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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 2017
Tiller: A tiny Oregon community for sale
GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press
TILLER — In the tiny,
dying timber town of Til-
ler, the old cliche is true. If
you blink, you might actually
miss it.
But these days, this dot on
a map in southwestern Ore-
gon is generating big-city
buzz for an unlikely reason:
Almost the entire town is for
sale.
The asking price of $3.5
million brings with it six
houses, the shuttered general
store and gas station, the land
under the post office, undevel-
oped parcels, water rights and
infrastructure that includes
sidewalks, fire hydrants and
a working power station. Til-
ler Elementary School, a
six-classroom building that
closed in 2014, is for sale sep-
arately for $350,000.
Potential buyers have
come forward but are remain-
ing anonymous, and backup
offers are still being accepted.
At a crossroad
The listing represents a
melancholy crossroads for
Tiller, a once-bustling log-
ging outpost that sprang up
after the turn of the last cen-
tury deep in what is now the
Umpqua National Forest,
about 230 miles south of Port-
land. The post office opened
in 1902, and miners, loggers,
ranchers and farmers flocked
to the community along a
pristine river.
By the 1940s and 1950s,
there were three timber
mills running, and the town
expanded the elementary
school and built a new gen-
eral store.
Then, nearly three decades
ago, logging on the federal
forest lands that encircle Til-
ler came to a near standstill
because of environmental
regulations. The mills closed,
and families moved away.
One longtime resident began
buying up properties. When
he died three years ago, the
family owned much of the
town.
Then the Tiller Elemen-
tary School closed and was
up for sale, as well as a small
market, and the man’s estate
bought those too — and the
potential became clear.
The listing includes more
than 256 acres in 29 dis-
tinct parcels, water and tim-
ber rights, and a variety of
zonings, from residential to
industrial.
About 235 people still live
in the unincorporated area
around Tiller, and have long
relied on the buildings now
for sale along historic High-
way 227 as a gathering spot
and one of the only places to
shop for groceries in miles.
“Between the dying econ-
omy and the dying owners,
Tiller became a new oppor-
tunity that had never been
available before,” said Rich-
Nick Swartzendruber/LandandWildlife.com
Almost all of the downtown in Tiller, a dying timber town in remote southwestern Oregon, is for sale for $3.5 million and the elementary school is for
sale separately for $350,000. The asking price of $3.5 million brings with it six houses, the shuttered general store and gas station, the land under the
post office, undeveloped parcels, water rights and infrastructure that includes sidewalks, fire hydrants and a working power station.
AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus
AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus
Longtime Tiller resident Paula Ellis plays with her dogs
outside her home in Tiller. Ellis spent her childhood in Til-
ler hunting and riding horses and now worries about what
will happen to the tiny, dying timber town.
Resident Sarah Crume holds her daughter, Hallie, as sib-
lings Patricia and Thomas Doolittle color nearby at the lo-
cal church in Tiller. The church is one of the few buildings
in downtown Tiller that is not for sale.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service
LEFT: A potential buyer of Tiller has come forward but is remaining anonymous — and back-up offers are still being accept-
ed. RIGHT: A crew of forest workers in Tiller in the 1930s.
ard Caswell, executor of the
estate. “I started getting inqui-
ries from all over the world,
essentially, ‘What was it?
And what could you do with
it?’ It’s the buyer and their
imagination that’s going to
determine what Tiller can
become.”
The potential buyers have
said through the seller’s bro-
ker that they intend to turn
the school into some type of
campus and create a “perma-
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culture” development that
respects the town’s remain-
ing residents and its pictur-
esque setting in a bend in
the emerald-tinted South
Umpqua River. They want to
make reopening the market a
priority.
“The buyers understand
that they only have one shot at
a first impression,” said Gar-
rett Zoller, principal broker
for LandandWildlife.com, the
seller’s realtor. “They want to
address this project with the
community in mind.”
Future is a mystery
Beyond that, Tiller’s future
remains shrouded in mystery.
The downtown is a ghost
town, but plenty of people still
live tucked into the mountains
in a region where bears wan-
der onto porches and where
picking up a cellphone signal
takes a 30-minute drive.
Residents gather at the
church for coffee and cinna-
mon rolls on Fridays and col-
lect their mail at the one-room
post office — when it’s open.
Some have a sense of humor:
A small, weathered sign
affixed to the defunct market
reads, “Last one out of Tiller
turn out the light.”
Sarah Crume and a few
other mothers cling to a sense
of community by meeting
with their young children
for playtime at the church,
LISTINGS
A - Charter Astoria/ Seaside - L - Charter Long Beach
one of the few places not for
sale. She’s raising five daugh-
ters here and had to send her
younger children to school in
the next closest town when
Tiller Elementary shut down.
“It is a little scary, espe-
cially raising our kids in this
place that we love,” Crume
said. “I’m just wondering
what kind of impact it’s going
to have on the people.”
Paula Ellis grew up in Til-
ler on a ranch and spent her
childhood hunting and rid-
ing horses here. Her daugh-
ters’ beds are decorated with
the skins of bears they killed
when they were teenagers,
and the antlers of the first deer
Ellis bagged hangs on a wall
near the front door.
She met her husband at
the elementary school and
recalls the annual end-of-the-
year contests for the children
that were dubbed the Tiller
Olympics.
A giant cross rises over her
home from an adjacent hill-
top, and Ellis lately has found
herself praying.
“If you do choose to live
here and raise kids here, it’s
a community you fall in love
with,” Ellis said, wiping away
tears. “And we don’t want to
lose that.”
For Rosemary Klep, news
of the sale brought on strong
emotions. Her parents built
the market that’s now for
sale in 1947, and she grew
up camping and roaming the
forests near town. Her family
had the only telephone in Til-
ler and, for a while, the only
TV.
“This town has been in
dire straits for many, many
years,” said Klep, 72, who
now lives near Olympia,
Washington. “But we loved
growing up there. To us, it
was a paradise.”
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