Document text
‘Little woman’ at the wheel By Bill Miller Aug 21, 2022 12:30 AM A A It wasn’t the most monumental historical event in Southern Oregon, but Ina Olwell should have expected more than a brief Mail Tribune paragraph. Even a Pendleton newspaper gave her two. After all, the daughter of Charles Ray of Gold Ray Dam fame, the man who had helped bring electricity to the valley, was also married to one of the most prominent real-estate developers in all of Jackson County. In typical fashion for the early 1900s, Ina’s feat was reported almost anonymously in her husband’s name — Mrs. John Olwell, in Pendleton, and simply Mrs. Olwell in the Tribune. Early in the morning, Aug. 21, 1908, Ina Enola Olwell, 24, climbed behind the wheel of her REO Touring Car. Her husband began rapidly spinning the starter crank until its motor sparked to life, and the couple with three passengers raced out of Medford on their way to Crater Lake. Just one of a party of five automobiles, the sputtering caravan was on its way to meet Edward Harriman, head of Union Pacific Railroad. They hoped to convince him to add his support and a chunk of his money to the building of a Crater Lake Highway. Harriman was vacationing with his family at their hunting lodge near Klamath Falls along with Oregon Gov. George Chamberlain. Both men had agreed to meet at the lake with the Medford Commercial Club’s road committee to discuss their propositions. Ina led the procession on its 83-mile trek. The road to the lake was barely more than a rutted wagon trail, twisting through the stumps of downed pine trees, and often covered in shifting, leftover pumice from the long ago eruption of the Mount Mazama volcano. Without stopping at the raging flood waters of Union Creek, she confidently bounced safely over the rocks at a furious speed. No one except Ina believed she could make it. Water had washed as high as the floor in the REO, and County Commissioner William Colvig, a passenger, shouted that his “field glasses” had been swept away. A following driver discovered them lodged in a rock a half-mile downstream. Turns out Colvig’s “field glasses” was actually a whiskey flask, and the stopper had fallen out, or been open when the water snatched it away. When they reached the foot of the caldera and looked up, night was coming on. No one had thought to bring any source of light, including carbide for the REO’s headlights. Ina said she wasn’t worried and was going on up. That’s when Commissioner Colvig, “of the sterner sex,” lodged his protest, saying he didn’t have life insurance and that it would be more than foolhardy to attempt to drive up the mountain trail without lights. The “little woman at the wheel” shouted back, “Well, we are going into Crater Camp tonight or bust every tire on my machine! … There are no rocks left on Uncle Sam’s roads.” But, of course, there were. With her foot to the floor and each of the motor’s two cylinders surging to Ina’s confident determination, she fearlessly nosed up through the darkness, around curves, stumps and rocks. After almost continuous driving for 10 and a half hours, Ina had notched her place in history — the first woman to drive an automobile to Crater Lake. The railroad man, Harriman, had suddenly come down with a bout of rheumatism and stayed at his lodge. However, he did send word with his wife and the governor that he accepted the Commercial Club’s offer of a position on the Crater Lake Road Commission. Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including “To Live and Die a WASP, 38 Women Pilots Who Died in WWII.” Reach him at [email protected].