A country road in an unidentified state.

    This is a very nice valley to look at, but the land is very spotted. Sand and gravel, black loam and granite and sticky, as it is called here. Black loam produces wheat and some corn, also alfalfa. I haven't seen any clover, timothy or bluegrass here. Granite produces some grain, fruit, etc. Sand and gravel produces cheatgrass, good for pasture a short time in the spring. Sticky produces more swearing than anything else. They tell me it pulls the soles off their boots and the tires off the wagon wheels.
"Coming Back to Iowa," Saturday Evening Messenger, Fort Dodge, Iowa, January 22, 1887, page 5


    Just beyond Bear Creek to the east is a scope of country known as the "Big Sticky." The soil is of an adobe nature and very hard to till; but, nevertheless, is a wonderful grain producer. Along the foothills in this belt of adobe soil the growing of fruits proves successful, and there remain thousands of acres of this land which in time will be planted to fruit.
    While the hill land produces grain and fruits there lie beneath its surface large and valuable deposits of coal, iron and copper.
    The "Big Sticky" country extends to the east and northeast from three to six miles, while many hamlets dot the hills and small valleys beyond.
    To the north of the "Big Sticky" country a distance of five miles from Central Point there lies a large scope of country known as the "Desert," on which there is but little settlement, it being used chiefly as a stock range. This land would require irrigation to make it produce crops, which can be done by taking the water out of Rogue River, Little or Big Butte creeks.
"The Rogue River Valley," Ashland Tidings, February 17, 1888, page 1


    The hunters of Medford expected to have a soft snap in hunting geese on Big Sticky, it having been reported that the bipeds could not fly off with the load of adobe which they accumulated in walking in the wheat fields.
"Medford Squibs," Democratic Times, Jacksonville, January 9, 1890, page 3

Why Did Mr. Merritt Do It?

    A hearse with four heavy horses attached to it was the sight seen on the streets of Medford last Saturday morning, as it was on the way to carry the body of a farmer from his late home down near Central Point to the cemetery, says the Medford Success. It was not for pompous effect that the driver had four horses to his hearse, but it was the fear that he would get stuck in the mud and that the country road instead of the cemetery would be the last resting place of the unfortunate farmer, whose life had been made miserable by the mudholes that now threatened to be his tomb. The driver's fears were not without foundation, for he did get stuck, and it took an hour's time and all the able-bodied men in the funeral procession to rescue the hearse and its burden from the bottomless depths of a Jackson County road mudhole.
Rogue River Courier, Grants Pass, February 19, 1903, page 1


    Editor Medford Mail:--Since writing the article "Good Roads" for your paper last week, the writer has been asked if he could suggest a remedy within the power of the people of Jackson County. In answering that question I would reply as a lady replied to a politician, when asked what she would do if she were a senator. She replied: "There are many things I would not do that are now done by state senators." If I were a road supervisor I would not fill a bad mudhole with mud; I would not put in a culvert and have the surplus water run over it instead of under it, as I see many now. If I were a county commissioner I would not allow a supervisor his pay for putting in such culverts and crossings. As a supervisor I would not sit idle at a crossroad post office and whine about not getting any pay until January 1904, and walk home and be compelled to hold onto a fence by the roadside to keep from miring down for the want of a few loads of fine gravel, which could be easily procured not eighty rods from the mudhole. But I was asked what I would do. I would use all the available means at my command to make a permanent improvement at every place I had work done. There is no county in Oregon that has more good material for good roads than Jackson County. I speak from a personal knowledge when I say that along the county road, for a distance of one mile from the Butte Creek bridge westward toward Medford, there is enough good material to macadamize the county road from Brownsboro to Big Sticky Lane. There is no need for a rock crusher, as the rock is already in much better shape than if crushed. It is mixed with a gray granite soil or decomposed rock, which renders it, when compressed, almost waterproof and forms a smooth, compact surface. The writer has made a satisfactory test of five rods of road using this material, but not having sufficient force to make the work thorough, yet it is in every way satisfactory. The material is abundant and of easy access. All that is necessary to complete a good, permanent road is, first, to plow or dig ditches on each or either side of the road, throwing or scraping the dirt to the center, leaving it crowning in the middle; then cover eight inches deep with the material mentioned, and we have a good turnpike, winter and summer, at a very small expense. If it did not seem like dictation, the writer would invite one or both of our county commissioners to visit the pits of material. The writer will take pleasure in going with them and looking the matter over, and as far as the writer is concerned, there would be no expense to the county. He would also be pleased to entertain the commissioners. Before closing this article let me say while I write concerning this county road, and this road district, No. 15, I am just as much interested in other and all districts in Jackson County. Jackson is the best county in the state, and Oregon is the best state in this Union, and the United States of America is the best country and government in the world, and we are the people.
Medford Mail, November 20, 1903, page 3

    The road built from Medford to the desert across "Big Sticky" last year is a piece of work that should make the present county court famous and is a monument to their ability as road builders. This fertile region has been isolated heretofore on account of the impassable condition of the roads in winter. There was no demand for real property abutting it. This condition has now changed, and property values are much higher and in great demand along the entire stretch of road. Medford has received a great deal of trade that formerly went to Central Point because it could not get to Medford in bad weather.
Medford Mail, May 29, 1908, page 3


    It is to the venturesome spirit of Dr. E. B. Pickel, a well-known physician of Southern Oregon, that the people of the Rogue River Valley owe the opening up to the planting of orchards of the large tract of land known as Big Sticky, however, better known among those familiar with the locality by several unmentionable aliases.
    In winter the roads through this district are impassable to a wagon. Even in a light buggy a driver must get out every few rods and knock the mud off the wheels with a club. To work this land as an orchard needs to be worked was considered impossible, and there was little belief that the land would ever grow trees. In fact grave doubts were expressed as to Dr. Pickel's mental arrangement when he, in the season of 1905, set out 8,000 trees, covering 140 acres. But when he followed this up by planting 4,000 more trees the next year it was freely predicted that Dr. Pickel was heading for the wall. Little did anyone, even the doctor, think that three years after the first planting the orchard would be sold at a profit of nearly $100,000.
    The story of Dr. Pickel's buy on Big Sticky reads like a fairy tale. It appears that the doctor and his wife had nearly completed plans for a trip abroad, but through the influence of Dr. Van Dyke, of Grants Pass, they became interested in orchard land and decided that if a suitable buy offered itself they would take it and postpone the trip abroad. One day Dr. Pickel was called on a case over into the Big Sticky district and his driver, who was familiar with the country, pointed out the Bush ranch of 161 acres which was about to be foreclosed by the state for the interest on money borrowed from the school land fund. Next to it was the Smith ranch of 240 acres which the driver said could be bought for $4000. Right then and there, Dr. Pickel forgot all his desires to see the cathedrals and art galleries of the old world. Instead he bought both farms, paying $6500 for the 401 acres.
    The trees set out on the 401 Ranch, as the orchard was called, grew fine, despite the dismal predictions. The soil was even found workable if handled at the right time and in the right way. The second year Dr. Pickel bought 160 more acres, but the farm was still known as the 401 Ranch. Last spring, feeling that the undertaking was too great for a single man to handle, the doctor sold out to a stock company for $110,000. The land, the trees, the improvements and the labor expended cost Dr. Pickel $35,000, leaving the difference as a handsome profit on a three-years' investment. The doctor has since then bought another place which he is developing. Now, nearly the whole of Big Sticky is being set out or has been set out to orchard.
Arthur M. Geary, "Enormous Wealth of Rogue River Orchards," Morning Oregonian, Portland, September 5, 1909, page F2

    Some seven years ago J. W. Mitchell, a blacksmith, and E. C. Boeck, a wagonmaker, were induced to purchase eighty acres of land over in the section of the country then known as the "sticky" section. The section did not belie the name, nor does it yet; but at that time those who were buying land there and planting it to orchard were regarded as easy marks. "Why, they can't even raise their feet when the stick is right," was the common opinion.
    A change has come over the spirit of their dreams of late, however. Big crops have been harvested from the black soil and the fruit sold for big prices.
    But to come back to the blacksmith and the wagonmaker. They paid $1,600 of hard-earned cash--earned by pounding iron and building wheels--for the eighty acres. They spent some more setting out the trees. They harvested a crop or two, and then a man came along and purchased 22½ acres of the 80 for $17,000.
    "They couldn't raise their feet" on that land, but in a few years they raised its value from $20 to over $750 an acre.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 28, 1909, page 2


    I have just returned home from spending two days very pleasantly visiting the hospitable Missouri farmers of the fertile, green, breezy sections known as the Antioch, Chaparral and Mountain districts, about sixteen miles north of Medford, my former home of twenty-five years' continuous residence. I found black mud, red mud, gray mud, but the deepest mud I found on the road between the swift city of Medford and the town of Central Point, and its present muddy condition pleasantly reminds me of the old mossback town of McMinnville away back in the 'sixties. The balance of long stretch of county road was sloppy and rough, but not mirey. Thanks to our ex-county commissioner, Joshua Patterson, and his able assistance for the noticeable improvements on the county roads generally, and more especially are we thankful to the honorable county court for the building of a fine, smooth, graded road of the most improved method on the long stretch of adobe country leading around the base of the upper Table Rock, an indescribable improvement so long and patiently waited for by the traveling public, that serves the the entire valley.
J. G. Martin, "Prosperity Prevails with Ranchers," Medford Sun, February 10, 1911, page 5


    And speaking of soil quality: the Rogue has it in the greatest diversity. There's the river bottom land, the choicest of the valley, fertile and free, and pleasant to work; then there's the "sticky," red and black. Stories are told, true of course, of hens that become anchored in this sticky soil, and of cows that can't come home because the mud gathers on their tails till it's a bigger load than they can carry. Yet some of the richest, most productive orchards are in this same "sticky," but when it is not understood it is ugly stuff to work.
Wilford Allen, "The Last Great West," Pullman Herald, March 3, 1911, page 1




    The greatest "bugbear" to the county road builders in the past has been the "Big Sticky" locality. This section lies east of Medford, passing through the richest orchard land, out over the reclaimed desert. The notorious "Big Sticky" gets its name from the peculiar lava ash formation of the soil, which becomes so muddy in the winter that many a wagon has had to be abandoned in its resisting grasp until spring.
Helen C. Gale, "Jackson County Leads in Race for Improvement of Highways," Sunday Oregonian, Portland, October 22, 1911, page 18


    To the Editor: In the year 1906 when I just landed in Jackson County the town of Medford was a small place of about 1800, while Ashland was a place of from 4000 to 5000. At that time Ashland was pointed out on the map in large print while Medford would have to be sought with a magnifying glass. The roads we had at that time were simply lanes fenced off in the fields with a rail fence on either side. The only piece of good road I know of at that time was about three-quarters of a mile along the south side of upper Table Rock, pumice sand being used, which came from W. M. Scott's place.
    The county at that time was assessed at $4,500,000. The only means of transportation at that time was by means of sticky cart, consisting of the hind wheels of a wagon with every alternate spoke sawed out, a pole stuck in for a tongue. Then if it was really necessary for the lady of the ranch to come to town, Hiram would put two horses to the cart, pack three dozen eggs in oats, take a roll of butter, and a gunny sack full of hay for the team. He would load Nancy in the cart who did the driving while the proud Hiram would walk knightly along with a sticky paddle and poke sticky [from between the spokes] from early morning until late at night before returning home.
    One man said: "Mary Jane, I only regret that God did not give me more language to curse the sticky!" Well, such language brought on a crusade of agitation for good roads among the newcomers, which caused him and others to raise up in arms against the movement and shout "ruin, disaster and bankruptcy!"
    About then a few Medfordites started the Medford Commercial Club, chipped in a few shekels, passed around the hat, got a few hundred and decided that it was money well spent to advertise the valley's resources. So they got up the Medford booklet and after the first carload or two went east it started a boom. At that time the best land averaged about $40 per acre. Well, the more we advertised the more we raised the price of Hiram's land; consequently many Hirams were displaced with a live set of people who have expended $75,000 for gravel roads each year ever since 1906. The county, instead of being assessed at $4,500,000, is now assessed at $36,000,000. At that time, if a newcomer had gone to Jacksonville and proposed a bond issue of $750,000 and would have made the assertion that Jackson County would have been assessed at $36,000,000 in 1913, he would have been hogtied, thrown in jail, adjudged insane and rushed off to the insane asylum.
    Well, here we are, 1913 well spent. Seven years have passed. We are to have a bond election to raise $500,000 to build a paved trunk line through the county, passing through nearly every important town in the county, one-fifth of the principal to be paid off in ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five and thirty years. Well, will the county be able to pay it off in that time? One thing sure, if the taxable property raised $31,000,000 in seven years past, at the same ratio the county in thirty years from now would be assessed $150,000,000.
    The most of us will be dead in 1943, so let us build the road and enjoy its use while we live and let the coming generation help pay for the benefits they will also enjoy.

    MEDFORD, Ore., March 19.--Employment, with big feet as the prime requisite for crashing onto the payroll, is offered in the fruit orchards surrounding this Southern Oregon city.
    The flat-shaped foot qualification is necessary because of continued seasonal wet weather, which has caused orchard soil to become so soft that unless you wear a size 9 brogan, or better, you are useless.
    Most any man who has a foundation the size of a couple of satchels can walk right out into an orchard and land a job as a pruner.
    The employing orchardist will select a few sample wet spots for the applicant to step on. If you don't sink in the mire above your shoe tops you'll swim right into a job.

Last revised August 5, 2023