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2B ❚ WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2020 ❚ APPEAL TRIBUNE Secret Continued from Page 1B Drawson would still become famous for ex- ploring and writing. His discovery of numerous gigantic trees kickstarted Oregon’s Heritage Tree program, and he’s credit- ed with helping save some of the state’s oldest groves. Yet when he passed away in 2012, at the age of 87, the “Family Falls” is- sue remained unre- solved. His fight is not forgot- ten. Inspired by Draw- son’s books, Tom Kloster followed Drawson’s foot- steps to Family Falls in the early 2000s. The pic- tures he took, and web- site he created, brought the area to life for a new generation of Oregon wa- terfall hunters. Now Kloster is plan- ning to take another run at the Oregon Geographic Names Board, seeking to right an old wrong by changing “Henline Falls” to “Drawson Falls,” and “Henline Creek” to “Fam- ily Creek.” “I believe that maps should contain a living history,” said Kloster, who lives in Portland. “A lot of the names the Forest Ser- vice applied are a little static. I think that names should be updated with people who’ve had a posi- tive impact in more re- Maynard Drawson, right, was best known for big tree hunting, along with Oliver V. Matthews, seen here in a picture from the 1970s. PHOTO COURTESY OF CAPITOL JOURNAL ARCHIVES cent times, and I think Maynard fits that catego- ry very well.” Oregon’s original ramblin’ man Maybe it was the quiet of the forest that made Drawson love the Pacific Northwest so strongly. After three and a half years in the Navy and World War II — where he fought in the Pacific Theater and the Battle of Iwo Jima — perhaps the sweet sound of silence was a welcome reprieve. “He never talked about his time in the war very much,” his son Mark Drawson said. “I just know he loved the out- doors.” Obituaries Timothy Butsch MT. ANGEL - Tim Butsch passed away May 6, 2020. He was 79. Born February 2, 1941 in Mt. Angel Oregon to Norbert and Dorothy (Miller) Butsch. Tim grew up in Mt. Angel, graduating from Mt. Angel Prep all boys School and then joining the Navy where he worked on subma- rines in Hawaii and the San Diego bay. After 4 years in the Navy, he returned home and met the love of his life, Mary Ellen Bates, who was attending Mt. Angel College. The two were married a short time after and spent the next 51 years together until Mary Ellen’s passing last year. Tim worked at Yoder as a mechanic before becoming part owner in the 70’s of the Mt. Angel Foundry, where he spent the rest of his career as a Foundryman. Tim is proceeded in death by his parents and brother Paul and is survived by his sisters Carol and Mary, and brother Mark; son Norbert, daughter Joan and her husband Jeff and 5 adoring grandkids, Nathan, Emily, Andrew, Henry and Albert. A private service will be held May 13, 2020 at Cal- vary Cemetery. Arrangements by Unger Funeral Chapel- Mt. Angel. Due to the holiday, our offi ce hours and obituary placement times may vary. Please contact us at 503-399-6789 or obituary@statesmanjournal.com for further details. Once Maynard Draw- son returned to Salem, settling with his wife, Dee Drawson, and raising seven children, he decid- ed that exploring every corner of the “Oregon Country” was the life that suited him. He was a barber by trade, but as one newspa- per pointed out, he was no typical coiffeur. Anyone who came into his barbershop at 864 Commercial St. SE would have seen a unique sign that said: Sunday … The Lord’s Day Monday … The Bar- ber’s Day Thursday … Maynard’s Day Drawson took those Thursdays to travel any- where and everywhere, visiting ghost towns and recording their history, searching out old-timers and pumping them for in- formation about where to find the largest trees. Drawson discovered mul- tiple “champion trees” — the largest of their spe- cies in Oregon — and sub- mitted them to the Big Tree Registry of the American Forestry Asso- ciation. “Maynard had what you’d call the ‘gift of gab,’” Mark Drawson said. “He could walk up to anyone — politicians in Salem or some guy on the street — and start a conversation. That was how he learned about so many of the places he wrote about. Just talking to people.” While trees were his forte, it was photography that brought him into the realm of Family Falls. One day in the mid- to late-1960s — no one can quite agree on the year — Drawson and his friend Jerry Morey were visiting 126-foot Henline Falls, a well-known cascade northeast of Salem that is still popular today. Drawson wanted a bet- ter picture, so the duo scrambled up the steep, forest-choked cliffs to the waterfall’s top. After snapping a few photos, he gazed upstream, into the wild upper reaches of Henline Creek. Something about it called out to him. “We noticed the area OR-GCI0408452-01 Simple Cremation $795 Simple Direct Burial $995 Church Funeral $2965 SALEM 275 Lancaster Drive SE (503) 581-6265 TUALATIN 8970 SW Tualatin Sherwood Rd (503) 885-7800 PORTLAND 832 NE Broadway (503) 783-3393 TIGARD 12995 SW Pacifi c Hwy (503) 783-6869 EASTSIDE 1433 SE 122nd Ave (503) 783-6865 MILWAUKIE 16475 SE McLoughlin Blvd (503) 653-7076 Privately owned cremation facility. A Family Owned Oregon Business. was wild and pristine, surprisingly free of signs of man, or litter of any kind,” Drawson wrote in “Treasures of the Oregon country.” Bushwhacking up- stream, through thick for- est and steep cliffs, Draw- son and Morey discov- ered one waterfall after the next, eventually reaching seven never-be- fore-mapped cataracts, all clustered within one mile of each other in the narrow canyon. They ranged in size from 23 feet to 79 feet, as impressive as any of Ore- gon’s more famous falls, yet they were totally wild, what Silver Falls State Park might have looked like 500 years ago. At first Drawson didn’t think much of his discov- ery. The falls were im- pressive enough, he fig- ured, that they would be difficult to miss, especial- ly in a landscape marked by mining. Yet the more research Drawson did — which in- cluded looking at the original survey map of Henline Creek from 1874 — and the more people he talked to, the quicker he became convinced that nobody had ever docu- mented the falls. He took a host of notable people to view the falls, includ- ing Forest Service rangers and managers. All were surprised by what they found. His next step was to measure each of the falls. He actually brought his children — including 7- year-old Mark — into the canyon to see the water- falls he’d named after them. “We were rugged little kids, so it really wasn’t a big deal for us to hike into a place like that, even though it was pretty rough,” Mark Drawson said. “He loaded us up and off we went. We went on adventures with him all the time.” Maynard ordered each waterfall to correspond with the ages of his chil- dren. The tallest waterfall was named Jerry Falls, for Jerry Morey. The next tallest falls, at 58 and 55 feet, became Dan and Steve falls, his two eldest boys. Dave (40 feet), Ron (37), Mark (29) and Jack- ie (23) came next. The smallest feature in the canyon wasn’t actual- ly a waterfall, but more of a slide. It became Dean- na’s Slide, for Drawson’s 3-year-old daughter. Later, Drawson had a sign painted that said “FAMILY FALLS” with the name and height of each. With his family in tow, they carried a ladder to the ridge above the can- yon of Henline Falls and tacked the sign on a tree, Drawson wrote. Having the names tacked to a tree still didn’t make them official, and Drawson faced increas- ingly stiff headwinds to have his find officially recognized. He attended multiple meetings of the Oregon Geographic Names Board to little avail. They reject- ed naming the waterfalls for his children, since his children were alive and a new name can only be in- cluded for someone who is deceased. Countless trips to the waterfalls, with bureau- crats and officials, mem- bers of the Forest Service and the OGNB, were to lit- tle avail. The board reject- ed even the name Family Falls. “I have been asked to work with the Forest Ser- vice to pick APPROPRI- ATE names,” Drawson wrote, “names which will again be considered within the due process of the OGNB. Some feel the name Family Falls is a good choice, as do I.” The area remained un- named, and the issue largely forgotten until the 21st century. Rediscovery of Family Falls “Easy Online Arrangements” www.CrownCremationBurial.com OR-GCI0348841-02 Tom Kloster grew up reading every page of Drawson’s books. The Portland native remembers coming across volumes of “Trea- sures of the Oregon Country” in his junior high library, around 1975, and not being able to put them down. “I remember checking them over and over again, just poring over every chapter,” Kloster said. “They were just fascinat- ing and easy to read, in this fun, narrative style. Family Falls stuck in my mind because of that pic- ture of all the kids holding the sign with the height of the waterfalls. It made me want to go there some- day.” He would get his chance. Starting in the 1980s, Kloster became a self-de- scribed waterfall hunter, the type who looks for waterfalls far from the beaten path. He explored the Salmon River Gorge in 1983 and his obsession continued, as he explored hidden cascades in the Columbia River Gorge and around Mount Hood. By 2002, Kloster turned his attention to Family Falls. The only in- formation he had was Drawson’s old guide book, which doesn’t pro- vide much detail other than climbing above Hen- line Falls and then bush- whacking upstream. On June 8, 2002, Klos- ter and three others set off. “After planning the trip for years, I had prepared myself for the possibility that the waterfalls would be less than impressive,” Kloster wrote on a blog and website devoted to Family Falls. “But as we climbed above Henline Falls, and into the secret upper canyon, we were awed by the pristine beauty and spectacular waterfalls.” His first trip yielded five waterfalls, but he would return multiple times and eventually de- velop an entire website devoted to Drawson and Family Falls. Kloster cre- ated a tip sheet, simple map and guide, helping a new generation of moti- vated photographers and canyoneers discover Family Falls. Kloster even got a chance to meet Drawson and show him the web- site. They met at White’s Restaurant in Salem, where Drawson had be- come such a fixture over the years that the menu includes “Maynard’s Meatloaf.” “I loaded my laptop and showed him the web- site — he loved it!” Kloster said. “He didn’t remem- ber much about his Fam- ily Falls trips, but he had a pretty salty sense of hu- mor about it, saying he’d have to be dead before they’d name a waterfall after him.” The plan The rules for renaming a landmark in Oregon — when it comes to an indi- vidual — are fairly straightforward. The person must be deceased for at least five years, a person’s surname is preferred and that per- son must have some his- toric connection or have made a significant contri- bution to the local area. Kloster believes all of those circumstances will apply to Drawson in 2017, the five-year anniversary of his death. While he concedes it would be difficult to get the waterfalls named for Drawson’s children — they are still alive, after all — he envisions nam- ing two landmarks in Maynard’s honor. Henline Falls, the pop- ular 126-foot waterfall that launched the expedi- tion, would become “Drawson Falls.” And Henline Creek, where the Family Falls collection of cascades is located, would become “Family Creek.” “You couldn’t even say we were disrespecting Mr. Henline,” Kloster said. “There would still be a mountain named for him right there.” (Mr. Henline, accord- ing to the brief informa- tion in “Oregon Geo- graphic Names,” was an “early settler who was in- terested in a mining en- terprise nearby.”) Kloster will likely face an uphill challenge. Phil Cogswell, the cur- rent president of the OGNB, said existing names are rarely changed, except when a derogatory name is in- volved. In recent years, for example, there has been movement to change the name of places that carry the name “Squaw,” a denigra- ting word used for Native American females. “There is a pretty firm policy about changing es- tablished names, unless the name is derogatory or redundant — like there were two Elk Creeks within a few miles of each other,” Cogswell said. “That said, every propos- al is considered on its merits and maybe there is a good case to be made here. We’ll never say no, and we’re always happy to help people navigate the process.” Cogswell said Kloster, were he inclined, would have a difficult time ap- plying the name “Family Falls” to the hidden wa- terfalls as well, because they now reside in a fed- eral wilderness area, where naming new fea- tures is discouraged. Cogswell emphasized that these were federal policies, and OGNB only makes recommendations to the U.S. Board on Geo- graphic Names, which makes final decisions. Kloster said he’s OK with the difficulty. “I always like a chal- lenge, especially when it’s against an entity like OGNB!” Kloster said. “My back up plan might be legislation, and I do think I could pull that off, too.” Despite the naming is- sues, one thing few peo- ple debate is Drawson’s impact on Oregon, and you don’t have to look much farther than the Oregon Department of Forestry building in Sa- lem for evidence. An 18- foot-tall Oregon white oak is planted in Draw- son’s honor, celebrating his many accomplish- ments in forest conserva- tion. Drawson is widely credited with preserving the Valley of the Giants, a 50-acre patch of Coast Range forest home to some of Oregon’s largest and oldest trees. And, he helped inspire the Oregon Heritage Tree Program, which now has an award named in his honor, the Maynard Drawson Me- morial Award. “It not only carries on his name but carries on his mission — acquaint- ing folks with the rich tree history we have in this state,” Al Tocchini of the Oregon Heritage Tree Program committee told the Statesman Journal in November 2015. In the end, Drawson will likely be most re- membered for his love of trees. But one day almost 50 years ago, he also made a discovery that changed the course of history for those waterfall hunters crazy enough to make their way to Family Falls. Postscript: Despite Kloster’s efforts and some early momentum, the Family Falls remain a blank spot on the map and not much has changed in the years since this story was pub- lished. Zach Urness has been an outdoors reporter, photographer and videographer in Oregon for 12 years. Urness is the author of “Best Hikes with Kids: Oregon” and “Hik- ing Southern Oregon.” He can be reached at zur- ness@StatesmanJour- nal.com or (503) 399- 6801. Find him on Twitter at @ZachsORoutdoors.