6 Spring 2016 Applegater
BACK IN TIME
Logtown Cemetery comes alive!
BY EVELYN BYRNE WILLIAMS WITH JANEEN SATHRE
Several years ago, after Carl
Offenbacher made and donated a
beautiful wrought iron gate to Logtown
Cemetery, plans were proposed to
remove the old falling-down fence and
install new fencing to go with the gate.
Even with some monetary donations
and willing volunteers to do some of
the work, the project seemed beyond
the financial capabilities of the Logtown
Cemetery Association. As time went on
and more ideas were sifted through, a
solution began to evolve that has brought
the old cemetery to its new look: a black
chain link fence that runs along the front
and a no-climb field fence enclosing the
three other sides.
I would like to thank all the
wonderful volunteers who worked
on removing trees, brush, and old fencing.
Though I have been asked not to list their
names, as they seem to be shy about their
good deeds, I feel blessed to live in a
community with them in it. I would also
like to thank the entities that helped the
association secure the necessary capital
to buy and install the fence: Oregon
Parks and Recreation Division (with
an Oregon Historic Cemetery Grant),
Oregon Community Foundation (with a
gift from Maggie Purves), McKee Bridge
Historical Society, and the Logtown
Cemetery Association (for keeping the
project on the front burner).
Some of the following history
of the cemetery is from John and
Marguerite Black, who were charter
members of the cemetery association. For
many years Marguerite was the secretary
and John was the sexton. They are now
buried in the cemetery that they loved so
much and donated their valuable time to.
On September 20, 1892, John M.
McKee sold his 160-acre homestead at
Logtown to Austin Albright for $600.
This included a two-story log house,
barns, sheds, farmland, and some mining
ground. It also included the graveyard,
which by this time contained several rows
of graves of miners and early settlers, some
of them McKees. However, McKee’s deed
to Albright did not mention any land set
The cedar archway was installed in 1939.
aside or reserved for a cemetery. Legal
ownership of this graveyard was passed
along to each purchaser of the property
until 1929.
The old cemetery, then called Laurel
Grove, was located about 400 feet up the
hill on the east side of the Jacksonville-
Crescent City road (now Highway 238).
In 1929, a group of local people rebuilt
the wire fence with new cedar posts
donated by Mark Winningham. No
written records of burials were kept in the
early days, but Elva Smith, who grew up
near Logtown and knew everyone, kept
track of names and dates on hand-drawn
maps as best she could during the 1920s
and 1930s. Issac Coffman, long-time
sexton of the Jacksonville Cemetery,
often assisted with burials in Logtown
during the 1930s.
The Logtown Cemetery Association
was formally organized at a meeting
held at the cemetery on May 14, 1939.
Those who attended were Elva and Ed
Smith, Pearl and Harry Whitney, Bill
and Gertrude Winningham, L. Frank
and Anna Lozier,
The wrought iron gate was made by Carl Offenbacher. Emma Smith, E. Igo
and wife, Minus and
Osie Pence, Leonard
McKee, and John
and Marguerite
Black. They voted to
change the name of
the cemetery back to
Logtown and agreed
that all persons who
had relatives buried
there or owned a plot
All those dead trees—again
BY BILL SCHAUPP AND ELLEN MICHAELS GOHEEN
A similarly titled article in the June
2003 Applegater began as follows: “Those
of us who make our living surveying for
and diagnosing the causes of tree mortality
and then offering recommendations for
managing forest insects and pathogens
are used to focusing on dead and dying
trees. Our perspectives, relative to those
of others, are probably a bit peculiar. We
see the few red and gray trees even when
they are surrounded by a sea of green
ones. We watch the weather closely, not
anticipating our vacations, but instead
wondering where and what the next
outbreak will be. Wet years are ‘good
for fungi.’ Fog banks on hillsides are
‘spore clouds.’ Trees in dense stands in
dry years are ‘bark beetle bait.’ Mostly,
we can predict the likely outcomes of
shifts in weather patterns; that is, we
know which insects or fungi will likely
be involved in disease, dieback, and tree
death in given situations. But even after
decades of close observation, we can
sometimes be surprised by how quickly
things change and how large the scale of
the impacts can be.”
Now that there is a similar situation
in the Applegate with all those dead
trees—again, it seems appropriate to hear
from us once more.
How did we get here? The 2013
drought followed by the snow drought of
2014 diminished tree defenses in interior
areas of southwest Oregon, especially
in very dense stands. Subsequently,
tree mortality due to insects and plant
pathogens has increased. This is especially
evident in the Klamath-Siskiyou
ecoregion, which includes the Applegate.
In t h e Ap p l e g a t e Ad a p t i v e
Management Area (AMA), which
encompasses the entire Applegate River
watershed, the results of the 2015 aerial
detection survey illustrate a large increase
in conifer mortality—pines, firs and
Douglas fir—as compared with previous
years (see graph). Note that after the dry
years of 2007 through 2009, another
increase in mortality was detected.
How do we determine this
trend? Since 1951 the USDA Forest
Service and the Oregon
Department of Forestry
have been doing an
annual aerial survey to
detect tree mortality in
Oregon. Two observers
fly in a small airplane
in a grid pattern over
all of the forested lands
in Oregon. They map
the locations of recently
killed trees, estimate their
number, and provide a
“cause of death” based on
tree species affected and
the pattern of mortality
observed. Obviously, they don’t map
small dead trees in the understory, and
they miss many trees when visibility isn’t
perfect, so we consider the numbers we
detect lower than what we would actually
measure on the ground. We ground-
check a sample of the dead trees we
map to give us an idea of how valid our
estimates are. We can be confident that
the data derived from the aerial survey
provides us with good information on
mortality trends over time. These data,
maps, reports and related information are
posted on the Internet at www.fs.usda.
gov/detail/r6/forest-grasslandhealth/
insects-diseases/?cid=stelprdb5286951.
These surveys and a number of studies
have shown that particular types of
tree mortality occur in pulses, often in
response to drought or other weather
conditions.
were considered members with a right to
attend annual meetings and vote.
In a subsequent meeting, the
association filed applications for
incorporation and made plans to obtain
legal title to the south half of the
cemetery. Property owners of portions
of the cemetery were Walter W. and
Edith Bell, residing in California, and
Paul E. and Mildred Pearce, residing in
the Applegate. Both parties graciously
donated land to the association.
The cemeter y has gone
through a few facelifts over the
years. In 1939 a rustic archway with
a carved wooden sign, donated by the
local Civilian Conservation Corps, was
installed. In 1949 the cedar archway
became unsafe and was replaced with
railroad iron and a wire gate. A well
was drilled in 1950 and a hand pump
installed. In 1958 a group of members
planted a row of slips from Maryum
McKee’s yellow rose bush (Logtown
Rose) along the front on the north side of
the gate. Later on, the Applegate Garden
Club set out more slips on the south side
of the gate.
There are only a few of us old-timers
left with memories and stories of the
people buried there. There are probably
more McKees or relatives of the McKees
buried there than other families, but
there is no doubt that a who’s who of the
Applegate is etched in stone throughout
the cemetery.
If you have an interesting
story about someone buried in Logtown,
send it to Janeen Sathre at djsathre@
gmail.com or 1517 Palmer Creek Road,
Jacksonville, OR 97530.
Evelyn Byrne Williams
with Janeen Sathre • 541-899-1443
What factors other than
drought are involved? The insects
and pathogens associated with the tree
mortality are all responding to trees under
stress, mostly water stress. That explains
why there is more mortality where water
is less available—on rocky soils, on heavy
clay soils, on drier, hotter aspects, at
lower elevations, and in heavily-stocked
stands. Other vegetation—grass, forbs,
shrubs, or hardwood trees such as oaks
and madrones—competes with pines,
Douglas fir, white fir, and incense-cedar
for moisture. When water is in short
supply, trees are weakened and their
chemistry changes. Chemical changes
may result in direct attraction of insects
to weakened trees or to increased ability
by insects and fungi to overcome tree
defense mechanisms.
Although the winter has begun
with ample precipitation, it is likely that
2016 will be another year of elevated
conifer mortality in the AMA. This
is due, in part, to the enlarged beetle
populations that exist within currently
infested conifers and the life-cycle length
of the beetle species involved. Another
year of below-average precipitation will
exacerbate this situation.
Bill Schaupp • 541-858-6125
Ellen Michaels Goheen
bschaupp@fs.fed.us
Bill is a forest entomologist and Ellen is a
plant pathologist with the USDA Forest
Service Forest Health Protection in Central
Point, Oregon.