1. Oak Creek

(Interview conducted by Royal Jackson at Peavy Hall, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon)

1. OAK CREEK

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What we've done here, Bill, is Marv Rowley has sat down with me and marked, in red, all the places he knows about in McDonald Forest: trails, cabins, old sawmill sites. We've systematically gone out and visited all of these. What I thought I'd try to find out from you is information on, for example, Oak Creek Guard Station. Do you know anything about that old homestead that's just a little bit up from the guard station?

William A. Davies: No.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Was there anything there in the days that you managed the forest?

William A. Davies: No, that was all gone by the time that I came here.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: And you came here when?

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: So you never did see a building of any kind there?

William A. Davies: Not that I remember.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What about the Oak Creek Guard Station? If you came in 1946, that was completed by then, wasn't it?

William A. Davies: Right.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Who was living there at that time, do you recall?

William A. Davies: I don't remember the fellow's name, but somebody that worked at the lab. He was not on the faculty; he was a civil service employee.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Was he a caretaker?

William A. Davies: No, he wasn't.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: He didn't keep a key to the gate or anything?

William A. Davies: He probably did. I think he did some maintenance out there, but he primarily just worked at the lab. Then they moved him out to the Jackson place. Then Ray Yoder lived there quite a while, and then Lloyd Hayes; they were on the faculty.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: That was after 1946?

William A. Davies: Oh yes.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Up until the time it ceased to be a residence and became a research facilily?

William A. Davies: Well, I think it was vacant there for a while after that. Nobody wanted to live there on the faculty, I guess. McCulloch was dean, I think, when they rented it to the fisheries department. Chuck Dane was assistant dean. He handled the thing; it was his idea.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Chuck Dane was Assistant Dean of Forestry?

William A. Davies: He is on the business staff now. I think he is head of one of the departments over there. He was, last year.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What was the idea of renting it to the Fisheries and WiMlfe Department? Just to be cooperative?

William A. Davies: Just to be cooperative, I guess. I didn't like the idea at all, but I wasn't consulted much even though I was forest manager. I thought that if we started making enough money on the forest, which we soon did, it would be an excellent place to house a kind of head maintenance man, or something for the forest.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: That idea didn 't prevail?

William A. Davies: No, they went ahead and turned it over to the fisheries department. The fisheries department rented it, in fact.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: I think the fisheries department still does rent it for a dollar a year, or something like that.

William A. Davies: It was more than that. And we also rented quite a few acres of land to them, at our estimated income from that land, because they didn't want it touched. Some of the purest water they'd found in Oregon came down off the hill there; that goes across the road just north of it. So we stayed out of that watershed except when the wind blew some trees down up there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You've not logged or meddled in that area at all, maybe since 1951?

William A. Davies: No, let's see, it was later than that. It would be in the fifties, I suppose; I don't remember.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What structures do you remember at the Oak Creek Guard Station site? For instance, what they call the Horse Barn, was that there?

William A. Davies: Yes, that was there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: And then the main residence?

William A. Davies: And the residence, yes.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Was there anything else there that you recall?

William A. Davies: No.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What was the Horse Barn used for?

William A. Davies: Nothing, I guess. They may have stored something there, but I'm not sure. But I don't remember it being used for anything.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: When you were the manager, you didn't use it for anything? You didn 't store equipment there, or anything?

William A. Davies: No.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Did you have any particular problems associated with that entry to the forest, trespassing, or anything?

William A. Davies: No, no more than the other entries. We had problems with all of them.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Illegal entry?

William A. Davies: Yes, because they weren't supposed to be in there and they wanted to go in. They'd find some way to get around it. I think maybe less problems there than some of the ones way off where nobody was around, where they could tear the gates down to get in, pull the fences down, and that sort of thing.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You don't remember anything at all, then, about this old homestead site that was just above the Guard Station?

William A. Davies: No, I know there were some apple trees there, and that's about all.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Had you heard any stories about what might have happened there?

William A. Davies: No.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Aren't there remnants of an orchard around the Oak Creek Guard Station, that look like a previous site?

William A. Davies: Yes, just by the gate. You see, the gate is inside of our property line now, past that house where there is so much traffic to the fisheries. We put the gate beyond it, and right there's an apple tree. When we stopped to unlock the gate the students would jump off the truck and go and grab apples.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Grab an apple off the tree, on the run?

William A. Davies: Yes, but as I told you before, a strange thing happened. One day we were up here; I had the seniors out on a survey crew, or something. There's a great big old sawmill site, just a big blackberry patch...

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: At the junction of Road 6020 and 600?

William A. Davies: It's just above there. Great big blackberry patch that came in on the old sawdust pile, I guess, where the sawmill was. I was telling this one student, "There used to be a sawmill there," and he said, "Yes, I know, my grandfather was a sawyer in that mill."

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Do you remember his name?

William A. Davies: No, but there's a town northwest of here named after his family. I can't remember his name. I thought it was kind of funny; I thought I was telling him something he didn't know.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: That's the mill that was located right at the junction of Road 6020 and 600, right in there?

William A. Davies: It's right above it; It's above the junction about 100 or 200 feet.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Right on the creek?

William A. Davies: On the left side of the road; It's between the road and the creek.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: As you are going north, it's on the left side?

William A. Davies: Right.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How about the old OS. U. school sawmill? What do you remember about it?

William A. Davies: Well, quite a bit, I guess. We got that surplus property from the federal government.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You mean the sawmill and equipment?

William A. Davies: All the equipment, yes. And the products department wanted it, forest products, to demonstrate cutting lumber and what not. But we had a fellow on the forest engineering faculty who was a captain in the Army during the war, and he was in charge of a forestry company in France that was cutting lumber for the war effort. They had a mill just like that, and he was in charge of it, so he knew a lot about it. His name was Ralph DeMoisy. He put the mill together, with the help of students, and then the products department took it over.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: And did they operate every day?

William A. Davies: No, sporadically, when they could get it to run.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: It was kind of hard to keep running?

William A. Davies: Yes, they finally got another engine for it, but somebody on the forest products faculty was in charge, who had never had much experience with a sawmill - most of their experience was in schools. It didn't work out vety well. The forest engineering department undertook to log for them, get logs down there. Finally, they got so many logs down there, they about covered the mill up. They ran it for quite a while and were losing money right along. So Dean McCulloch finally decided that it was a losing proposition, and wasn't worth it. He was worried about students getting hurt with the saws and what not, safety factor. So he just sold it to Alaska Junk, and they hauled it away

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How about the building that housed it, was it torn down?

William A. Davies: No, I think part of it is still there, isn't it?

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: No, there's nothing left at all.

William A. Davies: Somebody probably hauled all the lumber off. The foundation was there, and the platform was all there, and the planks. I imagine people have hauled it off. The lumber was worth a lot of money.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What was the usual routine there? How would the day open up f it was running? Would the sawyer come and get it started, then the students?

William A. Davies: Well, I think they'd just go out in a truck. They'd all go out there and start it running. The students ran it under the supervision of the faculty. I think Jim Snodgrass did most of the on-the-job supervision there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Was he a faculty member?

William A. Davies: Yes, in products, and Jack Grantham, who was head of the department at that time, was in charge of it. But they could only cut 2 or 3,000 board feet a day, I think. They'd have five, or six, or seven people around there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: A lot of breakdowns?

William A. Davies: Yes, a lot of breakdowns.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: The idea was to give the students practical experience?

William A. Davies: Practical experience, yes.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Was the mill typical of those being used in the industry at that time?

William A. Davies: No, it was built for the Army. Now, you know the things that the Army does take a lot of manpower, and a lot of money to run. Anything they do, I guess. So they had to have quite a few men. It was pretty much hand labor: pulling lumber around, and pushing it through, and pulling it off.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Is it accurate to say it was antiquated when the school got it?

William A. Davies: Well, as far as being efficient for a commercial operation, it wasn't.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: The industry had already advanced beyond this type of a sawmill, so the students weren't really learning much that they could apply?

William A. Davies: Well, only fundamentals, you know, sawing lumber, and some of the problems, and so forth. But nothing was automated, it was all hand labor.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: I heard there were some contests, at times, where the F. E. 's would bring the timber, and the F. P's would saw it up?

William A. Davies: There wasn't any contest. One time Snodgrass was talking to a group of faculty or someone, said one of the reasons we haven't been able to cut more out there is that we have been short of logs. We had some older forest engineering students working out there, veterans from the wax. They had an old beat-up truck and they used a grader to roll the logs on. That kind of teed them off so they covered that dang mill up with logs.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: They took that as a challenge?

William A. Davies: Yes.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What year was that?

William A. Davies: I don't know, time goes by so fast. At least 15 years ago, between 15 and 20 years. But when they decided to shut the mill down, we had a lot of logs there. Finally - I don't know whether Marv did that after he started logging for us or not - but they were hauled out and sold to some mill here in town.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How about this flume that is shown coming down to the sawmill at the junction of Road 6020? Did you ever see that fiwne?

William A. Davies: I saw parts of it up there all decayed, of course, way up the creek here.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: That's up the west fork of the Oak Creek?

William A. Davies: Up in here, around the old sawmill. There's still some iron gears and stuff still up there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Marv and I found that. It's still there: a lot offire brick, stacks of broken fire brick

William A. Davies: There was the dangdest mess of brick down here - way down in the bottom - and was going to go down and get that.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Let's see, you're talking about down in the bottom of the canyon of the west fork of Oak Creek?

William A. Davies: See this loop it makes around, right in there? I was running a survey line through there one day and ran across the brick. I thought I would carry the brick out of that canyon sometime. The old-timers told me that years ago they used to flume that lumber to Corvallis.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How did it go? From Oak Creelç, and then where?

William A. Davies: I don't know where it ended up; I don't know if it went clear into town or not. It gets pretty flat down there. They don't need much drop, there's plenty of drop from there on down.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Is there enough water in Oak Creek to flume that timber down?

William A. Davies: Oh yes. What they used to do in the fluming business - I don't know if they did here or not - if there wasn't enough water they'd put in a dam up there, let the dam get full, and then they'd open it up, then plug it up again, and build up some more water. But there's quite a bit of water in Oak Creek.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: When you saw these rotting pieces of the flume, were they long lengths ofjust little tiny support beams, or what?

William A. Davies: Oh, there were some support beams and some rotted timbers that they used, so that you could see it was a flume.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What year would that have been, roughly? Or even, what decade?

William A. Davies: That I saw it? Probably 25 years ago.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: It's completely gone now.

William A. Davies: You don't see it any more?

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: No, Marv and I walked all over this area, and he found what he thought might have been a piece here and there, but it was indistinguishable.

William A. Davies: Up above here, I saw it.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You saw it much closer to the sawmill? We walked that whole area there. Did you ever know anyone that worked on the sawmill?

William A. Davies: No, I don't know if the fellow that was a sawyer here was from the same outfit, I suppose, around the same time. Maybe he worked there, too.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Marv thinks that this sawmill operated around 1910 or 1920, but he's not sure. Does that sound reasonable to you?

William A. Davies: Yes, probably. You see, that was all horse-logged in there. That's why they didn't get back in very far, didn't get in the steeper ground, and didn't cut too much for the horses to get out. There's probably more sawmill sites that we don't know about there, because they didn't want to go very far with the horses and bring it to the sawmill.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How about the old homestead on Homestead Road? Did you ever know anything about that?

William A. Davies: No, except that there was one there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Did you ever see the building?

William A. Davies: I don't think so.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: The orchard? Or did you ever know anybody that lived there?

William A. Davies: No.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How did you know there was a homestead there?

William A. Davies: Evidences, and the old road in there. There was a very steep road - and they hail to straighten it out afterwards - and there was a building up there, at the top. Has Marv got this road open now?

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Yes, you can drive right up into here; it ends somewhere in here.

William A. Davies: There was a tremendously steep road.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Homestead Road?

William A. Davies: Going in there, yes. And there are some old buildings in there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: So that must be the homestead on Homestead Road.

William A. Davies: Yes, I remember that now. I remember that very, very steep road.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Right in here?

William A. Davies: Yes, because I remember Marv and I went up there one day and we looked around here, tried to get a road back in here to get some of this timber out here, dead stuff.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: That's up above Homestead Road?

William A. Davies: Yes, we went up here where the little road turns off and there's a little flat right there where the buildings were. They may have burned the buildings.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Let's go back over here to the sawmill site, right off the Road 600. Do you know anything about this sawmill site?

William A. Davies: No, except that there's one there, I guess.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Did you ever see it?

William A. Davies: No.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: So you never did see anything there at all, just knew there was some sawdust there?

William A. Davies: I don't remember - I've seen so many of those old homesteads, with sawdust piles, and what not around the forest - I don't remember what that one looked like at all. I just recall this one here because of the steep road and the flat.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Up on Homestead Road?

William A. Davies: I remember some kind of an orchard there. Seems to me there was even a walnut tree there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How about this O.S. U. weather radar site that atmospheric sciences put up? What do you remember about that?

William A. Davies: Well, Fred Decker... do you know Fred?

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Yes.

William A. Davies: He knows all about it. He set it up, and he got some money from the Navy, and the thing kind of fell through, and it was vandalized pretty heavily. They stole anything that was any good up there; went in on motorcycles.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Whose responsibility was it to clean up the remains of that site?

William A. Davies: I suppose it was the atmospheric science department. They were the ones that were fussing with it. It was sure a mess the last time I saw it.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: McCulloch simply gave them permission to do that? Was that in writing?

William A. Davies: Gosh, I don't know.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You never did see any kind of an agreement?

William A. Davies: No, well you know, this was university property and so there didn't need to be too much of a contract, not between departments. And then I think it was Fred Decker, I'm not sure, that named that McCulloch Peak.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: He said he did. That peak didn't really have a name.

William A. Davies: No, it didn't. And I think he named it McCulloch Peak. He got into a lot of trouble with the right-of-way up there. Did he tell you about that?

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: No.

William A. Davies: Well, this road that goes up there... Where the heck does it take off? Down here some place? Here it goes.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Oh, up Alder Creek? That road?

William A. Davies: Yes, now there's a guy that lives there, owns this property. He did work for the university. He is the most cantankerous guy, and I can't remember his name right now. He didn't want anybody on his property or on that road. Starker had a right-of-way across it, I guess, but that's all. He just wouldn't let anybody up there. He took a shot at a Boy Scout once that was walking through there. Up here now, there was a fence; this was all fenced at one time.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You're talking about the southwestern-most boundary of the fore st?

William A. Davies: We went out here some place, this road; We were thinning out in there, and one tree fell over and hit the fence; it kind of broke it down. Well, this guy wrote me the nastiest letter about knocking down his fence - it wasn't his fence at all, the school built it - and cutting those trees. He says, "I assume now since you did that I can go in and cut all the wood I want for myself on the school property, and I assume you are going to fix that fence immediately," and so forth. So I talked to Marv - Marv was doing the logging. He said, "I'm not going to fix his fence." I wrote the fellow a nice letter and told him that fence belonged to the school. The school had built it, and our tree had knocked it down, and we would certainly repair it. We let it go at that and never heard any more from him. Old Fred Decker had a hell-of-a-time getting a right-of-way through there, so Fred talked to me one time and we were just about to build a road around to it. We got one around there now.

William A. Davies: Yes, and so we wouldn't have to go through there. But, the thing is, Marv's cat driver got too ambitious and he built the damn thing on through. After this was gone, I wanted to stop here so people couldn't come - you can get in there easy from other roads, you can get in here and get into the forest - so Marv had him go up there and put in a big pile of dirt there. So you go up to find that four-wheel drivers had cleared the dirt off so they could get in; they sure find out how to get into the forest.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Marv said he thought there was an old trail off Road 600 going toward Road 680. Afoot trail goes out across the hill here to Woods Creek, and a trail to Price Creek. Did you ever see this trail? The red dotted line taking off of Road 600 going toward 680?

William A. Davies: The only trail that I know of, that was usable - we used to keep it open - comes around here.