Wednesday, January 7, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
17
Old house surprise: Missing Southern Pacific depot
By Janet eastman
The Oregonian
ASHLAND (AP) — Squint
as you walk by a decomposing
Douglas fir structure on a resi-
dential street in Ashland and
you’ll see patches of peeling
paint, called Southern Pacific
yellow, peeking out through
glassless windows. Stop.
There’s more to the story.
Barricaded behind weather-
beaten boards and, until
recently, shrouded by tow-
ering cottonwood trees and
10-foot-tall blackberry bushes
is the city’s first train depot.
This significant piece of the
state’s past has been missing
for a half-century.
It was built in 1884.
Charles Crocker, one of the
Big Four of the Central Pacific
Railroad, stood by Ashland’s
train depot three years later as
he drove a symbolic golden
spike into the last section of
tracks circumnavigating the
U.S, finally linking Oregon to
California, and transforming
Oregon’s economy.
Fast forward to the land-
mark today: Inch by inch, a
congregation of volunteers is
unearthing the Queen Anne-
style building and piecing
together the curious story of
how the decommissioned train
depot was moved stealthily in
the 1960s from the rail yard
to this nondescript lot about
three miles away.
The structure’s survival
remained a secret until this
summer, when the property
was sold by representatives
of the third generation of the
family that lived inside it. As
word of the discovery slowly
reaches city officials and his-
torians, the reaction is the
same: Who knew?
“I rode by this house for
years,” says Amy Gunter, a city
employee who serves on the
Ashland Historic Commission,
“and never had a clue what
was behind the walls.”
The long-lost train depot
was “hiding in plain sight,”
says historian Victoria Law,
who operated the Ashland
Railroad Museum and main-
tains an archive of railroad
memorabilia.
Finding the gabled depot
was a surprise, but it’s not
uncommon for homeowners
to stumble upon vintage archi-
tectural elements hidden in
their houses, especially during
renovations.
Just as classic car collec-
tors speak in hushed tones
about “garage finds” — long-
forgotten gems camouflaged
by dust or tarps — there could
be a bonanza of Victorian
hardware, Arts & Crafts tile,
vintage light fixtures and other
valuables holed up in your
home.
A number of Pioneer Era
houses are “buried” inside
later additions, says Peggy
Moretti, executive director of
the preservation group Restore
Oregon.
It’s also a custom, when
restoring an older house, to
install elements culled from
ones no longer standing. The
1871 Jacob Kamm Mansion
in Southwest Portland has
oak pilasters, burled ash pan-
eling, leaded glass and other
decorative features saved from
demolished houses.
Early settlers and their
ancestors were the original
recyclers. Long before modern
builders started using salvage
materials and repurposing
old buildings, our founding
fathers did it out of necessity.
Today, historic salvage is
big business. More people are
interested in sustainability and
adding historic character to
newer houses. Rejuvenation
(called Rejuvenation House
Parts in 1977) led the way and
Aurora Mills Architectural
Salvage is opening a Portland
store in early 2015.
“Preservationists always
prefer to see a building pre-
served and reused in place,
with appropriate adaptation
for modern living, but when
all else fails we do want to see
the historic materials reused,”
says Moretti, who installed a
salvaged historic window in
her 1906 Craftsman to counter
a previous owner’s misguided
remodel.
Stacy and Ramana
Waymire, the new owners of
the Ashland property where
the depot was concealed, had
no idea what was behind the
wooden facade until they were
approached to buy it. Stacy
Waymire refers to the find as
“the last mystery in Ashland.”
Both are priests at the
Ashland Zen Center, and since
they bought the lot in July,
they and center members are
handling the artifact as an
archaeologist would. They are
slowly removing overgrown
brush and painstakingly
inventorying what remains of
the original structure.
Only half of the depot —
about 24 feet wide and 60 feet
long — was moved via flatbed
train car to this lot, according
to Ashland historian Terry
Skibby.
This wasn’t the first time
the depot changed locations.
In 1888, it was moved when a
larger depot and hotel building
was completed and it was rel-
egated to a freight depot.
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Skibby, a lifelong resident
of Ashland, surmises that the
unused building was moved
to where it stands today in the
1960s, a decade after the last
steam engine whistled into
town.
Stacy Waymire found
an official-looking sign on
the old building that stated:
Caveat emptor (“Let the buyer
beware”).
Since it was last seen in
public, the depot’s pitched
roof and extended eaves have
been shortened, probably to
clear a lower overpass when
it traveled on tracks crossing
Highway 66.
The original wood floor
is missing, but some of the
gingerbread siding, corbels
and other decorative features
remain. The wainscot-pan-
eled interior has been recon-
figured to look more like a
home, but the original depot
restroom is still distinguish-
able. Sometime in the 1970s, a
scrap-wood shell was erected
around the structure.
The Waymires purchased
the property to build modest
housing for the Zen center’s
clergy and students studying
Buddhism. After the discov-
ery of the depot, they wanted
to know if it could be restored
and lived in.
Stacy Waymire contacted
Jim Lewis, who served on the
Ashland Historic Commission
for 14 years and successfully
converted the south wing of
the second train depot and
hotel into offices near the orig-
inal train station on A Street.
After crawling under the
building and in the rafters to
ascertain its structural integ-
rity and condition, Lewis con-
cluded it wouldn’t work for the
center’s need, but a collector,
Making the cut
museum or railroad group
might want to preserve it.
Waymire hopes to sell it.
“Our intention is to reclaim
everything we can, sell items
of interest and value to build-
ers and collectors, and recy-
cle the rest,” says Waymire,
who has photos of bathtubs,
antique furniture, woodwork-
ing tools and other collectibles
in a range of ages and condi-
tions found on the property.
“Repurposing and reusing
materials is the nature of our
practice and honestly, we are
a modest church and we need
the money to build new hous-
ing,” says Waymire, who is
also selling firewood cut from
the cottonwood trees. “We
would love to see this wood
heat more people than just
ourselves.”
She plans to contact
antique dealers, appraisers
and woodcrafters and hold
a public sale in the spring.
She can be reached at info@
ashlandzencenter.org. In the
meantime, Waymire asks that
people respect that the struc-
ture is on private property and
that it’s unsafe to go near it.
Local historians are hop-
ing people can see past the
old depot’s current dilapidated
state and visualize what it was
and what it could be.
“This building is signifi-
cant even if it’s beat up,” says
historian Law, who speaks to
groups across the state about
the railroad workers, most
from China, who excavated
tunnels through the steep
Siskiyou Mountains. “This
building is one of the very
last Oregon and California
Railroad Co. depots left in
the state. It evokes life from
long ago and it deserves to be
saved.”
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