Gable's Gold Coast

According to Governor Martin of Oregon, the southwestern corner of that State "has greater potential values than any other undeveloped section of the U. S." Crammed with 4,000-foot mountain chains, this wilderness has only three connections with civilization--a highway up the coast and 50 miles inland a parallel highway and Southern Pacific R. R. line. Between are said to lie rich deposits of chrome, copper, gold, iron, coal, limestone and platinum beneath an evergreen blanket of several billion feet of virgin timber. To exploit this domain has been a local dream for 50 years but only in the last three has exploitation actually begun, and that almost solely through the efforts of a onetime hunter of dinosaur eggs named Gilbert Elledy Gable. Since 1935 Gilbert Gable has wrought such changes in southwestern Oregon that the region has been called his "empire." Last week Emperor Gable was dethroned by the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Gilbert Gable is short, jovial and 51. Born in Pennsylvania, he never went to college, served for nine years before the War as publicity counsel for Bell Telephone Co. During the War he headed Liberty Loan drives. After it, he became an explorer, discovered dinosaur tracks in Arizona and a primitive Indian village. ''Lost Mesa," was made a chief of the Navaho tribe with a certificate written in human blood to prove it. Six years ago he took as his second wife Paulina Stearns, daughter of a wealthy Ludington, Mich, lumber family. In 1933 he went to southwestern Oregon for the first time.

Two years later, to the amazement of its 300 inhabitants, Gilbert Gable appeared at Port Orford, Ore., formed six companies to promote it as the only natural deep-water harbor on the rugged coast between Puget Sound and the Golden Gate. Fifty-four years before, Congress had appropriated $150,000 to develop Port Orford as a harbor of refuge, but nothing was done. Gilbert Gable proceeded to spend $750,000 doing it, most of the money going for a huge breakwater dock, an administration building, a new lumber mill.

On Labor Day, 1935, Promoter Gable gathered all of Oregon's bigwigs for the dedication. Dressed in dark silk shirt, riding breeches and boots, Emperor Gable was master of ceremonies, read a speech in which the instruction "chuckle" was written at appropriate spots. Said he: "I find myself shrinking into microscopic tininess beside the influence and the commerce we here set in motion." Next day an examiner of the Interstate Commerce Commission heard the application of Gilbert Gable's Gold Coast Railroad for a permit to build a 90-mile spur across the mountains into Port Orford from Leland on the Southern Pacific line 50 miles inland. Soon the Gold Coast R. R., life line of Gilbert Gable's empire since it would be the means of getting ore and timber to the sea or back East by rail, was granted an ICC certificate of convenience and necessity.

Three months after its dedication Gilbert Gable's dock collapsed in a storm. Since then a temporary pier has been built, Port Orford has grown to 1,000 in population and Gilbert Gable has become mayor. But no construction of the railroad has been started. Tired of waiting, local tycoons got behind a rival scheme. Five months ago, before an ICC examiner, this new group declared that it had funds to build a $7,000,000 line from Grants Pass, 15 miles south of Leland on the Southern Pacific, across the coastal range to Crescent City, 97 miles south of Port Orford on the California coast just below the Oregon line,* asked for a certificate of convenience and necessity. Against an imposing array of witnesses for the rival line, Gilbert Gable stood alone in the hearing, quietly declared that his backers had enough money to finance the Gold Coast R. R.. but that they preferred to wait until Port Orford's harbor was further completed, that Crescent City would require $4,500,000 worth of dredging to be usable. Civic groups such as the Portland Chamber of Commerce indicated that they did not care which line won so long as a railroad was built to the coast through southwest Oregon.

Neither side would tell the examiner who its backers were. Last week it looked as though the unknown backers, if any, would have to invest their money elsewhere. For the ICC examiner not only recommended that Gilbert Gable's certificate of convenience & necessity be withdrawn but also that one be refused to the Crescent City group. Said he: "Recent army reports show that the prospect of future growing importance of the ports of Port Orford and Crescent City definitely may be discarded as a factor of consequence in this proceeding."

*A Grants Pass-Crescent City line was started 25 years ago, abandoned after 18 miles of line were built.

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