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Oregon Historic Sites Database

address: historic name:Snell, Governor Earl W. Aircraft Crash Site
ADDRESS RESTRICTED vcty, Lake County current/other names:Governor's Ridge Site
assoc addresses:
block/lot/tax lot:
location descr: twnshp/rng/sect/qtr sect:40S 16E 25
resource type:site height (stories): total elig resources:1 total inelig resources:0
elig evaluation: eligible/significant NR Status: Individually Listed
prim constr date:1947 second date: date indiv listed:10/18/2018
primary orig use: Other orig use comments:
second orig use:
primary style: prim style comments:
secondary style: sec style comments:
primary siding: siding comments:
secondary siding:
plan type: architect:
builder:Beechcraft Aircraft Company
comments/notes:
In 1995 the Fremont National Forest erected a concrete monument on the site. Initial review memo sent out 7-3-2013 by IJ. Second draft responded to 3-2-2016. DJP
Survey/Grouping Included In: Type of Grouping Date Listed Date Compiled
   Fremont National Forest National Forest
NR date listed: 10/18/2018
ILS survey date:
RLS survey date:
106 Project(s): None
Special Assess Project(s): None
Federal Tax Project(s): None
(Includes expanded description of the building/property, setting, significant landscape features, outbuildings and alterations)
The Governor Earl W. Snell Aircraft Crash Site is proposed for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A at the statewide level of significance. It is the site of the 1947 airplane crash that killed Oregon Governor Earl W. Snell and his party, including the Secretary of State, Robert Farrell, and the President of the Oregon Senate, Marshall Cornett, as well as the pilot, Cliff Hogue. The site is located at an elevation of approximately 5,900 feet above sea level on the Fremont-Winema National Forest, in a remote ridge-top area. The crash debris that remains on-site is distributed within the 1947 impact area.
(Chronological, descriptive history of the property from its construction through at least the historic period - preferably to the present)
The Governor Earl W. Snell Aircraft Crash Site is nominated to the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A, for politics/government, at the statewide level of significance. The period of significance is 1947, the year of the airplane crash that took the lives of Governor Earl W. Snell and two other prominent Oregon Republican politicians. The site is associated with the immediate post-World War II years in Oregon, a time of dramatic changes that began during World War II but that accelerated after the end of the War. Earl Wilcox Snell was a popular and ambitious politician, elected Oregon’s Governor in 1942 and subsequently re-elected in 1946. His untimely death the following year – along with those of his companions and colleagues, Secretary of State Robert Farrell and President of the Senate Marshall Cornett – left Oregon without key leadership positions in the capital. As a direct result, state laws were enacted after the crash to restrict the number of officials travelling in the same airplane. Of more significance is the fact that the deaths of Snell and Farrell created a sudden leadership vacuum in Oregon’s Republican party, one that profoundly affected the state’s resulting politics during the subsequent ten-to-twelve years, and almost certainly contributed in substantial measure to the return of long-absent Democratic leadership (such as the election of Richard Neuberger to the U.S. Senate in 1954 and Robert Holmes as governor in 1956), as well as to younger Republican politicians, such as Mark O. Hatfield, advancing more rapidly to the forefront of the party organization. As a consequence of the crash, the site, which has a commemorative plaque mounted on a concrete-and-stone monument, is known to many people in Oregon; the locally used geographic name “Governor’s Ridge” increases the breadth of that knowledge.
Title Records Census Records Property Tax Records Local Histories
Sanborn Maps Biographical Sources SHPO Files Interviews
Obituaries Newspapers State Archives Historic Photographs
City Directories Building Permits State Library
Local Library: University Library:University of Oregon, Oregon State University
Historical Society: Other Respository:
Bibliography:
Abbott, Carl. Planning, Politics, and Growth in a Twentieth-Century City. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. 1983. Burton, Robert E. Democrats of Oregon: The Pattern of Minority Politics, 1900-1956. University of Oregon books: Eugene, 1970. Capitol Publishing Company. Capitol’s Who’s Who for Oregon, 1936-1937. Capitol Publishing Co.: Portland, 1936. Capitol Publishing Company. Capitol’s Who’s Who for Oregon, 1942-1944. Capitol Publishing Co.: Portland, 1942. Capitol Publishing Company. Capitol’s Who’s Who for Oregon, 1948-1949. Capitol Publishing Co.: Portland, 1948. Fremont National Forest. Supervisors Office “Forest History” file on Snell crash (containing original copies of official reports, hand-written notes, and newspapers). 1947. Hatfield, Mark O. Not Quite So Simple. New York, New York: Harper & Row, 1968. Klamath Falls Record and Herald. Oct. 28 and 29; Nov.13, 1947; Oct. 29, 1997. Lakeview Lake County Examiner. Oct. 30, 1947. LaLande, Jeff. “Oregon’s Last Conservative U.S. Senator: Some Light upon the Little-Known Career of Guy Cordon.” Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 110 No. 2 (Summer 2009): 228-261. Lowden, Merle. “Airplane search report, October 29 and 30, 1947, Fremont National Forest,” on file, Fremont-Winema National Forest, Lakeview, Oregon. MacColl, E. Kimbark. The Growth of a City: Power and Politics in Portland, 1915-1950. Portland, Oregon: Georgian Press, 1979. McKay, Floyd J. An Editor for Oregon: Charles A Sprague and the Politics of Change. Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press, 1998. Oregon Secretary of State, State of Oregon Archives available on-line, http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/pages/records/governors/guides/state Pacific Northwest Forest Service Association. “Old Smokeys” Newsletter, Winter 2016. Portland Oregonian. Various articles regarding the 1946 gubernatorial election, the airplane crash, and retrospectives of Snell’s life and career. Oct. 15 through Nov. 8, 1946; Oct. 30 through Nov. 4, 1947. Robbins William G. A Man for All Seasons: Monroe Sweetland and the Liberal Paradox. Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press, 2015.