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Corky and Don mix the concrete
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Bill Williams smoothes it out
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The Monument is set
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The new flag and pole stand tall
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Diane Weatherspoon, Dick and
Sharon Koloen stand proud
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The memory of Valsetz will live on
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Falls City Honors VALSETZ,
Gone, but not Forgotten!
Article from the Itemizer-Observer, written by Jennifer Rouse
It was a small group gathered in Falls City Park.
Just a handful of observers standing by, watching while workers cemented into place a shiny new flagpole and a stone monument - memorials to a place that now lives only in memory.
"In memory of all who lived or worked in VALSETZ, 1921-1984" it reads.
With its birth and death dates, the marker looks a little like a tombstone. Perhaps it is appropriate, because for all intents and purposes, the town of Valsetz is dead.
Boise Cascade corporation burned and then bulldozed the little mill town in 1984.
Valsetz lives only in the hearts and minds of its one-time residents.
And now, anyone who sees the marker will remember it too.
"We just thought we needed some sort of monument for Valsetz," Diane Weatherspoon said.
Weatherspoon is president of the Valsetz Reunion Committee. She lives seven hours away in Elgin now, but she and other former residents still remember the little town fondly.
Valsetz residents gather once a year for a reunion, reuniting with friends and neighbors scattered after the town's destruction.
The reunion's location has shifted among several Polk County parks, but for the last few years its been held at the Falls City Park. So the reunion committee decided to give something back.
"Boise donated money to a memorial fund, so we wanted to put some of it back into the park," Weatherspoon explained. They paid for bathrooms and picnic tables, and now the flagpole.
"Oh, I'm so excited about this," Weatherspoon squealed, with a big grin on her face, as the brand new flag was raised.
Dick and Sharon Koloen of Dallas were there to watch too. Sharon said the flag won't fly all the time. Only on special occasions.
"When people want to use the park, they can use the flag too," she said.
Weatherspoon said one former Valsetz woman wants to make a Valsetz flag, decorated in blue and gold, with a picture of a cougar, Valsetz high school's school colors and mascot.
"She has it all planned out in her head, how it will look," she said.
"I bet she could do it, too," Sharon added. "She's really good at sewing."
The former residents can already imagine how the flag will look flying over this year's reunion, the first Saturday in August in Falls City Park. But for now, they simply stand and stare at the marker and the flag and remember the town that used to be a few miles up the road.
The Valsetz residents know that the reunions won't last forever.
"We're going to continue with the reunions as long as we can," Dick Koloen said. "We always said, we'll just keep on doing it, and the last one left will turn out the lights."
But one day, when no one living remembers Valsetz, now the marker will still be there.
