Icon viewers:
Recently, I was catching up on what’s happening in my hometown of Bluffton
and found Fred Steiner’s interesting piece on Riley Creek.
Thank you, Fred, for sharing some of Bluffton’s past.
I do have to comment on his statement “Swimming in Riley Creek is no doubt
something that never interested you.” This brought back a flood of memories
about my adventures in and along Riley Creek.
While not as exciting as Huck Finn’s stories on the Mississippi, I enjoyed hours upon hours exploring the banks and in the water of the Riley to the chagrin of my mom who would lament that she could never get my clothes clean after I was in that water.
Ice skating, frog hunting, fishing, skipping rocks, building dams, camping, turning over rocks to find crawdads and snakes, and yes, swimming were a few
of the adventures.
The water was dirty (some would say gross), probably loaded with farm chemical runoff, the bottom rocky or extremely slimy in slow moving pools, but it was water, and I was a kid.
The Riley’s features near my house on Phillips Road included the “falls” (little more than rapids dropping 12-18 inches into what we called the quarry), and an island. The surrounding woods were also a place of solitude when I got upset with life. e.g. informing my parents that I was running away forever only to realize that I was getting hungry and it was time for supper.
The ankle-deep creek sometimes turned into a raging torrent, bringing and
taking treasures. One flood brought a raft made of barrels with a wooden deck built on top which the neighbors and I enjoyed until the next flood whisked it away.
So many boyhood memories of the Riley.
I would like to know if the history of quarry behind my house on Phillips Road. The creek appears to have been diverted at “the falls”. Was this ever an operating stone quarry that was filled in by diverting Riley Creek through it?
Verle J. Dalke
Dallas, Oregon
