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Vistillas
Between 1871 and 1930 there were
forty-eight different post offices in Lake County. Each post
office represented a community. Vistillas was one of those
little towns. It was located five to six miles west of Drews
Reservoir, where Fishhole Creek Ranch is situated today. The
area was populated by ranchers and loggers. This small town
survived for fifty years in the wilderness because the
people worked hard, worked together, and had the benefit of
a few essential services.
The town was first named Loraton, although this name was
rejected because it sounded too much like Lorella, another
town in Klamath County. The local settlers then suggested it
be called Fairview, which was again turned down by the post
office because another town in Oregon had that name.
Finally, on May 17, 1890, they named it Vistillas, a Spanish
word meaning “viewpoint”, similar in meaning to Fairview.
The name stuck and lasted as long as the town did.
The men living in the Fishhole Creek valley raised livestock
and hay or logged for a living. There was a railroad that
ran near Vistillas that carried logs to the Euwana Box Camp
near Quartz Mountain. There was a sawmill in Barnes Valley,
just a few miles south of Vistillas, and another mill north
of the present location of Drews Valley Ranch. Although the
Fishhole area was thick with trees and the closeness of two
mills was convenient for logging, the majority of
homesteaders were ranchers. The valleys of Fishhole Creek
formed meadows rich in green grass, fit for grazing and
haying.
Both sheep and cattle were run in the area around Vistillas.
In the early years, this was a cause for conflict. A story
is told that in the 1880’s a cattleman by the name of
Holbrook shot McCreedy, a sheepherder, because of grazing
practices. Holbrook felt that McCreedy’s sheep were
overgrazing the pastures. Sheep have teeth on the top and
bottom and are able to chew the grass off at ground level;
cattle have teeth only on the bottom and cannot bite as
close, leaving more grass. Being a cattleman, Holbrook hated
sheep and anyone who ran them.
Eventually the argument between sheepherders and cattlemen
disappeared. In 1931 a sheepherder from the nearby town of
Barnes Valley came to Vistillas in search of two hundred
lost sheep. Mr. Devail’s herder was moving the sheep to
Juniper Mountain when he lost track of them. Boyd Adams, a
cattle rancher, went to with Mr. Devail to help him locate
his herd. In time many homesteaders ran both cattle and
sheep.
The homesteaders of Vistillas came for many different
reasons. Some settlers, like Gilbert Lapham, came as young
men to establish ranches. Others, like Jody Owen of the JO
ranch, were raised in the area. Jody Owen’s father, James
Owen, came to Oregon in an ox cart as a toddler in May 1879.
James Owen learned to walk while holding onto the cart on
their long journey. Jody Owen went to school in Bly and
stayed in the area. Boyd Adams came to Vistillas on doctors’
orders. Mr. Adams was suffering from a disease that is today
believed to have been Tuberculosis. His doctor told him to
move to a higher, drier elevation.
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Joe Virden came to Oregon
from Iowa to complete his education and spent his vacations
at the Lapham ranch. As a young boy, George Fullerton came
to Vistillas with a friend. Fullerton’s parents had died
and, at the age of fourteen, he was considered an adult,
while his brothers and sisters were adopted. Fullerton
worked on the ranches and continued to live in the Bly and
Lakeview area his entire life.
As the town grew, the community became more united. Come hay
season, the men all worked together to cut and put up the
hay. They formed a haying crew, stacking the hay at one
ranch and then moving on to do the same job at the next. The
huge mounds of loose hay stood at least twenty feet high. It
was stacked methodically with the hay laid flat, horizontal
to the ground, so that water could not run into the stack. A
tall split rail fence was then built around the stack to
protect it from livestock. The hay was used to feed the
herds of animals all winter long.
Intermixed with the hard work there
were good times. The town was jokingly called Bachelor Flat because of
the limited number of women. Needless to say, the men never had enough
good food or enough beer. One of the ladies of Vistillas, Mrs. Lapham, had a garden and was often a hostess
for the hungry men. The folks were always ready for a
celebration, using any excuse to relax and take a break form
the hard work. On June 26, 1931 Mr. and Mrs. Jody Owen thew
a party for their wedding anniversary, over twenty-five
people came. The housewarming at Boyd Adams’ new cabin was a
party long remembered. People came by wagon from miles
around for a celebration that lasted for days, just because
Adams had built a new home.
The men of Vistillas enjoyed laughing at others’ mishaps.
Joe Virden took a bet of $2.50 that he could ride a horse by
the name of Black Toots for ten seconds. Virden settled
himself on the mare and, by the first jump, he was in
trouble. Joe Virden only rode Black Toots for two seconds
before she threw him in the dirt. The story was so popular
it made the local newspaper.
Boyd Adams mined his ranch for petrified wood in the early
1930’s. He sold the wood to a hotel builder in Klamath
Falls. The hotel built with Adams’s petrified wood is still
standing in Klamath. Adams received a write up in the Herald
and News which excited the entire town of Vistillas. It
was a community where one person’s success was shared by
all.
Three roads led into the area that made up Vistillas. The
men did what little shopping they needed to do in Bly. Many
made business trips to Portland or Klamath Falls, although
most of what they needed they raised on their own land. They
had a post office which moved from house to house as the
locals took turns being the postmaster. The first was Edward
Tull; in later years Adams, Owen, and Lapham all served as
the postmaster. There was a school in Barnes Valley that was
formed out of the Bly District in March 1889. In 1905 the
school was discontinued because there were no more children
attending.
Because of the hard work, sense of community, and
determination of its inhabitants, Vistillas existed until
1933. Then, because of the hardships of the depression, many
ranchers were unable to make enough to survive. With the
establishment of irrigation districts, life in the lower
valleys promised them less work and easier living with a
higher yield for their labor. The locals moved out. The
homesteads that made up Vistillas were sold as one large
block of land, which today makes up one of the best and
biggest ranches in Lake County. The homes of the early
settlers lie deserted in the meadows. Their split rail
fences and irrigation ditches are still used and, in many
ways, their lifestyle is continued. |
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