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Jackson
County 1908 Medford, Oregon, Jan. 1908
Dear Unknown Friend,I was requested by our teacher, Professor Shirley, of the eighth grade, to write to you concerning our city and valley, which I will do to the best of my knowledge. Medford is located in the center of the beautiful Rogue River Valley. It is on the main line of the Southern Pacific railroad, 331 miles south of Portland and 442 miles north of San Francisco, in the southern part of Oregon. Its altitude is 1,374 ft. It is the western terminal of the Medford and Crater Lake Railroad. This railroad not only opens the gateway to Crater Lake National Park, but also makes it the point of concentration for all the timber of the upper Rogue River. All the public buildings and business blocks are of brick and stone, magnificent in design. The religious and educational advantages of Medford are of high order. There are nine churches representing all the leading denominations, all of strong congregations, and most of them having splendid places of worship. Medford has a fine school system. There are two large brick buildings. They carry a broad course of study, including drawing, watercolor work and music, under a special director. Jackson County, in which Rogue River Valley is located, lies at the southern end of the state. The climate is mild. During the coldest weather it seldom gets to 20 degrees above zero. The warmest weather is in July and August from 90 to 100 degrees. The nights are always delightful and cool. Rogue River Valley is the home of the the apple and pear and has been known and recognized throughout the East, and commanded the highest prices. All other fruits are raised in abundance. Among those raised are peaches, plums, apricots, cherries and prunes. Also almonds and walnuts. Berries of all kinds. Grains, wheat, oats, barley, rye and timothy. Alfalfa to perfection. This is the pioneer mining district of Oregon. Copper, gold and coal in abundance are found here. There are also fine timber regions. The territory of timber tributary to Medford extends far beyond the limits of Jackson County. While the forests of upper Rogue River is immense, sugar pine, yellow pine, fir, cedar, oak and laurel are in abundance. Hoping this will give you some information of our beautiful country and city, Yours respectfully,
"Inter-School Letter System Started," Alton Evening Telegraph, Alton, Illinois, March 4, 1908, page 1Berna Roberts. JACKSON
COUNTY.
(Jacksonville, County Seat.)
Jackson County lies in what is known as the
Rogue River Valley in the southwestern part of
the state. It is bounded on the north by
Douglas, on the west by Josephine, on the east
by Klamath counties, and on the south by
California. The population from the 1905
census was 13,628; of these 89 percent are
United States born; of the foreign 11 percent
about one-fourth are German; the remaining
three-fourths are made up principally of
Canadians, English, Irish, Scandinavians and
Austrians. The total area of the county is
1,779,662 acres. There are 48,183 acres
unappropriated and unreserved, of which 47,155
acres are surveyed and 1,028 acres are
unsurveyed. There are 199,183 acres reserved
and 1,532,296 acres appropriated. Of the
assessed appropriated land 81,069 acres are
cultivated and 1,010,667 are uncultivated.
Cultivated land is worth on an average of $58
per acre, and uncultivated $10.45. The total
value of taxable property in the county in
1907 was $22,811,390. The expenses for the
same year were $30,935.69. The surface is
level, rolling and mountainous. The rock
formation in the western part is
pre-Cretaceous; in the eastern part it is a
combination of Cretaceous and Eocene. The
natural forest growth consists principally of
oak, willow, yellow and sugar pine and fir.
Fruit of all kinds, especially peaches, have
been found to grow well on this soil, which is
rich in all the essential chemicals. It is
likely to be a very lasting soil. Its first
need will probably be phosphoric acid. The
soil is black and deep, ranging from ten
inches to several feet. The subsoil is hard
and white. The sugar beet, hemp, onions,
sorghum and strawberries should grow well on
this soil. The soil in the immediate vicinity
of the valley consists of successive alluvial
deposits of different geological periods and
is very rich. Rogue River and its branches
furnish excellent water power for milling
purposes. The fuel used is wood and costs from
$4.00 to $6.00 per cord. There are several
mineral springs with good curative qualities
in the county. The leading industry is
farming. Lumbering is carried on extensively.
There are fifteen sawmills, one saw and
planing mill, one saw and shingle mill, one
box factory, one saw and box factory, one saw,
lath and shingle mill, one sash and door
factory and three planing mills, employing in
all 101 skilled men at a daily wage of about
$3.15; 170 unskilled men at a daily wage of
$2.25; two women at a daily wage of about
$1.15. Mining is also an important industry.
There are sixteen gold quartz mines yielding
ore valued at $24.15 per ton, a number of
placer mines, five asphalt mines, two copper
mines yielding 30 percent ore, one iron mine,
also quantities of asbestos, quicksilver and
building stone. Among the industrial plants of
the county are found brick yards, breweries,
creameries, cold storages, electric light,
flour and feed, fruit canneries, laundries,
machine shops, printing, soda water and water
power, employing in all 125 skilled men at a
daily wage of about $3.75, and 160 unskilled
men at a daily wage of about $2.25. The roads
are in good condition. The climate is mild and
congenial. The mean temperature during the
spring months is 50.5 degrees, summer 61.1
degrees, fall 56.4 degrees, and winter 42.7
degrees. The mean precipitation during the
spring months is 2.64 inches, summer 1.34
inches, fall 1.43 inches, and winter 4.21
inches. At the 1908 June election this county
voted in favor of a local option prohibition
law. The charter of Medford, however, exempts
that town from the operation of the law.
Third
Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics and Inspector of Factories
and Workshops of the State of Oregon
from October 1, 1906 to September 30,
1908, Oregon State
Printing Department, 1909, page 132
ON THE TRAIL OF
This is
the second of a series of twelve articles by the editor of Sunset magazine, all of them dealing with notable features of the Great Far West
country. The aim is to present an unconventional, yet correct, picture to the end that
the reader may be entertained and may perhaps learn to love, as does the writer, these
Wonder Places in this land that turns toward the setting sun. Here is a region that
is little known to the average American citizen, in spite of much writing of guidebooks
and novels. The knowledge of what is here, of these marvels, both natural and
man-made, of deserts surprised and made fruitful, of mountains that humble the Alps,
of gold mines and orange groves, of sequoia trees that were old when the Druid trees
of England were young, of lakes miles above and far below the sea--all this cannot
but help to broaden and to brighten; to rub off provincial dust, and to crack
the rivets in the chaplet
that binds the brow of the man who thinks the world has little new to
offer him: SKOOKUM JOHN IN THE VALLEY OF THE ROGUE, WHERE SCALPING KNIVES HAVE BEEN MADE INTO PRUNING HOOKS AND INDIANS HAVE FLED BEFORE INDUSTRY By CHARLES S. AIKEN ----
As Honore
Palmer, son of Chicago's one-time merchant prince,
stopped his motor car recently beneath the shading branches of a
certain big white oak on the rising hills to the west of the river
Rogue, he crossed, all unconsciously, the trail of Skookum John. Just
beyond, their roots firmly planted in gravel loam, waving their green
plumes with the uniform precision of the King's Irish Rifles on parade,
are the Palmer pear trees, humble helpers in adding more to the Potter
Palmer dollars. When, a few years ago, the railway engineers zigzagged
and bow-knotted a route for steel to rest upon, across Siskiyou
cañons and beside Rogue rapids, they touched many times the
leaf-strewn pathway over which Skookum John's moccasined feet had often
passed. Beside the railway now, between the shadows cast by Pilot Rock
and Onion Spring Mountain, are three cities, and a half dozen towns,
all with mayors and ice plants and churches, and bands that play
ragtime, and all the other signs of arrived civilization. When the
locomotives whistle on these grades, when dynamite blasts gold rock
from these mines, the echoes crash and carom among crag and pine top,
with a ringing JOHN! JOHN! JOHN! JOHN! From east to west, from the snow-topped Cascades to the ocean, from its source near Mt. Huckleberry's crest to its outlet near Humbug's frowning ridge, the Rogue River goes on its laughing way. A beautiful way and a beautiful land it is. It was all Skookum John's country once, but it's the fortune-making white man's now, with scarce a notch in anyone's memory for Chief Skookum or his tribe. Over to westward, in Curry County, a crest looms white and clear, and large and strong Skookumhouse Butte--that and a painted pine slab in the cemetery at Fort Klamath are Skookum John's only monuments. [Skookumhouse commemorates a native fort near the butte--a skookum house, i.e., a strong house, fort or jail--not Skookum John] TRAGEDIES
OF THE '60s
Every
ridge and hilltop and watercourse--nearly every tree--in all this
watered, forested, sunshiny land, have had their part to act in the
aboriginal life and the early Indian wars of this region. Here in
Southern Oregon, the Rogues (allied to the Klamaths) and the Klamaths,
the Umpquas, the Piutes and the Modocs fought for their lands and their
homes; fought, too, for revenge and lust, and their daring and deviltry
made Oregon pioneering a fearsome thing. In the early '50s, following
the discovery of gold in California, came the rush of miners to the
placers of this region. Up from Yreka they poured in steadily,
scattering among the watercourses and getting gold where they could find it. Reckless spirits there were
among these, and their treatment of some of the
peace-loving Indians soon made trouble. For over
twenty years, up to the time of the General Canby massacre, in the lava
beds in 1873, this irregular warfare continued, with right and wrong fighting on both
sides until they became as well mixed as the ethics of a Kentucky feud.
Skookum John was a lad in the early days of this pitiless war, when shots from behind trees and logs and haystacks formed the common habit. He was a son of Chief John, one of his tribe's great men, and a nephew of Leylek, who was a sort of Washington among the Klamaths and the Rogues. After old Chief John had been captured and taken away to prison, Skookum became Leylek's right-hand man, and it was while so acting that he came to his death in [November], 1863, under circumstances that have given him place in the Westminster Abbey of the Rogues, in whatever somber forest aisle that temple may be. SKOOKUM
JOHN'S ROMANCE
It all
happened here in this setting, long the country of Skookum John's
forebears. The story is told in some of the pioneer books, but all the
first-hand facts came to me one night from a man who was there, Judge
W. M. Colvig of Medford. He was a soldier then, serving under Colonel
Drew of the Oregon state troops, and he saw Skookum die. Soon after
that he left soldiering for law, and today he goes about among the
orchards and factories, occasionally drawing a complaint instead of a
sword, or discharging a jury in place of a gun. There had been trouble over around Table Rock above Jacksonville. Two or three settlers had been killed, and the troops went after big game. They caught George, a young chief, and a close friend of Skookum John, and they hanged him high at Jacksonville, on a big locust tree that grows thriftily there, just before the Starlight saloon doors. [George was hanged at Camp Baker, in Phoenix. The Starlight Saloon is unknown to history.] Now, George was not only Skookum's good friend, but he was the brother of Celie, a maid of the tribe for whom Skookum had plans that looked toward making her his squaw. Celie was evidently the Minnehaha of the Rogues. She was the fairest, fleetest, gayest, and brightest of all the women in any of the thousands of tepees between the great Goose Lake and the sea. She was well educated, too, for General Joe Lane had once sent her to a convent in California. [This is otherwise unknown to history.] But Celie liked not the white man nor his ways, and she went back to tribal customs and life the first chance she had. She dressed in deerskin leggings and wore moccasins and no one knew that English speech and knowledge were hers. When Celie learned of her brother's sudden taking-off she lost no time in rousing her tribe to action. Old Chief Leylek was over in the Klamath country and Skookum John and many warriors were with him. Celie knew that Captain Jack, chief of the Modocs--he who was afterward hanged for his part in the Canby affair--was a good friend of Skookum John, so she sped away through cañon and forest, across the rugged country, to her warriors in the Klamath, down below Crater Lake, a full hundred miles from Jacksonville [sic] where George's body was swinging in the night wind. In that camp, too, she counted on Blow, or Soltouk, a young brave, for whom she had great admiration, loving him as women will, even against the more ambitious claims of Skookum John. With the fiery aid of Soltouk and Skookum, Celie felt sure of getting the help of Captain Jack and his fighting crew of Modocs, and with such an array of hostiles the whites could be routed and killed and her brother's cruel death avenged. THE
FIGHT IN THE TEPEE
At Fort
Klamath was Captain Kelly, with forty men, and to him, soon after the
hanging of Chief George, Colonel Drew sent a a messenger of warning.
The Colonel knew Celie's power and influence, and he knew that trouble
was ahead. Fleet as was the messenger, Celie was before him. The chiefs,
five of them, including Leylek and Skookum John, met in hurried council
in a tepee situated at a point remote from the rest of the village. The
other fighting men of the tribe went silently from the village to meet
at some forest rendezvous. Skookum John was the last to join the tepee
conference. He had been out on a hunting trip and he went to the
council fire accoutered as he was. Hurrying through the underbrush in
his haste to reach the assembly he had fastened his long hunting knife
securely to his belt and tied the blade to the sheath lest he lose it
in speeding through the chaparral. Posting his men outside, all with rifles bearing on the tepee, Captain Kelly, with drawn revolver and followed by only one of his men, Sergeant Underwood, broke abruptly upon the council and demanded the immediate surrender of all present. It was a dramatic moment. The tent was lighted only by the fire in the center. The chiefs were stretched out about it, none of them armed but Skookum John. At Captain Kelly's words John jumped to his feet and lunged forward across the fire toward Kelly, pulling vigorously at his knife which he had forgotten to release from its sheath. At this action Kelly drew back and fired, and Underwood blazed away over the officer's shoulder. Kelly's shot struck John under the right eye, while Underwood's entered his breast. The brave young chief fell forward across the fire, partly extinguishing it and leaving the tepee in darkness. In the confusion Kelly and Underwood got outside, and one by one, as the four chiefs emerged, they were taken in charge. The prostrate form of Skookum John was lifted from the fire. His wounds were mortal, and he soon expired, amid the wailings of the few squaws who gathered about Celie, and listened to her words of lamentation and anger. Captain Kelly promptly sent a detail of twenty men through the village to round up all the warriors, but it was too late--all had gone to the forest as soon as Celie had roused them--gone to await the awakening action of the Modocs and Piutes. The next day Colonel Drew arrived with a small force and took command. He promptly called for Chief Leylek, and told him that all the warriors of the Rogues and Klamaths must come in and lay down their arms. THE
OLD CHIEF A HOSTAGE.
"If your
warriors are not all in by Saturday noon," said Colonel Drew to Leylek,
"you will be hanged from that tree!" After delivering this ultimatum, he continued: "Send to your men and tell them what I have said. Tell them to come in, not more than twenty at a time, and to put their guns at the foot of our flagpole. I will let all the chiefs go but you, and you must surely die if your braves do not come in." Old Leylek moved not a muscle of his face as he heard this. When Colonel Drew had finished, Leylek asked first to see Soltouk, then the other chiefs, then Celie. Leylek, who was over seventy, said at first that he would gladly die, if his people might be free. Soltouk and the others protested, arguing that the white men were so strong that Leylek's death would avail nothing in the end. The old chief reluctantly agreed. Then Celie came in and her passionate denunciation of the action proposed soon brought about her all the soldiers of the little post. Leylek asked her to go out and to use her power to bring in the warriors. and Soltouk also urged her to give her aid. "You coward," she hissed out at the young chief. "I thought you brave--I thought you a man--you are all cowards." "We have talked it all over," interposed Leylek, "and we all agree it is useless to oppose the white man at this time. Even if our warriors keep their arms we can do little except to provoke and compel more bloodshed." CELIE'S
PLEA FOR HER PEOPLE.
At this,
this would-be Joan of Arc stood erect, folded her arms and answered
scornfully: "Let Leylek go out and sit with the squaws--let him take my dress, and I will hang, and die gladly for my people. It shall then not be said that the Klamaths were cowards, that they gave up when the white man beckoned. Where is the old-time spirit of my people? I would rather die and see them all die than to give up without fighting for their rights. My brother must be avenged." As the girl finished, old Leylek shook his head sadly, and young Soltouk stole away from her scornful presence. All this talk was translated in part to Colonel Drew, who then took Celie to one side to question her. She was well-known among the troops as an Indian maid who was "full of ginger," and cared nothing for the blandishments of uniform or brass buttons. Even Joe Finnegan, the Irish corporal, and a premium lady killer, had found his arts useless with Celie. She never could understand the soldier language of love, whether in Chinook or English, or much less in Irish blarney. Through an interpreter Colonel Drew explained to Celie that her brother had been executed because it was known he was concerned in the killing of a settler, and that Skookum John brought his fate on himself. Besides that Leylek had said that John had advised in council that the Indians attack the post at Fort Klamath that night. To Colonel Drew's astonishment, when the interpreter had finished, Celie answered defiantly in clear, good English: "My people here are cowards--the chiefs are all squaws!" "Take care, Celie," Colonel Drew answered, "if you incite your people to revolt, we may hang you, too. And where did you learn English, and why have you not spoken it before?" For answer, the Indian girl pulled out a bead chain from around her neck. To it was attached a small crucifix. "I listen better than I speak," she said laconically. THEIR
LAST STAND
But
Celie's passionate plea for her people was all in vain. Wiser counsel
prevailed. She would not go to call her warriors in, but others went,
and on the appointed Saturday she watched the Indians come in
one by one, and sadly drop their arms by the pole where flew the Stars
and Stripes. It was the last stand of the Klamaths and Rogues. Some years before old Chief Sam of the Rogues and his people had been moved by the wisely paternal government away to the north, to the Siletz country, near the mouth of the Yaquina. Skookum John was buried near where he fell, and today the reservation of his kinsfolk, the Klamaths, is all about his grave. It is a beautiful, park-like country, most of it, with big forests of sugar pine, and lakes filled with trout. Over seven hundred Indians make their homes there, drawing on their Uncle Sam for any deficit in Nature's treasury. Travelers and campers bound for wonderful Crater Lake, by way of Klamath Falls, pass close by the reservation's west boundary. Here, if they are curious, they may see Soltouk, a little gray and a little bent, but proud of his army coat and his big silver star which proclaims him chief of police of all the Klamaths. Perhaps he might tell you of Celie--of her fate--and surely if you give him a good pipeful, or a generous tip, he may tell you of the prowess of his boyhood friend, Skookum John, of earlier days in the laughing valley country that both had so loved, and of all their people who loved it, too. BREAKFAST
FOOD FOR BRITONS
In the
heart of this valley of the Rogue today--the old French Canadian
trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company once called it Rouge from the
color of its water, but later on for manifest reasons the missionaries thought Rogue more
fitting--are three cities of pretensions and promise, to say nothing of
thirteen or more smaller towns where a few years will work wonders. [The Rogue River is never red,
nor even reddish. The name is derived from the perceived character of
the natives who lived near it.] These three cities are Ashland, Medford and Grants Pass. Fruit farming,
mining, water power, and a climate worth talking about are making these
gay blades of cities grow so fast that a daily directory is a crying
need, like the handy slip that came to the city's help after San
Francisco's great fire. Around Medford, pears are in the air
and the talk. Apples have been [in the air and the talk] and are, but the generals of
the troops predict an apple Waterloo unless some new Grouchy comes to
help. It's about Medford that young Palmer tools his motor car for a
few months every year. There are evidently others like him, for the
motor car registry here August first last was just one hundred and
thirty-seven. How's that for a city that is just beginning to make
dents in the map, and to sigh for asphalt pavements and slot machines? Just now Medfordians are shipping about half their apple crop to London, to make breakfast food for Britons. Just why over two hundred cars of seven hundred boxes each, or 140,000 boxes, or 7,000,000 pounds, or about 10,000,000 apples--that was the 1907 record--should be able to cross a continent and an ocean, and win their way to the favor of John Bull, seems one of the mystic results of modern trade. But this demand is founded on the good sense, or at least the expressed sense of the Britons. When Mr. Day of Sgobel and Day, the New York commission men, started to send these apples across the ocean, he sent naturally the biggest he could get. Word came back that these jumbos were not salable. "They are too large for breakfast and the Englishman won't cut them in half!" "Help!" cried Mr. Day. The next shipment that went was of smaller fruit--technically four and four and a half-tier, all clear-skinned, with a sun-kissed spot of red on every apple. "That's the sort," came back the reply. "Our people want a small apple; if we are very hungry for breakfast we'll eat two, but the large ones look too big to try!" "God save the King--that's easy!" said Mr. Day, so he pressed a few buttons and wrote a few telegrams, with the result ever since that London pays a large price for small apples while New York pays a small price--comparatively--for large apples, and everybody is happy. SOME
APPLEPLEXY FIGURES
And some
of these Roguish prices for apples would make a New England farmer with
his Baldwins and Seek-no-furthers sit up straight and say "I swan!" In
the first place all these apple eggs are, so to say, in just two
baskets--Spitzenbergs and Newtown Pippins being the only varieties
grown and shipped, with just a sprinkling of Hoover Red to cheer up the
Christmas market. These varieties are good keepers and answer all
demands, and so they grow and go, and the Rogue River apple farmers
sell and smile. The ruling prices of the valley fruit growers' union last season ran from $2.25 to $2.50 a box f.o.b. the cars at Medford or Ashland or similar points. That is all there is to it under present methods. New York dealers send agents here each season and they buy on the cars and take chances of sales. There's no waiting for vexing tidings of fruit arrived in bad condition and of heart-breaking and bank-breaking prices. As any number of trees bear as high as twenty-five boxes, and an acre holds fifty trees, and as each box sold at $2.50 represents a net profit of at least $1.75, a typical and obliging acre of Newtowns means a profit of just $2187.50! When I ranged through the orchards a few months ago--trailing Skookum John and the money makers who have followed him--I found no specific instances like this, for apple trees do not bear uniformly, and they do not always agree to keep a-living on the same acre. Pear trees are much more ladylike and tractable. But I found any number of men who frowned and showed their teeth at the same time when I asked them about profits--that's an unfailing sign of a healthy cash balance. The records of the dealers' union helped me trace some figures worth reading and some of the Medford bankers were surprisingly confidential, throwing off for the moment that look of hard, frozen sociability that bankers too often acquire from associating with their vaults. I heard of a certain nine acres of Newtowns, north of Medford, that in four years have yielded their owner a gross return of $16,620. From an acre and a half last year S. L. Bennett took in over $1400. Twelve acres of Newtowns netted f.o.b. orchard $1170 an acre. Seventy-one trees of Ben Davis apples yielded 700 boxes of fruit which sold on the ranch for $1 a box in 1907. One acre of six-year-old Newtowns netted $711. An 11¾-acre pear orchard netted $6600. 152 trees of Newtowns on a three-acre tract netted $3125.00 f.o.b. Medford. Fifty-five trees, also Newtowns, produced 815 boxes, which were shipped to the London market. In spite of the financial depression these boxes realized $1711.50 net. They were grown on less than one acre. From eight acres 6000 boxes of Newtown Pippin apples were marketed, netting $2000 an acre f.o.b. the orchard. For the past seven years this orchard has netted $791 per acre average. SPROUTING
FORTUNES
Everyone
is taking a flier in apples or pears. Not only are the valley lands
becoming orchards, but far into the foothills the skirmishers of the
fruit army are deploying. Off to the east, high in the hills, fully two
hundred feet above the valley, midway between Ashland and Medford are
the Westerlund orchards of nine hundred acres, all in pears and apples,
and all in one cleared tract. No water is needed here, no
irrigation--just sunshine and sense. One pair of laboring lads from
Gold Hill have applied their surplus earnings from trade to developing
a Newtown orchard in the foothills, and had the pleasure recently of
refusing to consider an offer of $25,000 for their place. They know
that it will bring them an income of $5,000 a year within two years
more. Another firm of mechanics have developed a peach and apricot
orchard in connection with a Newtown and pear orchard, and can sell
half their holdings for $7,000. An implement dealer in the valley
bought a cheap tract of bottom land five years ago, hired a
competent man to supervise the tract, planted twenty-seven acres to
apples and has received an offer of $14,000 for the orchard. He figures
that in three years it will be bringing in that amount each year, and
he is holding on and sawing much wood. THE
PATOIS OF THE PEAR
Down
in Riverside or Porterville no one talks of anything much besides
oranges. Valencias and navels become a part of one's daily bread. In
the great Imperial Valley, where the rebellious Colorado River has
settled down to work, the lingo is all of 'lopes [canteloupes]. But here in this
Rogue country--this Skookum John land--the talk is all of Spitzes or
Newts. When you meet a pear man you have to get a fresh grip on the
words that profit a man, and then you hear of Bartletts and Boscs, or
Banjos, Howells, Coms or Nells. I ran down the etymology of some of
these words--looked up their family tree of these lordly pears whose
crops are coin. Behind Banjo lurks the name that shows its Parisian
ancestry--Beurre d'Anjou; for colloquial Com read Doyenne du Comice,
and Nell is our old friend, Winter Nelis. But men who can find
shortcuts to fortune are never troubled about chopping language.
Consider Siskiyou's Sis, or San Bernardino's Berdoo, or San Francisco's
abominable Frisco! SOME
PEAR PROFITS
Old timers
laughed at J. H. Stewart, a fruit-grower who knew, when he planted his
experimental orchard of pears and apples near Medford twenty-five years
ago. He did a lot of fancy things, including spraying for pests and
fertilizing when needed. No one laughs at him now, but they may put up
a monument to him some of these days. Everyone today is following where
he led. He predicted more money in pears than apples and last year's
record looks that way. Here are a few windfalls that came my way:A single tree of "Banjo" pears produced $226. This tree has never failed to produce a crop in thirty years. A single acre of Bartlett pears yielded $2,250. A carload of pears from Lewis orchard brought $4,622.80 gross. Sixteen and a half acres of Winter Nelis pears grown by F. H. Hopkins returned $19,000 net f.o.b. Medford. Just think of that! Comice pears from Medford sold as high as $8.20 a box in New York last autumn, and a carload brought the highest price ever received for a carload of fruit ($4,622.80). Another car from Medford sold for $4,558. The fruit growers' union experimented by sending out Comice pears in half boxes, all alluringly wrapped and labeled, with fancy lace paper like a box of candy, and lo, the result was sale in the New York market at $5.40 a half box. New Yorkers will have a chance to buy more this present season. One shipment of ten half boxes of these Comice pears brought $46, giving the grower $4.60 gross. Out of this he pays commissions amounting to 46 cents, freight and refrigeration 45 cents, picking and packing and other expenses 59 cents, or a total of $1.50, leaving a net profit for each of these half boxes of about 25 pounds of $3.10. The Bartlett record price last season was $5.05 a box in Montreal for a shipment from the Burrill orchard of six hundred and forty acres near Medford. They sold for $3.59 a box at Medford. D'Anjou pears sold last year as high as $5.60 a box in carload lots. NURSERYMEN
KEPT BUSY
All the
nurserymen are busy helping make trees grow where none grew before.
Over 500,000 apple and pear trees were planted last year in this
section and the coming season will far exceed that record. They brought
$31 a thousand last year, but contracts at $25 for this season are being
made. Last year close to five hundred refrigerated cars of apples and
pears left the valley; the present season the record will run up to
eight hundred. The picking season begins in August and ends in
November. White labor only is employed and good wages are paid. One
woman packer last year made five dollars a day at five cents a box.
Pears will run about five hundred boxes to a car, apples six hundred
and fifty to seven hundred. Fruit is all wrapped and cardboard goes
between each tier. Cherries grow wonderfully well about Ashland as well
as peaches to say nothing of the staple apples and pears. Around
Jacksonville, table grapes, especially the Flaming Tokay, are being
planted extensively. Here, too, are vineyards where wine has been made
for many years. The climate the year around is so genial that it
encourages overwork on the part of Mother Nature. It is all remindful
of that great garden of Alcinous when Ulysses inspected it: And there grow tall trees blossoming--pear trees and apple trees with bright fruit, and sweet figs, and olives and their bloom. Evermore the west wind blowing brings some fruit to birth and ripen others. THE
SIGNS OF PROMISE
This
money-come-quick product means prosperity here--here on the crossed
trails of Leylek and Skookum John. The oaks and madrone trees that once
shielded the settlers from Indian bullets, that sheltered Celie and
Skookum and Soltouk and their fathers in the days of their idyllic
past, are still standing out bravely on many of these valley farms. But
they will soon go for the timber and the firewood of the conqueror, and
here will uprise at least one big city--perhaps three. Medford is
planning and pluming itself to break into the metropolis class; Ashland
has hopes, Grants Pass is confident, while Gold Hill is coy, but sure.
A big city water supply to be brought from Wasson cañon in
the mountains to the East is already under way, while miles of paved
streets and all kinds of electric power are assured. Only forty miles
away from Medford, where the headwaters of the Rogue drop fully five
hundred feet, it is figured that fully 80,000 horsepower is waiting to
help in development, while other falls would bring the total up to
fully 300,000. Down the river at Gold Ray, the Rogue is already
harnessed and is helping to light and power. Off in the hills miners are busy--at the Blue Ledge copper mine, at the big Sterling gold placer mine, at the Opp quartz mine. They've been busy around quaint and quiet old Jacksonville since the early '50s. Several of these old timers are living yet in cabins on the hillsides. Once in a while they climb down the cañon trail to town, cross under the boughs of the tree where Chief George gave up his life and drop a bit of treasure into banker Beekman's strongbox. There have been many nuggets in that box and some are there yet. Seven hundred miners once washed wealth from that little cañon about the old county seat town. Since mining began here in this valley over $35,000,000 of gold have gone out to help the banks of the world. And the men who know say there is more treasure yet--more than has ever been imagined, up in these hills--gold and copper and silver and onyx and jade and platinum and antimony. And the day is near when these treasures will be known, when far into the mountains and the forests the developing forces will go, joining hands with the city makers and the fruit growers in the valley, crossing and recrossing all of them many times, the well-worn, devious and romantic trail of Skookum John and his people. Sunset magazine, October 1908, pages 479-495 Last revised October 22, 2024 |
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