B.. Gardner Home

James Hanish: Not to here.

Bob Zybach: Can you recall anything other than stories about rattlesnakes about this particular area?

James Hanish: No, not a thing.

Bob Zybach: That's all you equated it with, that there were rattlesnakes up on the hill?

James Hanish: That's all there was.

Bob Zybach: Did you ever see one, did anybody ever bring.

James Hanish: I never did see one, and nobody ever showed me one they killed.

James Hanish: Out at Eugene, Skinner's Butte, there's some rattlesnakes up there. And they're on the high elevations here in the valley, they won't get downwards.

Bob Zybach: Do you recall what kind of rattlesnakes?

James Hanish: No, not any particular name. . . they weren't called a diamond back or the other kinds of rattlesnakes just a rattlesnake.

B. Gardner Home

Bob Zybach: Okay, we're up on. . . I've got the recorder on again here. We're up by the tree farm sign [Smith Hill Properties] on the gate on the top of the hill, can you remember anything about the family that lived here?

James Hanish: Yes, the husband worked at the Coote's sawmill, wife didn't work and they had a boarder that stayed with them, a young man. He worked at the mill and they had two daughters.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember the boarder's name?

James Hanish: No, I really don't. It's been so long ago, but before we left, left this area, the Gardner family moved up to the Portland area and that's the last we heard of them.

Bob Zybach: Did anybody move into their house after they left?

James Hanish: Not that I know of, no.

Bob Zybach: Was this called the Gardner house?

James Hanish: Gardner family, yeah, they lived there. It was not particular house, just where the Gardners lived.

Bob Zybach: The Gardner place maybe?

James Hanish: Yes.

Bob Zybach: Now this apple orchard that's in here would have been their apple orchard?

James Hanish: Yes, . . . remember they used the food from the trees.

Bob Zybach: Can you recall where their house was located from this point?

James Hanish: Wasn't too far back. It was about right around where that oak tree is, you could see it from the road.

Bob Zybach: Did they have a barn or any out buildings?

James Hanish: Yeah, they had a barn because they had a cow. And he worked the mill and his wife used to milk the cow.

Bob Zybach: Do you recall about how many acres they might have had in here?

James Hanish: I really don't know. It might have been maybe they didn't own the land, but see here in this territory there was farm houses and things and it might have been just pay so much rent maybe the land owner . . . they might have paid rent to Joe Smith for all we know. They never said. But Joe Smith owned a lot of land in here.

Bob Zybach: So John Smith was his son?

James Hanish: Yes.

Bob Zybach: And inherited the land from Joe?

James Hanish: As far as I know. I don't think. . . I couldn't tell you whether he had any other children or not.

Bob Zybach: Do you recall any other houses in this area up here?

James Hanish: No this is the only house that I recall.

Bob Zybach: Do you know the names of the men that the daughters married?

James Hanish: Oh, Lord no.

Bob Zybach: You didn't know them very well?

James Hanish: No, I didn't know . . . the girls I didn't know very well. Because like I say, they moved away before they got married here, they moved up to Portland.

Bob Zybach: Do you recall what year that was?

James Hanish: No, I really couldn't tell you. It was . . . no, long before the war, long before the war.

Bob Zybach: Can you recall if anybody else moved into this house?

James Hanish: No, 'cause see, when . . . after, they left shortly after we left and I didn't know . we didn't come back here anymore. I don't know if anybody else did move in.

Bob Zybach: Now, we might as well. . . can you recall what year you moved in here, into this area?

James Hanish: I talked to my mother about it, and she . . . we lost the records and she thought it

James Hanish: might have been somewhere . . . get there and went into in '33, '34 . . . it was the early twenties I would say.

Bob Zybach: And then you moved out in '33 or '34?

James Hanish: Well, I can give you a pretty good idea. I'm 78 now, and I was about 17 or 18 years old when we moved up here, so subtract that from

Bob Zybach: Sixty years ago.

James Hanish: About sixty years ago.

Bob Zybach: So that would be 1930?

James Hanish: In that period.

Bob Zybach: Where did you move from?

James Hanish: Oh, we moved from Sunnyside, California, up here.

Bob Zybach: So is that first your family ever came to Oregon?

James Hanish: Yes, the first. We had ten acres of young orange trees planted down there in Sunnyside and some chickens, we had around . . . . five hundred chickens and we decided to move to Oregon where we contacted different real estate people and we found this man by the name of Anderson. He had this homestead up here. So we traded even Steven for the homestead.

Bob Zybach: He moved down to Sunnyside and you moved up to Anderson's homestead?

James Hanish: Well, yeah, he was a real estate man as far as I could remember. He just bought our property as a something to invest in.

Bob Zybach: I see. So this was maybe a holding he had here?

James Hanish: Yeah, he had this hundred and sixty acres holding. So we moved up here and then we . . . we couldn't live on hundred and sixty acres, it was too wild, there was no house no nothing. He contacted Joe Smith and he found us forty acres out here. At that time Judge McHenry of Corvallis, his son . . . Judge McHenry now . . . the McHenry now that had the funeral parlor, his father. . . the old Judge McHenry, at one time he was district attorney and he was the one that closed the deal for us with this Joe Smith family. . . . We've known Judge McHenry and Joseph McHenry. In fact, I joined the American Legion when Joe was one of our members.

Bob Zybach: When you got the hundred and sixty acres where was that located?

James Hanish: That was located . . . all right . .

Bob Zybach: In this area?

James Hanish: Yeah, it was located . . . like from the Coote's sawmill.

Bob Zybach: If it's down here, we can probably talk about that when we get down here?

James Hanish: Yes, we'll do that.

Bob Zybach: I'll put it on my notes here then.

James Hanish: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember anything else about the Gardners here?

James Hanish: No.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember the vegetation up here, what did it look like when the Gardner's lived here?

James Hanish: Just like this.

Bob Zybach: Looked just about the same?

James Hanish: No change.

Bob Zybach: That's what everybody's been telling me, this is just about the way it looked in the 1920's and '30's.

James Hanish: Yeah, this country hasn't changed one bit, the trees haven't grown . . . a hell of a lot, some of the old orchards are still alive, but they're about dead, but. . . the tarp, what you want to call the flora of this place is the same.

Bob Zybach: The. . . was there any logging going on up in here at that time?

James Hanish: There might have been, I'm not sure how. . . I think Mr. Coote, he logged. . . but he probably did log in here. He logged along the lower part of the creek. See, that creek came down out of the mountain, I think you called it Savage Creek. It comes down . . . it flows between Polks Peak and the plateau. The hundred and sixty acres was located on the plateau.

Bob Zybach: Okay, we'll be going into that area there so as we get there we can look at it. . . look at the fog and then talk about it in more detail there.

James Hanish: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Can you. . . nothing else about this area? Looks the same?

James Hanish: Not a thing.

Bob Zybach: One more thing.

James Hanish: There's lots of skunks and yellow jackets, and wasps and hornets in this country.