McKenzie 9/26/25

We drove east on Highway 126 through Springfield and followed the McKenzie River up into the mountains.  The river is named for Donald McKenzie, who explored the area for the Pacific Fur Company in the early 1800’s, and it’s where all of Eugene and Springfield’s tap water comes from, and we were looking forward to a beautiful drive all the way up the valley.

On our way, we had to make one short stop in Leaburg to pay our respects to a guy in the Greenwood Cemetery there.  In 1977 a couple of guys wrote the song “Luckenbach, Texas”, and they gave it to Waylon Jennings to record because his name was in the song.  Waylon hated the song, and always did, but he knew it would be a huge hit so he recorded it for his next album and it went to #1 on the country chart.  Nobody, it’s worth mentioning, had ever heard of Luckenbach, Texas when the song was released.  Even today it’s not big enough to call a town, and at the time Waylon knew nothing of the place.  It’s since become a location to hold concerts and festivals in the wilderness about 50 miles north of San Antonio, but there’s still not much there.

Now, if you’ve ever heard that song, you know that it references “Newbury’s train songs”, among other things, and I always assumed that Newbury was some old dude who sang lots of songs about riding the rails during the great depression or something.  I had no idea who he was, and certainly didn't realize he had lived half his life in Springfield, Oregon, died in 2002, and is buried in a cemetery next to the McKenzie River.  Mickey Newbury was well known in Nashville for writing hits for other artists, including this one sung by a guy you might recognize, but his own albums were commercial failures.  He became disillusioned with the Nashville scene, and by the mid-70’s he had relocated to Springfield to be near his wife’s family and didn’t want anything to do with the whole outlaw country craze that was becoming popular.  He kept writing and singing and recording, and though he never became a big star he was respected by everyone in the business as one of the greatest songwriters ever.  He’s in the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, so we couldn’t just drive right by him.  I’ve listened to a few of his old songs and they aren’t to my liking, so we were doing the next best thing on this trip by listening to Waylon Jennings, including his rendition of Luckenbach, Texas.

Just a mile or so after leaving the cemetery we entered the McKenzie School District, which is a massive district reaching all the way up into the Three Sisters Wilderness area, but most of the population in the district is spread over several small unincorporated communities.  The first of these we came to was Vida.  The Vida post office was established in 1898 and was named for the postmaster's daughter.  A few miles later we were in the community of Nimrod.   My Oregon Geographic Names doesn’t even have a listing for Nimrod because nobody’s ever been able to verify where the name came from, but we here at CPHC obviously side with the many who believe it was named after Nimrod O’Kelly, the star of Way to Go, Nimrod! 

The next community upriver was Finn Rock, which was originally a logging community.  The rock beside the highway that Finn Rock was named for does indeed look a little like a fin, but it, and the eponymous community, were actually named for Mr. Benjamin Franklin Finn.  Finn brought his wife and six children over the Rocky Mountains to the Leaburg area in 1871, and he always claimed that he had pulled that rock out of the middle of the road with his team of mules when he found it in his way.   And if you believe that story, you might also believe that, as he claimed, he was the original, genuine “Huckleberry” Finn.  Finn said that he and Samuel Clemens had met during the Civil War and had traveled together to Colorado.

Ben "Huckleberry" Finn

People who have looked into the claim say that the dates don’t really match up, and that Clemens only served in the war for two weeks so it’s unlikely that he met Finn during that time, but Benjamin’s brother, who also claimed to have known Clemens, swore that it was all true.  Nobody will ever know one way or the other, but Finn’s own son thought it was hogwash, and Finn himself boasted of being “the biggest liar on the McKenzie River”, so I’m inclined to be skeptical.  But Benjamin's nickname definitely was Huckleberry, and he is buried in the Greenwood cemetery not far from Mickey Newbury.

Finn Rock is the home of McKenzie High School, but we wanted to see more of the district, so we drove on past the school a few miles to the community of Rainbow.  A hundred years ago Rainbow had its own post office, and it was named for all of the rainbow trout in the adjacent river.  The post office is gone, but Rainbow is now home to the Holiday Farm RV Resort, the place where downed power lines ignited the huge Holiday Farm fire of September, 2020 that eventually grew to more than 170,000 acres, destroying hundreds of homes and other structures throughout the valley.  Signs of the fire are still easy to see, with miles of burnt tree trunks covering the surrounding hills, but the vegetation is coming back, and the valley is full of attractive new homes, many right on the river's edge. All in all, it's pretty amazing how much everything has bounced back in only five years’ time.  McKenzie High School itself was saved from the fire, but many of the students had lost their homes and enrollment remains below pre-fire levels.

We continued on up the McKenzie to the community of Blue River, which is named for a river called Blue River, which runs down from the hills outside of Finn Rock and empties into the McKenzie near the high school, and doesn’t go through the community of Blue River at all.  It gets a little confusing because there are signs pointing to Blue River that are not helpful if you're trying to get to Blue River, and vice versa. There in the community of Blue River, just outside the entrance to Tokatee Golf Club, we found Takoda’s Restaurant. We were feeling a little peckish so we went in and ordered our pregame refreshments. The food was excellent, as was the service, and our waitress explained that the Holiday Farm fire had started right next door but the winds blew in from the east, so Takoda's was spared the devastation that everything west of them had suffered.

It was at this time, as we were sipping our drinks and waiting for our food, that I chose to share with Mrs. Ednold the fact that many people have been found dead, or gone missing, along the McKenzie River in recent years.  I explained to her that we shouldn’t be too worried, though, as it was a perfectly warm early autumn day with blue sky and sunshine.  What kind of nut would waste this beautiful day abducting people, dismembering them and scattering their remains deep in the woods?  The McKenzie River valley has tons of recreational opportunities, and I’m sure even the abduct & dismember crowd would rather be fishing or kayaking or getting ready for a football game on a day like this.  With an even greater appreciation for the perfect weather, we finished our pregame snack, hopped in The Bucket, and drove west, back downstream to McKenzie High School.

This has nothing to do with football, but as a public service I feel like I should share a bit of McKenzie High School’s entry in Wikipedia. The entry is extremely short and contains an address and a few vital statistics and not much else.  But, in a bid to become the weirdest entry ever, fully half the content is one section regarding Bobby Kennedy’s career in government:

    Student Government

    Bobby Kennedy was the 7th Grade Class Secretary, Associated Student Body Business Manager, and Sophomore Class President. Bobby ran for Associated Student Body Treasurer in May 1982 but lost. Bobby still managed to obtain 44.06% of the vote.

I don’t even know what to think about that, but somebody thought it was important for you to know, so I’m just passing it along.

McKenzie won a class B state championship playing 11-man football in 1969.  They started playing 8-man in 2002, went to 6-man in 2018, and 0-man in 2020, mainly due to the wildfires that decimated the area that year and severely limited enrollment over the next few years.  By 2022 they had a 6-man team again, and have won 2 games in each of the past three seasons.  The Eagles play in 1A 6-man Special District 3 and have started off this season with three consecutive losses, with the 2-1 Crow Cougars coming to McKenzie for a league showdown.

The school is a 9-12 high school, but schools for the lower grades as well as the district offices are on the same site, making it one big school complex on a hillside on the north side of the highway. There was ample parking in the parking lot, and we followed the sidewalk around to the west, leaving The Bucket to its own devices. At the entry table our 7 bucks got us entry with a printed program and a pleasant conversation with the lady who took our money. We kept following the newly-laid cement path around to the field and chose two seats on the aluminum bleachers in the new-looking all-metal grandstand. It's a nice smallish grandstand that has a press box, is covered, sturdy, and clean, and will never burn down. There's a nice running track on the other side of the school, but there isn't one around the football field, so we were right on top of the action. There isn't any seating for visitors on the opposite side, so a few of them joined us in the grandstand while most had brought their own chairs and watched comfortably from across the field.

The playing field is natural grass and east of the field, just a few feet beyond the goalpost, the ground abruptly falls away to the highway beneath. There is a fence to prevent players from falling off the side of the hill, but we wondered who would be responsible for retrieving the ball after any extra-point or field goal kicks that made their way over that fence. In the end, nobody attempted a kick all night, so we don't have an answer to that question, but just knowing someone would have to do it would be enough to make a coach think twice about ever even trying it.

The Crow Cougars had fewer players than our Eagles, but they had some good ones, and from the outset their offense proved hard to stop. With only six players, one missed tackle can lead to a big play, and that scenario played out several times for the Eagle defense, allowing the Cougars to forge a 13-0 lead by the end of the first quarter. That defense did improve as the game went on, and McKenzie managed a long scoring play of their own in the second quarter and were only down 19-6 at halftime.

There was no band (although the DJ on the PA system was pretty good, and they did have a recording of the McKenzie fight song, and yes, for the sixth game this season the home team were playing my high school's song), there were no cheerleaders (although Crow had brought theirs, who spent the game cheering to basically nobody on the far side of the field), no dance team and no homecoming ceremony. That was just as well as it gave me time to grab my sweatshirt and a blanket out of The Bucket; a chill had crept in to replace the perfect weather of a few hours ago, and for the first time this season we needed an extra layer to keep us warm. I also took the opportunity to visit the very nice concession stand just west of the grandstand to get a cup of coffee. It was just coffee to me, but it was also a hand warmer for Mrs. Ednold, so we were both happy with the purchase.

Things got a little uglier for the Eagles in the third quarter, as the mistakes piled up for both their offense and defense, and the Cougars were ahead 40-6 by the end of the third quarter. They did some good things and had some good plays, but they couldn't string enough of them together to keep the Cougars from scoring, or score themselves. They held their own in the final quarter and the final score was 46-12, but there was no doubt that Crow was the better team. But McKenzie has a good class of six freshmen, one of whom has a really good arm, and I don't expect they'll be struggling a few years from now.

The small, late-arriving crowd had grown throughout the game, and the stands were mostly full by the time it was all over. Most of them had probably been drawn there by a participating son or brother or friend, but McKenzie could charge admission for people to just come and sit at their field. A lot of the surrounding hills are still filled with the charred remnants of the forest that used to be green and thick all the way down the valley, but the trees around the school are still alive, and the setting near the river with the hills on all sides is still pretty spectacular, and when there's a game going on under the lights it's hard to imagine a nicer spot.

When it was all over, we packed ourselves back into The Bucket and headed back down the valley, past all the new construction and fancy vacation homes and lots of signs from realtors enticing us to buy some property and build one of our own. We nodded to Mickey Newbury and Huck Finn as we passed them in their improbable resting place in Leaburg, and kept driving until we had two lanes to choose from, and then three. By then we were within the reception area of the radio broadcast of the Beaver game. Eight minutes to go and we're up by 14? Yes!! Mrs. Ednold demanded we immediately turned it off so as not to jinx them. I laughed at her pessimism, did as I was told, and then we began celebrating. Thank you, Mike Parker. At least one of our teams had won tonight.