Trip Report

After leaving S.E.H.S. at 9:00 a.m., 16 Obsidians and 13 friends met Col. Rex Applegate and his daughter Shannon at the historic Applegate House out of Yoncalla. The colonel first told of the three Applegate brothers and their families who made the trek to Oregon in 1843 and of Charles Applegate, Rex's great grandfather, who had built this house which the family moved into in 1855. The colonel took the group on a tour of the garden, pointing out the trees for which the Charles Applegates had brought seedlings from Missouri and the rosebush by the kitchen door which Melinda Applegate had taken a slip from Narcissa Whitman's rosebush in Walla Walla as the Applegates came west. In the house, the colonel told of the home's unusual architecture and of the furnishings of the first floor; Shannon pointed out the many pieces of home-built furnishings on the second floor and of the attic, which housed many travelers who came by the large house to or from California. Lunch was enjoyed in the cool garden.

The bus brought us to the Douglas County Museum in Roseburg at 1 o'clock, where two tour guides in pioneer work clothes explained the superb exhibits. There are outstanding dioramas. A Rice Hill ice cream stop was made as we came home, arriving at 4:30 p.m.

On the trip were Marion Borchardt, Dee & Richard Brown, Fran Cooley, Janet Dorjahn, Phyllis Early, Bill Eaton, Margaret Fea, Dorothy Hayes, Barbara & Kess Hottle, Rosella Jones, Barbara Kiser, Evelyn Knott, Bonnie Ledford, Marie Loome, Helen Lynch, Cleora Mersdorf, Dean Patterson, Miriam Roberts, Kathleen Schlenker, Karen Seidel, June Smith, Jean Teague, Dorothy Turner, Vera Woolley; Ardis Ebbighausen (leader) and Ingrid Carmichael (co-leader).