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Letters
To the Editor:
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Recently a neighbor gave me a copy of the Summer 2003 Oregon Historical Quarterly (OHQ 104:2). I was stunned to see the picture of the Trask River on page 188 with the caption which includes "... with the surrounding sagebrush-dominated landscape,..." Apparently, the incorrect picture was placed above the caption or the incorrect caption was placed below the picture. |
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The Trask River begins on the western slopes of the Coast Range and flows to the Pacific Ocean. Annual rainfall from the Coast Range summit to the Pacific Ocean is over ninety inches. There are hundreds of species of flora in this area, but there is not and never has been "sagebrush." Salal isn't sagebrush, which has a very distinctive odor. Even after the four Tillamook Burns (1933, 1939, 1945, and 1951), sagebrush did not grow on the western slopes of the Coast Range. I have traveled from the beginning to the end of the Trask River many times, and there is no sagebrush. |
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I bring this to your attention because the journal of record for Oregon History needs to be accurate. |
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| Dick Blum
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| Tillamook, Oregon |
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To the Editor:
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I received my spring Quarterly and am already about halfway through it. Then I got to the part with the photos (Sarah R. Caylor, "Peeling Off the Emulsion," OHQ 105:1). Very interesting. Unfortunately, the first one at Fifth and Morrision (p. 121) has the wrong caption information. It's definitely the corner of Fifth and Morrision — northwest corner, in fact. But the street running left and right is Morrison, not Fifth. I saw immediately as a Portland native who knows the streets pretty well that the J.K. Gill sign in the background is the key. Gill's was on the southeast corner of Fifth and Stark. That means the photo depicts Morrison, not Fifth, at least not much of it. I wasn't born until 1930, but there were probably streetcars running on Fifth in 1927. It's just that the caption should deal with Morrison. And Morrison was a major street with Meier and Frank on the corner in the picture. The bronze Meier and Frank sign on the corner of the building was there for many years. Might still be. The people waiting to walk across Morrison would be heading south to the block of the Pioneer Post Office building directly across the street. |
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| John Wendeborn
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| Portland, Oregon |
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