An Oregon Story:
From Rivers to Reservoirs:
The Last of the Lumbermills:
|
Recycling the Out Buildings of Dorena
Retta Smith came to Cottage Grove to live with her newly married older sister, Evelynne Pleuard, shortly before the onset of World War II. She remembered the dam being built: "they poured the cement after they got the dirt and everything all filled up there. And you could just see it. It was a ways away but you could see the different layers going up each day."
While the Corps removed some buildings to make way for the dam and reservoir,
they built others to accomodate workers.
This photo shows the mess hall constructed at Dorena, 12 March 1948. Courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers
While the Corps moved many of the homes at Dorena to higher ground, it sold some homes, barns, and sheds to the highest bidder. Retta Smith and her in-laws bought three homes for about one hundred dollars apiece. They tore the original homes apart being careful to save the square-headed nails and windows from them, and built a new home along the lake's edge. But they had difficulty purchasing the copper wire needed to ready the house for electricity because of wartime shortages. Smith recalled that she had a friend who "worked at a mill and he told my sister, 'you tell Retta that when she needs some wiring, I'll get her some.' So Ray [her father-in-law] figured out exactly how much I'd need and I went and told [her friend]. We paid him and he got us the wiring." Even so, Smith had to live without electricity until the war ended.
