Generations Forestry

Thinning project in 2017

​William Ingram was seven years old when he arrived in Oregon with his family in 1854.  They had taken a ship from Maine to New York, then to Panama, crossed the isthmus by mule to the Pacific, boarded a ship from there to San Francisco, then another ship to Oregon City, and an ox team south to the Willamette Valley.  Their Donation Land Claim, in the hills between Sodaville and Brownsville, Oregon, had only a few large conifers and a grove of oaks – the surrounding grassland was selected for their farm.  The native people had burned it each year, creating an oak savanna.

A century and a half later, the giant fir where the family met Blackhawk, when he would escape from the Grand Ronde reservation, is now just a rotting stump.  The other giant Douglas-fir and incense cedar trees from those days are still there, sentinels of another time.  When the family quit farming this hill property, sheep from the valley were grazed here for summer pasture.  Sometime in the 1930’s, as grazing decreased, young fir and cedar began to cover the hills, seeded by those giant trees.  The firewood we produce for OWC was thinned from this stand, grown where William, our great grandfather, grew up.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

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