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So They Called it "Christmas"
Early History of Christmas Valley
by Melany Tupper
"Why do they call it 'Christmas Valley?'" is often the first phrase out of the
mouths of visitors to this desolate section of north Lake County. Even when the
sagebrush and alfalfa fields of Christmas Valley are covered in a blanket of
snow, visitors are hard-pressed to find anything "Christmassy" about the town.
The prevailing theory of how the community acquired its unlikely name is that
some unidentified map maker clumsily mislabeled a lake in the area. On
Christmas morning 1843 explorer John Charles Fremont and his men camped by and
named a lake "Christmas," located in what is now the Warner Valley. Some
believed that the name of Fremontıs lake had been accidentally picked up and
attached to a lake in north Lake County.
Maps published by Rand McNally in 1905 and 1907 show two separate lakes in Lake
County with the name of "Christmas." One of these two lakes is the lake
Fremont named in the Warner Valley. The second lake is still known to residents
of Christmas Valley and lies just to the north and east of that town. In the
early 1900's the community of Christmas Valley was called "Christmas Lake," and
the appearance of two Christmas Lakes on at least two maps of the day would seem
to refute the idea that Christmas Valley was named 'by mistake.'
Three decades after Fremont another cartographic party would conduct a survey of
north Lake County, having been summoned there after a rancher made the
astonishing and bizarre discovery of a pleistocene-age fossil bed. "I have in my
possession some bones which doubtless once belonged to some pre-historic animal
of much larger size and different form from anything now known to exist in this
country, or probably any other," wrote former Oregon Governor John Whiteaker in
an 1875 editorial that appeared in the Eugene City Guard. Whiteaker was
describing some of the first specimens from Fossil Lake, the bones of a mammoth
extracted by a "stock-keeper." Whiteaker visited Lake County frequently during
the 1870's and 1880's to check on personal ranching interests there.
Christmas Valley was open range land in the 1870's, and government records of
the era show no permanent inhabitants. Numerous Summer Lake, Chewaucan, and
Silver Lake ranchers used the valley as winter range for livestock, and the only
structures were a few scattered range cabins used seasonally. "On all the
neighboring ranches, the cattle were turned into the desert for food and shelter
in winter," wrote fossil hunter Charles Sternberg of his August 1877 visit. "It
was the custom of the country at that day to consider food and shelter free to
all."
Melva Bach, in her History of Fremont National Forest, stated that Christmas
Lake had been named by what she called "early pioneers," and maps of the period,
dotted with the names of Silver Lake and Summer Lake ranchers who were pioneers
in every sense of the word, stand to enforce Bach's opinion. These maps offer a
who's-who of the day by associating names of the pre-homesteaders with various
features like springs, creeks, lakes, and hills.
Whiteaker spearheaded a government surveying expedition of Fossil Lake in 1877
that included four Summer Lake Ranchers, four men from the General Land Office,
Whiteakerıs son Charlie, and George Duncan, the Silver Lake Postmaster.
Whiteaker further wrote that a "herder" had made the initial discovery of the
fossil bed in 1874, and although this individual is not named, he would have
been one of the very earliest settlers in the region.
George Duncan of Silver Lake had a spring named for him five miles to the east
of Christmas Lake. Joel Langdon of Summer Lake had a set of springs named for
him that lie about three miles east of Christmas Lake. A rancher by the name of
Levi Button gained some notoriety for having appeared in Sternberg's book, Life
of a Fossil Hunter. Button is named as a business partner to Langdon in the
1880 census and had a ranch of his own and a set of springs named for him about
20 miles northeast of Christmas Lake. The Connley Hills are another geographic
feature named for pre-homestead ranchers.
A federal survey crew arrived on the scene to chart the remainder of the
Christmas Lake Valley in 1882, and created a map and notes that mention two
ranches near Christmas Lake. "Two settlers John Jackson on the West side and
A.R. Chase on the East side of the lake have houses and other improvements,"
wrote deputy surveyor John Meldrum. The map shows the locations of the ranches,
the west ranch being on the lake shore, and the east ranch being set back in the
vicinity of Langdon Springs, about three miles away. Alexander Chase is shown
as having a permanent residence in Silver Lake in the census of 1880, as is
Charles P. Marshall, Chase's business partner. John Jackson shows up in the tax
rolls of 1875 as a resident of Silver Lake. Meldrum's map of 1882 may be the
first printed map to show Christmas Lake in it's present location in Christmas
Valley.
Most of the people who settled in Silver Lake, Paisley, and Summer Lake in the
1870's were stockmen originally from the Eugene area of Lane County. A man by
the name of Stephen Rigdon kept a fairly complete record of those who passed
through his "Pine Openings" toll station, located on the Oregon Central Military
Road, from 1873 to 1896, and a Cottage Grove cattleman, who liked to introduce
himself as "Major," is shown coming and going from the Silver Lake area seven
times before the survey of 1882. The Major is shown bringing his wife and three
children over the pass heading east in September of 1874, and he and his brother
Gabriel are shown to be associates of other cattle-raising families like the
Martins and the Smalls.
To this day the Major's family is recognized as being the owners of the building
where one of the most appalling tragedies in Lake County's history occurred, the
horrible Christmas Eve fire of 1894 in Silver Lake in which 43 people perished.
Aside from this one catastrophic and unfortunate event that was the result of an
accident, the Major's family was quite successful and well-connected.
The Major's family was one of the first to settle in Silver Lake, and the Major
was thought of as the founder of the town and so was referred to as "Mr. Silver
Lake." The original town site was located on the west side of Silver Lake, and
that is where the Major built a log cabin school house and hired a teacher so
that his children could begin their education in 1880. The Major had begun his
own education in a log cabin school house that was erected in Cottage Grove in
1853, and he enlisted in the Union Army in 1865. "He was very liberal in his
dealings," reported the Illustrated History of Central Oregon, "was highly
thought of by his neighbors, who had the utmost confidence both in his integrity
and his ability to handle finances."
The Major sells all his interested in the cattle business in 1882, and his
Silver Lake ranching headquarters to John Jackson, the same man whose name
appears on the west side of Christmas Lake on the surveyorıs map of that year.
Many ranchers suffered major losses of stock during the previous winter, which
had been unusually harsh.
The Major probably rounded up what was left of his herd that year and drove them
down to water at Peter's Creek, a seasonal stream that he had given his first
name to and a place where cattlemen would originate their cattle drives for
decades to come. "The Sinks of Peter's Creek," or "the Sinks," as the area
would come to be known, were a place where water from the creek, when it came in
contact with the sandy soil, would "sink," being absorbed at once at its outlet.
Peter's Creek was probably named for the Major, whose first name was Peter,
because the tax rolls of 1875, the census of 1880, and the deed and title
records up to 1900 show no families in north Lake County with the name of
"Peters."
The small log cabin on the west side of Christmas Lake that was taken over by
John Jackson was later owned by a rancher named Farrell, and then by the father
of Rueb Long, who filed the first homestead claim on the land in 1912 and became
its first legal owner. In The Oregon Desert, Rueb Long reports that the cabin
was already on the property when his family moved to Christmas Lake in 1900.
Long believed the cabin to have been built around 1880, and it remained standing
until 1981. It is not known who built the cabin, but it certainly could have
been built by the Major or some other early ranchers. The Longıs cabin
differentiated itself by being constructed of hewn logs rather than the broad
planks most typical of the later homestead period.
The Major's family name, Chrisman, was often spelled with a "t," making it
"Christman." It appears this way in the tax rolls of 1875, in two articles in
the Lane County Historian, and in another Eugene City Guard editorial, published
September 29, 1877 and written by former Oregon Governor and president of the
state senate, John Whiteaker.
When Whiteaker gave his editorial description of his Fossil Lake expedition to
the Guard in 1877, he was kind enough to include detailed directions to the
fossil beds. "Near the center of this basin, and about 18 miles from Silver
Lake, in a northeast direction, is "Christman Lake;" eight miles from Christmas
Lake, in the same direction, and apparently on the same level, are the Fossil
Lakes," wrote Whiteaker.
Whiteaker's use of quotation marks around "Christman Lake," is an example of how
one punctuates a phrase with an esoteric meaning, an indication that the name
had only been known to a small group of people. It is quite likely that
Whiteaker knew Peter Chrisman, as they both were from Lane County and Chrismanıs
father and Whiteaker were both active in the government there. Whiteakerıs
sentence is a compound, divided by a semicolon, indicating that the two names,
"Christman" and "Christmas" are closely related in meaning.
So it would seem that Peter's Creek, and nearby Christman Lake were named,
respectively, after Major Peter Christman. Sometime between 1873 and 1877,
people started calling Christman lake "Christmas." It is yet to be
discovered exactly how the "s" came to replace the "n", but maps with the name
of Christmas Lake would go into the hands of every homesteader that would come
to the valley in the early 1900's. The Post Office Department established a
post office in the community of Christmas Lake in 1906, but would force the name
of the office to be shortened to "Lake" during a name standardization phase. By
1920 most of the homesteaders had moved on and the Lake post office was closed.
In 1961 the M. Penn Phillips Development Company bought up, subdivided, and sold
most of the Christmas Lake Valley and shortened its name to "Christmas Valley."
The Town That Had to be Built;
One Man's Dream for Christmas Valley
by Melany Tupper
In many ways, M. Penn Phillips was the archetype of what it means to be an
American. Some would say he was progress without a conscience, paving everything
in its path. Others admire his pioneer spirit, his ability to think big, his
improvements to previously barren land, and his facility for making things
happen.
In July of 1961 the M. Penn Phillips development company hit town, before
Christmas Valley really was a town, riding high on a wave of newspaper,
television and radio advertisements, then quickly snatched up over 72,000 acres
from the ZX and Century ranches at ten dollars per acre. One year and a million
dollars later, the company had bought even more land, for a grand total of
90,000 acres, an area roughly twice the size of the District of Columbia.
In that first year they built 30 miles of roads, 15 homes, the Christmas Valley
Lodge, a motel, a 5,000 foot airstrip, a 40 acre experimental farm, and a 3,000
foot long lake. They renamed our valley, shortening the name from "Christmas
Lake Valley." Phillips started the first newspaper here, called the
Christmas Valley Gazette, that featured a column by Phillips revealing many
insights into his character and the challenges he faced.
Each month the face of M. Penn Phillips would grin from his front page column,
called "Penn Points," with a kind of cigar-flicking arrogance regarding the
future; tempting readers to join him in his Daddy Warbucks paradigm. "I believe
that more than forty years' experience in helping to build the west qualifies me
to write with some degree of authority," Phillips wrote. His columns were
characteristically choked with economic predictions for our valley and the
country.
These were idealistic times for M. (for Marion) Penn Phillips and the world. He
was a visionary living in an idealistic post-industrial age when people believed
that anything was possible. Look on the flip side of one of Phillips' newspaper
ads for lots in Christmas Valley and you'll find an article telling about how a
man by the name of John Glenn is about to be flung into orbit.
Phillips already had a score of successful developments under his belt,
including Hesperia, Salton City, Palmdale, Azusa, Compton, Ensenada, and Coos
Bay, Oregon. He had even bought and sold property on what is the present day
site of "The Strip" in Las Vegas, Nevada. "Man can do anything he
dreams," Phillips was inclined to say. His columns make it clear that in his
mind, it was just a hop, skip and a jump from draftsman and engineers' drawings
to the realization of his dreams. "Now it's real, not a dream," Phillips
wrote. At the age of 72 in a 1959 article that appeared in Time magazine,
Phillips claimed to have sold more parcels of land (around 100,000) than any man
alive.
Almost before valley residents knew it, and shortly after the airstrip was
complete, the Phillips company had set up shop in three trailers and started
flying in land buyers from California on a DC-3. The humongous plane would land
at our airport every weekend, dwarfing the Trailways bus that came to take land
buyers on tours of the valley.
"When the wheel hit the bank they swung around so
far sideways that I thought they were a sunk duck."
-Witness to landing of DC-3
"I sure had a good look at the landing though and it was a
mess," wrote one witness to the spectacle that took place on our runway
each weekend. "There was about eight inches of snow and they plowed out only a
sketchy track in the center of the runway. Way too narrow for a large plane.
When the wheel hit the bank they swung around so far sideways that I thought
they were a sunk duck. The tail got clear out in the sage brush and it poked a
hole through the elevator or whatever they call the horizontal fin."
Although these sometimes terror stricken visitors were promised their money back
if they didnıt like what they saw here, a down payment on land in Christmas
Valley automatically got them a plane ride from California. Approximately 1,400
people took the ride, and the plane landed here 67 times over a ten month
period. Approximately sixty-five percent of these folks were younger people from
central California who were interested in farming. The other 35 percent were
people nearing retirement, mostly from the Los Angeles area.
Long time residents of the valley were not always thrilled with the changes
taking place here. Some called the town site "Sand City," and the new arrivals
"Asphalt Farmers." A story appearing in 1962 states that some Christmas Valley
natives were concerned that they would have to begin locking their doors, and
that school and tax problems would outweigh any other gains made by the Phillips
development.
Phillips had a magnetic effect on the Californians. His dream was so engaging,
the picture he painted so inviting, that many came to believe in and focus on
what "could be" in Christmas Valley. Phillips had a reputation as a
fast talker, and enticing slogans abound from his days here. "Buy land and keep
it. Some day it will keep you." And, "Will you be ready for the boom
years ahead?" Phillips proclaimed as he sold real estate as a hedge
against inflation. In mid-September of 1961 a full page ad appeared in three Los
Angeles area daily papers announcing the "Christmas Valley Rural Retirement
Project." According to Phillips' records, these early ads resulted in 1,600
mail inquiries and a deluge of phone calls to his Azusa, California base office.
"Then comes the earth moving equipment...particularly the bulldozers.
That's the part I like...pushing the first brush and dirt. When I step on that
accelerator I get the same feeling that I think a racing driver does when he
starts a race."
-M. Penn Phillips
As early as 1959, Phillips had told associates that retirement cities would
prove extremely popular with older citizens. In a full page ad selling Christmas
Valley lots that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on January 2, 1962,
Phillips' artists depict what he called "The great American Main Street."
At the top is a large painting of a well developed and landscaped main street
with thriving businesses and locust trees in bloom. The ad features verbiage by
none other than Mark Twain describing the fragrance in the air and the cheer in
every face. "The small town--cradle of our traditions and the birthplace of
thirty-four of our presidents--is assuming new importance today as our
generation rediscovers the heritage of Hometown USA," the ad pitch reads.
People bought the message, hook, line and sinker. Ninety percent of the land in
Christmas Valley was sold within three months of Phillips' arrival here.
In an October 1961 article that appeared in Ruralite, Phil Washington, Phillips'
General Project Manager, stated that "H-bomb jitters and the war scare"
were partly responsible for prompting people to move from Los Angeles to a
remote place like Christmas Valley. "Our idea is to fulfill a need that is
rapidly developing in Southern California. There's too much congestion. People
want to get away. They want to get back to the farm, to the ranch," Washington
said.
The rich and rapacious M. Penn Phillips was the embodiment of the American
spirit in his day, though his heart did often seem to be in the right place.
During World War II Phillips was enormously successful as vice-chairman of the
southern California war bond drives, although he was paid only one dollar per
year for the four years he did the job. In 1963 Phillips paid $55,000 for
materials to build the road that now links Christmas Valley to highway 31 near
Silver Lake. Lake County personnel completed the work in this unusual
cooperative venture in which Phillips supplied 681 tons of asphalt. In 1962
Phillips donated ten acres for the future site of an elementary school, and in
1964 an article describes how he paid for five children to attend a 4-H
education program at Oregon State University. A 20 acre site in Christmas
Valley was donated for Oschools and churches, and in 1963 Phillips donated some
of the materials for the building of the church.
"The nastiest thing my mother ever said about anybody was, 'They're just
renters."
-M. Penn Phillips
Carlo Giuntini, President of the M. Penn Phillips Company and son-in-law of the
man behind the dream started calling Christmas Valley "the town that had to be
built." It was true that by 1963 all of the developers' goals had been met,
perhaps save one. The construction projects were complete and most of the land
had been sold, but where were all the people? Where was the bustling main
street? The census of 1963 reports 57 families and 203 people living in
Christmas Valley. Most were employed as surveyors, road builders, or in service
jobs for the Phillips company.
"Our company enjoys the enviable reputation of completing any community it
undertakes to develop," Phillips said from a 1963 column that carries a
reassuring undertone. "Have you ever thought why a town grows in a certain
spot? Someone builds it," he wrote. Perhaps Phillips was trying to reassure
himself? Yet, by the end of 1964 there were only 34 telephone customers in
Christmas Valley. An ad in the Oregonian in 1964 proclaimed, "For almost 50
years, M. Penn Phillips has accurately forecast when and where land values would
increase most rapidly. Now this pioneer developer pinpoints Christmas
Valley, Oregon as the best land investment opportunity in the United States
today."
On May 31, 1962, Phillips' sales manager in Bend told the Oregonian that the
company was now stressing the area as suitable for retirement and that it would
take too much of an investment (an estimated $25,000) to make an ordinary-size
ranch profitable. What he neglected to say to prospective retirees was that, in
the 1960s, it might cost over $10,000 to install electricity if land was three
miles from the nearest power pole. In these days the company was still claiming
to expect completion of the development and the arrival of 5,000 people by 1965,
and almost got its wish with the dawning of that year and the proposal of the
Ontario to the Ocean highway.
"O.T.T.O.," as it was called, would have connected Ontario, Burns, Wagontire,
Christmas Valley, Silver Lake, Roseburg, and Coos Bay with one continuous
stretch of interstate. Hopes ran high that the creation of this new super
highway would allow farmers in Christmas Valley to truck their crops to the Coos
Bay harbor and sell them to overseas buyers at a premium. The highway, proposed
in 1965, was never completed. Over 56 miles of the proposed route consisted of
Lake County roads that needed considerable upgrading.
Prior to the arrival of the M. Penn Phillips Development Company, the only land
grab to strike our valley within written record occurred in the early 1800s when
promoters blatantly misrepresented the land to lure settlers. One railroad
company published a prospectus that claimed, "The soil consists of a rich black
loam and grows wheat, which will average 60 bushels to the acre. All varieties
of fruit ...and berries grow in abundance." The Pacific Land Company of
Lakeview claimed the area contained "Thousands of acres of the finest
grain and fruit lands on earth." From 1908-1916 the population of our valley
went from 25 to over 1,000 persons, but lack of rain, the harsh climate and the
short growing season made farming nearly impossible. Hundreds left, and the
area went into a steady decline after World War I ended in 1918.
Some farmers tried to make a go of it from 1900 to 1930 when large areas were
cleared and planted in dry land crops, but these too were later abandoned when
farmers discovered that rainfall was inadequate and the aquifer was
inaccessible. In 1955 the arrival of electricity to Christmas Lake Valley
prompted some growth and the start of alfalfa irrigation.
According to an article in the Oregon Journal in April of 1963, Phillips had
arrived in Christmas Valley in 1961 on the heels of a 160 day license suspension
by the state of California against his development company and eight of its
members; a period of time that he later euphemistically referred to as his
retirement.
"Sold out completely and retired...for three months. That is, sold Hesperia and
Salton..." Phillips wrote in the March 1962 first edition of the Christmas
Valley Gazette and his first installment of Penn Points. According to the
Oregon Journal, the suspension stemmed from "substantial misrepresentation in
land sales and failure to exercise reasonable control over sales personnel."
"Now I'm off...on what I consider the most intriguing development of my long
career in real estate...one that I believe will give the most profit and
satisfaction to my clients," Phillips wrote of his new venture in Christmas
Valley.
In September of 1961 Phillips prints copies of a document called the "Christmas
Valley Information Report" and requires that all prospective land buyers read,
sign and date it before putting money down on land. "The lands being offered
are undeveloped acreage. Any representations other than those contained in this
report are not authorized by the M. Penn Phillips Company," a disclaimer
on the report reads. The report goes on to outline things such as the presence
of utilities, future development, climate, availability of ground water, and
suitable crops. Signed affidavits from long time valley residents such as well
drillers and ranchers in August of 1961 testify to the availability of water and
suitable agricultural pursuits like alfalfa, grain, cattle, sheep and horses.
By March of 1962 the Statesman newspaper from Salem reports that some of
Phillips' visions of what "could be" in Christmas Valley, like artists'
depictions of small farms with deep grass and large trees, are in question; his
methods are under fire. "Already the Real Estate Commission is planning
recommendations for new laws to give the state more control over subdivisions
and their advertising. The Christmas Valley development has been the chief
incentive," the article states.
The Bend Bulletin took the nearly identical course and wrote, "This newspaper
objected loudly to the original promotion of the area, which we felt was
misleading. As a result of our protests, which were joined by others around the
state, action is being taken which could cure some of the evils in the original
promotion. The M. Penn Phillips Company, promoters of the project, has
voluntarily removed much that we found objectionable in its promotional
material. Our objection to the original Christmas Valley advertising and
publicity was that it painted the Christmas Lake area as a veritable Garden of
Eden, located in a banana belt, with low priced land which would provide
sufficient side income to augment retirement resources. And this is a far
fetched picture, as anyone familiar with the country is aware."
"...A man has to take a chance. Buy something that looks good at the moment and
hold onto it. These were things I guess I was doing right; plunging headlong
into something I believed in, even if others didn't," Phillips wrote in March of
1968. According to a Willamette Week article of September, 1979, Phillips at
the age of 86 "abandoned" the venture in 1973. Only a few dozen people had
moved here, and most of the land had changed hands and was being bought by
Willamette Valley residents.
The decade that followed saw marked growth in Christmas Valley, leaving some to
wonder if Penn Phillips' dream was more mistimed than it was misbegotten.
During the three year period from 1979 to 1981, prices on alfalfa doubled,
spawned by a shortage of hay. The high protein content of Christmas Valley
alfalfa was in demand. The State Water Resources Department issued 13 loans for
irrigation projects during this time, and the state land board changed their
management policy away from grazing only and began allowing development of land
for crops and leasing it for agriculture. In 1980 more than 8,000 acres were
reportedly transformed to alfalfa fields, hearkening back to Phillips'
depictions of small farms with deep grass. A Chamber of Commerce Publication in
1982 proclaims that barley, potatoes, mint and sunflowers were also being
planted.
"Oddly enough, by looking back you can see the road ahead."
-M. Penn Phillips
By 1995 land sales in Christmas Valley still consisted mainly of
smaller improved parcels being sold to people from the Willamette Valley and
Washington. An Oregonian article of that year reports that realtors here who
had been waiting twenty years to see the valley grow were seeing properties
selling before they could make it into their listing books.
"This raw land, starting from scratch, is going to be turned into a marvelous,
integrated community. Itıs ideal for rural retirement," Phillips said of
Christmas Valley in 1961. The senior population of this country is predicted to
rise to 97 million by 2010 and 115 million by 2015. By 2030, those 65 or older
will make up 20% of the American population.
According to a new report by Lend Lease Real Estate Investments of New York, the
aging of America is likely to be the most important demographic trend in the
next 50 years, which will have a significant impact on the real estate industry.
The report predicts that "today's affluent baby boomers are likely to live
longer than their parents, travel more and move to senior-friendly locations."
Many developers are predicting explosive growth for the construction and real
estate industries in the years to come. One Florida developer interviewed last
month stated, "By 2002, they'll drive this market to unprecedented highs - all
the way to 2015. Twice as many babies were born in 1946 as in 1934. Lately, I've
been selling houses mostly to people born from 1934 to 1938."
"This raw land, starting from scratch, is going to be
turned into a marvelous, integrated community. It's ideal for rural
retirement."
-M. Penn Phillips
Getting a toe hold in Christmas Valley is not quite the
challenge that it once was for people looking for a place to retire. With the
advent of fuel-efficient cars, cellular phones, mini dishes and electronic mail,
no-one has to feel isolated anymore. Even electricity itself has become more
attainable, and great advances have been made toward making solar and wind power
more practical.
Was M. Penn Phillips mistaken in his dream for Christmas Valley? Were his
predictions completely wrong? Maybe all he needed was a little more time and a
little more technology.
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