I just came across these pictures from back in September and I don’t believe I ever got them posted. My son, Corianton, has kind of a family history bug at the moment, so I thought he might enjoy them.
My maternal grandfather was a pioneer named Bartlett Yance Couch. He lived at that time when men, and women, had to really struggle to survive. He was born in the west and lived in the west all of his life. It was the times when people would travel to unknown parts to stake their claim on a piece of ground, to try to make a living on.
As a young man, my grandfather’s family had settled for a time in eastern Oregon. Grandpa Bart had a job where he would drive a team of horses, and haul freight. There is a little, almost ghost town that at one time was a main town for freight. It was initially set up to help in the sell and transfer of sheep and the pelts. The town is, Shaniko. I am not sure how exciting his freight job really was, but he sure had a lot of stories that started with, “When I was freightin’ out of Shaniko…” Freighting involved a team of at least 6 horses and a long wagon. My mom has a picture of Grandpa Bart standing, as he drove this outfit. I never thought too much about it, until Roy and I tried to take a short cut out of Shaniko and we were on a less traveled road, probably like Grandpa’s roads, but better. That is some rough terrain out there!
So anyway, one Saturday last fall, Roy and I took a couple of the labradoodles, and headed over the mountains to Shaniko. I wanted to share some pictures of our field trip.
We loaded up the wagon (VW Cabriolet) and Roy and a couple of labradoodles and I were on our way. Mazy and Annie Labradoodle were very happy to finally arrive. They thought the open air of the old mode of transportation was more to their liking.
Wagons-Ho! With Mazy and Annie ready to go!
In case you should ever forget what town you are in, this building exist…. The town is very flat, so can be seen from many directions.
The town was almost a complete ghost town. You would see many buildings like these.
And used car lots like this….
Then, a wealthy man from Portland took an interest. He purchased around 28 or so acres, so yeah, like basically the entire town. He built a nice RV park. He put a lot of money into restoring the old school house….
And he bought the old hotel. He restored it beautifully! He hired some folks to manage it, and according the local source we spoke with, the management was the problem. Not that the town is practically a ghost town. The Shaniko Hotel is a lovely brick building, the biggest in this tiny-town-of-the-past.
He also did one other very big thing. He ran a water line from somewhere out of town, to his property! This was huge. Our source told us they were very excited, but then disappointed when he would not agree to share his water!
If you have ever wanted to own your own town, this gentlemen does have his 20-some-odd acres, hotel, RV park and waterlines for sale! Just contact Floyd.. I think they’re asking 1.3 million.
On with our city tour…. at the wagon barn the girls tried out a few other wagons.
Now I know that Shaniko did no have labradoodles, let alone Australian labradoodles back in the 1890’s, but you do have to admit they look pretty good sitting there! Maybe if they had, they wouldn’t be an almost ghost town.
From the wagon barn we made our way to the candy store! There we bought some licorice and a cold sasparilla. We would have liked to have bought more, but many of the buildings are short of some utilities other than water. We hadn’t thought to much about it and just thought we would use a debit card… the candy store owner said there are no phone lines on that street, so nooooo debit cards.
Of course the labradoodles did not go in the candy store…Mazy has a terrible sweet tooth and we never know what she might decide she needs..
The museum, next to the candy store was very good. It is self guided and very informative.
Next we came across one more wagon…
And of course I couldn’t resist… I can’t say the labradoodles enjoyed this wagon very much…
Don’t they look so sad?
If you have a wedding coming up soon, you might want to check this out:
I really loved this idea! I had done something similar, but never thought of attaching them to a tree!
Last, we went into the ice cream shop… Roy is never one to pass up an ice cream stop! There we had a sandwich and a cone before we hit the road. There was an old guy sitting in the corner in his overalls, telling anyone who would listen about the good ol’ days. Pretty interesting.
We were just about to leave town, when I see one of my relatives!
It looks like it is a petrified Couch relative! We were sure of it, when we took a look at the nose.
We then loaded the labradoodles up in the VW and headed out of town a different way than we came in… unfortunately the way we went ended up running out of road, but very scenic…
Would we reccommend this field trip? Sure, why not? The labradoodles would also! They do have one annual festival… I think it is a sheep round up or something. But for us, we’ll go when the town is ghostly quiet….
Here are a few websites about Shaniko you might want to check out, if I have peeked your interest:
http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/or/shaniko.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaniko,_Oregon
http://www.shaniko.com/
