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Geoff Somnitz

HST 591-90903

12/4/2015

Place History Project

Hop Production in Oregon as Seen by Different Sources

If an Oregonian is asked what they think when they think about hops, either they will

respond with asking what a hop is or they will probably say they think about beer or maybe more

specifically about local Oregon breweries. Hops have a very long history in Oregon, and

specifically in the Willamette Valley, first coming to the Oregon Territory in the mid-19th

century with records appearing in the 1850 census with eight pounds of hops being harvested.

These early harvests were probably not used for beer, but instead as a substitute for yeast. In the

kitchen, pioneer housewives would soak hops to yield starter for bread in case their yeast ever

ran out. By the end of the decade, production reached almost 500 pounds, and most of this

probably headed to the Saxer Brewery in Portland. This brewery later became known as

Weinhard’s Brewery, which is still active today.1

Oregon’s history of hop production has been documented by a wide variety of sources,

ranging from newspapers, personal accounts, oral histories, journal articles, historical society

records, archival collections, to data from government agency reports and university extension

reports. As it was difficult to find primary sources of Oregon’s hop production, and encountering

mainly secondary sources instead, taking a look at how these sources feature this subject turned

out to produce interesting information. Oregon newspaper articles from the early 20th century 1 Herbert B. Nelson, "The Vanishing Hop-Driers of the Willamette Valley," 267.

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alternate between promoting hops as a cash crop to export or to sell to breweries and featuring

articles such as a sermon from a church minister titled “Hop Growing and Picking or Should

Professed Followers of Jesus Christ Indulge.” This variation among sources, as well as

comparing data from older reports to newer ones and reading/watching interesting personal

accounts have made this an intriguing topic to study. I previously didn’t know very much about

this topic, and chose it as a way to do something different. I’m also new to doing a place history

of this scope, with my previous experience in this area being writing about the history of the Kerr

Library at Oregon State University. Finding articles that spanned a wide time frame and

geographic area proved to be a challenge, but was greatly aided by the records of the Oregon

Hops & Brewing Archives at OSU as a starting point as well as databases of articles and

archived reports.

When searching newspaper databases for hop references, most of them popped up in the

early 20th century before Prohibition. At the time, hops were a booming export. Prior to this

however, early hop production in Oregon usually happened in small farms, with a typical acreage

per farm being around 20 acres. Even then, hops were recognized as a valuable cash crop, with

families commonly growing them as a source of income. In the Willamette Valley, the region of

Oregon most commonly used for hop production, the climate and soil were well suited for hops

due to the similarity of the area to hop growing regions in Germany. Both are located on the 45th

parallel, getting around the same amount of sun and rainfall.2 As hop farms became larger and

larger, jobs were created due do the need for labor around harvest time.3 This labor force was

typically in the form of local families or Native Americans. An article from a Grand Ronde area

paper describes how picking hops became part of tribal history. During late summer harvest,

2 Agri-Business Council of Oregon. Oregon Hop Production. 2014.3 Peter Kopp, "Hop Industry." The Oregon Encyclopedia.

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families go to hop farms for work. They were separated into tribes to camp nearby and after

picking was over for the day, they would play ball and relax.4 Other ethnicities were also present,

with Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos part of the hop labor force. Latino workers weren’t as

common until the advent of mechanization in the 1950’s.5 Women and children were popular to

hire as workers due to their dexterity as well as being on a lower pay scale. An 1919 article from

a Salem newspaper described how female workers resisted being supplanted in the workforce by

returning male workers after the end of WWI, but estimated that some fields such as hop workers

would stay predominantly female due to the above reason.6

People of various backgrounds picked hops due to the decent pay, additional income

during the summer school break, and because it provided a break from everyday life. An oral

history and a personal account, one from the Willamette Heritage Center and the other from a

German immigrant society in Portland, cover similar experiences. Ruth DeSart Lively worked on

at the Wigrich Hop Ranch outside of Independence, Oregon. In her oral history interview, she

describes her experiences working in the ranch store during the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. On

the ranch, there was a campground provided by the owner for workers to stay for the four week

long harvest season. Families would come from Salem and Portland, usually with the father

staying behind. Lively also describes how the children often saved their wages for school

supplies. Another recollection was segregated housing for Asian and Native American workers

with the Native Americans bringing their own tents. In the store, along with selling goods, she

also helped distribute mail. She remembers tacking up letters on butcher paper bulletin boards

4 Ron Karten, "Still life: Lewis talks about Prohibition." Smoke Signals (Grand Ronde, OR), August 15, 2012: 3.5 Oregon Hops & Brewing Archives. "Hops History in Oregon." The Brewstorian. January 14, 2014.6 Daily Capitol Journal, "Women in Men's Places Loath to Give Up Work." Daily Capitol Journal, February 18, 1919: 1 and 3.

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for workers to claim. She finishes her interview by discussing the impact the Depression had on

workers, with the jobs on the hop ranch being a hot commodity due to the decent wages.7

Harvesting hops near Independence, 1940. Oregon State University Archives, Gerald W. Williams Collection., Willamette Valley album, WilliamsG:WV_hops Independence

Harvesting hops in the Willamette Valley, 1915.

Oregon State University Archives, Gerald W. Williams Collection, Willamette Valley album, WilliamsG:WV_children hops color

7 Ruth DeSart-Lively, interview by Willamette Heritage Center. Life on a Hop Ranch Salem, Oregon, (2013). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArDwZjkOWG4

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Adam Bihn provides the other personal account by way of a website detailing the

heritage of the Volga Germans who settled in the Willamette Valley in the late 19th century.

Bihn’s experiences, also during the 1930’s, differ from Lively’s due to him and his family being

out picking in the hop fields. Bihn describes advertisements for hop pickers that would be

distributed every year. Housing at the field and transportation to it were arranged along with

registration for the jobs. Bihn rode a train with his family from Portland down south to a farm to

the west of Salem. Horse drawn wagons would take them from the station to the farm, and when

they arrived, they would head for “shanties” and claim beds, which consisted of straw mattresses

and were large enough to fit two to four people. After breakfast, he and his family would start

picking. Hops are grown on wire trellises supported by wooden poles and once they had picked

as high as they could reach, other works would let down the wire for them to pick the rest. The

worker camps were near the Willamette River and Bihn enjoyed swimming after work. The

season for Bihn lasted three to four weeks, and he relates how some families would stay to the

end of the season even if it meant their kids missing school. Bihn finishes with saying even

though he enjoyed break from everyday life, it was nice to go home to his own bed.8 These

camps, with their gatherings of local families and the harvest celebrations that ended the season,

later formed the basis for organized hop festivals, some continue to this day.9

Turning back to newspaper articles, an interesting contrast can be found with the

promotion of hops and beer in papers with the few exceptions to that trend. There are articles

such as ones from The Oregonian, the main newspaper in Portland, all about reporting the

successes of hops as a leading cash crop and export. One from 1908 relates how the hop content

8 Adam Bihn. "Recollections of Summer Hop Picking." The Volga Germans in Portland. May 1999. http://www.volgagermans.net/portland/hop_picking.html (accessed December 4, 2015).9 Oregon Hops & Brewing Archives. "Hops History in Oregon." The Brewstorian.

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in beer produced locally is dropping due to higher prices resulting from most of the crop being

exported. It also talks about reluctance to purchase European hops over local grown hops even

though the predominantly German hops are substantially cheaper. A reporter from The

Oregonian bureau in Washington D.C. reports in the article that the House Committee on Ways

& Means is set to discuss a raise on the tariff for hops from the Pacific Northwest to try and

lessen exportation to ease the prices for local buyers.10 Related to that article is one from two

years earlier, also from The Oregonian, which posed a hypothetical question to the manager of

Weinhard’s Brewery in Portland about what would happen if hops were to suddenly become

extinct. He says in the article that beer without hops would be impossible and that “it would be

nothing less than a public calamity.”11 The question was thought up by the paper in response to a

statement by the Prohibitionist movement making the claim that without hops, beer would still

be plentiful. The brewer admits, however, later in the article that while beer without hops is

technically possible to the small amount actually used in the brewing process, it would just not

taste the same. The brewer goes on to discuss how the majority of the hop crop from the

Willamette Valley ends up heading east and that most of that is exported.12 On the other end of

the scale of support for hop growing is a sermon carried by two newspapers in Oregon City, in

which the author, the pastor of the local First Baptist Church, decries the picking of hops by his

parishioners. He takes offence to this due to the fact stated in his sermon that 95% of hops go to

production of alcohol. The pastor, a supporter of the temperance aspects of the Baptist faith,

admits that he might have a hard time saying his opinion in an Oregon town where it was

10 Oregonian News Bureau, Washington D.C. "Few Hops Used in Making Beer." The Sunday Oregonian, November 29, 1908: 1.11 Morning Oregonian. "Beer Without Hops Utterly Impossible, Declares Brewer." Morning Oregonian, August 29, 1906: 9.12 Morning Oregonian, “Beer Without Hops”, 9.

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commonplace to go work picking hops, still tries to convince his congregation. This sermon must

have been a big event for the town at the time, for both of the local papers covered it.13 14

Hop growing in Oregon continued through Prohibition, partly due to the devastation of

European hops after WWI and continued export of hops to make up for the loss. During the

periods of 1905 to 1915 and 1922 to 1943, Oregon as a state produced the most of hops in the

United States. Following the repeal of Prohibition, farmers expanded hop production

significantly and the area around Independence in Polk County, Oregon (where Lively’s Wigrich

Hop Ranch was located) became known as the "Hop Center of the World."15 This spurred on the

recruitment of large amounts of worker that included Lively and Bihn. In the early 1950’s, the

onset of mechanical picking led to the loss of the need for large amounts of workers. Acreage for

some farms increased to pay for the new machines, while others closed down to the cost of

upgrading. Another significant development occurred in the 1970’s and 1980’s with the

development of the Willamette and Cascade varieties of hops by the Crop Science Department at

Oregon State University. These varieties, bred to be well suited to growing in the Willamette

Valley, became very common in commercial hop production.

Agricultural reports are able to show data about hop production and some insight can be

gain from this. A report from the Extension Service at Oregon State College (now OSU) in the

1950’s detailing “Oregon’s First Century of Farming” has an interesting section about hops. It

describes how Oregon, after 1943, dropped from first to fourth in hop production. The report

blames the decrease on production and marketing difficulties. Seeing as this happened around the

time of transitioning from manual to mechanized labor, as well as the closing of some farms and

13 Rev. John M. Linden, "Hop Growing and Picking." Oregon City Courier, May 1, 1908: 6.

14 Rev. John M. Linden, "Hop Picking is Denounced." Oregon City Enterprise, May 1, 1908: 2-3.15 Kopp, "Hop Industry." The Oregon Encyclopedia.

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the enlarging of others, it’s safe to say that this might have had a factor. The following chart is

generated from Oregon hop production figures from the years 1859 to 1958:

A noticeable dip around 1935 can be explained due an outbreak of mildew among hop farms,

with the disease causing stunted growth and overall loss in production yield.16 17 Another report

is the National Hop Report published annually by the National Agricultural Statistics Service

(NASS), Agricultural Statistics Board, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Referring to a more recent and national report allows comparison to other states, which the most

recent report does by comparing the production yields of Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and the

16 Federal Cooperative Extension Service, Oregon State College, and Charles M. Long. Oregon's First Century of Farming: A Statistical Record of Achievements and Adjustments in Oregon Agriculture 1859- 1958. Corvallis: Oregon State College, (1959): 19 and 70. 17 Oregon Hops & Brewing Archives. "Hops History in Oregon." The Brewstorian.

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total from the United States over a three year period from 2012 to 2014. The following chart is

generated from the tabular data from this period:

The chart is able to show that Washington is the largest hop producer in the United States, being

a majority of the total production of the country. Oregon is second; with a large gap between it

and Washington, and Idaho is a comparable third to Oregon. The report also surveys what

varieties are the most produced and in Oregon, the top three are the Nugget, Willamette, and

Cascade varieties. This next infographic shows this data in a different way, as well as comparing

the US to other countries’ hop production in addition to showing US hop growing regions and

other information about beer:

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Today, the major hop growers are still centered in the Willamette Valley of northwest Oregon,

which can be seen above but also as shown larger in the following map:

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Oregon has a rich history of hop growing, with harvesting in the early 20th century being

a large cultural aspect of it. The oral history of Ruth DeSart Lively and personal account of

Adam Bihn give insight into this period, with early 20th century Oregon newspapers painting a

picture of hops as a key cash crop for many growers as well as the workers who picked them.

The sermon featured in the two Oregon City papers takes the other side and tries to convince

people to not support hop growing due to its primary application of brewing. That comparison,

as well as other stories of life that are connected to hops, made this topic an interesting one to

research. A place history of the Willamette Valley in Oregon will probably focus on some aspect

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of agriculture. Hops were a major part of it back in the early 20th century and still are to a minor

degree. Oregon hops go all over the United States and help make beer that countless people

enjoy.

BibliographyAgri-Business Council of Oregon. Oregon Hop Production. 2014.

http://oregonfresh.net/education/oregon-agriculture-production/oregon-hops-production/

(accessed December 4, 2015).

Bihn, Adam. "Recollections of Summer Hop Picking." The Volga Germans in Portland. May

1999. http://www.volgagermans.net/portland/hop_picking.html (accessed December 4,

2015).

Daily Capitol Journal. "Hop Outlock Not Encouraging." Daily Capitol Journal, January 14,

1914: 2.

—. "Women in Men's Places Loath to Give Up Work." Daily Capitol Journal, February 18,

1919: 1 and 3.

DeSart-Lively, Ruth, interview by Willamete Heritage Center. Life on a Hop Ranch Salem,

Oregon, (2013).

East Oregonian. "Beer is a Food of High Quality." East Oregonian, January 17, 1907: 6.

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Federal Cooperative Extension Service, Oregon State College, and Charles M. Long. Oregon's

First Century of Farming: A Statistical Record of Achievements and Adjustments in

Oregon Agriculture 1859- 1958. Corvallis: Oregon State College, 1959.

Karten, Ron. "Still life: Lewis talks about Prohibition." Smoke Signals (Grand Ronde, OR),

August 15, 2012: 3.

Kopp, Peter A. "“Hop Fever” in the Willamette Valley: The Local and Global Roots of a

Regional Specialty Crop." Oregon Historical Quarterly 112, no. 4 (2011): 406-433.

—. "Hop Industry." The Oregon Encyclopedia. 2015.

http://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/hop_industry/#.VmNYH-LrdyE (accessed

December 4, 2015).

Linden, Rev. John M. "Hop Growing and Picking." Oregon City Courier, May 1, 1908: 6.

—. "Hop Picking is Denounced." Oregon City Enterprise, May 1, 1908: 2-3.

Meeker, Ezra, and A. W. Lawrence. Hop culture in the United States : being a practical treatise

on hop growing in Washington territory from the cutting to the bale. E. Meeker and Co.:

Puyallup, Washington Territory, 1883.

Miller, Frank J. "Hop Acreage Increasing." Polk County Observer, February 3, 1914: 1.

Morning Oregonian. "Beer Without Hops Utterly Impossible, Declares Brewer." Morning

Oregonian, August 29, 1906: 9.

National Agricultural Statistics Service. "National Hop Report 2014." United States Department

of Agriculture Economics, Statistics and Market Information System . December 17,

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2014. http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/hops/hops-12-17-2014.pdf (accessed

December 4, 2015).

Nelson, Herbert B. "The Vanishing Hop-Driers of the Willamette Valley." Oregon Historical

Quarterly 64, no. 3 (September 1963): 267-271.

Oregon Hop Commission. Oregon Hop Commission (OHC) Website. 2015.

http://www.oregonhops.org/index.html (accessed December 4, 2015).

Oregon Hops & Brewing Archives. "Hops History in Oregon." The Brewstorian. January 14,

2014. http://thebrewstorian.tumblr.com/post/72686251791/hops-history-in-oregon

(accessed December 4, 2015).

Oregonian News Bureau, Washington D.C. "Few Hops Used in Making Beer." The Sunday

Oregonian, November 29, 1908: 1.

Reed, Cameron. "The American Beershed." In Food: An Atlas, edited by Darin Jensen and Molly

Roy, 23-24. Berkeley: Guerilla Cartography, 2012.

Strom, Danielle. "Hops." Willamette Heritage Center. 2014.

http://willametteheritage.org/assets/LaRC/bios_histories/Hops.pdf (accessed December 4,

2015).

The Sunday Oregonian. "Hops and Beer." The Sunday Oregonian, October 31, 1910: 8.