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Family tires of dam debate The former owners of Elk Creek Dam property would like to buy the land back or see it become a nature preserve By PAUL FATTIG Mail Tribune TRAIL - Enough already, says Robin Tucker. After years of political diatribe and public debate, she is weary of the dam argument. Her extended family was one of several forced to move after the federal government announced it would build the Elk Creek Dam on Elk Creek. The dam was part of the Rogue Basin Project approved by Congress in 1962. Yet the dam never was completed. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' work on the half-built structure stopped in 1987 amid a flood of controversy. "It's been painful for our family, this long state of limbo," said the resident of Phoenix, Ariz. "We want closure." Family members hope one day to buy the land back. If that proves impossible, they would like to see a nature preserve on the old family farm. If all else fails, they at least want a final decision on the dam project, she said. Tucker's grandparents, Roy and Margaret Tucker, bought the historic place in the early 1950s, moving from Gold Hill. The Circle Star Ranch was nearly 100 acres less than half a mile upstream from where the dam would be built. The old house was a stout farm dwelling built in the early 1900s. White with green trim, it had a potbellied stove in the dining room, a fireplace in the living room, a large country kitchen and a big, screened-off porch. Downstairs was a basement and root cellar. There were three barns, pastures and a one-acre garden. Cows, pigs, sheep, rabbits and chickens thrived on the farm. The family sold the property to Uncle Sam in the mid-1960s for $100,000. The structures were dismantled, the farm machinery moved, the animals taken away. Roy Tucker passed away on the farm. His widow, who later remarried and bought another ranch in Klamath County, died in the early 1990s. The family, which consists of six siblings and numerous grandkids and nieces and nephews, has since scattered. But they haven't forgotten the family farm. "It was our childhood home," said Robin Tucker's aunt, Linda Naumann Cook, 56, of Sacramento, Calif. "I was there to help dismantle the house. That was very sad. I haven't been able to go back." "That land is really no great economical value to anybody else," added Tucker's uncle, Earl Naumann, 55, of Boise, Idaho. "But there is a strong emotional attachment to the land for us. It was the place where we were raised." A former logger who had attended Eagle Point High School, Naumann now has a doctorate in business and his own research firm. But he hasn't forgotten his roots. "We would like to see the land restored to the people who originally owned it," he said, although noting that would likely take an act of Congress. "We were raised on that land. It has a lot of emotional value to us. "The dam is an idea whose time has passed," he added. "It was a different world then than is now." Former property owners would have a difficult time getting the property back if the Corps did decide to relinquish the land, said Corps spokeswoman Dawn Edwards in the agency's Portland office. "It doesn't happen very often," she said, although noting her research found that property in one case had been returned by an act of Congress. "In the case of Elk Creek, if we decided the land would not be used and was excess government property, it would then go to the General Service Administration process," she said. "They (former owners) would be way down the line. If it were offered to them, it would be at current market value. "It's extremely rare but things do happen," she concluded. In mid-November, Congress and the Bush administration approved a $2 million appropriation to allow the Corps to notch the dam. Another $5 million is needed to complete the task, according to Corps estimates. "It is the most cost-effective fish passage alternative," said the Corps' dam project manager, Doug Clarke, in Portland. "It is the best biologically. It also preserves most of the structure should future generations decide to complete the dam." The day after the announcement, a rally supporting completion of the dam drew more than 500 people to Elk Trail Elementary, where Robin and her aunt and uncle went to school. Led by county Commissioner Ric Holt, those against notching the dam have vowed to continue their fight. "It ain't notched till it's notched," Holt said before the rally. Notching the dam is fine with Robin Tucker, 47. Like her uncle, she stressed that the view on dams has changed since the dam project was approved. "Most people are in a different mind-set than they were in the '60s in regards to building dams," she said. "Moving off the land so a dam could be built to serve the better of the whole was not a problem for us back then. "But that focus is gone," she added. "We are able to see the environmental consequences now. I no longer assume this dam is in the best interest of the public." The land is more than a chunk of real estate, stressed Tucker, a geographer by training. To her family, the land represents a way of life in rural Southern Oregon that is lost to most still debating the issue, she noted. For a moment, she recalled life back on the farm. "I remember that log trucks used to go by - I'd wave and race against them on horseback," she said of summer days. Out in the garden, she'd see her grandmother toiling away. "She had an acre garden," Tucker said. "She would be out there in a dress and big rubber boots, tilling the garden. I really loved my grandmother." There were the farm chores, beginning with milking in the early dawn. "The milk barn was down by the creek," she said. "My grandmother would get out there and yell, 'Soueeeee!' You'd see these cows waddling up. We'd perch on milk buckets. The barn cats would come out. We'd shoot them in the face with milk and they'd lick off their whiskers." She recalled a big triangle-shaped chime dangling from the porch overhang. The chime was used to summon folks home for lunch or dinner, she said. There was the big table in the dining room where board games were played in front of the potbellied stove on a cold winter evening. When it was time to hit the sack, there were thick quilts her grandmother made waiting in the upstairs beds, she said. "Grandma made wonderful quilts out of rags," she recalled. "You didn't want to get out of bed on a cold morning." Her aunt in Sacramento also has fond memories. "In the summer, we would pick blackberries by the five-gallon bucketful along the creek," Cook said. "Right behind the place, there was a nice swimming hole. We always threw rocks in before swimming to scare the water snakes out." It was on the farm that she learned to drive the old hay truck, she said. "I'd always pop the clutch and my brothers and a couple of bales of hay would fly off," she said. Not all the memories were pleasant, however. "One winter, one of my mom's cows had a calf across the stream," she said. "Mom started cross the creek and got washed down. She was able to grab a branch. It was pretty scary." Like her other relatives, Cook hopes the family someday has an opportunity to buy the property back from Uncle Sam. "If we can't, make it into a preserve for animals," she said. "I don't want to see someone come in someday and build a lot of houses on that land." Tucker agreed. "In the most perfect of worlds, I'd like to see the family get the land back," she said. "I'd rather it never be made into a dam. "But it has been hanging in limbo way too long," she reiterated. "We're at a point where it's enough already. A final decision needs to be made." Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.