Make the McKenzie Connection!
Make the McKenzie Connection!
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Animal House poster By Finn J.D. John In this third and final part of a 3-part series on iconic Hollywood films shot in Oregon, we’ll talk about six films rather than five. Our survey ends, rather arbitrarily, with the end of the 1980s, at the dawning of the Gus Van Sant era of filmmaking in Oregon (and particularly in the Portland area). But first: The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975) Walt Disney Productions. Starring Bill Bixby, Susan Clark, Don Knotts, Tim Conway. Oregon connection: Deschutes County. This lightweight, feel-good Gold Rush W...
From the February 7, 2001 edition of McKenzie River Reflections Crews ready to drain Cougar Cougar cooling tower BLUE RIVER: Divers using mixed-gas technology in their scuba tanks have been working at depths of up to 200 feet while preparing Cougar Dam for planned upgrades. Underwater work has centered on removing a bulkhead at the upper end of the dam’s diversion tunnel and installing a trash rack to keep debris out when the reservoir is drained. In December, crews will remove a concrete plug that has closed the tunnel for nearly forty y...
McKenzie River Reflections...
From the May 5, 2000 edition of McKenzie River Reflections Seymour's Chateau" src="http://mckenzieriverreflectionsnewspaper.com/sites/default/files/small_Chateau.png" style="width: 180px; height: 119px; margin: 5px; float: left;" By Margaret Estenson While building our home in Vida in the spring and summer of 1944, we lived next door to Seymour’s Chateau on Leaburg Lake. There were three houses just west of the Chateau. Martha Goodrich had the house next door. The Goodrichs had some connection with running the First National Bank on the c...
Articles from past editions of the McKenzie River Reflections newspaper...
From the April 12, 2000 edition of McKenzie River Reflections Burned toilet MCKENZIE BRIDGE: Last Saturday an arsonist burned a toilet in the McKenzie Bridge Campground, just west of that upriver community. The double-vault building was completely destroyed, leaving only a few charred posts, steel doors and the metal roofing still standing. Replacing the toilet will cost an estimated $20,000, according to Dave Graham, developed sites manager for the McKenzie Ranger District “This type of act impacts everyone,” Graham said. “We will now have...
Sometimes a Great Notion By Finn J.D. John This is part 2 of a 3-part series on iconic Hollywood movies shot in Oregon. Last week, we looked at the era from the dawn of filmmaking through the 1950s. Today, we’ll talk about movies made between 1960 and 1975. Of course, this is not an article about popular cinema as a mirror of popular culture. But it’s hard to miss the social changes these pictures showcase. The nation that produced Shenandoah, with its faint stirrings of uneasy anti-war sentiment still wrapped up in classic Technicolor-era Wes...
Helfrich brothers Posted: 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 2 All tickets for this year's McKenzie Memories have been sold - none will be available at the door. Below is a story about the event. EUGENE: A paddle down a stream full of memories is planned for the night of April 4th. The third annual McKenzie Memories history event will feature storytelling, music, rare historic films and photographs of the McKenzie River. The evening will kick off with live acoustic music by The Blue McKenzie band. Then Dave Helfrich will share early family stories in...
Rachel and the stranger By Finn J.D. John In the past 25 years or so, Oregon has come into its own as a place to make movies. The iconic projects have come thick and fast, especially in the last 25 years or so. The last 15 years of the century saw The Goonies, Stand By Me, Drugstore Cowboy, Point Break, Free Willy (twice), Mr. Holland’s Opus, The Postman, Ricochet River and Men of Honor filmed here — along with dozens of others. And the 21st century so far has brought us Pay It Forward, Elephant, The Ring (twice), Fahrenheit 9/11, Into th...
Oregon Boot By Finn J.D. John In 1866, Oregon State Penitentiary Warden J.C. Gardner had a problem. The state prison had just moved to its present home, in Salem. Its old home had been in Portland, but the city didn’t really want it there — especially after an incident in the early 1860s when the state tried to save some money by subcontracting the facility out to a private operator. This solved the overcrowding problem in fine style: every single prisoner escaped. Things would be better now that the penitentiary had a home. However, that...
Our 2013 crowd funding project launched NewsArk Version 1.0. It generated money to purchase new computers, a large scale scanner and a number of new software programs. indiegogo logo Click here to learn more. NewsArk logo The NewsArk is an ongoing effort to archive McKenzie River history. Parts of it will include digitized back issues of McKenzie River Reflections, newspaper, going back to the start of publication in 1978. To achieve that go, we will launch NewsArk Version 2.0, 3.0 & 4.0 in the future. Click here for some of the stories from...
Canines clobber Chamber kiosk December 1, 2000 edition of McKenzie River Reflections Damaged kiosk WALTERVILLE: An errant Ford van left it’s mark in the Walterville Shopping Center Thursday afternoon, traveling across the parking lot backwards and crashing into the McKenzie River Chamber of Commerce’s information kiosk. The force of it’s impact sent shattered glass splattering across a car driven by area resident Wendell Austin, who said a steel post saved him “from getting clobbered too.” Witnesses said the van, owned by Cheryl Metteer of Walt...
Klamath Falls By Finn J.D. John At around 2 p.m. on a sunny Monday afternoon in August 1911, Klamath Falls resident John Hunsaker was driving past the Oak Avenue Canal when he saw something in it — something that looked like a man. Now, this canal was the waterway that carried the pioneer city’s untreated sewage out to the Link River. So although some things were occasionally observed floating in it, they usually weren’t people. Hunsaker took a closer look. It was a man, all right. Or, rather, the body of a man. There was no mystery as...
Hank Vaughn at 35 By Finn J.D. John By the mid-1880s, the wild, unpredictable and dangerous Oregon almost-outlaw Hank Vaughan had started showing distinct signs of settling down. He had married a part-Umatilla woman named Martha Robie in 1883; Martha, a widow, had inherited a comfortable sum from her late husband, and also was entitled to claim 640 acres of reservation land. Hank, as Martha’s husband, now turned his considerable managerial talents away from livestock rustling and toward wheat-farm management. The results were surprisingly g...
Magazine cover By Finn J.D. John When Hank Vaughan was sent to prison back in 1865, more than one person breathed a sigh of relief. Although only a lad of 16, Hank had already tried to kill four men with his six-shooter, and with one he’d succeeded. Hot-tempered, hard drinking and quick on the draw, Hank was an unpredictable terror of the “Billy the Kid” type. Had he not been sent to prison, it’s extremely unlikely Hank would have seen his 18th birthday; he would most likely have died at the hands of an angry mob, something that had very ne...
Hank Vaughn By Finn J.D. John Crime, they say, does not pay. Yet it’s pretty easy to look back through history and find examples of a certain kind of criminal for whom it did, handsomely, and for decades. With charisma, moxie and a seemingly endless supply of good luck, these characters sometimes even manage to cheat karma and die a natural death. And somehow, after these criminals are gone, people remember them with a kind of fascinated fondness, and say things like, “well, we’ll never see another like that again.” The second half of the 19t...
Book cover Want to win a McKenzie history book? Go to: http://alturl.com/xryri & fill out a short form. Then take a screen shot of your completed survey & send it to: [email protected]. You'll be entered into a raffle to win a copy of our upcoming book - “Weir are we? Hatchery fish of the McKenzie.” Portions of the book will contain first-person interviews from articles published & preserved in our archives. The deadline is 2/22/14. McKenzie River Reflections...
Opium den By Finn J.D. John Most people think of opium today with a certain kind of mild romantic nostalgia. We know it was bad, and people got hurt, but opium and the demi-monde that developed around it had a certain dark allure with its fragrant, smoky fumes and its elegant, exotic smoking rituals. A hundred years ago, though, attitudes were different. In 1914, opium had only just been outlawed in the United States. Dark, secret, candlelit dens in the basements of Chinatowns all over the West – if you could find them, and if they would...
Black Bart By Finn J.D. John Charles Bolton was a man with many friends. A charming, gentlemanly member of the social elite in the brand-new frontier town of San Francisco, he always had plenty of money. And if you asked him, he’d tell you he was the owner and manager of some mining concerns in the Sierra Nevadas, up near the Oregon border. If you pressed for more details, he’d talk vaguely and change the subject, like a successful fisherman trying not to divulge the location of his favorite fishing hole. That was nothing unusual; plenty of...
May 5, 2000, edition of McKenzie River Reflections Seymour's Chateau" src="http://mckenzieriverreflectionsnewspaper.com/sites/default/files/small_Chateau.png" style="width: 180px; height: 119px; margin: 5px; float: left;" By Margaret Estenson While building our home in Vida in the spring and summer of 1944, we lived next door to Seymour’s Chateau on Leaburg Lake. There were three houses just west of the Chateau. Martha Goodrich had the house next door. The Goodrichs had some connection with running the First National Bank on the corner of B...
A look at back issues of McKenzie River Reflections....
January 12, 2000 edition of McKenzie River Reflections Leaburg church The McKenzie Valley Presbyterian Church, concerned with the condition of the Leaburg Retreat Center, recently asked the Presbytery of the Cascades to make a decision of what to do with the facility, which is badly in need of restoration. In reply, the Presbytery offered to put funds into the restoration of the site, providing the McKenzie church manages the facility. The search is now on for a responsible tenant to work with the church. Once a tenant is found decisions...
Sunken PT boat By Finn J.D. John The Porpoise was one ugly boat in 1992 when the guys from Portland first laid eyes on it. It was a massive, weatherbeaten old hulk, 78 feet long and 20 feet wide, wallowing by the dock on Treasure Island in the Alameda estuary. Some time earlier, a storm had sunk it in the bay; luckily, it had only been in a few feet of water, and easily refloated, but now it lay low in the water, its bilges heavily laden with silt and gravel and water that had seeped in where the hull had been patched. The electrical system...
Mayor Geprge Baker By Finn J.D. John George L. Baker, the big, bluff, hail-fellow-well-met owner of Portland’s Baker Theater, was flabbergasted. As he and his fellow Portland Rosarians were getting ready to march in the 1917 Rose Festival parade, a courier had run up to him with a cryptic message: “The grand marshal’s car awaits,” the messenger puffed. “Hurry and get in and don’t delay the parade.” “Why, I’m not grand marshal,” Baker replied, puzzled. Just then his friend Gus Moser, who was in charge of the parade that year, hustled over....
Will Daly By Finn J.D. John Late on the evening of June 2, 1917, the Portland Morning Oregonian sprang a trap – a cunning and dirty trap. The always-formidable daily newspaper, owned and edited by Henry Pittock following the death of the legendary Harvey Scott, had thrown its weight behind a big, boisterous City Council member named George Baker in the race for Portland city mayor. But in a fierce race with Union man and small-business owner Will Daly, Baker was clearly on track to lose. For Pittock, that was simply not acceptable. Daly,...
