Life in the hop yards of Lane County
By Eliot Treichel
When the Willamette Valley produced half the hops grown in the U.S., the worse thing you could call someone was a “dirty hop picker.” Each fall, entire families, children and pets included, would pack a few basic belongings, simply leaving the calves to take care of the milking back home. Then they would migrate to the fields for a month of picking hops, which serve as a preservative in beer and lend the drink its bitter taste. There are few visible remains from those days—a weathered hop kiln just north of Santa Clara, a few wild hop vines growing in secrecy on Mt. Pisgah—but the impact has been indelible. Especially on Oregon’s beer.
Beginnings
The first hops grown in Lane County were probably little more than a few shade vines trained along a farmer’s porch, but the earliest commercial enterprise traces back to George Leasure. In 1869, Leasure planted five acres of hops along the south bank of the Willamette River, not far from a plot owned by Eugene F. Skinner, Eugene’s founder. By 1880, more than 40 farmers were cultivating some 200 acres of hops. When the price of hops soared to $1.00 a pound in 1881, Oregon’s hop industry exploded, and annual production jumped to almost a million pounds. By the start of World War I, output had grown nearly tenfold.
Farming hops was an intensive effort, and not without risks. The vines needed to be trellised up a twine-and-wire latticework that was strung between rows of hop poles, each standing about 12 feet high. While they grew rapidly, it took two to three years before a hop plant produced a marketable yield. Crops couldn’t be stored from year to year, and prices fluctuated wildly on speculation, sometimes leaving farmers holding a worthless abundance. Because of Oregon’s wet springs, vines were often plagued by hop lice and powdery mildew—setbacks that ultimately undid the industry in the southern valley.
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At hop’s heyday, there were 200 growers in the Eugene-Springfield area. Cottage Grove, Junction City, Crow, Glenwood, Goshen, Marcola, Fall Creek, and Lowell all boasted hop yards. One of the largest growers in the area was Alexander Seavey, whose fields stretched along the base of Mt. Pisgah. The Seaveys had over 100 acres of hops and several hop kilns—barn-like, cupola-topped buildings—on their property. Each fall, 500 to 600 people, sometimes more, picked hops for them. Legend tells that one year, when an early frost threatened the crop, all the stores in Eugene closed and shop workers went out to save the season.
The Harvest
Early hops were picked in August, late hops in September. Though the work was hard, many considered hop picking akin to a vacation. Families returned year after year, reuniting with old friends; some pickers even found romance. Most growers provided their pickers with tents or cabins, while the pickers supplied their own bedding and furniture. Farmers and grocery stores sometimes brought out watermelons and other produce to sell to the workers. Children minded siblings too young to work, idling away hot afternoons by playing in the fields or napping atop piles of empty hop sacks.
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Picking started early and continued until evening. With the aid of 10-foot sticks, the hops-heavy wires were first unhooked from their supports and lowered to the ground. Pickers stripped the small, cone-like clusters from the vines, placing them in wooden baskets, later transferring the hops into burlap sacks. Pickers yelled “Sack full!” when the bags were ready to be weighed and recorded. Workers received a penny a pound, picking up to 300 pounds a day. A “dirty hop picker” was someone who made his sacks weigh more by adding leaves and vines or dirt, or even by pouring water or urinating onto the hops. Sacks were then loaded onto horse-drawn wagons—or during the latter days, flatbed pickup trucks—and hauled to the hop kilns, where they were dried for 18 to 24 hours, raked across a slatted floor that was suspended over a heat source.
Nights in the hop yards were filled with bonfires, singing, and music. Organized boxing matches and dances were commonplace. Teenage boys and girls snuck off into the darkness and swooned. Dogs scampered between camps looking for scraps. A few hop farmers even kept their own deputy sheriffs to make sure life stayed peaceful.
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Some yards, like Seavey’s, employed Native American pickers, many of whom traveled to the area from the Warm Springs Reservation. The Indians often brought a few extra horses to sell, as well as handmade gloves and moccasins. On the final day of the season, the Warm Springs Indians reportedly had a ritual of sitting on the curb along Willamette Street, eating watermelon and tossing the rinds. When the watermelon was gone, they’d stand and begin their long trek home.
Legacy
The market for hops suffered greatly during Prohibition, and many Lane County farmers switched to peas and beans. An epidemic of powdery mildew struck Oregon in the 1940s, further bankrupting hop farmers. Like with all segments of agriculture, mechanization also altered the economics of hops picking, shifting production and prompting the development of larger, corporate farms. Today, according to the American Hop Museum, the Yakima Valley in Washington produces about 75 percent of all U.S. hops. The remainder comes from Oregon and Idaho.
Though diminished, the influence of hops on the Willamette Valley remains strong. Oregon State University and the USDA Hop Research Farm in Corvallis are pioneering new strains of disease-resistant hops. Northwest brewers have developed award-winning microbrews utilizing West Coast hops. Small growers are meeting increasing demand for organic hops, and new breweries, such as Coburg’s Agrarian Ales, are growing their own hops on-site, a nod to the traditional farmhouse breweries of the past.
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An 1893 New York Times article had this to say about those hoppy days of yore: “But the largest hop yards in the world are along the Pacific slope. The long valleys of the states of Oregon and Washington are now studded with hop poles presenting a spectacle that is worth going miles to see.” Miles that are now impossible to travel.
Each fall, entire families, children and pets included, would pack a few basic belongings, simply leaving the calves to take care of the milking back home. Then they would migrate to the fields for a month of picking hops, which serve as a preservative in beer and lend the drink its bitter taste. There are few visible remains from those days—a weathered hop kiln just north of Santa Clara, a few wild hop vines growing in secrecy on Mt. Pisgah—but the impact has been indelible. Especially on Oregon’s beer.
