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more photosThe Lookout Mountain Grange Hall, located about nine miles east of Prineville was once the center of activity for agricultural families and other rural Crook County residents. Today, the grange still hosts potluck dinners and rents out the facility for outside events.
Anthony Dimaano / The Bulletin
Dwindling membership challenges region’s granges
Still, Crook County grange will host state’s annual convention in June
By Erin Golden / The Bulletin
Published: April 19. 2008 4:00AM PSTAs a kid growing up in rural Crook County, Val Grubbe knew the Lookout Mountain Grange hall as well as her own home.
The rustic building with faded wooden floors and a massive cast iron kitchen stove was the place Grubbe played with friends and then curled up to sleep on well-worn benches as her parents tended to business in grange meetings. As a teenager, it was where she attended potluck dinners, served pie at community socials and learned the waltz. She came to the grange hall for parties, weddings and funerals that were attended by dozens of families who lived near the hall.
As an adult, Grubbe, 59, still spends time in the hall, but she knows things have changed — the agricultural community group that was once the heart of her rural community is now showing signs of fading as its members age and young families look elsewhere for entertainment. It’s a similar story around the region — dwindling memberships and grange halls once filled with activity gone quiet.
“I don’t know what will happen,” she said. “There aren’t any young people coming in — we’re hanging on, but I don’t know how much longer.”
The Grange
Formed in 1867 by a group of farmers looking to unite agricultural workers for political action and community building, the National Grange spread to communities around the country — including Oregon, which at one point had more than 250 local grange groups.
“The Grange was formed as a friend to farmers and agriculture,” said Phyllis Wilson, president of the Oregon State Grange. “It gave them an area to talk about their needs and their issues, their triumphs and their challenges.”
By the 1930s, Central Oregon had several granges — including Lookout Mountain, about nine miles east of Prineville, which was founded by a small group that included Grubbe’s mother.
From Paulina to Terrebonne, farmers and ranchers joined together and built multipurpose halls with room for meetings, dances and dinners. For many families, the grange hall was the go-to place for family entertainment and socializing with friends and neighbors.
“We held Christmas pageants, dances, bake sales, all sorts of things,” said Jenny Cholin, 43, one of the youngest members of the Lookout Mountain Grange. “It always seemed huge.”
Cholin’s grandmother, 90-year-old Lydia Hankins, remembers being part of a grange with more than 100 members that held twice-monthly dances, among other events.
“We had so many people that at the state grange meeting, we put on a march — we had enough people to stand in line and march in to music,” she said. “The grange just grew and grew.”
Though most members were involved in agriculture and joined the grange to discuss and work together on farming issues, many joined up so they could be a part of a grange group insurance plan. As the timber industry grew in Prineville, the Lookout Mountain Grange adapted, opening its doors to mill workers and their families, and keeping membership levels high.
By 1992, grange membership had hit a high across the state, with nearly 27,000 members in 258 granges, Wilson said. But in the mid-1990s, the grange insurance company folded, and hundreds of members left the organization. By then, the grange was also facing stiff competition from other growing community organizations, student schedules packed with soccer practice and music lessons, and entertainment made easy with television and computer games.
“Before television, the grange was a pretty active thing,” said Leonard Luttrell, 74, a longtime member and past president of the Redmond Grange. “But (kids) have so many more activities in school now, and the younger ones don’t seem to be as interested ... since television came in, all the fraternal organizations are going out, because people don’t have time.”
Losing members
In the past 15 years, statewide membership in local grange organizations has plummeted by more than 75 percent, with just 6,526 dues-paying members registered in Oregon at the end of last year.
The Lookout Mountain Grange now has about 40 members, including nine who turned out on a windy evening this week for the group’s regular monthly meeting. It was the first gathering the grange had held in a few months; bad weather and illness had kept many of the elderly grange members from driving to the hall, which sits on a little-traveled portion of U.S. Highway 26 that’s away from the lights of Prineville and out of cell phone range.
In flannel shirts and layered sweaters and jackets, the small group gathered around a wood-burning stove to see to grange business — budget calculations, community service reporting and planning for the annual state grange convention, which will be held this summer in Prineville. Despite the small size of the gathering, the group’s leaders keep to strict parliamentary procedure. They read from small blue rule books that provide an overview of what each meeting should cover and which of the agriculturally named officers — gatekeeper, overseer and steward, among others — preside over different parts of the program.
But while many of the members grew up on farms and ranches, very few in the Lookout Mountain Grange still work in agriculture. As in many grange groups, the majority of the group is retired or nearing retirement. It’s a tight-knit organization, but several of the members said they worry the lack of young people spells trouble for the future.
Cholin, a third-generation grange member, attended this week’s meeting along with her grandmother, Hankins, and her mother, Ruth Cholin, 69. She said families like hers have helped keep the grange alive but that the younger generation has been reluctant to carry on the tradition.
“There used to be lots and lots of young members,” she said. “But you could almost say that it’s going out of style, which is kind of sad.”
Holding on
But at both national and local levels, many grange members aren’t giving up on their organization. Instead, they’re trying to transform its image from a throwback agricultural club into a welcoming, family-oriented community service organization open to members from farms, small towns and even urban areas.
In Redmond, Luttrell said 60 people are members of the grange — down from a high of 400, but hanging on with help from a group of square dancers who rented the grange hall and then decided to join. Terrebonne Grange secretary Myrna Colvin, 64, said her group reaches out with community holiday parties and popular public presentations on topics including identity theft and navigating the health care system. In Jefferson County, the Crooked River Ranch Grange attracts new members with social events like monthly bunco games, said member Shirley Naylor, 72.
And Wilson, of the State Grange, said the group tries to reach out to new members each summer when the state convention travels to a new community. The week-long event, which will be held this summer in Prineville, is expected to draw about 300 grange members from around Oregon, and will include banquets, workshops, craft competitions and a golf tournament. Wilson said she hopes it will draw Central Oregonians who might have misconceptions about what it means to be a grange member.
“We are an agriculture-based organization but we’re fighting the stigma nowadays that you have to be a farmer in order to join, which is totally untrue,” Wilson said.
At Lookout Mountain, the grange is quieter than it once was, but its members are hopeful that the hall — and the organization — will be around for several more generations.
“When ranching turned to logging here, we lost some members but it didn’t take long to come back,” Hankins said. “I hope a bunch of people come in with children who want to have family entertainment. We’ll come back again.”
Erin Golden can be reached at 408-2836 or at egolden@bendbulletin.com.
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