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Historical Background for the Hollering Place in Coos Bay, Oregon

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Historical Background for the Hollering Place in Coos Bay, Oregon Historical Background for the Hollering Place in Coos Bay, Oregon By Frank Walsh Note: A project of the Concerned Citizens of Empire, the Hollering Place is located at the intersection of Newmark Avenue and Empire Boulevard and extends west from a bluff overlooking the bay to the waterfront. The group wants to revitalize downtown Empire by helping to create at the site a wayside, an interpretive center, retail stores and waterfront structures for recreation and events. Frank Walsh, a member of the Concerned Citizens, is a retired teacher who began his teaching career at Empire Junior High (1950-1953). He and his wife, Maxine, now live in Empire. The Hollering Place in the Empire district of Coos Bay should attract visitors and residents alike because it is at the very center of our early history. The Coos Indians lived for centuries in several villages on the bay at Empire.1 In 1852, the natives traded with their new “neighbors,” shipwrecked soldiers and crewmen living in a temporary settlement of tents (Camp Castaway) across the bay on North Spit. Early on the morning of Jan. 3, Captain Sam Naghel of the government transport schooner, Captain Lincoln, was forced to beach his leaking vessel on the spit during a raging storm. Everyone survived and with the help of Indians, the men salvaged most of the cargo.2 After four months living in the dunes, the survivors left the area. Pvts. Henry Baldwin and Phillip Brack, however, returned later and settled in Coos County.3 The lives of the Coos Indians changed forever during the summer of 1853 when settlers from Jacksonville founded Empire City. Soon Coos County was created and Empire City became the county seat.4 The first courthouse, a split-board shack, was torn down and replaced in 1872 with a handsome building costing $4,000. It was located on the bluff across the road (Newmark) from the Hollering Place.5 Earlier at the same site as the new courthouse, Capt. William Harris and his volunteers built a substantial log fort during the Rogue River Indian War of 1855-56. For several weeks after the lower Rogues attacked Gold Beach, women and children at Empire City stayed every night in the fort. Eventually Capt. Harris and his men abandoned the fort, realizing that the peaceful Coos Indians wouldn’t attack the town.6 Teaching only five students in a log shack, Esther Lockhart started the first school in Coos County during the fall of 1854 at Empire City. Her husband, Freeman, became the first county school superintendent. George Stauff built a two-story, four-room school in 1866.7 This school burned down shortly after midnight on May 8, 1919, and was replaced at the same site by the Empire Grade School - later named Market Street School and Empire Junior High.8 These early schools (except Mrs. Lockhart’s) were located a short distance east of the Hollering Place on land now used by School District 9C for parking and maintaining its buses. Empire in 1880 Empire City in 1880 was a thriving town of 600 people and was the port of entry for numerous ships. With David Bushing as the first collector, the government opened a 1 customhouse in 1873. The Henry H. Luse sawmill, shipyard and store, which were just north of the Hollering Place, dominated the economy of the town. Native Americans, many of whom worked for Luse, lived on the beach while the white people lived on a wide marine terrace 50 to 60 feet above the bay. The business district (Empire City’s first “downtown”) was below on a tidal flat adjacent to the harbor. Crisp white clapboard buildings were on wharves only a few feet above high tides. 9 Empire (“City” was dropped in 1894) went into a steep decline during the latter part of the 19th century. Luse sold his holdings in 1883 to the Oregon Southern Improvement Co., which built a huge sawmill in 1884 at the same site. However, the new owner and its successor, Southern Oregon Co., operated the Big Mill intermittently over the years, finally shutting it down in 1893. People left Empire for jobs in the mills, coalmines and shipyards on the upper bay. Instead of going to Empire, shoppers traded at the Simpson Lumber Company Store in “Old Town” (now part of North Bend) and at stores in Marshfield (later renamed Coos Bay).10 Finally, Coquille replaced Empire as the county seat in 1896. The population of Empire fell from 252 in 1890 to 147 in 1910. By 1951, however, the city had recovered and the population was around 2,200. The Cape Arago Lumber Co. (formerly the Big Mill), along with a pulp mill and sawmill south of town, were operating at full production.11 Today there’s very little left of old Empire except for several old dwellings including three beautifully restored Victorian houses near the Hollering Place. Dr. Charles W. Tower built a small house in 1869 that had his office, dispensary and bachelor living quarters. After Charles married Minnie, he gave the house to his brother, Morton, who later moved it one block north to its present location where it became the Major Morton Tower House (486 Schetter Ave.) He built a large two-story addition in 1892. The four-bedroom house is a restrained example of Eastern Stick style. Present owners Alden and Cynthia Miller occupied the house in 1982. Dr. Tower built the Old Tower House (476 Newmark Ave.) in 1872 on the same property as his first house. An excellent example of Gothic Revival style, the six-bedroom house, now the Old Tower House Bed & Breakfast, is owned and operated by Tom and Stephanie Kramer. Both Tower Houses are on the National Register of Historic Places. Capt. James Magee, master bar and ocean pilot, built the Capt. James Magee House (155 S. Mill St.) for his bride, Sarah, in 1873. Except for a bay window installed in the 1920s and a concrete foundation added in 2002, the house has been altered only slightly over the years. The house still has a coke-burning fireplace in the parlor. Tom and Mary Greaves own and live in the four-bedroom house along with their children, Garrett and Brier.12 In 1952, Emil Peterson and Alfred Powers in their history, A Century of Coos and Curry, predicted for Empire: “This oldest of all Coos County cities is rising out of its old lethargy and gives promise of a come-back to reclaim its place among the leading centers of Coos County.” With the Hollering Place, their prediction for Empire, now a vital district in the City 13 of Coos Bay, could come true. 2 Notes 1 Lionel Yost, She’s Tricky Like Coyote: Annie Miner Peterson, An Oregon Coast Indian Woman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 5, 10. 2 Nathan Douthit, A Guide to Oregon South Coast History: Traveling the Jedediah Smith Trail (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1999), 133-135; Joe [Curt] Beckham, “Shipwrecked Soldiers,” The West (Oct. 1969), 34-35, 66-67. 3 Emil Peterson and Alfred Powers, A Century of Coos and Curry Counties (Portland: Binfords & Mort, 1952), 262-263, 517; Myrtle Point Enterprise, Mar. 3, 1911; Beckham, “Shipwrecked Soldiers,” 34-35, 66- 67. 4 Peterson and Powers, Century of Coos and Curry Counties, 45-48, 98-99. 5 “Coos County Courthouse: 100 Years (1896-1996),” Coquille Valley Sentinel, 1996 Supplement, 28; Agnes Ruth Sengstacken, Destination, West! (Portland: Binfords & Mort, 1942, 1972), 143. 6 E.R. Jackson, ed., “After the Covered Wagon: Recollections of Russell C. and Ellis S. Dement,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 63 (Mar. 1962), 20-21; Orvil Dodge, Pioneer History of Coos and Curry Counties, Ore. (Salem: Pioneer and Historical Association of Coos County, 1898), 136; Sengstacken, Destination, West! 147-148. 7 Peterson and Powers, Century of Coos and Curry Counties, 213, 223; Sengstacken, Destination, West! 143; William T. McLean, “An Historical Sketch of Coos Bay,” manuscript, 1966, Coos Bay Public Library Archive, 6; Coos Bay Times, May 8, 1919. 8 The Trojan, yearbooks of Empire Junior High, 1952 and 1953, in possession of Frank Walsh. 9 Yost, She’s Tricky Like Coyote, 109-110. The population of Empire City was around 30 in 1860. See Dodge, Pioneer History of Coos and Curry Counties, 396; Stephen Dow Beckham, Coos Bay North Spit: Historical Investigations of Federal Activities in Coastal Oregon (North Bend, Ore.: Bureau of Land Management, 2000), 6. Henry Luse built the sawmill in 1856 and his adjacent shipyard in 1867. See Beckham, Coos Bay, 31-33. 10 Beckham, Coos Bay, 44, 59; Douthit, Guide to Oregon South Coast History, 137. 11 The Cape Arago Lumber Co. bought the Big Mill in 1942. By 1951, Scott Paper Co. owned the pulp mill and Coos Head Timber Co. owned the nearby sawmill. See Peterson and Powers, Century of Coos and Curry Counties, 99, 137. See also Douthit, Guide to Oregon South Coast History, 137. 12 Tower Houses: Nomination Forms, National Register of Historic Places. Our thanks to Christine Curran, Associate Deputy, State Historic Preservation Office, Salem, Ore., for providing completed copies of the nomination forms. Capt. James Magee House: interview with Tom Greaves, June 11, 2006, and Empire Builder, Mar. 24, 1955. 13 Peterson and Powers, Century of Coos and Curry Counties, 99. The Hollering Place, or Ellekatitch as the Coos Indians called it, was actually on the North Spit directly across the bay from their villages at present Empire. People traveling north or south along North Spit would holler for someone to row over a dugout and provide passage.
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