BILL REYNOLDS' TRIP TO HAYDEN & BEAR VALLEY - NOVEMBER 2010
My son & I (Bill Reynolds –[ JOHN A. SMITH - ADAH DOVIE SMITH REYNOLDS – JERRY REYNOLDS- WILLIAM REYNOLDS], made it to Hayden & Bear Valley last Friday-Saturday. We visited a museum in Hayden where I bought my own copy of Blue Mountain Folks. We were there looking for the museum director because people kept telling us he was one of two experts on the county and its history. Evidently he is a hunter; we arrived the first day of late hunting season.
I'm going to send a couple of emails to get pictures through. Hope they give you an idea of what we could find: the school house and what I believe was the store, along with the Ruppe cabin. I spent roughly five hours walking at the various locations marked on the map without finding foundations or indications of anything else that looked (to me) like remnants of farming. I did see fence posts that looked like they could have come from the houses so maybe that is what happened to them.
We drove up in my son's Ford Taurus. Hunters were out in all kinds of vehicles. I'm thinking that unless there is a spate of very wet weather, we'll be able to drive in anything with normal road clearance. But it would help to have folks share vehicles as some places along the road don't leave much room to pull off as a group.
Also, we did not take Bear Valley Road all the way out. It was cleaner to go farther west and up to 95 on to Bear Vally Road as a lot of that way was gravel. We came back out on Bear Valley Road heading west. Just a few sharp corners and we hit gravel road again quickly.
(note: click on individual photographs to view larger version)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I only took a few pictures at the Hayden cementary because the temperature was in the upper 20s with a pretty good wind. It is located on a hill overlooking the valley so wind right after my morning shower was uncomfortable. My purpose was because I don't know enough about the Smiths to know if these are ancestors.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
