Archer Mountain

[Born2BBrad]

Yeah, the Archer area is awesome!

BTW, the poem at the top is called "Dream of the Archer",
which is actually a song by the band Heart.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mflN7IrDMvk

[K.Wagner]

Thanks for background on the packet at the summit! I love the way everyone on this site adds their little piece of the puzzle so that we all benefit.

[miah66]

Some add'l info about the commune that was located in High Valley just below Archer Mountain:

From The Oregonian

UTOPIA FAILS IN HIGH VALLEY

By STEVE DUIN

Publication Date: March 7, 1996 Page: C01 Section: LOCAL STORIES Edition: SUNRISE


They were intellectuals, idealists, academes and hippies when they first hiked into this canyon. Awed by the raw, angular beauty of their hideaway, they were inspired by what they might do with it.

Live in community. Lean on the land. Cut all their ties but those with one another.
They had the vision. And the two dozen dreamers were, in the beginning, willing to sacrifice, to adjust, to compromise to hold fast to it.

"What is cooperative living but learning to cope with individual differences?'' Jessie McVey asked. It was a quote that Phoenix Reid swept up and stored in her journal on June 5, 1971.
Twenty-five years later, only two members of the original troupe still are communing with the fog banks and the sunbursts at the knee of Archer Mountain.

Most are in court, locked in a contentious legal battle about the future of their 183-acre utopia.
Is that bitter irony or bland inevitability? Well, they're arguing about that, too. But if you dream, or once dreamed, of disappearing into the warm embrace of an eternal circle of friends, take note of what happened to the group that beat you up the mountain.
Take note . . . for you won't take heart.

The seed group for High Valley Farm came out of the Metropolitan Learning Center, an alternative school in Northwest Portland that valued creativity over structure. When they discovered this canyon -- 1,100 feet above the Columbia River just west of Skamania -- they realized they'd found a home for their idealism and their heirs. The hillside included a view of Multnomah Falls. "It's one of the most spectacular properties I've ever seen,'' Bowen Blair, vice president of the Trust for Public Lands, said Wednesday. "The closest thing to Switzerland in the United States.''And the hillside was for sale.

A total of 24 people chipped in for the $156,000 buy in 1971. They eventually formed a corporation and doled out shares depending on the sum of each individual investment. Some of them moved into the chicken and turkey barns that had been built by homesteaders. Others lived in tents, and still others ventured out to the canyon only during their idle hours. There were weaving workshops, cooking classes for wild and edible plants, and weekend galas for dozens of MLC kids. There were goat herds and chicken coops and turkey dinners.

"Coming out of the '60s, we were feeling terribly dissatisfied,'' Bob Pullman said. ``We wanted to live better. We were trying to find common ground, but the only thing that bound us together was paying for the property.''

"Every one of us was a strong individual,'' Reid said. "That was our downfall. We could never come up with one guiding principle.''

By the mid-'80s, the community was drifting apart. Few people could find jobs and fewer wanted to continue living in wooden shacks when 40-mph winds were ripping through the gorge. "We weren't getting education in the local schools,'' said Jim Canon, who moved back to Northeast Portland in 1984. "We couldn't find local jobs. And the farm was too small for the divorces that happened. It was a dreamy situation, but it could not go on.''

By 1992, only two of the originals -- Phoenix Reid and Bob Pullman -- were holding on to their piece of the hillside. While several other shareholders still used the farm, a majority of the investors, longer in years and firmly rooted in various urban areas, wanted to sell the land. Enter trouble, the lawyers and the Trust for Public Lands. Blair admits that the trust, which buys private property to save it from the developers and the timber barons, had been eyeing High Valley for years. When he and Canon were on the board of Friends of the Columbia Gorge, they held meetings on the property.

In 1992, the trust offered to buy the 183 acres for $425,000. Such a sale had to be approved by 75 percent of the original partnership. The offer was narrowly rejected. But Pullman and Reid realized the sentiment to sell was too powerful to resist. They returned to the majority shareholders with an offer to match the trust's bid.

That offer also was turned down. "They were going to pay for it, but not with their money: They were going to log the place,'' Canon said. ``It's the last beautiful piece of land in the gorge. None of us could see logging it.''

Actually, Pullman and Reid only planned to log 39 of the 183 acres. That was enough to provoke Canon, McVey and eight other shareholders to file suit to dissolve the partnership. The commune and the sense of community, you understand, had long been abandoned.

Several years of legal wrangling followed. On Feb. 16, a Clark County Superior Court judge ruled that the Trust for Public Lands could buy the entire parcel of land for $571,000. If the judge's ruling survives appeal, Blair said, the trust will sell the land for a profit to the U.S. Forest Service, which is on record as having no interest in it. The Pullman and Reid homes will be demolished and they will receive, by Pullman's reckoning, less than half the homes' assessed value.

Never mind that these folks only want to abide on their hillside, not sell their stove-heated hutches to someone who would seed the canyon with $500,000 mansions. "I've never had another home,'' Reid said. "My father was in the military; I went to 13 different elementary schools. Then married a diplomat. This is my home. And the spiritual aspect of the place . . . I get up every morning, look out the window and gasp. It's my answer. My security. It's where I want to die, as well as where I want to live.''

You'd think there would be some room for compromise. Allow Reid and Pullman a dozen acres, perhaps, and give the trust the rest. "That was considered,'' said Canon, the spokesman for the group that wants the property sold, "but I know the trust doesn't like it. We've spent about $15,000 in attorney fees. It's beyond the point of compromise.''

The desire to live cooperatively is dead. The vision of High Valley is lost. Those who have come down out of the clouds want closure on what is still an open, ongong experience for the dreamers who remained behind.

It's enough for Reid to pick another 25-year-old quote from her journal. "If too many sacrifices are entailed,'' another of the first visionaries said, "naturally we'll have to move on.''

Naturally.

[K.Wagner]

Thanks for posting that old Oregonian article. I had read bits of the story, but never the part about the sale conflicts. I wonder what the final agreement was? I don't think that there was ever any logging done.

[Kdragoon]

I lived at High Valley Farm from its first year and was involved in the wind up and litigation. I know/knew everyone named in the interview. I lived there continuously for its first two years before going off to college. Jim Canon was my stepfather and I worked on a WA State DNR fire crew with Bob Pullman home for college the following two summers. Very mixed feelings and bittersweet memories.

[Webfoot]

Welcome Kdragoon. I hope you will stay around.

[K.Wagner]

Thanks for writing. One never knows what they will find on this site!