church, and soon after the bishop came to see us. That was the first of very many visits, when, for 13 years he made our house his headquarters on his frequent rounds of Episcopal visitations.
Once his friend always thereafter his friend, was the motto of the life of Bishop Morris, the second of the bishops of Oregon. In the old country, men of his rank in the church were rare birds to the common people, scarcely seen except in lawn sleeves and black cassock behind the communion rails, whether in cathedral or in the every day church of the common people. Here we had a bishop of a new type. Shall I tell how he impressed us, both at first and after, until the end of our long friendship came by his death in harness? Well, he was, when we knew him, an elderly man of medium shape and build, a gentle face, blue gray eyes, uncut hair and beard. His hair was grizzled and rough, his manners very friendly and unassuming. Pretension was to him unthinkable, he was naturalness itself. His itinerary was laid out by him to reach the most distant homes of his people, across deserts, mountains, lumber camps, fishing stations, mines, and just one church family was attraction enough. He rode on railroads, stagecoaches, mail routes, on horseback, in farmer's wagons. His equipment was his own bag, which held his Episcopal robes, neatly folded, and a black jacket by way of change from his every day long coat; this in addition to his night clothing filled it. He wore a soft black hat, and always carried a thick gray Scotch plaid. He was his own apparitor, and many times, he told me, put on his robes in a fence corner when he arrived at the crossroads schoolhouse where he was to preach. Even when his original diocese had been halved by the setting apart of Washington, his jurisdiction covered the whole 96,000 square miles of Oregon, and his mind was ever on enlisting and providing for fresh soldiers in the very little army of ministers spread over the immense domain. He bore with him the "care of all churches," for he was the universal referee in all troubles of church and people, and what he could do for Oregon at large he did. In the truest sense he now "rests from his labor and his works do follow him." If today we look out in Portland on the great Good Samaritan Hospital, and ask who founded and first built and established it, the answer is Bishop Morris. If we see the efficient and well attended Saint Helens's Hall in that city, with its scores of girls from all parts of Oregon, the same question meets the same reply. As in the great, so in the little; the town and village churches sprinkled over Oregon where the Protestant Episcopal Prayer Book is used, and an Episcopal Sunday school is collected, most of them had Bishop Morris not only for their founder, but for their frequent visitor. An extra attention to me was that the bishop was a first rate and established fly-fisher.

With my wife I paid a visit to Corvallis last January. We walked out westward from the town over smooth concrete roads. The big house we lived in had disappeared, its place being filled by Waldo Hall, which held 150 students of the college. The little farmhouse on the 30 acre farm and outbuildings, crops, fences, and rushy fields was where our boys used to wait for wild ducks in the in the winter afternoons. Now we saw in front of us a great green campus, bounded and dotted over with handsome trees and shrubs, with a large, brick building in the center of the view, with flagstaff and the stars and stripes above it catching the breeze. Other large and costly buildings showed at intervals round the campus, till we counted them to a total of 13, housing the many departments of the great college. That was not all, for on the lower ground to the left was the rounded roof of the great drill hall and armory, 300 feet long, and wide to match, where 1,500 men could maneuver in comfort when winter rains swept the outside parade ground.
The rise of all was in the old Corvallis College (CC) of 1868 to which the legislature of that day attached the magic name of OAC that the state might thereby make good claim to gifts and endowments that Congress had set aside for each state in the union. The CC of the South Methodist church was a good school in its day, with many young pupils and about ten or 12 students in agricultural college classes. The three professors were abundantly able to handle the number of pupils and students attending.
But one of the conditions of the national gift was that each state accepting it should provide adequate buildings and equipment. This the South Methodist church was quite unable to do. During those 15 or 16 years it dawned on the people of Oregon that in their state agricultural college they had an inheritance of untold value, but that no adequate growth was possible while the then existing conditions endured. So by the year 1884 the legislature let it be known that if the citizens of Corvallis and their friends desired the continuance of OAC in their city, and would be subscribing about $30,000 for new buildings and equipment it would be found that the South Methodist church would surrender their control and that the state could thereafter own and operate its own agricultural college.
It took a hard pull to raise that $30,000. To it Colonel Hogg and his friends contributed freely. But it was accomplished, and then we joined to frame the new constitution of the college and to get the legislature to pass it into a law. We had good help. Justice Strahan of Albany, afterwards one of the supreme judges, and Judge M. L. Pipes, a circuit judge, still and for years past a well known member of the Portland bar, were associated with me in that work. The legislature duly passed it; the South Methodist church ultimately, and not very graciously accepted it, and the governor nominated and the Senate accepted the first Board of Reagents, of whom I was one, holding office for a maximum of nine years, the governor, secretary of state, and superintendent of public instruction being ex officio members.
So we had a title, 30 acres of land near Corvallis, and $30,000 in the bank, on which to construct the OAC.
The congressional acts defined the scope of these colleges—their charter being known generally as the Morrill Land-Grant College Act (1862), after Senator Justin Smith Morrill (1810-1898) of Vermont, and the father of them all.
These colleges were "to give instruction in agriculture and the mechanic arts, not forgetting subjects necessary for a liberal education." But the most important provision was added to the curriculum, "including military tactics."
Letters were written to every agriculture college in the US, asking for their latest reports, for details of their faculties, their duties and pay, their income and legislative appropriations, and any notes of their experience that might be of use to us. Nothing could exceed the fullness and the kindness of the replies that poured in.
The fact that members of the present faculty, who came then to Oregon at our invitation, or followed positions, testified to my statement that we have held through the years a wise, loyal, and contented faculty.
So, in 1887, the doors of the college were opened and about 76 students responded. The growth has been steady and remarkable. This especially since the election of the present president, Dr. William Jasper Kerr, who came to us from Utah ten years ago. The advance from the original 76 in 1887 to upwards of 400 in 1907 was more than proportionate to the growth of population and resources of Oregon. But what shall we say to the figures given to the board of reagents by Dr. Kerr in October of 1917? The enrollment of students in that year so far was 1,802 as against 1,848 on the corresponding date in the previous year. The slight decrease was due to the enlistment of several hundred OAC boys as officers in the service of the nation, of whom 204, cadet officers responded to the first call.

A few weeks ago we were once again on the Pacific Coast. We had passed through Newport to the little inn, standing on the brink of the rough rocks overhanging the beating waves many feet below. Cape Foulweather and its lighthouse stood ten miles to the south of us, and we had passed it on our drive along the sands. But our inn was on the edge of the forest of giant spruce that stretched north, south, and east to the limits of Lincoln County. We ran across camp after camp of the timber men in khaki that were spread here, there, and everywhere, over that forest treasure land. Centuries had served to stop up the United States' service in the great war whose reserves now at last available. At last the Yaquina harbor and bar were being improved by the joint provision of the nation and our Oregon ports. As two new railroads were being rushed across the tide flats to carry the airplane spruce to the great mills just ready to be set to work, more than 2,000 workers for Uncle Sam had already been sent there. There steamboats on the bay and every scow, barge, and launch were taken into use. The trains on our railroad were drowned. The resources of the bay region were at last unlocked and in the service of the nation. What mattered it that I spent and wished that the colonel had been spared to see the fruits of his wasted energy, for I am all but the sole survivor of those who believed in and worked for the Oregon Pacific Railroad Company.

A prominent figure in Oregon and one of Benton County's foremost citizens of pioneer days, Wallis Nash, passed away Saturday afternoon at the country house near Nashville, in Lincoln. County. The remains are being brought to Corvallis today and the funeral services will be held from the Episcopal church immediately after the arrival of the funeral party. Internment is to be in the Crystal Lake Cemetery. Nash passed away March 13, 1926.
Nash was a native of England and was probably 90 years of age. He came to Oregon in 1877, passed two years in Benton County and then returned to England. Nash then headed an English colony that came to Benton County. The men in the party were here to learning farming and the families settled on tracts over this section. Nash, himself, became interested in farming and planted the first vetch sown in Benton County. Vetch at that time was recognized as tares, and Nash won quite general criticism for his act. The seed was sown on land that is now the personal site of the forestry building and gymnasium on the OAC campus.
With Judge Stahan and Judge M. L. Pipes, Nash helped frame the constitution of OAC and had it ratified by the legislature.
Born near London, England, in 1837, Nash was educated at Mill Hill School and New College, University of London, and then further for his profession of lawyer, finally becoming a senior member of Nash & Field, solicitors, of London. Always interested in new ventures, Nash secured Alexander Graham Bell's (1847-1922) patent rights to the telephone for England and the first message passed from there to Queen Victoria (1819-1901), at Osborne House.
Other important projects of their firm were the financial agreements for the first Atlantic cable for Cyrus Field and for a large Brazilian railroad, and Nash helped the framing of the first "limited liability" which passed by act of parliament.
Nash later met Colonel T. Egerton Hogg (1828-1898) in London, a Southerner who was much enthused over the great possibilities of Oregon, and came with him to the new country, first in 1877 and returning in 1879. He was second vice-president of the Oregon Pacific Railroad for many years.
Nash was influential in the construction of the Oregon Pacific Railroad, from Yaquina City to Mill City, now a part of the Southern Pacific lines, and was legal advisor for the road and one of the promoters under the management of Colonel Hogg and his brother, Billy Hoag. He was one of the first reagents of OAC, serving in the capacity of secretary. Later, for a brief time in the autumn of 1898, He acted as president of the board. His early connection with the college was at the time it was being turned over to the state and released from church control. Nash’s home was for many years on the present campus, He and his family residing in the English mansion that stood in pioneer days on the site of Waldo Hall. The old English home was then the gathering place and headquarters of the members of the English colony.
Following the years in Corvallis, where he secured large farming acreage, Nash located in Portland. He was for a time president of the board of trade in Portland and for many years was an editorial writer for the Oregon Journal and the Morning Oregonian. A writer of note, Nash was the authors of several books on Oregon, including Two Years In Oregon. He was renowned as an English scholar and was an accomplished pianist and recognized musician.439 He was a barrister in England during his young manhood but his law practice in Oregon was confined to brief periods in this city (Corvallis) and Portland.
The little Lincoln County town (Nashville) near which Nash spent his years of retirement and where one or more of his books were written, receives its name from the beloved citizen who had done so much towards the development of that section.
He also was active in enlarging the CC and brought to the school the late George Coote, florist, and other men who were prominent in the school.
Nash was instrumental in establishing the Sanitation & Household Economy Department and bringing Dr. Margaret Snell to the OAC.
Nash was twice married, the second Ms. Nash passed away only two or three years ago. The children surviving include Dorothea Nash, prominent in musical circles, in Portland, and the only daughter. There are four sons, Desmond, Percival, Rodney and Darwin Nash.
Nash played the organ in the Corvallis Episcopal Church and also read the service there many years.441

Nortons is located on the Southern Pacific Railroad, about six miles west of Nashville. The post office was established April 6, 1895, with James S. Huntington first postmaster. The office closed to Eddyville on January 15, 1934. The community was originally called Norton, but postal authorities did not accept this name as there was another office in Clackamas County of the same name so the "s" was added.
In former times, Nortons, named for Lucius Norton who owned a ranch nearby, was a station on the Corvallis & Yaquina Bay Railroad. A weathered and decrepit structure that once housed the general store and post office stands by the road site. Nortons, like Elk City and Hoskins, is another ghost village in appearance. The first military wagon road linking the Summit-Nashville area to the Corvallis-Elk City wagon route was built in the 1860s. It was graveled from Summit to Nashville around 1930, and paved in 1947. In 1910, Carey Peck, the community blacksmith, carved a new road along the right-of-way to the Clem Road to Burnt Woods on Highway 20. He was paid with county script, as was customary in that day, and had considerable difficulty cashing them for provisions. The road now graveled, opened up a new artery of travel to and from the area, which throughout the years has helped the Nashville-Summit residents considerably. Around 1912, when Jim Highland brought the first automobile to the Nashville area, the family's team of carriage and horses, the reliable pack-horse and the plodding draft teams obtained their first glimpse of their retributive justice. In 1903, the first store in Nashville was owned by Bruce Hamar. It served as a depot and waiting station along the route of the early railroad. At that time, the store was also the post office. When another large portion of the original Siletz Reservation was thrown open to homesteading in 1895, the Nashville-Summit area offered the quickest and easiest route to the virgin timberlands of the northeastern part of the county. Logging and lumbering were carried on in a small way with an ox team. Manpower predominated. The first donkey engines were used by Wallace A. Moody of Parkdale. In 1895, his father helped Sim Benson, who sold his oxen and bought enough donkey engines to run his logging operations and set up the first logging camp. In 1927, Ted Harmsen came to the Summit area and herded 2,000 Angora goats over the hills. In 1936, Harmsen & Hall built their first sawmill on the Earl Davis ranch. In 1945, Harmsen erected a sawmill at Nashville, which burned down in Jun. 1949. In 1950, a new electric mill was constructed with a planer added to its equipment in 1954. The first lumber was hand stacked, then shipped to Eugene. Harmsen received $8 to $9 per thousand board feet.
In 1913, early telephone communication in the area was first attempted on a neighborhood basis. In 1977, Clara Howard Mears of Lake Mills, Wisconsin, wrote:

The coming of the telephone was quite an exciting event there as elsewhere. I remember my brother coming home from town and telling us that he heard mr. Mansfield speaking from his John Creek office to some one in a store at Lake Mills as plainly as he ever heard him when present. My nephew and I rigged up a telephone with two tin cans and a wire over which we talked.

The switchboard was located at Summit, and extended through Nashville to the Chapman place. Rodney L. Nash, son of Wallis Nash, made the first call on his phone. It was July 16, 1913, the day his daughter, Mary Lou, was born. The doctor was summoned to assist in the delivery. However, this line was not kept in repair, and for many years the closest telephone service was at Summit. On November 7, 1954, Nashville was connected with a modern dial system under the Pioneer Telephone Cooperative. In October 1944, Nashville Grange No. 903 was organized by Jesse Reeder. Clyde Hamar was the first Master of the Grange. Gladys Hinshaw was its first Secretary. In early 1932, the Nashville Gas & Oil Company drilled an extraordinary oil well on the outskirts of the town. In March 1923, the well was drilled to a depth of 480 feet. Small quantities of gas were present. The well was abandoned a short time later, and only recently have options been renewed, and new incorporation papers filled in the amount of $250,000.
Mary Lou Nash Commons was the daughter of Faith Lister and R. L. Nash, and the granddaughter of railroad baron Wallis Nash. In 1963, she was managing the family's fine cattle ranch. That year, she hosted a potluck picnic for the Salem DAR, who spent the day learning about the Nash family and their contributions to Lincoln County Singing "Home on the Range," was almost too much for Mary Lou, who was devoted to her many pets. Her parents were selling the ranch her grandfather, acquired during the building of the railroad. The move was in keeping with the health and age of her parents.
Hamar, or Yaquina Lake, three miles northwest of Nashville, is a point of interest. In 1887, the lake was formed by a slide which blocked the course of the Little Yaquina River on land formerly owned by Charles Hamar during his absence. In past years, the state Fish & Game Commission has stocked the lake with fingerling trout.
On April 3, 1914, Peter Meads (1820-1914 KY), who once owned the place at Nortons now owned by Harry Porter, died at Walla Walla on Monday. His obituary said that Meads

and his family homesteaded a place at Nortons in the spring of 1867 and lived on it some 20 years when he sold out and moved to Walla Walla, where he has lived until his death. Meads was well known to the early settlers of Yaquina Bay. He used to team over the roads hauling oysters and clams from Elk City to Corvallis. This was done in the worst part of winter and over the muddiest kind of roads. Meads never stopped for rain or mud. He had a nice home at Walla Walla and enjoyed life in his later days. He was 84 years old. His wife, Rebecca Jane Carter (1841-1911 MO) died about three years ago. She was a sister of Siletz Reservation physician Franklin Marion Carter of Elk City. The Meads are survived by the couple’s children: William H. (1860-? OR), Olive A. (1862-? OR), Solomon S. (1864-? OR), Elijah F. (1866-? OR), and John S. (1869-? OR). So one by one the pioneers are passing away leaving behind them a name of honor, courage, perseverance and hospitality. May they rest in peace.

Nortons Cemetery is located near Homer Edwards' farm not far from Eddyville. Historian Evelyn Parry visited Nortons Cemetery in 1975, and says there is a marker identifying the site of the first schoolhouse in Lincoln County under a large fir tree. The grave sites are about a quarter of a mile further on toward Eddyville. The cemetery is about one block from the road. A big tree covers the fenced graveyard. The property is owned by Lincoln County. A July 1898 issue of the Lincoln County Leader, states that H. S. Porter thanks those who helped erect the memorial stone commemorating his mother. "Those who helped me knew of no other graves here," he said:

"Elizabeth Lee Porter's (1831-1898) obituary states that she was born in Harrison County, Ohio on November 4, 1831. She was a graduate of Wheeling College, Pennsylvania. In Nov. 1893, she married Andrew J. Porter (1827-1881), who was a surveyor. The couple moved to Oregon in 1864 and homesteaded at Nortons in 1865. Their home was at one time an overnight stopping place for travelers." Porter first began educating children in her home. Lincoln County's first schoolhouse was built in 1866, and Porter was the first teacher. She died at Nortons in 1898. The inscription on the memorial stone reads:

James A. Hamar was not an important man, as the world measures importance. I have searched the history books of the state of Oregon and have found no reference to him.
And yet, as we dedicate this monument to him at Nashville, I like to think that he was important, and not merely because he was my great-grandfather.
He was important because he represented so well the thousands of equally obscure but brave and decent men and Women who opened the gates of the frontier and laid the foundations of the beautiful state of Oregon.
We who stand here in 1965 owe a great deal to James Hamar and others like him. We have a good life, despite all of our anxieties and dissatisfactions. The world of Jim Hamar in 1865 was no better, and I think we must admit, if we are honest with ourselves, that it was much worse. One of the bloodiest wars in history ended in 1865, and a few days later a beloved president was assassinated. The 60,000 or more people in Oregon were still divided on the bitter question of slavery; they were bickering over the question of how the Indians should be treated; they were dissatisfied with their treatment by the federal government.
Wallis Nash, one of Jim Hamar's good neighbors, said much later that the dream of a successful railroad from Corvallis to Newport through Yaquina Valley (the road was built, but it was not "successful") might have been realized if there had not been so much throat-cutting and back-stabbing amongst the politicians and other greedy men who became interested in that project.
It all sounded familiar.
The life of the common man in 1865 was no picnic, as the life of Jim Hamar illustrates very well. Many of you at this dedication ceremony know his story better than I do. He was born in 1822 in Brookfield, Indiana—a wide place in the road which to this day has no more than 60 inhabitants. He died in Nashville in 1897—in another place no larger nor better known than Brookfield.
In Indiana, Jim lost his first wife, Katherine Russell, after she had born him two sons. Frontier life took a heavy toll on mothers and children. In 1862, at the age of 40—perhaps dreaming of something better for his new wife and their children—he set out on the long trek to Oregon. He left Topeka, Kansas on May 1, 1862, and arrived in Oregon on the first day of December—after seven weary months on the Oregon Trail.
Jim’s sister, Sarah Ellen Hamar Miller, came to Oregon to live near her brother and his family at Nashville following the death of her husband, Mathias Miller, a Civil War veteran who died in Kansas. Their son George and his wife Cynthia Hart Miller of Siletz welcomed Sarah's visits, arriving on her horse Bustles, riding side-saddle. A friend, believing Bustles had strayed, returned her to Nashville. The problem was solved by adding a halter with this note attached:

The Miller's son, Louis, and daughters Malinda, Ellen, Mary, Emma, Julia, Dora, Edna and Maggie, lived or visited in Oregon.
The daughter of Malinda F. Miller and Norman Edwards married Samuel L. Eddy, the son of Amanda Frantz and Perry Eddy of Kings Valley.
For a time, Jim and Sarah lived on the Link Allen place in Kings Valley. It was there a tree fell on him, injuring him so seriously that He never fully recovered. Life in Kings Valley must have been hard. The Indians were still a "problem," or, if not the Indians, then the G. I.'s of the fourth infantry at nearby Fort Hoskins.
In the late 1850s, Col. Augur, who commanded Fort Hoskins, sent a letter to several of the nearby settlers—among them Link Allen and Lucius Norton—asking them to comment on complaints about the soldiers. Allen gave him a frank answer. He said it was a toss-up whether they did him any good. What he earned by selling them chickens and eggs, he lost on pigs. It appeared that sentries at the fort sometimes encountered bears at night and shot them for the company mess. And it is said that the bear meat often tasted suspiciously like pig!
The military often took the side of the Indians against the settlers, another cause of fear and tension.
In 1864, Hamar left the Allen place near Fort Hoskins and crossed over the mountains into the Yaquina River Valley. Perhaps he traveled as far as he could on the ox road carved out by Lt. Philip H. Sheridan of Civil War fame, and then struck out into the trackless wilderness to find this valley. Or perhaps he came a roundabout way through Wren and Summit. No one seems to know. At any rate, he staked out a homestead near this spot, and thus became the first settler on the Yaquina.
Life in a home of his own may have been sweeter in some ways, but it was surely not easy. Hamar was never well-to-do. Of the eight children born him by Sarah, one of them (James Cash) died in Infancy. Three more of the children—Jane, Everett and Susan—and his wife Sarah died before Hamar himself passed away in 1897.
But those first settlers were rough and self-reliant. What they needed doing, they did for themselves. In 1865, Hamar, with the help of my grandfather, Everett, built a good trail into this valley from Hepptonstall, later called Summitville or Summit. I've speculated about his motive. Was it like his valley home with his nearest neighbors on the mountain? Was it to complete one link in the road to the growing towns of Philomath and Corvallis? Or had he already caught fire with the dream of a fine highway and railroad from Corvallis to the coast which might run through Summit and past his home at this spot, bringing prosperity. There was already talk of a railroad as early as 1857, though construction of the line did not begin until 1879.
Whatever the reason for the trail, it was one more link in the network of similar trails and roads which gradually bound together the scattered settlements and made possible the development of a great new state of the union by cooperative endeavor.
When Hamar's children and his neighbor's children needed schooling, he built a schoolhouse with his own hands at Summit in 1887. And a little later, he donated some of his land for another school in Nashville and again built the schoolhouse himself. He must have been proud when one of his grandsons, Bruce Hamar, became the teacher in the first Nashville School. The fine schools and colleges of Oregon in 1965 have grown from the seed planted by men like James Hamar.
So it is that the West was built. Today we dedicate this monument not just to James Hamar, but also to his neighbors who labored with him to make this valley a civilized place, good to live in. And we dedicate it to all the other thousands of little known men who struggled a century ago against the wilderness to leave us this heritage of Oregon in 1965.

The remains of Hoskins nestle in a hollow at the edge of the Coast Range, just where the mountains merge with the level flood plain of the Willamette River.
Lumber was king in the mid-1880s, and the timber to be sawed grew densely there. Virgin forests were so dense as to shut out the light of day except at noon. Sawmills sprang up all along the Coast Range.
As the woods were depleted close by, short logging railways were extended to the diminishing forests. About 1918, the Valley & Siletz Railroad laid tracks through Hoskins displacing the old store, a relic of the 1800s. The venerable building was moved to a new location a few hundred feet down the slope and beside the tracks.
Earl Lonie, who now owns the store, says, "But I guess they had some wild times upstairs in the old days." It is easy to imagine the ladies and gentlemen, perspiring from the performance of a lively two-step, walking out on the little balcony for a cooling breath of air.
A number of abandoned houses and cabins are scattered about, no pattern of streets exists anymore for Hoskins, and as Lonie sadly remarked, "The place seems to be a thing of the past."

In the autumn of 1919, Retta Wilson Martin taught at Hoskins in a little schoolhouse across the road from where Fort Hoskins stood. She stayed with a family who lived in the compound built as a hospital for the soldiers stationed there.
Hoskins, at that time, consisted of a general store, mill, cookhouse, the round house for the railroad, and a dozen houses for mill workers.
The railroad followed Luckiamute River and hauled lumber and logs to Independence. The company also offered passenger service from Independence to Valsetz on a special car called The Skunk.

After 39 years on the Valley & Siletz Railroad, P.W. "Casey" Jones (on the right) retires in January, 1957. F.W.A. Cox (on the left), the superintendent of V&S, shakes Jones' hand. Fort Hoskins, Oregon was established in 1856 as the result of the concentration of Indians at Siletz Agency and was named in honor of Lieutenant Charles Hoskins who was killed in the battle of Monterrey, Mexico. It was on the Luckiamute River near the mouth of what is now known as Bonner Creek. The fort stayed where it was until it was evacuated in 1865. The Siletz Indians were the southernmost Salishan tribe on the coast. The name now designates all the tribes on the former Siletz Reservation: Athapascan, Yakonan, Kusan, Takilman, Shastan and Shahaptian linguistic familes. The Rogue River Indians first applied the name Silis meaning black bear to what is now known as Siletz Lake. The Indians and the river took their name from the lake. After the bad forest fire of 1910, the William W. Mitchell Company built a railroad up the Luckiamute River to the summit of the Coast Range and began logging in western Polk County. The terminus of the railroad was just over the divide into the Siletz River drainage.

The schoolhouse at Hoskins was very modern for the times, with an above ground basement and one upstairs room for 28 students, grades one through eight, according to Martin. It had oiled floors, which were popular at the time, and a large wood heater in the center of the room. There was no running water, but each child had his or her own drinking cup hung on a nail above a large water bucket. There were two outhouses for student use behind the schoolhouse.
One time one of Martin's fifth grade girls "licked" the school bully, who ran home crying to his mother. Her satisfaction was short lived, however, when the boy's mother stormed the schoolhouse and gave the young schoolmarm a very harsh tongue lashing.

With the discovery of gold in the Rogue River Valley in the early 1850s came an influx of white miners and settlers which applied increasing pressure on the US government to remove the Native Americans from their homelands. War broke out between the Indian and the white population. The Coast Reservation was created by an Exclusive order signed by Pres. Franklin Pierce (1804-1869) November 9, 1855.
The purpose of the reservation was to provide a permanent reservation for the "Willamette, Umpqua, Coast tribes, and others who may be hereafter placed thereon." Seven Ratified Treaties of the Umpqua, and Rogue Valley tribes specified that a "permanent reservation shall be selected under the direction of the president" and the Willamette tribes ratified treaty specified that the permanent reservation would be selected by the Oregon Superintendent of Indian Affairs. These treaties were, however, ignored and the Coast Reservation was reduced by more than three-fourths its mass without treaty or compensation. The original boundaries of the reservation, a 26 mile wide strip, reached from Cape Lookout in Tillamook County on the north to near the mouth of the Umpqua River on the south. The reserve was created to contain 24 separate bands and tribes whose aboriginal homelands extended west of the Cascades from Northern California to Southern Washington. These tribes included the Alsea, Chastacosta, Maconotin, Joshua, Coquille, Tututini, Molalla, Tillamook, Rogue River, Dekubetde, Kwatami (Sixes), Galice Creek, Salmon River, Kalapuya, Naltnatunne, Yaquina, Yuki, and Klickitat. Over the next few years, all Indians of Western Oregon were concentrated on the Coast Reservation and the adjacent Grand Ronde Reservation, some as the result of treaty agreement and some by forceful removal by the government from their homes. The first population count in 1860 reported more than 3,000 Indians living on the reserve.
Many Native Americans died from sickness, hunger, and exposure as they were forcibly removed from their homelands and sent to the reservation. They were not allowed to bring their possessions with them, having been assured that all they needed to survive would be provided once they reached the reservation, which proved to be an empty promise. Upon arriving in the Siletz Valley, all bands were treated the same and expected to live together in harmony through some had been enemies in the past. Most had no knowledge of farming or their new environment and what it could offer for survival. Many died in the early years. For example, in 1857-1858, 205 of the Rogue River Valley Indians died within a 12-month period, and this was only one segment of the population. At Siletz, the Indians were under the control of a resident Indian agent. His staff include a farmer, doctor, miller, and teachers. Nearly three quarters of the Indians living in Siletz did not qualify for goods or assistance because their treaties had not been ratified by Congress. They received only the assistance the agent could secure through the limited funds for operating the reservation. However, the Indians of the Siletz Reservation did survive, working hard, and adapting to their environment through fierce hardships. They learned to farm and use the resources of the area. Many became loggers in the later years. Children were educated at the school on Government Hill, and in the 1880s some attended the Chemawa Indian School near Salem. Shortly after the turn of the century those that could began attending colleges and universities.
On December 21, 1865, Pres. Andrew Johnson signed an order opening Yaquina Bay to white settlement. The order divided the Coast Reservation into a Southern, Alsea, portion and a Northern, Siletz, portion. The land removed involved an area 25 miles from north to south and 20 miles from east to west.
In 1875, the northern end and the entire Alsea Subagency (or southern half) of the reservation consisting of 12 townships, was restored to the public domain, reducing the size of what was thereafter known as the Siletz Reservation to 225,279 acres.
In 1891 and 1892, 44, 439 acres were allotted to 551 individuals. Except for five timbered sections reserved for the use of the residents of the reservation, the remainder of the reservation was opened to public settlement in 1894. The exchange involved some 191,798 acres for which the government paid $142,000 (74 cents per acre).
The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians were among the Western Oregon tribes who were terminated by the Act of August 13, 1954. In 1955 all remaining Siletz lands, except for the 39 acres known as Government Hill, were sold. Government Hill was given to the City of Siletz. The reservation which had once exceeded 1,300,000 acres in size had now officially been completely taken away from its original tenants and given to public domain. The Termination Act also affected allotted lands which became subject to property taxes. By 1960 many of the last lands that had belonged to Siletz Indians passed out of their ownership due to non-payment taxes. Termination virtually destroyed tribal life. With the sale of all remaining lands, and no economic or socials resource, tribal members moved away from the reservation.
In the late 1960s, recognizing the severe effects of termination, a core group of tribal members worked to revitalize common bonds. This included restoring the tribal cemetery on Government Hill and developing programs to provide alcohol rehabilitation, job training, and social services. In the course of these efforts, it became apparent that the only way to reverse the trends of poverty, alcoholism, and despair was for the Siletz tribe to regain its status as a tribe recognized by the US. After years of intense diplomacy, the congress and president approved Public Law 95-195 which reinstated recognition of the Siletz as a federal Indian tribe in November 1977. In 1970 a reservation plan was approved, returning Government Hill to the tribe and setting aside 3,660 acres of scattered sites of timberland within Lincoln County as the tribal land base.

Since restoration, the tribe has reestablished virtually all its institutions of government. Policies and mechanisms currently in place have provided effective planning, development, and administration of programs. In 1985 the Siletz Tribal Economic Development Corporation (STEDCO) was formed as an independent entity to develop economic enterprises for the tribe that create job opportunities and foster the economic and social welfare betterment of tribal members. STEDCO projects include Hardwood Lumber Mill, the Siletz Indian Smokehouse in Depoe Bay, and Chinook Winds gaming center.
The tribe was also successful in seeking funding from HUD to create housing for its members. Thirty-nine homes were completed in April 1989 and 15 more in May 1991. In February 1991 the tribe opened a health clinic which treats all members of the community, both Indian and non-indian. Services and economic growth continue to expand with new tribal facilities in the planning stages and more economic opportunities being developed.
The culture and heritage of the Siletz tribe are celebrated and remembered during many events throughout the year. Nesika Illahee, the tribe's annual Pow Wow, is held on Government Hill in Siletz during the second weekend in August. As one of the largest Pow Wows in the Northwest, it attracts visitors from across the country who enjoy the competition dancing, Native American arts and crafts, and the festive atmosphere. In mid-November a smaller Pow Wow is held in honor of Tribal Restoration. A celebration in honor of the tribe’s veterans and departed loved ones is held on Memorial Day weekend.

Black Indians? The very words make most people shake their heads in disbelief or smile at what appears to be a joke, a play on words. No one remembers any such person in a school text, history book, or Western novel. None ever appeared.
Yet they lived and roamed all over the Americas and the Central Oregon Coast, as the following accounts reveal.

The Indians told of three men, one a giant black man, who along with two white companions, had been left to guard something of value within the wreckage, while 20 others aboard the vessel, left the area on foot, never to be heard from again.
It is said that the three men had lived among the Indians for some time, and the black giant had been worshipped by the Indians as a god.
But as the story goes, the Indians later killed all three men, for some reason, the black giant's mortality was exposed. ...[A] photo was taken in 1931 at Three Rocks, a coastal resort community on the north bank of the Salmon River. It accompanied a story written by a Journal reporter on the scene shortly after Calkins' father, a longtime resident of that area, had unearthed three humon skeletons from an ancient Indian shell mound being leveled for a tourist campsite.
At the time, the find had sparked renewed interest in the legend of the shipwreck of the black giant and his two companions, when it appeared that one of the individuals had, in his lifetime, attained an approximate height of eight feet.
The remains had also displayed mute evidence that all three had shared a violent death. One of the leg bones was shattered, a two inch bone spearhead was found lodged at the base of one skull, and a large stone was embedded in the crushed skull of another.

Originally a large tribe of around 2,000 members, by 1898 there were only 38 Tillamooks (Nestuccas) surviving. Sixteen lived at Siletz, 16 at Bay City, and six at Grand Ronde. Most of those at Bay City were of the renowned Kilchris family, descendants of the supposed "black giant" who ruled the tribe in the 1830s.

That same year, Evelyn Parry, author of At Rest in Lincoln County, Oregon, discovered proof of

an unidentified black sailor, along with his two white mates, who washed ashore at Big Creek in 1898 and are buried at Yachats Community Cemetery.

Their story began with the first European landings in the New World, reached from New England to Brazil, and continues today.
Oregon historian Terence O'Donnell wrote that Tillamook was

...the site of the first American landing on the Oregon Coast—by Capt. Robert Gray on his initial voyage [in his sloop Lady Washington] in 1788. He, however, called it Murderer's Bay, since it was here that his black cabin boy [Markus Lopius] was killed by local natives.

Their story began with the first European landings in the New World, reached from New England to Brazil, and continues today. The number of African Americans with an Indian ancestor was once estimated at about one third of the total. In Latin America the percentage is much higher. This means that an important pages in history has been missing.
Three great races—red, black, and white—built the Americas together. Their contributions and their interrelationships have filled libraries with scholarly studies, history texts, and novels. The relationship between Europeans and Indians and between Europeans and Africans have been thoroughly studied.
But one relationship has not. Conspicuous by its neglect is the relationship on this soil between red and black people. In 1920 historian Carter G. Woodson called it "one of the longest unwritten chapters in the history of the United States." He wondered if Africans did not find "among Indians one of their means to escape" from slavery.
Dr. Woodson's chapter still remains unwritten, his "escape" theory hardly explored.
Black Indians, like other African Americans, have been treated by the writers of history as invisible. Their contributions were denied or handed to others. When mentioned, their role has been distorted. For example, The negro cowboys, by Durham and Jones, an otherwise objective study, calls black people who joined the Indians "renegades"—a terrifying term borrowed from Hollywood westerns to describe vicious killers. The negro cowboys also declares "for every negro renegade who joined against the white man, a company of negro soldiers fought the Indians." This single sentence mangles some important history. It underestimates the number of Black Indians by hundreds of thousands. It also suggests slaves would remain loyal to their owners and praises those who "fought the Indians."
It is not that US chroniclers of the past have failed to see a black Indian heritage through the eyes of non-colored people, for that is understandable. Almost all were non-colored. What is unforgivable is that some have insisted on seeing past events through the eyes of a slave holding and Indian-killing class that has been dead for a century or more.
But omission, not distortion is the far more serious culprit in hiding the story of the black Indians of the Americas. Observers, not expecting to find Africans among Indians, did not report their presence. For example, artist George Catlin painted a magnificent portrait of Chief Osceola when he and other Seminoles were held captive at Fort Multrie in 1837. Catlin never painted or mentioned that Osceola's personal bodyguard of 55 warriors included 52 black Seminoles. Had his artistry captured their presence, he would have contributed vastly to our understanding of anthropology and history.
William Loren Katz, author of Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage, has some empathy for this blindness. During research for his book, The Black West, he kept unearthing frontier documents and photographs that established a significant Black Indian presence on the US frontier, including the Oregon Territory.
Despite their small numbers, black Westerners challenged what historian Malcolm Edwards calls "an appallingly extensive body of discriminatory laws." Occasionally an individual simply moved himself and his family from harm's way. Missouri farmer George Washington Bush, like thousands of others in the 1840s, caught "Oregon fever." In 1844 he uprooted his wife and six children, and with four other families set out on an eight-month, 2,000 mile journey to the Pacific Northwest. On September 3, 1844, near Soda Springs in present-day Idaho, Bush confided to fellow traveler John Minto that "he should watch when we got to Oregon, what usage was awarded to people of color." Bush resolved that "if he could not have a free man's rights, he would seek the protection of the Mexican government in California or New Mexico." The Bush party eventually reached Oregon, but unlike the majority of non-colored settlers who spread out over the Willamette Valley south of the Columbia, he chose the sparsely populated area north of the river. A recently passed Black Exclusion Law would be difficult to enforce in that area. Bush's decision initiated migration north of the Columbia and led to the Organization in Washington Territory.
There was a black family with the Simmons party which was barred from entering Oregon Territory in 1847:

The sailing ships came up the Columbia and down Puget Sound from the gray seas toward a green ocean of trees. For many years it was hard to see the logging because of the trees. The axmen hewed out a trace for the covered wagons that wheeled around Mount Hood. Water-powered sawmills were set up on the banks of the Willamette. In 1845 the Simmons party turned north from the Columbia because among its members were one colored family, and a provisional legislature had barred negroes from the territory south of the Columbia. "Colonel" Michael Simmons built a sawmill on Puget Sound in 1847.

Neighboring homesteader was negro named Rogers. Wife was full blooded Cherokee. Had ten children. Could do any sort of odd job, but never stopped talking. He was just the worst old blow. No prejudice on part of community.

He never fully weighed his evidence and The Black West gave black Indians minor attention until the third edition. As his private collection of Indian photographs and documentation piled up, it became clear the subject needed fuller treatment.
Though it was unfamiliar terrain, he chose to begin his story at the beginning, with the earliest foreign landings in the Western Hemisphere. That had two advantages. It established a black Indian participation in Democratic movements years, decades, or centuries before the American Revolution. It also demonstrated that dark people ignored the boundaries drawn by Europeans in their move from one "country" to another in search of liberty, justice, or a better life.
This unknown American story is deeply rooted in the human currents that shaped our early life. Two parallel institutions joined to create black Indians: the seizure and mistreatment of Indians and their lands and the enslavement of Africans. In their conquest of the New World, Europeans were determined to use both dark peoples. "Ten whites are not enough to watch one negro," said a Portuguese slave master living in Brazil in 1735. To protect slavery and prevent resistance, Europeans developed brutal methods of control and degrading racial policies.
There is evidence that European genocidal attacks on Indians in the New World may have an additional explanation besides land hunger and greed. Perhaps another reason for eliminating Indians was to prevent their alliance with Africans. Colonial Europeans left evidence aplenty that this was often an overriding fear.
Research into early American history confronts one with some inaccurate traditional assumptions and vocabulary. Columbus, believing he had landed in the East Indies, called the inhabitants "Indians." His error had become so much a part of our language that today even many Native Americans accept it. Katz used both designations. However, he dropped such derisive terms as "half-blood," "renegade," and "tribe" in characterizing Native Americans and Africans. If Europeans came from nations, so too did Indians.
Katz defined black Indians as people who have a dual ancestry or black people who have lived for some time with Native Americans. When slaves escaped to the woods and joined or began remote communities, they are called by the Spanish term Maroons.
In discussing the time when most foreigners in the Americas came from either Europe or Africa, he used such words as "Spaniard" or "African." When it is clear they were born in the Western hemisphere, he then used terms as white, black, or African American. He did not designate only US citizens as Americans for that broad category belongs to all people of the Americas. Despite this bias, Katz had no choice but to accent "Latin America," "British Colonies," and "American Revolution" because other phrases proved cumbersome or unclear.
He was humbled by the awesome task of rejecting bias in so explosively controversial a topic and one peopled with so stormy a set of characters. In his story even the simple question of criminality is open to interpretation. Were those who escaped slavery seeking freedom or breaking the law? Were Maroon settlements havens of self-determination or conspiracies against the European state? One solution he adopted was to offer eyewitness accounts, and to see that the neglected views of Africans and Native Americans were presented.
Katz never sought a bland neutrality and consoled himself that unbiased history has yet to be written in our world. His was a labor of love that introduced him to many exciting Americans it would have been interesting to meet. He tried hard to balance opinions, present contrasting views, manage personal feelings, and uncover some truths.
Today most black Indians do not live in the forests or on the broad plains of the US. Most do not inhabit government reservations set aside for Native Americans any more than most Indians do. To be sure they crowd, for example, the Shinnecock Reservation on New York's Long Island. But many more walk the crowded streets of nearby New York City. They are found in abundance in the cement caverns of Boston, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, Cleveland, and Detroit.
They have made a long march from farms, woods, and ranches to skyscrapers, subways, and ghettos. Most have arrived with only a faint recollection of their adventurous rural heritage and gallant ancestors. The people they meet in school, at work or play cannot appreciate their background because they know nothing about it.
"If you know I have a history, you will respect me," a black Indian student told a conference of New York teachers two decades ago. Her words still ring true. Those who assume that a people have no history worth mentioning are likely to believe they have no humanity worth defending. An historical legacy strengthens a country and its people. Denying a people's heritage questions their legitimacy.
Citizens celebrate this country's daring break from colonial rule, and rejoice in the plucky Minutemen who challenged the British at Lexington and Concord. But a month before those historic skirmishes on the path to freedom, other Americans were pursuing the same goal. Slaves in Ulster County, New York, planned a massive armed rising. Perhaps they had heard the exciting patriotic talk about liberty and independence. Their liberation plot involved slaves in Kingston, Hurley, Marbletown, and upwards of 500 Native Americans. Unlike the Minutemen, their shot was not heard around the world, their bold conspiracy never found its way into our history books.
These dark people in Ulster County, like thousands of others mentioned in Katz's book, made their contribution to freedom and to their immediate relatives and friends. But other black Indians made a contribution to the entire US society that deserves consideration.
On the snowy night of March 5, 1770, Crispus Attucks (1773-1770), a black Indian, stepped dramatically into US history in Boston. He was the first to fall in the Boston Massacre. Benson J. Lossing, a 19th Century historian, transformed Attucks into a Nantucket Indian. To Lossing it seemed wrong to place an African American with Native American blood at the daring first movement of American Independence.
Paul Cuffee, a Dartmouth Indian with African parentage, became a wealthy merchant and ship owner in early Massachusetts. He married Alice Pequit of his mother's Wampanoag nation. But his great interest was in protecting fellow African Americans from discrimination in the US and he became the first black man to sponsor a migration of US blacks to Africa. In 1815, he personally paid for and led 38 settlers aboard his ship, Traveler, to Sierra Leone. Cuffe became the father of black back-to-Africa movements in this country.
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895 MD), a slave runaway, with mixed African, Indian, and white ancestry, became the leading voice of black America during the Civil War era and the decades that followed. His creed "If there is no struggle, there is no progress," has inspired reform and revolutionary movements ever since. Douglass's name and accomplishments now adorn most history texts.
In 1851 Abner Hunt Francis reported to the country's abolitionists through articles in Frederick Douglass’s Paper the impact of Oregon Territory's Black Exclusion Law on its one hundred African American residents. According to historian Quintard Taylor:

Abner’s brother, O. H. Francis, a successful Portland merchant, had been arrested under the provisions of the law. Although Abner Francis railed against the statute, which allowed "the colored citizen [to be] driven out like a beast in the forest" and vowed to "suffer severely" if it helped bring about the law's repeal, he also noted that many Portland citizens had petitioned for his brother's exemption from the law and its eventual repeal.

Langston Hughes (1902-1967 MO), poet laureate of African Americans, liked to trace his family tree back to Pocahontas (1595-1617 VA). In that tree also was a man who joined John Brown's (1800-1859 CN) famous raid on Harper's Ferry and another who became a Virginia congressman. Hughes, a prolific writer of poetry, plays, short stories, novels, autobiographies, and newspaper columns, became the proud voice of New York's black community during the Harlem Renaissance.
In the early centuries of their life in the Americas, black Indians often created a society that might have been a model for everyone. They demonstrated that there was another path through the wilderness than the one hacked out by a European lust for gold, land, and power. Their communities proved bigotry did not rise naturally from American soil, its plains and waters. Bigotry and the appetite for it were imported. They traveled the stormy Atlantic and were speedily transplanted and nourished by those who carried them over.
If they had been of a mind to, Europeans might have learned something from the dark people they selfishly used. Instead, they gathered these people's precious gifts and offered promises in return. Africans and Indians followed a tradition that rarely wrote matters down, but held to verbal promises. They met Europeans who wrote many, many things down but failed to keep to their promises or treaties.
What followed in the New World was a titanic European battle for the control of dark people and natural resources. Europeans marched out its best soldiers to secure a continent and subdue its people. The result was unending conquest and agonizing slavery.
But beyond the pain were armed black Indian communities named "Hide Me" and "The Woods Lament for Me." They were home for some of our earliest explorers and pioneers. Families brought up their young, constructed homes, planted and harvested crops, took care of their elderly. They traded with neighbors, instituted religion, government, justice, and planned the common defense.
These settlements not only provided women with an equality and respect unheard of in European society, but elevated some to leadership. Two colonial Brazilian black Indian communities were commanded by African Women, and another African maroon settlement in 1825 in Brazil was ruled by a black woman named Zeferina who successfully led her forces against towns and plantations in Bahia.
With few weapons these alliances in the woods challenged the footholds Europeans build in the Western hemisphere. Using guerrilla tactics that would become famous in China and Vietnam in our own century, red and black people defeated superior numbers and better equipped foreign armies. This they managed while moving their families out of harm's way. These dark liberators often proved that European rule in the Americas amounted to a thin coat of white paint over a seething Dark Empire.
Before Patrick Henry (1736-1799 VA) shouted "Give me liberty or give me death!" Black Indian Maroons acted on this notion. Before Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826 VA) wrote "all men are created equal," black Indians turned a stirring phrase into hard reality. Before the Declaration of Independence eloquently argued for a people’s revolution against unjust authority, thousands of dark skinned Americans had been fighting tyrants and slave hunters on two continents.
For their audacity black Indians faced a repression more ruthlessly cruel than any King George III (1738-1820) imposed on the 13 original colonies. They were forced to carry on the longest, bloodiest battle for freedom in the Western hemisphere. Repeatedly they persuaded Europeans it was wiser to grant them independence, sovereignty, and liberty than to continue wars. European powers often learned this lesson late, after they had wasted lives and fortunes on the idea that these free colonies could be easily destroyed.
Maroon wars outlasted the endless conflicts between rival European states. Neither side gave nor asked any quarter, and prisoners were few. For their part maroons, even when captured and facing a terrible death, tried to protect their villagers. More than a century ago a British report from Belem, Brazil, described how a

captured negro gave such an account of the difficulties and dangers of the journey to his settlement, that 33 out of the 40 [enemy] soldiers refused to accompany their captain.

To prevent Africans and Native Americans from uniting, Europeans played skillfully on racial differences and ethnic rivalries. They kept the pot of animosity boiling. Whites turned Indians into slave hunters and slave owners, and Africans into "Indian-fighters." Light-skinned Africans were pitted against dark-skinned, free against enslaved, black Indians against "pure" Africans or "pure" Indians.
Those who have put history into books have emphasized differences between Africans and Indians. For example, they have stressed that Europeans encountered Indians as distinct individuals and members of proud nations, and Africans as nameless slaves. Little mention is made of the enslavement of Indians and nothing is said about the cultural similarities between the two dark peoples. In 1984, scholar Theda Perdue said:

By emphasizing the actual, exaggerated and imagined differences between Africans and Indians, whites successfully masked the cultural similarities of the two races as well as their mutual exploitation by whites.

In the US, Africans became central in the exploration of the new nation, and the development of the crucial fur trade. Because they were more likely to build a binding trust among Native Americans, whites employed them as negotiators and they did not disappoint. Africans, like Native Americans, cherished their own trustworthiness and saw promises and treaties as bonds never to be broken.
In his book, The Negro In Reconstruction, historian Robert Cruden wrote:

In the nearer West of the Great Plains, the US had another race problem—the problem that had been with us since early Virginia settlers took over Indian planting grounds. In the Reconstruction era the problem was not with agricultural Indians, but with the nomads of the plains country, whose prime food was buffalo. As the transcontinental railroads were built, the buffalo herds were exterminated. The railroads also made it possible for squatters and miners to swarm into the lands the Indians though assured to them by agreements with the US. Since the US made little effort to halt the white invasion, and indeed usually furnished military protection when called upon, the Indians fought back. In terms of our day, the Indians believed they were engaged in just wars against aggression waged in violation of solemn pacts and treaties.
White Westerners did not share this view. The West was theirs, they believed, because their toil and suffering to make it productive gave them moral title, and because God intended the land for those who could make best use of it—justifications that harked back to the Massachusetts Puritans, who had so sanctified the taking of Indian lands. It was also argued that the Indians were an inferior people, doomed to extinction in competition with whites.
In this light, Indian resistance to white expansion was seen simply as an expression of barbaric savagery, to be put down by any means. Campaigns against Indians frequently became campaigns of extermination, in which women and children as well as warriors were killed.
The justification was succinctly supplied by Col. John M. Chivington of the Colorado militia: "Nits make lice."
Such actions, when made known back East, caused moral revulsion among people of abolitionist sympathies. Now that the black man had all he could legitimately ask for, in their view, they could turn their energies to helping another oppressed people. Thus the black was supplanted by the red man as an object of Northern white concern. Neither blacks nor whites observed any irony in the fact that so many of the cavalrymen used to extend white power in the West were black.
These developments had a particular bearing on the place of the black man, apart from diverting Northern attention, money, and sympathy from black to redskins. Uniting Yankee conservative, West Coast radical, and Great Plains settler, was a common belief in a racial hierarchy. The Yankee believed recent immigrants to be of poorer genetic stock than the Anglo-Saxon. West Coast men, many of them Irish, and thus suspicious of Anglo-Saxondom, held that Chinese were inferior to whites. Great Plains settlers were apt to agree with a major of the Colorado militia who believed "the Indians to be an obstacle to civilization, and should be exterminated." This racism provided a bond of sympathy between many Northerners, Westerners, and Southern conservatives. When Southerners made their appeals to national opinion they spoke to a public which largely shared their commitment to white supremacy.

In the 19th Century an African-Indian friendship limped on despite onslaughts from white racial policies destructive to both peoples. It survives still in the legends of Native American nations, and in the stories and faces of many dark people.

Generations of young minds have been trained to think of life on the American frontier as a saga of white gallantry. Daring pioneers probed the wilderness. John Wayne cowboys whipped Indians to give us the USA. Children of every race joined in this version of the frontier served up each Saturday afternoon at the movies.
In the real wilderness two dark people met and often united. They were not driven together by any special affinity based on a similar skin color. Their meetings were unwittingly arranged by their enemies, the Europeans, who exploited both.
But in the retelling of our Western history, no one learned that Africans and Native Americans, separately and together, fought bravely for an America they knew was also theirs. Perhaps their story was trampled underfoot by their hard-riding European foes.
In 1774, patriot James Madison (1751-1836 VA) wrote about a slave revolt: "It is prudent such attempts should be concealed as well as suppressed." The black Indian story has been treated as though it were a massive slave rebellion. Its final burial came at the hands of a later white generation who shaped a heritage for books and movies that ended all claims but white ones.
These frontier omissions lie at the heart of our cherished national myth. The tale of the wilderness stands as the greatest American story ever told. It is the way we wish to see ourselves. "A frontier people," said Pres. Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924 VA), "is, so far, the central and determining fact of our national history... The West is the great word of our history. The Westerner has been the type and master of our American life." Creators of this West did not want it sullied by a black presence or subject to Indian claims.
"The Frontier" went from gritty reality to uplifting truth and finally to national legend. In the process entire races disappeared from it. Its cast of heroic characters included only non-colored people. If Europeans bravely conquered continents, it was not necessary or desirable to show black and red people defying white authority to build their own communities in the wilderness. Racial stereotypes long pictured non-whites as cowardly or childlike. How could red or black men be shown creating a culture in the wilderness, bravely rescuing their families, and riding off into the sunset?
There is another problem in introducing a set of dark frontier heroes. Their love of liberty thrust them against some sainted US figures. Thomas Jefferson, speaking of Indians, said "We would never stop pursuing them with war while one remained on the face of the earth." Andrew Jackson (1767-1845 SC), the first great Democrat to reach the White House, was first in a long line of candidates to win the presidency boasting against Indian men, women, and children. He staunchly defended slavery and, like Jefferson, owned slaves. To save their families, black Indians had to fight off posses and armies launched by these heroes.
Distorting racial history, as teachers know, injures dark children. They live with a muted heritage. Despite Black Indian contributions to this land, neither African nor Indian children nor their parents have an awareness of this legacy. Like whites, Native Americans learned in school that Africans were contented slaves and had no fighting traditions, certainly none that allied them with Indians. For their part, Africans are aware of Indians in their family trees. But they probably assume that, like the whites lurking there, they are mere intruders. Such inaccurate beliefs hide a heritage worth exploring. Further, they divide people today who could benefit from unity.
When African Americans have pursued their genealogy, they have focused on their African roots and sought a meaningful black heritage. Children of the black awareness of the 1960s have rarely cared to mention an Indian ancestry because this might be seen as a denial of their African origins and the value of blackness. All this is part of the racial nightmare we have inherited.
With her usual perception, precision, and pride, Rosa Fay, a black Seminole living in Brackettville, TX, in 1943, clarified her peoples' background for pioneer researcher Kenneth W. Porter:

We's culled people. I don't say we don't has no Injun blood, 'cause we has. But we ain't no Injuns. We's culled people.

Other Americans would benefit from a reexamination of their family trees and a new look at their biological inheritance. The process may yield wonder and gratification where once grief or skepticism ruled.
The ancestors of black Indians often created—or died in the attempt—an American sisterhood and brotherhood we have tried to attain. They did this under terrible circumstances and in the face of armed opposition.
Had we paid proper attention to their unique model of friendship and loyalty, our common American history, from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn, might have been different, more peaceful. Our racial problems might have been more easily solved. Even at this late date we owe ourselves a rereading of this fascinating legacy. Perhaps we can still learn from and act on its lessons.

While filming Red River (1955), John Wayne's (1907-1979) famous demand about Montgomery Clift (1920-1966)—that director Howard Hawks "get that faggot off my set"—underscored a common belief that homosexuality was not only common, but may actually have thrived in the frontier.
Moreover, popular folklore which does acknowledge same-sex interactions in the frontier assumes that "situational homosexuality," the desire for sexual contact with members of the same sex in the absence of opposite sex partners, is the primary motivational force behind any existing homosexuality. Yet this does not account for urban homosexuality in Western cities, or homosexuality among Western women. It appears more likely that Westerners responded to a multitude of internal and external conditions that allowed them to alternately discover or redefine their emotional and sexual desire.
Historian Herbert H. Bancroft noted that during the 1850s California goldrush, "the requirements of mining life favored partnership... sacred like the marriage bonds, as illustrated by the softening of "partner" into the familiar "pard." In 1914, migrant California fieldworkers were recorded to have not only justified but idealized homosexuality monogamous relationships. Larger groups of men in isolated mining, logging, or railroad construction camps appear to have been more gregarious. "Restlessness among the crew" of one Western mining camp brought over half of the camp's "brawny, ultramasculine" men to seek sexual "relief" with each other. Similar conditions existed in Civilian Conservation Corp camps in Texas in the 1930s and a highway construction camp in California in the early 1950s.
Western cities such as San Francisco, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Chicago enjoy highly developed homosexual urban subcultures which followed patterns established in Eastern cities. Several different "circles" within a city reflected divergent interests and pursuits. All provided a network of mutual support to those fortunate enough to be accepted into them. A San Francisco homosexual man wrote in 1911 that life could be "hard, for many crushing, but it is extremely interesting, and I am glad to have been given the opportunity to have lived it."
In the 1890s, a Colorado professor wrote that Denver's homosexual population included "five musicians, three teachers, three art dealers, one minister, one judge, two actors, one florist, and one woman's tailor." California, in an 1887 land boom led San Diego to build an elaborate Victorian house as an inducement for musician Jesse Owens Sharard and his male partner to move there and lend the city an air of cosmopolitan refinement. Similar social and artistic soirees were held in the 1880s in Southern California at the home of two San Juan Capistrano men.
There was probably no occupation in the West that did not have lesbian and gay participants. William Breakeridge worked as a Union Pacific brakeman before becoming a deputy sheriff at Tombstone, Arizona Territory, where he was known and accepted by many of the mining town’s community.

In the 1800s, sodomy laws were found in all states and territories, but were selectively enforced. In 1873, Lawrence G. Murphy, a civilian post trader at Fort Stanton, New Mexico, was charged with a "most unnatural” relationship with a local official in an effort to conceal his military contract. In El Paso, Texas, an 1896 charge of sodomy against Marcelo Alviar brought with it a bond set at $500, the same amount as for murder. The prohibitively expensive bond was punitive, and virtually guaranteed jail time or the loss of the defendant's life savings or property. This system of select enforcement was similarly applied to gambling houses, saloons, and brothels. Male prostitution existed in varying degrees, from a "elegantly furnished" 1882 Midwestern brothel to a particularly clandestine male street prostitution ring in San Francisco in 1902. Homosexuality in Western prisons was so common that in 1877, San Quentin director Dr. J. E. Pelham launched a crusade against it, advising solitary confinement as therapy.
In 1898, Boulder teamster W. H. Billings left his wife and sold his horses in order to run away with Charles Edwards, a saloon entertainer who played banjo and performed acrobatics. A Denver paper reported that Billings was "not happy unless he was trailing around the streets with Edwards" and that "if his home had any charms for him, said his wife, they had fled and all on account of a banjo player."
Among Westerners there existed a gentleman's agreement that arose from the need to survive in the frontier. One part of this agreement was mutual respect, allowing one "the right to live the life and go the gait which seemed most pleasing to himself." Historian David Dary has written that cowboys "sought to live lives that were free from falsehood and hypocrisy." This frontier code of conduct allowed many people to enjoy open relationships that would have otherwise not been possible.
On the open range, cowboys often developed strong and loyal relationships with each other. The dangers of stampedes and general rigors of the trail required absolute cooperation: a cowboy who could not be relied on found himself outcast. Loyalty was "one of the most notable characteristics of the cowboy," and devotion to one's "pard" was highly regarded. The cowboy expression that one was "in love" with someone could sometimes be taken literally. The Texas Livestock Journal remarked in 1882 that "if the inner history of friendships among the rough, and perhaps untutored cowboys could be written, it would be quite as unselfish and romantic as that as of Damon and [Patroclus]."
Many circumstances contributed to personal closeness on the ranch and trail. Cowboys frequently bedded in pairs with their "bunkie," and a ranch bunkhouse was occasionally called a "ram pasture." Many cowboys engaged in "mutual solace," a tender, expressive, and euphemistic term for sexual relations. Vulgar and explicit "ugly songs" describing phallic size, virility, and sodomy were sung around campfires. In 1920s Nevada, the "sixty-nine" sexual position was common enough among cowboys to warrant its own euphemism, "Swanson neuf."
Gay cowboys continued to be an intrinsic part of the West. In 1957, two Texas cowboys visiting the Mayflower Bar, an Oklahoma City gay bar, described their life as one where there are generally two or three gay cowboys to a ranch, who quietly recognize each other, keeping their identity a secret from the others. While many working horsemen and horsewomen maintain a quiet reticence associated with the broader aspects of ranching culture, the modern lesbian and gay civil rights movement has brought a growing number of openly gay and lesbian ranchers, as well as the creation of the International Gay Rodeo Association, with chapters around the US and Canada.

The first official overland exploration of the Oregon Coast from Alsea Bay to Salmon River was made by Lt. Theodore Talbot and party in 1849. They crossed the Coast Range from Kings Valley to Yaquina Bay and returned to the Willamette Valley via the Old Elk Trail. At Siletz Bay, where they had difficulty in crossing, the talked with an old Indian who told them that his and one other family were the only ones left alive of a once large indigenous population which had been wiped out by an epidemic.
The following are excerpts from Lt. Talbot's report to Gen. Persifor F. Smith, Fort Vancouver:

October: In pursuance of your orders enclosing instruction from division headquarters, on June 24, 1849, and directing me to carry out that portion of them relative to my examination of Alsea River and the country adjacent, I proceeded from Fort Vancouver to Oregon City by water on the 14th of August, with a detachment, consisting of a sergeant and nine men. I was delayed here some days, in consequence of the difficulty in procuring saddles, bridles, pack saddles, and other requisites for the expedition... the great number of parties constantly leaving for California having completely drained the place of those equipments. I engaged Joaquin Umphraville, an expert French voyageur, as my interpreter, and to that especial care of the pack-horses. The sergeant of my detachment, being seriously sick, was left with orders to return to Vancouver.
Having completed our preparations, we started for Oregon City on the 20th of August, traveling 18 miles up the eastern side of the Willamette to Champoeg, an old French settlement on the banks of that river. The next day we crossed the river at a ferry three miles above Champoeg and proceeded by easy marches up the valley to the Willamette, crossing the Yamhill, the Rickreall, and the Little Luckiamute, streams all tributaries to the Willamette, and taking their rise in the Coast Range of mountains.
The country through which we passed was moderately rolling. About one third was covered with timber; the rest was prairie or open land. The forest consists principally of white and live oak, and different species of cedar, pine and fir. The soil of the bottom lands is a brownish loam mixed with blue clay; that of the uplands is loose and gravelly. Claims are located and more or less improved on nearly all advantageous sites for cultivation; but at present evince general neglect, many of the farms having been altogether abandoned by their owners for the more rapid acquisition of wealth in the mines of California.
On the 24th, we reached Kings Valley, a pretty plain some six miles in length, and from one to two miles in width, lying immediately at the foot of the Coast Range, and separated to the eastward from the main valley of the Willamette by a line of steep hills. It was watered by a stream called the Big Lukiamute. Four families are settled here, and have well-improved farms. The distance from Oregon City is estimated at 65 miles. From the best information which I could obtain, I selected this as a favorable point at which to pass the Coast Range.
August 25: Crossing the Luckiamute, which takes it rise further north, we took a nearly west course, following a small Indian trail, which led us over a succession of high, steep ridges, running nearly at right angles to our course, and covered with forests of pine and fir, and a dense undergrowth of brushwood and fern. We crossed several small streams, the headwaters of Marys River, a tributary to the Willamette. The mountains were enveloped with such a dense mass of smoke, occasioned by some large fires to the south of us, that we could see but little of the surrounding country. These fires are of frequent occurrence in the forests of Oregon, raging with violence for months, until quelled by the continued rains of the winter season. We met on the road a small party of Klickitat returning to the Willamette from a hunting expedition. The proper range of these Indians is on the east side of the Cascade Mountains; but they have gradually encroached upon the hunting grounds of other tribes to the west of them, until they have reached the very ocean itself. Within a few years past they have cut the only two trails (one of which we are now traveling) that cross the mountains between the Willamette Valley and the coast. I obtained from them a good deal of information with regard to the part of the country over which I wished to travel. I made our camp on a small stream, walled in on either side by steep mountain ridges. The horses that I had been furnished with were nearly all in very poor condition and entirely unfit for any rough service, as today’s travel proved. Two of them gave out completely and were left behind, and four others were with difficulty brought up to camp. Although we had come only 14 miles.
August 26: Our road today, like that of yesterday, was full of steep ascents and yet more precipitous declivities, and much obstructed by fallen trees and thick brush. We passed through one tract of burnt forest several miles in extent, where the little trail which we followed, indifferent at the best, was often completely broken up, and we were compelled to have recourse to our axes to make a way through the heaps of charred logs. We descended, after a toilsome day's journey, into a grassy valley, about half a mile in length, watered by a fork of the Siletz, in which we encamped, having made nine miles.
August 27: We traveled down this stream, struggling through dense willow and cherry thickets which line its banks. Two miles below our camp of last night, we struck the main fork of the Siletz flowing from the northeast. It is about 40 feet wide, with an average depth of about three feet, the bottom rocky, large boulders in many places breaking the rapid current. Crossing it, we ascended the bank into a handsome prairie, extending several miles along the north side of the river, which from the junction of its forks takes a nearly west course. The soil of the river bottom is very rich; grass growing most luxuriantly where not completely choked up by the fern, a plant usurping possession of nearly every open spot of ground. It grows here from eight to ten feet in height, and is quite a serious impediment to travel. We encamped in an open prairie bottom about a mile long and half a mile in width, just where the river, changing its course, makes an abrupt bend to the north. We are surrounded on all sides by tall forests of pine, fir, spruce, hemlock, etc., which give quite a somber appearance to this sequestered valley. I had the pleasure of meeting here his excellency Gov. Joseph Lane (1849-1850) and two other gentlemen, who had deigned accompany my party; but we had missed each other in the Willamette Valley, and obtaining a Klickitat as a guide, they had come on it advance, and were now returning.
Having been informed that coal had been found near here by a party of wasichus who had visited the Siletz about a year since, I had devoted a day to the examination of this locality. We saw indications of coal at several places in the north bank of the river, and at length, after considerable search, found a seam four inches in thickness just below the surface of the water. It had a dip of 40 degrees to the north and was 30 feet below the top of the bank lying under a bed of shale or dip of 40 degrees to the north and was 30 feet below the top of the bank, lying under a bed of shale or salty clay, 16 feet thick, and 14 feet of loose gravel and surface soil. In the super-lying shale were many discontinuous seams or streaks of coal from a quarter to a half inch in width. Specimens of this coal have been submitted to the inspection of practical miners and others who pronounced it to be authentic, strata ten feet thick, and 14 feet of loose gravel and surface soil. In the superlying shale were many discontinuous seams or along the river banks are generally concealed from view by the masses of rubbish which has fallen from above, and by a tangled growth of briars and thick brush, which it would require much time and labor to remove.
There is but little doubt, however, that larger seams of coal than the one found by us must exist in this vicinity, probably near the same depth below the surface.
The distance from the bend of the Siletz to Kings Valley is 34 miles. The Indians say that a canoe can descent from here to the Pacific Ocean in two days, but that the river is full of rocks and rapids and the navigation dangerous. There are no Indians residing permanently on this river, and no trails going further down, the one which we have followed thus far crossing the river here and striking south.
August 29: Parting company with Governor Lane, who returned to the Willamette, we forded the Siletz at some rapids, and, traveling four miles through rolling hills, ascended a steep and heavily timbered mountain. I saw here pine eight and ten in diameter, the alder also grows to considerable size, many trees being 18 inches in diameter. The trail often wound along the edges of lofty precipices, where one false step would have plunged us down hundreds of feet into the rocky ravines below. The dense fog, however, concealed from us the full extent of the danger. Descending the mountain, we found ourselves on the shores of Yaquina Bay, where we encamped, having made 12 miles from the Siletz.

Riding a mile down the shore of the bay with my interpreter, we came to a small Indian Village, whose occupants received us very kindly. They call themselves the Yaquina. The Indians residing on the Siletz, Yaquina and Alsea bays all speak the same language, and belong to the same tribe, but each bay has its respective chief. There are about 80 of them, all told, living on this bay. They are generally well formed, intelligent, and of healthy appearance, apparently not subject to those eruptive diseases of the skin which prevail so extensively among some of the tribes of the Columbia. Most of them talk the Chinook jargon, a singular medley of corrupted English, French and Chinook words, spoken by the different Indian tribes of this coast in their intercourse with each other and the whites, somewhat as the French language is used among the "polished" nations of Europe. The Yaquina subsist principally on fish, clams, crabs and roots, occasionally hunting the elk in the neighboring mountains. They do not possess any horses, and have had but little intercourse with non-indians, neither the chief nor any of his people had ever visited the Willamette Valley. Having given them some presents, I explained to them the desire of the "great American chief" to establish and preserve friendly relations with all the Indian tribes.
August 30: The grass being very scant on the border of the bay, I sent the horses back two miles to a little grassy valley in the mountains which we had passed yesterday hiring a canoe, and five Indians to manage it, I went down the bay to its outlet into the Pacific Ocean which is about three-fourths of a mile wide. On the north side of the entrance are high yellow sandstone bluffs covered with fir trees, on the south side a cape of low sandy hills, with clumps of dwarf pines. I sounded the channel, with which the Indians are perfectly acquainted from the entrance to the head of the bay, a distance of about four miles. The depth of water ranged from four to seven fathoms, the general width of the channel was 40 or 50 yards. For a mile and a half from the entrance, the channel keeps near the north shore of the Bay. There are two sandbars about half a mile from the entrance, but they do not interfere with the channel. The land on the north of the bay is all high; on the south it is much lower, both sides being covered with forests of fir, spruce, hemlock, cedar, etc. The bay varies from one to two miles in width, a large portion of the upper part was very shallow, being left nearly dry by receding tide. I ascended the Yaquina River five miles. The average depth of water in its channel was 24 feet. The river is bordered by very steep hills covered with a forest of evergreens. The Indians say there are no trails leading up this river, that the country is very broken, and the forest impenetrable. We returned to camp in the evening, half numbed with cold, the day having been most unseasonably chilly and very misty, much more resembling midwinter than the height of Summer.
August 31: Crossing the Yaquina Bay, with four men, I started on foot to the Alsea Bay, taking with me a Yaquina Indian as a guide. We traveled three miles through the low sandhills near the southern point of the Yaquina Bay. Emerging from the hills, we came upon a hard white seabeach. Above it rose a wall of high sandstone bluffs, covered with lofty firs and pines, while the ever succeeding ocean waves rolled and spent themselves at our very feet. We saw and killed several sea birds and bald headed eagles. We also saw some seals, but did not succeed in killing any of them. We crossed numerous small streams of water, and were occasionally obliged to climb over rocky points extending out into the Pacific Ocean. The general line of the coast here is nearly south. Leaving the seabeach, half an hour’s walk through some loose sandhills brought us to the shores of Alsea Bay, which is 15 miles distant from the Yaquina.
We built our fire and slept near two Indian lodges, whose inmates scarcely knew what to make of our unexpected visit. They appeared to be rather poorer in worldly goods than the Indians of the Yaquina, none of the women wearing other clothing than grass mats fastened around the waist, and some of the men being entirely naked. They had also fewer guns, canoes, etc. There are about 30 of them in all, living on this river and bay. They say it is five days’ hard travel along the coast from this river to the Umpqua. They represent the route as being exceedingly difficult even for men on foot, and as totally impassible with horses, the path frequently climbing the face of steep cliffs, and passing through the most dense forests. These Indians occasionally visit the Umpqua, with whom they are at peace, for the purpose of buying from them their prisoners, of whom they make slaves. Quite a traffic is thus carried on, the Alsea and Yaquina in turn selling these slaves at advanced prices to the Indians living about the Columbia.
September 1: I went down to the outlet of the Alsea Bay in a small canoe, paddled by two Indians. It is only about 80 yards wide, and a fourth of a mile in length. The tide was falling, and the current settling out so strong that it required the greatest exertion to prevent our little craft from being carried out to sea. The depth of water in the channel was from five and a half to six fathoms. On the north side of the outlet, a narrow cape of shifting sandhills separates the waters of the bay from those of the Pacific Ocean. On the south side is a sandstone bluff 40 feet high. Leaving the beach with a semi-circular sweep, at the distance of about a mile above and below, a chain of lofty breakers stretches completely across the outlet of the Alsea, which would, I think, render it impossible for any vessel to enter the bay. We say it, too, under favorable circumstances, the sea being generally calm, and no wind stirring.
The bay is from a half to one mile in width. It is bordered by low hills, timbered down to the water’s edge. A large part of the bay is left dry at low tide, the average depth of water in the channel, which is narrow and very crooked, is about nine feet. I ascended a few miles up the Alsea, which is shut in by high hills and lofty forests. There are no trails around the bay or up the river. I was informed by some Klickitat that they had once attempted to cut a trail from the Willamette Valley down the Alsea, and had descended within about 30 miles of the Pacific Ocean, when the country became so broken that they were obliged to abandon the attempt. There are some small fern-covered prairies on the upper part of the Alsea. Returning down the river, we stopped at some Indian lodges, where they had a great abundance of a very excellent little fish, somewhat resembling a sardine in appearance, but larger, which is found also in many rivers on the northwest part of this coast, and known by the name of olhuacan. They take them here in wires [sic], with large scoops. I saw no indications of coal anywhere on the Alsea, nor any other matter of sufficient interest to require further delay. I therefore pushed back as rapidly as possible, for we had barely subsistence enough in the camp to carry us to the Willamette settlements by the route which I desired to follow, the delays and obstructions to our travel having proven much greater and I had been led to anticipate. But, in fact, our chief hindrance was from the miserable condition of our horses. Had they been in better plight, the trip could have been very easily performed in a third part of the time which it actually consumed. Retracing our steps, we reached the Yaquina late in the night, where we found the chieftain waiting with his canoe to convoy us to our camp on the opposite shore.
September 2: The heavy smoke fog, in which we had been enveloped since leaving the Willamette Valley, partially clearing away today, I attempted to make some examination of the outer part of the entrance to Yaquina Bay. The northern cape of the bay lies further to the west than the southern, and from it there projects out into the Pacific Ocean a point of low rocks in a south-southwesterly course for a distance of a fourth of a mile beyond, in nearly the same course, there extended a line of breakers to within a third of a mile of the south shore. The channel runs near the shore on the south side of the entrance. The outer passage is about a mile long, and little over a quarter of a mile in width, bordered on the one hand by a chain of breakers from 15 to 20 feet high; on the other by heavy rollers and low sandy beach. I sounded down this passage not quite half way carrying from six to seven and a half fathoms of water, when the wind, which was blowing from the northwest, increased to a perfect gale, and, the current setting out very strong, it became too hazardous to venture further. As it was, our canoe got into the edge of the breakers and partially filled with water. When it is calm, however, the Indians frequently go out to sea by this passage, and I think it possible that, under favorable circumstances, vessels could enter the bay. There is, no doubt, sufficient depth of water in the channel of the outer passage, if it be too narrow and too much exposed. Should it be satisfactorily ascertained that ships may come in with safety, this harbor will become exceedingly valuable, as it is surrounded by a country covered with forests of the finest kind of timber, has good mill-seats, and roads could be constructed which would afford a near market for the produce of the Upper Willamette.
September 3: Moving camp, we came miles along the shore of the bay, thence striking north, traveling three miles through an open rolling country covered with fine grass and some small patches of fern and thistles. The soil here appeared to be very rich, and was well-watered by numerous little springs. Descending some sandstone bluffs, we followed several miles along the seabeach, until a high rocky point projecting half a mile into the Pacific Ocean interrupted further travel. We were then obliged to climb along the steep sides of a densely-timbered mountain, at whose base were high perpendicular precipices of volcanic rock, against which the Pacific Ocean waves roared and lashed themselves with ceaseless fury. Our road was exceedingly bad, in addition to its steepness, immense trunks of fallen trees constantly obstructed our path. It took us over five hours to make four miles. Notwithstanding the good pasture and rest of several days which the horses had had, three of them utterly gave out and were left behind. Another horse was literally emboweled in attempting to jump a huge falled tree. We camped on a small stream in a deep rocky ravine, about 400 yards from the Pacific Ocean, having traveled 15 miles. I had engaged a Yaquina Indian to act as my guide to the Siletz Bay, but, not being closely watched, with characteristic want of faith he slipped out of camp, and I saw no more of him; we were heretofore left to find our way as best we could.
September 4: Soon after leaving camp, one of the pack-horses, loosing its foothold, rolled 200 feet down a steep hill, thence over a precipice 40 feet high, falling on the solid rocky bed of a small stream which ran below. Much to our surprise, it was found quietly eating grass, apparently not being in the least degree hurt, and soon made a second ascent with better success. Its saddle, and the pack, which contained mess kettles and pans, had not fared so well.
The road gradually improved as the mountains, receding, left a beach of open land extending from the top of the precipices bordering the Pacific Ocean to the foot of the steep timbered acclivities, a space varying from a fourth to a half a mile in width, well watered, with rich soil, and bearing a luxuriant crop of clover, grass, and their usual concomitant of fern. After a few miles travel, we again descended to the seabeach, which we followed until late in the afternoon, when, taking a faint trail leading through some low sandhills, we came to the upper part of Siletz Bay, where we encamped on a small prairie covered with fine bunch-grass and clover.
September 5: The day was disagreeably cold, with dense fog. We attempted to pass about the upper part of the bay, which is bordered by low hills clothed with a dense forest of white and yellow fir, hemlock, spruce, etc. This portion of the bay is a vast march, intersected by numerous small canals, which are all filled at high water and left nearly cry as the tide recedes. With considerable difficulty, we skirted along the edge of the timber, the ground being wet and lax, and our horses frequently miring down. We at length reached a stream 90 feet wide and from 15 to 20 feet deep, its margin lined with high bulrushes. I supposed this to be the main Siletz River. Swimming our horses across it, we made a raft of some dead trees that lay near the bank, upon which we crossed the baggage. Winding our way among the narrow, deep ditches or canals which everywhere obstructed our course, about half a mile further we came to another stream, larger than the one which we had just traveled. The fog having cleared away somewhat, but standing on the backs of our horses we could see yet another large stream beyond, and, as far as the eye could reach, one extended marsh. I saw therefore that it would be entirely impracticable to pass around the upper part of the bay, and determined to retrace my steps and endeavor to find some suitable point for crossing lower down. It appears that the Siletz, at its entrance into the bay, formed a delta, of which we had only passed one arm. In the meantime, the tide having fallen, left bare a broad strip of soft mud on each side of the stream already crossed, through which it was impossible to get our horses. We had, therefore, no recourse but to wait patiently for the rise of the tide. We lay down to sleep on the bank, wet, tired, and disgusted withal at the worse than useless result of our hard day's labor.
September 6: Recrossing the horses, we extricated ourselves from this marsh and traveled down the shore of the bay. It was about three and a half miles long, the greatest width one mile. The opposite shore was almost concealed from view by the fog, but it seemed to be heavily timbered. On the west side it is separated from the Pacific Ocean by a range of loose sandhills. It is a custom of the Indians in this country to deposit their dead in Canoes, and there are a great number of them along the borders of the Bay. They rested on platforms, each one surrounded by poles, from which are suspended all the personal effects of the deceased.
A chain of lofty breakers extends from shore to shore directly across the outlet of the Siletz Bay, which I think it would be impossible for any kind of vessel or boat to pass in safety.
The outlet is only about 350 yards wide, and I determined to cross our horses here. Starting them just as the tide commenced ebbing, they were carried by the current, which is very rapid and strong, some 600 yards towards a point on the opposite shore, where they all landed safely except one, which, weaker and less able to battle the waves than its fellows, was swept into the breakers and immediately drowned. We soon constructed a small craft for ourselves and baggage, the shore being strewn with thousands of drift logs. It proved, however, so difficult of management, and such a dangerous mode of conveyance in this lightening current, that they were glad to substitute it in its stead a fine large canoe which we found concealed among the bushes on the opposite bank. It was after night before all had crossed, and we camped 100 yards from the shore, at the edge of a pretty grassy prairie which here borders the bay.
September 7: Early this morning an old Indian entered our camp. He had come in a canoe from some distance up the bay, his attention having been attracted by a large fire which we had built last evening on the southern point of the outlet. He said that himself and another man, with their families, were the only residents on this bay, the last lingering remnants of a large population which once dwelt upon these waters. The mortality of 1831, which proved so fatal to the Indians of the northwest coast, it appears had extended it ravishes this far south. He told us that we crossed the Bay at the most favorable place, and that it was impossible to pass around the eastern harbor of the Bay with horses. Another large stream coming from the north empties into the bay about half way down its east side, like the Siletz, it forms a large marsh near its mouth. There are also many other marshy inlets, all impassable and bordered by dense forests.
Taking this Indian as a guide, we traveled round the point of the outlet, round the point of the outlet and along the seabeach beneath sandstone bluffs, the distance of two and a half miles, then bidding our final adieu to the Pacific Ocean, we struck northeast, following a small trail which led us over rolling hills covered with grass and a high growth of fern. About a mile to our right lay a handsome little freshwater lake, and beyond rise a succession of ridges and tall forests. Having come three miles through the hills, we descended into a fine bottom lying along the banks of a stream about 50 feet wide, to which the Americans have given the name Rock Creek. The soil of this bottom is dark rich loam. There are no Indians living here.
A large trail crossing the mountains from the Willamette Valley descends this creek to the Pacific Ocean, thence following up the coast to the Columbia. Cattle have been frequently driven by this route from the Willamette settlements to the Clatsop Plains, near Astoria. Taking the trail, we ascended Rock Creek ten miles passing over undulating hills and through some thick forests, camping in a small bottom oh the north bank of the creek.
September 8: We continued the ascent of the mountains, traveling through heavy timber. The forests here, as elsewhere in the Coast Range, is composed principally of red, white, and yellow fir, different species of pine, maple, ash, yew, and alder. Among the undergrowth there is quite an abundance of currant, raspberry, blackberry, and serviceberry. Our path was much impeded by logs, brush, numerous rivulets, and mud-holes. Near the Cousteau, or summit line of the range, there are many open spots, all covered with luxuriant crops of fern. Descending into the valley of the Willamette, we camped on a fork of the Yamhill River, at the farm from an American settler, having made 25 miles today; we were much struck by the contrast in the appearance of vegetation on this side of the mountain, parched and withered by the long drought, while on the west slope, we had left it fresh and green as in the early Spring. This is, of course, owning to the greater humidity of the atmosphere near the coast. The mountains are by no means so rugged and broken here as where we had crossed them before, and I think practicable to construct a wagon road to the coast from this point.
September 13: Traveling down the Willamette Valley, we reached Oregon City on the 13th, and on the morning of the 15th, I had the honor to report to you in person at Fort Vancouver.
I am sir, very respectfully,
your obedient servant,
Theodore Talbot, 1st Lt 1st Arty