Our Town

As I've mentioned several times in my blog that I am a product of smalltown America. I come from a town a lot like the one Thorton Wilder writes in his play, "Our Town". Un like his town we never had a local cemetary. Most of those who died in Valsetz were buried in either Falls City or Dallas. But like Thorton Wilders play we had the usual drama and personal experiences that people live through in their daily lives.

I never grew up in a jungle of tall buildings and concrete. The jungle or forest if you will where I grew up is located in the Coast Range Mountains approxmiately 50 miles west of the state Capital, Salem.

It is this time of year that I remembr Valsetz the most. The changing color of the trees and the ever present rain. In fact, it is said that Valsetz was the rain capital of the United States except for some exotic place in Hawaii, but who actual counts Hawaii. You just know if there is a place in Hawaii that gets more rain the Valsetz area it was created to impress the tourists. I can't imagine anyone actually living in a rainy part of Hawaii. I would have to say it rained in Valsetz from Halloween until Memorial Day in May. If it wasn't raining it was snowing. There were parts of the town that was nothing but a large mud puddle three fourths of the year.

The combination of the rain and the type of soil found in the Laurel Mountain area where Valsetz was located is considered the best place in the world for fir trees to grow. We had several variety of firs, Douglas fir, hemlock, cedar, spruce, white pine, and others that slip my mind. Our hillsides were also covered with viny-maples, alder, chitum (cascara), various wild fruit trees (crabapple, prune), huckleberries, skunk cabbage, Oregon grape and sallal.

I suspect the bounty that God blessed on the area is why Valsetz ever came to be. Men and women brought their families from various places around the world in the early 1900s to places like Valsetz. They brought their families to the region in search for jobs and some amount of prosperity and a small chunck of the American dream. These people were hard working people. People that had never heard of ergonomics, SAIF, or sick leave. These were people that endured the environment and the elements that nature provided or put up as obsticles. These people came to the area as loggers, camp cooks, millworkers, train engineers, road builders and carpenters. They came in the early 1900s and carved out small logging camps all along the Siletz river and its tributaries.

Eventually these small logging camps evolved into one town, Valsetz. Until the day the town's last standing homes were razed by Boise Cascade, the town was often referred to as, "Camp" by the older residents. I do not ever remember my dad or any of his peers referring to Valsetz as anything other then "Camp". "Better call in the dogs and wrap it up, its time to head back to camp".

This picture of the men sitting in front of the sawmill were of the original settlers in Valsetz. My dad's grandfather, father and uncles are seated in the front row. Eventually the timber industry would take my dad's father and one of my dad's uncle's lives. My dad lost his dad when he was nine years old from an industrial accident and a few years later one of his uncles would be killed in the woods as well. In Falls City our family has at least five men that lost their lives in the woods.

In the mid-1980s Boise Cascade Corporation had determined that the plywood plant and the residence of Valsetz were no longer vital to their bottom line and to Boise Cascade's shareholders. The fact that those from Valsetz had built the company to the success it had become meant nothing to the corporate heads. Everything that had come before Boise Cascade meant nothing as well.

The decision was made to fire, layoff and downsize to a small crew to raze the mill and the town. As people found new towns and homes to move their families to outside of Valsetz, the town crew was ordered to put a red "X" on the side of their home and within days bulldoze and burn the home. Very few were offered jobs in other Boise Cascade mills and many found it difficult to adopt to the "civilized" world. Within a few years many of those men that my dad had grew up with and worked with in the mill for twenty plus years had passed on. Old age, too much alcohol, cancer or heart attacks I do not really know. I suspect broken hearts.



In the summer of 1985 the town was to be finally "closed". There were to be no more families to raise, no more ball games to attend, no more school days, no more life in Valsetz. On that last day the largest Mountain Days-wake ever was thrown. There was enough bar-be-ques, beer kegs and live music for a large city to be had. People met at the school grounds and brought their grills, favorite adult beverage, musical instruments and memories. The day was filled with hugs, tears, laughs and more tears.

This picture is the last picture of the folks from my hometown. It was taken by a Statesman Journal reporter. I look through it ever so often and note those who have passed and those I can't remember their names. I also notice those I grew up with and the parents of the kids I knew.

I can't boast that any of these people were the greatest at anything. They probably weren't necessarily the best looking people in the world nor were they the smartest that I ever met. I don't know if any of them ever created anything great or solved any world problems, but they were my people and in my eyes, the best.