Wolf Creek Sanctuary

History-Onyx 16

       Hello fellow Internet surfer and welcome to a gem of a site dedicated to illuminating the onyx-like parallels unearthed from an otherwise beclouded and boring American and world historical perspective into its many hues and flavors, a spectrum inclusive of most light that makes up the untold stories, fascinating stories and journeys not quite attached or put together in this theatrical or holistic manner as you will find!
        We bring many years of personal and unique historical research, reading, collaboration, living, and writing experiences. One of us is a published historian, journalist, and genealogist, whose roots are in the Central Oregon Coast, the primary though not exclusive gathering or focal point of these stories. And her co-author is more centered, though not exclusively so on the personal-spiritual journey as a former Lutheran minister, and how this has come into play to reinvigorate her own philosophical historical understanding of faith and her questions of the world-church professional Christian training, vision and cultural paradigms, relying upon her common sense and also the expertise and critique of those historically disinherited, disenfranchised, and despised.
     Neither of us is professionally enamored by historicism in the classical sense, or any particular intellectual chains, other than the challenge to loosen the usual grip of white western european, heterosexist and masculinist elitism! And yes, we believe in being politically correct, and are proud of it, that we still name the names! We are students and practitioners of folk and established history, and are expanding our understanding of story, wishing to share some of those exciting findings and perspectives. We plan to update this site regularly with the little known gems and connections to "the rest of the story" usually relegated to footnotes we have uncovered from the current draft of our mammoth, interconnected, well documented history saga, Sovereigns of Themselves: A Liberating History of Oregon and Its Coast. We would welcome and appreciate hearing from you, comments, questions, suggestions, corrections, or other resources and we hope that you'll stick around long enough to get to know just a little bit more about what these two cyber-historians have to offer.    ---Rev. Marilyn A. Riedel & M. Constance Guardino III

Maracon Challenges You To Believe It Or Not!

The Hanging Tree At Six Bit House

      Wolf Creek is located on a creek of that name, just west of the Old Pacific Highway, and five miles north of Sunny Valley. The post office was established June 29, 1882, with Henry Smith serving as first postmaster. The style was changed to Wolfcreek on July 13, 1895, and back to Wolf Creek on April 1, 1951.
     There were plenty of wolves in Oregon during the frontier era, and a number of streams are known as Wolf Creek.
     The community was the locality of the famous Six Bit House, frequently mentioned in pioneer history. In 1936, James T. Chinook of Grants Pass wrote about this establishment, transmitting information from James Tuffs and George W. Riddle, both familiar with the history of Southern Oregon.
     The original Six Bit House was built during the Rogue River wars, probably about 1853, within the sharp hairpin curve of the Southern Pacific Railroad about a mile east of town. It was at the mouth of a gulch on the old road location north of I-5 and the Old Pacific Highway. The building has long since disappeared, but Tuffs recalled seeing the remains during his youth. (Oregon Geographic Names 1992, pp. 922, 923; Oregon Post Offices 1847-1982, p. 111)
     Douglas County pioneer George W. Riddle tells the story of a Cow Creek youth who went south with a pack train, and leaving the train, was on his way home when he was stopped by non-indians that were at a trading post on Wolf Creek. It is probable that the men were drinking, as there was always plenty of whiskey at these houses along the road. At any rate there was a chance to have some "fun" by hanging an Indian boy, so the youth was placed upon a horse, a rope was put around his neck and attached to a limb of a tree. At this point in the proceedings the proprietor of the house rushed out crying: "Hold on, that Indian owes me six bits." The hanging was delayed until the melancholy brave produced the money and paid his debt, and finding he had a dollar left asked that it be sent to his friend, William Riddle. When these business matters were concluded the horse was driven from under the young man and the hanging was completed. When the facts of this ghastly event became known, that trading post was given the name of the Six Bit House by which it was known afterwards. (Early Days In Oregon 1851-1861, South Umpqua Historical Society 1993, pp. 79-81)
     The second Six Bit House, built of logs, was in the north part of the town, close to the railroad. Tuffs lived in it several years.
     The present Wolf Creek Tavern, now on the National Register of Historic Places, was built later and had no connection with either of the Six Bit Houses.

"Wolf Creek Tavern" Courtesy Of Julie Hendricks

A fish habitat restoration project in Wolf Creek, a tributary of the Umpqua, is the attraction at the Minor Wolf Watchable Wildlife Site. The creek, which had been degraded by natural and man-made disturbances, is being refurbished to enhance the habitat for coho salmon, steelhead and cutthroat trout. Logs, rocks, and rootwads have been placed in the stream to recreate the habitat that once existed. (Visitors Guide, The News-Review, May 14, 1998, p. 18)

Radical We'Moon's Land Movement

Closely related to the Radical Faeries is the Women's Land Movement, which gathered strength in the 1970s and 1980s. Oregon might well have been the matrix out of which the movement sprang. There were several significant forces at work. Land was available and affordable. Early on there was Womanspirit Magazine, founded by Ruth and Jean Mountaingrove, which spread the word that it was possible for women to live on the land. For ten years they nurtured the magazine as a forum on spirituality as well as a network between different land spaces. Nearby in Southern Oregon there were many different parcels of land with women on them living collectively: Cabbage Land (1972), WomanShare (1974), and Fishpond, OWL (1976), Fly Away Home, Rainbow's End (1974), and Rainbow's Other End. Further north there was WHO (1972) and We'Moon Healing Ground. (Out In All Directions: The Almanac of Gay and Lesbian America, Warner Books 1995), p. 324)

An Outing From Port Orford

Elizabeth Clare, a poet, essayist, and activist living in Michigan, transplanted from Port Orford, Oregon, wrote of a trip she took to lesbian land in Oregon. She and her friend Marjorie visited WomanShare, OWL, and the healing Ground, hanging out with dykes, hiking in the mountains, splitting firewood, and planting trees:

"As we left WomanShare heading north to Eugene, a woman named Janice told us about a dyke-owned food store in Myrtle Creek and asked us to say hello to Judith if we stopped. Two hours later we pulled off Interstate 5 into a rickety little logging town. Marjorie, a Jewish dyke who grew up in suburban Cleveland and suburban Detroit, noticed the John Birch sign tacked under the "Welcome to Myrtle Creek" sign, while I noticed the familiar ramshackle of Main Street, the hill checkered with overgrown clearcuts, the one-ton pick-up trucks with guns resting in their rear windows. We parked and started to make a shopping list: fruit, bread, cheese, munchies for the road. I could feel Marjorie grow uncomfortable, and wary, the transition from lesbian land to town, particularly one that advertised its John Birch Society, never easy. On the other hand, I felt alert but comfortable in this town that looked and smelled like home. In white, rural, Christian Oregon, Marjorie's history as an urban, middle-class Jew and mine as a rural, mixed-class gentile measured a chasm between us.

"Faerie Garden" Courtesy Of Evan Hendricks

"As we walked into the grocery store, the woman at the cash register smiled and said, "Welcome, sisters," and all I could do was smile back. Judith wanted news from WomanShare, asked about Janice and Billie, answered our questions about Eugene, already knew about the woman from Fishpond who had committed suicide a week earlier. News of her death moved quickly through this rural dyke community; as we traveled north, we heard women from Southern Oregon to Seattle talking about and grieving for this woman. As I stood in Judith's store, I began to understand that OWL and WomanShare and Rainbow's End and Fly Away Home and Fishpond and healing Ground weren't simply individual, isolated pieces of lesbian land, created and sustained by transient urban lesbians; they were also links in a thriving rural lesbian network. When Judith asked where I was from, I tried to explain what it meant to discover this network a mere hundred miles east of my inarticulated dyke childhood. But all I could really do was smile some more as Judith told stories about being a dyke in Myrtle Creek, stories interrupted as she greeted customers by name and exchanged local gossip and news. Marjorie and I left 45 minutes later with a bag of groceries and a pile of stories. As we drove north, I reached out to my ever-present sense of disjunction and found it gone for the moment."

Clare, who has an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, profiles the problems of growing up gay in a rural environment in her essay, "Leaving Home." At the conclusion of her trip to lesbian land, she reflects:

"I certainly don't believe that I can cure my sense of disjunction with a simple move to the Oregon mountains, where I could live at OWL or WomanShare and shop at Myrtle Creek. The problems highlighted by the intersection of queer identity, working-class and poor identity, and rural identity demand long-lasting, systemic changes. The exclusivity of queer community shaped by urban, middle-class assumptions. Economic injustice in the backwoods. The abandonment of rural, working-class values. The pairing of rural people with conservative, oppressive values. The forced choice between rural roots and urban gay and lesbian life. These problems are the connective tissue that brings the words queer, class and exile together. Rather than a relocation to the Oregon mountains, I want a redistribution of economic resources so that wherever we live--in the backwoods, the suburbs, or the city--there is enough to eat; warm, dry houses for everyone; true universal access to health care and education. I want queer activists to struggle against homophobic violence in rural areas with the same kind of tenacity and creativity we bring to the struggle in urban areas. I want rural queers, working-class queers, poor queers to be leaders in our communities, to shape the ways we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. I want each of us to be able to bring our queerness home. Only then will I be able to stop writing the words that ache." (Queerly Classed, South End Press 1997, pp. 26-28)

Grave Creek (bridge center) rises in the northwest corner of Jackson County and flows into Josephine County. It receives Wolf Creek near Leland. In 1846 a girl named Martha Leland Crowley, died on what is now Grave Creek, and her burial there gives rise to the name. In 1883, James W. Nesmith, wrote that in the late summer of 1848 he started for California with a party of gold seekers, and they found Ms. Crowley's grave had been desecrated by Indians. They reinterred the remains, and called the stream Grave Creek. Martha was the daughter of Thomas and Catherine Linville Crowley, who came to Oregon from Missouri in 1846. Thomas and Martha died in Oregon, but before the family reached the Willamette Valley. The Crowley's daughter, Matilda and a son Calvin also died on the trip West, as well as Calvin's wife and child. (Oregon Geographic Names 1992, p. 375)