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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Guide Weather Subscribe Contact Us March 23, 2005 A family's history By Vickie Aldous Ashland Daily Tidings The opening of the Applegate Trail was born out of tragedy. In 1843, Lindsay and Jesse Applegate, with families in tow, followed the Oregon Trail across the northern portion of the state to become some of the first settlers in the Willamette Valley. But each lost a nine-year-old son along the way when a boat in the settlers' party capsized in Columbia River rapids, drowning the two boys. The bereft fathers were determined to find a safer route into Oregon. Beginning in 1846, the Applegate brothers blazed the Applegate Trail as part of a group of men who formed the South Road Expedition. The Applegate Trail ran from Nevada into Southern Oregon, passing over the Greensprings, through the Rogue Valley and up into the fertile Willamette Valley. Highway 66 and Interstate 5 still follow the historic route. The struggles of the family to reach Oregon, and the subsequent founding of the Applegate Trail, are recounted in two books recently named to a list of the top 100 books that reflect the state and its people. The list was compiled by the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission. Jesse Applegate Applegate, son of Jesse Applegate and brother to one of the drowned boys, recounted his journey to Oregon and early life here in Recollection of My Boyhood. The book is frequently printed along with an essay, A Day with the Cow Column in 1843, written by the elder Jesse Applegate. Shannon Applegate, who currently lives north of Roseburg in Yoncalla, chronicles the lives of her pioneer ancestors in "Skookum: An Oregon Pioneer Family's History and Lore." Books on the top 100 list include the journals of Lewis and Clark, Raymond Carver's "Will You Be Quiet, Please?" and Sallie Tisdale's "Stepping Westward: The Long Search for Home in the Pacific Northwest." Jesse A. Applegate Children frequently accept even the most difficult of circumstances as "just the way it is." Their parents may worry and work themselves to exhaustion, but children will still find a way to play and enjoy life. That natural propensity of children, combined with a pioneer spirit, helps explain much of the tone of Jesse A. Applegate's book. He approached the journey across the West with curiosity and few complaints. He was excited by boating the rapids along the Columbia River, comparing the sensation to a combination between rocking in a cradle and swinging, and even noted how two babies in the party were lulled to sleep by the rocking of the boats. His recollection of the capsizing of the boat is vivid and dramatic, capturing the anguish of Jesse and Lindsay Applegate, who had to choose between leaping into the raging river in a desperate bid to rescue the two boys or stay in their own boat and save the women and children with them. "This was sixty-seven years ago, and yet the words of that frantic appeal by the women, which saved our boat and two families from speedy and certain destruction, are fresh in my memory," Jesse A. Applegate wrote. "They were, 'Men, don't quit the oars. If you do we will all be lost.'" Displaying typical pioneer stoicism, he refers only a few times to the sorrow felt by the survivors. Aside from that tragic incident - Jesse A. Applegate carefully reconstructed the event as an adult - the book mainly provides a child's-eye view of the trek. He was disappointed at the sight of Mount Hood, which he expected to tower like an obelisk nearly as high as the moon, and he called the place that later became Portland a "gloomy forest." He also tells of hardship and the ingenuity required to survive. At one point, when there were no fruits or berries available, the pioneer women used rose hips and homemade starch to make a pudding. The pioneers followed the lead of American Indians and ate wild game, acorns, various plants, bulbs and roots, while drawing the line at caterpillars and yellow jacket larvae. "Children seated in the boats would enjoy themselves for hours gnawing off the fat coating from the dried salmon skins. An emigrant not hungry was thought to be ill," Jesse A. Applegate wrote. Upon their arrival in the Willamette Valley, they made clothes from tattered tents and wagon covers and, lacking wool from sheep, even tried to spin wolf hair into yarn. The family finally settled in Southern Oregon, which is now home to the community of Applegate, the Applegate River and the Applegate Valley west of Ashland. The Ashland Elks Lodge in downtown Ashland sits where Lindsay Applegate built his home. Shannon Applegate Shannon Applegate's book took 17 years of research and writing to create. A single mom at the time, she worked at a museum and ran a tamale-making business to support her family, all the while rising at 5 each morning to write. She uses all the techniques of literary non-fiction - setting scenes, fleshing out characters and making the reader feel, hear, smell and see the experiences of the pioneers. Although generations removed from those first Applegates who came to Oregon, her book has a tactile immediacy. In the beginning of "Skookum," Shannon Applegate intersperses her own writing with excerpts from Jesse A. Applegate's book to recreate that fateful day on the Columbia River. She uses small details to bring scenes to life. Jesse A. Applegate's description of the children riding in the boat and gnawing on salmon skins, in Shannon Applegate's hands, becomes, "'Jest skins' hadn't stopped their gnawing, however, for they'd begun to feel hungry all the time. And now the boy ran his tongue over the sore places on the roof of his mouth ..." Her book combines her own dramatization of events with historic photographs, lithographs, maps, architectural drawings of the Applegate family home in Yoncalla, letters and images of paintings by her cousin, Susan Applegate. She combed the country to find records, sifted through more than 10,000 letters by family members and conducted more than 100 interviews. Shannon Applegate also tells of her own excitement when she finds bundles of letters at the historic family home in Yoncalla. She still lives at the site in a bungalow on the grounds, caring for the old house and a nearby cemetery. "How could I have not written about this family's life? The evidence of its life and struggles is here in so many tangible ways," Shannon Applegate said in an interview. For a time she lived at the home with her uncle, Vincent Applegate, before he passed away. In a letter she wrote to him after he died and included in Skookum, she captured that sense of longing we all have to hear the stories that tell us where we came from and who we are. "Oh, Uncle Vince, I wish I could go to the kitchen now and get the Jim Beam down from the cupboard for you, or fry you an egg or make you a blackberry cobbler. Then, by God, we'd talk; or rather, you'd talk and I'd listen." The Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission's list of the top 100 books can be viewed at www.ochcom.org. Staff writer Vickie Aldous can be reached at 482-3456 x 3018 or [email protected]. 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