Voices from the Valley: Residents Describe Cottage Grove

Cottage Grove Now

Dot Crha owns the Cottage Grove Comfort Inn just off of Interstate 5. She came to the area in 1960 when her former husband, who was a timber faller, left the Olympic Pennisula to work for Weyerhaeuser. Dot Crha went to work as a meat wrapper for Lucky Market and then developed a gift shop and a trophy shop. Soon, she also owned part of the town's only racetrack. She relocated her gift shop, which was located in a round house, from downtown to a spot closer to the freeway exit in 1986. Visitors to Cottage Grove can still buy souvenirs at the original building in its new location. The business potential of the new site prompted Mrs. Crha to build the Comfort Inn.

It's probably been one of the most wonderful communities – people, everything. A majority of the people really are community-minded. And the thing is if somebody really has a hardship, everybody kind of chips in and works to help somebody out. I know many times we've been asked to do something for this person or that person. They need fifty dollars to get glasses or the kids need something and so we always donate different things into that.

Evelynne Plueard

Evelynne Plueard moved to Cottage Grove with her husband (who was a native) from a berry farm near Lebanon, Oregon. Mrs. Plueard lived in town for eighteen years but moved above Cottage Grove Dam in 1960. Her husband worked for Weyerhaeuser, as did her son and his wife. Mrs. Plueard is an artist and has volunteered her time teaching pottery and drawing, among other things, to the area's school children.

What do you like about living in the Cottage Grove community?

Well, out here I like the space. I couldn't stand living close – these houses they build about ten feet apart. I have claustrophobia and I wouldn't like it at all. I like being out in the country. I grew up out in the country and then I lived 18 years in town. We lived on the edge of town. We had two large lots so we had lots of room. We had a garden and that sort of thing too. So we really had a lot of room. It's not like it is now where they're building these houses so close together. I know, where we lived we had a lot and a half. Finally, we sold a half a lot to our neighbors because we didn't want someone building right next to us. And in the last year the people who own it – I don't know who owns it now – but anyway, that half lot, they put a street in there and they built a duplex back in behind where we used to have our garden. So they're just building houses in every little space that they've got.

Claire Dross describing her and her husband's single visit to Cottage Grove before moving North from California

I only came to Cottage Grove coming down I-5. We stopped because it was about time for lunch and I saw the sign and I said that's the size city I'd like to live in….So we stopped and, while neither one of us had retired yet, we thought well, let's just look around and we did. So that was really all we had seen, just that one time.

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This is much more wooded – trees, firs and cedars. More rivers and streams and much less congested as far as population and traffic. It's more open country.

Claire Dross talks about what struck her about Cottage Grove when she first moved there.

We were just on the outskirts of town and my husband and I were driving along Layng Road and there's a covered bridge at the end of that road. And I was looking ahead and I'm thinking – I'm seeing something up there that looks just like a bear but it's in the middle of the day. I think, "no that can't be a bear." And, of course, as we approached, it was a bear. It had just come up out of the creek and it was going across the road and shaking itself. It just amazed us that here so close to town there was this bear meandering across the road.