The only remaining residents of downtown Peak, on the northwest flank of Marys Peak, are ferns and tall firs grown  up from what would have been seedlings when the town died in the1920's.
        Twelve miles west of Philomath, Peak appears on no maps and is unknown even to some historians - one of many Oregon hamlets growing out of the Homesteading Act of 1862 that opened up tracts of public land to homesteading.
         When area settlers traveled to California in the summer of 1849 to make money on the gold rush, the Yaquina burn decimated the land for timber use and opened up much of Marys Peak to farming pioneers who carved 160 acre home amidst a wilderness filled with deer, bear, eagle and cougar.
    In its heyday, the town was little more than a post office, a shingle mill and a school used on Sundays by the followers of the United Brethren Church.
    Philomath resident Edon Farmer was born in Peak, as was his mother Viola Davidson Farmer.  She was the fifth of eight children from founders Virginia Cramer and Harrison Davidson.
        Cramer came across the plains on a wagon train and Davidson came through the Panama crossing up to California where they met and married before coming with the Cramers to settle Peak.
 The Davidson household was the center of a population that included Cramers, Fosters, Peoples, Pratts, Laskeys, Conrows, Pruetts, Winters, Hanks, Hamms, Lakes and Taylors.
        "Harlan Post Office had already been established and Peak was a growing community (in 1898) so Mother got in touch with the federal government and opened Peak's post office," Said Davidson Farmer, who now lives in the Corvallis Manor.

 

The Peak Post office was a few cubbyholes in the home of  founders Virginia and Harrison Davidson, homesteaders near Little Shotpouch Creek.

"It was just a few cubbyholes in the corner of our house, but people would walk for miles to come get their mail.  The carrier would travel west one day and then back to Philomath the following day."
        By the turn of the century, Peak was thriving and railroad logging on Woods Creek Road brought in more families to homestead claims on land owned by the Oregon & California Railroads that had been stripped of timber.  To get title, settlers had to stay three years to qualify and had to "prove" their claim by working the land and building structures.
        Supplies came in on wagons drawn by teams of horses from Philomath or from J.R. Thompson's store (now Vosberg's) at the thriving town of Blodgett, six miles to the west, where the Yaquina branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad ended.  Sometimes peddlers would come through the community selling goods.
        These early settlers lived off the land, forest and stream.  Like many, the Davidsons raised 100 head of Angora goats to sell mohair, which was traded for supplies or sold and then shipped east on the Oregon Pacific Railroad.
        "We had a big garden, but couldn't raise tree fruits or tomatoes because our growing season was too short," Viola Davidson Farmer said. "But you should have seen our turnips we used for feed stock - six inches across!"

SCHOOL IN THE WOODS

        Winters were harsh with deep snow in the mountains and children were needed in the summer to work, so school lasted only six months in Peak - three months in the spring and three in the fall.
In 1905, James Lake led the community in building Peak's log schoolhouse with a V-ceiling and moss-chinked walls and hand-split cedar shake shingles, with and attached playground on the west side of the building.
        Inside, the south wall had two map cases with roller maps of the Eastern and Western hemispheres that teachers used to try to show students what was beyond their mountain homes.
In her book on Benton County schools, "When School Bells Rang," Marlene McDonald said that the teachers in Peak were young (16 to 21 years old) and usually stayed only one year.  They boarded with the Farmers.
        "One year we had 28 scholars in the school, which meant we had to take turns with our desks," said Viola Davidson Farmer.  She had been one of the older eighth-graders, the highest grade possible  because vision problems kept her from her studies for two years.
        Since the school was on the border between Lincoln and Benton counties, both shared in maintaining the school.  But by 1925 when the sawmill ceased operation, only two students remained and in 1929 the school officially closed.

THE PEAK EXPERIENCE ENDS

        Peak homesteaders had gambled on becoming part of the route for a highway going from Philomath through Harlan, Big Elk and on to Newport by following the creek drainages, which was the path of least resistance for road building.
        When, instead, the railroad and then the highway went through Blodgett and Eddyville, farmers enjoying the bucolic mountain life found that they couldn't make a go out of raising goats and selling farm extras.  The town began to die in 1917 as people left to find steadier work and an easier life in the lowlands.
        Eric Thompson of the Thompson Timber Co. said his grandfather, J.R. (Johnny) Thompson, bought up the land around Peak during the Depression and afterwards.  He purchased many abandoned homestead claims for the price of back taxes, including that of Viola Davidson Farmer.
        With the trees grown up, the only remaining evidence of Peak is the Davidson Cemetery on Shotpouch Road, a small plot with the about 15 graves for founders' families.  Edon Farmer said he and some friends went up 10 or 15 years ago to clear the graves and put up markers.  Flowers still are laid there each year, Thompson said, in memory of the last of Peak.