[vc_row full_width=”” parallax=”” parallax_image=””][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Our guest speaker was Steve Arndt, author of the “Roads Less Traveled in Oregon” series of books about Oregon’s backroads. Some of the towns covered in his books include:
Lakeview, home of the geyser, “Old Perpetual,” located just off Highway 395;
Izee, named for a ranch brand and owned by one person;
Camp Gap, a CCC project from 1934 – 1942;
Bly, the only US location where people were killed during WW2. The cause: A Balloon Bomb;
Hardman used to be two towns: Raw Dog and Yellow Dog. The two, individual towns were owned by a pair of feuding brothers; and
Condon, home of the only Powell’s Bookstore outside of the Portland area. Two Nobel Prize winners grew up there.
The historical definition of a Ghost Town is any town with a significant loss of population. Steve Arnt has created his own definitions with several levels, the most ghostly of which is a town that no longer has any human inhabitants. Towns included on his ghostly list include:
Post: which now hosts only a general store. The old Glen Stage Coach Stop is about 13 miles away;
Paulina: originally named for an Indian Chief, this town has more houses that are empty than occupied;
Golden: a completely uninhabited town that is now a State Park. It was the set location for the TV series, Gunsmoke. It has seven standing buildings and a phony cemetery that was created for Gunsmoke;
Merlin: a town that used to be home to a sanitarium;
Buncom: an 1850’s ghost town, and
Mt. Vernon, formerly home to a hot spring and spa, was named for a race horse.
Steve Arndt grew up in Independence, Oregon and taught at Warner Pacific College for 19 years. His most recent book is “Oregon Ghost Towns A to Z.” He is currently working on volume two of the title[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]