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APPEAL TRIBUNE
WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 2016
Life in the
Valley y
sanews@salem.gannett.com
From wasteland to forest:
State park celebrates history
JUNNELLE HOGEN
APPEAL TRIBUNE
The park is the largest in Oregon.
Sprawled on 9,200 acres of undulating,
wooded landscape, Silver Falls State
Park, just east of Salem, has gained
notoriety for its “Trail of 10 Falls,”
miles of paved trails and recreational
buildings.
But as volunteers and staff noted
during the seventh annual Historic
Silver Falls Day, without the devotion
of an intrepid photographer and 200
workers from the Great Depression-
induced Civilian Conservation Corps,
Oregon’s largest state park might never
have existed.
Harvested land
“Back in the 20s and 30s, people just
didn’t come up here,” recounted Sharon
Lowrie, the park host.
The park almost didn’t receive for-
est protection. The verdant land, en-
trenched in the sloped hills of the Cas-
cade Mountains, became a prime desti-
nation for the Silverton Lumber Co.,
which by 1913 had hauled 125,000,000
feet of logs to its Silverton Mill, reduc-
ing most of the area to stumps. The
area was also ravaged by the Silverton
Forest Fire, which in 1865 burned an
estimated 1 million acres.
Then, Silver Falls found its own
Ansel Adams: June Drake, a Silverton
photographer who fought to preserve
the area in the early 1900s.
Given the damage to the land, it was
disqualified from consideration as a
national park.
Undaunted, Drake gathered support
from local business, chambers of com-
merce and the Oregon Highway Com-
mission, until finally, on April 2, 1931,
the Oregon State Park Commission
deputized the first parcel of land into
the Oregon State Park system.
During the Saturday celebration,
little of the logging and wildfire past
could be seen.
Lowrie says the Friends of Silver
Falls and park rangers run a busy sys-
tem of conservation: picking up gar-
bage, maintaining the trails and 1,000-
spot parking lots, and updating the old
facilities.
“We’re trying to maintain it for gen-
erations to come,” Lowrie said.
The densely forested area is now
filled with ferns, Douglas firs, Western
hemlocks, vine maples, red cedars --
and songbirds, nesting in the branches
of the moss-covered trees.
It is also chock full of another factor
-- crowds -- something volunteers and
staff attribute to another unique part of
the forest’s history: the work of the
Civilian Conservation Corps.
PHOTOS BY ANNA REED/STATESMAN JOURNAL
Tony Hendricks, of Sublimity, leads a draft horse logging demonstration during the seventh annual Historic Silver Falls Day at Silver Falls State
Park on Saturday. June Drake, a Silverton photographer, fought to preserve the area in the early 1900s.
Civilian Conservation Corps
Even after the Silver Falls area was
deputized into the parks system, the
land remained largely undeveloped.
Then, in 1935, the area received the
aid of 200 workers from the Civilian
Conservation Corps, a program started
by President Roosevelt to create jobs
during the Depression. According to
the Department of Forestry Forest
History Center, CCC involvement in the
state park wasn’t an isolated event.
Many of Oregon’s lookout towers,
guard stations and new tree grows
were implemented by the crews.
At the Silver Falls State Park, the
crews constructed the park’s buildings
and spacious lodge, put in trails, devel-
oped rock walls and laid bridges. The
work transformed the area, according
to Forest History Center coordinator
Alan Maul, who with his wife, oversaw
the Historic Day’s exhibits.
“The level of involvement here is
unique,” Maul said. “You didn’t often
see them building complexes like this.”
Maul has been working to re-create
Brothers, from left, Ian Huskie, 10, Alastair Huskie, 6, and Shaun Huskie, 8, of Salem, tumble
over each other during an old-fashioned game of tug of war during Historic Silver Falls Day.
School
Continued from Page 2A
priority need, which is closing Eugene
Field School.”
The permanent closure of Eugene
Field School last month was the catalyst
for change that is touching every school
in town. Mark Twain, built in 1955 as a ju-
nior high, will be a K-2 school, while Rob-
ert Frost, built in 1971, will serve 3rd-5th
graders. Rural K-8 schools are relatively
unaffected.
Shuffling teachers, students and
classrooms is a complex-enough job that
the district hired a specialist to do it. Phil
Appleton, a retired Army colonel and lo-
cal parent, is contracted to complete the
operation by the end of August. Twice de-
ployed to the Middle East, he has set up
and moved military encampments.
“The first thing I did was create a
timeline,” Appleton explained. “I said,
‘We need to get a written plan now so that
teachers have a timeline.’”
Affected teachers had until June 27 to
pack their classrooms. “They did a great
job,” Bellando said. “There will be some
pay given to them when they unpack.”
Now the gym at the Schlador campus
is full of boxes and furniture, labeled, or-
ganized and ready for move-in. Last
week, while Graebel, the hired moving
company, was busy unloading, sub-con-
tractors worked in every wing of the
middle school.
On the east wing, they’d turned the
1950s “multipurpose room” into a library
and cafeteria by adding of windows and
a separating wall.
Centurion Fire Protection from Ore-
gon City was installing the sprinkler sys-
tem. Outside the gym, ME Electric was
pouring over wiring schematics.
Silverton Middle School’s main en-
trance will be on Schlador Street, east of
the old high school’s front steps. Outside
will be a new paver patio displaying the
names of donors who responded to a
short Mark Twain PTC campaign this
spring. In two-and-a-half weeks, the club
the history of the Depression-era
group. Several years ago he started an
archive to track down the names and
locations of CCC workers.
On Saturday, he answered questions
from many longtime locals, whose fa-
thers and grandfathers were in the
corps, and who wanted to trace their
genealogy.
“I’ve had so many questions this
year, so many people asking, ‘My fa-
ther, can you tell me where he worked?’
“ Alan Maul said.
Nostalgia in the air
While the event focused on the roots
of conservation and history, locals also
celebrated other elements of the past,
complete with an antique cars gather-
ing, flint knapping, storytelling, horse-
drawn wagon rides and a canoe ride
over a waterfall.
The history was in the air, as well.
The Roundhouse Band from the greater
Salem area, brought back bluegrass
tunes from the 1930s and 1940s in four-
part harmonies.
“It’s a perfect backdrop for people
exploring the history,” said band mem-
ber Ron Leavitt.
As the evening approached, silence
couched in the space of the music, and
the volunteers wrapped up the displays,
to be preserved for another summer.
Inside the lodge, Diana Maul remi-
nisced about long summer nights in her
childhood, when her family used to
drive through rural Oregon on vaca-
tion. They would pass by wigwam burn-
ers -- sparks shooting out of the tops of
the wigwam -- and spot clear images of
the vibrant logging and lumber commu-
nity.
Now, she says that glimpse of Ore-
gon life is fading.
“My kids won’t see that kind of
thing,” Maul said. “They’ll have to hear
it in memories or see it in photographs.
Their kids won’t know it firsthand, the
way we did. So preserving it -- is a trea-
sure.”
Send questions, comments or news
tips to jhogen@statesmanjournal.com
or 503-399-6802. Follow on Twitter at
@JunnelleH.
Earl McCollum leads a guided hike for siblings, from left, Karen Parent, 9, Elisha Parent, 5, and
Elsie Parent, 5, of Albany, during Historic Silver Falls Day.
gathered $4,200 that will be available for
staff needs.
“We wanted to involve the community
in getting excited about the new school,”
Rivoli said. “We want people to view it as
a school, but also as a community place
where they can bring their kids, and say,
‘Look, here’s my brick that my family put
down.’”
Rivoli’s youngest child will be a high
school freshman next year, but she plans
to stay involved at the middle school.
“The transition can be really smooth
and really wonderful as long as the
adults jump on board, and they don’t em-
phasize the negatives but emphasize the
positives,” she said.
Down the hall in the 1960s wing along
James Street, large classrooms with of-
fices sandwiched between them are get-
ting new exterior doors to meet fire
code. The wing’s breezeway has become
a standard hallway with views of the
courtyard. In northwest wing from the
1970s, very little improvements are
needed, Bellando said.
What about the main 1939 structure at
the center of it all? Its brick-and-mortar
walls make it beautiful but dangerous in
an earthquake.
Contractors have already used steel
beams to support the walls it shares with
the 1950s, 60s and 70s additions. Three-
hour firewalls will separate it from the
parts of campus coming to life as a mid-
dle school, Bellando explained.
There’s little in the budget to pay for
extras. For example, the cost of paint is
included, but not the cost of labor, Bel-
lando said. Custodians and other staff
will likely be asked to focus their time on
such projects; a local contractor has of-
fered to help too.
What the Silver Falls School District
is doing here – retrofitting an existing
building for long-term use – is unusual to
the point that “other districts are watch-
ing us,” Bellando said.
A scaled-back remodel isn’t what the
school board had in mind when it went
out for a bond two years ago, but it’ll
have to do for now: “This building has
life left in it,” he said.