Customer Reviews

Antelope: The Saga of a Western Town

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Today Antelope is probably best known for being the town the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh tried to buy, but this book tells the story from much earlier of a central Oregon town that grew up in a time when there were hundreds of similar little towns that are now all but ghost towns or just notations on maps. It was a time when travel was by horse-power in the literal sense so towns were a day's travel apart along what passed for transportation routes. When the railroad and later, the highways bypassed Antelope, it slowly dried up or burned up like many other little towns.

I have a very personal interest in this book; the picture on the cover is of my great-grandparents and their children in 1893, before my grandfather was born -- eventually there were ten children. Many of the photos in the book feature members of both sides of my father's family -- the book is dedicated to my father's cousin Verna who provided many of the photos. My father was born and raised in Antelope and I can remember visits to Antelope and the Rooper Ranch as a child. There are still members of my family who own property in Antelope and even some who live nearby.

The book does not have a very scholarly voice, there are no footnotes, and few other books are cited. It's a labor of love from a man who knew the sources for his information as real people. There are funny anecdotes, odd detours, and holes in the story, but where else are you going to learn that the entire, undefeated, Oregon Agricultural College (later OSU) basketball team played professionally for Nome, Alaska in 1909?

If you are looking for a peek back into life on the frontier -- not the hollywood version; the real, mundane, eccentric, gritty, humanity at its worst and best version -- you'll enjoy this book.