P.. The Gardner Place

P. The Gardner Place

Neil Vanderburg: Top of this hill here.

Bob Zybach: Yeah, we're right by Gardner's right here.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Okay.

Neil Vanderburg: They had to come in here after they made this cut, because when they made the cut they left Gardner's high and dry! Like I told the kids, there was no trees in here, this was all grass.

Bob Zybach: There's that oak tree right there.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. But you don't count oak trees on a farm. But there was none of this fir, and all of this fir was logged off.

Bob Zybach: Looks like a lot of work.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: So, all this up here was logged of, and then from...

Neil Vanderburg: This was all grass here except for a few spots, you know an oak tree here and there. This was grass like that over there is.

Bob Zybach: Now, the road from the second mill, you said they had to come in from down here?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, there's a road went in just somewhere in here, right straight in. And then I think it's probably a little further here, but not,very far from here. Of course, see all these cuts have been put in here since this was done so you can turn off anyplace. But I would guess that the road went off right about there. And went back in there and then might have been that one.

Bob Zybach: Okay.

Neil Vanderburg: I could tell more from coming the other way. I doubt if it was that far north. The road came off to Coote's Mill right at the top of the hill there by Sheppards, and came back paralleling this road, for half a mile or so, and then you went down.

Bob Zybach: Okay. How far over from this road do you think it was parallel, the old road?

Neil Vanderburg: The mill was probably less than half a mile off of this road. See, that was all just bare grass, there.

Bob Zybach: So, was the whole area from Sheppard's to Coote's second mill bare grass pretty much?

Neil Vanderburg: No, this on this side was trees and this was grass. We had trees starting in about here. Sheppards logged his place, or we cut wood off of his place, my dad and I Cut wood off of his place. But the old Coote's Mill road would have gone in here. It would have gone back that way.

Bob Zybach: Then all the way back to the mill there?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: But then it would have been going through the timber then.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. But you see might be right there. I bet that's the road right there. Because this road was graveled up to the top of the hill.

Bob Zybach: This road here was?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. And so Coote could go in that road, and get to his mill. Sheppard lived right here at the bottom of the hill, and he had a house fairly close to the road here. His house isn't there anymore. It was real funny, I was hunting in here, that time I found Donald. This gets pretty steep back up in there. Goes back up in here further. Dobrinins lived just about where this spot here is.

Bob Zybach: Did they live right along the edge of the road here then?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, they had a barn and they had some of prettiest Indian paint horses you ever

Neil Vanderburg: saw. Pintos. But they would have lived right in here somewhere.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Do you recall anybody living on the other side of the road over there?

Neil Vanderburg: No, you asked me that the other day. And I don't remember anything. Anyway, there was a logging road went up this way, when Don and I met each other.

Bob Zybach: That' d be this road right here.

Neil Vanderburg: I think so. Anyway, I had a four-wheeled drive and a guy got a deer right up on top there. Well there was a cat road, a landing up there and then a cat road went back up on top. This guy shot a deer right up there on top. He was going down to get some help get that deer down. And I said, "Well I've got a four-wheeled drive, I could probably go up and get it." And, "Oh, you couldn't possibly get up there with a four- wheeled drive." So anyway I went on up the road, got up the landing, went up the cat road, got up on top, parked right by his deer and went hunting. He came back to get his deer and my pickup was parked about 10 feet from it. He didn't know where four-wheeled drives would go!

Bob Zybach: Did you have any name for that road going up in there, or for that ridge or anything back up there?

Neil Vanderburg: No, far as I know that road was put in after the college owned it. We were hunting out there on permits from the college. But they weren't stopping four-wheeled drives from going in there then, now they do.

Bob Zybach: Let's see, we're on 99 next to, what's the name of that.

Neil Vanderburg: South, or north gate, Mary's River Lumber Company.

Bob Zybach: Okay. And your question was, whether we're getting all disoriented today because of the same reason Jim Hanish did. All those field and meadows and marshes have all grown up into trees, and I was just wondering which is the more pleasing to you, which you think is the better environment?

Neil Vanderburg: I thought it was a very pretty setting for those meadows up there, with the trees surrounding them, was a very beautiful setting. Also, the moss under the trees and ladyslippers and stuff were very beautiful. But I'm quite adaptable, I like down in the desert, I like, I think mostly my main interest is farms. I enjoy seeing what farmers are raising and what they're doing. So basically I can't necessarily say that I like one better than the other. But I like to go from one to the other.

Bob Zybach: Do you see those trees up there? Is this kind of like tree fanning, type of a fanning?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, I'm seeing quite a bit of moss growing under them, which is a good place for such things as ladyslippers and some of these other flowers that grow in that kind of environment. And that's all coming back in the area that was logged off when I was younger. And so I'm not seeing too much destruction by logging, myself. I mean, I realize that a person 18 years old thinks that 50 years down the road is forever, but when you get up there and look back you have a different view of it. And I'm seeing that it's pretty nice up there again where all that area has been logged off once in my lifetime, some of it twice in my lifetime.

Bob Zybach: So you think the management with the mills and the old farms and everything else, overall it's been pretty reasonable?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, I think so. I think it was kind of nice that farmers could homestead up in the timber like that. And clear out a spot. But I think most of that's probably in the past now, we have modem transportation, electricity, and that sort of thing, and I don't think there's very many people would be willing to do without. You know, I mean, back there when the pioneers were here well if they wanted to get away from

Neil Vanderburg: everybody they could and get back up there and make a living. But that's something I don't think we can ever see again. In the first place, like I say, it's not the high cost of living, it's the cost of high living in lots of things, and we're kind of used to the high living. We wouldn't be willing to go back to driving a buggy up a hill like that and doing all the work it takes to eek Out your living out of it and go without a lot of things and so forth. So I think it's some of these old homesteads are not ever gonna be able to happen again, and I don't think anybody'd want to do it.

Bob Zybach: Do you think it'd be worth it, or do you think it'd be worth it for the forest in particular, the Research Forest, to tiy to recreate one or two of those old homesteads to show people what it was like in those days? Keep some of those fields open? Or keep some of those houses built up?

Neil Vanderburg: I don't think you'd find anybody to live in them.

Bob Zybach: Well, how about as a demonstration, kind of like they do with some of these historical recreations on old forts or something. Do you think a farmer thing like that, or do you think that would be too expensive?

Neil Vanderburg: I don't think he could make his living anymore because, let's face it, it was a pretty meager living when we were young. And we didn't have any electricity bill, no telephone bill, we bought a little gas we went to town once every two weeks. Our cost of living wasn't all that much. We had milk, we separated the milk and kept the skim milk for ourselves and sold the cream. And now there isn't any demand for cream because they found out now it's got cholesterol in it. So you wouldn't have anything to sell, really, and you can't sell milk to a creamery or anything, there's no demand for it, because you've gotta be grade A. So you get up there, what would you have to sell. I mean, basically, you might be able to get some beef out, but how would you get them out? Milk was the thing that most of us raised 50 years ago, on the farms, to get the milk check, and chickens, sell eggs, and that's where we got our money from. Well, our milk check is a thing of the past, the competition with eggs where they have these egg farms that produce thousands of eggs, your little dozen hens wouldn't make you much money. You couldn't pay for the feed. Mass production, that's what you have to have now.

Bob Zybach: What do you think about, f the School Forest has a loss, or that type of situation to make money was to charge people admission, the type of thing where it was kept as a living museum. That type of concept. Do you think it would be educational for kids, or worth it for older people to go back to old fields and subsistence farms off in the hills, one or two like that, just for educational value?

Neil Vanderburg: I think it would be interesting. If you had something like that and made them walk up there, like I had to. You know, rather than to have virtually a freeway going right past the front door.

Bob Zybach: Hike into it like they do now at a wilderness area, but hike up to an old farm the way they used to have to?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. A mile or two off the road and let them hike through the trees and enjoy the timber the way it is. You've got timber up there that you could do that with. You know. And, that would be a possibility, but it would be quite a chore to clear off and make something like that. Big as the trees are there now.

Bob Zybach: So, you think that that might be a reasonable attraction, but not a. .

Neil Vanderburg: I don't know how many people you'd get to go up there. It would take quite a few people.

Bob Zybach: How about people in the future, one or two generations from now. Maybe only five or ten people a year, but that want to report back to other people, or recreate that type of environment. Would it be worth it for that?

Neil Vanderburg: Well economically it wouldn't. It might be for the benefit that the people would get out of it. But I don't think you could ever make it pay financially. Hey, your boy's up there. [Returning to NW 15th street in Corvallis. Notices Paul Gorow and Alistar Zybach working on roof] He's been waiting for you to come home for a long time, he didn't want to work that late. He's got two of them up there. One of the boys own a car?

Bob Zybach: Yeah, one's got that [Fordj Mustang.

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