Oregon Humanities

A People's History

Residents of Bosky Dell rely on volunteers, family, and bee houses to document the history of their community.

Kristy Athens

The Bosky Dell area of West Linn, a green sliver wedged between the eastern flank of Pete’s Mountain and the Tualatin River, was not easy to develop. The white settlers who displaced local Native Americans cut hundreds of conifers and dug out their stumps to eke out a living from the lush but dank environment.

Current resident Jane Richardson and her friend Lois Roby decided that their community would benefit from a book about the history of Bosky Dell and its people, such as Henry and Almira Saffarans, who filed the original Donation Land Claim for the area in 1850 (only 636.45 acres of the possible 640 because of the topography); Adrian “Frenchie” Raujol, who built a cabin in 1922 using wooden pegs instead of nails and helped relocate a 31,000-pound meteor; Anne Dempsey, one of the first women to climb Mt. Hood, who served as a nurse during World War I and for Union Pacific Railroad.

In putting together the book, which took six years to complete, Richardson and Roby needed to be as resourceful as the original residents. They hired Lake Oswego native Alison Miller Wallis to compile the text and her mother, Barbara Miller, to proofread the book and write and distribute press releases. Richardson’s sister, Nancy Payne, and Bosky Dell neighbors Henry and Anne Sturtevant helped with interviews and research. To fund the project, the group constructed and sold an estimated three hundred mason bee houses at farmer’s markets. Last year they received a Clackamas County Cultural Coalition grant for promotion of the book.

Wallis estimates that each page of Bosky Dell represents one hundred hours of work, most of which was volunteered. Their interview process was exhaustive—each subject’s testimony was transcribed in its entirety and returned for corrections. “Our philosophy was it was their story; we were just borrowing it,” says Richardson.

The women fact-checked as much as possible. “We had a little slogan,” says Richardson. “ ‘Trust and verify.’ We’d ask two or three others, and try to cross-reference with official documents.”

The team reviewed land records, newspapers, tax rolls, and maps in archives across the Willamette Valley. The process could be daunting, but they kept at it. “You had these people who thought [research] was a fun thing to do, so they helped,” says Roby. “One little tidbit led to another. That kept us going.”

For the group, drilling an estimated 14,000 holes for bee houses was worth the effort. “It was important to meet the old-timers, some of whom have already died since we talked to them,” says Wallis. “It’s important to preserve an early way of life that we’ve forgotten about.”

“Often this kind of book talks only about the people who were political or glamorous,” says Roby. “_Bosky Dell_ is about the common people who kept everything going.”