Sunday Drive: Winchester Bay, 1952

Every summer vacation where our ultimate goal was Oregon we spent several weeks at a trailer park in Winchester Bay.* These photos from 1952 appear to be taken during our earliest stay there.**

[I have no clue what that dark diagonal line through the image is. From my personal collection.]

[Caption: Boats Winchester Bay taken from cannery. From my personal collection.]

*At this time the park was being run by Stanley and Lena Spooner, the in-laws of the owner Jack Himbaugh. Trying to figure out just how we came to know these people, I think the Curreys probably met the couple initially through their son Lee Spooner, a sailor stationed in San Diego during World War II. Mother and Dad had friends whose sons were in the U.S. Navy who sometimes brought their friends around for a good home cooked meal. I can't imagine any other connection.
**Here's a view of the park taken two years later.

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Oregon Wilderness, 1958

While we were staying at Fisherman's Trailer (now RV) Park in Winchester Bay during the summer of 1958, the owner Jack Himbaugh invited Dad to go with him on a visit to the gold mining claim in a remote part of Oregon* that he and a partner were working. The first photo shows the bulldozer the two men were using in their attempt to reach bedrock on the property.

[Northwest United States -- Physical. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

To reach the claim, Dad said they turned off a county road onto a logging road, then left that to follow a fire trail, and finally several traversed a couple of miles of rough track bulldozed out of the wilderness, ending up at an old cabin built by earlier miners next to the gold-bearing stream. Farther on the canyon opened out into a sunny water meadow filled with carnivorous pitcher plants (Darlingtonia californica).

[Jack Himbaugh, right, and his partner Ferdinand (last name forgotten) on the left]

[Ferdinand standing next to the chain at the entrance to the claim]

[Jack drove an old Dodge Power Wagon--this was probably taken through its windshield]

[All color slides from my personal collection]

There were bears in the woods, one of which was causing problems for Jack's partner who lived on-site. But that's a story for another day.

*Probably in either Coos or Douglas County.



© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.