6 Spring 2012 Applegater
BACK IN TIME
Some old gas stations
BY EVELYN BYrNE wiLLiAmS with jANEEN SAthrE
A few years ago I was asked if I
remembered the old gas service station on
top of Jacksonville Hill. For some reason,
I do not. Lorna Erskin, a Forest Creek
friend, told me about one being there in
the 1930s and that Mr. Ed Demer had a
photo of it. Well, it did not take me long
to contact him and he kindly let me have a
copy (top photo). He remembered it quite
well because his grandparents lived across
the road from it.
I also found that Maud Pool, at the
time the Applegate news correspondent
for the Medford Mail Tribune, wrote
in a March 12, 1930, article: “New
Station Going in near Applegate. Seeing
an opportunity to serve the tourist and
vacationists who flock to the Applegate in
the summertime, T. S. Cady is preparing
to open a service station, with free picnic
grounds near his home at the summit
of Jacksonville hill. Construction of
the station which will be operated in
connection with the Union Oil Company
is well underway, and Mr. Cady expects
to be ready for business in a short time.
The new concern, which will be named
The Summit Station, will include a line
of lunch goods, and the inviting picnic
grounds among the pines at the rear of
the building will make it a favorite with
the autoists. Mr. Cady is assisted with the
carpenter work by I.E. Clapp. Mr. Cady,
who has lived here since coming from
Idaho a year ago, says he thinks Southern
Oregon a fine place, and he is interested
in the future progress and development of
this country.”
Now my research began for some
other old gas stations in our area. In
looking through John and Marguerite
Black’s book, Ruch and the Upper Applegate
Valley, I found that the Ruch store had
a gas pump. In 1896 Cap Ruch built a
cabin/store/post office on ten acres of land
between Applegate and Uniontown Roads,
now Applegate and Upper Applegate
Roads. About 1915 he expanded the store
building and a gas pump was installed in
the front.
Then competition started in 1928
when his nearby neighbors, Chester and
Martin McDonough, built the Sunnyside
Gas Station with a lube and oil change pit.
They sold tires, tubes and other automobile
supplies, and customers had convenient
restrooms on the lower level. They added
a stock of groceries some years later.
There were gas pumps at the Copper
Store, which was built in 1934 by Mr.
and Mrs. Crow. Many people wondered
how this business could survive in such
a remote area. But it did. Many people
just took a Sunday drive up the Applegate
to stop and visit with the locals there and
have a soda pop or a beer and buy things
for a picnic. It would probably still be
there if the Applegate Dam had not been
built, but now that store location is at the
bottom of the lake.
I was told there were gas pumps
sometime in the early 1940s at the small
building by the McKee Bridge. The station
didn’t last long and the building was later
used by the Upper Applegate Lions Club
for their meetings. The Upper Applegate
Store (now McKee Bridge Store) had some
gas pumps later but they were discontinued
when store owner Willard Wilson stopped
using them.
Also, there was a gas station built in
1947 at Applegate across the road from the
Pernoll’s store (now the Applegate Store
and Gas Station). Owners were Edward
Kubli and his
son, Norman.
I have no
idea how many
more early day
gas pumps
sprang up here
and there in our
area, but I did
find an interesting photo of some in
Jacksonville. There were two pumps on
the sidewalk in front of the Masonic Lodge
building on California Street (middle
photo by Margaret LaPlante), and a 1925
photo shows a gas station at the end of
California and 5th Street built by Mr. W.A.
Childers and his son-in-law Mr. Leonard
McKee (bottom photo).
Old gas pumps are now considered
antiques and are interesting to see in
collections. They bring back nostalgia of
those bygone days when you could fill your
tank for a few cents and get away from the
farm for a day of relaxation.
Evelyn Williams with Janeen Sathre
541-899-1443
Tap wrap-up
BY LAirD fuNk
Greetings from the sugar shack!
Things are pretty quiet around the shack
right now, but in December and January it
was a busy place. We collected about 125
gallons of bigleaf maple sap and had a good
time turning it into about seven quarts of
delicious syrup.
The weather was not the best
for a tapping season, but we did okay
anyway. Most of December had the right
temperature range of freezing at night
with warmer days, but because of the lack
of rain there was no flow until that first
rainstorm at the end of December. Then
things got more normal. Whether due to
weather or something else, the sugar level
this year was lower than the normal 2%
and never rose above 1.75%. January was
fairly productive compared to December
and tapping went okay.
Apparently our colleagues on
Vancouver Island, B.C., had unusual
weather and flows also. Many reported that
reliable trees did nothing and traditionally
unproductive trees did well.
I sold out my supply of spiles and
such very quickly and could have sold
twice as many to the eager Applegaters
who read my last article (Fall 2011). I
met a bunch of nice folks, including one
gentleman from Murphy who had been
tapping bigleaf ’s since high school, a
couple decades at least, but who had never
had real tapping gear.
One problem I encountered was that
my source of milk jugs decided to tap his
own maples, leaving me way short. But I
found you can buy 48 new, sterile ones for
just over $17, so I shelled out a bit of cash
and got a lifetime supply of jugs. I ended
up tapping about 20 trees of various sizes,
though it took a few days to find the ones
with good flows. Some gave nothing but
some were outstanding. I averaged one-
third to one-half gallon per tree per day,
but my best trees sometimes produced a
whole gallon a day.
This year did show that the different
microclimates in our valley greatly influence
the flow. One tapper discovered that his
trees never got enough sun to warm up in
the afternoon till the season was almost
over. Those trees with plenty of moisture
in the soil flowed much better than those
on higher ground. Tappers “JR” and “KR”
up on the East Fork of Williams Creek
tapped about ten trees and got good flows
from all but one or two. Their best trees
were in or near water. They reported that
their return was 48 ounces of great syrup.
The evaporating went much better
this year because I bought two full-size
steam-table pans that provided a great deal
more surface area than the turkey roaster
Two bigleaf-maple trunks tapped into one jug.
from last season. Each holding almost five
gallons, they sped up the evaporation by
about a third compared to last year. This
saved a lot of propane because previously
a portion of the flames was not hitting the
oblong pan, which ultimately resulted in
a slightly lighter-colored syrup due to less
time spent boiling with less caramelization
of the sugars. A welcome serendipitous
event occurred when very cold morning
temperatures froze part of the liquid in the
jugs, leaving a higher percentage of sugar in
fluid portion and no sugar in the resulting
ice, which also helped fuel use and made
collecting a bit easier.
I tried using two pans on four
burners on my outdoor kitchen range, but
discovered I could not get full propane flow
after a couple of hours because the freezing
weather did not provide enough heat to
vaporize the gas in the five-gallon tank.
Next year I am going to use a bigger tank
and hope to use all four burners, allowing
me to increase production. There is a
balancing act to matching your evaporative
capacity to the collection capacity. It helps
to be able to evaporate a day’s collection
in one day. I would evaporate about ten
gallons a day down to the amount the pan
would hold, and then the next day add that
day’s sap to the pan and boil on.
All in all, it turned out to be a fun and
profitable hobby and gave us all something
to do outside when it was too cold for other
activities. I recommend that those folks
with bigleaf maples tap their trees next year.
I will order a supply of spiles and tubing
again and share them at my cost. If you
would like to try tapping, give me a call
next autumn and get set up.
P.S. You can tap most Acer species for
usable sap. My box elder gave 2% sugar
with a good flow.
Laird Funk • 541-846-6759