Community

‘There have been a lot of losses … there will be a recovery’

PHOTO PROVIDEDMarianne Purdy and the little car that could; saved her and all she could carry.

Cottage Grove, due to family connections, has become a place of refuge for fifth-generation Blue Riveran, Marianne Purdy.

She was relaxing on the sofa after a long day when her venetian blinds told her something wasn’t right. The normally white slats were a glowing pink. Curious, she stuck her head out the door and beheld trees “burning from top to bottom.” This is her story of miraculous escape and some of the history of a community that had already changed much in her lifetime before it was reduced to ash.

Purdy’s great-grandfather, George Lemuel McClure, came to the McKenzie River valley early, drawn by gold. The yellow metal had been discovered in the McKenzie Valley in 1863 but it wasn’t until miners found the gold bearing quartz ledges in the Blue River drainage that any large-scale mine operation began. In 1887 the claim that became the “Lucky Boy” mine was staked and by 1890 a huge wooden building had been built and hundreds of men had arrived to work in various capacities there and in support of other mines of the area.  

Early settler Samuel Christopher Sparks had purchased two homesteads containing 320 acres in 1895. Sparks’ purchase covers the townsite of Blue River and west as far as the current McKenzie High School. Between 1900-03 he and his family laid out the town of Blue River, sold lots, and also ran a saw mill, hotel, and livery stable. With five saloons and other diversions designed to entertain the miners, it was a booming place as long as the gold kept coming out of the shafts. That was proved to be short-lived with the “Lucky Boy” closing in 1912 and most major mining operations over by 1924.

During his life, George McClure had practiced the life of a miner and was frequently following the trail of gold and silver throughout the Northwest, but ended up back at the old home place. That is where he passed away as a still-spry 95 year old shortly after celebrating his birthday with a family reunion that drew around 300 of the McClure extended family.

Many of McClure’s sons followed not the lure of gold, but the more sure green gold – logging. Purdy’s grandfather, a timber faller, was locally famous for being able to cut equally well using either hand with an axe, a valuable skill in the pre-chainsaw era.

Purdy’s parents met during WWII and she was born during the conflict. Victor “Vic” Purdy was in the U.S. Army and had several postings stateside before the going got hard in Europe. He was sent over and participated in the D-Day landing at Normandy, coming ashore at Utah Beach. His unit slogged through the six-week fight on their way to Paris, sleeping in their mud-covered clothes the entire time. He did figure out how to take care of his feet, washing his socks and drying them each night using his helmet liner.

After the war the family came to the Blue River area, where Vic was taken under the wing of Purdy’s grandfather and taught the logging trade. “We moved around a lot for a while. Where the work was, my dad in the woods and my mom, a wonderful cook, worked as a mess cook for different outfits, finally retiring from U.S. Plywood. There were nine small mills in the area when Purdy was growing up, so there was plenty of work.

In 1948 a house became available and the young Purdy family put down roots. The house, one of the oldest in Blue River, was on the river bank with 200 feet of river frontage. It didn’t have electricity or running water. “We got our water right out of the river. People kind of looked down on us for that. That is until the county came through and tested the wells in the area. What they found out was with all the septic tanks and cesspools in the area and high water table, the wells were all contaminated. We were actually getting cleaner water out of the river,” Purdy chuckled.

Having just two bedrooms, Purdy’s father converted the pantry into a bedroom for the girls and slowly worked the house over with additions and improvements. Electricity came courtesy of a neighbor, an electrician by trade. Running water, too.

“It was a great childhood. Blue River was a safe place for children. Me and my next-door neighbor friend roamed all over the woods and explored everywhere. We would come home at dark and no one ever worried about us,” Purdy recalled.

One thing that made it so special for her remembering this time was the school at Blue River. It was still pretty new as the old building had burned down in 1943 due to a furnace fire. While most of the furniture and many supplies were rescued, the building was completely consumed in the fire.  

The new school was a community effort with loggers, carpenters, and tradesmen, all contributing their time and many businesses donating materials to build. 

Purdy remembers spending her whole education in a single building with double doors in the middle to separate the elementary from the high school sections. Many strong impressions and life-long lessons were instilled there by her experiences and individuals such as her second-grade teacher, Mrs. Campbell.

“While she was inching toward retirement, she was still tough as nails. But she taught me to read really well, something that I consider one of the keys to my success in life. I had read everything I wanted to in our library and they had to get books for me from the older kids section.”

Another teacher who made a lasting impression on Purdy was her sixth-grade teacher, Wayne Gruening. He had come back from the war after serving in the U.S. Air Force. He was the first male teacher that the young students had encountered. “The girls really gave him a hard time, like you wouldn’t believe. But he stuck it out and that never happened again, and he really taught me a lot.

Building of the dams in the area provided a boost for a while with men coming for that work. That swelled the school population, so that when Purdy graduated in 1961, it was one of the largest graduating classes ever at 66 students.

While Purdy was enjoying her childhood, bigger forces were at work affecting the future livelihoods of those in the area. The days of the small-time logging operations were numbered. Most of the primo old growth trees had already been cut. When the forest service took over the area, the system of opening up areas for bids favored the big timber operations. 

“The little guys got outbid and without trees they started shutting down. The last one was the veneer plant that stood on the bare spot by the school that is now used sometimes for training the track team and other athletic activities.

“My dad saw the writing on the wall and really drove it into my brothers, that they no how, no way should go into logging. And that mostly worked. One of them went into the forest service, the other into construction,” Purdy said.

Another factor affecting the town of Blue River was when Highway 126 was realigned away from the river. “Without the through-traffic many of the longtime businesses just died,” Purdy said.

Purdy herself, despite her idyllic childhood, saw no future there. “There were some jobs if you were a man but not much for women except to get married and start a family.” That didn’t appeal to Purdy, so after a stint of waitressing she started taking classes at UO and working nights at Williams Bakery. That wore her down and she wound up having anemia and had to rest.

One day walking down the streets of Eugene she saw a recruiting sign for the U.S. Army. Making a quick decision, she signed up and found herself, essentially a country girl, headed for the Portland airport, which she had never seen before, for her first flight. It was some big-time culture shock having to navigate the Chicago and Atlanta airports to arrive at Ft. McClellen, near Anniston, Ala. 

Purdy made a good impression on her superiors and was mentored and guided by them into Officer’s Candidate School. She rose to the rank of Captain and what the military really taught her was how to be organized to get things done and always to be focused on quality assurance. “That is different from quality control. Quality control is something I am responsible for all by myself, quality assurance is inspecting what you are doing and making sure that it is what it is supposed to be done,” Purdy said. 

After her military career, she did various things including helping her dad with fishing after he had moved to Coos Bay to pursue a different livelihood, something he really enjoyed.

Recently she had moved back to the old stomping grounds to help her brother-in-law, as her sister was having health issues.

That is where she was while watching TV when she noticed the strange light on her blinds. She took one look at the wall of flame and she knew she had to get out immediately. She didn’t even try to grab anything, just ran to her car. “I didn’t even worry about my dog, but fortunately he followed me to the car and jumped in. We headed to my sister’s and told them to get out. I didn’t wait for them but headed on toward the highway. The whole world seemed on fire as I headed out of the driveway. I headed to Springfield, driving through flames and over burning logs. I couldn’t even see my brother’s driveway two miles down the highway due to the smoke, to warn him,” Purdy related.

As traumatic as her escape was, it seemed the confusion was just beginning. Entering Springfield, which she was not all that familiar with, having not driven around there for 40 years, turned out to be terribly disorienting for her and her siblings, who had all managed to escape the conflagration. After checking in at Thurston Elementary to say that they were alive, each of them tried to find the other and spent hours circling, mostly lost in the unfamiliar terrain. Finally, Purdy headed for Cottage Grove, when she remembered her brother lived here and got in at 2:30 a.m., after a terrible, very bad, no good day.

The other family members are all staying with family out of the area. As Purdy shared her story with me she mused on the effects of this tragic fire. “There are a lot of losses. There will be a recovery and it will keep on recovering. We will survive,” she said with a note of finality and determination.

Write to Dana at 

[email protected]

Instagram

 

View this profile on Instagram

 

The Chronicle (@thechronicle1909) • Instagram photos and videos