The Agate Spring 2016.Indd

CONTENTS HENRY LARCOM ABBOT IN CENTRAL OREGON, 1855 WOLFORD CANYON - GEORGE AGUILAR SR. WESTSIDE JCHS MUSEUM • CASE OF THE MYSTERIOUS PIERS REDMOND AIRPORT DISPLAY • CAMP SHERMAN VIDEO REVIEW Donations - Memorial Gifts • Membership Welcome to the Agate #5 elcome to Issue No. 5 in our new series of THE AGATE, the Wonly local history journal in Central Oregon. We’re proud to bring you in each issue well-researched articles on Jeff erson County and area history; reviews of new publications, Jeff erson County Historical and news of interest to history-lovers hereabouts. In this issue: Society Offi cers, Directors new light on a nearly-forgotten Central Oregon trailblazer, Hen- ry Larcom Abbot; an eloquent memoir by revered Warm Springs historian George Aguilar, Sr. on the long-gone Reservation com- President: Lottie Holcomb • 541-475-7488 munity of Wolford Canyon; news of newly-digitalized turn-of- V. President: Betty Fretheim • 541-475-0583 the-century photographs by pioneer Agency Plains photographer Secretary: Wanda Buslach • 541-475-6210 Cora Luelling; and updates on current Historical Society doings, Treasurer: Elaine Henderson • 541-475-2306 including the 2016 Annual Dinner April 9, and progress on the Charlene McKelvy Lochrie • 541-475-2049 future JCHS Museum at Westside Community Center. Jerry Ramsey • 541-475-5390 We hope you enjoy this issue—and if you do, or have bones Jim Carroll • 541-475-6709 to pick with it, or suggestions for future issues, please let us hear Dr. Tom Manning • 541-475-6241 from you! Becky Roberts • 541-475-4525 And speaking of forgetting and remembering—here’s a short Jennie Smith • 541-475-1159 list of readings on homesteading that was somehow omitted from David Campbell • 541-475-7327 “The Mystery Homesteaders” in our last issue— Dan Chamness • 541-475-7486 Margee O’Brien • 541-475-3533 Barbara Allen, Homesteading the High Desert (Salt Lake City: Uni- versity of Utah Press, 1987) Ethel Klann Cornwell, Rimrocks and Water Barrels (Winona, Wis- Jeff erson County Historical consin: Lakeside Press, 1979) Society Advisory Council H.L.Davis, Honey in the Horn (New York: Morrow, 1935); “Back to Don Reeder Pete McCabe the Land—Oregon 1907,” in H.L. Davis: Collected Essays and Short Sto- ries (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1986 Joyce Edgmon Lola Hagman Paul W. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development (U.S. Gov- Bob Rufener Tony Ahern ernment Printing Offi ce, 1968) Darryl Smith Doug Macy Molly Gloss, “Introduction” to Alice Day Pratt, A Homesteader’s Carol Leone Garry Boyd Portfolio (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1993). First published by Macmillan as The Homesteader’s Portfolio in 1922 Gilma Endicott Greenhoot, Rattlesnake Homestead (privately print- The mission of the Society is to research, gather ed, 1988) and preserve the history of Jeff erson County and C.S. Luelling, Saga of the Sagebrush Country (unpublished MS in Central Oregon for public education through the Jeff erson County Library) display of artifacts and archives. “Many Hands,” Jeff erson County Reminiscences (Portland: Binford and Mort, 1998) Bess Stangland Raber, Some Bright Morning (Bend: Maverick Pub- Editor: Jane Ahern lishing, 1983) Designer: Tom Culbertson Jarold Ramsey, New Era: Refl ections on the Human and Natural Publisher: Jerry Ramsey History of Central Oregon (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2004) 2 THE JEFFERSON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY • MADRAS, OREGON Henry Larcom Abbot in Central Oregon By Jarold Ramsey n hethe beginning rains of of earlythe end October of this story 1855, came a offbe diresomewhere danger, east their of onlyMadras, route Jefferson to safety. County, As awrestled farming byfamily, men, first Sam in soonMichigan, rendered and afteran ul -the youngin the Army early engineer 1970s, whennamed a Henryyoung manLar- Oregon.Abbot later wrote, “Encumbered with a large movetimatum to Oregon, to Abbot they in wereemphatic homesteaders, Chinook strug Jar- Icomnamed Abbot Rick and Donahoe a party ofwas 17 tearingmen and down 60 numberIt didn’t of seemjaded to animals be a proper and diary—more, considerable he glinggon: to“Mamook prove up memalooseon and gain title tenas to thechik-chik!” 160 acres Tanworn-out old outbuilding pack mules on his were farm struggling north of baggage,thought, awe kind suddenly of “day foundbook” ourselvesor journal they’d(“Kill claimed.the little But cart!” where? Report Was p.97) the writer a man Redmond,westward Oregon.through In heavy one ofbrush the amongkeeping carefulhostile track and of well-armed work, visits, or a woman? (How the book ended up in a shed walls,and fallen he found timber a tattered in the hillsled- Indians,income and to expenses whom forour a famitrain- many milesut we from must its nowplace brieflyof origin leave was, andLt. reAb- ger-book,south of itsMt. pages Hood. filled They with wouldly, with veryrender little us of aa persontempt- mains, partbot ofin itshis mystery.) mountainside lurch in order dailywere entries guided, in pencil,more dator- ingal nature prey.” registered. (Pacific It Railwas- BRickto Donahoeget a firmer was fascinatedgrip on the by mainthe ledele-- ingless, from by Januarya young 1912 Indi to- roaddefinitely Survey not a Report,self-con- ger-bookments of and his thestory story and it themight historical tell, if he events could Septemberan named 1917, Sam begin An-- Vol.scious VI, “literary” p. 96; hereafrecord.- identifyand forces the writer,that were and locateshaping the ithomestead. out in Ore He- ningax-shat. in central This Michiwas- terBut Report)who kept. Heit? Thereadd- carefullygon Territory transcribed in 1855. it inIt’s typescript, a story that and seems even gannot (Saginawone of the County) loose edwas that no name, they hadbut clear only- drewto connect up an alphabetizedmeaningfully index with of regionalnames of peoand- andgangs abruptly of gold-seek breaking- lyfive the writer rifles was betweenpart of plenational mentioned history in the at entries. almost Eventually, every turn, he and both his ers and soldiers of them. And their during Abbot’s adventures with the Pacif- fortune that were guide was a young ic Railroad Survey expedition, and right on prowling through Indian who spoke through the rest of his long, consequential the interior wilds of no English, and Ab- life—he died in 1927, at 96. It’s surprising, Oregon in the 1850s bot had only begun to given what he accomplished early and late, and 1860s. Abbot and learn Chinook Jargon. and the notable Americans he associated his party were “official”: Not an auspicious with, that he is so little known. their mission was to scout Daguerreotype of Henry arrangement, but Abbot’s In Central Oregon, three minor land- Abbot, West Point, out possible railroad routes 1854 immediate challenge was marks bear his name—Abbot Butte and Ab- north and south both east and to pick and angle his way up bot Creek, west of the Metolius River, and west of the Cascade range, as part of and down through long stretches of Abbot Road and Pass along his route around an ambitious “Pacific Railroad Survey” au- blow-down and underbrush, while Sam An- Mt. Hood. (During WWII, an Army Corps of thorized by the Secretary of War. ax-shat scouted out the faint They’d been in the field northbound Indian trails that might lead since leaving Benecia, near San Francisco, on them on to the Willamette July 10. The survey, with Lt. Robert S. Wil- Valley and safety. The go- liamson in command, had gone quite well; ing was hard enough on foot but now Williamson and the expedition’s and on mule-back, but they military escort were exploring west of the were trying to proceed with mountains, and Abbot’s appointed task—to a two-wheeled cart, which find a better wagon route around Mt. Hood carried their fragile survey- than the notorious Barlow Road—had been ing instruments, including turned on end in recent days by news from glass barometers and ther- a settler in Tygh Valley that the Indians on mometers, sextants, and the both sides of the Columbia had risen up in- like—and also an odometer to Example of ‘odometer cart,’ Yellowstone 1872 ter-tribally and were burning missions and measure their daily mileage. killing Indian agents and settlers. So the The odometer’s mechanism made a click- Engineers encampment south of Bend was possible route over the mountains to Oregon ing sound, and Sam An-ax-shat named the known as “Camp Abbot,” but the resort com- City that the party was supposed to survey cart the “chik-chik.” Watching their constant plex that was created on the site in the 1970s had become, in the face of what seemed to struggles with it, whether behind a mule or was named “Sunriver.”) That he and his ex- 3 plorations are even this much recognized today is the result of eff orts by the late Robert Sawyer, early editor-publisher of the Bend Bulletin and one of the pioneers of Central Oregon historical research. After Abbot’s death, Sawyer contacted his family in Massachusetts, and was given his personal journals for the 1855 expedition, which he edited (with extensive notes) and published as “Abbot Railroad Surveys, 1855” in Oregon Historical Quarterly 33:1 (March 1932), 1-24 and 33:2 (June 1932), 15- 135 (hereafter Journal). Part of the appeal of his Oregon story is that it follows the archetype of the tale of the clever young man going forth into the wide risky world and proving himself—“Little Jack,” le petit Jean in French folklore, and so on. But another source of this appeal is that we can read Abbot’s 1855 Oregon narrative in three diff erent versions, each recount- ed by him but under very diff erent circumstances: his carefully edited “offi cial” report, as published by the Government in 1857 in Volume Six of the Pacifi c Railroad Survey Reports; his fi eld journals as found and edited by Robert Sawyer, which in- formally records his adventures day by day in the fi eld, as they came; and a little-known memoir he wrote as an old man in 1909, “Reminiscences of the Oregon War of 1855,” Journal of the Military Service Institute, Vol.

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