Whisky Creek Cabin on the Rogue River Trail East - Josephine County, Oregon
We joined the Rogue River just after it absorbed Grave Creek, and took the trail on the North side.
The trailhead is also a launch site for river rafters.
All up and down the Rogue River there are launch sites.
A lot of the rafts and boats we saw today will likely end the trip at
Marial, but I wonder how many will attempt the long haul to Gold Beach
on the Pacific Ocean.
The only tough thing about this 6 1/2 mile round trip to
Whisky Creek on The Rogue River Trail East was the heat!
It had to be close to 90 degrees, and the trail winds along the exposed cliffs with only an occasional shaded bend.
The cliffs are pretty straight down, so you need to be careful and
watch your step, because many of these sheer cliff faces are more than
100' to 150' straight down to the hungry looking rocks.
The "wild and scenic" Rogue River looked lazy at times,
but there are many rapids on the way to
Whisky Creek to keep rafters on their guard.
As an aside; either the original discoverer who named
Whisky Creek
must have preferred scotch whisky, or the cartographer was a scotch
drinker, which is a surprise, as I always think of the "Old West" as
predominately favoring bourbon, rye, and that whiskey family.
Here the rafters detour around a large island to the left. The right
fork goes straighter, but you may go airborne on the rapids.
Rafts are limited in number, because launching at Grave Creek
and further down river requires a permit. Normally, around 120 permits
per day will be issued out of 130,000 applications.
We started our trip to
Whisky Creek Cabin on the Rogue River Trail East early in the morning, and a great number of rafts, and several drift boats passed us as we wound our way above them.
Large fish kept hitting the water for floating lunch. They must be
hungry because one even made a pass at this plastic duck. I wonder if
this duck was on a trial run for the duck race contest we have coming up
later this month.
Ducks are $10 each through our Rotary Club, and the money raised goes
toward programs for children. Funds raised this year will go to the
Garrison Field Little League project and the Illinois Valley High School
all-weather track.
I wonder what the fish will think when 25,000 of these little guys
come downriver? We have a couple in the race, and the prizes are
great! There's still time for you to enter!
China Gulch is a peaceful, shaded area that we came across on the trail to
Whisky Creek Cabin.
There is a warning at the beginning of the trail about this being bear country, and signs were everywhere along the trail.
Every forest creature uses the trail, unless people are on it. Can't
blame them, as everything is straight up and down in these mountains.
Everywhere there are elk, deer and bear trails going down to the Rogue and up into the steep forest slopes above.
At last, we arrived at the bend in the trail that winds around to
Whisky Creek.
We crossed on a great footbridge, made in my home state.
As we reached the splitting of trails, some jokester had removed the arrows to the
Whisky Creek Cabin,
but using my abilities that all men inherently possess when it comes to
directions, and; after leading us around for twenty minutes, my wife
took over,
and three minutes later we arrived at the
Whisky Creek Cabin!
Whisky Creek Cabin was built about 1880 by an unknown gold prospector.
The first recorded claim was filed by a miner named Rushmore, and he sold it to Cy Whiteneck in 1918.
Mr. Whiteneck lived here for 30 years.
He built a flume ditch to channel water from way atop the mountain; past the cabin, and angling down to the mouth of
Whisky Creek. Cy used this water to throttle it down to decreasingly smaller pipes to produce tremendous pressure for hydraulic mining.
Cy sold the claim in 1948 to L.M. Nichols and his wife. They hired a
man name Lou Martin in 1957 as a caretaker for the property.
Lou built this solar heated shower, and a sawdust insulated, double walled pantry alongside the kitchen.
This flume ditch provided drinking water for the cabin, and also for hydraulic mining near the cabin and at the
Whisky Creek bar.
Mr. Martin was 83 years old when he passed away in 1977.
The
Whisky Creek Cabin is now owned by the Bureau of Land Management, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
We left
Whisky Creek Cabin wondering who "Kitty Mack" was. Most likely it was a 17 year-old cat when she/he died.
It's hard to imagine what this area would have looked like when the Rogue River reached its' highwater mark back in '64.
We met a large deer, and she seemed to go straight up the hill. We
waited a bit, and shortly, she appeared above us, and crossed over to
again drop down on the other side of us to continue down the trail.
