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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 5, 1956)
TWELVE MEDFORD (OREGON) MAIL TRIBUNE Iundy, August 1. 1151 STAGECOACHES Lined up on Ashland's main street in front of the old post office are several stagecoaches of the type that used to carry the mail over the toll road from Sac ramento to Portland. The picture is believed to have been taken in the late 1880 . CROSSING 99 Two miles from where Highway 99 reaches the Siskiyou, summit, the vestige of the toll road comes up from below and crosses the highway, taking off up the eastern slope of the mountain as shown above. AT THE TOP Here the toll road creeps out west side and follows . the railroad tracks of the forest after climbing the eastern slope through the canyon and on to the California ' of the mountain and reaches its own "Siski- border. ' you sumit." From there it winds down the Culvert Last Sign of IDollcHrhide Toll Hood Service Stopped In March, M5, On Siskiyou Route ' By DON ROBINSON Mail Tribune Staff Writer The last toll road in Jackson county is nothing more today than a rocky culvert and a faint clearing through the brush. It last saw service before women were allowed to vote. The Siskiyou Mountain Wagon road, later the Dollarhide toll road, wound its way painfully from the big Barron ranch house at the foot of the Siskiyou moun tains four miles south of Ash land, through rocks and scrub oak southwest over the top of the mountain and down to the canyon floor, turning south again to the California border, halting wearily at what was known as Cole's station. Familiar Path It began as a familiar path for Indian ponies. That was in days when Indians, missionaries, and a few scattered trappers were the only humans in the Rogue river valley. It ended in 1915 as a well traveled 56 -year -old "public road." The new Pacific highway, predicted by the Mail Tribune in 1913 to be ". . . one of the scenic boulevards of the world," had sliced disrespectfully over the toll road and pushed" it into history. Today, even that highway is outdated. Too many "Sharp Curves" signs mark its path for 2 0 0 horsepowered travelers. Highway 99 is the present "bou levard" over the mountain. An act of the Territorial legis lature establishing a Siskiyou Wagon Road company passed the House Jan. 14, 1858. It gave Michael Thomas and associates a 20 year franchise, to a road from Southern Oregon into Cal ifornia. Thomas sold the next year to Captain Lindsay Apple gate. AppUgat Brothars Three Applegate brothers, Lind say. Charles, and Jesse and their families, had come to the Oregon territory in the great wagon train migration from la dependence. Mo., in 1843. The Lindsay Applegates built a toll house half way up the mountain ... a log cabin with stone fireplace and heavy plank doors. In 1861, new house went up in its place. Ivan D., son of Lind say Applegate, hauled lumber by freight wagon from a mill in Butte Falls for this large two story frame dwelling. Rocks laden with sea shells were gath ered from in back of the build ing to make a pair of giant fire places inside. Operated Nine Years The Applegates operated the road and collected tolls for nine tars. Each day men on foot, in bug gies and wagons, and droves of sheep, hogs and cattle moved along the road! Rates of toll ran from 25 cents for "one horse man" to the 40 to 80 dollars per month paid by the stage com pany. The construction of the road made possible the organization of the Oregon-California stage company in 1860. The big red and yellow coaches carried mail from Sacramento to Portland the year around. Jim, Bell and Joe Leach were the pioneer stage drivers. They whipped their six-horse teams expertly around the narrow curves with never an accident. On cold winter days, they would stop at the tell house, lead the team to . the water trough outside, and go in to warm themselves by the perpet :'! fireplace blaze. r-rUs on Horses Always the lead span of horses on teams drawing wagons and coaches wore small bells on their harnesses. These "bell teams" were halted at each wide spot in the road. Drivers cocked an ear for twinklings on down the mountain. If they caught the LOOKING EAST This is what remains of the toll road as it is seen on the east side of the Pacific highway. It crosses the highway a few feet up the mountain from here, continues westward, crosses it again, and goes on to where the toll gate once stood about a mile from the point shown. ' ' ' ' sound of another team's bells, they waited until it had passed so as not to meet it on narrower, impassable stretches. Trains of as many as 80 pack mules sometimes plodded through the toll gates behind a bell mare. Ivan Applegates "Cash Jour nal and Diary of the Weather," now being preserved in the Jack sonville museum, is a handwrit ten, day by day account of toll payers and weather on the moun tain for several months. On a typical winter day, Dec. 22 1868, it was noted "Today is cloudy and pirty cold at 3 o'clock it commenct raining and raind very hard until 6 o'clock when it broak off again." Tells Story Mrs. Emil C. Peil, first white baby born in Klamath county, daughter of Ivan Applegate, and now a resident of Ashland, tells this story Of her father and his brother Oliver which happened at the toll house: The two young men found a cow freshly killed by a bear Which had been bothering cattle on the place for some time. They brought a rope from the house and perched themselves- in an oak tree directly above the car cass. . Several hours went by. Then, rambling out of the brush, came a mother bear and her half grown cub.vWhen the bears were about to make a second meal of the cow, Oliver dropped a noose around the cub's neck and pulled the rope tight. Ivan leaped onto its back. The Applegate dog, trained for hunt ing but not necessarily wrestling bears, tore into the fray. The blur of fur and buckskin rolled down a small hill and Ivan said afterward it seemed as though' the bear "turned right around in his skin." Cub Tires Out The cub was eventually tired out and quieted down. The boys tamed it and sold it to Wood ward's gardens in San Francisco where it grew to be one of the laxeest bears ever known there. Bad weather and like men caused the workers at the toll station to be constantly alert and laboring. When winter came to the mountain, maintenance crews equipped with a team of oxen and heavy timbers spent the day light hours clearing snow from the grade. It reached depths up to 16 feet at times. On days when toll mpney amounted to a sizeable sum, one of the men would be chosen to take it into the woods and sleep with it over night. There were no banks nearby and holdup tries were not infrequent. Collecting Toll Ivan was once collecting toll when a "desperado" rode up on horseback and swung his rifle around at the young man mean ing to collect some toll himself. Ivan's father, Lindsay, saw the action from inside the house. He lifted his rifle to the window and fired into the air, sending man, horse, and bad intentions galloping down the mountain. After nine years of Siskiyou life, the Applegates sold to the Thornton brothers, James and Henry, and James Laughlin. The Thorntons operated the road until 1875 when corporation stock was transferred to Henry Clay Dollarhide (named after the famous U. S. Senator from Ken tucky) and two Patterson tooth ers. Henry owned 99 shares of stock; Joseph Patterson had 99, and George Patterson had only two. On Oct. 3, 1876, Henry's father, Jesse . Dollarhide, joined the corporation and was elected its president. Political Status In the meantime, the Oregon territory had risen in political status. Oregon entered the Union as the 33rd state in February, 1859. Old roads created under Territorial legislature became county property, with the pro vision that toll roads might be leased for periods of ten years, after which they could be pur chased from their eperators by the counties. Jesse and Henry Clay Dollar- hide signed their last Articles of Agreement with Jackson county court on Oct. 6, 1880: "The Siskiyou Wagon Road company agrees to put down sixty rods of corduroy also less en the grade on the first htll this side of the state line on the Toll- road one half inch to the foot less than it is at present. . "And agrees also to keep in good repair said road from Hugh F. Barron's to said state line for a term of Ten (10) years at the same rates of toll as allowed under the present act." Operation Continual The 10 years passed. The coun ty, unwilling to spend money it did not have, moved not a finger to acquire the road. The Dollar hides consequently kept it open and the company operating. L. Dudley Dollarhide, later known as "Uncle Dud," brother of Henry Clay, then entered the road business and bought out his father and brother. He moved with his wife and three children to the old toll house in 1897. - Dudley and his family cooked for the gangs putting through the first telephone, postal tele graph, and Western Union lines over the Siskiyous. As the years wore on and a new century began, the traveling public grew more and more un friendly toward paying toll each time it wanted to cross the moun tain. "Uncle Dud" didn't return its unfriendliness, but neither did he return its money. 'Better Roads' In 1913, a "better roads" movement: in- Jackson county culminated in the decision to build a Pacific highway over the mountain, taking almost exactly the same route followed by the toll road. Negotiations with con tractors and the state took time. But on Nov. 28, 1913, in the presence of Governor Oswald West, the state highway commis- ' 1 THE GATE IN 1887 Henry Clay Dollarhide (center) stands With his family beneath the original toll gate at the toll house in the Sis kiyou mountains: The picture was taken in 1887. The sign across the top designates the route as the "Tole Road." Henry ran the road with his father, Jesse, until his brother, Dudley, bought them out and continued oper ating the toll station until 1915.. This picture and the one of the old stagecoaches above are from negatives owned by Memory Lane Studios Ashland. sion, and "hundreds of prominent citizens," as the Mail Tribune phrased it, the first shovelful of earth was turned. Dudley held tight to his road. He sold the rights from Barron's place to the Steinman railroad tunnel, but kept the section from Steinman to the border. Highway crews kept digging and finally dug straight across a part of the grade still legally in Dollarhide hands. Lawyer Protests Dudley's lawyer, C. B. Wat son of Ashland, protested in a series of four Mail Tribune ar ticles of October, 1914: ". . . Dol larhide gave the county the right to cross his toll road in con structing the Pacific highway with the express understanding that they were not to block or obstruct it. Yet they have con structed a fill directly across his road from side to side that is 16 feet .high on the down hill side and eight feet high on the other side. - "The contractors have also, without leave, license, or con sent, appropriated 600 feet of the toll road and forced travel out of - the road and among the rocks." In September,' 1914, the Mail Tribune's front page told of a restraining injunction ordered against Dudley when he was ". . . alleged to have made threats backed by a - shotgun against workmen employed on the road." Grip Loosened Dollarhide's grip loosened rap idly. On March 8, 1915, he sold all of the road to the county for J1.000. "Uncle Dud" kept his toll house and continued to live on the mountain, running a few cattle and farming. When the new highway was completed, he noticed that the horseless car riages rolling over it were re plete with ailments notably flat tires and boiling radiators. With his eye for opportunity as sharp as ever, Dudley built a service station several hundred yards down the highway from his house and did a healthy busi ness thse until Highway 99 was put through. He died in October, 1939. . Buildings Destroyed The toll house, two barns, and a blacksmith shop on the toll property were destroyed in a forest fire on a Sunday in De cember of 1929. The toll road today is in a state of sad disrepair, difficult to find and more difficult to fol low. Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Presley, the former Dorothy Dollar- hide, granddaughter of Dudley, bought several acres of the old corporation land including what used to be the toll house in 1946. They buili a temporary house near the edge of the property's stand of virgin timber and moved in last July with their three giant St. Bernard dogs' Drifted Snow, Swiss Robe, and Frosty Dawn. - Mrs. Presley and her husband intend to keep the quarter-mile of toll road that runs through their land cleared as a land mark. Erect Gatepost They have erected a gatepost over the entrance to it painted "Old Wagon Road." Mrs. Pres ley derived this from the two names given the old route, "Mountain Trail", before 1856, and Siskiyou Mountain. Wagon Road" after the corporation was formed. Below the Presley place the road can be traced as a yellow culvert littered with rocks. Above, it is a faint but distin guishable path up to. Highway 99, crossing the highway at mile post 334 two miles from the sum mit, crossing the Southern Pa cific tracks near the Siskiyou station, heading up the eastern slope of the mountain, down the other side and along the Tails to the border. The Daughters of the Ameri can Revolution. Ashland, at the instigation of Mrs. Peil, plan to put up a marker on the Presley place near the old toll road, commemorating the Dollarhides, Thorntons, and Applegates. Mrs. Peil and Mrs. Presley are two of at least 34 children raised by the three successive families at the toll house: 12 by Applegates, 6 by Thorntons, and 16 by Dollarhides. i Amateur Historian An amateur historian with several scrap books filled with clippings of her famed pioneer family, Mrs. Peil has the toll road as one of her historical in terests. - She has notes and clippings about it including a short essay written by her aunt, the late Mrs. Alice Applegate Sergeant. Mrs. Presley is also fond of her grandfather's old road, and is the possessor of the official records of stockholders meetings held by the Thorntons and Dol larhides. In finishing her essay, Mrs. Sargent wrote of the toll road: "Time has brought great I ' AREA MAP Traced from superimposed 1950 and 1910 map of Jackson county, the above shows the old toll road, its successor the Pacific highway, and the present main route over the Siskiyous, Highway 99. The toll road and the Pacifie highway follow each other so closely they merge at on point on the map. changes, with the grade in ruins, the railroad circling the moun tain slopes, and the great Pacific highway, like a silver ribbon, winding Its way where sure footed Indian ponies used to go." The pride of the Pacific high way has now been transferred to Highway 99. But history at least will not forget the father of them both, the Siskiyou Moun tain Wagon road, later the famous and sometimes contro versial Dollarhide toll road. 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