Oregon Humanities

Putting Central Oregon History on the Map

Jarold Ramsey works on archiving materials from Oregon’s historic Hay Creek Ranch.

Ellen Santasiero

When Jarold Ramsey, president of the Jefferson County Historical Society, got word that an anonymous donor planned to give three boxes of valuable maps and papers from Oregon’s historic Hay Creek Ranch to the organization, he was thrilled—but he knew he’d need outside archival help. Ramsey, a Madras native and emeritus professor of English at the University of Rochester, is perhaps best known for Coyote Was Going There, his anthology of Oregon Indian legends. But now he’s bringing the same attention to Central Oregon’s Anglo history and helping preserve the ranch’s archive is his latest project.

Established in 1873, hay creek grew in the early twentieth century to be the biggest sheep operation in the world. Through the decades its various owners produced plot maps, deeds, stock certificates, and business records, some of which ended up in those three boxes. In 2009, Ramsey found the help he needed in archivists at Lewis & Clark College who are donating their time and expertise to process the more than fifteen hundred documents.

Q: Why is it important to save documents?

For continuity’s sake. For Indian groups who have not been relocated, the basis of their cultural literacy, their very understanding of their collective identity, is caught up in their intimate and storied understanding of their homeland—all of its natural features, their place names, all come with stories, and these stories add up to a rich continuity that sustains them even in times of disruption and change. It’s true for other cultures, too. We haven’t completely lost this kind of knowledge, but I fear that we are losing it,
with serious consequences for our collective well-being.

Given the mobility of our lives and the pervasiveness of the media, there’s a growing homo-geneity in American life, a kind of masscult popular culture that’s about three pixels deep and constantly changing and basically placeless, so that it’s incapable of serving us where we live. Obviously, I deplore the long-standing neglect of geography in the schools. Saving documents helps ensure a community doesn’t lose its connections to its stories, its place, and its collective identity. Local history is, to a very important extent, based on documents and artifacts.

Q: Who might be interested in the archive?
Scholars doing academic research on historic business practices or other topics. I hope the schools and the community college will use the files. Three years ago, students from Madras made it to the National History Day competition.

Q: What’s the most interesting thing you’ve found so far?

A piece of cardboard torn from a box. Fastened to one side of it is a sheet of paper listing an inventory of items that outfit a typical sheepherder’s shack. It lists so many pounds of coffee, flour, baking powder, Karo syrup, salt and pepper, everything in the nature of food and cleanliness. That and a lot of maps. Some of them are priceless because someone will have lettered on the map the original names of the neighboring homesteaders. These names were lost until now. There is also an extraordinary hand-drawn map showing all the springs and wet spots and a map as big as a tablecloth showing the ranch’s holdings in the early 1930s or ’40s. I recall that map up on the wall in the old commissary.

Q: You know the ranch?

I’ve known it all my life. I know a lot of its stories. I’m heavily invested in local history. It’s a legacy I have to keep going.