It's fairly common to encounter locked gates where you can't get into the forest. This was the first time I was able to drive into an area where I wasn't welcome. It's legal to use the road. There just isn't anywhere you can park or walk around
until you get to Forest Service land further up the road.

We headed in a bit different direction this time. We went to Sweet Home on the east side of the Willamette valley and up high enough to get into the tall trees. I had been reading that this was a good area for rockhounding. A guidebook I had
gotten from the library specifically mentioned some spots on the Upper Calapooia river and we started out there. We picked up some interesting rocks at our first stop and had gone further up the river. A lot of the property up there is posted and we
stayed out of those places. We found a likely spot with trails to the river and went down there to collect some more rocks. About the time we were ready to leave a pickup pulled up and someone started nailing signs to a tree right next to where we were
parked. He was putting up more no trespassing signs. He said he had to replace signs frequently.

It turned out that we were on Weyerhaeuser land and they're selling recreation permits to use their land. Were we were it's $100/year for a family and the permits for 2023 are all sold out. After I did some checking I found out you can't collect
rocks from their land even if you have a recreation permit. Even though they own the land for 25 miles up that river there is still plenty of open land in that area. So we went to the Whitcomb Creek county park on the Green Peter reservoir.

https://linnparks.com/parks/whitcomb-creek/

A bit over 100 years ago they had a minor gold rush in that area. Quartzville went from zero to over a thousand residents and the back to zero in a short period of time. The Quartzville road is a recreation corridor through there. Camping is allowed
in all of the pullouts and campfires are permitted where they placed a steel fire ring. There are a lot of steel fire rings in that area and there were a lot of people camped right next to the road. The Yellowbottom pond further up the road had a small,
first come first served campground. That was closed.

You can legally pan for gold in the Quartzville recreational corridor.

https://www.rivers.gov/documents/quartzville-creek-brochure.pdf

There are active gold mines in that general area. OTOH, during the depression desperate people were out there panning for starvation wages. It could happen, but I don't think you're likely to make much money panning for gold in the Quartzville
creek.

https://www.ghosttowns.com/states/or/quartzville.html

TB

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