Hops: A
One-Time Thriving
Industry
in Josephine County
Grants Pass, Oregon
by
Michael Oaks
Josephine County Historical Society
June 2002
It’s probable
that many of us remember days of picking hops to earn money for school
clothes, or help with the family income. The hop industry in Josephine
County disappeared almost entirely by the early sixties. Charles
Lathrop, on Upper River Road, was probably the last of the
growers in this county. The beer industry favored the hops grown in
Washington State and other areas over those grown locally. An article
was found in the July 20, 1933, Grants
Pass Daily Courier on the subject of hops in our county and is
as follows:
Hops Picking in Marion County 1946
It is doubtful that many people are aware
that hop growing is very old in Josephine County or the actual expense
involved in raising them. With most of us, knowledge of the industry
lies solely in our having picked a few.
Mrs. Ada Weston, a prominent local grower, has furnished some
very good information concerning the subject and through it we find
that hop growing is among the earliest in the county. In 1875, hops
were set out on the J.Z. Ranzau place six miles west of Grants Pass.
Sam Christie now owns this place and it is now planted once again to
hops. In 1893, H.L. Robertson planted hops on his farm 12 miles west of
this city. This yard is still operated (1933) by some members of the
family: Mrs. H.L. Robertson, Dave and Fred Robertson, and Ida and R.E.
Stephenson.
The DeArmond yard was set out in 1895. This was sold and plowed
up in 1913 and later purchased by William Hull. It was then leased to
Sam Christie who replanted it to hops and is still operating. The Cecil
E. Weston yard was started in 1906 and has since produced a crop of
hops under the same ownership. What is now the Schroeder yard was
planted in 1920 and was followed in 1927 by the King and Eisman yard.
This year has seen the addition of some new yards, namely those of
Roscoe Howard, Peelor and Britton and Dick Avery.
There were about 365 acres of hops in cultivation in 1905, but
due to poor prices many yards were plowed up, with a result that in
1915 only about 250 acres were left. It is estimated that this
fall, however, hops will be picked from about 570 acres. Information
supplied by Mrs. Weston relating to the work and expense of the
industry, shows that hop growing is a continuous job for the grower.
These figures are for Josephine County alone.
In January the pruning is started. The repairing of trellises,
cultivating, irrigating, twining, training, stripping, picking, drying,
bailing and cleaning up the yard follows this. New poles are needed
each year to replace the ones becoming too old and many cords of wood
are used in the drying sheds. It is necessary each season to replace
machinery or repair it, and lumber is needed to repair or build hop
houses. There is feed to buy for horses orin the case of tractors, gas,
oil and maintenance.
Actual work with the hops is done by hand. This means cash and
makes it necessary for the growers to borrow money. Fertilizers and
supplies are expensive and taxes and insurance are high. For the first
time in four years, hop prices are better, but the joy is taken from
this when we learn that most growers have low price contracts, which
must be filled first.
All of the above
concerns added to the eventual demise of the hop industry in Josephine
County.
Of Hops and Men
by Harriet Smith
Guardino
As Ginna and I
grew older, we spent a good part of the summer working in the fields to
earn money for school clothes and school supplies. The Rogue River
Valley, situated in the foothills between the Cascades and the Coast
Range, was fertile and green. Blessed with mild temperatures,
agriculture became an important industry. One of the chief crops was
hops, used for the bitter flavor in brewing beer. My very first
experience in the fields was picking hops with my parents.
Walking through
the hops fields was an awesome experience, almost like trudging through
a jungle. Rows and rows of heavily foliaged vines were strung up on
wires ten feet high, their long, straited stems twisting upward and
outward. Their catkins, or conical fruit, one to two inches long, were
as light as a feather, and when ripe, they acquired a yellowish-green
hue.
In the good old
USA, most of the hops were grown in four states, Oregon, Washington,
California, and New York. In the Grants Pass area, there were at least
eight large acreages. Most of the workers were local, although in the
heart of the Great Depression during the mid-thirties, our valley
experienced an influx of migrant workers from the “Dust Bowl” states.
Because of the terrible drought and dust storms which had blown away
the top soil, people from all over the Midwest left their farms,
driving in caravans across the Rockies to the western states, seeking
employment. Oregon received her quota to work in the fields, many of
whom stayed permanently.
I was about six
the year my parents when to the hop yards to help with the harvest.
Once, Ginna had gone with a friend to pick hops and had acquired a
decided aversion for all things associated with hop picking: dust and
sweat, scratchy vines, and sand in your shoes; dirty hands and the
bitter taste that remains, even after washing one’s hands; filthy outhouses and
community drinking
cups, etc. So she managed to bargain with the folks to wash the milk
separator if they would let her stay home. What she didn’t know was
that this would become a permanent job. Ha!
For a few days,
I went with Mother and Dad to Lathrop’s hop yard on the Upper River
Road, early in the morning as soon as the dew was off the ground. The
work was very tedious, to say the least. Hops were stripped off the
vines into a hamper, a heavy canvas bag hung on a round metal frame.
Most people protected their hands with heavy cotton or leather gloves.
All the large leaves had to be picked out. Pickers were paid 3/4 cents
to one cent a pound, plus a bonus of 1/4 cent per pound for staying the
entire season, which lasted about three weeks during August and
September. I would guess the average picker made about$1.00 a day,
although a fast picker could double that. I was expected to cover the
bottom of the hamper before I could stop to play, for which I was paid
the huge sum of ten cents. One day I lost my shoes somewhere in the
tangle of vines, which just about wiped out my folks’ earnings for the
day. Woe is me!
When the
hampers were crammed full, they were emptied into large burlap sacks,
waiting to be weighed. A team of weighers passed through the field
carrying a long pole between them, from which hung a spring scale. The
sacks were hooked onto the scale, and the weight was recorded on a
ticket, which was redeemable at any time. The sacks were then tossed
onto a large truck following behind the weighers, and were transported
to the hop kiln houses for drying. There the hops were submitted to an
air blast of 140 degrees to 180 degrees Fahrenheit, sometimes even
hotter. During the drying process they were generally fumed with
sulfurous acid gas to improve their appearance and also their sale
value. No doubt this treatment destroyed the plant pests which
occasionally infested the fields--blue mold and plant lice (real live
critters!), etc. Evidently, the pests didn’t detract from the
flavor of
the beer. Nevertheless, the hops were extremely unpleasant to pick.
When the dried hops cooled, they were compressed into large bales and
stored in a cool, dry place, awaiting transit to a buyer.
Just as
important as the weighers and truckers to the operation of a hop yard
was the “wire down” man. Systematically, he made his way through
the hop rows, carrying a long pole on which the hops were trained.
Those wires had been hung on cross wires with large “s” hooks, so as to
be readily unhooked and thrown down to the pickers, one section at a
time. If they fell too close to the ground, the wires were then propped
up with scissor-shaped jacks, which could easily be moved from place to
place as needed. The “wire down” man also carried a sharp machete to
cut the old mutilated vines off the wires before hanging them up
again.
Since pickers
were not paid by the hour, we had a lot of flexibility regarding our
work habits. We could arrive at various times of the morning and leave
at various times in the afternoon, though most chose to come early and
work late. We could stop to eat whenever, or to take a potty break. And
of course, we always had access to the water barrels.
But times have
changed. Now hops are gone from the Grants Pass area, and Japanese Fuji
apple trees have been planted in their stead. In Oregon’s lush
Willamette Valley, hops are now trained on low trellises, and
technology has replaced the pickers with hop machines. This is progress!
The Hobo Jungle
By 1932, the
Great Depression was in full swing. Soon after the Wall Street Crash in
October of 1929, 35 percent of all Americans were out of work. Banks
closed. Insurance companies failed. Factories and businesses locked
their doors. Fortunes were lost, and men committed suicide; some even
went insane.
As a case in
point, when Monte and I were first married, we had a little Italian
neighbor named Lucy, who operated a small grocery in the front portion
of her house. From the back room, we often heard her husband’s
incoherent babbling. She claimed he had lost his mind after the crash.
Many people lost
their homes. There was no Social Security, no Workman’s Compensation,
no Welfare programs other than a few private charities, and jobs were
few and far between. In the cities, bread lines stretched out for
blocks, and men from all walks of life left their families to ”ride the
rails” in search of work. They slept in barns, abandoned buildings, and
“hobo jungles” close to the railroad tracks.
In the
“jungles,” a pot of mulligan stew, composed of odds and ends of meat
and vegetables, cooked continuously over an open fire. If a man wanted
to share the food, he had to make, at least, a small contribution to
the pot. Honorable men were forced to beg or steal in order to survive.
To assist their fellow travelers, the “hobos” developed their own code,
which they strategically scribbled on walls or fence posts, or wherever.
Laughing Waters
Apparently,
Bonny Oaks was far enough from the railroad tracks that we didn’t get
many hobos. I do remember one incident, however. Early on a Sunday
morning, Mother pan-fried a chicken, intending to have it for dinner
after church. Outside in the breezeway, she put it to cooling a
screened cupboard, which was nailed to the wall of the house. When we
got home from church, we were unpleasantly surprised to discover we
must have had a very hungry visitor while we were gone. He had eaten
the whole chicken, leaving us with a platter full of bones. Nothing
else on the property had been disturbed.
One other
incident I recall. It was a hot afternoon in August. Dad was working in
his garden when he noticed a kindly old gentleman walking slowly down
the road,stopping here and there to pick and eat the wild blackberries
along the ditch bank. His clothes were ragged and dirty, and he walked
with a cane. Leaning over the fence to introduce himself, Dad soon
learned that the old man, whose names was Waters, had eaten nothing but
wild berries for the past three or four days. So Dad invited him to
come and sit in the breezeway while Mother fixed him a nourishing meal.
Mr. Waters--I
never knew his first name, but Mother dubbed him “Laughing Waters”
because of his sparkling blue eyes and his soft, warm laughter--Mr.
Waters had an interesting background. For many years he had lived as a
recluse in the mountains of Montana, existing largely off the land.
Actually, he was a very intelligent man. Loved to read. Played the
violin. In the evenings, he told us, he often sat in his lamp-lit
cabin, playing his violin while the curious deer peered through the
window to listen. But having come to the age where he could no longer
handle the stress of mountaineering, he made his way to the Rogue River
Valley, looking for some kind of work.
Harrold’s Pansy
Gardens
My father
suggested he go down to Harrold’s Pansy Gardens, about a stone’s throw
away from Bonny Oaks,where they had work, of sorts, all year round.
That’s where Ginna and I used to pick pansy seed every summer.
Happily, the Old Man Harrold and Laughing Waters hit it off right away.
He got the job. And not only that, Harrold built him a one-room shack,
just big enough for a wood stove, a bed, an easy chair, a few book
shelves, and a small table. Laughing Waters lived there for the rest of
his life.
Oregon
History CD Edition
1870
Benton County Oregon Census A-I