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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels March 8, 2004 Ashland's wrong-way lodge By Lance K. Pugh For the Tidings The 55-ton crane, having finished the daunting task of lifting roof sections ninety feet off the ground, slid down the frozen road toward Ashland. Even with a bulldozer chained behind, using its blade angled into the earth as a braking device, the crane began to pick up speed as it angled toward the first, and perhaps last, curve in the treacherous road. The driver of the crane was white-knuckled and sweating a river as the crane began an icy slide into the turn, which held the potential of launching it off the mountain, and into a mortal toss of steel to slope. The Mt. Ashland ski lodge shortly after its construction in the early 1960s. The lodge faces about 30 degrees down the slope from where it was designed to face. The bulldozer groaned, buckled and skipped each time its' blade gave purchase, forcing the operator to hang on like a rodeo bronc rider as he prayed that the crane would not drag him to his death. Onlookers stood frozen with the sight of impending doom as the crane groaned through the curve and eventually slowed to a manageable careen, pulling along the hopping bulldozer like a toy on a string. It was a fitting, yet hazardous, end to major construction at the mountain, signaling the conclusion of the most daunting tasks at hand. The construction of the Mount Ashland Lodge was a triumph of effort over constraint. How it got laid out facing in the wrong direction has been a matter of controversy and conjecture for 40 years, a Gordian knot yet to be unraveled. The long awaited lodge was designed by Bob Bosworth, who was teaching architecture at the University of Oregon in 1963, when the lodge was staked out. He had designed the Oregon Pavilion for the Seattle World's Fair in 1962 and was selected by the legendary Glen Jackson for the job at Mt. Ashland. Bob came back to Ashland on a spring afternoon and headed up to the mountain to meet with all the parties, there to stake out the footings. Someone got there ahead of him. Jack Batzer, the founder of Batzer Construction of Medford, at 88 is still vibrant, strong and humorous. He left the farm in rural Minnesota in the early 1930s because his dad refused to buy a "Poppin' Johnny," a term for a John Deere tractor that gave off a distinctive exhaust note. Life behind a horse did not hold much appeal for Jack, so he came west and got involved in some very large projects, including a 550,000-square-foot building for Roseburg Lumber and 1,000 windmills for various California wind farms. Jack started his company with "$400 and a wheelbarrow" and soon was tackling some of the most challenging construction jobs in Oregon. It took Jack a week to get his bulldozer through a deep, late spring snow and up to Mt. Ashland. Arriving at the site of the lodge he encountered 10 feet of snow and pre-set flags. Always a go-getter, Jack got to work and soon had the foundation ready to pour, which he did shortly thereafter. Glen Jackson was the head of Copco (California-Oregon Power Company), later known as Pacific Power and Light. He was also the chairman of the Oregon Highway Commission, responsible for putting in I-5 and was used to having his way. When it became apparent that the footings were laid out askew, Glen, according to Jack, said that "now you do it or not!" so the crews kept at it, trying to get the roof on before the snow began again to fly. Jack decided to build the 20 roof hips on the ground, then hoist them into place with a large crane. The "house" cab and boom of the crane were attached to the tracks with twenty large bolts, each tightened one hot summer afternoon by men using a 9-foot wrench. Months later, while lifting a load in sub-freezing temperatures, the bolts snapped and the crane exploded apart and crashed to earth. Construction came to a halt as new bolts were air-shipped in from New Jersey. This time they used the wrench with a lighter touch. How the site got laid out and by whom is still discussed to this day. Finger pointing was not productive once the concrete set, but as Captain Louis Renault said in Casablanca, "round up the usual suspects." A twirling index finger was pointed at the engineer, surveyor, Bob, Jack, Glen and at someone from the Forest Service. My best guess is that some raccoons did it as a prank. Regardless of how the error happened, the view from the lodge is not directly at the mountain, as it was designed to be. It ended up pointing about 30 degrees more downhill than planned, losing the best views of the slopes. The good news is that it got built and has provided warmth and shelter to countless thousands over these last four decades. Glen would regularly fly over the project and radio in his commands and concerns. Road equipment from the just-finished Interstate was directed up the mountain and when the dust settled the Mt. Ashland access road was punched through. Previous to that the access to the mountain was up Tolman Creek Road or the Loop Road to Bull Gap. When the scarcity of large timbers threatened a long delay in the project, Glen made a few calls and five semi loads of timbers appeared in the middle of the night. The initial access to the lodge was so steep that the concrete trucks needed to pour the 80-foot chimney had to back up the road for the last quarter-mile, lest the concrete flow out of the rear of the mixers. Even the formidable crane could lift the concrete only 70 feet into the air, so the last ten cubic yards of concrete was carried in buckets to the top of the forms. There was the constant concern that the concrete would set up in the trucks, which, in the construction industry, is considered a solid, yet undesirable event. Every worker at the site had a five-gallon metal bucket, in which a fire was kept going to provide some hand warming as the crew moved quickly to button up the lodge as the first snows began to fall with a howling ferocity. It's easy now to sit in the warmth of the lodge and speculate how things might have gone differently four decades ago, but thoughts change quickly when one ventures outside as the sun sinks behind the mountain and the temperature drops like a chunk of cold iron. Take your gloves off and stick your hands in the snow for a few minutes as your breath drops at your feet � you'll begin to appreciate how cold hands, strong backs and warm hearts made an investment for Ashland and the entire Rogue Valley. 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