Osborn Springs
| Osborn Springs | |
|---|---|
| Location | CRNG, OCHOCO NF |
| Tree Count | 4 |
| Species | 3 apple,1 pear |
| Varieties | 3 identified |
The Osborn Springs orchard contains 4 documented heritage fruit trees (3 apple and 1 pear).
History
Rogers and Osborn Family Background
The Osborn Springs homestead grew out of the joint migration of two interconnected pioneer families: the Rogers of Yamhill County and the Osborns of Greenwood County, Kansas.
Green Clark Rogers (1825-1891) — known throughout his life as Clark Rogers — was born in Indiana to Lewis Franklin Rogers and Nancy Ann Richards. He crossed the plains to Oregon in 1845 with his brother James William Rogers, a year ahead of their father. In 1847 he married Mary Jane Nelson in Yamhill County and took up a Donation Land Claim within the present city limits of McMinnville. He served in the Cayuse Indian War of 1849. After Mary Jane's death in 1876, he left the valley in 1878 and crossed the Cascades into what was then the vast western reach of Wasco County, where he took a homestead on the Crooked River that he named the Cove.
George Henry Osborn (1852-1940) was born in Missouri and raised in Greenwood County, Kansas, where his father Hon. William Franklin Osborn was among the earliest settlers of Lane Township, served as a county commissioner, and was elected three times to the Kansas state legislature. William F. Osborn's Virgil, Kansas farm included "almost 600 assorted fruit trees" — a detail recorded in his 1883 biographical sketch in the History of Kansas. George's sister Sarah F. Osborn would later marry Julius Spate McCoin, and all three Osborn siblings (George, Sarah, and William R.) came to Oregon separately, each spending time on an uncle's ranch near Goose Lake before settling elsewhere in the state.
George came west in 1872, working near Goose Lake before moving to the Willamette Valley, where he married Ella Rogers — Clark's daughter — on November 6, 1877.
From the Cove to Haystack (1879-1880)
Clark Rogers had gone ahead in 1878 to establish his Crooked River homestead. In October 1879, George and Ella Osborn and their infant son Franklin ("Frank") loaded their belongings into a wagon and crossed the Cascades to join him, a journey Ella later recalled took fifteen days "over such roads, spechly the lavy beds."
At the Cove, Clark and George cleared rye grass "ten feet high and so thick you could hardly get through it," built a ten-by-twelve log kitchen, lived in a tent, and put in a vegetable garden. Once the homestead was established, Ella recalled in her memoir Our Pioneer Life: "They kept on clearing up land and went to the Dalles and got fruit trees and set them out. I guess there are some of them old trees there yet." According to the Genealogical Forum of Portland (1980), Clark and George "planted the first fruit trees in Central Oregon."
After about two years at the Cove, the Osborns relocated to the Haystack country. In 1880 George discovered an abundant spring near Haystack Butte and filed a homestead claim at The Dalles land office. The Osborns built a home at the site — depicted in Beatrice Young's painting above — and raised ten children there: Franklin C., Robert C., Francis E., Maude L., Lulu M., Winford C., Floyd H., Lois W., Florence G., and Rex R.
A Possible Kansas Connection
Clark and George's trip to The Dalles for nursery stock is the most likely source for most of the Osborn Springs trees. However, William F. Osborn traveled from Kansas to Oregon to visit his children shortly before his death in 1910, and it is possible he carried scions or young trees from his own 600-tree Virgil, Kansas orchard to Osborn Springs. This Kansas connection is a tantalizing lead when considering the origins of Tree 112, the unique Osborn Springs apple whose DNA shows no match to any known variety in the USDA-ARS-AFRS reference collection.
Connection to the McCoin Family
The Osborn family was closely connected to the McCoin family. Sarah Frances Osborn (1855-1888), George's older sister, married Julius Spate McCoin. The McCoins stayed on an Osborn family homestead in the Haystack community before establishing their own homestead on Gray Butte in 1886. The Osborns and McCoins were thus among the pioneering families who settled the Gray Butte and Haystack area in the early 1880s.
Abandonment and Later History
George and Ella Osborn operated their ranch until 1920, when they turned over operations to their son and moved to the Portland area. After the premature death of their son Robert, the original Osborn homestead near Haystack Butte was sold to the Resettlement Administration in 1936-1937, and like other homesteads in the area the buildings were demolished as part of the federal program that consolidated failed homesteads into what became the Crooked River National Grassland.
George Osborn died in Portland in 1940, and Ella in 1944. Their names are preserved on several geographic features in the area, including Osborn Springs.
2024 Survey and Preservation
During the summer of 2024, Forest Service personnel conducted a comprehensive survey of all known homestead-era orchards on the Crooked River National Grassland. The survey assessed tree conditions, documented surviving trees, and collected GPS coordinates for spatial mapping.
The Osborn Springs site was found to contain 3 surviving apple trees, all in good condition. DNA samples were collected from the trees to determine their varieties as part of ongoing efforts to document and preserve these heritage fruit trees. A pear tree (Tree 110) in the southeast quarter of the homestead area was separately documented in 2026 from information provided by an Osborn family descendant.
Trees Identified
- Tree 110 - Pear, southeast quarter of homestead area
- Tree 111 - Monmouth Pippin (tentative), 35 feet tall, good condition
- Tree 112 - Unique variety (DNA shows possible relationships to Drap d'Or de Bretagna, Twenty Ounce, Red Astrachan, Jefferis, and Boiken), 35 feet tall, good condition
- Tree 113 - Stark, 35 feet tall, good condition, fruit observed developing in 2024
All three trees have been selected for preservation at the Clarno Apple Arboretum in 2025.
Sources: Ellen Rogers Osborn, "Our Pioneer Life" memoir (early 1940s), reproduced in Martha Mitchell, "Osborn's First Homestead At The Cove Now Lies Four Hundred Feet Under Water," Central Oregon Rancher, December 1980; "Pioneer Families of Yamhill County, Oregon, Volume III," Genealogical Forum of Portland, Oregon, Vol. XXX No. 4, December 1980; biographical sketch of George H. Osborne, An Illustrated History of Central Oregon (1905); biographical sketch of Hon. W.F. Osborn, History of Kansas (Greenwood Co.) (A.T. Andreas, 1883); personal communication with an Osborn family descendant, April 2026; "Osborn was an early Cove and Haystack area settler," Madras Pioneer; Find a Grave records; CRNG Fruit Orchard Survey 2024 Summary; DNA analysis results from USDA-ARS-AFRS.
Primary Sources
The following historical documents are available:
- Beatrice Young painting of the Osborn Springs homestead (Central Oregon Rancher, December 1980)
- Mitchell, "Osborn's First Homestead At The Cove..." — Rancher, Dec 1980 (p1)
- Mitchell, "Osborn's First Homestead At The Cove..." — Rancher, Dec 1980 (p2)
- Mitchell, "Osborn's First Homestead At The Cove..." — Rancher, Dec 1980 (p3)
- Rogers family entry, Genealogical Forum of Portland, Dec 1980 (p1)
- Rogers family entry, Genealogical Forum of Portland, Dec 1980 (p2)
- Bio. of George H. Osborne, An Illustrated History of Central Oregon (1905)
- Bio. of Hon. W.F. Osborn, History of Kansas (Andreas, 1883)
- Legacy orchard map (2001)
Orchard Map
Trees
- Tree #110- Pear
- Tree #111- Monmouth Pippin(good)
- Tree #112- Unique Trees(good)
- Tree #113- Stark(good)
| Condition | Count |
|---|---|
| Good | 3 |
| Fair | 0 |
| Poor | 0 |
| Dead | 0 |
| Total | 4 |
Varieties
Historical Documents
See also: Document Archive
