This is the 4th in a series about The Class of '57. Today there is a fine inclosed swimming pool in Sweet Home located at the west end of SHHS. This was not the case in 1957.  Oh the pool was there, but it was not inclosed. The Class of '57 could hardly wait for the weather to warm up so that we could go swim the Santiam.

To see and read more of my articles about Sweet Home see my I remember ... series.

If you look close enough you can see the river in the photo above. You can also see part of the rocks that were the "High Rocks" (far left center). The houses on the far side of the river were not there in 1957. The river was also deeper before the Foster Dam was built.
 
 

The two pictures above were actually taken about about 25 years ago, but I'm sure the area still looks much as it did then. The inlet in the photo above is about 500 feet upstream from the city water plant. There was far less brush in the past due to the river washing things away when it flooded. My brother and I lived on this beach in the summer time.
 
 

There was a time when there was no swimming pool in Sweet Home. Then who needed a pool when we had the Santiam River? You may wonder why the water intake tower in the top picture above was built so tall. Before the river was damed at Foster the water level would get very high when the spring melt started up in the Cascades.

One year my brother and Joe Miller (with the aid of 1/4 sticks of dynamite), dug a tunnel in the side of the hill about half way between the beach and High Rocks. When the rains came.... It's a good thing nobody was in it when it collapsed. Joe loved to use dynamite, and his carelessness would eventually cost him his life.

I must admit that the photographs that follow were taken before 1957. They may have been taken in 1950-53, but the area remained not much changed and continued to be a favorite hangout of the class of '57 for years.

We lived in the house in the foreground in the photo below. The car in front of the house is my father's 1936 Buick. The area of the river where we swam is a short distance beyond the white house that is left of center.

We lived here several years, and this house was not finished until after we moved out of it. Three rooms and a path; note the privy in the lower right corner. What looks like a foundation for a building is actually the outline of my garden. You will also note that Doug and I had not finished stacking the firewood (to the left of the Buick).

"X" marks the spot where this hause was.  The lumber loading dock on 12th Ave. is long gone, but it was a very busy place in 1957. The photo was taken from atop one of the box cars parked there, and the view is to the North; toward the river.  The pictures below were taken at the end of 9th avenue about 1949/50.

This photo was taken just West of High Rocks. One of the two log bridges is right behind my father, and you can see people standing on the other one on the far right. They stopped putting the bridges across the river after the swimming pool was built, but that didn't stop us from swimming here. I'll bet Bob Walker wishes he still had that beautiful black hair!

A diving board was installed at High Rocks on the south side of the river. I'm not sure who the diver is, but it could be my brother Doug.

This photo was taken looking up stream. Several people are standing on the floating bridge. We used the bridges as a shortcut to Sweet Home when we lived on River Road. Our house at that time was straight up the hill from the beach on the North side of the river.

That's my brother Doug on the left (left photo), with his back to the camera.  He could do this.

One thing that we did once was to float down the river on inner tubes from the covered bridge at Foster to the Pleasant Valley bridge. Most of the trip was rather tame, but there were a couple of places where the river was wild. I would not do this again if the river was restored to the conditions of the 1950's. That is, without the Foster Dam.

I have been told that since the Foster Dam was built the water in the Santiam at the end of 9th Avenue doesn't have a chance to warm up like it did in prior years. Too bad.