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| Sweet Home |
| History of Linn County,
Oregon Compiled by Workers of the Writers' Program of the Works Projects Administration in the State of Oregon Page 41 TOWNS Sweet Home is one of those towns that seem to have been born on no special date. It just naturally grew out of its environment. Mrs. Jack Kenney (Keeney), nee Zeila Ames, of Sweet Hone (Home) tells of the happening (125): - "My grandfather's name was Lowell Ames; born in 1800, he died at Sweet Home in 1860. He was one of the very early settlers of the Sweet Home Valley, arriving about 1852. At that time the road leading into the region came up the Calapooia from Brownsville, crossed the divide and descended into the south Santiam Valley. The road up the canyon from Lebanon was not opened until years later, and then was a poor track for many more years. "My grandfather had six sons, all grown, when he arrived in Oregon - William Z. Ames; Andrew; Lowel, Jr.; John; Joseph and Len Ames. All took up claims in the Sweet Home Valley. The creek running through the town and emptying into the Santiam is named Ames Creek in honor of the Ames family. "My father was William Ames, born in Illinois and dying here at Sweet Home, where he lies buried. My mother, Isabell Turnbull Ames, was born in Indiana in 1838. I was born in Sweet Home in 1878, on what is now the Galbraith place, on the old Sweet Home - Foster road east of town. My sister, Ada Ames Rozell, here at Sweet Home, married a member of the Morris family, a son of A. P. and Polly Morris, who also arrived in 1852. The Ames and Morris family's were all members of the Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ, commonly called Mormons, but not of the Salt Lake Mormon church. Our branch of the church has never consented to polygamy. "The Sweet Home neighborhood in the early days was a very active Latter Day Saints colony. Church was held at various settlers' houses. After the town of Sweet Home was started worship was held in an old hall on Long Street just west of where the railroad now crosses the street. At a later date services were held in an old barn on the Jim Putnam place on the old Brownsville road just at the edge of town. This land is now owned by Jerry Keeney. The old hall was on the old Moss place. The upper town was first called Mossville and the first store there was in the old hall and run by Jim Simons. "At a very early date John Donaca opened a store on the bank of Ames Creek in the lower end of the present Sweet Home, about on the spot now occupied by Ernie Schell's store. The Donaca store was later run by Asher Hamilton, and burned down about 1893. Another small store in the lower town was kept by a man named Rowell, in a tiny building, not over eight feet square and with no windows, on the creek bank; some say this store was built on the top of a stump. "Perhaps the most noted of all Sweet Home's early business houses was the Buck-Head Saloon, run by Bluff Moss. The name came from a fine pair of antlers mounted on the building's gable end. Soon the surrounding town became known as Buck Head. This part of Sweet Home grew, while Mossville died out. The Sweet Home postoffice was finally moved from Mossville to Buck Head and Sweet Home became the prevailing name. Among the early business ventures was a tannery, between the present highway and the old road now usually called Long Street, on the east band of Ames Creek, at the rear of the present Bell service station. When the service station was being built some of the old pipes of the tannery were dug up. Part of the old tannery ditch is still in evidence. Albert and Sam Wadkins once ran a small chair factory in the old tannery building, and Lowell Ames ran a small store next to the tannery, where the Russel garden now is. Otto Theodore Lubker ran the postoffice when it was located in Mossville; before that John Ames was postmaster. The old postoffice and the Donaca store burned down together. There was also an early day shingle mill run by my father on Ames Creek near the present Galbraith place. "The second church to be organized in Sweet Home was of the Evangelical faith. Uncle Joe Ames donated the ground for it. Before any church buildings were erected the various denominations held services in the schoolhouse on the high ground east of town. I went to school there. One of the preachers was a Mr. Norton of Advent persuasion. My older brothers went to school in a little log cabin farther up the road just this side of the Jim Morehead farm. "Fifty years ago it took tow days to travel from Lebanon to Sweet Home - 16 miles - with a four horse team. The old stage line stops were Lebanon, Sweet Home, Gilliam House, Cash Creek and Grahams. These old road houses did a big business with passengers crossing the Cascades. It was an interesting trip. I made it once, helping to drive calves, riding sideways on a horse without a saddle. The hear of the rider's body when no saddle is used is bad for the horse's back and when I arrived in eastern Oregon the back of my pony was raw and galled. "Opinions differ as to how Sweet Home received its name. One story has it that Lowell Ames, Senior, struck with the beauty of his claim, sang Home, Sweet Home, and thus originated it. It is also told how two early day squatters, Samuel Powell and Clark Williams, who lived in a double cabin built on their claim lines so that each might live in his own end and on his own land, stood looking out over the beautiful valley one day and, since the region as yet had no name, called it Sweet Home. Again, it is believed by some that a Mr. Clark stood looking at the lovely view from the cabin of John Gilliland, and turning, remarked: 'You certainly have a sweet home here', which started the name." Official Sweet Home town records are very, very few until nearly 1900. It is believed that the place was incorporated in 1893. The postoffice was established in 1874, with John B. Hughes first postmaster (126). According to U. S. census figures of 1870, Sweet Home Precinct had 199 people. The town is first enumerated in 1910, with 202 inhabitants; 1920 - 175; 1930 - 189; and 1940 - 1090. In 1886-87 the place is credited with 60 people, a flour mill, a steam sawmill, church and school (127). Recently, almost overnight, because of the enormous demand for lumber created by the defense program, the sleepy little village was transformed into a pulsing, pushing boom town, with logging operations and sawmills multiplying on every hand, with logging trucks coming and going continuously, with service stations springing up on almost every block of the main thoroughfare, with a plywood plant constantly enlarging its capacity and with the electric railroad hauling out peeler logs for plywood plants to the west in almost mile-long trains daily. The reason for all this lies in the fact that somewhere around 15 billion feet of the best timber in Oregon has to pass through Sweet Home on account of geographical reasons, making this place a very valuable bottleneck, indeed. Since the town is still growing and sawmills and logging camps round about increasing, it is little use to prophesy about its future, except to say that its growth will be surprising. Donated by Patricia Dunn, March 2003. Contributed: ©1999 - 2000 Jan Phillips |
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