Fire Destroys Historic Ashwood Grange Hall

A flue fire that spread all too fast destroyed an historic Grange hall in the small ghost town of Ashwood on Sunday, but members preparing a potluck breakfast for after church services escaped unharmed and residents were able to save a piano and other irreplaceable items.

The fierce that tore through the Ash Butte Grange Hall fire sent up a dark smoke plume visible for miles. Mary Golden said the loss of the gathering spot is significant to the farming area, but that Grange members will seek donations and grants to rebuild the community center.

Luella Friend, 91, an area resident since 1936, said the fire began around 9:30 a.m., a half-hour before services were to begin in the hall, followed by a potluck. A fire had been set in the woodstove, and it evidently started there, she said.

Friend said when they arrived and saw smoke pouring out, “everybody was standing around, looking at” the fire. So she said her husband and others went to the back door to see if they could save items from inside — “they got everything off the wall, the charters.” The piano was saved — the pool table was too heavy for those on hand to get it out as well, she said.

“It went fast,” Friend said, adding that Tom Ledbetter went to get a water truck from his place, but it wouldn’t start, had a flat tire and was out of water, so…

Annette Thornton said it was the oldest building in Ashwood, and that while they had tried to bring the fire truck, “It wouldn’t have mattered if it was parked out front. It got inside the rafters and was fully engulfed.”

“The biggest blessing was, if we’d had services in there and were singing, I was in there — probably later than I should have been — and with the doors shut behind me, you couldn’t hear the fire at all,” Thornton said. “So it could have been really bad. There’s a lot of elderly people who attend the church. It was probably 15 minutes before we were sitting down.”

Ashwood, located about 30 miles northeast of Madras, has a history dating back to the Sahaptin and Northern Paiute Native American tribes and to settlers in the area in the 1870s. It was named for nearby Ash Butte, which has volcanic ash deposits on its flanks.

The area boomed with sheep ranching a century ago, then became a silver and mining boomtown until the minerals played out, putting the focus back on ranching and agriculture.

“The three oldest residents of Ashwood watched it burn down,” Thornton said, adding that she’d found some pictures which show the building was “at least a century old.”Friend said it had been a hotel and even a tavern in its earliest years.

The church services still were held, and the potluck afterward, at the Ashwood Community Church, Friend said.

At its peak, in 1940, the state had 371 Granges. There were 213 as of 2005, according to an article The Oregonian published that year. Ash Butte Grange Hall No. 802 was chartered in 1932, during the National Grange’s last big growth spurt.

Friend said it’s a good thing folks want to rebuild the hall. “We need one,” she said. “We have funerals and weddings and birthday celebrations, everything else” there.