Pioneer mailman John Templeton Craig's monument and grave will soon lie beneath winter snows atop the Old McKenzie Pass.

Leaving the family farm near Wooster, Ohio, John Templeton Craig headed west in the summer of 1853. Barefoot, he made his way across the plains driving a team for his brother-in-law. Craig entered Oregon over the Barlow Pass going first to Oregon City and later moving to Camp Creek, where he set up a whipsaw sawmill.

           Government efforts to lay out a road to the the Pacific struck him deeply, resulting in a life long effort to route it through the McKenzie Valley.
           Felix Scott's 1862 crossing of the Cascade Summit wasn't the easiest way to travel.  At times the party yoked up to twenty-six oxen to one wagon to make their way over the steep ground. John Craig was on that journey, which herded 900 cattle to the Florence, Idaho, mines.
           The next summer he and John Latta followed the Scott Trail to Salt Springs (later known as Belknap Springs) but turned right up the Lost Creek Canyon. There the ground was not as treacherous as it climbed toward the Sisters mountains.

           On September 25, 1865, George Millican, William Y. Miller, J. M. Dick, and James W. Gray, filed articles of incorporation for the McKenzie Valley and Deschutes Wagon Road Company. Those papers describe a route from "Robert Millican's Place by way of the valley of the McKenzie and the most feasible Pass of the Cascade mountains, north of the Three Sisters to the crossing of the Deschutes above the mouth of the Crooked River."
           Craig settled in at the "Rock House," a rudimentary shelter formed by an overhang in what is now the Ben & Kay Dorris Park in Vida. From there he ventured out spending months in the forest as he hacked through trees and moved rocks and boulders to lay the route for a future toll road.

           At Strawberry Prairie (today's community of McKenzie Bridge) trees were felled and a bridge was constructed in June of 1869. Two years later the road to Salt Springs, was in use. At that time a Military Road company bhad begun to survey the area with a plan to finish Craig's road. That caused the stockholders of the McKenzie Valley and Deschutes Wagon Road Company to rush the completion of their route before rival companies could get control. After the reorganization of the Craig Company, the road building was carried on in a more business like way.
           Finally, Craig had a permanent home, fashioning a small cabin at Strawberry Prairie. By 1872 the road builders had inched their way up the Alder Springs Gulch, Dead Horse Grade and past Windy Point to Central Oregon.
           In 1875 Craig, secured the contract to carry the mail to Camp Polk, near the present town of Sisters. Two years later he died while carrying the Christmas mail over his road.

Photo and text by permission of  the Mckenzie River Reflections   (C) 2001