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LEGACY of a LAKE.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

CLEAR LAKE - No land lines. No Internet. No motors on the water. No worries.

"It's just so quiet and the lake's so pretty," says Dale Wollam, board chairman of the recently disbanded Santiam Fish & Game Association.

Wollam has been coming to the association's Clear Lake Resort since he was a teenager in the 1950s. Since his father brought him to fish its crystal clear waters and sleep in a sleeping bag on the picnic tables "to keep you out of the mice." With his children and grandchildren now coming here, Wollam is part of four generations who call the rustic resort 72 miles east of Eugene a home away from home.

But now, after eight decades and countless campfires and "the-fish-that-got-away" stories, it's the end of an era for the resort and the association. Run by volunteers since its inception in the 1920s, the nonprofit association has arranged to sell the six-acre site to Linn County. The $100,000 sale must be approved by Willamette National Forest, owners of the land, says Tamara Hamilton of Albany, the association board's secretary. And under the association's bylaws, all proceeds from the sale will be used to start an endowment at Oregon State University for the benefit of students in OSU's Fish & Wildlife program.

Until the sale is completed sometime this summer, the county will lease the resort. In the county's hands, association members hope that affordable cabin and boat rentals, and the resort's tranquil ambience, won't change much at the 200-foot deep lake that sits at the headwaters of the McKenzie River. No motor boats are...

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