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'Hidden' gem for sale Photo by Jim Craven Earl Morris would like to sell his 883-acre Hidden Valley Ranch to benefit vocational education. The ranch is named after the once-hidden valley through which I-5 now runs near Blackwell Hill. It is the largest single tract of land in Jackson County. Deal would help fund future By Bill Kettler Most people whizzing along Interstate 5 past the big "For Sale" sign on Blackwell Hill know very little about Hidden Valley Ranch. Few know the Morris family bought the ranch in the 1940s hoping to mine gold. They've probably never met Earl Morris, the last leaf on the Morris family tree. And it's unlikely drivers ever realize that the ranch takes its name from the little valley where the freeway now runs. "Before they cut that freeway through there, nobody knew there was a valley here," said Morris as he walked the hills where he's lived for more than half a century. When the Morris family bought the ranch, Blackwell Road was Highway 99, the only north-south highway. The little valley now filled with freeway was invisible from the old road. At 89, Morris wants to sell the 883-acre ranch to endow a foundation that will provide vocational and technical scholarships for high school students. "I get so sick hearing about kids who have put in 12 years of their life at school and they don't know how to do anything," he said. "I want my money to go to kids who don't want to go to college, so they can take their last two years of high school and learn how to do a job." Morris has deeded the ranch to the Morris Family Foundation, which he created. Now he's ready to sell the ranch, which stretches from Blackwell Road on the north to Old Stage Road on the south. "It runs a mile down Old Stage Road," he said. The ranch has been divided into several tax lots, but it's one of the biggest blocks of land on the valley floor, said Dave Watson, who works with the computer that stores Jackson County's land ownership records. "Six hundred and forty acres is a square mile," said Watson. "I can't think of any individual holding that would be near that.'' Watson said somebody else might control more land through a combination of direct ownership and leases, but Morris's ranch could be the largest contiguous ownership on the valley floor. "It really is one of a kind," he said. Morris is asking $1.5 million for the 883 acres, which includes a home that sits atop a knob with a commanding view of the valley. "The view alone is worth a hundred thousand," he said. "I've got the best view in the valley. I look right out at Mount McLoughlin. I look right out at Crater Lake." The land is zoned for exclusive farm use, but Morris said the rolling hills aren't suited to agriculture. "About all it's good for is houses," he said. "but nobody will buy it because you can't put a house on it." Residential development on farmland is tightly controlled under state and county land use laws. Neither Morris nor his brother, LaRue, ever married. "There was no women that hard up," he said, laughing. The brothers shared the home they built on the hill. LaRue Morris died in 1991, after a long teaching career in Central Point schools. Earl Morris did a little bit of everything. In recent years, Morris has had problems with thefts and vandalism on his spread. In 1997 vandals damaged historic buildings the brothers operated for years as a summer tourist attraction called Gold Gulch. Recently someone stole his irrigation pump. "I'm afraid to put another one in," he said. Morris wants to sell to someone who will allow him to live on the ranch for the rest of this life. "I'm 89," he said. "Ninety is about as long as you go." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA