From Virgil Powell’s Diary
Virgil Powell (1887-1963) was
a long-time resident whose family had
a farm in the Upper Nehalem Valley
between Natal and Pittsburg. Each year
from 1906 until 1955, he kept a regular
diary of his activities.
In May 1915, Virgil mentions
traveling on the “new road” that was
presumably to or through Vernonia, but
we have not yet been able to establish
its history. We presume it was still the
hard-packed dirt, possibly oiled, road
typical in rural Oregon until the 1940s
and even later.
Saturday, June 12, 1915: Inez
and I went up to Vernonia 7:15
and returned 1:15 P.M. Cloudy
all day but only sprinkled a
little. Mrs. Nelson raffled off
her fish basket.
Sunday, June 13, 1915: Went
up to Pittsburg 10 A.M. and
fished from there down here
and caught 11 fine ones with
fly and spinner. Cloudy most
all day but very good.
Monday,
June
14,
1915:
Cultivated the late potatoes
first thing in forenoon. Went
fishing
in
afternoon
and
caught 12 nice ones. Pretty hot
most all day.
Sunday, June 20, 1915: Inez
and I went up over part of the
(new) Highway in afternoon.
Bright and fine all day. Ball
game at Vernonia, Mist vs
7
Vernonia.
Tuesday, June 22, 1915: Roy
and I went up on the new
Highway in forenoon.
Cut
hay all afternoon.
Cloudy
in forenoon but awful hot all
afternoon. They took the big
steam roller up this A.M.
Saturday, June 26, 1915: Roy
and I left 8:30 and went up to
Clauds on Pebble Creek. Came
back via Vernonia and the
new Highway. Got home 2:30.
Rained a little in morning but
fair in afternoon.
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. We now have
a page on the Vernonia Hands on Art
website, www.vernoniahandsonart.org
If you are a Facebook user, check out
the Vernonia Pioneer Museum page. 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.
D
Vernonia
Dental
DM
Roads and Rails
The isolation of Vernonia in its
early days appealed to many of its first
settlers. The Upper Nehalem Valley,
known at first as a “hole in the timber,”
was accessible only on foot with perhaps
a mule or horse packing supplies. Over
time resident volunteers widened the
footpaths into primitive dirt roads to
allow travel by horse and wagon to
market centers and transportation links
in St. Helens and the western Tualatin
Valley.
The first rough trail improved
for wagon travel followed a route along
Dairy Creek to Mountaindale, over Green
Mountain past the eponymous spring
that provided good water for travelers,
back and forth across Pebble Creek to
the center of the handful of homesteads
that was Vernonia. In 1880, just six
years after the first settlers came into
the valley, the biggest windstorm in the
history of the Upper Nehalem obliterated
the Green Mountain Spring Road. The
settlers went to work constructing a new
road - this time to Buxton.
The first market road to St.
Helens - Pittsburg Road - was another
early settler effort. Motivation for
this road building came from multiple
sources: the need to get products to and
from markets, access to the scheduled
water transportation to Portland and other
towns along the Columbia, and a way to
avoid the $2.00 per $2,000 tax or jail
time. In 1860 Oregon passed a law that
every able-bodied man between 21 and
50 was expected to put in time building
roads equivalent to his assessment or
face the aforementioned penalties. The
Scappoose-Vernonia market road wasn’t
completed until the late 1920s.
The Salem-Astoria Military
Road was first surveyed in 1855;
construction began in 1856. The route
of this road bypassed the rarely visited
and uninhabited Upper Nehalem Valley.
The northern part of the route was to go
from what is now Gales Creek through
the Coast Range to Astoria. A wagon
road from Astoria to Elsie comprised
the northwest section, and the road from
Salem to Timber the southeast, but the
middle portion was never built. Federal
funding ended with the outbreak of
the Civil War in the early 1860s with
maintenance left to the counties.
Some sections of that road and
the older market roads were incorporated
into our present day county and state road
system. The State Highway Division
was established in 1917 as more and
more automobiles required better,
interconnecting roads. Construction
methods gradually incorporated more
permanent surfaces such as macadam
and concrete, but even by 1948 only 16%
of Oregon’s roads were paved. Roads
in and out of Vernonia were among the
last to be hard-surfaced. Keasey Road,
formerly known as Rock Creek Road,
remained gravel until the 1960s.
The promise of a railroad through
the Upper Nehalem was a long hoped for
but elusive goal. The homestead lands in
the valley were partially held for future
railroad development. By the late 1880s
the Astoria and South Coast Railway’s
survey of a right-of-way through
Vernonia led to a small land rush. All of
the platted city lots were acquired, stores
and offices opened, the Nehalem Valley
Journal newspaper established a weekly
publication, and the population soared to
almost 150. Vernonia officially obtained
its city charter in 1891. Just two years
later, news that the railroad would
not be built coupled with the national
depression known as the Panic of 1893
caused a mass exodus. Homesteads
were abandoned, businesses closed and
the newspaper ceased. The population
dropped to less than forty.
It was only when the Oregon-
American mill construction began in
1922 that a railroad line finally reached
Vernonia. Passenger service to and
from Portland and the Tualatin Valley
commenced, and the line from the
lumber camps and rail yard at Keasey
brought the timber to the mill. Finished
lumber from the O-A mill headed south
and east to markets across the country.
Passenger service to Keasey began
in 1923 but ended during the Great
Depression of the 1930s. The rail line
from Vernonia to Keasey was abandoned
with the closure of the mill in 1958, and
passenger service to Vernonia from the
south and west ended soon thereafter.
After a few years of steam excursion
train operations in the late 1960s, the
line between Banks and Vernonia was
abandoned and eventually became the
Linear Trail we know today.
2015
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By Tobie Finzel
june18
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The Good Ol ’ Days
in other words
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Dr
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622 Bridge Street Vernonia, OR 97064
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