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COMMUNITIES
IN SEARCH OF
OUR HISTORY
Laurel Roses
Mulino News
Through the writing of this column, and my son doing his
Eagle Scout project restoring the Howard Cemetery in Mulino,
I came into possession of a headstone found in a citizens
garage. I went and picked it up, and the hope is to have it
repaired and returned to the cemetery.
When I shared this information at a Mulino Hamlet meeting
many questions came up about who owned the cemetery and
whose responsibility was it to keep it maintained. Many
thought it belonged to the State Highway Department since it is
located on their right of way; others said it was owned by the
family who lives in the house located right there.
This prompted Mike Wagner, Hamlet Chairman, to start an
investigation, pouring through County records and maps of
cemeteries in the area which led to the truth.
The Howards Cemetery is owned by Ann Wiley Breemer and
her brother, Drew Howard Wiley, great-great grandchildren of
Richard Rutter Howard and Cynthia Turner Howard.
This couple had 10 children, the youngest a daughter, was
born within a few weeks of setting up a tent in the Willamette
Valley after the wagon train trip across from Illinois where
Richard had been a miller. When they settled just south of
Oregon City, Richard Howard first built a saw mill, then the
family home, then the flour mill which was located in the town
they established, Mulino.
Their son, Charles Turner Howard, took over and ran the mill
his whole life. He was Ann’s great grandfather. Charles married
Mary Sanders who was a major player in the establishment and
running of the grange. The family were patrons and builders of
the first church.
Mike Wagner was able to make contact with Ann Wiley
Breemer in California and asked her for any information she
may have on the Founders Cemetery, as we call it.
She informed us she was going to be in Oregon in August
and that she would like to come to Mulino to visit and answer
our questions. In the mean time, Mike was able to locate the
Sanders cemetery that Ann and Drew also owned as their great
grandmother was Mary Sanders, and remembers visiting with
her family as a child.
Several days of pruning, weed whacking, sweating and sore
muscles resulted in Mike finding the Sanders cemetery in total
disarray and vandalized. He found the Wright family plots in
the same area, then cleaned and exposed the headstones still in
existence as best as he could.
Ann told us that the cemetery is where it is, on the north end
of Molalla, because the Sanders family donated the land for a
church to be built there, which it was. The church is gone now,
but the cemetery that was next to the church remains.
When Ann and her husband Jan came to visit us, we went to
both cemeteries and she shared with us many wonderful mem-
ories passed down to her from her mother. Unfortunately the
cemetery was vandalized long before the 1980s and her mother
sadly knew that the body of her grandfather was taken. Many
headstones have been removed and very little has been done to
keep the site clear of being totally taken back by nature.
On two separate occasions, Ann and Drew were contacted
about the possibility of offering the cemetery for active burying
places. One of those requests was from a racist group that they
turned down on no uncertain terms.
For several years, a paranormal group took an active interest
in spending time at the Sanders Cemetery and made some
unusual claims on activities there. The family had a difficult
time protecting the site because they lived so far away, so they
struggled to keep it up and protect it like they would have liked.
Bayne Howard, Charles Howard’s son, operated the mill and
owned the Howard Cemetery in Mulino, and lived in the area
until he was 86. During the time he was keeper of the Howard
property, the highway was scheduled to be widened and he gave
permission for the Howard Cemetery to be relocated to its cur-
rent spot. It is unsure if only the headstones were moved or the
remains also.
In many ways, Ann is torn as to what the best long term solu-
tion for the greatest respect to show to her ancestors. Is it best
to try and maintain the cemetery from a long distance, or would
it be best, and not such an attraction to vandals, to just let the
forest grow over the place and let them rest in peace? It is locat-
ed in such a forested and secluded spot and she has such a great
respect for them, but the idea of people with no respect for the
deceased or the past could do more harm than nature ever
would.
I was overwhelmed with the whole outing and the opportu-
nity to be transformed back to a time when this valley was first
being settled by pioneers. To stand at the graves of those early
settlers created in me a great appreciation of the life they estab-
lished on the frontier and wondered what they would think if
they came to visit today.
Even more tempting to me is wishing for just one opportuni-
ty to travel back in time and truly experience the day-to-day life
that played out over 100 years go in this place we now call
home.
Photo by Laurel Roses
Ann Wiley Breemer, great-great granddaughter of Richard and
Cynthia Howard, founders of Mulino stands near the founder’s ceme-
tery where her ancestors are buried in Mulino.
MOLALLA PIONEER 100-YEAR ANNIVERSARY 13
“Green and Gold Timber”/Hult
That’s not snow falling from the sky; that’s wood shavings from the Hult Sawmill in Colton. This photo was taken around 1913.
Colton 1913:
A Story of School Issues, Taxes and Sawmills
Cindy Fama
Colton Corner
What was happening in Colton in
1913? Life was getting pretty estab-
lished in the area.
Wikipedia tells us that in 1892 by two
residents, Joshua Gorbett and a man
named Cole, each wanted to name the
community after the other.
The United States Postal Service
informed them Gorbett was too much
like Corbett and would be confusing, so
the community was named Colton. The
Colton Post Office was established that
same year.
Now, 15 years later, a passage in the
book “Gold and Green Timber A History
of the Nils Peter Hult Family” says,
“There was still much of the virgin tim-
ber and the second growth made the
woods so dense you could not see the
houses. Colton sawmills were abundant
with the large Hult Sawmill on Milk
Creek where Hult Road crosses and
smaller family owned mills from
Elwood to Highland to Fernwood. In
1913 Stephen Carver was extending the
Clackamas and Eastern Railroad line to
the Hult Mill.”
Logging and milling were the eco-
nomic mainstays of the area.
By 1913 there were several phone
lines to the outside world, churches and
several small general stores, some offer-
ing music and dances on a Saturday
night.
According to an article written by
Ollie Lundstrom and published in the
“Molalla, Oregon Bulletin” on Oct 26,
1977: “In 1913 there was much discus-
sion about the need for a local high
school in Colton.”
Frideborg Hult Cornay expands on the
1913 events leading up to the building of
the Colton High School in her essay,
“Colton, Oregon, From Before the
Beginning of the Century.”
The following is an excerpt:
“Philip Hult, as a ways and means
committee of one (self-appointed…
Maybe!) went to the Court house in
Oregon City and looked up district
boundaries and tax records. He found
that school taxes paid by even the most
influential land-owners in the communi-
ty amounted to very little, since this dis-
trict was classed, for tax purposes, as
logged-over, burned-over stumpage
land. But, he found the ‘Pot of Gold at
the end of the Rainbow’ that day in the
Court House. He found three townships
of valuable timber land in the Cascade
foothills, the school taxes of which were
not claimed by any adjoining school dis-
trict. He found Colton bordered on this
land quite substantially and Bee Hill was
attached by a sliver. By law it could be
claimed for either district or consolidat-
ed districts.
The next step was to bring the good
news to the Colton School Board and get
some action. ACTION? By 3 a.m. there
were still entirely too many bugs in the
proposition to get any action except in
reverse.
Phillip had taken his school-marm sis-
ter (author of this piece, Frideborg Hult)
along when meeting with the Board
because she was more personally
acquainted with them—but instead of
being an asset she was a liability-what
could two young folks barely out of their
teens (23 and 24 respectively) possibly
know of the serious business of taxes
and school board and revamping dis-
tricts and building new buildings?
So back to home base to doctor up
district boundaries again. This time it
would include only Bee Hill and James
Districts. The eastern boundary of the
latter ran parallel with Wall Street but a
few rods east of it, and of course, bor-
dered on Bee Hill and this, in turn was
attached to the townships of timber land.
A daytime visit to the Board of Bee
Hill was decided on and this time Philip
took his venerable father, Mr. N.P. Hult,
along.
Instead of picking up the various
members of the Board for a discussion,
they found the entire male population of
the district on the road working out their
road tax. It may have that they were dead
tired from their battle with rocks and
stumps and were swayed by the possibil-
ity of plank road on which to transport
their children the slightly greater dis-
tance to school-or maybe it was the sage
advice of an older citizen who they all
respected or just the enthusiasm of
youth-whatever the reason they all even-
tually were jockeying for position on the
petition for consolidation.
There was one more problem to be
resolved-that of persuading the James
District that it could possibly be a good
idea to build a new grade school and a
high school at its present location on
Wall Street (the building burned to the
ground in 1993) instead of its former
place on the corner of Dhooghe Road
and Highway 211.
Finally after much discussion and a
solid promise of a new school building
for the first three grades near the west
side of the district, which became known
as the Cedardale School, everybody
seemed to settle down to enjoy the afflu-
ence derived from the windfall of taxes
channeled in the consolidated district.”
(per Cornay: the two story school
building known as Colton High went up
on Wall Street in 1914).
CPO calls for push to fix road
Craig Loughridge
Clarkes-Highland News
“This is a campaign.”
Those were the words of Ralph
Gierke, chairman of the Clarkes-
Highland Community Planning
Organization, as he and others at last
week’s CPO meeting agreed to lobby for
road repairs to the “Four Corners” inter-
section in Clarkes.
CPO members voted unanimously to
draft a letter to county commissioners to
ask for safety improvements at the inter-
section. CPO members also agreed that
as many as possible would attend a town
hall meeting of commissioners at 7 p.m.
March 19 at Molalla Public Library, 201
E. Fifth St.
The intersection where Unger Road
and Windy City Road come together
with Beavercreek Road has had at least
half dozen crashes since 1986, but at
least two of those crashes have resulted
in serious injuries.
Long-time Clarkes resident Gary
Hartt, a former CPO president, agreed
with other CPO members that the inter-
section is dangerous, and likely has had
many more crashes that have gone unre-
ported.
Local residents who’ve been asked
about the intersection say the danger
results from a sight distance that is too
short because of a hill a few hundred feet
south of the intersection on Beavercreek
Road.
The intersection lies less than a quarter
mile east of Clarkes Elementary School,
and the school’s buses travel through the
intersection daily as they go to and from
school with students.
Hartt said one of his greatest fears
since a child on a bike was run down in
the intersection about 1986 has been that
a school bus full of kids would be hit by
a passing log truck or dump truck.
Hartt and Howard Bicket said volun-
teers put together a plan to fix the inter-
section with donated labor in the 1990s,
but county officials refused to approve
the plan.
The Oregon Department of
Transportation, which maintains a
statewide database of crash reports, had
reported four crashes at the intersection
from 1992 until fall 2012. A fifth crash
reported by the Clackamas County
Sheriff’s Office in December 2012 had-
n’t reached the ODOT database as of last
month.
Anyone with a recollection of a past
crash at the intersection, no matter how
long ago, and whether documented or
not, is asked to call Hartt at 503-632-
6955. Information also can be posted on
the Facebook page for Clarkes-Highland:
www.clarkes-highland.com.
CPO members also scheduled a spe-
cial meeting for 7:30 p.m. May 1 at
Clarkes Grange to further discuss safety
work at the intersection.
Candy donations needed for egg hunt
The parent-teacher group at Clarkes
Elementary School says the group still
needs donations of candy for the group’s
Easter egg hunt, scheduled for March 22.
Donations can be dropped at the school
office between 9 a.m. and 3:45 p.m. on
school days.
In other school news, kindergarten
registration is scheduled for April 18
from 3:45 to 4:30 p.m. For more infor-
mation, call the school at 503-632-3290.