PLSO The Oregon Surveor September/October 2021

16 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 44, No. 5 Featured Article Probably the first “organized trail build - ing” in this area was after the creation of the Forest Reserve Act by Congress in 1891, with the reserves to be adminis- tered by the Department of the Interior. In 1893, the first reserve created in Or - egon was the 220-square-mile Bull Run Reserve to protect Portland’s water sup - ply. The second was a reserve to protect Ashland’s water supply, which was only 29 square miles. The third was the Cas- cade Oregon Forest Reserve which was 235 miles long along the Cascade crest and contained over 7,000 square miles. In addition to hiring deputy surveyors to survey section lines, the General Land Of- fice (GLO) was also in charge of these and other “reserves.” The superintendent of the Cascade Reserve was a gent by the name of Captain Salmon B. Ormsby, who hired and supervised “forest rangers” to open trails, fight fires, etc. Finding The Trail In 1967, while at Oregon State, I was browsing through some old Mazama An- nuals and came across an article about a 1900 trip to Minto Mountain, which is located in Township 11 South, Range 7 East, W.M. (Section 12), having been sur- veyed in 1896. The article states, “The trail up Minto Mountain was opened for us by the forest rangers Messrs Parrish, Heness(sic), Heseman, and White, under Superintendent Ormsby, and to these rangers, we were indebted for many fa- vors during the trip.” The GLO survey plat shows “Bowman’s Trail up Minto Mtn,” undoubtedly being the one referred to in the 1900 article above. The GLO management of the “Cascade Reserve” continued until 1905 when the U.S. Forest Service was created within the Department of Agriculture. In 1908, the northern portion of the “Cascade Re- serve” was broken down into the Oregon National Forest and the Cascade National Forest. The dividing line between the two was the Willamette Valley and Cascade (Santiam) Wagon Road, roughly where Highway 20 now runs today along the South Santiam River. In 1911, Oregon National Forest was further divided into the Mt. Hood National Forest and the Santiam National Forest, with the com- mon boundary being approximately the north limit of the Breitenbush River drain- age. In 1933, the Santiam and Cascade National Forests were combined to be- come today’s Willamette National Forest. The trail that is the subject for this arti- cle was located in the Breitenbush area near the head of East Humbug Creek. It was near the ridge top between East Humbug Creek and Elk Lake Creek about four miles northeast of Gold Butte Look- out. In 1983, my dad, Noyes Whitten, was looking at a proposed Forest Service tim- ber sale near the head of East Humbug Creek. He came across what he presumed was an old Indian trail beside a shallow little lake about 50 feet across. A few hundred feet farther down the “trail” he found a spring with a lot of obsidian chips nearby and a large hemlock tree with a foot-square blaze that had been scribed as follows: “Elevation 3100 Mohler and Hicks 8-9-06.” He didn’t bid on the sale, but did go back there a few months lat- er and sawed the chunk containing the scribing out of the tree. It would have been destroyed by the impending log- ging otherwise. I recognized the name Mohler from a 1907 Mazama Annual that I had seen at the Kerr Library at OSU in 1967. In that 1907 report was an article authored by L.J. Hicks, a member of the Mazamas, who wrote about a trip he had made with Sidney Mohler in August of 1906. (The Mazamas were, and still are, a mountaineering club organized in 1894 on the summit of Mt. Hood.) I have been a land surveyor for more than 50 years and have seen a lot of old scribing by deputy surveyors (1851 to 1910) and have done a fair share of scrib- ing myself. I have never seen letters and numbers so carefully and neatly made! I surmised that Mohler and Hicks probably camped here for a day due to rain, for it would take a long time to make these marks, especially with only a jack-knife. The “Indian trail” my dad mentioned was probably re-opened by the GLO in about 1900 since there were mining claims filed in 1890 about twomiles to the northwest. Mohler & Hicks Sidney Sumner Mohler was born in Min- nesota in 1880 and was a contract painter living in Oregon City in 1900. He had climbed alone from Jefferson Park to the top of Mt. Jefferson in 1903. L.J. Hicks was “scouting” the Jefferson Park area for a planned Mazamas outing there in 1907. In August of 1906, from Mohler’s home in Oregon City, they went south- erly to Wilhoit Springs, a few miles east of Scotts Mills, probably by wagon. They then started their walking trip to Mt. Jef- ferson, following a trail east to the Molalla River, thence northeasterly past Roost- er Rock to the area of Table Rock. They then dropped easterly, down to Bagby Hot Springs on the headwaters of the Collawash River. From there, the route would be southeasterly past Bull of the Woods, on various trails, to Elk Lake Creek and then up to the ridge top where they camped and marked their names on the tree. This would be about two days’ travel fromWilhoit Springs. After a rainy day in camp, they would have gone southwest- erly, via a ridge trail, about five miles to Elk Lake, and then down the West Fork of Humbug Creek to the Breitenbush River. They then would have followed the Breitenbush down to Detroit and then easterly along the Oregon Pacific railroad grade to Tunnel Creek, where it had ended in 1889. From there, they obviously followed the Minto Trail (circa 1880s) for a mile to Whitewater Creek and then turned off continued T The trail that is the subject for this article was located in the Breitenbush area near the head of East Humbug Creek. It was near the ridge top between East Humbug Creek and Elk Lake Creek about 4 miles northeast of Gold Butte Lookout. continues T