Oregon Water: An Environmental History

Introduction

Mt. Angel, Oregon,

A Town Without Water

Sometimes when they visit our country home on a hot August day, our grandchildren are surprised to find that no water appears when they turn on the faucet. The well has run dry, but "miraculously" the water returns overnight. To these city children, water always comes out when the handle is turned. In late summer we worry about our water supply, always making sure there’s a container full for morning coffee. The flowers are carefully watered along their roots, and some plants, especially the hydrangeas, are checked in the late afternoon for signs of wilting. We keep a close eye on my grandson, who mischievously likes to turn on all the outside spigots, emptying the well. After showing our grandchildren the pump, the well, and the spring, we satisfy their curiosity.

Familiar with the idiosyncrasies of our well and our water cycles, we know how to conserve, but what happens when a town, an industry, or even a wide geographic region runs out of water? A simple pump and shallow well aren’t enough to produce the many thousands of gallons consumed for every single need, and for cities and businesses to run dry is no longer exceptional, even in rainy western Oregon. Mt. Angel, a community situated in the northern Willamette Valley, currently faces this dilemma. Its surface rivers and streams are diminished and polluted, and its regional groundwater levels are dropping. In the search for an adequate source, panicky administrators and farmers are deepening existing wells, drilling new ones, or building dams for storage.

For our family, the arrival of the first rains in late September allays our worry, bringing the illusion that the well is now full and the spring is renewed. But the same concerns will return again next fall. Will we end up like Mt. Angel with our well polluted and empty? Every year toward the middle of September, the town of Mt. Angel, Oregon, celebrates its German beginnings with an Oktoberfest. Men wear Lederhosen, tubas oompah, sausages and sauerkraut are consumed, and gallons of beer are drunk to toast the festivities. Oktoberfest is a traditional Old World expression of thanks for the bountiful harvest, and the centerpiece in the town square is a two-story-high totem of farm fruit, vegetables, and other crops. Such a celebration is particularly appropriate for Mt. Angel, which has been a farming town since its beginning around 1850.

Pioneers who first came to this region of Marion County in Oregon’s Willamette Valley found a land ideal for agriculture. The soils were fertile, and the climate mild. Cool winters with rare snowfalls were followed by dry summers when temperatures averaged in the low seventy to eighty degrees during the warmest afternoons. But most of all, water was plentiful. Mt. Angel might experience up to fifty inches of rain a year, mainly coming during the interval from November through May. Precipitation swelled the rivers and replenished the groundwater, which was part of a seemingly endless supply percolating through the sands, silts, and gravels beneath the region. The meandering Pudding River passed to the west of town, Abiqua Creek was on the south, while Zollner Creek flowed north and westward. These Oregon creeks, whose beds were filled year-round, would be called "rivers" anywhere else in the United States.

A community of 3,400 persons today, Mt. Angel lies approximately twenty miles northeast of the state capital at Salem and thirty miles southeast of the largest metropolis of Portland. From the intersection of Main and Charles streets, three landmarks on the skyline rise above the town: the Benedictine Abbey atop a prominent butte, the Gothic spire of St. Mary’s parish church, and the seven-story Wilco grain elevator. These three symbolize the character of Mt. Angel, a strongly Catholic agricultural town, where farming and religion have come together to dominate the past and present.

Mt. Angel is situated in the shadow of an elongate butte, visible for fifty miles. Two and one-half miles long with an elevation of 485 feet at its highest point, Mt. Angel Butte has always had something of a mystical aura. To the Indians, who called it Tapalamaho, it was a place to commune with the spirits. Benedictine Father Adelhelm Odermatt, arriving from Switzerland in 1882, was instantly drawn toward its dominating presence but was prevented from building a monastery on its summit because there was no immediate supply of water. The Benedictines did, however, purchase 1,600 acres that included the butte, converting the surrounding "howling wilderness covered with timber" to "waving grain fields, orchards, vineyards, and vegetable gardens, dotted here and there at convenient points with flour and saw mills and shops."1 Shortly after this, the Benedictine Sisters acquired thirty acres near the base of the butte, "where good water could be obtained."