A New Access to Pringle Creek and Riverfront Park?

Over a year ago, the developers of the former Boise Cascade property, displayed this overview of what might be a future access to the property. Since then it has been determined that the State Street entrance (across the railroad tracks) to the Carousel will be closed. Thus a new opening will serve both that facility and the developing property at Pringle Creek to the south. There is no assurance that the plan shown here will be the one used, but it is interesting to see what was being considered at that time. The new intersection will be adjacent to our Downtown Historic District, but does not effect historically designated property on Ferry Street.

Featuring our Summer Street Heritage

Today the Statesman Journal featured Grant neighborhood's efforts to establish a National Register Historic District in an area including this historic Summer Street house. Originally built in the 1930s for Juanita and Robert Paulus, it is now owned by Lola and Christopher Hackett who are active in preservation activities and are quoted in the current newspaper article. On October 8, the Marion County Historic Society will welcome Norma Paulus as speaker at their annual dinner, held at Mission Mill Museum. We are fortunate in Salem that both newcomers to our community and representatives of past generations work together to preserve our valuable cultural heritage.

Our Salem Fire Station Museums

This is Salem Fire Station #5 at 1520 Glen Creek Road NW. It houses one of our three fire museums with historic equipment.

At Fire Station #5 you will see this Hand Pumper equipment. In 1857, Salem volunteer fire company fought fire with leather buckets filled with water, ladders, and a few basic tools. In 1883, Salem purchased this Hunneman hand-operated fire engine and 300 feet of leather hose. Without horses, it was necessary to hand- pull the 4000 pound fire engine to the fire. Notice the tubing along the top: one end dropped into one of the four cisterns downtown, the other end connected to the hand pumper hose. Fireman forced water from cistern through hose to the fire using the hand rails along the side of the Hand Pumper. This equipment was retired in 1904.



This fire station is is dedicated to George Ventura who joined the Salem Fire Department in 1962 as a firefighter. In April of 1980, he was promoted to Deputy Fire marshal where he remained until his unexpected death in 1986. At the time of his death, George was attending a seminar in Yakima, Washington. In his honor, flags at all Salem Fire Stations were lowered to half-staff.


At this Fire Station #10, 3611 State Street, you will see an original hose cart. Considerably lighter than the engine, it required fewer man to transport. The rod has handles for two men, although there may have been a cross bar to enable more men to move it through the streets. This station museum, like the others, has numerous historic photographs and firefighting exhibits.


At Fire Station #7, 5021 Liberty Road S, you will see Salem's second and last steam engine, the 1889 La France, a horse drawn pumper. By 1893, using horses had saved human labor to such an extent that the 220 man volunteer force was reduced to 14 paid firemen. A select number of apprentice firefighters known as "Call Men" would continue to volunteer until 1923 when the department was able to maintain a fully paid force.


The last use of steam power was in 1935 when the State Capitol burned and every piece of usable equipment was needed. Salem Fire Department's only line-of-duty-death occurred when Floyd McMullen, a 19 year-old volunteer fireman"sleeper" for the East Salem Engine Company, was struck and killed by falling debris at the capitol. This station is dedicated to him.

Another member of the Salem Bush Family

On Birdshill Drive in South Salem, this 1901 house gives us another contact with the history of the Bush family in Salem. In 1911, the daughter of the owners, 21 year old Margaret Boot, married Asahel Bush IV, the only grandson of the Asahel Bush II who built Bush House.
The young couple had a home on Bellevue Street, traveled widely and were part of the "Roaring Twenties" social life. Margaret gained local acclaim for riding an elephant in a Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena. Both Margaret and Asahel died in their forties.
The house has had a progression of improvements as the prune orchard lost acres. The original entrance from the north (now City View Cemetery) led to a carriage house, since made into a residence. The barn was removed for another residence. The landscape still provides a panoramic view to the west over the Willamette River and to the coastal mountains.
Between 1952 and 2008, there were only two owners: Dilbert Milne and Hans Linde.

Before the Parking Garage...

Photograph used by courtesy of Oregon State Library Photograph Collection

The next time you swing your car into the Chemeketa Parking Garage entrance on Commercial Street, give a thought to what was at that location before the garage was built in the 1970s. In the 1898 photograph above, the business on the corner was the Barnes Cash Store. Mr. Barnes's son Ralph was a Foreign Correspondent for the New York Harold Tribune in Europe during the World War II years and died in an wartime airplane crash in 1940. You may be able to Mr. Fry's name above the Drug Store entrance. That was the Daniel Fry who owned Fry's Hill (Now the High Street property known as Gaiety Hill) and lived in the historic Smith-Fry House. His warehouse was just demolished (the concrete triangle) as part of the Boise-Cascade property renovation. Further south on this block, out of the picture, in the only remaining section of this Eldridge building that stretched from Chemeketa to Court Street: Greenbaum's Quilted Forest, a family business in the third generation that began in the year this photograph was made, still operates there.

Their House Fell on Them

photo from the collection of Eileen and Doug Ebanks

Eileen and Doug Ebanks had already done a lot of research on their 1909 house when we met them in 2007. It was probably built by Adam Korb or his son David, both concrete contractors whose name can be seen pressed into many older sidewalks in Grant and SESNA neighborhoods. By 1962 when this photograph above was taken, the house was owned by Kenneth and Lucille Bass.

Walking in our Grant neighborhood one afternoon, we saw this house and were attracted by the handsome, blue-painted residence with matching fence, flowers and landscaping softening the strict lines. We introduced ourselves to the Eileen and Doug Ebanks who owned the property.

Photograph by Timothy Gonzalez of the Statesman Journal

Not many months after we met the Ebanks, we were alarmed to hear the house, on supports to excavate for a basement, had fallen in the middle of the night, July 24, 2008. Eileen, Doug and one of their young sons were sleeping inside. Eileen was seriously injured, the others only superficially. The photograph above was published in the Statesman Journal with an article stating that the Ebanks planned to rebuild their home as close to the original as possible.

Now, almost a year later, here is the rebuilt house as it appeared on June 21, 2009. They have stayed true to the spirit of the house, considering the present code requirements and the need to accommodate their careers and their family. Eileen is recovering from her back injury and so this is a happy ending to a story that could have been tragic. Yes, it has a basement ~ and will be painted blue.

The Fall of the House of Dalrymple

The Dalrymple House was built by James J. and Mary Evans Dalrymple on Marion Street in about 1862. The family had three daughters: Jess Albert, Lizzie Krause and Kate Griffith. After the family sold the house, it was owned for many years by Ola Clark, a well-remembered math teacher at the high school. It was later rented and had been abandoned when the photograph above was taken. Kate's grandson, Dr. John Griffith, remembers the interior window shutters, curving stairway, woodwork and hardware were still original in the 1960s.

On May 10, 1972, a crane lifted a detached portion of the second floor in order to place it on the moving platform for the move to a new location. The first floor of the house is still in place and the Garfield School is seen in the background. A local newspaper reporter was there to photograph the action.


Moments later, with with a photographer looking on, the crane slipped as it was lifting the second story onto the moving platform. This was probably the most spectacular house move in Salem history. A parking lot on the northwest corner of Marion and Winter Streets is the site where this elegant Italianate residence once housed the Dalrymple family.

These three photographs are from the Oregon Historical Photograph Collections, Salem Public Library, Salem, Oregon

Below is a series of 12 historic Salem buildings that were more successfully moved to new locations.