Helen (Douthit) Claypool
By Steve Lent, Crook County Historian
When Mrs. Helen C. Claypool first came to Central Oregon and started teaching school at Trout Creek in 1882, she admits she little dreamed that she would someday be disbursing funds for Crook County, and, she added with a laugh, there was a great deal of doubt in her mind in the fall pf 1928 just before she was first elected county treasurer. In those days Mrs. Claypool was Miss Helen Douthit, daughter of Mr. And Mrs. James O. Douthit who were running sheep in the Hay Creek country. Mr. And Mrs. Douthit came to the Central Oregon country when their daughter was still attending the University of Oregon at Eugene. The university was quite a school in those days says Mrs. Claypool. When first founded the university included instruction for the upper grades of grammar school–one could take fifth grade work at the institution.
The university, however, was far from the first college institution in Eugene–It was preceded by Columbia. An uncle of Mrs. Claypool’s graduated from that institution in 1862 and was a classmate of Joaquin Miller. Mrs. Claypool spent her girlhood near Coburg and lived neighbors to the Miller family. She remembers Joaquin’s family–his father wore a velvet overcoat trimmed with fur–rather queer garb even then. Mrs. Claypool for years had the valedictory address that Joaquin Miller delivered when he graduated from the Columbia Institution, it was one of his best works.
When Mrs. Claypool first taught school at Trout Creek, there was no such thing as Madras. She remembers when the vast holdings of the Hay Creek Company were owned by individual ranchers. Old Dr. Baldwin was among the first ranchers in that section. December 13, 1892 she married L.D. Claypool, whose parents had been among the first settlers in the Prineville country. They first settled on what is now known as the McCormack ranch. After her marriage to L.D. Claypool, she and her husband went to their ranch in the Paulina country.
John t. Faulkner, who died a few years ago, was postmaster at Paulina and also operated a blacksmith shop when the Claypools first went there. Shortly after they established residence there, the homestead rush began and Paulina went urban. A hotel was built and Fred Mosier established a saloon with a thriving trade from the influx of new people. While Mrs. Claypool says the community always seemed to her to be a perfectly safe place to live, it acquired some reputation of a wild, wide-open western town to those who were not acquainted with the locality and were informed only by rumor. With the advent of a new population, a hotel and saloon, Paulina was destined for culture and a school was established.
The first schoolmarm proved to be a terror-stricken young woman, not native of the Central Oregon country, whose information regarding the Paulina community had been distorted with tales of guns, shooting scrapes and bad men. A long, hard ride over muddy roads in a jolting horse-drawn stage had her in a state of near hysteria when she arrived at the hotel about midnight. Fight fire with fire, thought the first teacher, and she arrived armed with a six-shooter. Paulina people did not then make their frequent weekend trips to Prineville. The journey then often required more than two days when they came down with four-horse outfits for supplies. The Claypools made a trip from two to four times a year. Mr. Claypool’s parents still lived on the McCormick place, not far from town. In those days, before modern roads were built, upper country people came to town by way of the wickiup and down the Ochoco from the old Russell place. Mrs. Claypool remembers a faster trip when Mr. Claypool’s sister was ill. They left the Paulina country at sundown and were just coming thorough the old Russell ranch when the sun peeped over Lookout Mountain the next morning. They drove a team that had been pulling a mower in a hayfield all day, too. People prided themselves in good horses in those days. Race meets in Prineville each year drew hundreds of people top the Crook County metropolis. They were later succeeded by the fair each fall.
There has been a post office at Post as long as Mrs. Claypool can remember. The community was named after its first postmaster, Walter Post, who had also kept a stage station where travelers between Prineville and the upper country could spend the night.
There was nothing troublesome in the pioneer Hay Creek country when Mrs. Claypool taught school there. “You can ask Lyn Nichols or Preston Dunham,” added Mrs. Claypool, they went to school down there then.”
In 1912, the Claypool family moved to town to send their two oldest boys to high school, two others were in grade school. Later they disposed of their Paulina ranch and made Prineville their permanent residence. In 1928, Mrs. Claypool was induced to run for county treasurer and was elected on November 6, of that year. A few days after the election, J.H. Gray, who was serving the last of his elected term as treasurer, passed away and Mrs. Claypool was appointed by the county court to assume his unexpired term. She was again elected to the office in 1932.