Harney
County covers 10,180 square miles, but only about seven thousand people
live within its boundaries. One can travel along a main highway for
miles without seeing a house or fence, just an occasional road that
leads seemingly nowhere. While communities such as Blitzen and Ragtown
faded, Burns managed to endure and became “the biggest town in the
biggest county in Oregon.” With the exception of the later community of
Hines to the south, Burns today stands alone, the only town within a
seventy-five mile radius.
The discovery of gold in eastern
Oregon in the early 1860s brought thousands of prospectors through the
area, and their presence soon led to violent skirmishes with the
Northwest Indians. To restore peace, the federal government established
several military camps in the present-day Harney County before
negotiating a treaty in 1869. Cattle ranchers, attracted by the vast
amount of bunchgrass and the railroad available at Winnemucca, soon
began moving their herds into the region. While small, family-owned
farms grew on the northern sections of the county, several vast cattle
ranches, financed by out-of-state owners, developed on the southern end.
For the next several decades, an uneasiness that sometimes erupted in
violence brewed between the settlers and the cattle barons as each
jockeyed for land ownership and water rights.
Burns consisted of a hotel, a
saloon, and a barber-shop in the early 1880s. George McGowan, a merchant
from a rival settlement, soon moved to the town and started a general
store with Peter Stenger.
When establishing a post office, Stenger
wanted to name the community after himself, but George Francis Brimlow
in Harney County, Oregon, and Its Range Land wrote that McGowan
discouraged this, observing that too many might call it “the Stenger
town where they got stung.” Instead, McGowan suggested the name of
Burns, after Robert Burns, his favorite Scottish poet.
The Burns townsite was part of a land
grant given the builders of the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain
Wagon Road, which extended from Albany to the Washoe Ferry on the Snake
River. Although the quality of the road in some locations was poor, the
federal government awarded the land grants, the promised incentive.
Subsequent owners of the military road land grant recorded a
twenty-four-block plat called the “Town of Burns” in 1883. One early
settler wrote that in the mid-1880s, “There was nothing attractive about
Burns in those days; in fact it was as raw and crude a little burg as
one can well imagine. There were two saloons, two small mercantile
stores, a rough-and-tumble hotel, a blacksmith shop and a livery stable
in the making.” The saloons, by far the most popular businesses,
attracted visiting cow-punchers and settlers, who made it their
headquarters while they were in town.
Burns has only a few two-story
structures. Because of the extra cost, owners generally had specific
reasons for constructing an additional story. In small towns, fraternal
groups such as the Masons frequently erected two-story buildings, with
the intent of renting the ground floor and using the upper story for
lodge activities. Fraternal groups usually identified their buildings
with their emblem in the center of the structure above the top floor.
Three interlocked rings are exhibited on the Odd Fellows structure at
348 North Broadway, while a compass above a carpenter’s square decorates
the Masonic building at 406 North Broadway.
Other builders of two-story structures
usually were prominent merchants who thought the town had a future, such
as Voegtly or Nathan Brown, whose building stands at 530 North Broadway.
An early settler wrote that Brown, who previously had lived in Walla
Walla, Oregon City and San Francisco, rode through the surrounding
valley and said, “This is going to be a good country; I’m going no
further.” The exterior of his 1896 building, exhibiting fiscal caution,
displays six no-nonsense narrow windows and a row of stone dentils on
the second story. Its less-dressed rubble sides suggest that the
structure anticipated same-height neighbors, which never came, to hide
its ungainly parts.
A History of the
Courthouse
Burns extends several blocks beyond
the Brown building, and then the main street reverts back to a highway
heading northbound for the Blue Mountains and Grant County. Harney
initially was part of Grant County, but the distance to the county seat
at Canyon City, several days away by horse, influenced many citizens to
petition for a more locally based government. Supporters circulated a
bill in the legislature as early as 1887, but it was not until February
1889 that the state created Harney County, honoring the general who had
assisted in opening up eastern Oregon for settlement. Harney City was
designated as the temporary county seat, but had to face Burns and three
other towns in a general election for the permanent position.
Burns citizens began campaigning
vigorously. The May 17th, 1890 Herald listed Burns’
natural advantages, including that “public buildings erected in Burns
are not liable to destruction from cloud-bursts” and that “[the town] is
free from the annual mosquito and gnat visitation that afflicts other
parts of the county.” Other persuasive arguments were “Burns has the
only brewery in the county” and “the Burns Brass Band, of 18 pieces, is
the only band in the county.” Such compelling reasons undoubtedly swayed
the voters, for the final election results were 512 votes for Burns, 415
votes for Harney, with the rest of the contenders sharing the remaining
89 votes.
Even before the official count was
finished, the June 4, 1890 newspaper reported triumphantly that “the
battle is over, and victory perches upon the banner of the Burnsites.”
The battle was not over. “Burnsites” had to file lawsuits to compel
county officers to move to Burns. After the officials had relocated, a
court ordered them back to Harney City until claims of suspected voter
fraud were resolved. However, Burns citizens, including several town
leaders, armed themselves and marched back and forth in front of the
building housing the county records, threatening to shoot down the first
person who attempted to move the records.
According to a petition filed by a
Harney City citizen, several of the Burns men “threatened and still
threaten to kill” the sheriff and officers of the court if they moved
the records. The petition claimed that some of Burns’ citizens had made
bribes with the promises of money and employment, had intimidated school
children to vote, had furnished whisky to voters, and had circulated
fraudulent ballots to “careless, illiterate and hasty voters.” In
addition, it stated that Burns “is an unhealthy and sickly place and the
inhabitants thereof not law-abiding but notorious and dangerous. Many of
the buildings therein of old wood and about to fall in….There is great
danger of flood at all times.”
However, Harney City citizens
themselves were not guiltless. While Harney City citizens claimed that
110 Burns votes were fraudulent, Burns citizens countered that 146
Harney City votes were fraudulent. Finally, almost three years after the
initial election, an independent referee ruled that Burns had won the
county seat position by a mere six votes.
Perhaps in response to the fear of
flooding mentioned in one of the county seat election lawsuits,
officials in 1894 located the first Harney County courthouse, a
two-story wooden structure, on a hill two blocks away from the main
street. In the second-floor courtroom, small ranchers fought cattle
barons over land ownership. The most famous trial occurred in 1898, when
a jury found Edward Lee Olivier, a homesteader, innocent of murdering
cattle baron Peter French.
Forty years later, the November 4,
1938 Burns Times-Herald called the courthouse “antiquated [and]
poorly arranged.” Voters were deciding whether the county should
construct a new $100,000 courthouse, with 45 percent of the cost to be
paid by the federal Public Works Administration (PWA). With such
largess, the issue passed, and the county judge immediately traveled to
Portland to present a request to the PWA official. But the PWA refused
the request; later newspaper accounts blamed either incomplete plans or
that the county’s part of the funding was not entirely available in
1938.
By 1940, the court began discussing
building a modest courthouse entirely with its own funds. Officials and
interested leading citizens toured recently constructed courthouses in
Tillamook, Linn and Deschutes Counties. Economy, however, was foremost
in their minds. The court even reduced the amount of the lowest
construction bid by about 5 thousand dollars to $63,066. The county
moved to the Brown building and, assisted by a grant of over four
thousand dollars from the Works Progress Administration, work began on
excavating a basement.
Just one month after the invasion of
Pearl Harbor, the county court moved into the courthouse, and the
community began using the new facilities. One group that announced plans
to meet there, the Harney County Wild Life Association, apparently
preferred their wildlife dead; according to the March 6, 1942 newspaper,
they would “enjoy the new rifle range in the court house basement.”
The
Courthouse Today
A sidewalk and a berm along the front
of the courthouse distinguish this block from others along the street.
The landscaped square provides a cool respite during Burns’ hot summer
months, although sprinklers discourage lolling on the grass. Most of the
trees provide only shade, but an apricot tree on the southwest corner
also bears fruit, which locals pick during the summer.
Elms flank the walkway leading to the
front of the building, which faces east like the first courthouse.
Except for its square, the veteran’s memorial, and the words on its
façade, the building has little to suggest it is a courthouse. A modest
budget and a shift in architectural styles from ornate embellishments to
nondescript facades were two major factors contributing to the
courthouse’s austere exterior.
Decoration is concentrated on the
central entry, where concrete fluting flanks a tall twelve-pane window
over the two front doors. A plastic owl, which replaced a rotted wooden
flagpole, guards against birds perching on the ledge over the entry.
Another owl stands above the back door, whimsically added not to
discourage birds but to match the one in front. During the spotted owl
controversy, pranksters painted spots on the back-door owl; it has since
been repainted.
The lobby’s rose-colored terrazzo
floor, one of the few interior extravagances, has become the basis of
the courthouse’s subsequent color scheme. Benches lining the wall
exhibit a similar shade, as does some of the lower half of the lobby
walls in order to simulate wainscot. Even the elevator, a recent
addition that replaced one of the two stairways to the second floor,
sports this warm color on its exterior doors. Using nothing more than a
bucket of paint, the maintenance man, Irv Rhinehart, showed that the
county cares about the courthouse’s appearance.
Even though shepherding, farming and
logging also were ways of life for Harney County citizens, the pioneer
society chose a cattleman on a horse for the seal lying in the center of
the terrazzo floor. At the head of the seal, a setting sun bisects the
date 1870, the year the county was created. Darrell Otley, whose family
were ranchers, designed the seal and was awarded a wrist watch for his
efforts.
The courthouse construction budget did
not allow much interior embellishment, but employees and officials have
added their own decorations, which define Harney County and personalize
the building. A picture of two cowboys amid grazing cattle, painted by
Otley, dominates the far wall. (A rendition of the painting, naturally
in a rose tint, is printed at the top of the county’s official
stationery.) On a side wall, three paintings donated by county employees
and Otley also portray ranching scenes.
Pictures of Harney County’s rangelands
are located throughout the courthouse. In the county clerk’s office, one
prominently located painting depicts the site where the famed cattle
baron, Peter French, was killed. During election nights, interested
citizens waiting for the voting results in the clerk’s office share a
potluck in the nearby break room. While as many as fifteen to twenty
people stand around talking, the clerk posts the results on hand-written
poster board lying along the long counter in the clerk’s office. Unlike
metropolitan areas where counting can continue throughout the night,
courthouse-loitering residents, many with full stomachs from the
potluck, generally will know the election outcome by 10:00 p.m.
In the midst of election night
socializing, few probably notice that the piers in the clerk’s office
have either rounded or squared corners. Those with the squared corners
were added after the discovery in 1959 that the aggregate in the
reinforced concrete construction was inferior and was causing the
seventeen-year-old courthouse to sag. Employees vacated the building for
three years while the county court vacillated between tearing it down
and repairing it. During that time, the local newspaper even referred to
the building and its grounds as “the old courthouse property.”
The courtroom on the second floor is
another place where the Harney County identity is strong. In 1995, a
local junior high school art class painted a mural on the wall outside
the courtroom. This forest scene, depicting the northern part of the
county, contrasts with the rangeland paintings on the first floor.
However, inside the courtroom, a painting of a cattle roundup towers
over the judge’s bench. This picture, like the wildlife scenes on the
entry door walls, once hung in the old downtown post office. Another
later addition is the elk trophy on the rear wall – the evidence in a
case against several hunters who had killed the elk illegally.
The furnishings connect the courtroom
to the rest of the courthouse and the community at large. The recorder,
witness, prosecution, and defense sit on modern burgundy chairs, a
deeper shade of the rose tones found throughout the building. The Edward
Hines Lumber Company supplied the clear pine for the spectator benches,
and unlike other counties, which selected their benches from a catalog,
these appear to be locally made. The Hines company also provided the
knotty pine used in the judge’s bench and jury box – a wood found more
frequently in vacation cabins than in solemn courtrooms.
Because Harney County did not receive the PWA funds to
help build its new courthouse, the building does not feature a lobby
with costly marble wainscot or elaborate ornamentation on the exterior
like the courthouses in Linn and Clackamas counties, which did received
PWA funding. The Harney County courthouse is a plain structure, but
through the years its citizens have personalized the building with
things that speak of the community. Just like their predecessors at the
turn of the century, Harney County citizens are aware that the
courthouse represents them.
Want to learn more
about Harney County and it’s historic Courthouse?
Exploring Oregon’s Historic Courthouses by Kathleen M. Weiderhold
provides an excellent description and history of all of the County
Courthouses in the State of Oregon and is where the text listed above
originated. This book was published in 1998 by the OSU Press.
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