Today, 150-acre Santiam Valley Ranch rests on the eastern side of the Hunsaker Donation Claim. Much of the 640.46 acres have been subdivided into other farms and rural subdivisions. The Hunsaker Family Cemetery continues to be well-maintained, now located on Parrish Gap Road.
The donation claim property is bisected by a 230 kV transmission line held by PacificCorp (yellow line).
Continuing west, the donation claim property is bisected by Parrish Gap Road (purple line). The road gets its name from Reverend E. E. Parrish, a gold miner in the 1849 California gold rush, who settled in the Parrish Gap region with his wife Emma Bates Parrish.
The western portion of the donation claim is now a rural subdivision known as “Shadow Hills”.
Left, the red line notes the donation claim to Joseph Hunsaker and his wife, filed on January 24, 1866.
The green line marks Santiam Valley Ranch today.
Left, the railroad (brown line) bisected the donation claim property in 1871. The railroad is now owned by Union Pacific Railroad. East of the railroad sits the old maintenance road, now known as Duckflat Road.
Bethel Substation2 owned by Pacificorp bisects the donation claim property.
Running east to west (not illustrated on this map) lies the Santiam Water Control District’s irrigation ditch and to the south, the Fitzpatrick Lateral Line irrigation ditch. Maintenance of this ditch is recorded by an easement in 1924. Prior to the construction of Detroit Dam, the Willamette Valley Water Company constructed the main irrigation canal that traversed this farm. From aerial maps, one can see the installation of the irrigation canal during the time period from 1948-1955. In exchange for housing the canal, the farm received 50 acres of free water rights.
Willamette Valley Project Including Construction of Detroit Dam
In the early 1930s, Willamette Valley farmers, business owners, residents, and politicians worked together to convince the federal government to develop a comprehensive plan for managing the Willamette River Basin. Flooding had caused millions of dollars in damage. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) completed a survey and report in 1937 recommending a number of water storage dams on the Willamette River and its tributaries for flood control, navigation, irrigation, and power generation. With the Flood Control Act of 1938, Congress authorized seven dams, including the Detroit Dam. Congress approved the Willamette Valley Project and the USACE finished the first of thirteen dams in the basin in the early 1940s.
The estimated construction cost for Detroit Dam was $13,615,000. The dam would provide flood control as well as benefits for navigation, irrigation, power, stream purification, and recreation, although there was significant opposition citing its impact on salmon and in-stream habitat. World War II delayed the project until 1946 when the Corps began acquiring and clearing more than 3,000 acres that would be inundated by the dam’s reservoir. The Corps awarded the construction contract to Consolidated Builders, an interest of West Coast industrialist Henry J. Kaiser (the same man who built the war ships in Portland during World War II, and who oversaw the design and construction of Vanport*.)
Construction began on April 1, 1949. Consolidated Builders poured the first bucket of concrete on August 3, 1950. The reservoir began filling in 1952, and the Secretary of the Interior and former Oregon Governor Douglas McKay dedicated the dam on June 10, 1953. The Detroit and Big Cliff Dams, finished in 1953, created two reservoir lakes that are used for recreation. Both of the Detroit Project dams, located on the North Santiam River, have power generating facilities. The dams do not have fish ladders, and as a result, native salmon and steelhead have been blocked from returning to their upriver spawning grounds. As of 2018, this matter is now being addressed by USACE for a major fish reconstruction effort.
*And as the story continues: In 1942, Vanport (located between Vancouver, WA and Portland, OR) was built in 110 days as a temporary housing project to address Portland’s wartime housing shortage, especially with regard to building of the Liberty ships. Vanport housed up to 40,000 residents, including Ken’s sister and her husband, Barbara and Lt. James Riley. On May 25, 1948, the Columbia and Willamette Rivers reached 23 feet, eight feet above flood stage. Within ten minutes, Vanport was inundated. In less than a day, the nation's largest housing project—and Oregon's second largest city—was destroyed. 18,500 residents were displaced, including Ken’s sister and husband.