 Vernon Arnold, and I'm from Southern Oregon. I was born in Medford in 1938, and I grew up in Butte Falls. We lived in the Applegate on Carberry Creek above Applegate Lake until I was four, then we moved to Butte Falls and I went through school up there. My dad was a logger, worked in the log industry, and he got a job up there. It was right after the Depression, you know, and I was born in Melvin, Arnold. Then we moved up there and then I went to school in Southern Oregon College, got a teaching degree and taught for a while, ten years. So now, what do you want me to say next? Oh, go to the picture. I'll just refer to this picture of my dad's side of the family. Ezra, he's dad. My dad's dad is in the picture to the left. Behind in the picture is Fred Bennett. He was a half-brother to my dad. Going across Yuvina, Arnold, and Elsie, Arnold, my grandmother. I never knew either one of the grandparents. They were gone before I was born. In the middle of the picture is Jim, Arnold. And then going across the bottom is Lena, Arnold. And then my dad, who was probably about two years old, his name was Melvin, Arnold, about two years old, he was born at Squaw Lake. So the family at this time all lived at Squaw Lake. There were no roads, just trails in there. Way back in the, he was born in 192. So that tells you it goes back a long ways up there. How'd they make their living? He did some mining. He would mine and go over the hill to Elliott Creek, near the Furglade, not Furglade, but the Blue Ledge Mine, but not the Blue Ledge Mine. He'd mine over there in the summer and come back in the winter. And they grew big garden, and they also raised cattle, or a few cows and pigs and what have you. So they were pretty much self-sustained. My grandmother, or not my grandmother, my great aunt who's in this picture, her name was Eugene Arnold, I just mentioned. She was born in 1862 or three, right in there. And she lived up until she was about nine or 10 years old. And she wrote a story about it. It's in the Historical Society, a book on what it was like living up there. Very interesting story of her life. Then she went on, because she moved out of the area, moved up to Idaho, then back to the family ranch in Iowa. But her husband was out here mining and found her. He was about 20 years older than she was. But anyway, that's the Arnold family. My dad worked at various, yeah, I'll mention this, my dad worked at several mines around. He worked at the Blue Ledge mine, the copper mine, the big one up in the Applegate. He went through school about the eighth grade. Then they discovered a mine when he was about 13 years old, up in the Applegate, upper part of the Applegate. It's now called the Arnold Mine. I'm just going to hold this up to refer to it. I wrote a book because it was discovered in 1915. We had 100th anniversary two years ago, celebrating the mine. And it's a beautiful area. I used to go up there and do assessment work with my uncle, who's in this picture too, Jim Arnold, and enjoyed it as a kid, go up there for a month at a time, this time of year when it was rainy and cold sometimes. So were the mines very profitable? Well, it was a hard rock gold mine. In the early 1930s, they built a small stamp mill up there. They drug everything in by horse or whatever, mules, what have you, all the equipment. And they had a tunnel that went back in the mine, this book describes all that. It went back in the mine and they had a ledge of quartz about two feet wide that went down in the mountain and the gold's in that quartz. In order to get out of the quartz, you have to crush it up into fine sand and mix it with things to get the gold out of it. Yes. And they were able to extract the gold. It got enough to keep it going. It didn't look like very much money, but in those days it was a lot of money because they had no jobs. And that's when I lived on the Carberry Creek up here because he would go from that ranch up to the mine, hike in about nine or 10 miles, work it, even during the winter, they'd go out on his keys, work the mine, come back with the gold and what little they raised on the farm and the gold they got were able to live. It's perfect. So where did they get the water? They had a stream that came, they call it bean gulch, came right down by there and they had to have water to flush the gold out and stuff. And how did they engineer the stamper? There's different designs for that. Yeah, I've got a picture in the thing over here that shows how a stamp mill works. But anyway, they put it together and then they had a small, they were going to use a water wheel, but they decided against it, I guess, and they got a little small engine up there and they had a belt and what it does, it stamps up and down like this. It has things that pull them up and drop and they would bring the ore from up there at the mine above them down by Orkart, pull it, they take a full one and pull an empty up and then fill that one up and pull the empty up and they crushed the ore into fine sand there and that's how they extracted the gold. Now since then, I'll just mention briefly, my dad retired in 1967 and before that he started building another stamp mill. The reminiscences are still up there and it's all fallen down, there's pictures in the book here, but it's all fallen down but he built this great big, much heavier duty, two stamp mill, a great big building. It's amazing what he did. We would go up and help him as we could, we were working and so on. He built that, never did run very much ore through it because by the time he got ready to run it, he got too old. And so when he was about 85, I think it was about the last time he was up there. Was it like that? Yeah, it was more for family. But I never got the mining bug so the gold didn't excite me that much but my dad had that bug and he wanted to get that gold out and around. Not too many in those days because the jobs were pretty flantiful in the 70s and 80s and so on. Nowadays they're thinking about going back and mining it again. We still have it in the family. So that's my dad's brief history and he lived up there. Of course we grew up in New Falls. When he retired he moved down to Roosh out right down here and that way they could get to the mine a little easier. Well anyway, that's my dad's side of the family. Now I want to tell you about my mother's side. I'm going to talk about my mother's side of the family now and they came to the Applegate. My grandfather came there in 18... I've got him on the 1860 census mining out here by Roosh Forest Creek and then about 1878 he married my great-grandmother who I knew. Her name was Sadie Collins. His name was Freeman Oscar Collins. Her name was Sadie Collins. And the interesting thing about her and I have him in the picture here he's here, this is her he was about 30 years older than her. He was born about 1820 or no, 1830 she was born in 1862. The interesting thing about her is she was half Indian. Her mother was an Indian her father was a white person and they were she was born in the Henley-Harmbrick area, 1862. So that's kind of an interesting history about the two of them and they raised a pretty good size family you can see the, and this isn't all the kids there were a couple more that aren't in the picture one was born after this and I think one wasn't in the picture. But I want to but anyway they lived on the ranch where they had a ranch just up from the Applegate River on Squaw Creek my uncle took me up up to Squaw Lake one time and he said we were all born right here and he pointed to the area where they were born now it's all under the lake but anyway that was interesting I'm glad I got that history and then we came back to the ranch and he said a lot of our people were buried here on the ranch and he took me up to the little graveyard that was up there's a big two-story house that my uncle built John Collins I don't remember it it was probably a route something but it's right across this side of Copper Store it's not up by Copper Store there's a swinging bridge that went across some people I talked to here remember the swinging bridge and we'd go across the swinging bridge to the ranch house and up behind it was this graveyard and he pointed out the gravestones were all gone they were all wooden at the time and they all deteriorated but the graveyard had about 10-12 people in it and they had to move all those because it's under Applegate Lake now all family some of them weren't some of them were friends of the family a couple of them were in the Civil War and he pointed those out to me I've got a list of them if you've ever wanted but anyway it was interesting finding where that gravesite was they had a nice spring there that fed the ranch this is a little side story three years ago the water was very low we decided we'd go up there and see if we could find any remnants of the old house or anything and I walked down there you could see some of the old house the concrete foundation so I was kind of excited about that and the water was just wrapping in the edge of it so the lake wasn't completely down but I said they used to have a spring it was right over here and I looked over and here was water bubbling up that sent chills down my back because it was a wonderful spring and it was still bubbling there I'm going to try to go up there again if the lake goes low again but anyway they all lived on the ranch some of them moved away but there's a lot of brothers and sisters in 1979 there at the ranch I'm going to tell you one side story here too her mother I told you was half Indian when she was about 8 years old the story was she got a severe case of measles it left her deaf and she raised all these kids never could hear her sound so I remember because she lived in 92 she lived with her daughter my grandmother in Medford and I remember talking with kind of a sign she would kind of mumble and talk and her son came down and talked to her and he could talk the same language it might have been an Indian sign language I'm sorry because her mother was Indian so she never went away to school no nothing we know of probably they created that language themselves but anyway they had a nice life and so on I could go on and on but I don't want to keep up there's one story I want to tell about this picture of grandfather born in 1830 you notice his face is kind of scratched off and I got this picture I'd never seen it before until I was out of high school and somebody in the apple gate here said you might like this picture of your grandparents I said I'd never seen a picture of him before ever so I took it and I kept wondering why she said somebody damaged his face well I didn't think anything about it then I went down and visited a cousin that lives in California her mother was this lady over here and she said I got some old pictures and I said well I'd like to take a video I took a video camera and aimed down and let them go through their pictures that's how I used to do it and her mother was probably in her 80s and she would point out and say they had a picture exactly like this it was an original kind of picture it was scratched off in the exact same spot and that hasn't been photographed that way it was scratched up this is the other side of the story and I can't verify this no one knows I have a cousin he's almost 90 he lived in the car break creek when I lived up there this is early on so I remember some of the stories he has a good memory Harold Arnold is his name and he said I heard a story up here on the apple gate a guy had cancer on his nose and this Indian woman made a poultice out of she went around and picked up plants and so on and made a poultice and put it on his nose and cured it so I have a hunch he was left with a hole there and they were embarrassed by the picture it sounds logical doesn't it that's my last story it was kind of funny my uncles never talked about him that was their dad but they never talked about him much I don't know he was quite a bit older he died in 1975 and he was buried at the ranch we got him out in the Jacksonville cemetery now okay let me just tell a brief story about Arnold Mountain are you ready Vern Arnold again one story I left off it has to do with the mine and this mountain behind the mine was Lake Peak for years after my dad passed away my son used to go up and help him in the summers my son said I want to commemorate him somehow or other he said I'm going to etch something in a block of wood this is in honor of Melvin Arnold or something and put it up on top so he did that a couple years later he came to me and he said why don't we change the name of the mountain I said I don't know how to do that how could you change the name of the mountain he said well if anybody do what you can I worked at the historical side I was president of the board for a while and so on so I kind of knew people so I got some information started filling out the forms five years later it might have been five might have been four years later they said there's no other there's a lake peak there's a lake mountain around here this is lake peak we don't need too lake they said and you have history that goes back a hundred years here let's rename it Arnold mountain and they renamed it it's now on all the maps is Arnold mountain Collings mountain came from this Collings family the Collings mountain is it because Freeman Oscar was there and his wife Betsy Lewis at that time Betsy Collins wait a minute Sarah Collings we're there for so long in that Applegate lake area that they decide when they started naming mountains I don't know how they got it but they just decided they would name it Collings mountain after that after our family so it just picked up that name and I don't know how it got its name I never tried or did anything about it it was already on the map years before I was born so anyway two families that I'm associated with the Applegate two mountains named after our family nobody can claim that can they thank you great job