The gazette-times. [volume] (Heppner, Or.) 1912-1925, 1920-04-29
Service Men Are Goats
But Find They Can't Thrive
On o & G Land Grants at All

Former service men are being
made the goats, while looking for
homesteads on the o & land grants
in southern Oregon, but unlike the
goat of tin can fame, they are finding
that making a living on the rolling
rock-ribbed hills of Douglas county
would drive jack rabbit to suicide
Bennie Boone, son of Col. Boone
OF Lexington, writes from Roseburg
that there are few pieces of land
down in that country, but they are
extremely hard to find. He says,
we stayed at one place one night,
two of us, at the home of a half
breed. He had lived on this place
Tor 23 years. When we asked him
what our bill was for the night he
said he only took the weekly Ore
gonian and was not up much on hotel
prices, but thought 50 apiece would
be plenty. 1t was" Boone has the
homestead idea out of his head, so
far as the southern part of the state
is concerned, and has gone to work
IN the store room for the Southern
Pacific railroad, but there are hun
deds Of former service men who are
pouring into that country who are
not so fortunate. They are victim
lied by real estate men, according
to reports and many of them are re-
turning to their eastern homes very
much disguised. The story of one
of these ex-army boys is given in an
interview to the Roseburg Review as
follows:
Il pulled into this place in one of
those tourist trains with the side
door coaches" he said, with al
hunch that ! was going to view my
farm and become a prosperous citi-
zen with few months. The first
person | met was a real estate man.
He told me he had located number
of men and would like to show me
something l could file on. He said
he had some good rolling land in
mind, so l told him to roll it around
and I'd take look at it.
well he took me out in the sticks
a few million miles, l guess it was
that far; anyhow, we met a man out
there who was coming to vote for
Lincoln this fall, and he took me to
see some land which on the map was
marked level with large gravel. The
only level land in the bunch was on
the map and the gravel was the size
of an ordinary house. 1t would make
a goat seasick to go around some
of them rocks.
''The real estate man told me he
would locate me on that patch of
nowhere for $40, and told him l
give him $40 for the whole
d outfit. So he took me to an
other place. 1t was marked up and
down, but it was mostly up. A ma
tive there told us that a party of
surveyors had been there five years
ago and that there would be a rail-
road built soon. He was so wild
he'd have to be. hog.tied for a week
to get him used to a train
I'VE looked the land over 1t was
so steep We couldn't even find a place
level enough to roll dice on, and if
man wanted to sleep out there he'd
have to have one of those California
folding cots-the kind you anchor to
a tree. If you wanted to keep a
woman on that land you'd have to
find a Mexican senorita and cut her
toe nails short and then take her
shoes away from her.
"a guy told me that a jack rabbit
couldn't live on the most of this
grant land, and | told him if he could
show me piece where respectable
could live for two weeks
I'd file on it. l hit this town with
s115, but it's gone, and so will l be
by tonight"
His experience is the same as
hundreds of others. There is one
feature which is in favor of Rose
burg. The army taught the men to
retain their good humor in spite of
hardship and disappointments. A
few are sore and "crabby," but the
majority take their loss of time and
money good-naturedly and are going
back home to start over. A few are
biased and refuse to recognize the
advantages to be found in this local
ity, but by far the majority are
charmed with the climate and with
general conditions and quite a num-
ber plan on returning. Some are
staying and with the money they had
intended to invest in government
land are buying small tracts of par
TALLY improved land and are going to
huild homes for themselves