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REVIEWS
WHERE FORTUNE CALLS: DREAMERS AND SCHEMERS IN THE LAND OF THE LAKES
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by the Shaw Historical Library
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| Shaw Historical Library, Klamath Falls, Oregon, 2007. Photographs. 149 pages. $17.50 paper. |
| The theme of this publication, the 2007 annual edition of the Journal of the Shaw Historical Library, is land settlers and land promoters: the homesteaders, emigrants, and colonists who sought to settle and develop parts of the "Land of the Lakes" as well as the individual and corporate promoters who sought to profit by encouraging such settlement. The book includes fifteen related manuscripts, ranging from three to twenty-seven pages, regarding land promotion and settlement in a geographic area encompassing parts of south-central and southeastern Oregon, northeastern California, and northwestern Nevada. |
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The articles on land promoters include: a history of the failed attempt by the Oklahoma & Oregon Townsite Company of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to create an instant city on the vacant shores of White Lake, Oregon, in 1905; the unsuccessful attempt by the Klamath Development Company (KDC), a subsidiary of the California & Northeastern Railroad, to encourage Russian colonists to settle on farmland south of Klamath Falls in the early 1900s; the maneuverings of the KDC to shift expansion within the city of Klamath Falls to land it owned; the Oregon Valley Land Company of Kansas City, Missouri's, 1909 public auction of nearly 12,000 parcels of land it had subdivided from a 300,000-acre federal land grant, which eventually resulted in the great majority of the original 14,000 purchasers (mostly from the American Midwest, or their heirs) selling or giving up their land for back taxes; and the subdivision of ten large tracts of isolated, raw land into thousands of tiny lots in Klamath and Lake counties, Oregon, and Modoc County, California, during the 1960 and 1970s, which resulted in the overwhelming majority of such lots remaining unimproved forty years after their creation. |
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The articles on settlers include: a history of homesteaders' failed attempts to farm Oregon's dry and largely barren Fort Rock Basin in the early 1900s; homesteaders' successful farming efforts in Langell Valley, Oregon, after a federal reclamation project provided needed irrigation water; the successful promotion before and after World War I of farmland in southern Klamath County by the Czech Colonization Club of the American Midwest, which led to a Czech settlement that founded the town of Malin, Oregon; the creation and development of the town of Tulelake and the town site of Newell in northern California; and the struggles of the isolated hamlet of Fort Klamath to survive and thrive in Oregon's Wood River Valley. |
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Most of the articles in this very readable journal cover material not previously published, with the notable exception of the manuscript on farming in Oregon's Fort Rock Basin, which was covered in great depth in Barbara Allen's Homesteading the High Desert (University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 1987). Where Fortune Calls relies heavily on interviews with local residents as well as well-documented, old editions of local newspapers, old correspondence files, and unpublished manuscripts, records, and plat maps, which are only available at local museums or other local document repositories. It includes an abundance of historic photos, many of which have not been previously published as well as a bibliographic essay on related research material available in the Shaw Historical Library. Several of the manuscripts in this journal will be of particular interest to scholars studying the long term negative effects of subdividing large tracts of isolated, rural land into a multitude of small lots. |
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| DOUG FOSTER
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| Ashland, Oregon |
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