T.. Coote—Cornutt Sawmill #1

Neil Vanderburg: up the hill here from the Berry Creek side, he ran into a spring about half way up, and it was always a pothole and they could never do anything about it, and they've still got that spring there; they've still got the pothole I've noticed since we've been working on this deal!

Bob Zybach: Still now, huh?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, it's still there.

Bob Zybach: Did that spring have a name or anything?

Neil Vanderburg: No, no. It just. . . it wasn't a spring until they dug it out with the bulldozer. Well they dug it out and it's been leaking ever since.

Bob Zybach: Did they just have the one bulldozer?

Neil Vanderburg: As far as I know. It think there was just one.

Bob Zybach: And then the county built that road through there?

Neil Vanderburg: The county, yeah, Benton County built the road.

Bob Zybach: But then, this road that we're sitting on here, the one that goes to the Chaffin place, this was here from.

Neil Vanderburg: Well, Bill Coote probably developed this road, and when it got past his other road then it was just a buggy trail.

Bob Zybach: Where did they haul the logs down to this mill? Did they haul down to this road here?

Neil Vanderburg: I have no idea. This mill, of course, was closed before I came here, and apparently there wasn't any log pond here. The reason why I know is I've talked to Clifford Cornutt on the phone since we've been working on this. I was curious and I asked him. He says no there was no pond here. And I didn't remember any.

T. Coote—Cornutt Sawmill #1

Bob Zybach: We've traveled south from the second Coote's mill site, and we've passed the first intersection, the one coming in from the gate on Tampico, and we're right at a little hill here on the east, maybe a quarter mile or half a mile from the second mill site, and we're looking west here.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. That's where that mill was, was a quarter to a half a mile up the creek, the way I remember it. And then there should be a real steep mountain on the other side that we spoke about that Mr. Gardner's relation got killed trying to ride a log down the hill.

Bob Zybach: So that hill there to our west, somewhere down there they just. . . they had a log slide.

Neil Vanderburg: Log slide from up on top of the hill, because the hill was too steep to bring the logs down with horses on because the logs catch up to the horses, so they just turned them loose up there and slid them down into the bottom here. Now I thought I remembered that there was a mill pond that they slid into, but Clifford Cornutt can't remember it. But Clifford Cornutt, you have to realize, was only in 3rd grade when he left this country. So he may not remember as good as he might.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember a mill pond for sure, or is it just one of those things you're not sure?

Neil Vanderburg: Just one of those things that I think I remember and he doesn't.

Bob Zybach: On the log slide, then that would have been just right over mud, or right over dirt?

Neil Vanderburg: They actually laid some logs down and the logs slid in the logs. The logs guided them down, kept them lengthways so they didn't turn crossways.

Bob Zybach: So it was just log guided, and then it was dirt. They didn't float in water or anything?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, 1 remembered that they slid into a mill pond here at the bottom. Otherwise, I don't know how in the world you could get them into the mill, because you sure wouldn't want to be down there with a team of horses. You sure wouldn't want to get in there with a team of horses and pull those logs into a mill when they were sliding logs down at you! And to me a mill pond would be the only way to float the logs away from the stuff that was coming down the hill.

Bob Zybach: Could they have just yarded to a spot on top of the hill and then moved them down, ran them down the trough there for a while, and then stopped, and then yarded them out of there by horse?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, that's kind of what Clifford Cornutt said, but I just, seems like I remember a pond slide there.

Bob Zybach: That would have been right where . . the hill had to be steep, and then Savage Creek was

Bob Zybach: down along the base of it, and that would be the site of the first Coote's mill.

Neil Vanderburg: That's the site of the first Coote/Cornutt mill.

Bob Zybach: Can you recall any old buildings or anything from that mill when you were a kid?

Neil Vanderburg: There was nothing there except that log slide when I was there.

Bob Zybach: And maybe a pond.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. The remains of a pond. But that mill had probably been closed five, or six, seven years by the time I got here, and all the timbers and everything . . . if Bill Coote didn't take all the timbers, well probably the farmers did. So there was virtually nothing there except kind of what we're finding, an old mill site, you know.

Bob Zybach: Vine maple.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Did this area in through here, had this all been logged off by that time, then?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. I'm sure it had. We didn't go up very far before we were in virgin timber above that mill. I think they logged more off over here, to what I'm thinking is north, when they had that mill in here.

Bob Zybach: Did it go up and their logging kind of butt into Bennett Brothers logging?

Neil Vanderburg: Well of course Bennett Brothers was a lot later and in my mind the Bennett Brothers was quite a bit west of where we are here. You know, when you're talking about logging with horses, a half a mile is a long ways!

Bob Zybach: And Bennetts is maybe two or three miles west of here, so their logging could have been totally separate.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, I'm sure it was.

Bob Zybach: Okay, and then this road here, the Chaffin Road, that came in off of where we were just sitting, it kind of goes up the ridge of that hill there? We're not on it anymore.

Neil Vanderburg: No, it went up the creek for quite a ways and then it veered off and went up on top of the ridge right there just below Chaffin's house.

Bob Zybach: Okay. So it came from his house fairly quickly and came down to this creek. In pretty close order then.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: So where we were walking back there in that old road bed may have been the old Chaffin road.

Neil Vanderburg: It could have very well been. But like I say, the Chaffin road was not a developed road, it was a buggy road.

Bob Zybach: Okay. And then. . . so where we've been driving the truck along we haven't actually

Bob Zybach: probably been on it?

Neil Vanderburg: No, no, I'm sure it wasn't this far from the creek.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Can you remember anything else about that first mill site? Well, we haven't got it on tape, the story of how Gardner died.

Neil Vanderburg: Well, all I know is what the Cornutts told me, was that at quitting time one night, well I didn't know until I talked to Clifford who it was, but I'd heard that somebody got killed on that slide where they slid the logs down. What Clifford tells me is that they cut a log loose up there at quitting time and this Gardner he decided, "Well, I'm not going to climb down that hill," and he stepped up on the log with his caulk boots on and the log rolled and killed him.

Bob Zybach: Now, was that Gardner, was it his brother or his son that had the place up here?

Neil Vanderburg: Clifford didn't know. I asked him and he said it was a relative that was living with the Gardners up there. But probably, maybe living in the other house. There were two houses up there.

Bob Zybach: Did the Gardners have both houses?

Neil Vanderburg: No, the Gardners ended up with both of them. Actually, there was some preachers. We always called them Two by Twos, I don't know what their religion was, but they believed that they were sent out, like Jesus sent out the disciples, two by two, and they were supposed to go out and knock on a door and ask if they could stay there. And they were supposed to be supported by the people and they were . . . if the people turned them down they were supposed to shake dirt off their feet and leave, and in the scriptures they were more or less condemned if they didn't welcome the disciples, and that's where this group started. Anyway, they lived in the Gardner's second house when I was here. For two or three months.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember the name of the Two by Twos?

Neil Vanderburg: That's all we ever called them, was Two by Twos. But they.

Bob Zybach: And there was two of them?

Neil Vanderburg: There was two guys. There was a Mr. Plum and a Mr. Larson.

Bob Zybach: Okay, Mr. Plum and Mr. Larson were the Two by Twos.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: And they only lived here for three or four months?

Neil Vanderburg: Three or four months. And they had a baptismal service down here and Mabel Tandy was one of them that was baptized. And also Edith Tandy was baptized at that time by these Two by Twos, and then after we moved over to Oak Creek, well one day somebody knocked on the door and here was Mr. Plum and Mr. Larson. They were starting to have meetings in the school house up there on Oak Creek. We didn't go the second time.

Bob Zybach: Did you have them come in and stay?

Neil Vanderburg: No, no, they shook the dust off their feet at our house, because we felt that they were not scriptural. We . . . all of our family has pretty well studied the Bible and they were, as far as we were concerned, a cult. There's quite a bunch of those Two by Twos, I think that's the name they go by, up in Kings Valley today.

Bob Zybach: Still?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. The Burbanks. That's their religion.

Bob Zybach: Were they the ones that invited Mr. Plum and Mr. Larson here, or did they get baptized at that time?

Neil Vanderburg: No, the Burbanks, I don't know whether they were later or earlier or what. But I met

Neil Vanderburg: a couple of Burbank boys at the Brand-S Plywood mill, they worked at the plywood mill for a number of years, and they lived over in Kings Valley, and of course that's quite a ways from here. So I didn't know the Burbanks at that time. However, one of the Burbanks was doing the logging for Bill Coote, I found from Donald Dickey, but there's a whole raft of them over there in Kings Valley. And I hunted with the B urbanks.

Bob Zybach: Did you say a Burbank owned Bamm Hardware over there in Philomath?

Neil Vanderburg: That's what I was told. No, a Bennett.

Bob Zybach: Oh, from the Bennett Brothers.

Neil Vanderburg: No, I don't know whether it was from Bennett Brothers or not, but that's what I wanted to find out.

Bob Zybach: I see, just a Bennett owned it, and you wanted to find out if he was related.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. Somebody, I don't know whether it was Donald Dickey, or somebody told me that they thought that it was the same Uibe. But apparently they moved to eastern Oregon, now.

Bob Zybach: So those Two by Twos only lived here for just a few months.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, they were just missionaries. They would preach in an area and then they'd go on. It's quite interesting, just a little side line, when we moved up here my sister was going with a guy by the name of Harold Jones, down in Los Angeles. And when we moved up here the school bus driver lived at our house, Al Fennell, and he was going to OSU. He lived at 9ur place and drove the school bus. So anyway, one day a guy came and knocked on the door and it turned out that his name was Harold Jones and he was a friend of Al Fennell's. And what had happened was that my sister wrote a letter to her friend Harold Jones in Los Angeles, and she put our address on it, Monmouth Route 2, and the mailman knew this Harold Jones and so they sent it him. So he thought he was invited over to our house because my sister had written and told him that he was foolish for coming up here because she wasn't interested and all that sort of thing. But at the end he said she was a glutton for punishment, if he came up. And then she says, "P.S. I got a haircut." Well, this Jones that didn't even know her got the letter. So he went upstairs with Al Fennell and showed him the letter and Al got a big kick out of it and came down on the landing and read the letter to my sister. She about died. Anyway, so we invited this Harold Jones to stay awhile, as long as he slept with Al, and so anyway this Harold Jones from California came so we had two Harold Joneses with us for a while! But anyway, what brought the subject up was later when I was hunting with the Burbanks, I found out that this Harold Jones had married one of the Burbank girls. And so I met him again after about 40 years.

Bob Zybach: Had he become a Two by Two?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, his wife was. I don't know whether he was or not.

Bob Zybach: We talked about the Mennonites before. And the Two by Twos. But wasn't there a local man that went out preaching at times, too?

Neil Vanderburg: Not that I know of. The American Sunday School Union, most of the time I was here, had a Sunday School in Berry Creek School. But it was, for the most part, it was a case . . . now Donald Dickey's mother was my Sunday School teacher. And it was just a local deal, my mother taught, and my dad taught, you know. And it was mostly kids with adults teaching, was basically what it was. And every quarter or so we would have a missionary from American Sunday School Union, would preach a sermon and see how we were doing, and so forth. That was all the religion actually

Neil Vanderburg: that I know of in this area. We went to Airlie once in a while, there was an Evangelical church in Airlie. The Phelps preached there. And I got quite a bit of my Christian foundation from Mrs. Phelps. She led a class on Acts that was very informative to me, which of course is how the church started after Jesus died and so forth. And Saul meeting the Lord on the Jericho Road, and so forth, and so I got quite a bit of foundation from her. She was a one-legged woman. She was diabetic and they had cut her leg off clear to the hip.

Bob Zybach: When you say "Evangelical," what do you mean by that?

Neil Vanderburg: That was the name of the church, the denomination.

Bob Zybach: Did they have anything unusual? They were like Presbyterian, or Baptist or just.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, probably closer to Presbyterian than what we have normally been. They believed in sprinkling, which we don't, and that sort of thing.

Bob Zybach: Sprinkling as opposed to full submersion [Baptism]?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: How about the Two by Twos?

Neil Vanderburg: They immersed.

Bob Zybach: Did they use Berry Creek?

Neil Vanderburg: They gave their baptism right there in our old swimming hole on our place in Berry Creek.

Bob Zybach: And that's what, 100 feet down from the bridge or so, somewhere in that area?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, more like 300 feet.

Bob Zybach: Back of those blackberries.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, yeah. You see the creek turns and then goes, went under Tandy's bridge and then came out into our place.

Bob Zybach: Did anybody from your family get baptized there?

Neil Vanderburg: No. Not at that place.

Bob Zybach: Just let them use the swimming hole.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. And actually we let them use our house for a dressing room, changing room and so forth. I remember my mother saying that there was a woman that came to the baptismal service, and she was from the head office or something, and she must have drank 10 cups of coffee in an hour and my mother says, you know a lot of Christians talk about people that smoke, and she says, "All that coffee that woman drinks would be much worse for her than a little smoke!" You know, once in a while there's something when you're small or younger that just sticks with you and that always stuck with me. That woman drinking so much coffee, and my mother thought, "Boy that's terrible!"

Bob Zybach: And the woman from the Two by Two office and Mr. Plum and Mr. Larson, they'd lead the baptism?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Was there anything unusual about the preachings they gave or anything?

Neil Vanderburg: I think most of it was fairly fundamental except for their. . . I don't find anyplace in the scriptures that says we're supposed to carry on what the disciples did, you know.

Bob Zybach: I see. So they took it pretty literally that they had to go out and do like the disciples did.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. There's a lot of religions that carry on. Like foot washing is fine, but we don't feel that it's necessary. Jesus washed the disciples' feet. But basically I think that's probably as much as I know about them. I sat and listened to their sermon, but there was nothing that was that. . . basically, in our religion, for the most part, unless it's in

Neil Vanderburg: the scriptures twice we don't feel that it's something that we have to carry on.

Bob Zybach: But if it's in there a couple of times then you do.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, then quite often. See, it only mentions that Jesus washed the disciples' feet once, and basically what it's saying is that humility, it's a lesson in humility, not in washing feet.

Bob Zybach: But the Two by Twos, they took all that.

Neil Vanderburg: They took all that stuff.

Bob Zybach: Did they have frimilies?

Neil Vanderburg: No.

Bob Zybach: Did you ever know what happened to them after you moved to Oak Creek?

Neil Vanderburg: I have no idea. No, see, they were just like the disciples, no wives or anything. They were just two men traveling around.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember anything about them personally, what they looked, or.

Neil Vanderburg: Mr. Plum was short and fat and, who did I say the other one was?

Bob Zybach: Mr. Larson?

Neil Vanderburg: No, Mr. Larson was the short fat one and Mr. Plum was the tall skinny one.

Bob Zybach: Did they dress all in black or anything, or just dress normal?

Neil Vanderburg: No, but I think they did wear stovepipe hats, if I'm not mistaken. But that may have just been their own choice, not necessarily a uniform of the religion.

Bob Zybach: Okay, we're looking.

Neil Vanderburg: It's possible we've got a pretty good hill right back this way.

Bob Zybach: I think we do, 1 think there's a steep hill right through there. And it looks like these berms that are in here just don't look natural, do they?

Neil Vanderburg: Not really. There is one thing you have to realize, this Savage Creek gets pretty savage. When we had a lot of rain right up . . . it's a short creek, and when it rains, it drains fast. And so these creeks get, Berry Creek and this can get pretty wild. And so you may be looking at, like that wash across there, you couldn't have crossed that in the high water. So that could be causing some of our unnatural landscapes here. Did you want to walk over and see if you can find that steep hill? I can probably get across the creek.

Bob Zybach: Okay.

Bob Zybach: Okay, 1 just took a couple pictures of the berms down there. We're just upstream along Savage Creek from the berm, and right at the base of a steep hilt here.

Neil Vanderburg: And that's probably the hill that they slid the logs down. I called it a flume. I thought they actually had water running down between the logs and kind of halfway floated them down. And I had a picture of them landing in the pond when they got to the bottom. And where were standing here now, they could come off that hill and actually slow down before they hit the pond, and it's possible maybe we can find some evidence of where the logs might have slid on in, but more than likely that log chute would have kept them from making a trail.

Bob Zybach: We've got a trail right where we're sitting here. And a high point up above us here. And this would be the headwaters of the pond. We can see some settling right there. It looks to me that there's some possibility we're right in the chute.

Neil Vanderburg: And we've got a nice level spot over on the other side for a sawmill. I have an idea that if we would climb this hill that we could find evidence of logging that they did

Neil Vanderburg: up on top. I know when I climbed this. . . I just climbed this hill once. And I was about, oh, 13 and I know I got Out of breath going up that hill. So it was a pretty steep hill, but I think possibly we've got a hill here that would qualify for that.

Bob Zybach: So this might be the first site here?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. This is about the distance I remembered it. From the second mill site. Or from the school.

Bob Zybach: And you say you came up a road on the east side.

Neil Vanderburg: Came up a road on the east side, or I may be turned a little bit, I want to call it the south side. Southeast, I guess. But the road hung fairly close to the creek but not on the creek. And that was the road that went on up to Chaffins. From this point on it was just the Chaffin road.

Bob Zybach: Okay, but we can say it's on the Smith Peak side. And then the Chaffin road went up the Smith Peak side and hadn't crossed over this creek yet.

Neil Vanderburg: I don't remember that it ever did. I guess it must have, huh?

Bob Zybach: Maybe it went up above the headwaters and followed the ridge. It might not have.

Neil Vanderburg: Might be. See we went on . . . I think the creek stayed on the righthand side of us. And then we went up on the ridge and I think we went on the ridge maybe a half a mile, something like that. To get to the Chaffin place.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Now, over there on that side where you said would be a good place for a mill, it looks like there's some evidence of a depression right through there, like maybe

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, possibly where a log slip was going back up this way.

Bob Zybach: Would they have hauled them out of the pond by horse?

Neil Vanderburg: No, they would have a winch run by the steam engine.

Bob Zybach: If that berm were there, we're on a fiat here, if that berm had been built out where we thought, then this would be about the extent of the pond right through here.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. Yeah. The mills quite often sat beside the pond, but more likely below the pond. You dumped your logs up at the head end of the pond and then you had. what they tried to do was turn the mill so that the back end of the mill was like this and the pond was in here. And then they just pull them off the side of the pond.

Neil Vanderburg: I think we can jump across there pretty easy. [Crossing creek]

Bob Zybach: Well, let's walk up on the head end of there and see if we can spot anything else here. *** We're about 100 feet up the ridge in that one little grove. We can see some stumps off to the right here where there

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, this is all old logging in here. I'm trying to get a look. . . where I can see.. it's possible they put that chute down this ridge here.

Bob Zybach: Well, that lines up with what we were seeing below.

Neil Vanderburg: So darn much viney maple here that you can't really get a picture. Those trees are getting higher and higher across here. That's the bank right there. And that's darn steep. He might have slid those logs down to this point, and hooked on to the trees down here.

Bob Zybach: Well, we've got plenty of slope here, they could still be going down hill, if they're pointing the right direction, right down that groove we've been walking up.

Neil Vanderburg: I think he shot them right down through here. Right down in through here. See that would have been pretty.

Bob Zybach: Would come right here, and see where we've got the cut right down there? And line right up

Bob Zybach: with the pond site.

Neil Vanderburg: Because you see this is pretty steep to horse log, because those logs would come over the top of them. They were pretty touchy about logging down hill. 'Cause when that old ground gets wet in the wintertime it gets slick. We've gained quite a bit of altitude from the creek here already.

Bob Zybach: Now you spell viney maple with a "y" or an "c"?

Neil Vanderburg: I don't know, but I just say viney maple. I never did have to spell it. I would have called it "ie" if you hadn't asked me. Just to be different. Well, I'm pretty sure we're pretty well in to the. . . this is a pretty steep walk down through here.

Bob Zybach: Well, I think f we haven't located all three Coote's mill sites, we've come as close as anybody has. At least 50 years later.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, I think so. I think we're . . . we can't actually pinpoint it, but I think we're awful close.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember anything else about this site? I think we got the names of all the mill families, and.

Neil Vanderburg: No. I just came up to this mill once, actually. And all there was was a log chute there then. And we went by it when we went up to Chaffin's place. But Clifford Cornutt and I, one day after school, climbed up to the top of that log chute.

Bob Zybach: Is that when he told you somebody had died on the chute?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Now see right where we're coming through here, it would be the type of thing where logs could have been getting skewered, or thrashing back and forth, and it lines right up with where it looks like there might be a pond.

Neil Vanderburg: Not only a pond, but also a level spot for a mill.

Bob Zybach: Yeah, and a mill spot, both.

Neil Vanderburg: Of course you can see on that number three mill how Bill Coote was trying to find a fairly level spot for his mill, so he didn't have to do the leveling himself.

Bob Zybach: Now from up here, too, you can see that little basin in there.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, and that's just the way we're coming down here.

Bob Zybach: Would that be the right size for a mill pond?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, I think so.

Bob Zybach: Because these logs were only 16 foot long or so.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. And that basin went on around the corner, didn't it, from here?

Bob Zybach: Yeah. See that depression over there on the Smith Peak side there, could that be the type of place they'd yard logs out of?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, they didn't actually yard them out. They just put three logs together, two on the sides and one on the bottom, and then cabled them. And of course the wet logs would lubricate the log chute and they'd pull them right into the mill, directly into the mill from the pond. By the way, Clifford Cornutt is going to be up here probably within the next year or so. And when he does he's going to look me up. Might be interesting to see what he remembers. Like I say, he left here when he was in 3rd grade. He was pretty young.

Bob Zybach: Will you be coming up to these mill areas here with Clifford?

Neil Vanderburg: Very likely.

Bob Zybach: Okay, that might be good to get either me or Jeff Garver or somebody involved at that time from the school.