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http://www.omniture.com --> Email Story to a Friend June 14, 2006 Son fought to keep the Wood House from being razed in 1946 By JENNIFER STRANGE for the Mail Tribune Back in the 1860s, when Civil War veteran Marvin Sylvester Wood was planning his house just north of what is now Eagle Point, he turned to state-of-the-art materials and technology. "When it was built in 1870, it was one of the first structures in the whole area, built two full years before the Butte Creek Mill," says Skip Geear, Wood House chairman of the Eagle Point Historical Society. "Its construction is board and beam and its architecture is extremely unique." The picturesque two-story house boasts a gabled roof over a front-facing dormer window with a dramatic backdrop provided by Mount McLoughlin. "Since this was well before fillers, the outside walls are also the inside walls," Geear says. "The structural strength and integrity has kept it standing." Using lumber cut above Prospect was another strength-building measure employed by Wood. "The valley people in those days felt there wasn't strength in lumber from the lower elevations," explains Marjorie O'Harra, a retired newspaperwoman who wrote about Marvin Wood's son, Walter Wood, and the house in the late 1960s. Walter inhabited his father's house from the day he was born on March 4, 1881, until his death in 1974. It was Walter Wood who saved this local landmark from demolition, says Geear. In 1946, the Oregon Department of Transportation wanted the building razed to make way for a wider Highway 62. "Walter wouldn't negotiate and he demanded moving it, so that house was moved to the other side of Highway 62 at a cost of $1,442, which Walter Wood paid," says Geear. "Then he dug a 59-foot-deep well that's still used." The younger Wood raised his family in the house, finally ending up alone. "They called him The Hermit," says O'Harra, who remembers knocking on Walter Wood's door one afternoon in hopes of interviewing the man who lived in the most notable house on the highway. "He didn't have a telephone and when he answered the door, I noticed bits of apple clinging to his long, white beard," she says. Living in the home's kitchen, Walter was alert and witty, says O'Harra. His closest neighbors told her they sometimes saw him walking, with his walking stick, along Crater Lake Highway. "They said he'd go to the barber, not to have his whiskers trimmed, but to crony-ize," O'Harra says with a laugh. Calling the Wood House a "cameo of our history that's still very, very real," O'Harra commends the Eagle Point Historical Society's efforts to preserve the structure and its stories. "I'm delighted at the way they've cleaned the place up without changing it or making it cutesy," she says. "It's a way to embrace our past and use it to pave the way into our future." Advertisement s Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback www.bingo.com Home Security Systems Trunks, Footlocker Custom Build Computers Discount Hotel Reservations --> online casinos news Ashley Furniture HomeStore Send Flowers California Casinos GMAT Prep Windermere Van Vleet Sports Equipment Entertainment Guide --> Online Casino Fundraisers Sudoku Online Casinos Canada Online Casino Reviews