[or-roots] Or was it snow of 1968 and freeze of 1972

[Leslie Chapman]

Well, Close but i believe if you can find the records, the big snow was in
1968, I would check the caption of my photos of it but the album seems to be
missing? I was living in a Co-op at Oregon State at the time and school was
closed for a couple of days, they finally reopened while it was still chaos
in terms of transportation; the Willamette valley floor is not in any way
prepared to cope with a foot of snow let along 2 - 3 feet that we had in
that storm. The reason they reopened school was that we college boys were
raising too much hell with snowball fights and other pranks, the guys in the
Co-op picked up the VW belonging ot one of the girls next door and put it in
the entryway and buried it in snow for example and guys were ambushing
passing cars and grabbing their back bumper and going for a skate, we had
one guy realized he had a rider and sped up, the kid was afraid to bail in
traffic but got thrown off when the car crossed the railroad tracks
downtown, fortunately not hurt.
 The photos i was looking for are from my home place south of Cottage Grove
where my Brother had to fire up the cat and bulldoze the snow off the road,
I think he may have gone down the County road too - we had over three feet
there.

As to when the river froze over, I don't recall it happening in '71, though
the Siuslaw might have frozen, it seems to me like it was cold that winter
too, but I do know that the first two weeks or so of 1972 were quite cold
and most open water in Western Oregon froze over, I think I mentioned this
earlier, I know the date because I came home from Peace Corps for my Mom's
funeral and we couldn't bury her for two weeks as the ground was frozen
solid.

The 48-49 freeze was just before my time, but I have seen the pictures and
heard the stories. That was the one that left snow on the back of the ranch
till May.

As to snow in 1963, could she have been thinking of the storm of Dec 1964
that was all the way to the beach at the California line one day and 5,000
foot elevation the next? Precipitated one of the worst floods we have had in
my life.

Les C

-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Connie Guardino
Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2003 2:46 PM

Wasn't it the winter of 1967 that the University of Oregon closed it's doors
for the first time in history because of deep snow? Cars were literally
buried, and were skiing around downtown Eugene. I have a picture of me knee
deep in snow.


Betty Moreland wrote:
Don't usually make a comment but I remember "71 the siuslaw froze over and
63 the snow was up to 4' high no snow in Mapleton normally.


----- Original Message -----
From:DAVIESW739 at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 5:10 PM
Subject: Re: [or-roots] Are you still there?
 We don't have to go back that far the Winter I bought my place 1992 it
snowed 8 inches and then it froze it was there for more than week and all
the little pickups that didn't have 4 wheel drive were in the ditch on
Fishback Hill. A year or two before we were in Jacksonville and the temp was
10 below That was cold and roads were covered with ice from the rain. No
snow to make it easy driving on them. BRRRRrrrr almost as bad as living in
Wyoming in 1950. Walt Davies
Cooper Hollow Farm
Monmouth, OR 97361
503 623-0460