Make the McKenzie Connection!
Make the McKenzie Connection!
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Continued From Last Week By Finn J.D. John The court also learned that Fieber had tried to slip away to a new piece of land beyond the county court’s jurisdiction, which he had secretly leased in Wasco County. He had already installed 13 lions and a tiger at the new place. Police figured this out when they pulled him over for a traffic stop and found a pair of lions sitting in the truck. This was another probation violation — he’d agreed not to move any of the animals. Finally, in March 1986,...
The Willamette National Forest issued a temporary closure order this week for a portion of Forest Service Road (FSR) 19 to complete a paving project to resurface the road and repair slope failures, providing safe access for those traveling the scenic roadway. The road closure order, which covers all access along FSR 19 from milepost 32 to 50.5, will be in place until Oct. 19, 2023. Access to the roadway will be open for transit on the following dates: Sunday, Oct. 8, and the following Friday through Sunday, Oct. 13-15. Forest Service Road 19,...
On the evening of Sept. 28, 1995, Woney and Laurie Peters, of Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, were driving back to their home behind the local elementary school when they noticed something wasn’t right. The first thing Woney noticed was the horses. They were confined in a corral in front of the house, next to the trampoline, which his teenage kids were playing on. The kids seemed fine — but the horses seemed terrified. They kept staring up at the hillside that ran along behind the house and the sch...
Stripes may come back, but not downtown River Reflections, Volume 6, Issue 30 March 23, 1984 Yellow lines down the middle of the McKenzie Highway have been a point of conflict since the Oregon Highway Division spent $4,700 last August to sandblast off several no-passing zones. Area residents protested their removal during a 6-Year Plan hearing in Eugene as well as at a special meeting with highway officials at Leaburg in December. However, according to James Gix, Region 3 area Highway Engineer...
Continued From Last Week The accolades kept coming. She appeared on an episode of NBC’s This Is Your Life, with the legendary Ralph Edwards. Afterward, she was presented with a home in Beaverton and a new Packard automobile. She threw herself into the lecture circuit, giving speaking engagements and appearances around the country talking about her time as an American spy behind enemy lines. She even had a Hollywood movie made about her, starring Anne Dvorak, in 1951. It was called I Was an A...
Sometime in 1943, during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, a group of more than 40 officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy strolled into Club Tsubaki, an exclusive gentlemen’s club in the heart of downtown Manila. They were there for one last evening of fun while they were still in port. That very evening, they were scheduled to climb back into their submarines and set out on an extended cruise. The private party had been arranged by one of the subs’ commanders, who had struck up a fri...
AND, THAT WAS the end of it. Germany extradited Sheela to the U.S. for trial on various charges including arson, poisoning, and assault. She worked out a deal that included a few years in federal prison, from which she was released in 1988, after which she immediately married a Swiss sannyasin named Urs Birnstiel and left for Switzerland with him. Rajneesh was simply deported after receiving a prison sentence for immigration violations, suspended on condition that he leave immediately and not...
After the election, the new formerly homeless residents of Rajneeshpuram were the most pressing problem for Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers. They cost a lot of money to feed and house, and they started fights and made trouble. Rajneeshee leaders started out giving them bus tickets home, but that got very expensive very fast. After all, it had cost $1 million to bring them in by busloads; sending them home one or two at a time would be many times more than that. So finally, the...
In the courtyard at the Antelope Post Office today, there stands a large bronze plaque attached to the base of a flagpole. It reads, “Dedicated to those of this community who throughout the Rajneesh invasion and occupation of 1981-1985 remained, resisted and remembered.” Most visitors probably roll their eyes at this, thinking it a bit melodramatic. Invasion? Occupation? Puh-leeze, they might mutter. But the Rajneeshee takeover of Antelope was not an anodyne bureaucratic exercise. To those who...
Part Two: Arrival On June 1, 1981, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh boarded a Boeing 747 for a flight from Mumbai to New York City. Officially the trip was for medical treatment, and authorities were told he’d be heading back home to India afterward. But Rajneesh was not planning on returning. His movement, which had already become an international octopus with meditation centers in dozens of different countries around the world, had outgrown the Pune campus. He needed a new World Headquarters. And his ne...
By Finn J.D. John Part One of Five: Inception Once upon a time in India, a man lived. He would go on to become one of the most influential thinkers in new-age thought, but at this time — the early 1960s — he was merely a philosophy teacher, and one of the thousands of gurus living and discoursing in that land of gurus. His name was Chandra Mohan Jain. But even then, just a few years out of graduate school, Jain was different. To call him charismatic would be a colossal understatement. By all...
Step four in a dream - A true public library River Reflections, Volume 6, Issue 26 February 24, 1984 By Jacquie Long From a few stacks of books in her living room to shelves in a small brown shack, and finally, to a large two-room collection, Mrs. O’Brien’s Blue River Library continues to grow and is now known nationally. Mrs. O’Brien and her husband, Orel, saw the need for a library in the McKenzie River area more than a decade ago. They began their dream of building one in 1970. After Mr. O...
When we first went to a camp above Wendling we lived in a tent house. My dad built a floor and sideboards about four feet high and then put this big tent on top of it. We lived in that for the first year. Dad worked for the section gang. They built the railroads, and then when the camp was moved they tore them up. We moved to Camp 29, which was on the east side of Mt. Nebo. They were almost through with that logging site, so then we moved clear around to the northwest side of the mountain. We...
The Willamette Meteorite is the most famous heavenly body to end up in Oregon, but it’s far from the only one. Here are some of the others: Sams Valley Meteorite, Jackson County: 1880s and 1890s The area of Sams Valley, about 10 miles north of Medford, apparently was the target of a meteorite that broke up on entry into the atmosphere. There have been roughly half a dozen pieces of it found over the years, including three found in the 1880s by a gold panner, a 15-pound metallic lunker found i...
It was getting toward the end of the summer of 1902, and West Linn resident Ellis Hughes was getting worried. His neighbor, William Dale, had traveled back to Eastern Oregon to sell some land he owned there. With the proceeds, Dale and Hughes planned to buy a piece of property next to the Hughes farm. The property belonged to the Oregon Iron and Steel Co., which wasn’t really doing anything with it and which Hughes was pretty sure would be happy to sell … unless, of course, they found out why...
Reprinted from “McKenzie River Reflections and Recipes” McKenzie High Booster Club 1971 By Prince Helfrich The McKenzie River was first discovered by Donald McKenzie in 1811. Trails from Eastern Oregon following the north bank of the river had been used for years by Indians who made the trip in the fall to catch salmon and dry them and pick wild huckleberries for their winter food. The McKenzie was first called the McKenzie Fork as it was thought this stream was a tributary of the Willamette River. As late as 1935, parties of Eastern Ore...
Seavey, probably shortly after he took up residence on the north side of the river in 1855. There was a trail (in later years a dirt road passable by horse and buggy in the summer) running from the Seavey ranch along the north side of the river to the Armitage crossing, but the ferry provided the main access. During the years when Seaveys grew hops and until the CCC’s completed an improved road along the north side of the river in the ’30s, all the hop pickers as well as the hops on their way...
Continued From Last Week So right away, Baldwin was hearing the stories. Most likely there were some terrible ones; they obviously touched her heart. Over the next several decades she would dedicate her life to doing something about them. Time went by. The Baldwins left Lincoln. Eventually, in 1904, they moved to Portland; LeGrand had taken a job for a chain of dimestores, and was tasked with opening one in Oregon. So Lola went forth and plugged into the Portland aid-society scene. She found an...
By the time Walt Disney Productions released “The Rescuers” in 1977, the idea of a “Rescue Aid Society” dedicated to the eradication of kidnapping felt quaint, old-fashioned, and fun. But not many years earlier, when memories of the Progressive Era were fresher, it would not have scanned that way. In fact, “The Rescuers” was first pitched in 1962, at which time Walt Disney himself killed it. And that was probably a good call: members of the real Aid Societies were still alive and had matured...
Reprinted from the August 21, 2002, edition of McKenzie River Reflections The mothers along the highway used to take turns providing a hot lunch for the school. When it was her turn, my mother made a huge vat of potato soup on the wood stove. Then the bus driver would heave it up into the bus and off we’d go, smelling potatoes and onions all the way to school. I don’t remember, but I suppose the teachers would heat up the big vat of soup on the school’s woodstove. Once a year we’d have a Box S...
Continued From Last Week By Maureen Trullinger, nee Barrows The first year we were at the resort my parents decided they didn’t want to keep Tom and Judy and the porcupines anymore. Judy had deeply scratched the back of Mom’s hand as she was forking meat into the cage. Tom attracted female cougars down from the mountains at night during the breeding season. Often their tracks could be seen around the cage the next morning. The female’s cries sounded like a human woman crying, and my mothe...
Reprinted from the August 21, 2002, edition of McKenzie River Reflections By Maureen Trullinger, nee Barrows In about 1934 my parents, Maurice and Rose Barrows, decided they wanted to buy and run a resort on the West Coast - at least my father did. I'm not sure how Mother felt about that. Much later she told me she was a "big-city girl" and had not been really happy living in the mountains. They researched and wrote letters to real estate brokers, then drove west from Indiana to look over...
It was a typical balmy August evening at the Oregon State Penitentiary. The bell had rung for supper, so inmates were streaming out of their cells and heading toward the dining hall for the evening meal, as they always did. But on this particular evening, four prisoners hung back from the throng, and when the last prisoner had rounded the corner out of sight, they doubled back, hurrying into the cell that had been assigned to one of their number. Working feverishly with an auger stolen somehow...
From the April 23, 1982 edition of River Reflections It was over 40 years ago, back in 1937, when Harold & Flossie Phillips moved to the McKenzie and started their way towards building one of the most unique businesses this valley has ever seen. Starting off with a small restaurant at the junction of the old McKenzie Highway and the then dirt, Mill Creek Road, Phil’s Phine Phoods became a virtual smorgasbord of everything you might need. It’s was a family affair too, with the original cou...
From the January 28, 1983 issue of River Reflections Tempers sizzled Tuesday, January 25th, at the Lane County Planning Commissioners' public hearing for the new countywide rezoning plan, though most of them had to be put on the back burner once again. More than 100 Lane County residents, most of them senior citizens from rural areas, showed up at Harris Hall to voice comments and concerns about the new rezoning package. Gene Kanes, chairman of the planning commission, announced that the Comprehensive Plan Revision, which the county has been...
