In historical and archival work, students are constantly reminded not to underestimate the power of a single historical artifact and the stories it can tell. Even an unsuspecting image of farmland can spur historical intrigue with just a bit of curiosity and detective work.
One such example came about while working with the Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin Illustrations, 1925-1941. This collection is a part of SCARC’s ongoing “Photo Collection Tidying” project, wherein we work to ensure that all boxes and folders in photographic collections are clearly described in their finding aids. To do so, we ensure that the images represented in a collection’s finding aid match the images physically present in collection folders.
While working with the Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin Illustrations to organize and compare the physical photos present against the collection’s finding aid, I came across “Item SB 318: Cost and efficiency in dairy farming in Oregon, September 1933”, which is actually a series of 34 photographs and 46 diagrams. The preexisting description for this series of images reads, “Cows at pasture; types of pasture; alfalfa crop; kale and corn silage; R.H. Christensen Coos River Farm; loafing sheds”.
At this point, my interest was piqued. I am from Coos Bay, Oregon, and more specifically, grew up on Coos River (and still call this place home). Myself and my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents have lived on Coos River at different periods since the early 1960s. Upon discovering this piece of Coos River history, I thought it likely that if I found where the farm had been located, I would recognize the land. Thus, I set out to find where this “R. H. Christensen Coos River Farm” had been located.
Before going to maps collections, I quickly searched the name in SCARC’s holdings. A search for “R.H. Christensen” resulted in images from Laverne, Oregon, located on the Coquille River about a 40 minute drive south of Coos River. For example, the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department Photographs, 1925-1979, contains “Item 3-G-101: Homemade power plant, Laverne, farm of R. H. Christensen, June 1932,” as well as “Item 1-D-125: Irrigated pasture, Levern, farm of R.H. Christensen, June 1932”. As far as I am aware, there is no Levern in Oregon, but it seems reasonable to assume that this is a misspelling of Laverne. I thought it possible that R.H. Christensen owned several pieces of land in Coos County, and took note of this discovery to refer back to later.
Next, I searched maps collections that might reveal land ownership, including Metsker’s Atlases of Oregon Counties, 1929-1988. Unfortunately, the three atlases of Coos County in this collection were dated 1941, 1958, and 1975. Because the initial item was dated 1933, I feared that these atlases were created a bit later than I hoped and may not contain the information I sought if Christensen hadn’t owned the farm into the 1940s. I still went ahead with my search and parsed through the 1941 atlas. Maps of Coos River did not show any land belonging to R.H. Christensen. I was disappointed, but given my earlier findings, went on to maps of Coquille River and to my surprise, found separate plots of land along the Coquille River to “R. H. and G. L. Christensen” on page 52 of the 1941 atlas. To practice due diligence, I also checked the 1958 atlas and found the same plots of land to be owned by “Gladys L. Christensen” 16 years later on page 53 of the 1958 atlas. By 1975, the land had changed hands.
The spelling of the last name “Christensen” seemed unique enough to me that I thought this not a coincidence. After many searches of “R.H. Christensen” and “Gladys Christensen” in obituary and newspaper databases, I finally found an obituary for a “Ralph H. Christensen” dated May 7, 1948. This obituary confirmed that Ralph Christensen had lived in Coos County and married Gladys Abbott in 1914. His primary residence was in Bandon, Oregon.
I thought it reasonable to assume that the Ralph and Gladys Christensen discussed in this obituary are, in fact, the leading characters in the story I have constructed so far. At this point, I believed that the evidence I had gathered pointed to two options: either the original photo of the Christensen farm in the Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin collection was mislabelled and instead of being a Coos River farm, it was a Coquille River farm, or that Ralph Christensen (or his family) owned multiple pieces of property in Coos County.
Now, understanding that Bandon was a place of interest, I still sought to learn more about the land that Ralph and Gladys owned, and whether there truly was a Coos River farm attached to their name. This time, I turned to Google and searched for “‘Ralph Christensen’ Bandon”, and when that did not yield useful results, “‘R.H. Christensen’ Bandon”.
The latter search resulted in an unexpected find. I came across a Bandon Historical Society newsletter from 2017 that featured an article titled, “Miraculous Rescue Story…”. While not what I thought I was looking for, it was here that I got a look into what Christensen’s character may have been.
According to the newsletter, a man named Richard Howell visited the Bandon Historical Society Museum in August 2016, where he sought out the museum director. With her, he shared a Bandon Western World newspaper article titled “Infant Lost in Flood Found Alive”, dated February 4, 1937. The article explained that the Howell family had lived in a house built near the Christensen farm on Lowe Creek (a tributary of Coquille River, located between Coquille and Bandon, Oregon). The house was built in a canyon, the article reports, and below a 20-foot-tall dirt dam. The dam was used for irrigation purposes on the Christensen farm.
In 1937, a heavy downpour resulted in a flood that destroyed the dam and swept away the Howells’ home in the middle of the night. In their journey to the main road through the flooded canyon, they lost hold of their three-month-old son. Fearing the worst, the family searched for the child, but to no avail.
The remaining Howell family members (both parents and two children) arrived at the Christensen farm for help. The article reports that Ralph Christensen built a fire for the family before hurrying to the home of Maurice Ray, who was the superintendent of the Moore Mill and Lumber Company logging operations and the employer of Mr. Howell. The pair then ventured into the canyon, where they rather heroically found the baby trapped in an alder sapling. The child was still alive despite being lost for an hour in the flood.
Richard Howell, the museum visitor, revealed to the museum director that he was the infant in that story. He shared that after his rescue, he was taken back to the Christensen home. Howell and his wife had visited the museum with hopes of obtaining a better copy of the Western World article and to see if they might learn any more on the 1937 flood.
Howell’s story did not inform me of whether the Christensens owned property on Coos River, but it did confirm that they owned and resided on a farm along the Coquille River. Given that there is a record of their land ownership along the Coquille River but not on the Coos River in the 1940s, I am inclined to believe that the original item was mislabelled. Alternatively, the Christensens may have owned property on Coos River in the 1930s that was sold before the 1941 atlas was created.
Although my initial question remains unanswered, this search was not fruitless. I discovered where the Christensen family lived in the early twentieth century, but more than that, a riveting tale involving Ralph Christensen and Richard Howell. If this work has taught me anything, it is that while factual information (like addresses and land ownership) are important, the human stories that these facts inform are the true gems of the historical record.
This post was written by Grace Knutsen. Grace is a student archivist at Special Collections and Archives Research Center. She is an Oregon State alumna and Master of Library and Information Science student.
