Document text
On the trail of history Butte Falls wants a park at the old mill site linked by a path to other parks By Melissa Martin BUTTE FALLS -- The falls that this lumber town is named after was a productive, noisy place during World War I. There was a sawmill here that produced 50 million board feet of lumber. It produced railroad ties that went to France. Today, visitors find the falls on Big Butte Creek to be a quiet retreat. There's little evidence of the Butte Falls Lumber Company's sawmill all that remain are the concrete footings at the creek bank that held the water wheel and the stone foundation of the boiler house. But Butte Falls residents want to reclaim this part of the town's history by turning this spot into a park with an interpretive center and a two-mile walking path that loops around Butte Falls. The city has applied for a $200,000 state Department of Transportation grant to purchase 13 acres now owned by Superior Lumber Co. in Glendale, says Joyce Hailicka, the Butte Falls resident who wrote the grant. She also requested $24,200 from the Oregon Heritage Commission to help with the project. "I'm excited about the town reclaiming its history," Hailicka says. "In the year 2006, Butte Falls will celebrate its 100th birthday and I'm excited to have the Falls Park in place and have a town celebration at the site of the original mill that started Butte Falls." Besides purchasing the property from Superior, the city would have to secure easements from Rough and Ready Lumber Co. and other private property owners to make the path complete, says Tom Hayes, Butte Falls public works director. The trail would partly follow the route of Medco's Four Spot train that carried timber into the valley. It would connect the town's parks -- Bud Nutting, Fairy Glen and eventually, the fish hatchery park on Highway 821. Already, residents have made improvements at the falls. The Big Butte Historical Society asked contractor Terry Schultz to build a 12-foot deck made out of the native Douglas fir and cedar to create the first viewpoint. Last year, Butte Falls High School graduates Charlie McLauchlan and Jeremy McKibbin built a road and parking lot and installed the first sign on the highway to guide visitors to the falls. They had help from B.J. Rogers of Superior Lumber and Ron Hailicka of Ron Hailicka Equipment Inc. "It's so beautiful here," says Schultz, the Butte Falls contractor who likes to take a lunch break at the falls. "We've lived here 20 years and we've never seen this view of the falls because of the trees and because there was no vantage point." The sawmill, built in 1904, thrived with the arrival of the Pacific and Eastern train in 1910. It closed after the war in 1919, leaving 100 men without a job. The lumber company donated one block of land for a town hall, jail and hose house for Butte Falls, which incorporated in 1911 and built a community water system on Ginger Creek, according to a report prepared for the project. Butte Falls survived that cycle of economic downturn, just as it has survived repeated booms and busts brought on by its dependence on the timber industry, Hailicka says. The mother of five is known for her work in 1991 to raise $65,000 to turn a depot-style building into the town's first library. She's currently working with Eagle Point residents to find grants to build a new library. Hailicka credits Butte Falls Postmaster Dan Murphy and dozens of other residents with dreaming up the Falls Park project, which could also include a 6-acre campground and day-use picnic area. "It would be nice to preserve that area for recreation rather than have a developer come in and change the whole nature of it," Murphy says. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA