Chapter 3 – Historical Conditions
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Chapter 3 – Historical Conditions Contents Introduction And Methodology......................................................................................3-1 Pringle Creek Watershed..................................................................................................3-1 History of Pringle Creek Watershed .......................................................................3-1 References .................................................................................................................3-52 Glenn-Gibson Watershed...............................................................................................3-61 History of Glenn- Gibson Creeks Watershed .....................................................3-61 References .................................................................................................................3-67 Claggett Creek Watershed.............................................................................................3-69 History of Claggett Creek Watershed...................................................................3-69 References .................................................................................................................3-79 Mill Creek Watershed.....................................................................................................3-81 History of Mill Creek Watershed...........................................................................3-81 References .................................................................................................................3-97 3 – Historical Conditions List of Figures and Tables Figures Figure 3-1: Location of Lake Labish Figure 3-2: 1878 Historical Atlas Map of Salem Tables Table 3-1: Population Change in Marion County, 1870-1990 Historical Conditions Introduction And Methodology his chapter provides an overview of historical conditions for the Pringle, Glenn- T Gibson, Claggett, and Mill Creek watersheds. The purpose of this chapter is to provide insights into how each watershed appeared from the time of the early inhabitants up to the present. With a better understanding of the watershed’s natural history and cumulative land-use changes, this information can be used to help guide future restoration actions. Historical information was collected and written by members of the Pringle, Glenn-Gibson, and Mill Creek Watershed Councils and Friends of Mill Creek, using the guidelines outlined in the Oregon Watershed Assessment Manual. Pringle Creek Watershed History of Pringle Creek Watershed By Wendy Kroger Introduction Long before the population of the City of Salem had grown to nearly 140,000 people, and before 40,000 vehicles crowded downtown’s Front Street every day, and before a public debate raged about whether to build a fountain in Riverfront Park, citizens of our fair town could watch ice skaters as they swooped across the Willamette Slough and see ferries loading tons of high quality flour -- locally produced flour from wheat grown in the immediate vicinity -- from docks owned by Salem Flouring Mills at Front and Trade Streets (Becktel 2001). A short walk south, at Bush’s Pasture Park near the Bush Barn where thousands of art lovers now gather each year during the Salem Art Fair, is a grove of oak trees that probably are the progeny of another stand of oak trees -- in the exact same spot -- that were flourishing when Columbus discovered America (Chapman 1995). And before there was a community hospital straddling Pringle Creek, or a major electronics industry pumped out gallons of ground water daily from beneath its building alongside Pringle Creek, thick riparian forests flanked the banks of the streams that emptied into the Willamette River. Back then, settlers coming up the Willamette would have seen mighty Oregon white oaks, big-leaf maples and scatterings of Douglas Historical Conditions 3-1 fir dotting the savannas (Marion County Public Works 2000). In a June long gone, when the ship Lausanne -- the Mayflower of the Pacific -- came to Chemeketa Plains, sailors en route to our area would have seen upland prairies awash with waving perennial grasses and envisioned wheat fields (Rutledge 1957). They would have spotted plump salmonberry growing in the seeps and swales and along the wet slopes of ravines that cut swaths through the numerous forests. They might also have noted red huckleberry in shrub swamps and brush prairies along the way and, in the upland forest areas, thickets of thimbleberry. They certainly would have seen meadows of camas exactly as described by explorer Meriweather Lewis: “resembling a lake of fine clear water” (Lewis 2001). Before there was a sea of parking lots, streets and roofs in downtown Salem, the spot now occupied by the intersection of State and Commercial Streets at one point of geologic history was under 243 feet of water and the land where Hilfiker Lane is now in the southeast part of town, all the way around to the grounds of West Salem’s new high school, was lakefront property. The waters from the massive “Lake Missoula Floods” are thought to have crested about 400 feet above sea level here, and the last of those gigantic cataclysms -- of which there were perhaps 40 that broke loose from glacial dams in Northern Idaho -- generated walls of water 200 feet high which contained 800 times the energy of the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Kalapuya native legends include a description of a “water beast” which once roamed the Willamette Valley floor (Jacobs 1945). Natural History Floods. Forty million years ago, all of Marion County was under water. In the next ten million years, volcanic activity set the Cascade Mountains into upward motion and Oregon climbed out of the water. The uplift of the South Salem Hills happened about the same time. Weather exposed and decomposed the topmost peaks of those hills, leaving them capped with bauxite, the most common aluminum ore. World War II shortages caused the nation’s eyes to glance at those hills and interested parties to secure reserves. In the last million years the Ice Age came to North America, but glaciers did not cover the Willamette Valley. Instead, over time, gigantic glaciers covering much of the rest of the Northwest began to melt, their droplets becoming walls of water -- the Lake Missoula Floods -- which poured southward into the Valley, creating a huge, freshwater lake, called by some a “Willamette Sound.” Icebergs in Central Washington broke loose and ended up floating on the new lake. Chunks of rock came with the icebergs and were left stranded when the ice melted. One ended up in front of Collins Hall at Willamette University. For many years after the disappearance of the Valley lake, seasonal floods surged from the Willamette River to the eastern and western borders of the Valley. As the water overflowed the banks of the river, its velocity was greatly reduced so that much of its load of sand and silt settled to the bottom near the river, with only the finest mud remaining to drift farther 3-2 Historical Conditions out before settling. Thus the valley floor was built highest near the river in the form of broad natural levees. These natural levees along the river and its streams are only slightly higher than the surrounding flood plain. In a result that questions logic and sometimes causes confusion, upland plants are more likely to grow close to the streams on the drier levees, while wetland plants often grow farther away on the flood plain (Clark 1957; Guard 1995). Early Life. Active current anthropological research in Woodburn indicates humans lived in the Valley approximately 12,000 years B.P., based on human hairs recovered from undisturbed marshland clay deposits. DNA testing has not been completed, but early indications point toward a conclusion that the hairs belong to “a much older and unrelated population in North America than any that are currently known.” Carbon - 14 tests on stone artifacts discovered at the same location add weight to the conclusion that humans were in the area as long as 12,700 years ago. They are the earliest dated artifacts yet to be found in the Willamette Valley (Hibbs pers. comm.). The Curator of the Condon Museum of Fossils at the University of Oregon has identified numerous Pleistocene and post-Pleistocene fauna fragments from strata at the Woodburn site including ground sloth, mastodon, dire wolf, bear, possibly sabre- toothed cats, big-horn sheep, horses and the largest known Pleistocene bird, the teratorn with a 14-16 foot wingspan, and the first to be found north of the La Brea tar pits archeological site in Los Angeles. Twelve thousand years ago, horses, camels, mammoths, bison, deer, bear, panthers, tigers and lions roamed the Willamette Valley. Thousands of birds, including giant condors, hawks, eagles, geese and ducks nested in the area (Hibbs pers. comm.; Allen and Burns 1986). Location and Climate. Salem sits in the north-central part of the Willamette River Valley basin and straddles the east and west banks of the Willamette River. At an elevation of approximately 150 feet above sea level, Salem rests in a natural basin formed by the westward Eola Hills rising between 900 and 1,000 feet, the Waldo Hills to the east between 500-600 feet, and to the south the volcanic South Salem Hills rising 600-700 feet. The Willamette River does something unique in Salem: it is the only place along its entire length where it does not flow across wide expanses of flat floodplain but instead pinches between two sets of bedrock hills: South Salem