Lost in the Woods : It’s a Long Way From Fast Track to This Isolated Town

A visit to this remote Siskiyou County hamlet wedged between a towering cliff and the north fork of the Salmon River is almost like a journey into the 19th Century.

So isolated is the village that it has no electricity, no television and not even much radio reception.

Nor do many of the 150 or so residents--mainly loggers, miners, woodsmen and their families--have indoor plumbing.

Yet, they seem to like it here.

“We have never missed the city,” said Teresa Johnson, 32, the Town Hall secretary whose husband works in a nearby gold mine. “We moved here 10 years ago from La Habra. . . . We fell in love with Sawyers Bar. We liked the people and the old-fashioned way of life.”

A few families have been here since the 1880s and early part of this century. Some are escapists seeking the quieter life. Others are here because there is work for them as miners and foresters.

Ten-year-old Wook (Wookie) McBroom, whose family has lived here for four generations, is not bothered by the fact that there is no television. “Don’t miss what we’ve never had,” he said.

Wookie said he hikes in the woods, fishes in the river and plays with his friends after school until it gets dark. “I eat dinner, do my homework by kerosene lantern, then go to bed,” he said. “We go to bed early around here.”

Bear and deer meat are eaten more than beef and chicken in Sawyers Bar. Families often hunt for their food. Wookie (who is named after his grandfather) said he knows that not many kids elsewhere have eaten bear and “I bet fewer have ever eaten rattlesnake.” The latter, he said, tastes like “a mix between hamburger and chicken.”

Twisting, Mountain Road

Sawyers Bar, embraced by the Klamath National Forest and on the edge of Marble Mountain Wilderness, is 25 miles from the outside world via a twisting, one-lane mountain road, half of it now covered with snow. The road clings precariously above the Salmon River much of the way. Etna is the nearest town. Yreka, the county seat, is 55 miles to the northeast.

The people of Sawyers Bar are scattered up and down the river and in narrow gulches leading north and south from the river with a few living “downtown” in a dozen rustic homes and cabins.

“Downtown” is a tiny post office erected in 1969 (with lumber from the old Little North Fork Bridge), the general store, the two-room school with 29 kindergarten-through-eighth-grade students and the weather-beaten houses.

When a baby is born in Sawyers Bar, each woman prepares a square for a baby quilt, Johnson said. When someone dies, the men make the coffin and the women decorate the inside with fabric and “with loving care, so it’s not just a box,” she said. Then the men dig the grave in the little cemetery.

Men and women of the hamlet donated their time and materials to build the frame Town Hall in 1971. But the building has been padlocked for the past year and a half because the people of Sawyers Bar cannot afford to pay an annual $1,200 liability insurance policy that the state requires.

The nearest doctor and dentist are an hour and a half away in Fort Jones.

Postmaster Sandra Reynolds, 29, who is also secretary of the school board, often rides her horse, Baby, to and from work.

She opens the post office three hours a day, six days a week, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is without electrical lights and is heated by a wood stove. She is paid $365 a month.

The postmaster has two children, ages 8 and 10. Her husband works for the U.S. Forest Service and is based in Sawyers Bar.

Last year at a community meeting, townspeople were asked to list the needs of Sawyers Bar. Topping the list was “getting computers for the school so our kids will be ready for the computer age.” This year, the school has five new Apple computers acquired through a grant.

‘Hours in the Dark’

Although no power lines lead to the town, the school is served by a generator during the day. “Sometimes we spend hours in the dark when the generator goes out,” said Bill Slocum, 42, principal and teacher.

Slocum has lived in Sawyers Bar for two years. He said he was teaching in a San Jose junior high school when he heard about the opening for teacher-principal at Sawyers Bar. He took it because it enables him to teach four classes at once and still be an administrator.

“The quality of life here is surprisingly livable,” Slocum said. “People do extremely well without regular power, without television, without many things people in other places take for granted. I’m thoroughly enjoying the experience.”

Monthly potlucks, dances and bingo games are held at the school.

Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Sgt. Larry Schaller, 42, said the people of Sawyers Bar settle most of their problems among themselves because it takes a deputy 1 1/2 to 2 hours to respond to a call from the hamlet.

There are a few phones in town and the reception on them leaves much to be desired.

“We have to get along in an isolated place like this,” said gold miner Wayne Burke, 70. “Any time we get any rotten eggs in here we ostracize them; we ace them out.”