in other words
The Good Ol ’ Days
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 Na-
tal and Pittsburg. Each year from 1906
until 1955, he kept a regular diary of his
activities. Among his many endeavors,
Powell carried the mail between St. Hel-
ens and the Upper Nehalem in the early
1900s.
Friday,
May
18,
1906:
Ploughed the patch for ruta-
bagas. Rained quite a little
in morning. Went to Verno-
nia in afternoon. This is the
last day of school , the chil-
dren took exams yesterday
and today. F.J. Peterson and
Messing were up this way in
wagon.
Saturday, May 19: Carried
the mail. Grange day at Na-
tal. Got a good fill when got
back to Grange Hall. Mr. W.D.
Cast came over. Rained quite
a bit in afternoon.
Sunday, May 20: Went down
to Natal to ball game be-
tween Natal and Vernonia,
score 11 to 12 in favor of Na-
tal. Rained a little in morn-
ing. Dandy old time coming
and going to game.
Monday, May 21:
Hauled
pickets for yard fence in
morning.
Harrowed the
ground for corn and wheat
in afternoon. Rained quite
Terry’s
Gym
The Vernonia Pioneer Museum is located
at E. 511 Bridge Street and is open from
1 to 4 pm on Saturdays and Sundays (ex-
cluding 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 do-
nations 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.vernonia-
handsonart.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.
The School Board asked district
administrators to prepare for a Public
Hearing on Thursday, May 19, 2016 to
consider the offer.
D
Vernonia
Dental
School Board Considers
Proposal to Sponsor Oregon
Virtual Education continued from page 3
minor administrative duties required
by the District. In order to become the
sponsoring district, Vernonia would need
to create an additional Charter School
within the current Vernonia School
District.
hard in afternoon. Went to
Vernonia in night after Dr.
Hatfield for Armstrong’s but
he did not come. Got home
at 2 A.M.
Tuesday, May 22: Carried the
U.S. Mail. Grace and Miss Al-
derman went out to St. Hel-
ens. Rained very hard all af-
ternoon.
Wednesday, May 23: Sawed
wood in morning and fixed
river fence in afternoon.
Planted corn, squashes, beets,
etc.. Good bright day and
looks like rain is over.
Thursday, May 24: Carried
the mail. Made flying trip
coming home. Got back at
2:45.
DM
He erected the first post office building
on Madison Street and a larger one in
the 1920s to accommodate the surge in
population due to the new lumber mill.
A few years later, the post office moved
to a building on Bridge Street where it
shared space with a drug store and later
to the former gas and electric building
on Bridge and Park Place. In 1954, a
modern post office structure was built on
Jefferson Street. It was destroyed by fire
in 1974 and replaced with the post office
we have today, the only one in the 97064
ZIP code.
Eden Keasey applied for a post
office on his farm in 1890, five miles out
from Vernonia on what was then known
as Rock Creek Road, to serve the home-
steaders who lived in that area. Mr.
Keasey served as postmaster until 1923
when the office moved four miles out to
the newly constructed town of Keasey at
the end of the public rail line. It served
that town and nearby logging camps un-
til 1955. By then, the decades of logging
operations had depleted the old growth
timber in the area and the camps closed.
The former town is now on private prop-
erty, and new timber grows where the
railway station, homes and the post of-
fice once stood.
Established the same day as
Vernonia, the Clear Creek Post Office
existed for just over a year in a house
that stood on the site of what is now the
North Cemetery on Clear Creek Road
off Timber Road. A few miles south and
granted twenty-one years later, the Kist
Post Office operated from 1899 until
1912. The Kist community was named
for the man who had homesteaded the
land along the Nehalem River. Mr. Kist
is said to have perished in a snow storm
while traveling from Buxton towards his
home.
We will continue with the early
post offices next month. If anyone has
old letters or postcards postmarked from
the early post offices in our area, the mu-
seum would love to be able to scan them
for our records.
7
an
Early Post Offices, Part One
A patron recently came to the
museum in a quest for postmarks from
early day and preferably defunct post
offices in the area. We showed him an
article on the early area post offices from
the Vernonia Centennial (1991) special
edition compiled by Dirk and Noni An-
dersen, former publishers of The Inde-
pendent. The Andersen’s credited Robb
Wilson for his extensive research for the
articles in this paper, Vernonia – The
First 100 Years. We will base this and
next month’s articles about the early post
offices on this research in addition to our
own.
For the first four years of its ex-
istence, the community we now call Ver-
nonia was isolated by the dense forests
and rugged terrain that encircled the Up-
per Nehalem Valley. Mail for the area
was primarily sent to Mountaindale and
brought in when a resident passed that
way into the valley. In January 1878,
the US Post Office granted an office to
the new little town which had chosen the
name “Vernona” for early settler Ozias
Cherrington’s daughter. Somewhere in
the application process, an “I” was in-
serted, and the new post office and town
became Vernonia. David Baker, the first
postmaster, set up the office in his home-
stead cabin located where the second
Vernonia High School once stood.
During this same time period, a
new road was built between the valley
and St. Helens. Once a week, mail was
transported on foot or horseback between
the two towns. After the first year, Hiram
Van Blaricom succeeded Mr. Campbell,
the first carrier, and carried the mail for
four years. Following Baker’s nine year
tenure as postmaster, nine others held
this title until 1918 when Emil Mess-
ing assumed the position. Messing was
postmaster until his retirement in 1954.
2016
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By Tobie Finzel
may19
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