Camp Adair

 One portion of the Benton County history exhibition in the historical society's Corvallis Museum is devoted to artifacts related to Camp Adair. Today, most people in the county have no memory of the base and its impact on the county.  The photographs, documents, and artifacts in the Benton County Historical Society's collection can combine to provide a picture of this part of our history.

In February, 1941, the United States War Department decided that there was a need to build three new Army basic training camps on the West Coast. By July, 1941, the army had chosen a site of 56,800 acres in a rectangle 6 miles wide by 10 miles long, located 8 miles north of Corvallis, 8 miles south of Monmouth and six miles west of Albany. Highway 99W ran through the site.  In addition to its access to transportation, the site was valued for the similarity of terrain to what recruits would find in Europe.

Within six months, the camp's 1700 buildings had been constructed at a cost of $32 million.  That such a large project could be completed that quickly is truly amazing.

The buildings included waste water and fresh water treatment plants, a heating plant, 500 barracks, 11 chapels, 5 movie theaters, 13 post exchanges, 2 service clubs, a hospital, a field house with 3 basketball courts, a bakery, 2 guest houses, a bank, a post office, phone exchange, warehouses, headquarters offices, firing ranges, an electrical substation, an airfield,  rail yards, and a mock German village.

To equip the 96 dayrooms, the army asked local communities for second hand furniture and recreational equipment, which many contributed.

 The soldiers who were to train the new recruits arrived in the summer of 1942 and the recruits in the fall.  Four divisions were stationed there, as noted on this sign. They included 40,000 people, making Camp Adair the second-largest city in the state at the time. 

What the soldiers in these units remembered was the rain, which left everything sodden and muddy.  The camp earned the nickname, “Swamp Adair.” The rest of the year, poison oak was the major complaint.  The last group of recruits shipped out on July 20 1944.

The next two posts will include portions of a first-hand account of life in camp.

If you want to learn more about the history of Camp Adair, check out the on-line exhibition at http://www.bentoncountymuseum.org/index.php/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/swamp-adair/

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

Homemade Butter

One of the hallway displays in the Benton County Historical Society's Corvallis Museum contains a number of old food-preparation items. Some, like the toaster, are earlier version of appliances you would find in most kitchens today.  But there is one item that you may not recognize and are unlikely to find in kitchens today.

 

This square wooden box is a butter mold. Until about 1900, most butter was made by individuals in their own home.  Some made more than they could use and traded it to their neighbors for other commodities.

To make butter, fresh milk was put in a shallow dish to settle and then the cream was skimmed off and placed in a churn.

Inside the churn was a dasher. 

Moving the dasher up and down caused the particles of fat in the cream to come together to make small globs of butter. Later, this was down by rotating a barrel churn or turning a crank to rotate the paddle in a smaller tabletop paddle churn.

Horner Museum Curator Thyrza Anderson, 1972-1977,  shown with butter churn

Gear driven tabletop glass Dazey butter churn

              

The liquid portion (buttermilk) was poured off through a hole in the top of the churn and then the small globs of butter were put in a butter-working bowl. 

The contents were kneaded by hand or worked with wooden butter paddles to squeeze out any additional liquid and to make the butter smoother.  

 

The bowl and paddle pictured were used by the Clarence Tedrow family on their farm along the Luckiamute south of Monmouth from 1900 to 1920.

Once the butter had reached the desired consistency, it was packed into a mold such as the one on display and chilled.

As some people with ample supplies of milk made extra butter to trade, they began to press designs into their blocks of butter as a type of trademark.  This butter mold has a acorn and leaf design.

Beginning in the late 1860s and accelerating after the invention of a mechanical cream separator in 1871, more and more butter was made in factories, not on individual farms. 

You could make your own butter by putting cream in a bowl and “churning” it with an electric mixer.  You first get whipped cream but if you keep going, eventually you'll have butter. I vaguely remember doing this as a child. But buying it is so much easier.

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

History of Harvesting with a Sickle

 Tuesday's Gazette-Times article on Afghanistan contained a photograph of a farmer there harvesting wheat with a sickle. It's a picture that could have been taken at many different times and places since humans domesticated wild grains and settled onto farms. Sickles were developed soon after; archaeologists have found Mesopotamian sickles that were used as early as 7000BC.

Wheat was one of  the first crops planted by pioneers in Benton County. The rush of people west following discovery of gold in California in 1848 and in southern Oregon in 1852 increased demand for flour and hence the acreage devoted to wheat in all parts of the county.

Wheat field in the Coast Range east of Nashville circa 1905

This sickle is one of the pioneer artifacts that were part of the Hill collection, an early donation to the Horner Museum. Sickles were common tools and appropriate to harvesting small acreages.  People of all ages could learn to use them easily.  But the work was slow and laborious:  stoop over, grad a handful of wheat and sweep the sickle across the stems to make the cut. The backward C shape of the sickle balanced the weight so the tool did not rotate downward and but a strain on the user's wrist.

Technology advanced and created easier-to use tools that allowed farmers to harvest the grain in less time. The first innovation was to attach the blade to a long handle so the user could remain upright.

Placing a hand on each of the two nibs (one of which is difficult to see in the photo), the user swung the scythe in a semi-circle parallel to the ground. Using the scythe required more strength and skill so not everyone could use it.  Also, people of different heights needed scythes of different lengths.  Another person was needed to gather up the cut grain and take it to the barn. Sickles were still used with crops beaten down by rain or in fields with many rocks or stumps.

To make gathering up the grain and eliminate some of the loss of grain scattered on the ground, curved fingers were added to create a cradle to catch the cut grain and lay in down in neat rows that were easy to gather. Using a grain cradle, a farmer could harvest about 2 acres of wheat per day, instead of the half-acres possible with a sickle.

Tom and Mary Ann Hayden settled on their donation land claim in the Alsea Valley in 1854.  Tom used this grapevine cradle scythe (currently on display in the Benton County Historical Society's Corvallis Museum) to harvest wheat until 1872. At that time, he and John McCormack purchased two of the latest horse-drawn mechanical reapers and used them to cut nearly all the grain grown in the valley.

The photograph shows a horse-drawn reaper harvesting wheat on the Bennett farm near Philomath circa 1905.

John Bennett and Clint Nye operating a three horse-drawn reaper/binder
in a field on the Bennett Farm located just south of Philomath, Oregon.

 

 

 

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

 

Unicycle!

 The current exhibit downstairs at the Benton County Historical Society's Philomath Museum is entitled, “Walk, Ride & Roll.”  You can see the different ways people travel without cars whether it be walking, riding horses, boating, or riding a train. Bicycles are included in the form of an early (1867) bike known as a “boneshaker” on display and in photos of locals riding their bikes in different settings.

One other early form of bicycle was known as the penny farthing as the shape reminded people of two coins --a penny (large) and a farthing (small) -- side by side. You can see one of these on display in the “Hats and Chairs” exhibit in the Society's Corvallis Museum.

What has not been included is a related item less commonly used:  a unicycle.  These developed as riders on penny farthings discovered that they could ride keeping their weight over the front wheel and not even use the back wheel.  Patents for a unicycle were issued in 1869 and 1881.  Unicycles feature the pedals and a bar supporting the seat attached to the axle of the one wheel. 

For a time, unicycles were associated with clowns and other performers.  In this photo from the Bicentennial Celebration in Corvallis (1976), Brian and Gary Martin are riding unicycles during a clown workshop. Gary, on the right, is riding what is sometimes called a giraffe-- a unicycle with a long shaft supporting the seat and a chain connecting the pedals.  

Unicycles, clown workshop, bicentennial folk festival,
Brian Horner (L) and Gary Martin (R),
Corvallis, Oregon. Photo by Judy Carlson.

In the 1980s new forms of the unicycle were introduced as people found new ways to use them.  The free style unicycle has a small wheel and high seat for doing tricks or clowning around.

These cycles are also used for unicycle basketball and other games.  There's a mountain unicycle (muni) (similar to a mountain bike) with wider tires for riding on rougher roads. The touring bike is made for riding long distances and has a larger wheel.  Both are used in unicycle races. In unicycle “trials” competitions (or street unicycling), riders attempt to navigate a course of obstacles without the rider touching the ground. Sometimes this means hopping or jumping the unicycle.  People seem to be using unicycles in some of the same way they do skateboards. Wonder when these events will be added to the Olympics!

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