Vancouver, Washington
June 13, 1911
Dear Mother:
At your request and agreeable to my promise, I will endeavor to give you some idea of that southern and central Oregon country. I was gone two weeks, leaving here on the 17th of May and getting home on the 1st of June, going down west of the Cascades to the foot of Mt. Shasta and coming back on the east side. I left Portland on the midnight train so that I had a daylight ride from Albany on south, never having seen that country. It was a delightful trip, it being right after a rain and everything so fresh and green. I presume the landscape was at its best, for they say it soon begins to dry up and turn brown in the south. The Willamette, Umpqua, and Rogue rivers are all pretty streams, and the development that is going on in their upper valleys is remarkable. Albany, Roseburg, Eugene, Myrtlecreek, Grants Pass, Medford, Ashland, and others which you have been through, are growing rapidly, and the little fruit farms about them show only a portion of the future possibilities. The Myrtlecreek district is next to Vancouver for prune growing. The way the orchards are taken care of is a surprise to me. I had little idea that the trees could be made to grow so perfect. Taken young when the buds are starting, the orchardists make the trees send out limbs wherever they wish to grow as they wish. Around Medford they tell me five acres is enough for any one man. Land runs in value from $225 up to $2000 per acre around Medford and Ashland. Of course, going farther back from town, cheaper land may be had. I stopped at Goldhill the first night I was away. It was near there that Uncle Will used to live. It is a quiet little burg on the Rogue River. I liked it. Next morning I took a local to Medford. Was there a few hours, and took the overland going south as far as Weed, California, changing cars there back on a branch road to Klamath Falls getting in there shortly after dark. But there is no use to say anything about the ride from here to Mt. Shasta for you made it yourself and perhaps got more beauty out of it than I did.
From Weed to Klamath the road leads up into the lake country. My intention when starting was to cross the mountains from Medford by the way of Crater Lake, but I learned at Goldhill that the summit was impassable and snow lay 11 feet deep about Crater Lake. It was not a matter of debate. The railroad was the only way around. Usually the lake is visited this early in the season. I read in the paper a day or so ago that three men had made the trip to the crater from the east side from Fort Klamath, but had a very hard trip.
The timber is nearly all a species of pine, jack pine, yellow pine, sugar pine, and white pine. It is pretty timber, except the jack pine. The yellow and white pine seems to grow up straight and would make good logs up to forty or fifty feet; then tapers off bluntly. It seems to be subject to a hollow rot, caused by a worm of some kind. This seems to be a serious problem with the government, but some expert has discovered a fly which fights the worm, or rather lives on it. At Klamath Falls on the upper lake there is quite a large sawmill, but their output at present is mostly shop stuff. The pine makes a cleaner, prettier lumber than our red fir and yellow fir, but it cracks badly in the sun.
I remained at Klamath Falls over the next day (Sunday) and took in the town. It is a boom place, having doubled its population since the government census. At present I was told there are four men for every job. People seem to have bought their town lots before starting there, and flock to town rather than to the land for a living. I do not know which is the worse, however, for unless the newcomer had a thousand or more to tide him over it would be a pretty hard task to exist until he could get a crop of hay from the land, and that is the best crop he can raise. The land around the town for miles is level but is covered or dotted with island-like hills (former mountain tops and then islands when the country was all a great basin of water). I was out on the government irrigation project. It is a great piece of work. The ditch at present extends for miles, and as soon as the water is spread properly I think the country will gradually turn into vast fields of alfalfa. It is a question of time. My walk lay up the Klamath river from the lower to the upper lake a distance of three or four miles. Power is developed on this short river, and the city gets its name from the rapids. The place is not new in the sense of some of the towns that have sprung up. When the Indians held the country they maintained a village at the base of the upper lake on the river and lived luxuriously by fishing and hunting. This country even now is about the best game district in the United States. One barbershop I was in must have had at least fifty mounted deer heads adorning the walls. When the white man came, he at once obtained government permission to establish a trading post there and that was in the '40s. So you see some of the old boys have been in there a long time, and the distance from the outside world was enormous – scarcely think I care to undergo the privations that they did.
Monday morning I started for Lakeview on the stage at six o'clock. There was a man and his wife and little child with me as passengers, but they got out about ten miles from Klamath Falls, and I was the only passenger the remainder of the 100 miles. The ride to Lakeview is a continuous day and night ride of about 48 hours. The teams are changed every 15 to twenty miles, depending on the country. One driver drives until 6 p.m. to a certain station where another driver takes his place for the destination. Stops were made long enough for dinner, supper, and midnight lunch. The first half-days ride is out of the Klamath Lake country into the Lost River country to Bonanza, where we stopped for dinner at noon, about 30 miles from K.F. That place is a dreary little burg resembling St. Michael in sandy surroundings and size, and the desert of Sahara in barrenness. The insignificance of the place stands out so strongly in contrast with a large brick schoolhouse built there in its boom days when settlers grew a few bumper crops and the town made a wild growth. The town that was wiped out by a fire. They still have two stores, a hotel, a bank, a saloon, etc. The ride from Bonanza, after we leave the sand, leads over a timbered strip of mountainous country which consumes the entire afternoon, bringing us at evening into the Sprague River valley to the post office of Bly, where we had supper and changed drivers and horses. It was just sunset when we made the drive from Bly across this little valley. Someway I liked it. Where there was water on the land the grass was making good headway, and the farm buildings gave such a prosperous appearance to the ranches. Where the land was yet raw, it was dotted with the prettiest, most symmetrical junipers it has ever been my pleasure to look upon. They gave the country the appearance of biblical scenes as shown in Sunday-school papers.
We entered timber country again as dark closed around us and the stars began to glitter over us. We lighted the lanterns on either side of us and kept right on. There is no pause in a stage team's life. There is no choosing of ways by the passengers. It is just grin and bear it, having faith that the road curves around the big tree looming out in the blackness before you and that you may not crash into it or be overturned. Licketysplit they go, making the curves without a hesitation. What matter how many roots, rocks, or chuckholes we strike. The sooner over them the better, and the better over them soon. We passed thru Drews valley but it was too dark to see the country. As daylight began to change the blackness to gray, and the stars' twinklings were outclassed, we entered the Goose Lake valley. Oh, how bitter cold that wind was. Clouds like in the month of March back home, came piling in from somewhere over the mountains back of Lakeview, peltering us with sleet and hail. When I entered the hotel at Lakeview, I was chilled thru and thru. I was tempted to accept the proffered glass of whiskey but did not. Breakfast was served at six, and a plenteous supply of hot coffee served instead of the whiskey.
I was very nearly worn out that day. However, I made use of the time to get acquainted with some real estate men, the men in the Land Office, and the Clerks in the Forestry Service, and a few others. There was a vacancy in the Land Office and I was offered temporary employment until a Civil Service man could reach there from New York, but I felt that I had better get back home.
The next morning I tried to get a saddle horse to ride over into Warner Valley where my land lies, but found that in that country where everyone rides horseback, there was only one saddler to be had and they would not let me have him to ride the distance I wished to go. However, they said they would drive me over and back for about $10.00. I always have been pretty good on the walk, and it being fresh and cool that morning, having snowed about half an inch during the night, I started out about half past eight to walk to my ranch. I got my bearings on the map and asked no questions of anyone. My walk that forenoon took me through some pine timber, over a ridge of mountains. I cannot remember when I ever felt better or enjoyed a walk so much. The roads weren't the least bit muddy for the snow seemed to have evaporated into the air leaving the roads hard and clean. Occasionally I had to cross on a fallen log over mountain brooks.
At one o'clock, I reached a wayhouse on the other side of the ridge where the stage driver always stops on his was to the Post Office of Plush to get his dinner and change teams. Here I got a good dinner and inquired about the lay of my land and how to get there. I found that I had walked eighteen miles from Lakeview and that my land lay about fifteen miles farther on. I met an old rancher on horseback who gave me the directions and advice as to the fork in the road. So I started out at a good brisk walk. The country was more open and level, the road winding about as nearly on the level as it could through the sage brush country skirting the hills. I turned to the north on the first old little-traveled road as I was directed to do. The first thing I knew I was up in a canyon which sloped steeply up the mountain side into the timber and there was no road to follow. I then climbed over the ridge to my right thinking that possibly I had missed the trail and that it led up the ravine over that ridge. Getting over there I still found that there was nothing doing, so I climbed over the next ridge into another canyon, and another, and another, but still no trail. These ravines stretched out from the valley up the mountain side similar to the way the fingers spread out from the palm. I concluded the best thing I could do was to follow that last canyon back down onto the sage brush plain for I was sure to get back to the stage road in time. And it was getting on well in the afternoon. At the base of the ravine I met a sheep herder horse back who pointed out the stage road to me winding in the distance, a crooked brown streak in a field of gray sage. He told me to get on to it again and follow it and take the first old road leading off to the north. This I did. About five o'clock I struck the edge of a long treeless ravine leading down out of the mountains and running away down into the valley. Away down several miles I could see ranch buildings. I wound my way down the sides of the ravine to its level green, grassy bottom where I found a good well-traveled road all the way down to the ranch. I reached there about six o'clock, having walked all together with my wanderings up the mountain canyons, in the neighborhood of thirty-six miles in nine hours of continuous walking.
Three Irishmen were batching there, while building fence getting ready for the lambing season and shearing. I was given a cup of good cold milk, and I believe I never tasted anything so refreshing in all my life. Supper was cooked over a fireplace in old fashion style, consisting of pork, macaroni, fresh bread, gravy, tea, milk, and apple sauce. I ate of that greasy truck as well as I could and then we sat about the fire and I came with in the limit of bursting my gizzard laughing at those three devils, for they were little else. You see there are a great many primitive Irish living there, the ranchers paying their way over to this country originally, they serving out an apprenticeship to pay for their transportation after getting there. They are instructed not to stop in the United States, but to come right thru to Lakeview. Well these three were the raw sort. I never dreamed what real Irish brogue was until my night with those three fellows. They made me a bunk on the floor with my head to the fireplace, while they three crawled into the bed. About midnight I heard the most fearful yell I ever heard. I sat straight up in bed and listened. One of the others rolled about, mumbled a bit, and said as though he were half awake, "Phawts the Mather, Paddy?" Drawled the other, "Oh, oi was joost a dramin', but its all roight noo." Seemed an ordinary occurrence to them.
Next morning we were up early, broke the ice in the creek and got some water, washed, had breakfast. Then one of them got up a couple of horses and we rode over the country all forenoon, over my land and the adjacent land. About ten o'clock we struck their sheep camp and had a good drink of milk, and were back at the ranch at noon. We crossed over a plateau of several miles to another creek running about parallel to the one where the ranch was. That creek runs diagonally through the section to my left and to my north but my land touches it only at its northwest corner. But it slopes back up off the creek so steeply that I doubt if water can ever be got on it unless one were to go away back several miles and bring it down. It is hard for a novice to judge, however, for I have been places where, but for my common sense, I would have wagered that the water was running up hill. My land is covered with sage brush and is grazed over by sheep and horses. They keep the grass down which springs up very nicely where the stock are kept off and especially in the creek bottoms and about springs where the water gets to it. The 280 acres in the ranch north of me is owned by a couple of brothers by the name of Allen, from the north part of Buffalo County, Nebraska. It is said that they gave $5,000 for their land. Of course, they have the creek bottom for hay and miles of land unfenced over which their stock can run. My land is somewhat rocky in places. It is hard to place a valuation on it, as there is a vast lot of just such raw land, most of it government land, and it is worthless in small pieces and of value chiefly to sheepmen. Such land leases at $60.00 a section. The land immediately adjoining me on the north, was taken under the Desert Act, under which a man pays $1.25 an acre cash for the land and puts on improvements to the value of $3.00 an acre before he is given title, making the land cost him improvements and all, $4.25 an acre. I think the least I would take for mine would be $2.50 per acre, and I have offered it at that figure. In the future, as the country develops, there is no question in my mind but what that land can be made very valuable for farming purposes. I may decide to forget I have it, keeping the taxes paid up, which amount to about $2.00 per annum, and then when railroads go in there and things grow valuable, remember my investment, and see if I can get the principal and interest back from a sale of the land.
That afternoon, I rode the horse I had ridden all morning back to Lakeview. Young Barry told me of a shortcut which would put me into Lakeview on a twenty-five mile ride. The horse was not the easiest riding in the world and I was very soft. But I reached Lakeview about seven o'clock that evening. It was a good ride. One place I went through a shallow lake my horse wading belly deep for over a mile. I sat with my feet locked round the saddle horn. Another place in crossing over the pass above Lakeview, my critter was knee deep in snow. On nearing Lakeview I got off and walked a couple of miles down the mountain. I was so stiff I could hardly walk. But I soon limbered up and when I got up the next morning I hardly felt the effects of either my walk or ride.
I spent one more day at Lakeview making a plot of the township in which my land was located for the benefit of the sheepman who was doing a good deal of fencing and had nothing to guide him as to the boundaries of the land he had leased. I did not go out to see the lots owned by the people who dealt with the Oregon Land Company, as they are out of town from a quarter of a mile to three miles. I did not go out to see Loyal's land for I forgot the numbers of it and could not find his name on the clerk's indexes. But if his land lies north or west of town, it is sage brush land and very good. The Road land around Lakeview as elsewhere is still under sage brush. Where the other sections were cleaned off, there is a good stand of grass. I scarcely think one would want to go in there intending to make a living off ten acres. The altitude is too high to depend upon successful fruit growing, and a farm of this size is too small for general farming purposes. The town of Lakeview has been a very good market for gardeners for the reason that there never were any railroads near, but now there is a narrow gauge road building in from the south at Alturas to be in Lakeview this fall. Whether that will make any difference or not remains to be seen. I think as an investment Van's ten acres will prove a good one, for as time goes on that country must necessarily be put into hay and irrigated. For the range is practically gone. Intensive methods must take the place of the old time free and easy ones. It would be my suggestion to Mame to hold on to the land, and when they got a few thousand ahead it might be advisable to try to develop it. Or it might be well to let one of the boys come out, clear off the land, and get it in shape to bring in something. But to go into that country with their large family (unless they want to undergo hardships and privations as all pioneers must and have done in that country) would be unadvisable.
I started north on Saturday morning on the stage for Paisley, 45 miles from Lakeview in the center of Lake County. This was a pleasant ride, skirting the east side of Goose Lake valley, then through the mountains to the north winding through narrow valleys and wider plains, bounded generally on either side by almost perpendicular cliffs of rim rock. There are some very rich ranchers live in through that vicinity, and a great many homesteaders have taken up their weary life. But on the vast, vast amount of land that is so useless! The ZX ranch is the largest in that valley country. It was not dusty there and the land is pretty generally under cultivation and irrigation. They have some excellent fields of clover and alfalfa and wild hay. The people have been in there for fifty years or more. The trees there are mostly cotton wood and poplar and I suppose those trees, with the good roads and general air of prosperity is what reminded me so much of home. The county Supt. Jackson lives there. He went in to that country about twenty years ago. Taught school, bought land, acquired a few head of cattle, and now counts his wealth by the thousands. He runs what is called the Chewaucan Mercantile Co., is president of a big irrigation concern, and is talking some of organizing a bank at that place. He was on the jump every minute I was there. I stopped at a hotel he had just built. We talked about the school there. The principal of last year would not be back and he suggested that I apply for the place. It pays $125.00 per month. He said he would keep me for $25.00. I was under the impression when I left there that I would try to get the place. For I know that a single man can go in there, be sane and temperate, save his money and buy land and in twenty years be independent. But the remoteness from anywhere, and the feeling of hominess about my present abode, has kept me from considering the return to that country this fall.
There was no stage out of Paisley on Sunday, so I amused myself in the forenoon by taking a long walk up the Chewaucan River. The air is so light in that altitude I found it easy to breathe deep full breaths. And certainly a walk in that climate is invigorating. If you read Irving's Astoria, I think you will remember the difference in vigor in the Indians they met east and west of the Cascades. Those east of the mountains were so much better races. I had just finished my dinner at Paisley when an automobile came chugging into town. I made quick to learn that they were headed for Silver Lake, a town 55 miles to the northwest in the northern end of Lake county. They agreed to haul me, and, and the price being paid, I bundled my grip into the seat and off we went. That was the best ride on the trip. About midway on the ride, one of the tires struck a small pointed rock and it blew up with a report like a shotgun. Then the driver exploded and the air circled upward from us like a whirlwind of blue smoke as he poured forth volley after volley of blessings upon his machine, the rocks, and the world in general. But by the united efforts of all of us we soon had the thing repaired and were on the way. We made the 55 miles in four hours. This trip took us up the west shore to Summer Lake and past Silver Lake. The west side of Summer Lake is a narrow strip of land between the lake and the mountains and is reported to be the best fruit-growing land in that country unless it be Pine Creek in the south end of Goose Lake Valley. All that country east and north of Summer Lake is being homesteaded or taken up under the Desert laws. The same way with [unreadable] Lake Valley. But as we rode up the west side of Summer Lake and watched across the lake on the east the hundreds of whirlwinds of white alkali dust lazily creeping across the land and dying away as they dropped onto the lake, white columns of dust reaching up into the sky for hundreds of feet, I felt that personally I would prefer the green valleys of the Pacific Coast. We reached Silver Lake about 5 o'clock that evening, and I had to grind my teeth when told that there was no stage north from there Monday. I could hardly bear the thought of a day in that miserable dusty hole. But Monday forenoon I tried to catch some fish in Silver Creek but the water was muddy from a bursted dam up stream and got neither satisfaction nor fish. In the afternoon I found relief in talking to the soda fountain girl, who was very agreeable and willing to talk. She had been one of the teachers in the two-roomed school there the past year, and to put in the summer she had started a small confectionery and soda-fountain. She was like a rose in the desert. Her dress and everything was so refreshing compared to the rough, tanned, dusty, inhabitants common to the place.
But Tuesday morning I got started again. This time by stage for Bend. This was to be a ride of 95 miles. Leaving the Silver Lake valley, we went over into the Fort Rock valley. This is a wide level valley, with vast numbers of new cabins scattered over it. They have no water to irrigate with but are trusting entirely to the dry farming methods. It is very dusty in there but the soil looks very good and from what I could learn they have fair success in farming. The valley gets its name from an odd formation of rock standing out by itself in the valley. It is shaped like a huge fort! It is a round mass of volcanic rock about a half or three-quarters of a mile across. The outer edge is almost perpendicular being five hundred feet high. The inside slopes down like a huge amphitheatre, which served as the entrance to the fort. On the opposite side of the enclosure from the opening there was what looked like a pulpit or rostrum. To one of superstitious or at least imaginative mind, it was made for the use of giants in which to congregate for worship or what not. The government has set it aside as a reserve.
That ride that day was the worst I ever experienced in my life. The dust was awful. What it must be like in the fall after a summer of travel and no rain, my imagination can not picture. A good portion of the day's journey was through the government forest reserve. The soil is a loose volcanic ash dust and in those forests there is no wind, no air stirring, and no water, nothing but trees, brush, and dusty road. It would rise up from the hooves of the horses and wheels of the stage and settle over you and drift into you and through you until you would feel like repeating something about "to dust returneth". But we reached the station called LaPine about six o'clock where we had the first opportunity to clean up. Oh how good it was to feel the touch of water on my face! We cleaned up enough to eat supper, and then took the stage again, with a new driver, for Bend, reaching there about midnight. I rode with the driver on his high seat and got no more dust. The ride from LaPine follows the Deschutes River and is not so weary as the ride before reaching LaPine. The driver was a most interesting personage. He was an old trapper. He has been in nearly every interesting place in the west from the plains to the coast. He told me he had a trunk full of plates of some of the most noted scenes covering the west from Mexico to Canada, from the Cascades to Custer's Battlefield. To have had such a guide on all my trip would have added so much to the interest. Some of the drivers were such stupid things, hardly knowing enough to give a civil answer.
I might mention the town of LaPine is the one which put itself on wheels and moved several miles in a week to adjust itself to the new proposed railroad projected through that part. And on the way the name was changed from ________________ (I can't recall it now) to LaPine. The man traveling with me on this stretch of the way said that he came through there and ate dinner at the hotel while on the move.
Bend is a boom place, the railroad being headed that way, but not there yet. It knows how to soak the charges on to a poor weary traveler. But I wasn't there long enough to learn much about it. I only know that I stripped to the skin, took a good bath, put on clean clothes, had a good night's rest, breakfast the next morning, and took an automobile at 5:30 for Opal City, the present terminus of the Oregon Trunk R.R.. That was a delightful ride of about three hours and the machine took us along so rapidly that we scarcely knew there was any dust. A great deal of the land from Bend on down the river is under irrigation and is in alfalfa and clover. It seemed so good to look upon the green fields, although the season had been so backward the hay was just getting a good start at that time. At the time I am writing (July 22), I suppose the fields are covered with haycocks. Land in there is worth, or held at about $100.00 per acre more or less. I should judge that it would be worth it where one has perpetual right to a good and sufficient water supply for irrigation purposes.
We took the train at Opal City about nine o'clock. The ride down the Deschutes canyon is quite interesting, but the continuity of the canyon walls of lava grows monotonous and one is really glad to reach the Columbia River, and find himself seated in a North Bank train headed for Vancouver, or at least I was. On the way down the canyon, walls go up so high and are so barren. But occasionally we could see an edge of a grain field lapping over the top of the hilltop down the slope to the river, so green and fresh. And I learned that the water taken out of the headwaters of the Deschutes is carried along on top of the broad plateaus bordering the Deschutes canyon and in places there are some very prosperous farms. Occasionally, too, we could see wagon trails winding back and forth up the canyon side from the river, and as we could see the whole length of the trail up the hill, the grade seemed to keep the same degree of ascent all the way, going back and forth so that the trail looked like a side view of a coiled wire spring.
I have liked Vancouver very much better since that trip. And the chances are that I will remain right here. Although I have been written to by the Civil Service commission regarding a position in Alaska, a place I have always wanted to visit. They only wanted to pay me $100.00 per month, which would not justify my leaving here, unless I went purely for the travel. I am sorry I cannot give you a better idea of the country in central Oregon, but I went as much for the outing as for to see the land, and came back fully satisfied. The trip cost me close to $100.00. So you see that it costs money to travel in that country unless you want to deny yourself some of the usual requirements.
I am getting along well in the bank. Can't tell if I made a mistake or not by going back. I was building up a pretty good business of my own. All told last month, after getting back from my trip and nothing settled as to what I would do, scarcely hoping to make much more than my expenses, I made $99.95. I might soon have worked up to something pretty good. But the bank salary is sure, and the opportunity is good.
I suppose you heard about Jimmy's death. I didn't get word in time to get to the funeral. I felt so sorry about it. It is too bad. Will and Jennie were there, so Uncle Will said in his letter to me.
Must close and get some supper. Your son, J. A. H.