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Friday, May 18, 2012
Covering Dallas, Monmouth, Independence, Falls City and surrounding areas since 1868
Valsetz Railroad Station
July 05, 2011
VALSETZ -- You don't even have to blink to miss Valsetz. Sixteen miles up a logging road from Falls City, most of the time, people can't even get to Valsetz -- or the land where the town once flourished from 1919 to 1984.
Former residents can take you there, with their memories. No intact structures remain, except in old photographs, so memories may be the only map most people have.
Former landmarks -- Snob Hill, Cadillac Avenue, the log pond, Valsetz High School, the company store -- they're all gone, blanketed over with forest.
Even the very grade of the landscape seems changed to people who once lived there.
"Don't you remember this hill being a whole lot steeper?" shouted ex-resident Ken Jeske from his truck to fellow former residences as he drove down what used to be the main road through town.
Former Valsetz residents, from left, Cassandra( Fennimore) Cooper, Joe Fennimore, Kristi Laughlin-Wheeler and Freddy Vasquez look over a special section published by The Oregonian newspaper after the town's demise in 1984.
Jeske and more than 300 former citizens and their family members were exploring their former home on the second day of a three-day reunion at the Valsetz town site.
People nod in reply to Jeske's question. They can remember riding bikes on the road -- the hill, which isn't visible today, made it tough going.
It's difficult to picture homes where a stand of trees thrive now. What isn't hard to imagine is that people fell in love with the place, surrounded by forest and the peaks of the Oregon Coast Range.
The wild, beautiful environment was part of the appeal of Valsetz, a "company town" run and owned by three lumber companies over its life and closed in 1984 by the last, Boise Cascade. But in equal measure, so was the sense of community found here.
Gene Fewx, of Salem, points out a familiar face in a scrapbook. Fewx was born in Valsetz in 1950 and lived there until his family relocated to Dallas in 1959.
"I thought I was in heaven," said former resident Nancy Mahi.
Mahi and her husband, Henry, were teachers in Valsetz schools from 1974-79. They moved to Valsetz from Hawaii, looking to escape the crowded islands.
They remember their short time in the town fondly, despite the weather, which tended to the extreme.
"It rained and rained, and then it rained some more," Nancy Mahi said, describing the nature of the precipitation in the region, which topped 144 inches in some years.
Valsetz: 1919 - 1984
"We had such a good time up here," Nancy Mahi said. "We lived in two bunk houses shoved together, but that was fine. We loved it. It was a great five years here."
Nancy Mahi said people didn't have to feel afraid in Valsetz. And if something tragic did happen, the entire town was there to help.
In that way, it seems, Valsetz was a community -- in the truest sense.
"I remember that we felt safe," said Kathy Thompson, who lived in Valsetz as a young child and later after high school when her husband got a job at the mill. "The only time we locked our doors was when we left town."
Those who remember growing up in Valsetz recall it being a paradise for kids. There was hunting, fishing and playing on the softball team. When the weather drove people indoors, there was the pool hall and a two-lane bowling alley.
"I don't think we were ever bored out here," said Sally Petite, who graduated from Valsetz High in 1968.
Children seemed to have had plenty of freedom to play -- or get into trouble.
"We could get away with just about everything," said David Rickels, Sally's younger brother.
For over 65 years massive timber was havest from the Coast Range and brought on trucks to the Valsetz Mill.
Of course, word traveled fast around town and everybody's mother knew everybody else's, thus secrets weren't kept for long.
Nevertheless, people said they wouldn't trade the experience.
"It was a lot of fun growing up here," Petite said. "More kids should grow up here."
Jeske said he has tried to make that happen for his sons, taking them on the same outdoor adventures in the forested hills surrounding Valsetz he experienced as a child.
"I come here all the time," Jeske said. "My boys still grew up here."
Former residents said the schools were the center of town, but the mill was the lifeblood. Without the mill, there was no Valsetz. In late 1983, that's what the 300 or so residents living there at the time found out when town owner Boise Cascade notified citizens that the mill and town were to close. The mill and all homes were to be demolished, as if the town never existed.
Ralph Thompson, who started working in Valsetz when loggers still were using crosscut saws to fell trees, had a practical view on the situation.
Trucks loaded with one log were a common sight as they were being delivered to be processed at the Valsetz Mill.
"Nobody liked it, but we knew it was going to happen," he said.
Others, even those who no longer lived in town at the time, had stronger feelings.
"It was sad," Petite said. "We grew up here and you couldn't come back because it was gone."
Kathy Thompson, Ralph's daughter, thought there could have been better uses for the homes than demolishing and burning them to the ground.
"I always thought they should have left the houses and rented them out (for vacations)," she said. "It was a shocker when they said it was going to be shut down."
Most people at the June 24-26 "Valsetz: Going Home" reunion didn't dwell on the end, but used the time to catch up with long-lost friends and neighbors, laugh and reminisce about their time in Valsetz.
"It's just like coming home here today," Nancy Mahi said. "It's been amazing to see all the kids. ... It's just a special place."
Jeske said there is a chance Forest Capital Partners LLC, the current owner of the property that opened the land for the weekend, would allow more reunions -- perhaps every three to five years.
Jeske believes if that were to happen, more people would come out to share their memories of Valsetz, a tiny working-class town by any measure that had a big influence on the lives of the people who lived there.
"None of us up here were rich," said former resident Troy Lieuallen, pausing to look around, "but we had this."
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