Fire destroyed a piece of Baker County history

Returning to Baker County from Oklahoma will never be the same for the Hammond family.

That’s because the house that had been home to several generations of family members was destroyed by fire on Jan. 16.

The structure, known as the Waterbury House, stood along Dry Gulch Road about a mile west of Richland and could be seen from Highway 86.

After reading the Jan. 18 Baker City Herald report of the home-leveling fire, 40-year-old Ross Hammond called the office to provide more information about the two-story, five-bedroom home he grew up in.

The house was built by a Mr. Waterbury for his schoolteacher wife and has stood as a landmark along Dry Gulch Road near Richland for many years. For more years, in fact, than reported by this newspaper and recorded at the Baker County Assessor’s Office.

Hammond said his family began researching the history of the house after finding the year 1870 etched into one of the sandstone pillars that supported it.

The Hammonds determined that construction probably began in 1869 and was completed in 1870.

Further research turned up Union County news reports from 1878 that referred to the home as the Waterbury Mansion.

While not completely accurate, the date reflects the era in which the  home was built and would have no bearing on the property’s assessed value for the purposes of levying taxes, Savage said.

Hammond said his family was saddened by the loss of the home and wanted to provide more information about its history in the aftermath of the fire.

“The old girl — we just kind of wanted to give her a good send off,” he said.

According to the book “Oregon Geographic Names,” Waterbury Gulch and Waterbury Ditch, also known as the Waterbury-Allen Ditch, were named for Charles M. Waterbury.

Hammond said his mother’s grandparents, Oscar and Lanta Burnside, were the first in his family to own the house. Many Richland ranch hands and their families also spent time living in the home while working for Oscar Burnside, he said.

“It touched a lot of people,” Hammond said. “A lot of people knew that house.”

He said the family received calls from many people expressing their sympathy for the family’s loss.

“They said it’s just a shock not to see it,” he said. “You could see it for miles.”

Oscar Burnside, who had many holdings in Baker County, was killed in a car wreck in Baker City, Hammond said. Lanta Burnside sold the property to her granddaughter, Doris Hammond, and her husband, Danny, in the 1950s. They operated a dairy and cattle ranch in the Richland area before moving to Oklahoma with their sons, Ross and Rodney, in 2007.

Ross Hammond said the house had been maintained for the Hammond family’s occasional use as they traveled back and forth from Oklahoma to Baker County during the past two years. It would have been home to Mib and Jacque Dailey, who are leasing property from the Hammonds and were moving in when the home was destroyed by the fire.

Ross said a spark from a wire, possibly caused by a rat or some other rodent chewing through the insulation, is suspected of starting the blaze in the kitchen area.

The fire was burning hot and moved quickly through the structure before firefighters arrived about 11:30 p.m. on Jan. 16, said Fire Chief Dave Kingsbury of the Eagle Valley Rural Fire District. Firefighters from Keating and Halfway also responded and spent the next three hours protecting the surrounding outbuildings, which also have stood on the property for many years.

Hammond said his boyhood home had been changed little over the years. The house retained its 9-foot ceilings and other original design elements, except for the addition of a kitchen and bathroom, which came along some 40 years later, he said.

“It was painted outside and my mother would repair the wallpaper at times,” Hammond said. “It was modern enough for us.”

The home was heated with wood except for a propane cookstove and wall heater in the kitchen.

Hammond said the loss was insured and the house will be replaced “with a home of good standing.”

“I wish we could replace it with what was there,” he said.