There are times when all it takes is for one person to stand up, raise their voice and make a stand to change the way it was. The way it was supposed to be. One of the persons was Wallace McCamant. His big moment was a hundred years ago at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. It was a moment putting him into history’s limelight for a brief flash. A flash with consequences, rendered years ahead not as well recorded. Here is another story lying quietly in one of the secluded corners of River View Cemetery in the hills of southwest Portland.
La Fayette Grover as a US senator in the late 1870’s – Matthew Brady photograph.
River View Cemetery is one of two historic cemeteries in Portland, Oregon. Lone Fir was the first cemetery, but filling up in the latter 19th Century, River View was established in the hills just – then – outside the growing city. Here, the families of well-to-do Portland buried their loved ones and still do. Walking through the memorials is a history lesson of the city. Street names come to life – through death. The larger monuments tend to overawe the more numerous plainer ones, as if trying to sum up life as the dead thought of their experience. Stories abound here among all of the graves and it is one of the smaller, lesser monuments we move to today – the grave of La Fayette Grover, third governor of Oregon.
There is a small area in Portland where west-to-east streets are named after old Oregon governors. The sequence follows a series of Union military leaders from the Civil War – Grant, Sherman, Hooker, Meade, Porter (there is a Caruthers Street thrown in for good measure in between the governors, with a good story to boot.). In the governor section, there is Woods, Gibbs, Whitaker, Curry, Pennoyer, Gaines, Lane, Abernathy and Mood. Another governor with a short section of streets is Grover Street.
The former courthouse of Douglas County designed by Charles Burggraf – 1891
COUNTY COURTHOUSES OF OREGON
Of Oregon’s thirty-six counties, nine featured courthouses designed by Charles Burggraf at the turn of the 19th century. Burggraf was an Oregon-based architect and German immigrant. Three of those nine are still in use today, with two still operating as county courthouses while the other is a museum.
Tiger Town on a quiet afternoon during the week in May. A different picture after June 1 and on the weekends before.
Tiger Town Brewing Co. is another one of the many examples of how craft breweries can revitalize a community. Mitchell, Oregon is and has always been a very small town. Centered not far from the geographic center of the State, Mitchell’s population since 1900 has always wavered around the 200-person mark, some years over (especially 1950 when the population soared to 415, though ten years later, it was back down to 236) and some years under. The 2010 census clocked Mitchell at only 130 people though that number rebounded a bit by 1920 with 160 people calling Mitchell “home”.
Triglav rising with the Krma valley on the left and the Kot in the middle. Peak to Triglav’s left is Rjavina. View is from Jerebikovec.
Hiking route taken on my one day “climb” of Triglav – route is in light green.
There are not many countries thinking enough of their mountains to emblazon them on their national flag. Slovenia is an exception. Triglav, the highest, represents the strength of the Slovene soul. On a summer weekend, the goal of every Slovene seems a whack on the ass – the reward for a climb of Triglav. “Thank you sir. May I have another!” Afterall, Milan Kucan, the first president of Slovenia said, “It is the obligation of every Slovene to climb the mountain at least once in one’s lifetime.
The next to last switchback before the summit of Dog Mountain is reached. Indian Point is the tall rocky point in the sunshine on the Oregon side to the right center with Wind Mountain further to the right on the Washington side of the river.
Ahh, Dog Mountain. This seven mile, 2800 vertical foot gain hike is one of the most popular in the Columbia River Gorge. I would guess it to be number three after Multnomah Falls and Angels Rest, both on the Oregon side easily accessed from the freeway I-84. Dog Mountain is on the Washington side in between the towns of Stevenson and White Salmon-Bingen with the trailhead right on Washington Highway 14. The hike is a workout, but the views over the eastern sections of the middle Gorge during the wildflower season of mid-spring are what brings the crowds out.
Thomas Condon, John Day and fossils all come together in the middle of Oregon. The fossils came first. Then, trapper and hunter, John Day, working with the Pacific Fur Company came west in 1810. He spent the final ten years of his life living in the Pacific Northwest. He and fellow fur trader Ramsay Crooks were robbed and stripped of their clothes by Native Americans near the confluence of the John Day and Columbia Rivers. History records four different dates for John Day’s death and posterity has left many geographic features named in his memory.
Sheep Rock from the John Day River near Cant Ranch.
The best known is the John Day River. Note – there is another smaller John Day River near Astoria close to the Pacific. This river is the fourth longest river in the lower 48 United States without a dam along its entire length. It is the longest within Oregon and the Pacific Northwest – not that there have not been plans for one. The section between Service Creek and Tumwater Falls is part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
Fort Walla Walla Cemetery holds the dead of some of the last Indian Wars, the close of the Frontier.
FORT WALLA WALLA CEMETERY
The cemetery was established soon after Lieutenant Edward Steptoe organized the first Fort Walla Walla, a few miles east of downtown, in 1856. The fort moved two times in the immediate years following and the cemetery ended up presently just to the west of the last fort, the present-day Veterans Administration Medical Center. The cemetery holds graves from the different eras of the fort’s existence, 1856-1910. Civilian graves are separated from the soldiers by about thirty yards. Three monuments reflect some of the major battles during the 1877-1878 Nez Perce War in which soldiers who spent some time in Fort Walla Walla lost their lives.
Looking across the Columbia River at Wind Mountain from Indian Point on the Oregon side of the Gorge.
Driving to the large trailhead at the bottom of Dog Mountain, Washington Highway 14 drives right around the base of another smaller peak with its own form of drama, Wind Mountain. A beautiful cone-shaped peak, Wind has a brother, Shellrock Mountain, on the opposite side of the Columbia River in Oregon. Both mountains are thought to be from the same volcanic intrusion which needed to be cleaved in half by the Columbia River. Unlike Shellrock, Wind Mountain has a trail to the top.
Of the three Army posts erected around the periphery of the Oregon Coast Indian Reservation, Fort Umpqua is the most forgotten. The State has made Fort Yamhill into a Park. Benton County has done the same with Fort Hoskins. Fort Umpqua lies hidden on the wrong side of the mouth of the Umpqua River, hidden by sand, vegetation and time.
