The dam hasn't broken, not yet, but the people are spilling over the top gasping for clean air, pure water and most of all--space.
    These people are disenchanted Southern Californians, and they are flowing into Oregon through the Rogue River Valley. Many of them are going no farther.
    "It is like coming into another world," explained George F. Sharpe, retired medical officer from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.
    "Here is peaceful living away from the snarl of too much traffic, the smoke of too much industry, the crush of too many people. This is paradise for the fisherman, the hunter. Here we have found the friendliness of neighbors, people who care. This is everything we had dreamed of."
    Those who are in a position to deal with newcomers have noted that the "stream is accelerating."
    "They all seem to be looking for a better way of life," a local banker said.
    "Many of them are retired, but an increasing proportion want to make a living here. They are the young and the middle-aged, looking for jobs and business opportunities."
    For the retired there are relatively few problems. They find a home place they like, enter into community life and are happy.
    But for those who hope to make a living, the story on job opportunities is sometimes contradictory.
    "There are openings for tradespeople, like journeyman carpenters, electricians and plumbers," Lloyd Colfax, placement interviewer for the State Employment Service, Medford, said, "but some of our newcomers are finding it rough to get established.
    "I would say 75 percent of them are looking for jobs. Stop by the office the first of any week and you will see 15 to 20 California cars parked out in front.
    "Those who are ambitious, willing to take most any job to get started, can usually find opportunities to start at the bottom and to move up. Our lumber industry is expanding and if Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (White City) develops the way it is expected to, there will be tremendous opportunity.
    "Medford is a natural as a distribution center, and there are going to be more and more job opportunities here in wholesale outlets and warehouses."
    But all of these things have not developed yet, and there are those who don't want to wait until they do.
    "Some who can't afford to come here yet are buying property and holding it," a realtor said. "I had a California school teacher in recently. He said he would lose his retirement if he brought his family here now, but he wants to buy a place and hold it until he retires. Another one said retirement or no, he was going back to California, sell out and come now.
    "He was like so many of them, he wanted a little acreage with a stream and trees. He hopes to partially support his family by farming."
    Dr. Clifford B. Cordy, Jackson County extension agent, is concerned about those who want to farm for a living, or for supplemental income--and there are a lot of them locating in this land of many fingerling valleys.
    "Those people have nostalgic dreams of farm life," he said, "but no conception of modern-day farming problems.
    "They buy five acres and put horses, cows, sheep and pigs on it, or they want to plant a crop. They don't realize the cost of equipment. They know nothing of intensive farming, management.
    "One man wanted to buy an acreage, plant pear trees, return to his job in the Los Angeles area and come back here in five years to a producing orchard--and an income.
    "So many fail to realize that farming today is a highly technical and scientific process and that farmers are competing with a world market, not the local market of yesteryear."
    George Brenner, county planning consultant, described the newcomers from Southern California as a "cross-section of people."
    "Some feel this country is a thing of beauty and should be kept that way," he said. "There are a few, however, who are coming here because this area is big, ripe and easy.
    "Our building and zoning codes are lax. Anybody who wants to can go into the building business. Subdivisions are making rich men out of those who were once described as 'land poor.'"
    Brenner also discussed those who are being squeezed out of California agricultural lands by suburbanization.
    "This is where tax structure enters the picture," he said. "These people are faced with reinvesting their money or letting Uncle Sam take a big bite out of the profit they made. They feel investment in land here is a good deal--an investment that will make them good money in the future."
    And those newcomers looking for the chance to turn a dollar aren't alone.
    The old conflict of esthetics vs. money is cropping up more and more among the long-time resident sand business people: an orchard is subdivided, a farm sold off in lots, roads are cut to an oak-studded hilltop, too many houses are built on the land, the lawn of a gracious old home is torn out, the land sold for a roadside business.
    Property values are changing.
    "When someone tells me he thinks he has paid too much for a piece of property, I just tell him he must have paid the California price," an investment counselor said. "Naturally adjustments are being made so that the first sale is not too far below what the second and third will be. We have seen the same tract of land sell three times in a relatively short period of time, each time with rapidly ascending prices."
    Cultural opportunities and the availability of entertainment may be limited in the Rogue Valley, but those who are spilling over the dam seem to feel the esthetic values and the livability of this area offset its disadvantages.
    "Those who can are getting out the metropolitan areas," a retired electrician said. "Here we can wake up in the morning and see the sun and the hills instead of smog and smokestacks. There aren't so many people. There isn't so much crime. In southern California the Negro situation is getting intolerable, taxes are high, the cost of living is exorbitant."
    And so they continue to come: the educator who takes a big cut in salary to rear his children where they can gather wildflowers in the meadows, the former equipment dealer, the retired designer, the retired Navy lieutenant, the retired editor, the displaced citrus grower, the businessman, the nurseryman, the minister who wanted a chance to "work more closely with people," the welder, the professional singer, the writer, the artist, the gunsmith.
    The list is long. These people are, almost without exception, pleased with the simplicity of life, the slower pace they have found.
    But how long can this last?
    This is the question--the problem--that faces those responsible for planning for the future of Southern Oregon, those who can wonder just how long the dam can hold.
Medford Mail Tribune, October 10, 1965, page B3

Last revised July 6, 2014