11.. Sawmills

11. Sawmills

Bob Zybach: The mill you worked in, was that on Oak Creek, the mill.

Charlie Olson: The mill was on Oak Creek. Pettygrove and Doherty owned the mill.

Bob Zybach: Pettygrove?

Charlie Olson: Pettygrove and Doherty. And up above them was another sawmill, and he built a flume, what did they call that darn place? I never can remember that. It's pretty close to where Corvallis has its water pond, that pond in Corvallis.

Bob Zybach: Noon? Did he build a tramway to Noon?

Charlie Olson: Noon isn't. . that isn't the Noon station, no. They flowed the lumber down to there, but this guy up on the hill that run out of timber, and then he teamed up with Lyle Winney, and built a sawmill out by Mountain View. Up the creek there a little ways from Mountain View. And when they did that, they wanted me to go with them. And I did, I went with them over there, and helped them build the mill and then I set ratchet for them and then I logged a little at night and early in the morning and Lyle Winney got pretty salmoned on the cook and he got so he couldn't take care of his mills at all, and his bank account got to where he couldn't pay his wages and I lost about $1000 on him.

Bob Zybach: What was he doing with the money? You said he got salmoned up on the cook?

Charlie Olson: I didn't get your question.

Bob Zybach: I didn't understand. You said he was having a

Charlie Olson: Oh, he wanted to marry the cook.

Bob Zybach: Oh, I see. But you said "salmoned up.', I never heard that expression before.

Charlie Olson: Yeah. He sold his old briscoe car, and bought brand new Oaldand and thought that would do it. And the first Saturday night after he had got that out there, she came and whispered to me before I got through eating my supper "will you stay till I get the dishes washed? I wouldn't ride back to town with that S.O.B., if it was the only way I could get there I'd walk." I told her I'd wait, and when she got the dishes washed up why I took her to town. Her family, that is her folks lived in town. But somehow, I don't know . . . she was a widow. But somehow he finally succeeded and he married her later on.

Bob Zybach: There was a mill in there called the Zeller miii. Were you familiar with that one?

Charlie Olson: It was electric. [C.O. Addendum: All mixed up. Zeller never had a mill in there. He was at Wren.]

Bob Zybach: Could that have been maybe the first electric mill in Benton County?

Charlie Olson: I think it was. [It was the Winney mill and I helped him build it.] It was supposed to turn out 10,000 board feet a day. And that electric set up, there was 75 horsepower on the saw husk, and there was a 25 horsepower motor on the, that name again . . . There is a side saw you know that will cut 2x4's out of 2x8's, anything the side lumber will make.

Bob Zybach: Was that a trim saw?

Charlie Olson: Well the trim saw was farther on out [unintelligible] got the crosscut. There was a 5 horse motor on that, but there was a 15 horse motor on this edger, and we put out 30,000 ft. a day.

Bob Zybach: So you worked in the Winney Miii then?

Charlie Olson: Yeah, I set ratchet. But when the electric motor starts something it will continue that same speed. And when that started it would go right on through. And with the steam, that's what this was rated with you know, with a steam you'd hit it pretty fairly and then it would slow down, like chug a chug a chug a chug a and you'd just sit there. It was a long time before it would go through. Then of course coming back, it would come back pretty good lick. But this electric motor wouldn't slow down. And when it hit there it just went through. And the sawyer was Olin Winney, and we were kids, and it was funny, you know a lot of fun, they just do funny things. And whenever he got to the end of that log, I had dogged there. And by the time he got it back I had this one undogged. And I had the ratchet back and one day, in the spring, the logs were kind of slick. He didn't stop just right, and when he got back a log kept going right on and it went clear on out of the mill. The tractor that I used, I logged in the morning before the rest of them got up, and I logged in the evening after supper so that they would have timber in there. They logged with horses and the horses couldn't keep up after they got far enough away you know, it was a long haul. And we used that tractor and I would put in quite a few extra logs there to help make it so that it would keep going during the day. So it didn't take too long until he owed me quite a little bit. And I kept thinking "well, if I

Charlie Olson: haven't got it I won't spend it." But it got to the point where he went bankrupt and I decided I would buy the tractor and it belonged to Lyle supposedly. I went out south of town where he had a little place, and I drove it from there on out, and it was his as far as I knew, so I made a deal with him. And that would be $500, was what I was to pay for the tractor. But it needed an overhaul, and that would cost about $250 to overhaul it. And I figured, I had two checks they bounced. Those two checks amounted to around $1000.00. So actually I could have gone to court, but I didn't do it. I took the tractor home and overhauled it so that it was in good shape. And I plowed quite a little bit of ground with it in different places. And a fellow by the name of Johnson that was the president of the bank in Corvallis had a prune orchard between Corvallis and Albany. And I disked that for him. And right at the end of Corvallis, as you come out west to go out towards Oak Creek, there is a school house. There was 4 acres right there that belonged to a guy, that later started a sawmill in Philomath. I plowed that 4 acres for him where that school house is now.

Bob Zybach: Was that Vincent? Vincent? Was that the guy that owned the 4 acres that started the mill? Or Brandes?

Charlie Olson: Well, Vincent seems to ring a bell. I believe it was.

Bob Zybach: Vincent had some land in Soap Creek, too, right across from the Cook's at one time. Maybe even bought the Cook's place. When Winney went bankrupt, was that maybe 1925, somewhere in there? [C. 0. Addendum: 19201

Charlie Olson: No, it was earlier than that. [1920]

Bob Zybach: So just a little after World War I. So the electric sawmill, Winney's mill, was in there right around World War I.

Charlie Olson: Well, we put that in . . . I don't want to quote a date on that because I haven't any way of telling you this for sure, and it could confuse with other dates. But I was working for Pettygrove and Doherty, and Olin, Lyle's brother, was setting ratchet for them, and they moved out, that is, when the Winney's, Olin, quit, and I was driving a team at that time. I quit them before. Because they did a dirty trick on me when I was shifted from this slab truck and in to this last deal, the rear end of that sawmill that just had George Witham to help, and we did it, and they didn't pay us a darn thing extra. And they didn't pay me full for that first month because I had been

Charlie Olson: working on the slab car half of that month, and that wasn't as high a pay. So I quit them and went to work for a fellow that had a small team. And he is, he had a bad leg, he couldn't follow them. And I worked for him, and when they quit, Olin Winney and Lyle Winney went out to Lewisburg and there was another Winney, Roy, he furnished some of the money, and they built that and I helped them when they built it. And right below us was a gravel crusher, it was electric. So they just extended that in and set up this mill. And when the timber got far enough away so that it was hard to keep the mill going, they moved the mill closer to the timber.

Bob Zybach: Did they have a name for the mill, did they call it the Winney Mill, or just the mill?

Charlie Olson: It was just the mill, just the sawmill.

Bob Zybach: When Pettygrove and Doherty were logging, was that the people that built the flume into corvallis?

Charlie Olson: No, a fellow that had the mill above Pettygrove and Doherty built the flume. His son was a surveyor, and he surveyed for that flume and then he went to Kings Valley and surveyed for Christiansons. They put in a flume there that was about 3 miles long. I worked for them later on.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember the name of the surveyor?

Charlie Olson: If I wasn't trying to remember it would come to me. He had a mill that was about 2 miles above Pettygrove and Doherty. Rosenkranz.

Bob Zybach: Rosenkranz?

Charlie Olson: Rosenkranz.

Bob Zybach: And that was a surveyor, and that's who built the original lumber flume to corvallis?

Charlie Olson: This old man, Rosenkranz, wasn't the surveyor, his son was the surveyor, and he surveyed for Christiansons over in Kings Valley. So they put in that flume.

Bob Zybach: Now, where that flume came down, do you know where the guard station is right at the mouth of Oak Creek, where the school property starts now? Where the GC built a house in there where the Fish and Wiidife house is now? Are you familiar with that? Where you go p Oak creek into the school forest now, there is a gate right there.

Charlie Olson: I haven't been in there for quite a while.

Bob Zybach: Okay, as you go into Oak Creek, and you go towards the west fork, up and over to Soap Creek, there is a homestead in there, kind of on a hill. Do you knDw who lived there?

Charlie Olson: [Yes. That was known as the Kline place. That house had six fireplaces in it. A man named Cockerham owned it and my uncle lived there and took care of his sheep.]

Bob Zybach: Okay, that might have been the 1920's even. Did the road that went past Sulphur Springs and came around the headwaters of Soap Creek and then down the west fork of Oak Creek, was that road in there?

Charlie Olson: That's not open. Just. . . that's a forestry road, but it's padlocked. And they had a fish hatchery up there, though, for a while. But for some reason, I don't know what it was, they had to take it out of there. I think it was lack of water. There wasn't enough water so that they could keep on going.

Bob Zybach: Do you know of anybody that lived in that area? Did anybody, was that area part of the area that was logged by Rosenkranz?

Charlie Olson: Rosenkranz logged up above it. He was the upper one. Pettygrove and Doherty logged the lower end of it. But up at the upper end, was Rosenkranz. But they ran out of timber.

Bob Zybach: And that was all yellow fir that they were logging?

Charlie Olson: They started in on the small stuff too.

Bob Zybach: You told me that there was a stand of hemlock up in there, of nice hemlock right along that one ridge.

Charlie Olson: There's two places where I know of hemlock, and one of those was between our old home and Airlie. And the other one that I knew of is right up here.

Bob Zybach: Okay, just close to Summit here.

Charlie Olson: Right up here. Starker's has got it now, It was a Hamer homestead. And they got in debt with the store, and just like everybody else in here that did the same thing, they left their home and gave it to Plunket, the home, for the store bill. Then Plunket sold it. And that's how I bought my first three 40's. Here $600 for three 40 acre patches. And it still had some of the old growth. And that's how I could run the school buses for Philomath. They didn't pay me half enough to continue to run those buses, but I felt a kind of a responsibility; I felt like I owed it really. I felt that I should go on with it, our kids went to school too, you know, so I continued. Then I got three more 40's for at about the same price, that joined them, so all of it joined