Bellfountain Recollections

In addition to the accounts of military service during World War I featured in earlier posts, the archives of the Benton County Historical Museum also contains Dorothy Mack's recollections of life in Bellfountain from 1905 to 1921.

Mack tells how 33 people pledged a total of $92.50 to purchase the Bellfountain Camp Ground “to be held forever as a public park.”  Mack continues: “In my childhood I went to many community picnics there, as did my Mother before me.... There was a stage in the park with rows of benches on the sloping ground beyond, and this is where our programs were held and where graduation exercises took place.”

Mack also recollects attending pie or box socials. “The pie socials were all right, but it was the auctioning off of the beautiful boxes I loved.  Once there was one made like an airplane—a thing I’d never seen.  Even more vividly do I remember one my Father bought.  It must have been close to two feet long and was really pretty, gray with some stacks of crepe paper. He paid nine dollars for it! The proceeds went to finance some community need, but even so – nine dollars was a lot of money to pay for a box lunch.  The men shared the evening with the lady who’d made the box and packed the lunch.  Once a big handsome logger from Glenbrook was stuck with me because he thought the box for which he’d paid five dollars belonged to a pretty young teacher.  I was only about nine, but I sensed his terrible disappointment and was glad there were chess pies and chicken sandwiches in our lunch.  He ate more than his share but stayed very glum.”

Near the park was a prune orchard.

Willamette Valley prune orchard

Mack notes that “when the time came to harvest that crop, my Mother was right there.  We children went with her until school started in September.  Even then my Father would take us and join our Mother for an hour or two of work after school was over for the day, before going home to the chores and supper. There were ‘tree shakers’ who shook the fruit to the ground and ‘box boys’ who brot [sic] bushel boxes to be filled.  We kids always managed to get our knees covered with mashed prunes and dirt; bees often stung us, and it was hot and sticky and dirty work.  Our mother didn’t even have the comfort of working in pants, but wore her long wash dresses, and a sunbonnet for shade. Alton Seits carefully filled one of his boxes with clods, covering it with a layer of prunes, and thought this a great joke on the management.  My Mother brot [sic] him up short when she pointed out that he’d wasted time and energy on a box for which he’d be paid nothing—and I thought she was being  very hard on Alton.  Years later she told me that she spent all her prune picking money one year on a pair of high-topped gray kid shoes; that they cost her twelve dollars.  I can hardly believe she worked so hard and so long for so little! But she said the shoes were beautiful, and I hope so--- she earned them.”

The Bellfountain Park, the oldest of all Benton County Parks, still is the site of many gatherings at the 85-foot picnic table made of one continuous slab of wood.

By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon