Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/512



Unique in the history of the United States is Helmick Park, Polk County, Oregon. Seventy-nine years ago Sarah and Henry Helmick took up a claim of 640 acres of land on the Luckiamute River in Polk County, Oregon. On September 12, 1924, when the West Side Highway, a link of a paved stretch running through the Pacific Northwest from the Canadian border to the Mexican border, was dedicated, "Grandma" Helmick, 101 years old, gave back to the people of the United States a five-acre natural park of the land which they had given her and her husband in their youth. The fathers of the republic in their vision made laws granting lands on liberal terms which in 1850 took the form of homesteads to the Oregon pioneers. "Grandma" Helmick, with a generosity unequalled by any receiver of a homestead grant in the United States, returned that land to the givers when her time to use it had ended. Her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and the generations to come will rise up to call her "blessed" even as will the traveler who rests under the shade of the Oregon trees and drinks of the cool, fresh water as it gushes out of mountain streams. For nowhere in the history of the republic has a pioneer taken a grant of land from the federal government, lived on it, cultivated it and brought forth from it the products of civilization, and returned it to the people who gave it to him.

As "Grandma" Helmick sits in her little house in Albany, Oregon, she looks back on a life full of pioneer hardships, difficulties overcome, and now in her last days has about her a loving and grateful family and the luxuries of modern civilization to give her the comforts that were lacking in the early days.

"Grandma" was born in Mouckport, Indiana, July 4, 1823, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Steeprow. She