Our histories, carved in stone

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Nearly 800 Pleasant Valley residents are buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in Josephine County near Hugo, but many of their stories will never be told.Bill Miller

We mark our history like shallow footprints left in snow, and what little trace we leave, quickly melts away.

Too busy in our daily lives, we forget to ask our passing relatives what they did and why, until it's too late. And they don't write it down. "Who would care?" they ask.

How frustrating that must be for small-town historical groups trying to gather together the history of their happy home. As each voice and memory of those who came before, quickly and inevitably fades away, only a few fragmentary clues are left behind to follow.

Few community organizations have dedicated themselves so tenaciously to recovering their past, as has the Hugo Neighborhood Association & Historical Society.

Beginning in the 1970s and growing through the 1990s, the group's history investigations have blossomed in the 21st century.

Through oral history interviews and hours of research in government and private archives, the group has compiled biographies of pioneer settlers, rediscovered the original route of the Applegate Trail and documented their area's historic buildings.

Hugo is a small village a few miles north of Grants Pass. Its origins date back to the Applegate Trail when a few covered wagon emigrants from the east began to take up land claims nearby.

Three years ago, members of the Hugo Historical group discovered the remains of a quarry that ties together with the earliest remnants of their community.

Said to be the only granite quarry in Josephine County, its stone probably was first used as fill for rail beds by the Oregon & California Railroad in the 1880s. The railroad was inching south toward the California border and the small station near the quarry was called "Gravel Pit."

But, the Hugo group's most exciting discovery came in 2007, when an examination of stone remains at the rediscovered quarry, confirmed that the quarry was without a doubt the source for finished headstones in the nearby Pleasant Valley Pioneer Cemetery.

There are many undated stones in the cemetery, so it's difficult to say when the first pioneer was buried there. The earliest dated marker is for 35-year-old William A. Gibson, who died July 23, 1869.

Best estimates say the quarry was in operation perhaps as early as the 1870s and ceased operation in the late 1920s.

Chinese workers who fell while constructing the rail line may have been buried near the current cemetery entrance. Early residents remembered wooden stakes on what they thought were graves in the now flat and empty area near the old Applegate Trail.

If there were graves, they were temporary. Because of religious beliefs, nearly all Chinese remains in the West were disinterred by Chinese officials early in the 20th century and returned to China.

There are nearly 800 individuals buried in the Pleasant Valley Pioneer Cemetery. Too busy to tell their tale, with descendants now buried with them, most of their stories were lost to us a long, long time ago.

Ours is a fragile history and we mark it in the shallowest of footprints.

Writer Bill Miller lives in Shady Cove. Reach him at newsmiller@yahoo.com.

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