In 1961, the Army Corps of Engineers’ Rogue Basin Project proposed a dam on the Applegate River for flood control and irrigation that required purchasing property from 36 private owners and the Copper Store.
Guy Watkins was one of those landowners. His grandfather had mined in the area and homesteaded the 160 acres Watkins still ranched. His aunt Mamie Winningham had run the Copper store and Copper Post Office, built by Watkins’ grandfather and named after the copper mining boom of the 1880s.
Gladys Crow owned the Copper Store after 1936, a landmark for locals, fishermen and miners.
Many people remembered attending the Watkins school or shopping at the Copper store or picking up mail at the post office.
Another landowner, David Winningham, had planted a tree farm as a long-term investment that he would not see come to fruition. Even ranchers downstream from the dam lost their 100-year-old water rights and had to pay for the new irrigation water they had previously simply pumped from the river.
Though the Applegate Dam was built for the greater good, real people had suffered real losses before its construction in 1980.
Sources: Ziegler, Maude. "Copper Store, Ranches, Homes Threatened." Medford Mail Tribune, Feb. 1962; Miller, Bill. "The Underwater Ghost Town." , Medford Mail Tribune, Dec. 2008, mailtribune.com/lifestyle/the-underwater-ghost-town. Accessed 18 Oct. 2018; "Information Paper for Applegate Lake, A Part of The Rogue River Basin ." Soda (Southern Oregon Digital Archives), Portland District, Corps Of Engineers , Oct. 1974, soda2.sou.edu/awdata/020805b1.pdf. Accessed 18 Oct. 2018.
