Recollections of Peak, Oregon

The Benton County Historical Society's collection contains a 1980 letter from  Viola Davidson Farmer in which she recollected life in Peak, Oregon. Viola  is the third from the left in the photograph.  She is standing next to her mother, Virginia (Virgie) Davidson (fourth from the left).

Mrs. Farmer writes: “My mother had been working with Mrs. Kessel, Postmistress in Philomath, to get a P. O. half way between Harlan and Philomath. This was installed shortly before my birth and was given the name of Peak, Oregon.”

Peak was located two miles north of Marys Peak and  6 miles south of Blodget, on the western edge of Benton County.  The Peak Post Office was established October 11, 1899.

Her letter continues:

“The office was a wooden dry goods box with cubby holes placed on a table in my mother's bedroom.  A man on horseback carried the mail to our house, spent the night there, went on to Harlan the next day, then repeated the route the next two days in reverse.  There was no road then, only a trail.  There was a makeshift road to Blodget where we had been getting our mail before that.”

Davidson house/Peak Post Office, circa 1900

Davidson house/Peak Post Office, 1910

The house stayed in the same place but the address changed so siblings “Noah and Mary were born at Blodget and I was born at Peak-- All three of us in the same house.”

“Well, my people did all right.  Made roads and new houses and a nice schoolhouse [in the top photo] that doubled for a church.  Conditions got so the mail came with a team and a hack and transported cream and groceries, etc. Also made Philomath to Harlan in one day and back to Philomath the next day. I grew up to be the Post Mistress' assistant and also to see as many as thirty kids in school....We had nice times.  But when it was time to put the new highway through to Yacquana [sic] we were voted out and it went with the railroad.  The people who had come to homestead moved away and Marys Peak died.  It had been logged off and there is nothing there to show there ever were houses, roads, or fences.”

The Peak Post Office  closed on October 15, 1917.

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