This is a mostly a repeat memory post with some added thoughts and all new pictures. On our summer camping trip in June we drove through New Pine Creek, the tiny (not-quite-a) town that straddles the Oregon-California border. We lived in that out-of-the-way place for two years very early in our life together.
Goose Lake State Park, Oregon
That was in the early 1960s. Back then, Goose Lake wasn't yet a State Park but it was a 20+ mile long shallow Lake. Now it is a large field of grass. Not a drop of water.
We'd last driven through this area twelve years ago during a cross-country RV trip. I posted then about the memories the town evoked, but because even that visit was so long ago, I thought the post was worth a repeat. (Thoughts I added this time are in bold.)
MEMORIES IN A TUMBLE-DOWN TOWN
We've been married just about forever (I wrote that twelve years ago and we're still here!) and sometime back at the dawning of civilization*, we lived for a couple of years in New Pine Creek. We went to see it last week when we were in Southeast Oregon. It's a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of place that straddles the Oregon-California border on Highway 395.
(Definitely not the prettiest entry-way into California)
This little farm community is twenty miles south of Lakeview Oregon and 50 miles north of Alturas California, with nothing much else in between. It's the outback of the outback. Back then (*it really was 1959 through 1961), we thought we were so lucky to get to move there. Bill had just graduated from a two-year program at a Teacher's College in Lewiston Idaho (across the Snake River from our home town of Clarkston Washington). He got a position as teacher/principal (and janitor) at New Pine Creek Elementary, a one-room school on the California side of the border. California! It paid more than Idaho, where most of his fellow graduates went. I think he made about $4,500 that year.
We had a one-year old son and a baby on the way. (Our daughter was born in Lakeview in February 1960. The Dr. and hospital were 20 miles away from home.) This is the house where we lived — as you can see, it is about a foot from the highway. The house actually looks better now than it did then; we didn't have siding or a fence. (Ugh, it's a junk shop now — so this time, it looked even worse than it did in 1960.) It snowed a lot in the Winters we were there. The snowplow would come past several times a day and plow the snow into drifts that blocked the house in. Those winter days were long!
This is the old school building where Bill taught. Someone was living in it last time we were here, but It looked completely abandoned now — the school closed years ago. It was about the length of two blocks straight up the highway from our house. It is funny to realize that the eighth-graders Bill taught were actually only six or seven years younger than he was then.
It was a very small village even when we lived there. But there were a couple of grocery stores, a good butcher, a barbershop, a service station right next door owned by the sweet couple who were our landlords, and a Grange Hall that had an active social schedule. Now the buildings all look like something straight out of a ghost story. (Even worse this time.) Junk shops are the last dying gasps of a small town.
After our two years there, we moved back to Eastern Washington. Living there again, we had two more sons, bought our first house, worked a bunch of various jobs between us, and, eventually, Bill went back to college and completed his degrees. It remains my fond hope that someday I will get around to scanning some old pictures and writing some memory posts about those years! In 1971, we moved to Lane County, Oregon — the opposite side of the State of Oregon from NPC, in every possible definition.
Random Roadside pictures as we drove around Oregon's outback in 2021
(altered with Picasa to look like a 1960s scrapbook page.)
We've long since lost track of the people we knew during the short time we lived in New Pine Creek. But we'll always remember our two years there — we did a lot of growing up and had a lot of fun too. (Looking back from over half a century later my mind is boggled thinking about how young we were then .) I wonder if there will be anything left of the town if we ever drive through again. (So obviously we did drive through again and found the town in even worse condition. I don't think we'll do that again! But we treasure our memories and are thankful that we've survived all the ensuing years in slightly better shape ourselves.
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