A.. Sulphur Springs Road

Part I.

January 29, 1990 Tour

Interview conducted January 29, 1990 by Bob Zybach and Angela Sondenaa, during a tour of Sulphur Springs and Soap Creek Valley area.

A. Sulphur Springs Road

Bob Zybach: We're with Charlie Olson at the intersection of Sulphur Springs Road and Lewisburg Road at the base of Lewisburg Saddle. Charlie do you want to tell me where the road that you remember going through here went?

Charlie Olson: The road was farther over [west], farther over than it is now. And it came across and came out in the road that goes down back of us [Highland Road] and goes past that school house. It came out beyond that school [Crescent Valley High School].

Bob Zybach: Do you remember the families that lived there at the school?

Charlie Olson: No.

Bob Zybach: That was Bessie Murphy's [Gragg] family. Now, when you say over farther you mean on the south side there. It came down the south side of where it is now?

Charlie Olson: Yeah, it left quite a ways back from here. There was a family by the name of Totens over there and then Vineyard, John Vineyard on this side, it took off between those two places and went easterly there and came back where there is a walnut orchard now and it was there years ago, but they haven't grown hardly at all.

Bob Zybach: Was the road as far over at that house?

Charlie Olson: The one we see?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Charlie Olson: Oh, yeah, it was quite a ways beyond that.

Bob Zybach: So it went beyond that house and went from Totens through Vineyard's and did it go up over Lewisburg Saddle by that route?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Will we intersect it up here in a little ways?

Charlie Olson: We'll be pretty close to it on top. When we go over here, but on the way down we're not in it.

Bob Zybach: Where would be the next good place to stop from here, would it be up on top?

Charlie Olson: On top, I think, is the best.

Bob Zybach: Do you know any houses or any large trees or daffodils or anything of that nature that might be worth stopping and looking at between here and there?

Charlie Olson: No.

Bob Zybach: Okay. And this road, do you remember what year that that was the old route? Do you remember what year it changed to this route?

Charlie Olson: I don't know what year they changed things.

Bob Zybach: Could that road have been driven by wagons?

Charlie Olson: That we went then?

Bob Zybach: Yes.

Charlie Olson: Only. Wagons only. There was a turnoff over yonder that went in to another area that . . . I don't remember the different people that owned that in there. There's quite a few names in there that I'm not familiar with any more, but quite a ways over there, there was a gate and another road that went on in to quite an area.

Bob Zybach: To the Oak Creek area, that far over?

Charlie Olson: It didn't go as far as Oak Creek.

Bob Zybach: When you say only wagons could get through, this would be maybe 1900 or 1905, 1910?

Charlie Olson: Wagons would go through, yes, but it was pasture, a whole lot of it was pasture and Sol King's pasture. A lot of that road over there went through Sol King's pasture and there would be let downs of different types of gateways to go through, but wagons was it of course, there was no automobiles yet.

Bob Zybach: What's a let down?

Charlie Olson: A wire fence with a pole holding the whole together, you know, the different wires, you unhook the loop around the top and you take this whole thing and walk around with it or else you just let it down and drive over it.

Bob Zybach: Was that an actual road or a right of way?

Charlie Olson: That was neither one, and you could go through there and you could go any place really just so you could get through, but there was a let down or some way of getting in from one pasture to another. He had it divided . . . Sol King owned a whole lot of land in here, and he had it fenced off in different blocks so that he could shut the cattle out of one and in another.

Bob Zybach: But he didn't care if people went through his pasture. Could he have stopped people if he wanted to?

Charlie Olson: I don't think so.

Bob Zybach: So they had some kin4 of right of way?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Was Sol King still alive when you were a kid?

Charlie Olson: I don't know for sure, when I was little he probably was, but he had a daughter and there's some cabins in Corvallis, I think there's probably eight or nine of them they're right together and they're just alike and this daughter owned all of those cabins and when I got big enough that I could drive around, you know, why it was just common knowledge that she owned all those cabins. I think she was . . . I don't think she was married. I never saw her. I think she was just a single woman.

Bob Zybach: I have just one more question on that walnut orchard there, did that have a name to it, or just the walnut orchard?

Charlie Olson: I don't know who owned it. It didn't have any name. But there's walnut. . . there's little walnut trees there yet that ain't much bigger than this. [Shows 4fl6It diameter circle with hands.]

Bob Zybach: Can you think of anything else in this area that. . . how did the vegetation look here, were these hill sides open, can you recall?

Charlie Olson: Oh, yeah. That whole area on the south side here, pert near everything was bare on the south side here. All of these hills in the eariy days were bare. When there was anything at all, it would be oak and then these trees came in and took over and choked the oak out. These trees that are here. You're in the forestry department?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Charlie Olson: Maybe you can answer some of these questions then. Where did they come from we called them bastard fir when they came in and that wasn't really a beautiful name so it changed to Douglas fir.

Bob Zybach: Oh, bastard fir, I think, is woiffir. That's isolated with heavy limbs, it meant there was just a few of them. That's what I've heard so maybe it's changed.

Charlie Olson: They were all from the same area it seemed like when they first came in here they took over. We never knew what . . . where they came from, but we called them

Charlie Olson: bastard fir until some where around 19 . . . oh, maybe 1918 or sometime along in there. Why, there were more biblical names, called them Douglas fir.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember when they started calling them old growth for the older trees?

Charlie Olson: That's . . . that probably didn't start . . the old growth probably didn't start too early, because we called them yellow fir. And that's what they were. They were yellow fir. And my father could bore a hole in one and . . . straight in, and then another one a little higher and then he could make some coals out of oak and put them in one of those holes and with a blower fan them and they would start to burn in there and they'd burn that tree down.

Bob Zybach: That's how they removed the trees?

Charlie Olson: Well, no, no, they . . . when they started to really remove the trees was when the sawmills came in. And the railroads would take nothing but that yellow fir. And if there was a round edge . . . just a little bit, just on the sap side, a little round edge on any of one of them they'd throw them out. I worked for Christiansons at the time when they would load out one load after another on that score that they had down there.

Bob Zybach: Where was the Christiansons' fir at?

Charlie Olson: Huh?

Bob Zybach: Where was the christiansons' fir at. . . where you were working?

Charlie Olson: They . . . little creek, I think, they named it Christiansons after a while. I don't think it was named before. But they had their mill about two miles up on the highway, or three. Up on the highway in Kings Valley, right up this creek and then later on when I started to run school buses in there, why we'd go up that road and then go across over past a gravel . . . manufacturing outfit and they were . . . they called themselves Tn-County Gravel Company.

Bob Zybach: Would that be in the 1930's?

Charlie Olson: That was earlier, they were in there earlier than that. And that would come out on Maxfield Creek and then go back down past the church and then to the school house on Maxfield Creek.

Bob Zybach: On this area here, do you remember when the bastard fir started coming in?

Charlie Olson: No. Soap Creek over there is where I noticed it.

Bob Zybach: Okay, we'll talk about it there then. These hills were all bare, can you remember what kind of vegetation was on the hills before the oak?

Charlie Olson: Grass.

Bob Zybach: Native or would people plant grass?

Charlie Olson: I don't think it was ever planted. I don't know how it got here but there was oodles and oodles of grass.

Bob Zybach: Good grass?

Charlie Olson: Good, yeah. Good pasture for cattle. And it would grow tall because it wasn't pastured down.

Bob Zybach: So this would be cattle pasturage, would people run sheep or horses?

Charlie Olson: Sheep, yeah.

Bob Zybach: Or horses?

Charlie Olson: Not very much. Horses, they had enough horses for their own use just for what ever they needed them for. But there was no . . . that I know of, there was no place where they raised horses for sale or anything like that.

Bob Zybach: These hills here, what kinds of wildlife would come in?

Charlie Olson: Gray diggers.

Bob Zybach: Gray diggers. Would there be very many deer in those days?

Charlie Olson: Quite a lot of deer.

Bob Zybach: More than now?

Charlie Olson: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. My mother would go out and feed the chickens and she'd called the chickens and the deer would come and eat up the wheat.

Bob Zybach: On the south facing hills at this point though, too, would the deer be in this area?

Charlie Olson: Well, they were all over.

Bob Zybach: How about bear?

Charlie Olson: Not too many. Not too many bear, there were a few panther.

Bob Zybach: What, cougar?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: How about bobcats?

Charlie Olson: A few.

Bob Zybach: Now you called them panther.

Charlie Olson: Well, there's a lot of different names for the same animal.

Bob Zybach: But the common name was panther, would people say panther?

Charlie Olson: That's what we called them.

Bob Zybach: How about beaver?

Charlie Olson: There wasn't too many beaver until later. The beavers came in quite a lot later.

Bob Zybach: So when you were young, can you recall any beaver?

Charlie Olson: Undoubtably there were some but there wasn't many enough to that I noticed them. On Soap Creek they didn't build any dams at the time when I was living up there.

Bob Zybach: Can you ever recall seeing a boomer in this area?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember the location?

Charlie Olson: Boomer?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Charlie Olson: Where I live now. [Summit, Lincoln County, Oregon]

Bob Zybach: Not where you live now, this area. Where you live now, there's colonies of them.

Charlie Olson: I didn't know of any of them earlier. I had my first contact with boomers was when I moved to Summit.

Bob Zybach: But you don't recall any in this area?

Charlie Olson: No.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Can you recall anything else about these south hills here, about the types of vegetation that was on it, or the type of animals that were pastured here, or maybe a type of wildlfe that we haven't mentioned. . . coyotes?

Charlie Olson: There was coyotes. There were coyotes.

Bob Zybach: How about wolves?

Charlie Olson: There was only one wolf that I know of. And that was about 19 . . . I'll have to figure a little bit. When I was aware of it, I didn't know what it was and my uncle came over here about 1910. And I had to go and talk to him one evening coming from school and my sister went on and we went around Bakers Mountain at the time and we went over Bakers Mountain and we went around it the other way. We had three different ways of going to school. And that particular night, why she went home around Bakers Mountain on the north side, or went to the right of it. And

Charlie Olson: when she came to where there was what we called a white house with a big barn, there was something walked out in front of her and it . . . the hair stood up on its neck and it showed its teeth and she didn't crowd it. She just stood still for a while and then it took off. And I had gone over that night, I had gone over to talk to my uncle, to tell him something, he was working for a neighbor and I had my little twenty-two pistol. I wasn't with her. And when I came along he [the wolf] wasn't there. And that was about . . . that same year but quite a little while later, I was alone and I was on the road coming toward the school house and about a mile from the school house something went across the road and it wasn't a coyote. And I went over and talked to Alvie Govier and he had hounds. And he went up there and turned his hounds loose. And they took it. And they never came back. He lost them. So after awhile there was some people named Staits over toward

Bob Zybach: Airlie.

Charlie Olson: Airlie, yeah. And they had some hounds and they got Out of that thing later and they didn't come back. I was working in the [Winney} mill out at Mountain View [Winney's] and there was a fellow that had been up on Soap Creek when I hadn't been there. I'd been gone from there for quite a little while. I can't think of his name now, but he told me that they finally got a timber wolf. He called it a timber wolf. And that apparently was what had killed these dogs.

Bob Zybach: You think it was just a single wolf, not a pack or anything?

Charlie Olson: No, it was just a single wolf. How they only got the one.

Bob Zybach: That's the only one you've heard of in this area?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Did you ever hear of any white tailed deer in this area?

Charlie Olson: White tail?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Charlie Olson: Well, you mean mule deer.

Bob Zybach: No. They had white tail in the 1820's, I just wondered if there were any left by 1900.

Charlie Olson: We had two different types of deer here and the white tailed deer is just the most common one, but there was another one that came in and got mixed with these and right now I can't think of what they call that. But it was a heavier deer, shorter

Charlie Olson: legged deer, they never had anything but a spike. They had nothing but a spike, no matter how old they got.

Bob Zybach: Where did they come from?

Charlie Olson: Well, I can't tell you that. I don't know.

Bob Zybach: And then it just inner bred with these deer here? Did they call them something like a "bench leg" or anything like that?

Charlie Olson: That's it. That's it, "bench leg." That's what it is. Yeah.

Bob Zybach: So they had bench legs in here?

Charlie Olson: Yeah, they did. They had bench legs here but they were mixed with the others and I shot several of them. I hunted quite a little bit when I was a kid, and I shot several of them. And we were up on the Grass Mountain over in Alsea [River], my wife's father and I and Charlie Rauls. Charlie Rauls had a little shop at that Volvo people are in today in Corvallis. His mother owned that building and he was with me. And it was just about like it is now only thicker, fog, thicker than this and he was down before and we were out in the open but there was bunches of trees in clumps and in rows, different places you know. And I spotted a pretty big deer but I couldn't tell what it was. The fog was too thick and it was only about thirty-five yards from me. And I didn't know where Charlie Rauls was by that time. So I blew my hands a little and then he whistled and he was farther back so I knew he wasn't where he would get hit. And when the fog lifted just a little bit so I could see the outline of this deer again. He was still there. And I shot him. He just went down. I have a little .32- .20 and that's the only thing I use for deer.

Bob Zybach: Still?

Charlie Olson: Still.

Bob Zybach: When did you shoot your last deer?

Charlie Olson: Huh?

Bob Zybach: When did you shoot your last deer?

Charlie Olson: I stopped shooting them about twenty years ago, but the last one that I shot was about 8 months ago or six months ago. I can't see with my right eye. I had a little forty a little .44 magnum automatic. And stock is quite short and I figured that if I hold that under my shoulder and then grip that grip real tight and hold the other forearm,