Front matter

WANDA MARCKS COOK The Story of the Sulphur Springs Stock Ranch Benton County, Oregon: 1904-1939 Oral History Interviews by Bob Zybach and Kevin Sherer Soap Creek Valley History Project OSU Research Forests Monograph #12 1995 OSU RESEARCH FORESTS COLLEGE OF FORESTRY

Cover Photo: Courtesy of Myra Moore Lauridson and the Soap Creek Schoolhouse Foundation. Pictured is the Moore family farm on Soap Creek, taken about 1899 or 1900 by Mrs. Lauridson's father, Samuel H. Moore. The picture is taken toward the south and includes the northern-most portion of the Sulphur Springs Stock Ranch and the central portion of OSU's McDonald Forest in the background.

Soap Creek Valley, Oregon, Oral History series Monograph # 01: Lorna Grabe. Family history and story of the Soap Creek Schoolhouse Foundation, Benton County, Oregon. Monograph # 02: Paul M. Dunn. Biographical sketch and story of the Adair Tract, Benton County, Oregon. Monograph # 03: Donald Dickey. Family history and life on Berry Creek, Benton County, Oregon: 1928-1942. Monograph # 04: Edward Sekermestrovich. Life at CCC Camp Arboretum, Benton County, Oregon: 1935-1940. Monograph # 05: John Jacob and Wilma Rohner. Family farming on Coffin Butte between World Wars, Benton County, Oregon: 1919-1941. Monograph # 06: James Hanish. Biographical sketch and a tour of Berry Creek, Benton County, Oregon: 1930-1938. Monograph # 07: Charlie Olson. Biographical sketch and early history of Sulphur Springs, Benton County, Oregon: 1900-1920. Monograph # 08: Neil Vanderburg. Family farming and saw milling on Berry Creek, Benton County, Oregon: 1935-1941. Monograph # 09: Eugene Glender. Growing up on a Tampico family farm, Benton County, Oregon: 1910-1941. Monograph #10: Velma Carter Rawie. A history of the Carter family and the town of Wells, Benton County, Oregon: 1845-1941. Monograph #11: Bessie Murphy. Botanizing in Benton County, 1900-1991. Monograph #12: Wanda Marcks Cook. The Story of the Sulphur Springs Stock Ranch, Benton County, Oregon: 1904-1939. Remaining to be printed Monograph #13: William Davies Monograph #14: Charles Hindes Monograph #15: Marvin Rowley Monograph #16: Index to Monographs #1-#15. Soap Creek Valley, Oregon, Oral History Series. Monograph #17: Documenting Natural and Cultural Resources Research. Soap Creek Valley, Oregon, Oral History Series.

Printed on the second leaf (PDF p. 2), unnumbered, recorded here as [front-2]. The heading prints "Oral History series" with a lower-case s, unlike every other printed list. This list gives Monograph #03 as "1928-1942". Recorded as printed. Method: PDF p. 2 rendered with pdftoppm -r 170 (and the "Lorna Grabe" and "1928-19xx" lines re-cropped at 400 dpi) and read as an image; the PDF text layer of this leaf is unreliable ("Loma", "fanning", "Chaxlie", "Rwie", "199 1", "#1415"). Printed line wraps are joined with a single space, one line per printed entry, matching the convention already used in monograph #15.

The Soap Creek Valley History Project was initially authorized in 1989 by Dr. William Atkinson, former Director of OSU Research Forests. The oral history portion of this project remained under Dr. Atkinson's direction until January 1994, when it was assigned to Jeffery Garver, OSU Research Forests Manager. In December of that year responsibility for the oral histories was given to Ann Rogers, Cultural Resources Manager for OSU Research Forests. Funding for the Soap Creek Valley History Project is provided by the OSU College of Forestry. Wanda Cook's interview was first transcribed by Bonnie Humphrey, formerly of the OSU Homer Museum staff. Subsequent transcriptions and tape auditing were performed by Lisa Buschman, former OSU Research Forests secretary, who also assisted with draft editing, formatting, and indexing. Holly Behm Losli, Tami Torres and Md. Shahidul Islam, OSU Research Forests text editors, completed draft formatting and indexing under the direction of Pam Beebee, OSU Research Forests Office Manager. This project could not have been completed without the help of these people.

The Soap Creek Valley History Project was undertaken by the Oregon State University's Research Forests in 1989 for the purpose of better understanding the history, ecology, and culture of an area that has been impacted by OSU land management practices for nearly seventy years. An important part of the project has been the location and publications of existing recorded oral history interviews with individuals who have had an influence upon the valley's history. New recordings have also been made with significant individuals who have not been previously consulted, as well as "follow-up" interviews with people who have continued to contribute to our understanding of the Soap Creek area. The publication of these interviews as a series of cross-referenced and indexed monographs has been undertaken in an effort to make them available to resource managers, researchers and educators. An additional use is accurate and available references for a planned written history of the area. One of the primary accomplishments of the Soap Creek Valley History Project has been the creation of a computerized concordance file, currently on IBM Word Perfect 5.1. This was made possible through the assistance and expertise of Bonnie Humphrey, of the former Homer Museum staff, Lisa Buschman, former secretary for the OSU Research Forests, and Holly Behm Losli and Taim Torres, text editors for OSU Research Forests. In 1994, the concordance file was thoroughly tested and redesigned under the direction of Md. Shahidul Islam, currently the publications editor for this project. His refinement of the concordance file now allows for a more efficient and systematic indexing of the monographs in this series. In addition, the system will now be much easier for students, staff, and others to use, and will providing a method for cross-referencing other research materials being used in the construction of the scholarly history portion of the project. The Soap Creek history is being assembled from the written and spoken words of the people who made it and lived it. The use of the concordance file allows information from the journal entries of botanist David Douglas, the transcribed words of Kalapuyan William Hartless, the memories of pioneer "Grandma" Carter, and the recordings of Wanda Cook -- a history spanning over a century and a half -- to be systematically searched and organized. The index to this monograph is an example of the applied use of the file. Citations should mention both the OSU College of Forestry and OSU Research Forests.

The following interview was recorded on October 28, 1989 at Wanda Cook's apartment in Portland, Oregon. At that time I wrote: "She is an attractive, articulate, and intelligent woman with an inquisitive mind and an ever-present sense of humor. Due to the nature of this project, the interview was principally concerned with her childhood and young adult years in the Soap Creek Valley. A love of reading, an enjoyment of plants, and a concern for appearances, are all reflected in Mrs. Cook's current surrounding." Wanda had made such a lively and youthful impression on me that I had failed to note that she was over 90 years of age! During the course of our discussion she had often seemed and sounded like a person half (or even a fourth) of her actual years. Wanda Marcks was a 9 years old when her family moved to the Tampico area of the Soap Creek Valley in 1904. The Marcks family farm encompassed much of the 1846 David Carson Donation Land Claim and subsequently became part of Camp Adair during World War II. It is now part of the "Beef Barns" development of the OSU College of Agriculture. As a child she attended public schools, rode horses, observed the wild plants and animals around her home, and performed the chores and duties typically required of "the oldest girl" in a family for that time. At the age of eighteen Wanda married a neighbor, Ernest Cook, that had recently graduated with a degree in agriculture from the Oregon Agricultural College (as Oregon State University was known in those days). The young couple moved to the groom's home on a horse and cattle ranch near Sulphur Springs, at the southwestern end of the valley, where they lived until 1922. The principal focus of this interview concerns those year's of Wanda's life; as a young farm wife, raising a family in Benton County during the time of World War I. A secondary focus is the land itself; how Wanda and the Cook family came to be associated with it; how they changed it; and how it came to pass into the hands of others. A planned trip to Soap Creek Valley to record Wanda a second time was cancelled when she broke her ankle and was forced to move into a retirement home with a caretaker. Instead, her son Roy accompanied Kevin Sherer and I on a tour of the valley on May 15, 1990. As evidenced by the second transcript in this monograph, Roy was great fun to talk with. He also provided Kevin and I with a number of pre-World War I photographs of Soap Creek Valley and some 1910-1939 legal documents regarding the Sulphur Springs Stock Ranch that he had inherited from his father. Appendix A provides a comprehensive selection of these materials. A number of additional photos had been previously donated to the Homer museum and can possibly be located through that source. Earlier this month, Shahid Islam and I visited Roy at his home near Yachats, overlooking a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean. At that time we made some final corrections to the transcripts and indexes, obtained a few additional photographs, and made a final, clarifying, recording that was used to detail many of the captions and footnotes in this monograph. As usual, our visit was both entertaining and productive; the interesting lives, lively good humor, and consistent attention to detail that have characterized Roy's and his mother's involvement in this project have contributed greatly to the more positive qualities of these final results. It has been both great fun and a good education to work with the Cook family on this manuscript. Of additional interest to these interviews is the current attention being given to the eastern portion of the old Sulphur Springs Stock Ranch. At the time of this writing it is being partially logged to meet the conditions of a bequeath from Elizabeth Bond Starker Cameron to the OSU Kerr Library and to OSU Research Forests (See the Corvallis Gazette Times of May 23 and July 6, 1995 for additional details on this issue). The printing of these interviews and of Ernest Cook's photographs further "attests to the importance of programs that include oral histories as part of the survey process," as stated by Kevin Sherer in the introduction to Monograph #6 in this series. Bob Zybach Corvallis, Oregon September 1, 1995

SOAP CREEK VALLEY MAP | 1910 T. P. Cook Ranch Map. This reduced copy of the boundaries to the Sulphur Springs Stock Ranch was made from an 11"X17" map in the possession of Roy Cook. The original map is probably the one made for Ernest Cook by his uncle John Cook; it is apparently the map referred to in the April 21, 1910 letter from John to his brother (and Ernest's father), Tyrone Cook (see Appendix A for a complete transcript of the letter). | Sulphur Springs Stock Ranch location map. This map shows the 1348-acre Sulphur Springs Stock Ranch as it was located in relation to present-day Corvallis and to OSU Research Forests. It is an annotated version of the map of the Forests' Cultural Resource areas as shown on page 19 of the February 19, 1993 Draft of the McDonald-Dunn Forest Plan (OSU College of Forestry Forest Planning Team, Co-chaired by John Sessions and K. Norm Johnson). The solid colored area depicts a portion of the former ranch that was recently given to OSU Research Forests. It is known as the "Cameron Tract" named for its donor, Elizabeth Bond Starker Cameron (Corvallis Gazette Times, July 6, 1995). | May 15, 1990 Soap Creek Valley Tour Map. This map shows the location of tour stops taken during the May 15, 1990 tour with Roy Cook. Letters written on the circled stops correspond with the letters written on the table of contents. For example, the circled "E" on the map shows the location of chapter "E. Soap Creek Schoolhouse." Names shown with house locations are for families that lived in the Soap Creek area between 1899 and 1930.