Memories of Somes Bar #2, 1954

Langford’s Store at Somes Bar

 One early spring day in 1954 we, Mom, step-father Gordon and me, drove the three miles down the Salmon River Road to the store. Mom needed to mail a letter and the post office was in the store. We also needed ice for the ice chest. The store was a small building nestled in a nook on the Salmon River Road where the Orleans Road dropped down the bluff to cross the bridge and join the Salmon River Road. We would have arrived from the right.

    As we parked, a young couple with a child were leaving the store, walking across the porch area and down the three steps. That was the first time I saw Jimmy (Margaret Cook) and Norman Goodwin with their daughter, Cheryl. In a few years they were family. Jimmy cared for my two little girls in January 1959 when I had an emergency operation. You could always count on Jimmy. The same can be said today for Cheryl. Family and friends for life.

   The great flood of 1964 took out the bridge in this photo, as well as the store. Brush lives there now. There are commemorative plaques on the river side, telling what was once there. In my memory, this will always be Somes Bar.

   The 1964 flood also washed out the Wooley Creek Bridge just upriver from my old home. When we first arrived at the property at Somes, you could see marks on the cliffs across the Salmon River from the flat where Gordon intended to build the house. A definite line was defined, moss, ferns, and other plants grew above the line , but not below it. Gordon said that was the high-water mark. Once, in a flood, the river had been that high. My young self was amazed, to think the river had been roaring and tearing down the canyon. Now we know, that was nothing compared to Dec 21/22, 1964.

   The other thing that struck me was at the upriver end of the Wooley Creek Bridge. Looking down river, I could see the remnants of an old trail along the bluff. The urge to get on that trail was strong, but my  stepfather said, “Don’t be silly, it ends after a few yards. Besides, you’ll probably fall in the river trying to get to it.”  So, as alluring as it was, I never got on that old Indian trail. Nevertheless, the urge to walk on it remains in my memory.

   Fern Flat was a few miles upriver from Wooley Creek. It was  a mining claim, held by Ted Muth in the early 1950s. He sold it to my folks. The land was a small flat, above the road. There were springs and ferns all over the slightly sloped hillside, almost like a marsh.  Muth, or someone before him, built a small cabin with a porch. When the Drummonds acquired it, there were radishes growing in a small clearing. Years later, in the late 1980s, I never could find it. Maybe the road changes after the flood mowed over it.  An old timer at the Somes Bar store told me that ‘hippies’ lived there in the sixties.

   Currently, Somes Bar town, i.e., store and post office, is on the corner of State Route 96 and Ishi-Pishi Road over on the Klamath River. It is nearly four miles from the old site on the Salmon River. While it seems strange to me, it is understandable to have it away from the river and safe from floods. Junction Elementary School has always been in that area.  And of course, it is near Kátim’iin and the center of the Karok world.