Visit John T. Craig Memorial, Oregon

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John T. Craig, a 30-year-old native of Ohio who had come west in 1852. He had settled first in the lower McKenzie Valley, but after the road-building expedition of 1862, he built a cabin on Craig's Pasture at what he considered a logical place to cross the McKenzie for a different route over the mountains. An eccentric loner, Craig seems to have been obsessed with the idea of making a better road over the Cascades and spent the rest of his life connected with it in some way. Several different companies were formed to build a wagon road over the mountains using a different route. Felix Scott does not appear to have been connected with any of them. He had other ideas in mind. He moved to Arizona and by the time of his death in 1879 he was extensively engaged in stock raising and freighting business. Craig stayed with the McKenzie. He was one of the owners and for a time president of the McKenzie Salt Springs and Des Chutes Wagon Road Company. Another settler associated with the road was J. H. Belknap, whose son, R. S. Belknap, developed Salt Springs into the Belknap Hot Springs Resort, and for whom Belknap and Little Belknap Craters north of the McKenzie Pass are named. The new route that Craig's company followed went up Lost-Creek and White Branch (passing near Proxy Falls) and zigzagged up Deadhorse Grade. After crossing the Scott road it climbed on up into the lava beds. Instead of trying to avoid the rough lava by circling around it, the new route went right over some of it, thereby reaching a summit seven hundred feet lower than Scott's Pass. This new route, essentially the same as the present state Highway 242, was opened to travel about 1872. It provided the main transportation link between Eugene City and central Oregon for the next seven decades. Until 1891 tolls were collected at McKenzie Bridge and for a few years thereafter at Blue River: $2 for a wagon with two horses, $2.50 for a wagon with four horses, $1 for a horseman, 50¢ for a pack horse, 10¢ for loose horses and cattle, and 5¢ for sheep. In 22 years the company took in nearly $18,000 - but their disbursements exceeded $19,000! Mail was carried by contract over this road to Camp Polk (near present Sisters), to Prineville, and eventually to Mitchell. John Craig was not a regular mail carrier, but in late December 1877 he started for Camp Polk with a sack of Christmas mail. He never arrived. Searchers found his frozen body in a cabin near the summit lying in the ashes of the fireplace with a quilt drawn over it. His grave and marker are close to Craig Lake. The memorial there was erected by the Oregon Rural Letter Carriers Association.

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