15 What city park is named after a long line of surveyors, several of whom have been covered in this column? Question continues Klamath Falls is home to a city park which encompasses more than 400 acres and lies at the southern tip of Klamath Lake on Lakeshore Drive. The park is only two miles (as the crow flies) from the Oregon Tech campus, and I’ve driven by it many times thinking someday I would use it for a story. What I didn’t know is how involved the story would be to tell and how the park’s namesake led a fascinating life which was interwoven with some of the hero’s and scoundrels of Oregon’s surveying history. As all good surveying families go, the park’s namesake comes from Answer a long line of surveyors, several of whom have been covered in this column. His family left their roots in Marion County and arrived in Linkville (present day Klamath Falls) in 1874. His father, William S. Moore, soon built a sawmill on the Link River which he operated with his youngest son, Charles, who would go on to become a Klamath County judge and Oregon State treasurer. Charles also did some surveying, but he is not the focus of this story. By 1882, William had turned the sawmill operations over to his two sons, Charles and Rufus, who became notable land owners, timber barons, and pillars of the Klamath Falls community. The latter of those three things is where the story becomes more complicated because within his extended family, we find some heroes and scoundrels. Throughout his life Rufus was a capitalist who was responsible for the development of mills, canals, railroad development, power generation, lumber, and logging. It was said he knew every inch of Klamath County like it was his own front yard, and according to his obituary, he often walked more than 2,000 miles in a single season. It was common Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org The Lost Surveyor
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