Not always an easy trip

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In the hot summer of 1910, Max Filson brought the very first of all the boats that ever floated on Lake of the Woods. Today, Lake of the Woods Resort offers boat rentals, cabins and other attractions, and U.S. Forest Service campsites are available in the summer months.Bill Miller

Max Filson and a few of his Ashland friends were going nautical.

In the hot summer of 1910, Max had hauled an 18-foot sailboat 35 miles up the roughly graded road to Lake of the Woods.

The Ashland Tidings declared it a minor historic moment. It said this was the first boat to float on the lake "that has heretofore been regularly navigated by nothing more than rudely constructed rafts."

Captain Max, as the newspaper called him, wasn't a Huckleberry Finn. He was planning a business opportunity and hinted he might mount a gasoline engine on board, and "if the demand of the tourists justifies it," he would stay for the season and sell rides.

With a road better suited to wagons than to automobiles, tourist traffic was light and Filson's business never left the dock.

For nearly 40 years, the lake had seen a few fishermen and even fewer summer swimmers. But campers found it a pleasant stop on a three- to four-day wagon trip to Crater Lake.

The Lake of the Woods Road was little more than a trail until 1912, when Dead Indian Road, now Dead Indian Memorial Road, was "worked into a fine automobile road" by county authorities. The grade of less than 10 percent was easier on a horseless carriage than the steep and torturous climb over the Greensprings Highway.

By 1921, the road was good enough to allow an automobile leaving Ashland to arrive at the lake in just over four hours. There were no hotels, but campsites were everywhere.

The Forest Service was now in control of the lake. To pay for improvements, it began renting 48 lots on the western shore where it allowed renters to build private cabins.

The building boom had begun, said the Tidings. "Many of the conveniences of home have been transferred to rustic cottages on the lakeshore, and tradition has it that even a game of bridge is available."

By the mid-1920s, a corporation announced plans for a year-round lakeside resort.

"It will include a hotel, housekeeping cottages, a store and service station and a boat landing and rowboats," said a spokesman. "We also plan on making Lake of the Woods one of the best fishing grounds in Southern Oregon."

The lake's popularity was growing. The Boy Scout summer campground was established by 1927, and soon the annual trek to the lake included Girl Scouts and church groups.

All of these young campers, boy or girl, seemed to ask the same two questions: "When do we eat?" and "When can we go swimming?"

The roads to Lake of the Woods remained dusty and unpaved until the late 1950s. The final paved access, Highway 140, wasn't completed until 1964.

Today, had Max Filson been able to stay around and keep his boat shipshape, he'd feel right at home navigating the lake as part of the endless fleet that arrives each summer.

Filson's boat might have been first, but it certainly wasn't last.

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

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