Glenbrook, Benton County, Oregon

 One of the first things you might notice on entering the Benton County exhibition in the Corvallis Museum is this photograph on the wall to your right. 

Construction of a Mill Pond Dam by the Jamestown-Oregon, Lumber Company

 
The photograph is titled, “Construction of a Mill Pond Dam, Glenbrook, 1919.”  I must confess that when I first saw it, I had no idea where Glenbrook was located.  For others equally puzzled, Glenbrook is on Hammer Creek, about three miles southwest of Alpine, in the southern part of Benton County.

In 1919, the company began construction of a wooden buttress dam on Hammer Creek.  This type of dam has a solid earthen wall on one side and log buttresses at an angle on the other to support the dam and keep the water pressure from pushing it over. You can see the wood buttresses in the middle of the photograph, in front of the dam. The 100-foot-long dam created a log pond and also provided electricity to run the mill.

View of Glenbrook, Oregon, log pond circa 1930

The railroad tracks on the left extended over 5 miles west into the company's timber holdings. To the east, the Southern Pacific line up-graded its rails on the line to Alpine to accommodate the heavier loads.

On the right, a sawmill is under construction.  The timber for this construction came from logging camps run by the company.  The finished mill was equipped with the machinery standard for such mills at the time including:  a 10-foot Allis Chalmer band saw, a 12 x 72-inch Sumner Iron Works edger, a 48 foot automatic air line trimmer and slasher, and a 66 inch upright Mershon resaw. This machinery was valued at $250,000.  The mill had a capacity of 125,00 feet of lumber per day.

The company also planned to construct two boilers an additional planing mill, and storage facilities.

The company expected to eventually hire between 350 to 500 people.  In order to attract workers, the company also built houses, a general store and a pool hall.

The entire operation opened August 24, 1920 with a barbecue, attended by between 1500 and 2000 people. They were entertained by speeches, sight-seeing tours, and band and orchestra performances.  A baseball game and tug of war, diving, and nail-driving contests were also part of the day's festivities.

Hiring at the mill created a boom in Glenbrook, resulting in additional houses, a new school, a doctor's office, a store, and a barbershop. 

In November 1925, the entire operation was abruptly closed down and the company departed.  No explanation was given locally, but there were rumors of mismanagement and corruption. No taxes had been paid for several years.

Several other sawmills operated in this location including Christianson Brothers Lumber in the 1930s and Hogan's mill in the 1940s and 1950s. 

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

Lady of the Fountain Statue

 This photograph from the collection of the Benton County Historical Society, shows the fountain which once just west of the intersection of Madison and Ninth Streets in Corvallis on what was part of the Oregon State University campus. 

The statue in the middle depicts Hebe, the goddess of youth in Greek mythology.  The daughter of Zeus and Hera and the wife of Hercules, Hebe was supposed to have the power to restore youth and beauty.  The statue was over six feet tall and was made of cast iron.  When the fountain was operating, water poured from the pitcher in the her right hand into the six-foot diameter basin below.  The basin was made of bricks from the original Corvallis College building on Fifth Street.

The fountain was a gift from the class of  1902. The cost of the statue and base was $350 (equivalent to over $3,000 today) which was substantial given that the total enrollment was just over 400 students in all classes.

The fountain soon became part of campus lore and a popular meeting place. Sophomores would dunk “unruly” freshmen in the cold water. Beer bottles would periodically appear in Hebe's pitcher and other items in her left hand.

The Lady was first stolen in October of 1919.  The morning of the discovery, students also noticed green and yellow paint on many surfaces and “Smear OAC” and “Rah for the U of O” painted on the armory walls.  The statue was found in a ditch in the Eugene area. The culprits turned out to be high school students from Eugene along with one UO student. The statue was restored to her place and the student councils at the schools agreed not to “molest” each others' traditions.

The Lady disappeared again the next year.  This time it took 2 years to find her in the basement of the Portland home of a University of Washington student. She was greeted with great fanfare when she arrived in the back seat of  a car during a track meet in Corvallis. After this second incident, the hollow statue was filled with cement with steel rod reinforcements anchoring her to a solid concrete base.

In January 1929, students awoke to this scene.

The “Lady of the Fountain” was smashed to pieces! Someone had taken a sledge hammer to the statue. The hands were recovered and donated to the Horner Museum and are now on display at the Society's Corvallis Museum.

Although a reward was offered for evidence that would lead to the capture of those  responsible, the perpetrators were never caught. Some thought was given to replacing the statue but it was ever done.

Claude Buchanan was a member of the OSU class of '02 which had donated the statue. In 1932, his daughter, OSU graduate Aurella Buchanan, made this small replica of the statue.  It was displayed at the 30th reunion of the donating class and later donated to the Horner Museum.

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