Preserving Grey’s West

GRANTS PASS, Ore. – One of the most popular sites on the Rogue River is a crude one-room cabin of peeled logs and hand-split shingles.

It was once owned by Zane Grey, known for his Western novels including “Riders of the Purple Sage.” But now the 32 acres and the buildings on it belong to everyone.

This month, the cabin was bought by the Trust for Public Lands and sold to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which is nominating it for the National Register of Historic places. The purchase means that the site will remain open to visitors.

“I think it’s fantastic that they are preserving it,” Eric Grey, the late author’s great-grandson, said from his home in New Jersey.

The property includes the original cabin, two modern cabins, a compound of outbuildings, one of the original boats Zane Grey used to descend the Rogue, a grass airstrip and a garden.

Grey was a regular on best-seller lists, with one or more top 10 books from 1917 to 1924. He became a Hollywood figure in 1915, when “Graft” became the first of at least 112 movies based on his works.

After floating the Rogue River’s rapids and falling in love with its steelhead, Grey bought a mining claim in 1926 at Winkle Bar, where he built the cabin, which became his wilderness retreat.

“My great-grandfather said that he spent ‘one of the briefest and happiest days I have ever had’ on the Rogue near Winkle Bar, despite the fact he never got a single bite fishing,” Eric Grey wrote in an e-mail.

Grey set his novel “Rogue River Feud” on the river, which courses through the Klamath Mountains of southeastern Oregon and was among the original rivers protected by the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1962.

Many rafters stop by to peer in the cabin’s windows and marvel that one of the most famous writers of his day would choose to live in such rustic conditions.

Eric Grey said his great-grandfather was “constantly getting swarmed by people” who would even walk in without knocking at the writer’s Hopi-style home on California’s Catalina Island. The cabin in Oregon was his hideaway.

“I think he really loved the scenery and the fact that it was very similar to what California looked like 50 years before,” Grey said. “He remarked on several occasions that he was upset that all the rivers in California were dying and all the fish were gone, but Oregon was still essentially intact.

“We’ve definitely seen more of it disappear. It obviously concerns me. I’m glad there are at least efforts to preserve places like the Rogue. Maybe I’ll have kids someday, and it will be there for me.”