After They Drove Old Dixie Down: Identity and Isolation in a Southwestern Oregon Mountain Refuge

Summary

In the spring of 1872 the ‘Carolina Company’ wagon train left the war-torn Appalachian Mountains and headed to Oregon. Pulling up generations’ worth of roots in a region particularly devastated by the infamous Stoneman’s Raid of 1865, the group eventually found refuge on a remote mountain on the Southwest Oregon Coast, where they were given three years to ‘starve out’ by neighboring communities. Described as ‘the bone and sinew’ of the south, the Carolina Company soon established a mill, school, and small ranching settlement that endures to this day. While perceived as backwards by their urban neighbors, the community came to rely on their isolation for survival and sense of identity. At one time promoting itself as a utopian community, the largely self-sustaining colony created a successful, even if modest, existence. Recent investigations have provided new information about this poorly understood historical community and its modern legacy.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Digging Domestic Spaces: An Exploration of Homesteads, Habitations and Farms   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-71,07