The Jacksonville Miner
Published Every Friday at
JAC KSONA 11.1.E, OREGON
( iu k ivi newspaper of jac ksonviija :
Entered as second-class n litter February 19, 1932,
at the poatoffice at Jacksonville, Oregon, under
the act of March 3. 1879.
LEON? RD N. HAI±
MAUDU TOOL
Editor and Publisher
Applegate Editor
PHONE JA< KSONV1LLE 111
Address All Conun’anici.tior.s to Box 138
Subscription Rates, in Advance:
One Year.............. |1.00 Six Months................. 50c
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Friday, September 7, 1934
The JACKSONVILLE MINER
Page 2
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The Forest Fire
Green, timber-covered hills; quiet,
peaceful homesteads. Cabins housing
families just getting on their feet from
the depression. Picturesque rail fences
zigzagging along shaded, cool roads. The
air is still as a summer’s sun beats down
a cheerful, post-harvest a urance of
Nature’s providence.
Almost suddenly, however, the still
routine of a late season afternoon is
broken by the abrupt rising of a column
of smoke beyond the hills. The air stirs
languidly, live things sniff and become
restless. Farmers and miners notice the
dark pall that is gathering in intensity
as minutes pass and nervously make for
their homes and shacks in the green,
cool forest.
As leaves increase their motion, al­
most as if in apprehension, black smoke
rolls up nearer crest of the nearby ridge
and a faint roar can be heard above the
landscape’s usual quiet. Horses stand
stiff-legged and spread their nostrils as
acrid fumes from the gathering fire
drift down into the valley. Residents,
those fortunate enough to be near home,
are hurriedly packing their belongings
into cars and trucks, all the time casting
worried glances over their shoulders as
the skies darken. The black, swirling
pall is fire, death-dealing, treacherous
forest fire before which every living
thing must flee, and be quick about it.
With a burst of fiendish glory the
distant roar anti crackle suddenly tops
the ridge; a deep red flame pierces the
black curtain and fire starts its ugly
course down the mountainside as the
last stragglers flee in terror. Green
trees, majestic and imposing, are licked
barren in one great motion of the flames
as they race through the dense, lush
forest that a few moments before was
haven for man or beast.
Immense, liquid flames seem to push
great troughs into the woods like a man
stumbling through a wheat field. The
blaze licks out hundreds of yards as a
twisting wind sends it through crowns
to throw firebrands far ahead of the
fire’s path. The inferno reaches a cabin,
a barn and fence; solid, useful structures
one minute, blazing torches of hell the
next. Demon fire roars on in its strength
scarcely noticing such insignificant
things. Across the valley, up the yonder
ridge at express train speed, roaring,
crackling and sending up mountainous
thunderheads of smoke and ashes.
Left behind are the millions of little
flames busily engaged in burning out at
leisure what the great blaze hurriedly
scorched. Hot, smoking ground dotted
with illuminated totem poles laboriously
burning from top to bottom. Hollow
stumps and trunks snapping and pop­
ping as the clean-up flames lag like a
countless horde of fleas following behind
on the trail of their monstrous home.
Night comes, the fire’s wrath is cooled
and lulled for a time. Hills are punctured
with a myriad of lights, like a great, dis­
tant city. Everywhere are bright little
fires close to the ground where pitch
stumps continue their several day task
of burning to the tips of the deepest root.
Black, bleak, barren acres of charcoal
and ashes. Death and destruction: ruin
and end.
Residents pick their way, fearful of
falling snags that send great showers of
ÛEB, .
red sparks high in the air, back to the
iTPEFUWY
black cinder piles that mark the lines of
IF IT HIT ,
I what was sweet home a few hours be­
THE
fore. Poking around in the hot rubbish
HOUSE
for some familiar object that would
bring vividly full realization of the per­
sonal cost of the holocaust. Frightened
children, hysterical women and teeth-
gritting men with stern, troubled faces.
As the fire glows and smoulders as if
to rest for the night, hundreds of men
in dozens of trucks begin to arrive on
ail sides. There is cheerful, noisy conver­
sation as fire fighters rushed in by a
paternal government catch the signifi­
cance of fire's nightmarish grandeur and
don water tanks, shoulder tools and set
out for the fire lines. While Gulliver
Friend Birkenbcuel of Portland
operated by spirits for at least 20 | But from the first the mine paid
sleeps on his charrel laurels swarms of years.
This statement may cause beautifully
‘----- »*»..•>.. ---•
»..............
..... got • says we'd probably l>e a better
and • the
miners
liny men will work all nignt in a sweat­ you to laugh, but it is so desig- good ■wages ami everybody W’as bnrnyard golfer thnn bass singer
ia'<'d in the annals of that state satisfied. Then came a day when
ing, earnest effort to tie him down with Just
at the moment I cannot re­ a messenger came bursting into if we could get the right pitch —
so many threads he will not ce able to call the name of the man who camp with an Important message Weston Leader.
opened it up and owned it for that from the spirits He hail nearly,
rise again with the coming of day. Tiny length
of time, but he was a strong rode several horses to death to get 1
streams of water are played on inch- spiritualist and consulted the spir­ there on time.
BY TRAIN TO
its in everything he did. He
The spirits warned the miners i
high flames as leaves and sticks are churned
they told him where to to look out for danger. That was
laked toward the dozing inferno. Burn­ look for mineral and in after years all. Tlii' miners looked all around. I
he was guided solely by their ad­ saw nothing thut looked dangerous
ing snags are felled and fresh earth is vice.
The Highland Mary was a
had a hearty laugh
turned up to thwart movement of fire. great mine. It laid at the foot of anywhere,
among themselves and went on
that rose straight up working But four days later they
It is man’s turn to become overwhelm­ a for mountain
fOR M»oU1
6000 feet above the valley. broke Into one of those mountain
ing. and rangers, neighbors and CCC Over a mile high above the valley reservoirs
(an immense b«xiy of
it towered and its interior was water often found existing In the
workers are making the most of it.
honeycombed with veins of quartz, interiors of the big hills) and the
The long night’s battle grows weary, rich in gold. When I visited the whole outfit barely escaped being
mine it had been worked for over drowned After that experience,
dawn breaks over the hills and deep 20
years by from 100 to 200 min­ they paid a lot more attention to
shadows of the valleys lighten into a ers and they had done a lot of what the spirits said.
in that time. But after going
-----------
smoky haze. Burning coals send out lit­ work
through the mine and then coining
A
The
ratio
between
and sil­
tle flames as if in greeting to a new day out and sizing up the immense ver does not bother gold
us
nearly
so
I
it would seem as though I ver
not corner us "* “rly w I
and renewed activity. The giant fire is mountain
they hail barely scratched it, so ««uch a" their distance from the,
I home plate Weston Leader.
getting back his strength as a morning vast were its proportions.
Ride in big, comfortable
This property
property proved
¿*“2 I
proved to
to be
be so
so
breeze plays through the charred ruins, This
coaches on smooth steel rails.
finds Itself In the trough of a
that in a short time the owner strike wave. Weston Leader.
Tourist berth for the night
warning of impending trouble along fire rich
was enabled to leave it in the
as little as $1 extra. Sec your
lines.
hands of a superintendent while he
local agent or write J. A.
lived
in
style
in
New
York
and
di
­
Another day sees the blazing monster
Dr. H. P. Coleman
Ormandv, 705 Pacific Bldg.,
rected operations from there. At
stemmed and hemmed in by man, where that time there was m> railroad or Chiropractic - Phy slot hrrsphy
Portland, Ore.
Oregon License 284
the day before humans could but flee telegraph line closer than Pueblo,1
miles distant, so all messages
California License 3029
before its terror. Stifled and smothered, 200
Southern Pacific
were brought by horseback from
I
I
Years III Medford, Oregon
the flames content themselves with the Pueblo to the mine. Quitb often
messages were for the miners
devouring of logs and stumps, occas­ the
to turn north or south or some
ionally making threatening gestures at other direction, as advised by the
And although the miners
green, virgin timber as crews of men spirits.
ridiculed the idea of spirits know­
rush to circle the break. The monster is ing anything about mines, they
were compelled to follow orders
licked, but not until a dozen homes and and
in every instance they always
five thousand acres of forest have been found rich ore, though they suc­
ceeded in making the crookedest
wiped out.
tunnels in the whole Rocky moun­
It is a graphic repetition of the battle tains and when the property was
sold to the big Silver
of life and the elements. Because man eventually
Belle mining company the first
permitted a tiny, innocent-looking little thing the new owners did was to
the ore bodies with
flame to go unchecked, that same little reopen
straight tunnel that could
flame spread and grew in a few breath­ worked to advantage.
taking moments into a blaze a thousand
men could not curb.
It was just another forest fire, in all
probability starting from one human’s
carelessness or indifference to the fru­
gality of nature and man. A terrible
scar to be left by a small piece of wood
"called match, or a cigaret, flipped into
the air during some trivial conversation.
there who was six feet and six around here at this time of night,
inches tall, a fine clean fellow, who wrapped up in a white sheet, scar­
insisted on taking a cold shower ing folks to death?” "That’s not
bath every morning before break­ a sheet," he told me. "It’s my
fast. Summer or winter, he never nightgown and I have just been
failed to bathe himself with the out to the bath house for my cold
coldest water he could get, which shower.”
he claimed put a lot of pep into
"Do you mean to stand there
him, though I am here to tell you
and
tell me you wear a night­
that it would kill an ordinary man
as dead as a mackerel to strip off gown?” I asked him. “You ought
(Continued from page one)
his clothes in winter time and let to be ashamed, and ;zou a logger,
so I gradually grew out of the no­ that ice water run over him for too. Why I never heard of such a
tion. But as to ghosts, I have pos­ several minutes first thing after thing as a logger owning a night­
itively never felt the least bit of getting out of bed. Well, anyway, gown. Well, run along.” I told him,
fear of them. Many people have I was hot-footing it through a nar- “I’ve got business down at the de­
tried to teach me this fear, but I •>w passage way on my way to pot." But the other loggers got a
simply couldn't learn it.
the depot and the fog was so thick great kick out of It when I told :
What is there about a ghost to you could cut it up with an axe. my ghost story at breakfast.
terrify anyone? Will we not, all I couldn't see over four feet ahead
That is the only ghost I have
of us, be ghosts some day? I will of me and was going it blind, when ever been able to scare up and, I
not deny that there may be cer­ ill of a sudden a tall apparition believe me, I have devoted quite a
tain earth-bound spirits who hang dothed in white loomed up ahead lot of time in my life to hunting
around their old haunts for a time >f me and I quickly side-stepped for them. Mexicans and Indians
after death, but what of it? They to avoid a collision. “Great grief!” sized me up a.« a pretty desperate
would be powerless to hurt any­ T said to myself, “Here's the first character because I didn’t get all
one. In all my hunting I have seen ghost I ever saw, and by cracky panicky jjke they did whenever
but one ghost. Once in Washington :t’s a big one.” R'lt just then the ghosts had been spotted in the vi­
I was employed by a large lumber ghost spoke: “Hello, Jack,” it cinity. They simply couldn’t under­
concern, and part of my job was i said, "what are you doing out so stand whv I should wish to inter­
to meet four trains a day, and look early in the morning?” I took an­ view a ghost, even to the extent
after the mail, express and freight. | other look and I’ll be darned if it of hunting for it, instead of run­
One morning just before daylight wasn't the big logger, whose name ning away.
I was awakened by a noise that was Brown, but I hardly knew
Speaking of gh osts reminds me
seemed to come from down around
the depot. So I dressed hurriedly him, encased as he was in a long of the Highland Mary mine on
iwB i
headwater) i of the Animas
and started on a trip of investiga­ white garment from neck to toes.
I river in the fan Juan country,
tion.
"Good gosh, Brown,” I i 8al'>' Colorado. This Lx the spirit mine of
Now, we had a logger working1 what do you mean traveling Colorado, discoy e red by spirits and
SPIRIT MINE WAS
ONE OF RICHEST
TELLS REYNOLDS
Becoming School Minded
4
2
h
CALIFORNIA
DANCE
Saturday till
2
Jacksonville
DEL ROGUE
Housekeeping is unexciting work at best . . .
why make it harder by dark kitchens, cup­
boards, closets, cellars ? It doesn't pay to
grope in the dark. Lamps cost only half what
they did six years ago. Electric light costs
only one one-hundredth as much as the same
amount of light from candles. Improper light­
ing makes the children's school-work harder.
A new type floor lamp floods the entire
room with shadowless light or serves as the
conventional reading light ... or both. Maat ’
by several manufacturers, it is for sale at your
dealers.
THE CALIFORNIA OREGON
power company
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