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http://www.omniture.com --> Email Story to a Friend July 6, 2006 Click image for larger view The historic Lyman House on Highway 234 near Gold Hill is likely to fade into history. (Mail Tribune / Roy Musitelli) Too far gone By Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune The Lyman House near Gold Hill is falling in on itself and there isn't much that anyone can do. Though travelers might not know it by name, anyone who has driven along Highway 234 near Sams Creek Road has caught a glimpse on the highway's south side of the old, unpainted, two-story house with the upper floor surrounded by a veranda. Built by Joe Douden in 1871, it was home to the Lyman family for more than 100 years. Recently, the slow deterioration that became noticeable about 35 years ago has accelerated, and the unoccupied house is not likely to last much longer. "It's a really important house, architecturally and historically," said Kay Atwood, historian and author. "It goes back to some of our very earliest houses still standing in the valley." Atwood remembers how rough the house looked during her 1974 visit with its owner at the time, Ernest Lyman. "I interviewed him inside the house in the living room and you could see the outside light coming through the cracks between the boards," she said. "I think he had just been living in it by himself for a long, long time. It was neat and tidy, but certainly not improved at all." The impression was much the same six years later when Marjorie Edens, a former employee of the Southern Oregon Historical Society, chatted with Lyman during a 1980 oral history interview. "The house was really ghostlike," said Edens. "The wood was aged down and hadn't really been cared for. It was pretty far gone when I was there." Lyman had just celebrated his 84th birthday and he told Edens that he was worried. " 'I get discouraged, you know'," he told her. " 'I don't know what will happen to the house after I'm gone.' " "He loved his house in an entirely different way," said Edens. "He loved it from the inside out." "During our interview," she continued, "he talked about each room in terms of who had died, slept, or was born there. Even though Lyman joked that someone had died in "every room except the bathroom and the kitchen," Edens said she sensed a deeper, almost spiritual feeling from Lyman. "It seemed as if the people he was talking about who had died were still there," she said. "It was almost as if the house was encasing them all. Talk about being connected to your home!" Atwood got the same impression of Lyman's appreciation for the home. "He was very interested in, and knowledgeable about his family history in the place," said Atwood, "He was very involved and cared about the old house. I think he appreciated what it was." His struggle to keep his family home together never got any easier. For a while, he hired a caretaker who lived in a trailer behind the house, but Lyman didn't have the energy or money to keep up with necessary repairs. After he died in 1991, the new owners did their best to keep the house together, but it was already too late. A few years ago, they moved out — it was just too dangerous to live in. "There are no laws requiring someone to fix up an old house," said Carol Harbison-Samuelson, SOHS's library manager. "That would be unfair. Sadly, many old buildings will deteriorate past the point of preservation, where it becomes too expensive to restore it. "You can always rebuild," she said, "but most people just don't have pockets that deep." Edens said many people in such situations "tear down the old house and then essentially build a new one using the old siding on it, to make the new one look old." The current owners did not to return phone messages asking for comment on the property's future. Bill Miller is a freelance writer living in Shady Cove. Email: [email protected] Back in time: The history of the Lyman House Joseph Douden built the house in 1871 from pine trees felled on the then-unnamed Lyman Mountain, which stands directly across the highway from the Lyman house. The logs were dragged to the site and hewn by hand until they were square. Once the building was framed and the logs mounted, the cracks were filled with a mortar, most of which has disappeared. Unique to its time, none of the rooms in the house connected with another. To get from the living room to a bedroom, for instance, a person walked outside onto the porch and then into the bedroom. There was no internal stairway. Reaching any room on the second floor also meant a walk outside and then climbing stairs to the second-story veranda. Though it may seem strange to us, a single entrance to a room, particularly bedrooms, offered protection for the family at a time when traveling people were often welcome to stay overnight. Eventually a few internal walls were erected, which created some connecting rooms. Architectural author Phillip Dole has said that from a distance, the veranda makes the house look like a Southern plantation. Douden may have been influenced by his boyhood homes, having been born in North Carolina or Virginia, depending on which census you believe. He was a Confederate volunteer from Missouri during the Civil War who by 1867 was living near the northern Oregon town of Brownsville. There he met and married Caroline Fredenburg Hooten, and by that marriage became Ernest Lyman's step-great-grandfather Caroline Hooten's first husband had been beaten to death in 1862 by an Indianapolis mob displeased with Mr. Hooten's Confederate sympathies. Caroline, with her four children and her parents, the Isaac Fredenburgs, sailed for Oregon by way of Panama. Shortly after her marriage to Douden the family moved to Southern Oregon, settling on their homestead claim near Gold Hill. In 1895, Mary Hooten, Caroline's youngest child, married George Lyman, a newcomer to Jackson County. They had one child, Ernest Lyman. George Lyman had left Massachusetts after a dispute with his family and headed west to find gold in 1883. He mined in the South Dakota Black Hills and in California, and even after he was married, Ernest Lyman said that his father spent a few years trying to get rich in Alaska. Only after Joe Douden died in 1901 were any changes made in the house that he had built. A one-story kitchen wing was added at the back of the house with a doorway connecting to the living room. Except for minor repairs and wear and tear over the years, the building is unchanged. Ernest Lyman kept a low profile and little is know of his life. He served in France during World War I then returned to the house. When his father died in 1936, he continued with the family's apple orchard and agricultural pursuits. After his wife died in 1971, Ernest Lyman spent the last 20 years of his life alone in the house that he loved. 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