Catching Creek 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I acquired this rendition of the Davenport portion of Catching Creek this Fourth of July. A good part of my early life occurred within the bounds of this sketch. 

If we refer to my story of Hallowed Ground, https://docsmemoirs.com/2020/05/24/hallowed-ground-prefaced/, I can explain the locations of that story.

At the time of the story, we lived on the Lundy ranch. It was off the page at the bottom. The Cow Horn field was part of the Lundy Ranch. This sketch is laid out as the creek flows from the top of the page to the bottom. Unlike most maps, the top of this sketch is west. Just over the hill at the top of Catching Creek Mountain, one goes downhill to the coast. Going down Flores Creek to Langlois.

The Hallowed Ground story starts at the cow bridge, seen crossing the creek near the top quarter of the sketch. We would have started the hunt by walking the road up to the Davenport Grove, framed by a large bend in the creek. This grove has been the setting for an annual Fourth of July celebration since 1904. The bend of the creek always held many ducks.

After hunting the grove, we followed the creek to the cow bridge. That is where the story starts and where the grouse was shot. The field across the creek had a massive myrtle tree in the center. That tree is not on the sketch.

The creek crossing, where we almost fell on the second crossing, was on a line from the cow bridge to the logging truck. The Bartlett land was located just up the creek as it disappeared off the sketch at the top of the page.

The two houses at the top of the sketch were located a little more up the creek. The first house is about where the log truck is, and the second is about where the first house is. Jim’s cabin was before my time. I had heard stories of the place but had never been to it.

We lived in the first house until I was four years old. The sketch doesn’t illustrate how the outhouse was located on a hillside behind the house. That was a difficult trip in my memory.

On our trip back down the creek, we would have crossed the cow bridge again and walked (or ran) down the middle of the field to the upper barn, where we would have returned to the road. 

The house on the driveway from the barn was Uncle Dutch’s house, and the next large house near the road was my grandparent’s house. My mother had been on ten children in their family. 

The lower barn is just across the bridge from up the creek; the other building has a garage. The outbuildings behind my grandparent’s house were the woodshed and the outhouse. Remember, they had a large family with six girls and four boys. The outhouse was an impressive three-seater.

We then ran down the road, past the Bee Tree, and around the creek to where the road left the stream at the bottom of the sketch. There were never ducks in the creek where it ran along the road. 

The cow was in the creek just above the “a” in Catching Creek at the bottom of the sketch. 

The creek was loaded with ducks from where the road left the stream, all around Horse Shoe Bend and around the tip of the Cow Horn to Camphor Creek. There were ducks from Camphor Creek down the creek, but the Catching Creek became brushy from there to the river and was hard to hunt.

Today there are no dairies on Catching and fewer cows in the pastures along the creek. The creek is brushy along most of its course. There are likely still a lot of ducks in the stream in the fall, but hunting them is almost impossible.

Davenport Grove is still a gathering place, but my generation is fading fast. Next year we will celebrate a hundred and twenty years of Fourth of July Celebrations.

Time marches on!

Sketch done by C. Vincent.