V.. Sulphur Springs and Charlie White

Bob Zybach: coming in in the '20s and '30s and working with the mill and stuff.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. We used to go over to Berry Creek, or Savage Creek as you call it, to come to school a lot of times during lunch hour, on a nice day like today and eat our lunch over there and stuff. And we all called it Berry Creek. Everybody in school did. But apparently Donald knew it by Savage Creek [See Glender].

Bob Zybach: Do you know if there's any pictures from this angle here -- we're looking from the road towards the bales of hay that's in the second Coote mill site -- are there any pictures when that mill was there of any of the shacks standing that you know of?

Neil Vanderburg: No. No I don't. I think Coote really stayed on top of that ridge there.

V. Sulphur Springs and Charlie White

Bob Zybach: Okay, we're right at the horse trail just beyond the county road oak, there. That oak is the end of the county road. And the new crossing here on Sulphur Springs.

Neil Vanderburg: I guess what Bob wants me to tell you, is how he got acquainted with me was that when I was a kid we used to come up to Sulphur Springs and play baseball here on, apparently what was the lot of the old lodge that used to be up here. And we, when we moved from Berry Creek over to Oak Creek, a guy by the name of Charlie White and I herded our cows around from Berry Creek up here to Sulphur Springs and then we went across in back of, that was Peavy Arboretum at that rime, the CCC camp, now it's part of the Oregon State Forestry Department buildings. And on the trip across, I don't know if I recorded it or not, but the CCC boys were from back east some place and they were falling trees like a beaver, just going around and around them, and then when they'd get down to where it was pretty small they'd holler "last round!" and everybody would clear out except the last guy chopping, and he'd chop until he saw which way it was going to go down, and then he'd run the other way. So we got quite a kick out of that, and that's a story I've told quite a few times.

Bob Zybach: Now where were the CCC boys working?

Neil Vanderburg: Right up on top of the second ridge up here.

Bob Zybach: Now we're right at the mouth of Baker Creek, so it was up towards Oak Creek from here?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: They were coming all the way out from Peavy Arboretum to work?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Do you know how they came out here?

Neil Vanderburg: I think they probably had trucks that they rode in.

Bob Zybach: Did they come along Lewisburg Saddle or come out the way we took?

Neil Vanderburg: I think they had their own road through there.

Bob Zybach: Okay. So they wouldn't have come up Soap Creek.

Neil Vanderburg: No. No, they. . . i'm quite sure that they were cutting roads and stuff through there, and so forth. Anyway, three or four years ago my daughter wanted to know something about my history, and so I said well let's just take off one of these days and I'll show you things that I did when I was younger. And so we got in the car and we went up to Oak Creek, to the house that we used to live in, and then I took her up to where our pasture used to be, and now it's all planted to houses. And then we went on up as far as we could toward the McDonald Forest here, and then we turned around and we came back around and came to Sulphur Springs and we sat down and

Neil Vanderburg: ate our lunch at Sulphur Springs. And I was kind of disappointed at the mess that Sulphur Springs had become and the fact that there was no signs so that nobody in the Corvallis area knew where Sulphur Springs was. They all knew about Sulphur Springs Road, but they didn't know there was such a thing as a Sulphur Spring out there. And so I thought that it at least ought to be marked on the road so people could go down and stick their hand in it and make their hand smell rotten for the rest of the day!

Bob Zybach: Did you ever drink that spring water?

Neil Vanderburg: No, but I stuck my hand in it and it sure is hard to get the smell off your hand. But anyway, I was pretty upset that it was in such disrepair, and so I took it upon myself to try and figure out some way to at least get a sign up here. So I went to the county and the county said, well, we can't do anything that belongs to the college and the college just can't cooperate a bit. So I kept looking and nosing around and one thing and another, and I knew this Jeff Garver that I knew worked in the Forestry Department of the College, and he went to the same church as I did. So one day I asked him before Sunday school, I said "Jeff, who would I see to do some work on Sulphur Springs? I'm in the Soil and Water Conservation Board [Benton County] and the Governor has given us $1,000 to do work on streambanks and so forth, and that's to help high school kids out financially and stuff. I'd like to do some cleanup work on it, and I just wondered who I'd see." And he said, "Me." So then we started talking about it, and so then a group of fellows came in to the Soil and Water Conservation Board and wanted a project of surveying and so forth for some work, and so we sucked them into the Sulphur Springs area here, and they drew up maps and the situation as far as trails are concerned, how much they were likely to erode if there were traffic and so forth. And they came up with the idea of coming down a few hundred feet below Sulphur Springs and putting a bridge across for horses and bicycles. And we're sitting right beside that bridge right now. Apparently Jeff Garver has carried it on that far. But while I was here I got some Boy Scouts in here and we

Bob Zybach: Who drew up the plans on the bridge?

Neil Vanderburg: They were college kids, I don't know who they were.

Bob Zybach: Somebody from Oregon State?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: And they were funded by the Benton County Soil & Consen'ation Board?

Neil Vanderburg: No, they weren't funded by us but they were just looking for a project. It was so they could graduate. It was a project for graduating in forestry.

Bob Zybach: Oh, I see. So it was like a senior project, or.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, they were all seniors, that was their last year. There were three of them in there.

Bob Zybach: Do you recall their names?

Neil Vanderburg: No, I don't but I'm sure that. . . I turned in the literature that I had on it back to the Benton County Soil & Conservation Board and they have it on file, I'm sure, and I think that probably Jeff Garver does. Anyway, it turned out that we did. . . Jeff said, I can get all the chips I want for making trails for nothing. So then a Boy Scout Master, he's a lawyer in the old GT building, he came and wanted a job for his scouts. So I got Jeff to dump a load of chips in there and mark out where he wanted the trails and the boys came in here and did the trails and then Jeff came and told me, maybe I

Neil Vanderburg: shouldn't say this on the tape, he told me we're going to log on the back side of that hill, but because of the fact that you have got it started as a park, we are not going to log on the Sulphur Springs side of the hill. So these trees that you see standing here now, are standing here because of what I had started. Anyway, but Jeff said we'd have to stop the project for a couple of years, because if we try and log and after we did the project there would be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth! So it stopped and before it got started again, I moved to Independence. And this is the first time I've been back since and I see that they're doing pretty much what I had planned. And if you would take this trail over this bridge you would find some beaver dams up there and quite a bit of interesting stuff on that trail that you would miss by going across Sulphur Springs.

Bob Zybach: Our Cultural Resource Inventory [1990 OSU Research Forests "Human Use" Cultural Resource Inventory I recommended that those beaver ponds he opened for interpretation and also Sulphur Springs Trail be developed, so we're behind you on that time wise, but the thinking was in the same place.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, but anyway, that's how this all got started with, because I didn't like the way the place looked. But Jeff had also told me that when we got the work done that they had tractors and rototilers and stuff, and they would go ahead and work this ground up and level it out and reseed the lawn, and so the idea of the bridge is to keep horses and trail bikes and bicycles and stuff out of their new lawn. So that's why it comes around here. Plus the fact that it does go through the beaver pond area and so forth.

Bob Zybach: Was that part of the original planning, that this trail go up to the beaver ponds at that time?

Neil Vanderburg: It was going around them, yeah.

Bob Zybach: So that was part of the plan.

Neil Vanderburg: That was part of the original plan, yeah.

Bob Zybach: And you say that that plan either Jeff s got a copy of, or the Water Conservation people?

Neil Vanderburg: One or the other. Jeff and the head of the. . . let's see, I'm not sure whether the head of the water resource went with us or not, but there was three of us that walked through here and kind of laid out that trail. But I didn't know about the beaver dams and stuff in there until Jeff told me about them, so Jeff sort of led the way around through here and it was kind of an interesting thing. Apparently those beavers have been in there for a lot of years but I didn't know about them.

Bob Zybach: There was literature that the beavers were stocked in Oak Creek in the late 1940s by Oregon State researchers, but i'm not sure that they still know that. And there's no record of any beavers in here before the '40s.

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, is that right? Well, that's probably why I never saw any beaver dams up here then.

Bob Zybach: Now you mentioned that you'd come up here to play baseball. How many times did you do that?

Neil Vanderburg: Probably three or four.

Bob Zybach: Would it be like teams, organized baseball?

Neil Vanderburg: No, just come up here and play. After church. Went to Sunday School, you know.

Bob Zybach: Would you drive a car all the way back in here?

Neil Vanderburg: Urn hmm.

Bob Zybach: So it was like for picnics and stuff

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, that type of thing. Actually, it was more a boy/girl deal, maybe two carloads of us just come up here for the afternoon and oh just get acquainted more and stuff, you

Neil Vanderburg: know.

Bob Zybach: Did this par/c have any reputation or anything?

Neil Vanderburg: No.

Bob Zybach: It was just a place to go for picnics?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, it was a nice level, grassy, area. Apparently was lawn for the lodge when it was here. I didn't know that there was a lodge here until I got involved the second time here, but they tell me that there used to be a lodge there that burned down, and probably that was lawn. But after they had trail bikes and their horses coming over from Corvallis and stuff, they really cut that lawn up and so it's a mess.

Bob Zybach: Did they have any picnic tables here at that time?

Neil Vanderburg: I don't think so.

Bob Zybach: How about on the fountain, did they have any spout at the fountain or anything?

Neil Vanderburg: No.

Bob Zybach: It was just a little pool?

Neil Vanderburg: It was cleaned out and of course that concrete took care of that.

Bob Zybach: It was new in the '30s. Where it said Sulphur Springs.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. And not spelled right if I remember right.

Bob Zybach: Do you recall who built that?

Neil Vanderburg: I have no idea. Like I say, this area to me was a long ways away. The automobiles we drove then was 40 miles an hour or so, and so I don't know how far it is, but six or eight miles, so it was a half hour drive over here. My dad told me when I was learning to drive for my driver's license he told me that no man should ever drive over 35 miles an hour, that's as fast as a man can think. So, now you know.

Bob Zybach: So Sulphur Springs was just kind of a special place to come to?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, just something for a change. Kids, you know how kids will be, they've got to go someplace.

Bob Zybach: Did you do any fishing through here?

Neil Vanderburg: No. We had plenty of fishing over there on Berry Creek.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember what this looked like off to our right here, towards the east?

Neil Vanderburg: No, I Can't. I have no memory of that at all. I was looking at girls, what do you think?!

Bob Zybach: Well, that's where [Roy] Cook said that they guys from the college brought girls out here for the same thing. I think it was kind of a socializing spot maybe.

Neil Vanderburg: Well, over there on Oak Creek they did a lot of that. I'll show you where we lived on Oak Creek and we had to cross the creek to go home, cross a little bridge, and there was a lot of trees there. And most every time we wanted to go out on Saturday night or Sunday night we had to wait for the kids to get all dressed back up and start their cars and back them out of our road!

Bob Zybach: Well, let's see. We'll be talking about Charlie White and stuff as we go up and over. Can you think of anything else by this part here? I want to get a picture of the horse bridge and everything before we go.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. I think that Charlie White was a big part of my life in Berry Creek, and maybe, right now, since I mentioned that he went over the hill with me here, and he knew the route, I didn't. He led us over. And I first met Charlie White the first day we moved into Berry Creek. He came over and helped us a little bit and did a lot watching and talking, because like I mentioned before, I had four sisters. And that first day he really painted a beautiful picture of Edith Tandy, who was his niece. And

Neil Vanderburg: all the time I lived here that stayed with me. Boy, if I saw Edith I'd come all apart. Cause I was just a young fellow and he told me how pretty she was, and what a nice personality she had, and all that stuff. So, anyway, that was my first meeting with Charlie White.

Bob Zybach: Did Edith Tandy live up to her billing?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, I thought so.

Bob Zybach: So if nothing else, Charlie White was a convincing talker.

Neil Vanderburg: Well, after all, I married an Edith! But anyway, as I look at the pictures of her she isn't near as beautiful as I thought she was. But anyway, to carry Charlie on a little further he was not very anxious to work. Money didn't mean too much to him. Bob mentioned that he was probably a hippy before his time.

Bob Zybach: I think you put those words in my mouth.

Neil Vanderburg: Well, maybe so, but anyway, he and I did a lot of things together. And for the most part they weren't things that my mother would have been too happy about. But Charlie, he always kind of figured, you know, that if he needed some gas, well he had a Kentucky credit card, which probably people don't know what is now, but it was a siphon hose. And he helped himself to somebody that had some. And one time he came up to our house and told me that he had to have some gas, because his dad his dad was about 80 at that time, and was real sick and he had to get him to the doctor. So he got me to go out to the garage with him and he siphoned some gas out of Bill Coote's Essex! And of course his dad wasn't sick at all but that was just a story he made up. And ultimately he stole some gas from my dad and my dad put him in the penitentiary for a year along with some other people. So we didn't see Charlie for quite a while, and after he got out, well easy money was made like a lot of people that are over in the near east right now thought, it's easy money, so he joined the National Guard. And got that money every month and thought he was really smart, and then World War II came along. So they drafted Charlie into the service and after he'd been in the service for a while, well they discharged him because he had flat feet. But really they discharged him because he spent more than a year in penitentiary and lost his citizenship!

Bob Zybach: Oh, from stealing the gas?

Neil Vanderburg: From the stealing the gas and stuff.

Bob Zybach: Was he sorry to get out?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, no, he was real happy to get out! That money didn't look nearly so good then. Charlie got into a lot of trouble. He didn't do anything real bad, but he was always just bordering on getting into trouble and so forth. And Halloween night, I think I told you about moving the outhouse and him falling in the hole, didn't 1?

Bob Zybach: I think we saved all the Charlie White stories for going over Sulphur Springs here.

Neil Vanderburg: Well, anyway, the last year that they had Berry Creek in operation, well, we had a Halloween party at the school. Forest Tandy was on the Board of Trustees and so was my dad. And Forest says, "I don't believe those outhouses will stand to be tipped over again, maybe we'd better stay here and watch them." And my dad says, "Well, I've got a busy day tomorrow, why don't you and Neil stay here?" So we stayed there, and Charlie White, and about eight or nine kids were running up and down the road waiting for us to go home; they could see we were there on account of we had a fire in the stove there. So Forest says, "What do you say we move the outhouse off the hole and let the fire go out?' So we did, and they were riding a touring car,

[Withheld from this edition pending review. The page keeps its printed number and its permanent link, so a citation to it still lands here.]

Neil Vanderburg: go for a ride with me today. I'm going to go up in the hills." So, okay, I climbed in with him and we went up to Parker's place, and I was just sitting in the car. He got out and he had a whole bunch of beer bottles stashed away. We were only probably 75 feet from Parker's house. And Charlie started throwing them into the back of the car, and Mr. Parker came Out, and he was a good sized wood cutter, and he came out and he laid a log across the road and stood on top of the log with his arms folded, and he says, "Now unload all those." So Charlie unloaded them, but he broke a few of them. And when Charlie got them all unloaded, well, Mr. Parker got off the log and moved it out of the road, and he says, "Don't ever come back." I don't think Charlie ever did. Because he figured I was kind of a big kid, and I think he probably figured I'd be helpful to him. But I was a little bit nervous about that deal, I didn't like that at all.

Bob Zybach: How did he die?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, yeah, during World War II after he came back from the service, they moved over to . .. he had a sister who married a guy by the name of Pyburn over on Highway 20. And they built a house for Charlie's mother and father and him to live in. Which is about three or four miles this side of Albany. And Charlie got the measles and he thought it was funny, and he wouldn't go to bed or anything, and so finally he got real sick and got in bad shape with them, and he still thought it was kind of funny. And then his folks tried to get the doctor to come see him when he lost consciousness. And in those times nobody was going to waste their ration of gas to come out and see about a guy that was unconscious, and so he ultimately died right on their front porch. And the undertaker came out and got him. I think he was about 2 when he died.

Bob Zybach: Just a young man.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Did he ever get married or have a girlfriend or anything?

Neil Vanderburg: No, as far as I know, he never had any inclinations toward a girlfriend. I think he was too lazy, he didn't want to support one. But I will say this for Charlie, when Charlie came back after he got out of the penitentiary, he came up to my dad, and my dad was quite nervous when he saw him walking up. Charlie came up and he says, "I want to tell you that I'm sorry for what I did and I'd like to work for you to pay for the gas I stole." So he had some good parts to him and so forth.

Neil Vanderburg: I'm wondering, I see tractor tracks here, I'm wondering if Jeff's [Garver] been in here doing some work up and around the spring itself here. I also see two or three cars up there.

Bob Zybach: We're just coming back from Sulphur Springs there, and you were telling me about these rocks here.

Neil Vanderburg: Well, 1 was told that at one time the Sheriff of Benton County lived on past Sulphur Springs, and there was two things he didn't like about this set up. And one of them was cars driving all over it, and the other thing was vandalism and so forth. So apparently, he got some county dump trucks to pick up this rock, it looks like probably from the rock quarry over there by Wren, and dump some big rocks in here so that you couldn't get in with a car, to try to protect what was left of it. There has been a lot of motorcycle damage and since they built that new bridge on down the creek here a ways, well, they're asking everybody on horseback and motorcycle to go

Neil Vanderburg: around the beaver dam and come out on the road over that bridge, and stay out of this area and it sure looks like an improvement just from what I can see here.

Bob Zybach: You mean, in the last two years?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, the last two years. I think it was two years ago that I finally found that Jeff Garver had something to do with this, and in that two-year period I've seen he's done some cleaning up around Sulphur Springs itself, and put up signs and stuff. I'm feeling real good about it, I wish I could have followed this through to completion, but it looks like somebody's picked up the ball for me!

Bob Zybach: Yeah, it's looking a lot nicer in the two years I've been coming here. Vandalism and horses.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, well, the horses and motorcycles and the bicycles were all coming through here. Apparently they got that stopped. And I have not seen any vandalism. When I came here a couple of years ago somebody had been living over there on the other side of the creek here, Soap Creek, and had some plastic tarps laying down there and one thing and another, and they just walked off and left. It was just looking awful trashy, and somebody's picked things up around here and so forth. So I'm real happy about it.

Bob Zybach: Now we talked a little bit about some of the recommendations that they plant exotic grasses in here. Do you think that that's

Neil Vanderburg: I wasn't in on the exotic grasses. Actually, I was too. Our office of the Soil and Water Conservation has been in with OSU on developing some grasses to use in the forests to help stop erosion, and we were talking about, I can't remember the name of that grass right now

Bob Zybach: Brachopodium?

Neil Vanderburg: No, that wasn't one of them.

Bob Zybach: That's the one that they've got growing all through the forest now on the other side.

Neil Vanderburg: Well this is newer grass. And it's not supposed to grow very high, to help the possibility of fire danger. This is a low, slow growing grass that just kind of grows along the ground, and . . . boy I can't think of the name of it. We planted some of it between 3rd and 4th Street there, where they come together on the north end of town as an experiment to see how it would work in this kind of a situation. And we just had it coming up well when I moved out of town, so I don't know how it worked.

Bob Zybach: That's kind of a marsh area there, between 3rd and 4th. That was built up, so that would be a similar environment to here.

Neil Vanderburg: Very similar, yeah. And that was the grass that I had suggested we plant here.

Bob Zybach: What do you think f this had been used, maybe if they did start burning it and bring back wild strawberries and stuff, do you think that would be a good thing?

Neil Vanderburg: It might be a good thing, but I was thinking in terms of.. . nobody wants to mow it, that's why I was thinking of the short grass.

Bob Zybach: How about if they just came in like the Indians did and burned it every so often?

Neil Vanderburg: You'd have weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth with the environmentalists!

Bob Zybach: You think it would be a political issue.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, I think you'd run into, "Oh, we're blowing smoke in the air, and it's causing the greenhouse effect."

Bob Zybach: But what if it's bringing back the native wildflowers?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, well, they're not interested in that. Everybody has got their own hobby horse, you know.

Bob Zybach: Okay, so you think the smoke people and the wildflower people are two different camps?