Soap Creek Valley · Monograph #5 · 9 of 46

E. Earth Day Plantation

E. Earth Day Plantation of John Jacob & Wilma Rohner — printed p. 23 — recorded September 30, 1990 at Automobile tour of the Coffin Butte area, Benton County, Oregon. Every printed page has its own permanent link.

Zybach, Bob 1993. John Jacob and Wilma Rohner. Family Farming on Coffin Butte Between World Wars, Benton County, Oregon: 1919-1941. Soap Creek Valley History Project, Monograph #05. Oregon State University Research Forests and College of Forestry, Corvallis, Oregon: 132 pp.

p. 47 = printed page 47 of the original book; the link on each page number is a permanent address you can send to anyone.

Provenance

From: #5 John Jacob & Wilma Rohner
Narrator: John Jacob "Jake" Rohner and Wilma "Willie" Rohner
Recorded: September 30, 1990 · Automobile tour of the Coffin Butte area, Benton County, Oregon
Interviewer: Bob Zybach
Printed pages: p. 23
Original: http://www.nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Oral_Histories/Soap_Creek_Valley/05_Rohner/Zybach_1993.pdf
Accessioned: From Bob Zybach’s upload, 23 August 2026

Part II. Printed session note: "The following transcript was made from a recorded interview with Jake Rohner that took place during an automobile tour of the Coffin Butte area on September 30, 1990. Stopping points along the tour route are noted on the map at the front of this book with alphabetized letters. The same alphabetic system is used in the following text to coordinate discussions with speqfic [specific] locations." Fifteen lettered stops, A-O.

p. 23

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Lewisburg. That's the only one I know of, and I don't remember what they called it.

Bob Zybach: Okay, so this was Stellmachers back then, back where you were pointing where all the barracks were and then back where the sign for...

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Well, Steilmachers and Carters, and Williamson, and oh it took a lot of farms.

Bob Zybach: One thing we didn't get on the recording that I wanted top on it was all these fields out here, there wasn't any trees to speak of, it was all purple with vetch?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Yes.

Bob Zybach: And you also said that it volunteered, and it was just beautiful because it went up and down the highways. Volunteer vetch.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Yes.

Bob Zybach: When did the weevil come in and eliminate that?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Somewhere I think just prior to when Camp Adair came in in 1942. A few years just prior to that.

Bob Zybach: So this whole little basin in here was pretty much, eveiybody was raising vetch?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Yes, a lot of people were. Some farmers didn't get into it, they didn't have the right equipment to handle it. But most of them, especially on the lower hilly slopey ground it done very well, where other things wouldn't do as well.

Bob Zybach: What did they raise in here before vetch?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Oh, some wheat, and some ryegrass. And hay. Of course every farmer used to have some cows, cattle and horses. And they had to raise so much hay to keep the year round. So there was quite a lot of hay raised.

E. Earth Day Plantation

Bob Zybach: We just passed an Earth Day plantation on the left there. What do you think about tree plantations in land like this?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: I think it would probably be a good thing.

Bob Zybach: How about, now we're looking at Christmas tree crops. Can you remember when people started planting those?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Not exactly, no. But it's been quite a few years now. And I think now it's being over done, for christmas trees. I think a lot of them will end up being forest.

Bob Zybach: Oh, the christmas trees?

Speaker attribution inferred from typography where the printed page prints only Q and A.

How to cite this item

The first line is the citation as it is printed in the original. Use it when you cite the work itself. Use the second when you cite this page.

As printed: Zybach, Bob 1993. John Jacob and Wilma Rohner. Family Farming on Coffin Butte Between World Wars, Benton County, Oregon: 1919-1941. Soap Creek Valley History Project, Monograph #05. Oregon State University Research Forests and College of Forestry, Corvallis, Oregon: 132 pp.
This page: Rohner 1993. E. Earth Day Plantation, p. 23. America's School Trust Library, The Zybach Collection. https://schooltrusts.org/collections/zybach/soap-creek/m05-rohner/e-earth-day-plantation/ (accessed 2026).
Cite this passage: Rohner 1993, p. 23 — Monograph #05:23
https://schooltrusts.org/collections/zybach/soap-creek/m05-rohner/e-earth-day-plantation/#p23 Swap 23 for whichever printed page you are quoting: every page number in the margin is its own address.
Permalink: https://schooltrusts.org/collections/zybach/soap-creek/m05-rohner/e-earth-day-plantation/
Original PDF: http://www.nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Oral_Histories/Soap_Creek_Valley/05_Rohner/Zybach_1993.pdf

More on citing this collection: How to cite the Zybach Collection.

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