Applegater Spring 2019
The wildlands of the
Lower Applegate
Round Top Mountain
Roadless Area
The Round Top Mountain Roadless
Area is located on the high, rocky
ridgeline dividing the Illinois Valley
from the Lower Applegate Valley.
Portions of the area drain into the
Deer Creek watershed near Selma,
while the northernmost portions of
the wildland drain into Jackson Creek,
Murphy Creek, and Panther Creek in
the Applegate River watershed.
The area is a patchwork of rock
outcrops, serpentine barrens, and mixed
conifer forests. Located in the moister
western portion of the Applegate Valley,
it receives abundant rain and winter
fog. On productive soils, old-growth
forests of Douglas fir, ponderosa pine,
sugar pine, white fir, incense cedar, live
oak, and madrone grow in contiguous
unlogged forest habitats. The vast old-
growth canopy is occasionally broken
by serpentine outcrops, young forests
regenerating from historic wildfires, and
mixed hardwood groves.
In the 2016 Resource Management
Pl a n , B L M p ro t e c t e d t h e c o re
of the area by designating 5,295 acres
as the Round Top Mountain Lands
with Wilderness Characteristics (LWC).
However, significant unroaded habitats
at the margins of the LWC are currently
unprotected.
Bolt Mountain
Bolt Mountain is not quite a wildland,
but it makes an interesting and beautiful
hike for exploring the serpentines of
the Lower Applegate Valley. The low,
rounded butte is a unique and isolated
hump of serpentine rising 1,258 feet
from the valley floor above Jerome
Prairie and the Applegate River near Fish
Hatchery Park.
A 3.3-mile trail beginning at
Fish Hatchery Park climbs through
beautiful Jeffrey pine woodlands with
spectacular views and incredible floral
displays. The trail climbs to the 2,227-
foot summit and provides an accessible
hike in the serpentine habitats of the
Lower Applegate.
Mark your calendars!
Applegate Neighborhood Network,
along with the Siskiyou Chapter Native
Plant Society of Oregon, will be leading
a hike to the Cedar Log Flat Research
Natural Area on Saturday, May 18.
Email info@applegateneighborhood.
network for more information.
Luke Ruediger
Program Director
Applegate Neighborhood Network
(ANN)
info@applegateneighborhood.network
shop” (corner store), which will help him
better provide for his daughter and serve
his community.
• Christopher operates a printing
business in the family garage. He hopes
to buy two computers and a router so
he can email documents and customers
can use the internet. This will help the
business thrive, support his extended
family, and provide a much-needed
service in his community.
• Lovely has always wanted to earn her
bachelor of arts in psychology and plans
to attend Wits University to become
a child psychologist. She has met the
entrance requirements and will attend
classes part-time while she continues
working as a receptionist to support
herself and her daughter.
• Thabo, a boilermaker for a transport
company and a father of three, plans
to start a business safely transporting
children to school. He has developed
a viable business plan and hopes to
purchase a reliable used microbus.
• Ntuthuko, a father of three, dreams of
being an Uber driver. He has experience
driving for a tour company, has researched
the market and requirements, and hopes
to purchase a reliable used car.
• Isaiesh began a university degree in
social work, but unemployment caused
her to leave the program after two years.
She hopes to pay back her outstanding
tuition and complete the degree.
I invite you to contribute to these
projects! Every dollar counts in this
collective effort to make a real and
immediate difference across the globe in
Soweto. You may specify which person’s
project you would like to support, and
you’ll receive updates as the plans are put
into action.
It’s easy to donate at GoFundMe:
Visit gofundme.com/support-soweto-
projects, where you can also watch short
videos about each person, curated by
them. Enjoy!
Margaret Perrow della Santina
541-899-9950
perrowm@sou.edu
The author is currently writing a book
that spans 20 years of her research on youth
development in South Africa.
BY LUKE RUEDIGER
The Lower Applegate, between
Murphy and Wilderville, is known for
its agricultural flats, not its wilderness
habitat. As it blends into the outskirts of
Grants Pass, the area is the most heavily
populated portion of the Applegate
Valley; however, two significant
wildlands tucked into the surrounding
mountains provide important habitat
for wildlife. Although not remote, the
wildlands are obscure and seldom visited.
They support interesting serpentine
habitat, clear flowing streams, and dense
old forests. Without recreational trails,
access into their interior requires difficult
off-trail hiking. Those who do venture
there, though, will be rewarded with
solitude, spectacular forests, abundant
wildflowers, and long vistas across the
mountains and valleys of southwestern
Oregon. These last wild habitats in the
Lower Applegate support a unique piece
of the Applegate Valley’s biodiversity
and natural heritage. They should be
protected for future generations as an
important refuge for wild nature.
Slate Creek
Roadless Area
The unprotected Slate Creek
Roadless Area, at the headwaters of
Slate Creek on the Rogue River-Siskiyou
National Forest, is roughly only 3,500
acres but contains unusual serpentine
habitat unique to the Applegate River
watershed. Its 386-acre Cedar Log Flat
Research Natural Area protects the only
population of the insectivorous cobra
lily (Darlingtonia californica) in the
Applegate River basin and numerous
rare plant populations, including Waldo
buckwheat, which is otherwise found
only in the Illinois River Valley.
Slate Creek is the first major tributary
of the Applegate River. It supports
runs of chinook salmon and steelhead
and some of Applegate River’s most
abundant runs of coho salmon. It flows
along Highway 199 through Wonder
and Wilderville before dumping into the
Rogue River west of Grants Pass.
This area receives roughly twice as
much rainfall as the driest portions of the
Applegate Valley and supports abundant
winter fog. Its weather, vegetation, and
unique soils make it similar to portions
of the Illinois Valley with its endemic
serpentine flora. Although significant
concentrations of heavy metals and
a lack of basic plant nutrients make
serpentine soils toxic to most plant life,
unique plant communities have evolved
to thrive on them. These unusual soils
support barren red rock openings,
carpeted in low chaparral, sparse grass,
and twisted Jeffrey pine. Majestic
Port Orford cedar, bay laurel, western
azalea, and alder dominate the stream
corridors, and boggy wetlands flow down
serpentine slopes into grassy clearings
lined in cobra lily.
Stories from Soweto:
Commerce across the globe
BY MARGARET PERROW DELLA SANTINA
As I wrote in the winter 2018
Applegater (“Stories from South Africa”),
over the past 20 years I’ve been lucky to
get to know some people from Soweto,
the townships outside Johannesburg that
are home to over a million black South
Africans. I first met them in 1998 when
they were young adults in their 20s,
participants in a youth-development
project offering them skills that would
help them find jobs.
Although apartheid officially ended
with the celebrated 1994 democratic
elections, South Africa remains a vastly
inequitable country, with racialized
poverty, high crime, and unemployment
well over 30 percent.
Today, those “young” people are in
their 40s. Some are formally employed—
Lungile sorts mail at the post office on
the night shift; Thabo makes boilers
for trucks; Lovely is a receptionist;
and Nonhlanhla is a nursery school
aid. Others piece together informal
work—Isaiesh sells Tupperware from
time to time; Ntuthuko occasionally
works for an auto-body shop; David
collects recyclables; Kgotso has sold
perfume and handbags in the street; and
Christopher runs a printing business
from his grandparents’ garage.
Despite incremental, positive changes
in their lives over the past two decades,
they struggle to make ends meet. They
are disappointed that their children’s
futures are not as secure as they had
imagined. Even those who are formally
employed often have long commutes
(two hours each way) in crowded
minibus taxis.
Education has been officially
desegregated, but they generally can’t
afford the fees to send their children
to better public schools. Fee-free
government schools are notoriously
inferior to formerly white schools in the
Johannesburg suburbs.
They all have hopes and plans to
build a better future for their children.
Before I left South Africa in September
2018, some of them identified a
significant “next step” requiring modest
funding. Listening to their plans I was
struck by one thing they all had in
common: in addition to supporting
themselves and their families, they all
explained how their plans would also
benefit their communities.
Back home in the Applegate this fall,
I set up my own commercial
v e n t u r e : a G o Fu n d Me
campaign on their behalf. I’m
an uncomfortable fundraiser,
so creating this campaign
was a stretch for me. But I’m
thrilled to have raised over
$3,000 so far (the goal is
$20,000) towards supporting
these projects:
• David collects recyclables
and pulls them on foot, on a
homemade trolley, to a scrap
depot several kilometers away
from home. He hopes to buy a
shipping container to expand
his business to include a “spaza
21
Cobra lily (Darlington californica) is found
in the Applegate only on Slate Creek.
Photo: Luke Ruediger.
Photo, below left: David at his recycling business.
Photo, below right: David at home with his daughter. Photos: Margaret Perrow della Santina.
