Just Beyond the City Limits: Carver, Oregon
A Historic Community Built from Basalt and Timber on the Clackamas River
On a late spring morning, I turned right off South Clackamas River Drive and pulled into the parking lot to meet Chris Guntermann. He was waiting at the Baker Cabin Historic Site; a quiet, wooded property at 18005 S. Gronlund Road, south of the Clackamas River boat ramp. Here he walked me through a corner of Oregon history that many people drive past, though the beautiful white buckboard pioneer church is hard to miss in the morning light illuminating its facade.
Guntermann is a retired horticulturist and the current volunteer president of the Baker Cabin Historical Society, a role he arrived at the way a lot of community preservation work gets done: “gradually, then all at once.” He has been at it for years now and has no complaints. “It’s really a nice respite from my other work. Come down here, sit at the cabin, you’ll enjoy it.” With the birds and the river as the soundtrack behind him, I could understand.
That is exactly the right way to describe the Baker Cabin site. It is peaceful, unhurried, and genuinely historic. And it is the starting point for understanding the community that grew up around it.
The Pioneer Church
The first stop on Guntermann’s tour is the Pioneer Church, which sits in a wooded clearing just steps from the parking area. It is a small, white-painted wood-frame building that looks like it has been in this spot forever. It has not — which is part of what makes it interesting.
The church was built in 1895, six miles east of here in the timber community of Logan, by German immigrant settlers who wanted a place to worship in their own language. It was incorporated in 1897 as the German Methodist Episcopal Zion Church of Logan, Oregon. The founding members were the Zurbuchen family, Swiss immigrants who donated the land and helped build the structure. Sermons were preached in German, and on Saturdays the church offered German language classes to area residents.
“The Zurbuchans — who were actually Swiss-Austrian — they formed it up, donated the land, built the church, and it sat empty after about 1932 and went into disrepair,” says Guntermann. The congregation disbanded around 1920. For decades the building sat unused, eventually serving as storage for hay and whatever else needed somewhere dry.
In 1967, a community member named Ernie Heinrich decided that was not an acceptable ending. He led the effort to move the building to the Baker Cabin site, and the community showed up to help finish it. “When it came in, it had no roof, no floor, no windows,” says Guntermann. “The neighbors and all the people who the roads are named after here, they all came down and had pancake breakfasts and quilt raffles [to support the effort].”
Inside today, the original pulpit stands at the front of the room. The antique organ, pews, and chairs are the ones donated during that 1967 restoration. In summer, a grape arbor over the adjacent garden creates a naturally shaded outdoor space that Guntermann describes as “a really nice photo or backdrop for vows.” The church is available for weddings and small events year-round. The society even hosts intimate concerts, like a cello performance by candlelight they recently hosted.
The Baker Cabin
A short walk from the church brings you to the 1856 Baker Cabin itself; a low, sturdy log structure that has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976 and looks like it plans to stay standing for another 170 years without much trouble.
The cabin was built from squared Douglas Fir timbers originally destined for the California Gold Fields, with no pegs or nails — just hand-hewn logs stacked and fitted together with a cantilevered design more common on the East Coast than in the Pacific Northwest. “The whole thing is just dry stacked,” says Guntermann. “There’s a pin at the top and at the bottom and everything else is just stuck on top of each other. It meets county codes,” he jokes, “…not. But it works. Still here after earthquakes and the threat of fires.”
Some of the logs were replaced in 1996, and original corner pieces from earlier restorations are preserved and on display. The original well is still on the grounds, though vandals broke off the handle some years back.
Also on the property is a shed housing the “Mud Wagon,” an 1850s stagecoach that once ran routes between Sandy and Portland, donated to the historical society in 1939 and restored for static display. It gets rolled out for community events and has become a popular photograph spot. At last winter’s Oregon City Heritage Days in December, it was decorated for Christmas and parked out front. “Back in the old days when people out here still had draft horses,” says Guntermann, “I saw it in the Oregon City parade being pulled by four horses.”
The Bigger Picture: A Community With Three Names
Standing on the Baker Cabin property, Guntermann points out the landscape around us and the history layered into it. Understanding Carver means understanding its three names; each one a marker of what the land was being used for at the time.
Long before any of those names existed, the Clackamas people, a Chinookan-speaking nation, lived and traveled along this river and its tributaries for thousands of years. Their villages, fishing grounds, and trade routes defined this landscape before American settlement arrived and displaced them within a generation. Bedrock mortar holes (or “grinding rocks”) still visible on the property are signs of their presence, where they would pound and process acorns, grains, seeds, and roots with pestles.
The first white settlers here were Horace and Jane Baker. They arrived in fall 1846 after crossing the Barlow Road, the first wagon road over the Cascades which bypassed the dangerous Columbia River raft route into the Willamette Valley. They chose this particular bend in the Clackamas River deliberately. Horace Baker was a stone mason by trade, and the high-grade Columbia River Basalt formation immediately above the river was exactly what he was looking for. The quarry he established supplied stone for the Willamette Falls Locks, the Tillamook Lighthouse, Portland’s Pioneer Post Office, and the rock walls along the Willamette Falls overlook on Highway 99E.
So, the community first became known as “Baker’s Quarry.”
In summertime, the Society hosts rock-splitting demonstrations using the original quarry wedge technique. “We split them with the wedges,” says Guntermann, with the matter-of-fact enthusiasm of someone who has done it many times and still finds it satisfying.
The second name, “Stone,” honored Livingstone Stone, superintendent of a salmon hatchery built on land donated by the Bakers. It was the second fish hatchery in the nation; the first west of the Mississippi and in Oregon.
The third name, Carver, came from Steven Carver, who platted the first development in the area and built a railway from Portland to service it. As Guntermann explains it: “Stephen Carver brought it from Portland to here — that’s why it’s called Carver. He platted the land, but his railroad went bankrupt. They had recessions back then, too.”
The railroad is gone, but you can still read it in the landscape. Look over the edge of the Carver Bridge and you will see the original trestle footings still in the riverbed on both sides and right in front of the Rock Garden Tavern. The old rail line crossed the river on that trestle, then swept behind the Baker Cabin property, and continued south east to Fisher Mill and the logging operations further up the valley. When the timber ran out and roads were built, the railroad simply became unnecessary.
The pioneer economy that made all of this work is one Guntermann explains with characteristic clarity: “You get your 640 acres or so from your Donation Land grant and you have to generate income. A lot of times they would harvest the timber, burn to make pasture, and then raise cattle. Cattle come with milk whether it’s a dairy or not. Portland’s 15 miles away with no good roads, so what do you do with the milk? You take it over to a creamery and turn it into butter, because butter is a lot easier to move.”
That creamery, Clear Creek Creamery, built in 1901 just south of the river, grew to 1,500 patrons by 1920 before closing in 1936. The large butter churn from the original operation is still on display at the Baker Cabin site.
One more detail Guntermann mentions with quiet satisfaction: because Horace Baker transported his basalt stones down the river via raft… and hauled the rafts back, public beach access downriver from the Baker Cabin property extends to the high water mark because it is classified a ‘navigable’ river. Upstream, private landowners own to the middle of the river. “What does history do for you?” he says. “It lets you get out of your boat.”
What Else Is in Carver
After leaving the Baker Cabin site, the rest of Carver is a short drive along either side of the river.
A ~300 yard trail connects the Baker Cabin property directly north, through the original quarry outcroppings and a climbers’ wall, to Stone Cliff Inn. It’s close enough that, as Guntermann notes, “if the lights were on, you could see it right through that gap in the trees.”
StoneCliff Inn (17900 S. Clackamas River Drive) sits on the site of Baker’s Rock Quarry and opened in 2004. It is a log cabin-style restaurant with a menu focused on locally sourced Pacific Northwest cuisine, a full bar, and outdoor deck seating with views over the Clackamas River. It is also a filming location from the 2008 film Twilight, with a sign on the property noting the specific scenes. Reservations are recommended on weekends and advisable any time.
Rock Garden Tavern (17930 S. Clackamas River Drive) has been operating in some form since 1928, converted to a tavern in 1936 by the Mumpower family (the same family whose name runs through much of early Carver history). It is a straightforward local bar on the river, and a genuine community fixture.
Carver Park (14888 S. Springwater Road) is a Clackamas County day-use park at the confluence of Clear Creek and the Clackamas River, at the site of Baker’s slack-line ferry and near the land the Bakers originally donated for the area’s first fish hatchery. It has a boat launch, river fishing access, restrooms and picnic areas. Day use parking is $9, reduced for vehicles towing boats. It is a popular access for floats down to Oregon City or from Barton Park; and a good spot to spend time on the beach.
For visitors who want to stay overnight, Clackamas River House is a bed and breakfast operated by Marc and Susie DeLaBruere, less than a mile from the Baker Cabin site. There are two private suites: the Log Cabin Suite upstairs with river view, queen bed, and fireplace, and the Jacuzzi Suite downstairs with a private Jacuzzi tub, plus a garden with a gazebo, fire pit, and waterfall. Home-cooked breakfast included each morning. Rooms start at $120 per night, and the property is 24 minutes from Portland International Airport.
The Carver Cafe (another Twilight film location), The Carver Hangar, and Shelley’s Echo Inn are all historic sites and well-regarded local restaurants across the Carver Bridge. They’re worth a visit if you are in the area and can beat the crowds.
A Place Worth Keeping
The Baker Cabin Historic Site is free to visit during daylight hours. About twenty-five percent of the Baker Cabin Historical Society’s operating budget comes from donations; the rest depends on venue and wedding rentals, and the time and energy of a small group of volunteers who show up because they believe the place is worth showing up for.
Over lunch, Guntermann was candid about what the future of that work looks like. Finding volunteers is hard. Getting younger people committed to historic preservation is harder. The Society has been at this since 1937, but institutions like this one do not run on momentum alone, they run on people. “History can become extinct,” he said simply. If the Society were ever to dissolve, the property would revert to the State, its future uncertain.
That is not a prediction. It is a reality check from someone who understands the work intimately and is still choosing to do it. The Baker Cabin has survived 170 years of weather, earthquakes, wildfires, vandalism, rowdy wedding guests, and the general indifference of passing time. Whether it survives the next generation depends less on the logs than on the people willing to take care of them.
If you visit and find yourself moved by what is here — the cabin, the church, the river, the quiet — consider volunteering, donating, or simply telling someone else it is worth the stop. That is how places like this make it to the next hundred years.
