The upper McKenzie River, in Oregon, is a vast wilderness and a tourist fishing location for the past 100 years. Some 30% of the clean water in the Willamette River comes down the Mckenzie. In the latter part of the 19th century, gold mining and began and brought more people to the area. Then hot springs were found (Belknap, Kitson) and several tourist businesses began. Tourism was big for this area in beginning in the 1890s and extending to the present. It may have been a rugged gravel road but numerous newspaper accounts in this era address people camping and fishing for weeks up on the McKenzie, and even bringing back their fish to show off to local townsfolk. Fly-fishing and drift boating to catch the rare red-sided Dolly Varden trout alongside steelhead and salmon are famous for the area.
“Jay McCormick, proprietor of the Hotel Owens, on the McKenzie river at Blue River, sent one doxen red side trout [Dolly Varden] to friends in Salem yesterday. Some of the fish are on display in the Cross meat market. Those who received the fish are Hauser Brothers, Dr. W. B. Morse. Claire Inman and L. S. Barnes” (7/3/1917, Daily Cap. Jour. Salem. p1 )
The expanded trail up into the upper river was very narrow, and it had to be widened to accept wagons. The first road developments were supported by Lane County.
Logging also became large in the area, with logs floated freely down into the valley and then “caught” by lumber mills at riverside. Millions of board feet were logged from the area.
In this era, Eugene city needed a clean water supply, and they created a reservoir and pumping station up the river.
When fishing tourism began to negatively affect the fish populations, a fish hatchery was built to provide salmon for the river.
The State was already, by 1910, in the habit of stocking the river. In the early days, jugs would be mounted on horseback to transport tens of thousands of smolts to the upper river.
Native American use of the basin is another subject. At this time, not much is known of how often or for what purpose various tribes used the area. There does not appear to have been permanent villages on the upper McKenzie, the area being too cold for permanent habitation. In fact, all the tribes in the vicinity of the Cascades share these practices, and no tribes of Oregon are culturally equipped to live over the winter in a heavy snow environment. Tribes of the area would move away from extremely cold environments, like the Cascades people who moved out of the Columbia Gorge to the area of Portland for the winters; or the Molalla who moved out of the foothills to the interior Willamette Valley. There are additional examples. Absent are the ethnographic or oral records of tribes having villages in the upper McKenzie region.
Instead, there are records of temporary villages, summer fishing encampments on the upper McKenzie. Settlers and their descendants have records of the Warm Springs peoples encamping along the upper river and setting up fishing camps and fish drying scaffolding in about August of each summer. Many of these accounts were recited me over the past 3–4 years when I have visited various communities on in the area, from Blue River to Mckenzie Bridge. The accounts are usually said to be from the grandparents of present day people, and state that the camps were along the flat areas of the upper river. In the Oregon State Archival records of the 1920s-1930s development of the McKenzie Highway, one of the staging areas is called “Indian Camp” suggestive of the settler stories.
In addition, there is a significant record of Warm Springs people coming into the Springfield area to encamp along the Mckenzie and Middle Fork rivers. Hendricks Bridge Park-on the McKenzie to the east of town, the campground likely the current picnic areas, and the area of Glenwood are noted as Warm Springs encampment areas. People at Glenwood- an area between Springfield and Eugene – hosted many itinerants, “illegal,” and minority people interacting in the earliest days. In Glenwood there were many speakeasys, and it was a place where Blacks, Natives and other minorities felt accepted (or at least not intimidated). The Towns had “laws” called “sundown laws”- Eugene especially would not allow Black people to live in town- and Native people- had to live across the river from the downtown, at what is now Alton Baker park, because they were not allowed to remain in town after sundown. Black people in this period could not own land in Oregon, and so they too were forced to live outside city limits. Voting district records from about 1900 at Lane County Archives show that no Native or Black peoples lived in Eugene, while several of these families lived in Cottage Grove. Glenwood is nowhere mentioned in these records, it was likely not considered a legal voting area.
Warm Springs peoples would join in the Hop harvest at this time, and Springfield had some large hop fields, the Seavey fields likely the largest. The Warm Springs people were known to travel over the Cascades with small ponies and wagons and bring their whole family. Native children had some business making leather gloves, which they would sell to the area farmers. Stores in Eugene also sold Indian made items.
See my recent (2024) Lane County Historian article (Native Peoples’ Traditional Encampments at Eugene and Springfield)
In addition there is this newly found account,
“During the early part of the century there were a great many Indians who made the trip from the Warm Springs Indian Reservation crossing the McKenzie Pass, coming over to fish for salmon down around the Hendricks Bridge area. They would sometimes spend three weeks to a month fishing for salmon, and the Indian men would quite often pick hops in the hopyards in the Thurston and Walterville areas. The two or three fenced fields immediately west of the ranch house where my grandparents lived were a regular stopping place for Indians. They liked to stop for overnight camping, because it was a place for their stock, and they could buy hay from Grandfather. They would camp on their way down river and stop again on their wayback.” (Indian Puppies. Manena Schwering as told to Ray Nash. Lane County Historian, Vol. XXXVI, No.1, Spring, 1991.) (Thanks Mark Swift)
About the Kalapuyans and Molallans of the area we only have a few accounts. The Kalapuyans had lived at the site of Eugene City, the Chifin Kalapuyans. Other bands, the Winefelly, the Chelamela, lived in the area as well. The Mountain Molalla lived at Lost Valley up the Middle Fork, by Pleasant Hill. These peoples were removed from the area in 1856 to be resettled at the Grand Ronde Reservation. A number of these people subsequently left the reservation and took off-reservation allotments at Cottage Grove, mainly members of the Halo/Fearn/Fisherman (see the old man Fisherman essay) extended family. The reservation was porous in those days, and there was some allowance for travel into the valley- if they registered their travel with the Indian agent and got a pass. Many people would go back to their original territory, and remain, a practice which continued for years. Newspaper accounts suggest there were tribal campmeetings at Pleasant Hill and Cottage Grove orchestrated by Kalapuyan leader Polk Scott.
See history of the census lists of the Southern Valley tribes essay this blog
In the mid-1850s, one small band of Molalla was encountered by Joel Palmer on the McKenzie. Palmer’s encounter spawned a believable account of a band of Molallans leaving Dickie Prairie, outside of Molalla city, following the Abiqua Battle of 1847, because settlers were harassing them. They had only lived in the McKenzie for about 7 years.
See essays on Molalla removals
Still, the whole of the McKenzie could easily have been visited regularly by Kalapuyan and Molalla peoples, during the summers when they ventured into the mountains for huckleberries or hunting. Summer encampments were likely the most common tribal cultural expression in the basin. We just do not have accounts of this occurring in this area, for these tribes, but it is a commonly known fact about their culture and seasonal lifeway. (see the Louis Labonte II essay OHQ vol 1, no.1, 1900)
One basin over, that of the Middle fork, there were Klamath Trails which brought Klamath people down into the valley. The Klamath travelled the “pacific crest trails” to trade in the valley or at The Dalles on the Columbia. Some Klamath are noted camping alongside the Molalla and remaining in the valley through the summers hunting elk. They do not appear to have come down the McKenzie drainage at all. It may be that the extensive black lava fields on the top of the valley dissuaded people from venturing down into this basin.
A written account of a Warm Springs encampment was published in a Lane County Historian in 1991.
“The next day we reached the big prairie, but just before making this place we heard much shooting to the south of us and could not account for it, but when we reached the prairie we found it full of Indian ponies and the squaws drying meat; and the shooting we heard was the Indians hunting. When we reached this camp an old Indian came out and handed us a paper which said, “These are good Indians” signed by the Agent of Warm Springs, so we knew we were safe. The Indians were campers and were drying their meat on the bank where the Log Cabin Hotel now stands. Just before reaching the prairie, I caught a fine red side trout about 18 inches long. One squaw came to me and wanted the trout and I made her understand I would trade it for elk meat. She brought out a large piece and we made a trade. We had it for supper that night, but the odor was anything but appetizing, however, we managed to eat most of it as it was the first fresh meat we had eaten on the trip.”
It was common for Indians travelling off the reservation to have to carry a permission note from the Indian agent. Indians were not allowed off the reservations and if they did not have a pass, they were subject to being arrested, jailed, then forcefully returned.
The land in the area of Blue River is incredibly flat alongside the river, a very inviting area for camping and fishing.
Highway development occurred in the late 1920s and into the 193os. The Oregon Department of Transportation has some amazing photos of road development.
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