PORTRAITS: Fort rock valley homestead years

All  through the nineteenth century, persons in Europe and the eastern states and provinces of North America associated Oregon with verdure, fertility and a bountiful nature.  How persons yearned for this landscape  and for the rich loams that produced these pastoral scenes! 

Oh, so many learned the hard and bitter lesson that nature has not provided  her bounty evenly.  Many who left a relatively pleasant life became  enmeshed with desperate seasonal crises as the hard summer sun struck the anvil of the desert and the hoary blasts of winter froze dreams  forever.  But some endured, some persevered.  This is their altogether remarkable homesteading story, one that we might read today with  no little envy. 

Thomas Vaughan
                    Executive Director
                    Oregon Historical Society
                    1954-1989

PORTRAITS was published in September 1989 to coincide with the annual Homesteaders' Reunion, which is held in Fort Rock on the second Sunday in September.