Outdoors
Rec
B
Saturday, August 14, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Abandoned mine
near Granite is the
perfect place to
make a horror movie
IF YOU GO
If you’re coming from the north, from
the intersection of Forest Road 73 (Elk-
horn Drive byway) and Road 52 (Blue
Mountains byway) drive south for about
1.7 miles, and turn left on Road 7335 (at
the edge of a meadow). If you’re coming
from Granite, to the south, drive north
on Road 73 for 6.7 miles to the Road
7335 junction.
Drive east on Road 7335 for about 1.7
miles to Road 110, on the left. There is
a barricade (open) at the start of Road
110. Continue for about a quarter mile to
a large campsite on the right. To reach
Cabell City cemetery, walk up the road
to the left, which crosses Onion Creek
on a wooden bridge. To see the mill,
house and other buildings, walk east
up the main road, which is crowded by
overhanging alder trees.
This website has photos and more infor-
mation about Cabell City: https://bit.
ly/3ATQPHt
JAYSON
JACOBY
ON THE TRAIL
I
know the perfect place to
make a horror movie.
This is superfl uous knowl-
edge, to be sure, as I am still
waiting, with an increasing lack
of patience, for Hollywood to
solicit my site location expertise.
In the meantime Cabell City,
one of the least known but more
interesting ghost “towns” in
Northeastern Oregon, is ready to
make a creepy backdrop for the
sort of fi lm in which teenagers
are picked off one by one while
wandering about asking “who’s
there?” and invariably slinking
into the darkest recesses of what-
ever buildings they come across
rather than just running away.
I subjected the word “town”
to the dubious purgatory of quo-
tation marks because the place is
not, precisely speaking, a town
at all.
At least not in the way that
other ghost towns, such as
Granite, Bourne and Cornu-
copia, are.
Cabell City is the site of an
abandoned gold mine along
Onion Creek, a tributary of the
North Fork John Day River about
eight miles north of Granite.
It was never incorporated, nor
did it boast a post offi ce.
Yet Cabell City, whatever
it lacks in offi cial government
recognition, has some of the
best-preserved mining buildings
in the region, including, most
unusually, an intact home.
Relatively intact, anyway.
The house, which is well-ap-
pointed with packrat nests and
piles of their diminutive drop-
pings, is eerie enough to pro-
voke an involuntary shudder in
people who think “The Blair
Witch Project” was actually a
documentary.
The other buildings, including
a multi-level mill chock full of
cables, belts, chains and hulking
metal machines that a miner
might recognize, would also
make fi ne settings for the bloody
scenes that defi ne the slasher
genre.
It’s not unusual, certainly, to
fi nd scraps of machinery, or the
ruins of a cabin, at a mine site.
But Cabell City’s structures
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald
The mill at Cabell City on July 31, 2021.
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald
A metal plate identifi es a piece of equipment in the mill building at Cabell City.
are unusually sound, it seems to
me.
A likely explanation is that
the site is public land; for some
reason, unlike dozens of other
mining properties, it was never
patented into private land.
Cabell City is, however, an
active mining claim, so although
you can walk around and peer
into the creepiest nooks and
crannies, you can’t pan Onion
Creek or otherwise prospect for
precious metals on the 60-acre
site.
I have long been aware of
Cabell City. It’s shown on most
maps, and I have a passel of
those.
But until late June I had never
visited, even though a road —
rough but not awful — leads
right to the spot.
I was so taken with the place
that I went back a month later to
show my parents, who have an
affi nity for historical sites, and in
particular mines.
The namesakes for the city
were brothers Fred E. and John
B. Cabell.
According to the McArthurs’
“Oregon Geographic Names” —
as indispensable as a book can
be if you have any interest in
our state — the Cabells located
the La Bellevue mine in 1875.
That mine is a mile and a half or
so east of Cabell City, near the
top of the ridge that divides the
Onion Creek and Baldy Creek
drainages.
The brothers were listed in
the 1900 Census as living in the
Granite precinct.
Curiously, “Oregon Geo-
graphic Names” states that only
the cemetery at Cabell City
has survived; there is no men-
tion of the mill, house or other
buildings.
The cemetery is a tenth of
a mile or so northwest of the
mill and house. It’s a tiny place,
maybe 30 feet by 15, with three
white crosses surrounded by a
metal fence.
According to the McArthurs,
a 1980 Forest Service document
notes that the cemetery contains
the graves of Fred Cabell, his
wife, Johanna, and their eight-
year-old daughter, whose fi rst
name is not listed.
Fred Cabell died in May 1914
at age 70, his wife on April 12,
1923, age 78.
Although Cabell City is less
than 2 miles from the paved
Elkhorn Drive Scenic Byway,
it seems to me much more
See, Cabell/Page B2
Berries are sweet symbols of summer in the mountains
TOM
CLAYCOMB
BASE CAMP
T
his week I was having a
hard time trying to decide
whether to write a Back-
packing 101 article followed up
by an article on Kolby’s and my
backpacking trip last week or
Katy’s and my crappie fi shing
trip. But then while Kolby and I
were backpacking we stumbled
into a gold mine of berries.
This is the best berry season
that I’ve ever seen. The huckle-
berries were thick. We had back-
packed into the backcountry to
fl yfi sh but who can just walk by a
loaded down huckleberry bush?
A handful of huckleberries can
spruce up the blandest bowl of
morning oatmeal, can’t it? Or
you can throw a small handful in
your water bottle to make a real
fruit-fl avored drink. A few huck-
leberries sprinkled on a peanut
butter sandwich raises a peanut
butter sandwich to an elite sand-
wich level.
What do we do now? I’d
packed in wayyy too much gear
Tom Claycomb/Contributed Photo
The ultimate breakfast — a cup of coff ee and oatmeal with huckleberries.
and about died on the pack in.
But how do you just nonchalantly
stroll by bush heavily laden down
with huckleberries? So, we gorged
for a while and picked a couple
of bottles full for our oatmeal the
next morning and enough to take
home to make some homemade
ice cream and then it was back to
fl yfi shing.
But then matters got more
serious. Kolby stumbled onto
some raspberries. Fishing was
done for the moment. Finally, she
got her fi ll and I was able to coax
her on down the trail to fi sh the
next hole.
So with the above said, we’ll
talk about backpacking and
crappie fi shing in the next three
articles but for today, it’s berry
picking! Berry season is in full
swing right now and you need to
drop everything and scramble up
to the mountains with a handful of
empty buckets.
Every year after gobbling down
the fi rst handful I’m reminded
of how much I love huckleber-
ries. They’re the best berry in
the world, with wild raspberries
trailing right behind them.
I know your fi rst question will
be, where do I fi nd them? I found
mine at about 4,500 to 5,000 feet.
As we were headed home, we
found a bunch more up high near
the passes but only a couple of
their berries were ripe, 95% of
them were green as a gourd and
tiny. So up at the higher eleva-
tions, they were a long way off
from being ripe. If you go up this
weekend, I’d advise you start at
5,000 feet.
If you’re not familiar with
huckleberries they’re a small
bush. I’ve never measured them
but I’d say that they’re about 28
inches tall on the average. They
grow a small purple berry that is
maybe one-quarter inch in diam-
eter, and some will be smaller.
I fi nd most of mine on hillsides.
I’ve never seen them down low in
fl at areas.
You’ll fi nd them on the side
hills of trails and roads but of
course it’s easy access to the ones
along roads so they’ll get picked
fast by everyone. That’s the area
they seem to like. We fi nd our
raspberries intermixed in the
same type of terrain.
But we also fi nd a lot of ran-
domly placed raspberry bushes
when we walk off a trail down
to our fi shing holes in the rock/
boulder slides. It almost seems
that they do best in the worst pos-
sible spots. But granted, we still
fi nd a high percentage of them
along the trails interspersed with
the huckleberries.
Once in a while I hear people
say that they picked two to four
gallons of huckleberries the past
weekend. I don’t know. I’ve never
picked that many in one setting.
Maybe they’re talking about how
many their whole church family
picked. Or maybe I’m just an ama-
teur berry picker. But regard-
less, instead of taking fi ve-gallon
buckets I’d suggest taking a large-
mouth water bottle to put them in
while picking and then you can
transfer them to a bigger bucket at
See, Berries/Page B2