The Gold Standard — Lester Mooberry on Life in Early Cornelius
The Gold Standard — Lester Mooberry on Life in Early Cornelius
When it comes to local historians, Lester Mooberry sets the standard. Digging up information on big events is relatively straightforward — newspapers and books documented those well enough. But the details of normal daily life are far more elusive, and those details are what I find most compelling. The small, everyday things that were never considered newsworthy are the fabric of lives and communities. Nobody did a better job of preserving those small things than Lester Mooberry.
Here are Lester’s own words on life in early Cornelius:
We have so many means of transportation today it is difficult for us to realize how thrilled the people were to have the railroad come inching up the valley from Portland. Work was comparatively slow as they had none of the giant machinery so common today that would have made digging and grading comparatively easy. Men and horses provided the power to do the work then.
Children used the track to walk to and from the old log school east of town, and people going to church and Sunday school used the track to keep out of the mud. Groups of young people found a Sunday afternoon’s diversion in walking up and down the track. When the railroad was built on up the valley, Sunday excursions were quite common. President Hayes paid a visit to the Indian school at Forest Grove and had the train stop at the station in Cornelius so he could shake hands with the old and young gathered there.
Cornelius was the first town along the line to have a depot. It contained the post office and a telegraph instrument. We can imagine that people called for their mail about train time to see who might be arriving or leaving. Steam engines headed the trains, and this called for water towers and long piles of wood. Cornelius had both of these, and the trains tarried long enough for firemen to secure both wood and water to last them until the next stop.
In addition to the passenger depot, Cornelius had a freight depot south of the tracks and just across the street west of the passenger depot. The platforms surrounding the freight depot were just as high as the floor of the freight cars so loading and unloading could be done easily. The steps at the freight depot gave the idle old men of the town a place to sit and see what was going on at the stores, depot, or warehouse.
Freight trains were long then as hops, grain, wood, hay, and many other things from the farms were shipped by freight. Cars were spotted along the sidetracks and farmers could drive up beside them and fill the cars from their wagons.
When the Oregon Electric Railroad began operating, a depot was built in the north part of town. People from the valley bought their tickets to Cornelius and rode the steam train that far, then walked across town and rode to Portland on the electric train. In the late afternoon they came back to Cornelius on the electric train, again walked across town, and rode back home on the steam train.
The Southern Pacific Depot
A photograph taken during the World War I period shows the Cornelius Southern Pacific Depot as it appeared in those years. A soldier leans against the building — perhaps being seen off by his younger brother. One hopes he made it home to Cornelius. In the background to the right stands the station outhouse, and to the left the corner of the C.C. Hancock store is just visible.
Elsie Cornelius served as acting postmistress at this depot, distributing mail to the community as trains came and went. It was the kind of place where the arrival of a train was still an event — where people gathered not just for mail and freight but for the simple pleasure of seeing who was coming and going.
The depot’s days were numbered. The final passenger car of the Southern Pacific left Cornelius late one fall evening in 1929. Many parents woke their children that night to watch it go — to witness what they knew, even then, was the final episode of an era passing before their eyes. The children who were lifted from their beds that night to watch the last train leave Cornelius would carry that memory for the rest of their lives.
