"I think he really loved the scenery and the fact that it was very similar to what California looked like 50 years before," Eric Grey said of the Rogue. "He remarked on several occasions that he was upset that all the rivers in California were dying and all the fish were gone, but Oregon was still essentially intact. "We've definitely seen more of it disappear. It obviously concerns me. I'm glad there are at least efforts to preserve places like the Rogue. Maybe I'll have kids someday and it will be there for me."
Author Zane Grey's cabin to remain open to all
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) -May 19, 2008 The cabin was once owned by Zane Grey, best known for his
Western novels including "Riders of the Purple Sage." But now the
32 acres and the buildings on it belong to everyone.
This month, the cabin was bought by the Trust for Public Lands
and sold to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which is nominating
it for the National Register of Historic places. The purchase means
that the site will remain open to visitors.
"I think it's fantastic that they are preserving it," Eric
Grey, the late author's great-grandson, told The Associated Press
from his home in New Jersey.
Nelson Mathews, Northwest program director for The Trust for
Public Land, said the property was assessed at $840,000. The actual
sale price was not disclosed. It includes the original cabin, two
modern cabins, a compound of outbuildings, one of the original
boats Zane Grey used to descend the Rogue, a grass air strip, and a
garden.
Grey was a regular on best-seller lists, with one or more top 10
books from 1917 to 1924. He became a Hollywood figure in 1915, when
"Graft" became the first of at least 112 movies based on Grey's
works. He died in 1939 at age 67.
After floating the Rogue River's rapids and falling in love with
its steelhead, he bought a mining claim in 1926 at Winkle Bar,
where he built the cabin, which became his wilderness retreat.
"My great-grandfather said that he spent `one of the briefest
and happiest days I have ever had' on the Rogue near Winkle Bar,
despite the fact he never got a single bite fishing," his
great-grandson wrote in an e-mail. "He was in love with the
wilderness, and the pristine Rogue was a remnant of what America
had been."
After Grey's death, the cabin was acquired by the Haas family of
San Francisco, owners of Levi Straus and at one time the Oakland
A's, who built their own modern cabins on the property, but allowed
the public to walk around the old Zane Grey cabin as long as they
took nothing but pictures.
Grey set his novel, "Rogue River Feud" on the Rogue River,
which courses through the Klamath Mountains of southeastern Oregon
and was among the original rivers protected by the National Wild
and Scenic Rivers Act in 1962.
Many rafters stop by to peer in the cabin's windows and marvel
that one of the most famous writers of his day would choose to live
in such rustic conditions.
Todd Newport, president of the Zane Grey's West Society, said
from Prescott, Ariz., that Grey's "love for fishing drove him to
such places.
"He was able to write books as well as movies and magazines,
and it was able to pay for his fishing."
Eric Grey said his great-grandfather was "constantly getting
swarmed by people," who would even walk in without knocking at the
writer's Hopi-style home on Catalina Island in California as if it
were a public building. The cabin in Oregon was his hideaway.
