6 Tadpole
Voice of Irma Genevieve Wilson Harry
As told in 1982
When our family was young we went camping a lot, but it was a lot different than it is now. We didn’t have the fancy parks to go to and we had to dig our own hole. We always wanted a cabin in the mountains. We lived in Portland for several years, but never bought a house. In the spring of 1959, just before our first grandson, Tom, was born, we bought a piece of property, about the size of a city lot, on the Salmon River near Welches up at Mt. Hood. The first time we went up there Tom was in an infant car bed. Ralph always had special names for people. He called our grandchildren ‘Tadpoles’ so we called the property ‘Tadpole’. For five years we loved to go up to Tadpole and camp, watch the kids play in the water, and just sit under the tree. Ralph built a house at Tadpole and finished it during the summer of 1964. The house wasn’t very big but it was big enough. Ralph and his brother Alva worked all summer and completed the house: put on a roof and siding, put glass in the windows and had weatherized it. He finished the one room cabin with a Franklin stove and plumbing. It was going to be nice, warm and toasty. He put insulation in and the cabin was winterized. We had a loft for the kids to sleep in and also had a bed and other furniture on the main floor. It was a great retreat in the mountains. I think we had stayed there a night or two after it was finished. Dick’s family planned on going up to stay in the cabin for a few days during Christmas vacation.
After Thanksgiving the weather was very unusual. There was about two weeks of extremely cold weather with a lot of early snow in the mountains falling on ground which was frozen solid. Then overnight the weather changed drastically with temperatures rising from below freezing into the 50’s in the mountains. Heavy rains poured throughout the northwest. The rain melted the snow so rapidly and the ground was frozen so solid that the run off had no where to go except into the swollen river beds. So in early December 1964 there was a terrible flood which closed down the highways throughout the state. Dick and his family lived in Albany then and couldn’t even get to Portland because the Willamette River was flowing across Interstate 5.
There had been a log jam up the Salmon River from Tadpole. It was probably from all the timber which fell during the Columbus Day Storm of 1962. Ralph had talked to the Corp of Engineers about, but they said it was no problem. Well, when the floods came, the log jam broke, and a wall of water roared down the river, wiping out four or five summer houses along the way. Ralph’s pride and joy, Tadpole, was washed away with the flood waters. In my minds eye I can just see the house floating down the river all in one piece. When Ralph built something, it was built to last; if one nail was enough, two were better. Ralph and Dick were finally allowed to go through the road block about a week later to see what was left. A 200 foot lot from the road to the river was now 25 feet of forest land and 175 feet of river bottom: no trees, no dirt, no vegetation of any kind, only river bottom sand and rock. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground. It was like God was saying, “I’m sorry!” We were heart sick. However we were grateful that our family had not been in the cabin when the dam broke. No one was hurt, but Tadpole was gone.
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