COQUILLE VALLEY MUSEUM SPECTACULAR
IA SENTINEL publication - page 6
Travel, freight, and fancy on the Coquille River
Yesterday’s
Highway
■
“Charm” makes it’s way through the Coquille river system.
Hurtc-Coquille Historic Society
BY ROBERT JUMP
They called the muddy track between
Coquille and Myrtle Point a road, but it really
wasn’t by today’s standards.
According to resident historian Boyd Stone,
the road didn’t get gravel until 1921.The area was
certainly moving forward in those days. However,
while we now think of motor vehicles anytime
there’s talk of going to Myrtle Point or Bandon,
that’s hasn’t always been the case.
According to Stone, residents of yesteryear
used their own version of a highway: the
Coquille River.
“It was the main highway,” Stone told The
Sentinel. “There were an awful lot of boats that
hauled milk, lumber, mail and passengers.”
The normal snags and debris seen on the river
today were problems for boats navigating the
river in the early days as well. But they weren’t
the only hazards to river navigations.
“There used to be a sign on the Coquille
River Bridge about the nets from there on
down,” Stone said. “You could have nets out half
way across the river and of course these boats
had to know where the fishermen were 24
hours a day. The boats ran 24-hours a day, you
know, because the tugboats had to run with the
tide. If they were towing a raft of logs down
and the tide went against them they had to tie
up alongside the river.”
In those days, Bandon was a thriving port.
“The mail boats would have come in from San
Francisco into Bandon. We’re talking about 1893,
when the railroad came in,” Stone said. “Mail
would come into Coos Bay then it came in by
railroad. Mail to Curry County would come into
Coquille. Logan Kay was the purser on the
Telegraph and he would get about a wagon load
of mail and bring it up to the post office and
another load to go back down to go to Curry
County. There were all those stores down there
so there was freight.There would be just a terrific
amount of that stuff.”
Mail and freight were moved between the rail
road and the river through the Collier Warehouse.
“I remember the Collier Warehouse. It was
tom down a few years ago, it extended from the
depot to the river and that’s where the railroad
came in,” Stone said. “They would move freight
back and forth between the river and railroad
because most of these farms were on the rivers, it
was their highway. Even after the roads went in
the farms were sitting on the riyer.” ......
The steamer “Alert” on the Upper Coquille.
Photo-Coquille Historic Society
While residents now see milk being trucked
to other locations, that wasn’t always the case.
“Milk was a big thing to haul.There were milk
boats,” Stone said.
Then the roads were improved and boat traf
fic dwindled.
“The last boat to run was the Charm,” Stone
said. “It lost money because they had the mail
contract.They had to fulfill the mail contract.”
According to Stone, most of the boats navigat
ing the river were steam powered, but not the
Charm.
“It was propeller driven,” Stone said. “It first
started out on gas and then went to diesel.
They use to say that it took cords of wood to
run between Coquille and Bandon. That’s a lot
of wood.” _
Boyd Stone has fond memories of the former highway
known as the Coquille River. Stone’s book, “Living in the
Past Lane” is available at the Coquille Valley Museum.
Photo-Robed Jump
According to Stone the farthest he ever trav
eled on the river was to Beaver Slough. However,
he once tried to take a boat to Bandon.
“We started to one day,” Stone said. “We had a
little bitty boat and we wanted to get back. We
didn’t want to go any further. We got to Beaver
slough.”
Stone thinks of the river fondly.
(See, Highway, page 12)