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National Geographic : 1979 Dec
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San Francisco. From the house he is remod eling in a sleepy valley east of Langlois, Bill ranges all over Oregon videotaping profiles of people and places that are widely broad cast in the Pacific Northwest. He tends his stand of timber as an investment, a resource he can count on to offset the risks of being an independent producer. "I'd say that self-sufficiency and indepen dence are the virtues prized most among the coast's rural people," Bill told me. "There's a strong tradition of hospitality and helping your neighbor, but everybody wants to suc ceed on his own, somehow. It's like canning your own garden vegetables instead of buying them at the store. "It's not a precious affectation," Bill said. "It's an effort to stay in control of your life economically while enjoying a degree of independence." Most newcomers share Bill's feeling for independence, and such virtues are deeply rooted in local tradition. In cattle rancher Sam Dement and his wife, Dorothy, I found the embodiment of native self-reliance. Sam is a fourth-generation Oregonian. Tall, lean, gray-haired, and permanently tanned, he appears much younger than his 59 years. He and Dorothy spend much of the year on their 3,300-acre ranch in the mountains east of Sixes, a town consisting of a general store cum-post office. The ranch is a chain of high meadows stretching 15 miles through timberlands in sight of the sea. I arrived at roundup time an hour before dawn. The kitchen was already crowded with family and friends who had come to help out. Platters of scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, and toast circulated around the table as the talk turned to beef prices. "For years they fell below our production costs," Sam said. "When that happened, we went to work in the sawmills, did some car pentry, cut a few trees to sell. That was after we did our ranch work. We got by." Parts of the ranch have been in the family Ups and downs of beefpricesmake ranch ing a marginal operation for Howard Leathermanand others nearPowers. "But with land values increasing,anyone who wants to sell out and get out can do just fine," he says. for four generations. The house and barn were built in 1875 of hand-hewn white ce dar. The house was once a hotel on the stage coach route between Port Orford and Myrtle Point, then a paddle-steamer stop on the Coquille. It has no electricity and no tele phone. Kerosene lamps provide light, and Dorothy cooks on a wood-burning stove. The house is warm, cluttered, and neat. National Geographic,December 1979 808
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