Skip to main content

Grave Matters


Few places around here are as wrongly named the Lone Fir Cemetery, a beautiful park-like area with nearly every kind of tree known to Portland—including dozens of firs. They could have even named it the Four Sequoias. One fellow a hundred or so years past had the foresight to have a Sequoia seedling planted on each edge of his final resting place. Today they make a lovely shelter from wind and rain while passing through the boneyard.
Four Sequoias

My wife and I were visiting our final resting place today—a fine, crisp sunny day, more like Spring than early February. Almost twenty years ago, as a weird sort of splurge, we bought two plots in the Lone Fir after finding that they still had a few left. Today it would be impossible, it's a full house. Back in the  1960s I used to walk straight through the Lone Fir on my way to Washington High. I always enjoyed reading the epitaphs, but it would be years before I realized the fascinating history of the place and its inhabitants. 

The McCleay Crypt (one of my finest snapshots, if I say so myself)
I was delighted that we were given plots about twenty yards from the prestigious McCleay crypt, a gothic edifice spooky enough to inspire a few chills. But recently it came to my attention that we were even closer in proximity to the Portland's number 1 shanghai boss, the sailor's boarding house master James Turk. There he lies thirty feet from us, along with his first wife Kate, and his beloved mother. You will be able to read about Mr. Turk in great detail in my upcoming book. He was on of the ruthless men who made Portland infamous as Shanghaiing Capital of the World. Besides this he was a brawler. He was arrested so many times for beating people with his fists that when the Oregonian reported on it, they usually did so beneath the headline "Turk Again". He wasn't the only family member in the papers fairly regularly, his wife Kate was in and out of the police court for her tendency to drink too much, argue loudly, and beat people with her fists as well. She, at least, had the excuse that she was Irish.

A shanghaiers's final resting place

There are many other interesting people interred in this lovely place. A good place to start is at the 
 Friends of LoneFir  website.

 
a. McCleay crypt
b. Blalock's future abode
c. The Turks



Comments

  1. Rob SchleigerApril 22, 2012 at 9:26 PM

    i don't see anything glorious or interesting about the turks' grave. if anything, they should be forgotten, in my opinion. the same goes for the sad history of portland's shipping and prostitution rings. SORRY.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Last Word on Shanghai Tunnels - Including 14 reasons why the stories are bogus

I have never been on a tour of Portland's so-called "shanghai tunnels," so I am unable to comment on this attraction, except that I have heard that the tour is quite entertaining. Neither have I been to the Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland,  the Magic Carpets of Aladdin, or the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, for that matter. The closest I have come to this sort of tourist entertainment was while visiting the ancient city of York I took my family on the "York Ghost Walk." This tour is a bit of innocent fun with some old ghost stories mixed in with distorted history—just for the tourists.  It may be true that I have no experience with the tourist tours of these basements in the northwest regions of downtown, but I do know a bit about them. There is a great deal of documentation in the newspapers, and in old court records. They were built by Chinese back in the days when Chinatown was the center of gang activity related to the different tongs...
17 comments
Read more

The Steel Bridge and the Railroad

I don’t know if anyone has noticed this, but the Steel Bridge on old postcards is often designated as being owned by any one of three different companies. Most often you will see the words “O.W.R. & N. Co. Bridge across the Willamette,” or something to that effect. Other times the card might read, “O. R. R. & N. Co. bridge, Portland, Oregon.” Then, on occasion, a card might say, “Union Pacific bridge, Portland, Oregon.” This was confusing to me at one time, until I read a little something on the history of the Union Pacific lines in the west, then I became even more confused. The lines were in and out of receivership, leased, sold, given different, but very similar names, and called different names by different levels of railroad hierarchy. When the first Steel Bridge was built in 1888 the company behind the construction was the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company (O. R. & N. Co.), an old and powerful entity that had evolved from the Oregon Steam Navigation Company...
Post a Comment
Read more

Good old O Dock

O Dock, foot of North Holladay When I started working on the waterfront the first place I was assigned was to a place that was indicated on the dispatch roster as "LDC". This stood for Louis Dreyfus Corporation, but few people called it that. It was known to the longshoremen and most everyone else as "Globe". The dock has gone through a number of names over the years and is now wearing the name O Dock. I am of the opinion that this is an older name than Globe, harking back to the Portland practice of naming docks after the streets of which they were the "foot". "O" referring to Oregon Street. At one time Victoria Street ran all the way down to the river having its foot in this same area. In those days there was a Victoria Dock. It was burned to the ground in 1902 by an arsonist who had spouted threats while spending a bit of time in the Oregon State Penitentiary that he was going to "burn Portland to the ground." He got as far as l...
1 comment
Read more