Guest Editor-Blogger: Rob

My friend was hauling logs to Riddle from up around Lemolo Lake and almost hit a creature, crossing the road. He reported it to the State and got his CDL revoked for filing a false report. I'm pretty sure he saw what he said he saw, but the state got him anyway. All of us know what happens when a driver reports these things. It's no wonder reports from truckers are very few.

Guest Editor-Blogger: Blue Truck

Linda, I have asked Sally Rich of Powers to tell the story on your blog about the trouble back in the 40s. Here is a photo I took in 1977 while camped there for a week.

Also, Jean told me that they're getting the requests to print your column in the paper.

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Thank you. The photo is beautiful. And thank you for talking to Jean.

Guest Editor-Blogger: Sally Rich

The Mountain Monsters of Azalea Lake

Azalea Lake is located in the Siskiyou Mountains between the tiny towns of Powers, Oregon and Agness, Oregon. Back in the 1940s the lake was a logging camp for Coos Bay Lumber Company. The company built 35 cabins along the lake to house the loggers.

My mother Minny Rich was a camp cook there and remembers the weird happenings in 1947-48. Back in these years, very few had ever heard of "mountain monsters." In the spring of 1947, loggers started complaining about terrible looking hairy monsters that left behind unusually large footprints.

Then in May of 1947 two loggers went missing in the forest above the lake. The rumor was they got drunk on store bought whiskey and wondered off to get forever lost. Many stories about these big monsters were talk of the camp and towns. Then in June of 1948, a crew of timber fallers saw what appeared to be one of the lost men with four giant hairy monsters.

The man was totally wild by then, and didn't appear to be wearing any clothes or shoes. The camp had had trouble with strange tracks since the 1920s, when it was first occupied by a group of settlers that talked of tall creatures stealing their meat and other goods.

In 1980, the USFS burned all the remaining cabins down and sealed off the road. Did the forest agency know something? We will probably never know. Fifteen miles away is Squaw Lake, another USFS owned lake that is having its own strang occurrences. Could it be the next generation of the hairy monsters? Just a thought from some of the "old timers" here in Powers.