Oregon Experience tells story of a woman's Maxville connection

Maxville loggers came mostly from out-of-state, transported directly from the deep South. Photo courtesy of Oregon Historical Society

Years later, living in Seattle, she was still an outsider — only this time it was her rural background that branded her as different.

The next episode in OPB’s Oregon Experience, “The Logger’s Daughter,’’ tells the story of Trice’s exploration of her family’s past and how she found a community that embraced her. It’s a “family’’ she never knew she had.

Large timber harvests require many workers, and logging camps were once common in the Oregon woods. But few of those camps housed whole families — the fact that did make town of Maxville distinctive. 

Maxville was built in 1923, almost overnight, by the Bowman-Hicks Lumber Co. near Wallowa. The Maxville workers came mostly from out-of-state, transported by the company directly from the deep South. But what made Maxville unique was that 50 to 60 of its citizens were African-American. It was home to the only segregated school in Oregon. Its black residents lived in a group of houses across the tracks from the white residents. Yet conflicts across racial lines were few and friendships many.

Maxville was officially closed in the early 1930s, though a few loggers and their families stayed on for another dozen years. And most of what happened there during its short existence is not widely known.

Enter Gwendolyn Trice.

Gwen never knew much about her father Lucky’s early years in Oregon. She only recently learned that he had left Arkansas in the 1920s with his father to live and work in this place called Maxville.

A couple of years ago, Trice set out with a tape recorder and a video camera to learn more about Maxville. Her gathering of oral histories took some unexpected turns as she became immersed in a much wider community. The story of that community, its history and its people is revealed in “The Logger’s Daughter.’’

The complete program will be available online anytime after Feb. 9 at opb.org/oregonexperience.