14
history
february21
The Good Old Days
2013
By Tobie Finzel
Museum News
The Board of the Vernonia
Pioneer Museum Association (VPMA)
elected officers for 2013 at its January
meeting: President, Jay Anderson; Vice
President, Ralph Keasey; Secretary,
Barbara Larsen; Treasurer, Tobie
Finzel. The board bid a fond farewell
to Carol Davis who has ably led VPMA
for the last seven years but resigned to
pursue other interests. Jay Anderson
has volunteered in a number of ways
during this past year, and he was warmly
welcomed to the board.
There is a new structure on the
museum grounds. After the collapse of
the former outdoor display shed during a
heavy snow in 2010, the museum board
applied to the Columbia County Cultural
Coalition for a grant to help replace that
structure. This spring the area under the
roof will be graveled and several of items
will be moved there with explanatory
placards added to describe how they
were used.
VPMA has received several
donations from descendants of the
Malmsten family who settled in the
Vernonia area in the early 1900s.
Olof Malmsten’s sons, among other
accomplishments, established the first
telephone service in Vernonia which
was jokingly referred to as “The Swede
Line.” We have used some of these
funds to purchase a display case for the
wedding coats worn by Olof and Franklin
Malmsten and to restore their wedding
portraits which are now in the process of
being reframed at Grey Dawn Gallery.
Mark Greathouse, great grandson of Olof
and grandson of Franklin, and his wife,
Helena, donated these artifacts and made
a generous grant to the museum that has
greatly helped preservation efforts.
Many current and former
Vernonians receive frequent email
correspondence from Bob New, a 1947
graduate of Vernonia High School. Bob
has been the unofficial Vernonia historian
for several years and regularly provides
reminiscences, digitized photographs,
video and slide shows of Vernonia
events, and obituaries of Vernonians to
those on his distribution list. He has
generously provided copies of his DVDs
and CDs to the museum for resale to our
patrons and for our archives. In future
columns, we will share some of his great
stories about Vernonia in the “good old
days.”
From Virgil Powell’s Diary
Virgil Powell was a long-time
resident who had a farm somewhere in
the Upper Nehalem Valley between Natal
and Pittsburg. Each year from 1906 until
1955, he kept a diary with a brief entry
almost every day of his activities. He
noted what he did on the farm that day,
what the weather was, if he worked in
the woods or delivering mail, and what
entertainments he attended. In the 1960s,
then-curator John Stofiel transcribed the
diaries to typewritten pages; both the
original diaries and the transcriptions
are kept the museum. Here’s what Virgil
wrote in February 1908:
Saturday, Feb. 15: Carried the
mail to Mist. Got to Mist at 11
A.M. Grange day at Natal. Pretty
fair day but rained after I got
home. Had a fine time down at the
store talking basket social for next
Saturday night.
Saturday, Feb. 22: Carried the
mail down to Mist. Got to Mist at
10 A.M. Left Mist at 1 P.M. Got
home at 2.25. Stayed home till
3.10 then started for the doings at
Vernonia at 4.45. From Mist to
Vernonia 3 hours. Had a deuce of
a time. Did not start home till 7
A.M. Good fine day.
Tuesday, Feb. 25: Sawed wood
all day.
Shot at some salmon
in the afternoon but did not kill
any. Cloudy and looks very much
like rain. Received a postal from
Florence Williams.
The Vernonia Pioneer Museum
is located at E. 511 Bridge Street and is
open from 1 to 4 pm on Saturdays and
Sundays (excluding holidays) all year.
From June through mid-September, the
museum is also open on Fridays from 1 –
4 pm. There is no charge for admission
but donations are always welcome.
Become a member of the museum for
an annual $5 fee to receive the periodic
newsletter, and if you are a Facebook
user, check out the new Vernonia Pioneer
Museum page created by Bill Langmaid.
The museum volunteers are always
pleased to enlist additional volunteers to
help hold the museum open and assist in
other ways. Please stop by and let one
of the volunteers know of your interest in
helping out.
VPMA is a non-profit, all
volunteer group organized as a heritage
program of Vernonia Hands-on Art and
is an affiliate of the Columbia County
Museums Association.
Columbia
County leases the building, the former
headquarters of the Oregon-American
Lumber Mill, from the City of Vernonia
and pays the utility costs. Volunteers are
responsible for managing the artifacts
and staffing the museum.
Voices From The Crowd: Just Another Day in the Life of a Timber Faller
By Dennis Nelson
I was working for Don Hood back in the early
80’s. We were on a job off of Keasey Road where we
were thinning a fifty year old Douglas Fir stand that
had big old growth cedar snags scattered throughout.
One morning my boss led me up to the biggest
snag on the claim. It was situated just below the top of
a deep canyon. There was a skid road pushed to within
100 feet of the snag’s base. The boss asked me if I
thought I could wedge it uphill onto the skid road.
I looked it over pretty carefully, walked around
the snag a couple of times, judged it to have only a
slight downhill lean and told him I thought I could.
The next morning, with the boss home doing
paperwork, I set about to fall that snag.
With the face removed I could see that it was
mostly good sound wood with a little rotten hollow in
the middle. So far, so good.
The tree was five foot in diameter so it took a
little beavering with the saw held at head height to get
This was all taking too much time. After more
the job done.
than an hour of beating wedges I was getting exhausted
I cut and wedged and cut and wedged until I and a little frantic. If the boss knew how long this had
reached the point where I feared
taken and I ended by losing the
to cut any more. There was too
snag into the hole, he would not
much rot in the center to totally
be amused.
I
ran
to
the
crummy
and
trust the strength of the holding
I slammed on those wedges
found a couple more
wood in the hinge. By this point
and cut a tiny bit more. By this
wedges and some broken
I’d lifted the tree with wedges
time I’d lifted the back of the
chunks and drove them
several inches and the downhill
tree about eight inches; I didn’t
in
too.
lean seemed to be gone, but it
dare cut anymore and my wedges
showed no inclination to fall ei-
were buried.
The snag was starting to
ther.
The snapping and popping
talk to me, snapping and
I cut a little bit more
was getting intense when finally,
popping deep inside.
and drove my wedges in deeper.
with a groan, the big tree leaned
Pretty soon I had all my wedges
forward into the face and with an
in, stacked on top of each other.
incredible crash down through the
They were in so deep I couldn’t drive them any further. standing timber, fell into the skid road exactly where I
I ran to the crummy and found a couple more wedges wanted it.
and some broken chunks and drove them in too.
With a huge sense of relief and after a little bit
The snag was starting to talk to me, of rest, I set about measuring and bucking this monster.
snapping and popping deep inside.
The old snag was a little over five feet in di-
I didn’t know if it was getting ready to ameter with hardly any taper. It was missing several
fall over backwards, shoot off the stump like feet of top but was still well over 200 feet tall.
a rocket and disappear down into the depths
Right after lunch the cat skinner yarded our
of the canyon or what.
prize out to the road. The next day the boss came back
and was he happy! You could see the dollar signs danc-
ing in his eyes. We left the job that night with those big
logs on the road feeling pretty proud of ourselves.
Monday morning when we came back nothing
was left but strips of sawdust in the mud where our old
Small and Large Animals
growth cedar bonanza had been. The cedar thieves had
struck. We were outraged and heartbroken. The boss
was out a lot of money.
In those days old growth cedar for the shake
and shingle market was the hottest thing in timber
country. Crummy’s coming out of the woods piled
high with shake bolts were as common as loaded log
trucks. Thieving was rampant and the roads weren’t
gated like they are now. I knew guys that made more
money stealing cedar at night and on weekends than
Mon, Wed & Saturday
they did on the day jobs cutting timber or working on
the rigging.
9 a.m. - 4 p.m.
After too many big fires the state of California
Call for Appointments
outlawed putting cedar kindling on roofs, most of the
(503) 429-1612
old growth cedar was gone, the market petered out and
Or 24 hr. Emergency Number (503) 397-6470
another era in the local economy ended.
700 Weed Ave. Vernonia, OR
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