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History of Early Pioneer Families of Hood River, Oregon. Compiled by Mrs. D.M. Coon

PETER NEAL AND FAMILY 1860

Peter Neal with his family came across the plains to Oregon in 1844. For many years he was employed by the Hudson Bay Company at Oregon City as a black-smith. He came to Hood River in the fall of 1860 and located on land which had been occupied and abandoned by the "Gordon Boys". This tract of land was on the east side of Hood River and Neal's Creek" received it's name from Peter Neal who utilized its waters for the development of the resources of the country and for his own profit. With the assistance of Hardin Corum, a neighbor, he erected a sawmill on the creek which ran through his place. This was in 1862 and was the first saw-mill in Hood River Valley.
The timber in that section was of the best quality and he did not confine his cutting to his own land but took whatever he wanted and the government did not object in those days. The price of the lumber was about $90.00 per M. The mill was not a large one but large enough to make a good living for its owner and his family. He continued to operate this mill until 1886 when he sold out to "Harbison Brothers" and moved to the Willamette Valley. He had a large family and many of his descendants are still among Hood River's energetic and prosperous citizens. His daughter Julia, born at Oregon City, married Jerome Winchell and their homestead joined that of Peter Neal's, There were four Winchell children. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Winchell married John Divers. She died at the age of forty four years leaving twelve children. Another daughter married William Odell and her descendants are well known throughout the valley. The town of Odell is located on the homestead of William Odell. Amanda Neal, another daughter, married David Turner whose farm was in Pine Grove District 4 miles east of the Odell farm. She died in November 1887 on the ranch. Four children were given them, the only surviving member of the family is Mrs. Ed Rand of Portland. Peter Neal and wife moved to Roseburg, Oregon, where they both died.
The following article is taken by piece meal from a letter in the Glacier of June 3, 1926, written by Robert Harbison.
Speaking of Peter Neal he says: "His holdings in the valley consisted of the 160 acres on Neal creek lying just south of the high wagon bridge. My brother Sam, my mother and myself bought the place from him in September 1886, and as there were two old houses on the farm, Peter Neal and family, by arrangement, remained in one of them until the following spring. His respected grandsons, Virgil Winchell and Milton Odell still live in the valley and by the latter I am informed that the exact date of his grandfather's birth is not known, His native state was old Virginia and it is believed his birth occurred in either the year 1821 or 1822, thus making his age about 23 when he crossed the plains in 1844. Even at that age he had already pioneered in Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas. His early life was contemporaneous with men of the Daniel Boone type, a lover of the forest, always eager for new scenes, and as Boone once expressed it, 'more elbow room'. His school advantages were nil and his knowledge of letters limited but his lore of the essentials to existence during his times was boundless, This must have been apparent to those whom he accompanied across the plains, otherwise this hardy young man would not have been chosen as captain of the train. When the party reached The Dalles a raft was made and the rest of the journey to the Willamette valley was completed by way of the waters of the Columbia. They landed and tarried for a short time at the mouth of Dog River, as Hood River was then known, and during this rest he took his gun and wandered back into the interior of the east side, At that time the whole valley floor was covered with an unbroken forest of beautiful yellow pines, clean limbs to a goodly height and no underbrush. Game was abundant and bear steaks and venison were on every hand for the taking. He went on with the company and 17 years elapsed before he returned, and during that time he saw nothing that appealed to him like the Hood River Valley. The vision of its setting in the mountains and of those stately pines kept constantly recurring to him. He was a skilled workman, being efficient as a blacksmith, gunsmith and millwright and upon arriving at Oregon City he at once found employment with the Hudson's Bay company.
After a time he moved to Salem where he lived several years. When gold was discovered in California in '49 he joined the rush but took little part as a digger in the golden sands of the streams. He saw a good thing in packing flour and other supplies from the Willamette valley to the mines.
He made good money at this and told me that he cleaned up some $5000 or $6000 in the enterprise. California had but recently become free from the Mexican yoke and about the only coinage in circulation was Mexican silver dollars. These were of courses bulky and heavy and he told of seeing these silver dollars thrown into heaps on the floors of the back rooms of sutlers' stores and other public places, Such receptacles for the safe-keeping of this money were hardly worth robbing because the amount one could make sway with would not justify the risk. In the year1860 the lure of the Hood River valley brought him back with his family where he was destined to do the most important part of his life's work. He homesteaded the 160 acres and at once proceeded to build a hone and a sawmill. (This was the first saw mill in Hood River valley but not the first one east of the Cascade mountains as Jonah Mosier had a mill in 1855 on Mosier Creek.) A dam was built on the creek a few rods above the wagon bridge and a heavily framed mail building was planted in the creek bed just below.
In the heart of this building was installed one of those pioneer rigs known as a sash mill. To those who never saw one a brief description may prove of interest. The water wheel in these mills was always of the horizontal type and in this instance a wheel known as the Parker wheel was used. This consisted of iron buckets hooped around a huge wooden shaft about ten inches in diameter. A heavy balance wheel, with crankpin was gudgeoned to one end of the shaft. A pitman about fourteen feet long was connected directly to the sash above. This sash, like a huge window sash, was made of four heavy pieces of wood and played up and down between wooden guideposts. The saw was stretched tightly down the center of the sash. The log carriage and log passed back and forth through the sash. These mills being built right on the ground could be made of any dimensions to handle the logs that could be milled.
As I recall it now this sash was about seven feet across, thus making it easy to saw logs three and one-half feet in diameter with economy. Peter Neal, however, tackled logs of greater size. If logs would not pass on its side of the saw, so much worse for the log. Slabs a foot thick at the small end containing many board feet of beautiful yellow pine lumber often went down the chute and such logs after the first four runs would come out about square. No set works were used on the carriage and the log rested on a wooden headblock at each end. An iron bar was used to pinch the log over the desired thickness of the board or the piece to be sliced off, and goodly pinches these always were, resulting in very thick lumber. Peter Neal operated this mill twenty-five years before we bought the farm with the mill still standing and in working order. Most of the output of the old mill was hauled down to the Columbia River to The Dallas by means of wind-propelled flat-boats. He sold this lumber delivered in The Dalles at $14.00 per thousand feet and the price to local people was $15.00 per M. at the mill. His reasoning was based on sound principles for the lumber hauled away from the mill was never paid for. It is said that many good houses still standing in The Dalles were constructed from lumber sawed in this old mill. The young generation who now glide along in automobiles over paved roads can with difficulty imagine the conditions under which this energetic pioneer labored to get his products to markets. The lumber was load-ed onto heavy wagons and conveyed by ox teams to the landing.
There were no roads, and rough-necks came into play for negotiating these wagons down the steep mountainside to the river. The only way at all was to keep on Mrs. Foss's farm back of her present dwelling and thence on down over an almost perpendicular slope to the river, passing the house built by Benton Rand but now owned by Mr. Pullen.
Peter Neal told of starting a young man to the river one day with two yoke of cattle drawing a wagon heavily loaded with lumber. In going down that steep place he lost control of the outfit and wagon, oxen and lumber all landed in a tangled heap at the foot. It was here that Peter Neal met an emergency without flinching. A better road must be had and as Wasco county was large enough for an empire with but few settlers, county aid was out of the question. The present road from Mrs. Foss's around the point to Mr. Pullen's is almost entirely the work of Peter Neal. He told me that he worked 117 days with ox teams and plows and other crude grading tools making this road. Possibly others of the early settlers assisted but the burden of it all was his. This piece of grading with very little improvement continued to be the only road down the east side to Hood River up to about 1897 or 1898. His services to the community were various and many a struggling settler had Peter Neal to thank for the shelter from wind and weather which he enjoyed. He assisted in the organization of the first school district on the east side of the valley and acted as one of the directors, Wm. Odell and D.A. Turner being the other two members of the school board. Warren G. Gooddell was the first teacher.
In January 1887, less than five months after we had bought the farm, the snow, which had fallen heavily all winter, went off with a chinook wind and a prolonged downpour of rain. Neal Creek became a torrent. A dozen or more big logs were in the pond held back from the overflow by a boom. Brother and I had given but little thought to safe-guarding this boom and the flood caused it to break loose at one end. This let the logs drop down on top of the dam. We saw there was danger of them going over and Sam and I put on rubber boots and raincoats and started down the slope to enter a boat and attempt to tow the logs back to safety. Before we had gotten half way, the logs rolled, over the dam with a rush. The sudden release of restrained waters tossed them with a heavy impact against the foundation posts of the mill, and as the dam and mill were joined together this spelled finis to both. Some four or five acres of water, impounded over sixteen feet deep at the dam, went out like a tidal wave. Not a vestige of the old mill remained on the site but the wreckage strewed the banks of Neal Creek to its mouth and I opine that many parts went on till they joined the "roaring waste of ocean". We built another mill on the same site and manufactured lumber, and also did flour milling and feed grinding in a small way until about the year 1903. The timbers still standing are the foundation posts of the gristmill. The old iron Parker wheel was crushed in the wreckage but parts of it were strewn on the gravel bars below.
Many years ago I picked up one of the iron buckets and sent it to the Oregon Historical Society's rooms in Portland where I presume it can still be seen, The old wheel had a history before Peter Neal installed it. At one time it supplied the power that operated the Bradford sawmill at the Cascades. During the attack on the settlers in 1856 by the Indiana the mill was burned. The wheel being under water suffered no injury and Peter Neal secured it for his new mill."