MINING MAGIC WITH A SITEMAP – REFRESHED MEANDERING

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Finding One from the Other.

Keep at something long enough and it grows. That means it gets harder to find things. A couple of links within a post may glean a way forward to more information. The drop down menu can also lead on, but is a bit cumbersome, especially for the normal person spending 0.87 seconds on the site. I could leave it all up to SEO and search engines. Slow, but sure, the search engines actually do hit on a few of the posts. But I thought a simple page – sitemap – could do the job for the person actually interested in what is available. A simple matter of updating, on my part, as we go meandering along.

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VANCOUVER BARRACKS NATIONAL CEMETERY REVEALING HISTORY OF THE FORT AND MORE

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Graves laid out - view from the south or the top of the "heart". Vancover Barracks National Cemetery.
Graves laid out – view from the south or the top of the “heart”. Vancover Barracks National Cemetery.

The post cemetery for Vancouver Barracks became established in 1857. The Army maintained the cemetery until recently. In 2020, the cemetery became part of the National Cemetery Administration – Department of Veterans Affairs – renamed the Vancouver Barracks National Cemetery.

Fort Vancouver was built in 1824 to serve as a central hub of business for the Hudson Bay Company in the Oregon Country. The company had its way in the region until the late 1830’s when American settlers began to arrive. Attempts by the company to meet this influx with colonists of their own came to naught and the Oregon Treaty of 1846 set the border far to the north at the 49th parallel. The fort, left deep in American territory though the company continued its operations. However, those operations became more unprofitable and difficult as more and more settlers came into the picture.

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AWAY FROM THE VALLEY – A SIMPLE YOSEMITE

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Jeffrey pine growing through the granite at Olmstead Point – Cloud’s Rest is on the right horizon and Half Dome is to the left.

For most visitors to Yosemite National Park, a visit equals a trip to Yosemite Valley. I do not have any statistics but would easily say most visits are limited to a quick stay in the dale that Ansel Adams describes as “Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.”

Nevada Barr, a mystery fiction writer best known for her Ana Pigeon series involving a myriad of national parks and law enforcement, related this tale about the park, “The story is, a man came up to Yosemite and the ranger was sitting at the front gate and the man said, “I’ve only got one hour to see Yosemite. If you only had one hour to see Yosemite, what would you do?” And the ranger said, “Well, I’d go right over there, and I’d sit on that rock, and I’d cry.”

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MAGIC DEEPENS WITH FALL COLORS AT ELOWAH FALLS

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Exposure challenges from the ledge trail above Elowah Falls.

Ollie and I last visited the waterfalls on McChord Creek – Elowah Falls and Upper McChord Falls – early in the spring. We live in the shadow of the Columbia River Gorge, a region of true natural magic. Within twenty minutes, we can be deep in the woods, hiking to an overlook or behind a waterfall. Many of the trails are short – 1-2 miles – translating to the ability to discover the magic again and again.

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QUIET REPOSE ON THE EDGE OF THE FOREST – FORT STEVENS NATIONAL CEMETERY

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New entry into the Fort Stevens National Cemetery.

Fort Stevens National Cemetery is one of the smaller units under the jurisdiction of the Veterans Administration. One of the newest units, the cemetery transferred over from the Army in 2020. Although one of the smallest cemeteries within the National Cemetery system, there still are openings for new burials.

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RENEWAL OF FORTUNE ON CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT

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looking from Cape Disappointment Lighthouse over the mouth of the Columbia River
View from Cape Disappointment Lighthouse over the mouth of the Columbia River.

A short trail winds through the forest and down the hill from the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. It connects to the road ascending from the Cape Disappointment Coast Guard Station on the Baker Bay (east) side of the headland on which the lighthouse sits.

Earlier posts included information about the lighthouse, the old artillery fort – Fort Canby – on which the Coast Guard station sits today, and a little about the evolution of the Coast Guard mission at the mouth of the Columbia River.

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GEORGE RAPP, ECONOMY AND THE NEW MILLENNIUM

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St John’s Lutheran Church occupies the old Economy Harmonist chapel in Ambridge, Pennsylvania today. Notice only the hour hand is shown.

In the last post, we saw Johan Georg Rapp and 600 like-minded Pietists coming from Germany to establish a new communal settlement just north of the Ohio River called Harmonie. After a decade, they set out downriver to build a New Harmony along the banks of the Wabash River in southern Indiana. Another decade brought Rapp and his followers back upriver to found their last town, Oikonomie, better known as Economy. Here, Rapp would continue to change the focus of simple agricultural communalism to more of a spirit of amassing wealth – still within a communal picture. This would allow Rapp and the Harmony Society to greet Jesus’ return at the beginning of the Second Coming with enough material sustenance to last the thousand years of the new Millennium.

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GEORGE RAPP AND HARMONY ON THE CONNOQUENESSING

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Revolving gate at Harmonist Cemetery – one life to the next.

Johann Georg Rapp – anglicized to George Rapp – led those who would follow from southwestern Germany to found the first of three communal villages – Harmony – in the New World in 1805. Five other villages would spin off from these in the course of time. Who was George Rapp and who were his followers?

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WILHELM KEIL FOUND HIS BETHEL IN MISSOURI

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Bethel, Missouri – and engraving after Keil’s departure for Oregon – Illustration from The Communistic Societies of the United States 1875 Charles Nordhoff.

In Genesis, Bethel is the place where Abram stayed building an altar on his way to Egypt and on his return. Later, in the same record, fleeing from the wrath of his brother Esau, Jacob falls asleep on a stone dreaming of a ladder filled with angels stretching between Heaven and Earth. At the top of the ladder, God, who promises Jacob the land of Canaan. When Jacob wakes, he anoints the stone (baetylus) with oil and names the place where he his dream occurred, Bethel. So, as with Abram and Jacob, Wilhelm Keil led his communal German-American followers to a new Bethel. This one in the middle of Missouri.

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AURORA, NEW DAWN FOR WILHELM KEIL IN OREGON

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Keil Family Cemetery just outside of today’s town,

From a European birth, Wilhelm Keil made his way in fits and starts, all the way from one coast to the other, finishing his days in the communal town he founded, Aurora, Oregon. The story of his life was unusual to say the least.

Keil started out in what would soon be the Prussian province of Saxony. Born 6 March 1811 in the town of Bleicherode, just a year before the Royal Saxon army was marching off as part of Napoleon’s Grand Armee on its date in Russia.

NOTE: This is the first post of four moving backwards in time from the German-American communal town in Oregon of Aurora to other like settlements from which the Aurorans sprung out from.

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