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Prime Times From sawmill to classroom By Melissa Martin SHADY COVE � In 1911, Orin Train and his 2-ton team of Percheron horses cut 2 million feet of Douglas fir timber from what is now Casey State Park. They hauled it to Prospect to frame the power plant that brought the first electricity to upper Rogue farmhouses. Orin Train built eight sawmills before his death in 1971, including one in Rogue River that burned to the ground and one at Laurelhurst, now the bottom of Lost Creek Lake. He also built and operated blacksmith shops in Butte Falls and Shady Cove � all this with only three years of schooling. So when the son of this self-made man wanted to quit his job in the family sawmill to start the ninth grade, his dad objected. "Dad had been very successful with only a third-grade education, so he thought an eighth-grade education was enough for me," said Ralph Train, 85. Train is one of the last pioneer descendants living in Shady Cove. Despite his dad�s plans for his life, Train went on to become a schoolteacher and administrator for 34 years. Today, he�s retired and living on property logged and farmed by his grandfather, Albert Hall, who arrived in Etna, or modern-day Shady Cove, in 1891. Train was born May 17, 1915, in Butte Falls, where his dad owned a blacksmith�s shop. "When I was born, Butte Falls had board sidewalks, cows running through town � that was before they got tired of that and built cattle guards on either end of town," Train said during a recent interview at his home on the Rogue River. "Between the dogs, the cattle running free and different noises, I would cry every time I heard something. By October my parents moved out of town and into a trapper�s cabin where it was quiet." Train�s future was decided for him when he was 8 years old and living with his family on the 320-acre Brophy Ranch, located beneath present-day Lost Creek Lake, a ranch his dad would later lose to foreclosure during the Great Depression. "Beginning in October 1923, for 15 months, I was in bed with rheumatic fever. Dr. Kirk Metzger, a retired doctor from California, would come out once a week with horse and buggy to see me," Train said. Train learned from Metzger that he had permanent heart damage and should avoid a career with physical labor. "Of course, my dad didn�t pay any attention to that," Train said. Neither did things change when Train became a teenager. "Ralph and his dad didn�t get along too well when he was a teenager," said Train�s nephew, Jim Collier. "But very few people got along with Granddad. He was what we would call today controlling. He was the head of the family and liked to have things his way." Train left home at age 15, living with and working for a truck farmer so he could attend Rogue River High School. "I figured I had done 10,000 miles on my hands and knees working in the lettuce pads," Train recalled. The next year he shopped for a better use of the $500 tuition paid by the Laurelhurst School District and found that Butte Falls High School only charged $300, allowing Train to keep the rest for living expenses. He boarded and worked at the Clark Ranch in the Cascade Gorge. But his senior year, he found an even better deal in Prospect, where he graduated in 1934. He earned a degree from Southern Oregon Normal School in 1939 and got his first teaching job at Mount Pitt School, near Willow Lake. When the school closed a year later, Train moved on to teach and coach seventh- and eighth-graders in Gold Hill. Train supplemented his teacher�s salary by working in the family sawmill. "I had learned every job at the sawmill," Train said. "But I had become a very proficient ratchet setter and I was in demand." The ratchet setter�s job was to watch for hand signals from the sawyer and then adjust the saw to cut the board the required length. "It was a hard job and required skill," Train said. "You needed good eyes to pull the lever up and move the board. You needed to be quick and accurate. It took about one or two seconds to move the saw when you got the sawyer�s signal. "The Train Brothers Lumber Co. was known to have accurate cuts, and I was one of the reasons." Collier agreed. "Granddad was a stickler for carefully, accurately produced lumber. Once he got that perfection, he was ready to move on to build another sawmill," said Collier, a Shady Cove resident and vice president of the Upper Rogue Historical Society. "Some of the other sawmills that weren�t so careful wouldn�t get the orders that Granddad did. He prided himself on his quality." Ralph Train�s grandparents, Albert and Adeline Hall, built a sawmill located near present-day Shady Cove School. Albert Hall cut into the pine forests that covered the Shady Cove valley to build his home and a home for neighbor Mansford Zimmerlee, another pioneer family. Train credits President Franklin D. Roosevelt for helping him accomplish his dreams, starting with the U.S. Civilian Conservation Corps. Train was among hundreds of young men stationed in CCC camps in Southern Oregon and Northern California. "They fed us, clothed us, paid us $5 a month and sent $25 a month home to our mothers. It benefited the whole country," Train said. Ralph learned a work ethic, a military-style discipline and an appreciation for Southern Oregon�s rugged beauty. During a stay at Crater Lake in 1934, Train built rock fireplaces and hiked the old lake trail located near the present-day Visitor�s Center. The trail had 21 switchbacks. Train ended up back in Butte Falls as the grade school principal in 1942, with his new bride, Mareta, also an educator. They moved to the Willamette Valley, where their daughter, Denise Carey, was born in 1947. Train may have parted ways with his father in his teen years, but he made peace before Orin Train�s death at age 83 in 1971. "The last time I saw my dad, we were together at a hunting camp" near Union Creek, Train said. "I killed a buck and the Jeep was full of people so there was no place to put it. We hauled it on top of the engine." A knotty dilemma SHADY COVE � Big, tall and knot-free. That�s what Californians in the 1900s liked about Ponderosa pine and sugar pine that they bought from Oregon to build homes and cabinets. But when Rogue Valley loggers cleared the region of the big pine, Orin Train and other local sawmill owners had to change their marketing strategy. "People were used to building with pine because it was softer, easier to handle and a pretty wood," said Jim Collier, grandson of Orin Train. Like his uncle Ralph Train, Collier is a retired teacher who lives in Shady Cove. "Pine was so soft, you could hammer a nail right through the end of it. That�s why sugar pine was used for cabinet work." Timber fallers would cut the big pine, some of it 4 feet in diameter, chop off the first few limbs, take the good, clean wood and leave the top of the tree on the ground to rot. "Nobody wanted the knotty pine," Collier said. But when the pine was gone and sawmill owners had only Douglas fir to offer customers, they cut the harder wood and shipped it by railway with an "Oregon Pine" label. "They got away with it for 20 years," Collier said. Californians discovered that this new "Oregon Pine" was of superior quality for framing and floor joists because it was stronger than pine. Later, in the mid-1930s, improvements to the planers or knives in the sawmills made it possible to cut through hard knots in pine, said Collier, who was a ratchet setter in his granddad�s sawmills. That�s when knotty pine became popular. Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA