Deeply Rooted
Five Generations Caring for The Forest House…
“I’m very proud that it’s been in my family for so many generations. It’s something with historical value,” says Steve Burton, a lifelong Siskiyou County resident and current owner of Yreka’s iconic Forest House. Built in 1852 as a stagecoach stop between Fort Jones and Yreka, the Forest House became a family ranch in 1909 when Steve’s great-grandfather, Fred C. Burton, purchased it from the original owner. More than a century later, Steve is helping preserve the place where generations of his family have stewarded the land. “My great-grandfather, Fred C. Burton, and his wife Gertrude purchased the Forest House, and my kids, Jake and Lyda, will be the fifth-generation owners of this place.”
Stories are part of the ranch’s inheritance. “There was a sawmill. There was an ice house where they cut blocks of ice in the winter and packed them in sawdust from the sawmill. Then there was the orchard, which came about because the original owner, Marshall Short, had heard about an opportunity to buy a bunch of fruit trees,” Steve says. “He figured he was going to make a killing selling them, but nobody bought them, and the trees were starting to die. So, he just started shoving them in the ground. At one point, the orchard operated as the largest fruit production in the state. Fresh fruit was shipped on the rails. They were making brandies and ciders, and people from the East Coast would come through and say, ‘Holy cow, Forest House! We’ve had your apples.’”
Some of those remnant trees remain on the ranch. “One of the things we’ve been working on is trying to preserve the genetics of those trees and see if we can graft them and keep them going,” Steve says.
Steve’s son, Jake, is already imagining a next chapter. “I’m studying agricultural food and business management at Oregon State,” he says. “We have a long genetic line of apple trees there, so seeing what I could do in the future by grafting them or recreating the orchard would be really cool.”
For Steve’s daughter, Lyda, the land has always generated something less tangible. “Our family has always been big on keeping everything in the family and passing it down,” she says. “My name is actually a family name after my great-grandmother, Lyda Mae Burton. And Jake and I grew up on the ranch. We went sledding there. I learned horseback riding there. My great-grandfather Homer loved to draw, and there’s still a drawing he made on one of the barn doors. It takes a lot of time and grit to have this property, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. I feel like I’m really close to my family in a way that I wouldn’t have gotten if we didn’t have this land. It’s taught us how to stay close.”
Jake didn’t understand what the Forest House meant until he began hearing other people’s stories. “I would always go to different events, and people would come to me because they’d known relatives of mine or had connections to the Forest House. Growing up, you slowly start to understand how truly important it is, not only for me and not only for my family, but for the people around me as well. It taught me a lot about community and family.”
Steve’s wife, Kyla, came into the family from much farther away. “My family was in Nova Scotia, so I never had grandparents around or a lot of family stories,” Kyla says. “It’s really cool to see the stories and the family that go along with this place. There’s a lot of pride that comes with it.”
Today, Steve and Kyla are spending their retirement caring for the ranch while Jake and Lyda finish college. They lease grazing, manage timber and hope, one project at a time, to breathe new life into the old property. They also went through the effort of getting the Forest House and a couple of outbuildings added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011. “We’d love to keep the place from falling over, if nothing else,” Kyla says. “We’re not interested in selling it or having it leave the family. We’d love to see the orchard come back. We’d love to see the Forest House restored someday if we can figure out how to make that happen.”
Steve admits there are days when the responsibility weighs on him. “There’s a lot of anxiety watching the place kind of melt away, and I’m concerned it’s going to fall over on my watch. But we’re still trying to do the best we can to keep it together.” His children are already thinking about the watch that comes after his, as Jake clearly articulates. “Our dad’s goal has always been to really keep it in the family and give us what he got originally, really keep it as one piece. Moving forward, that’s mine and my sister’s goal as well, to continue to try to pass it down.”•
For more information on restoration or to schedule a private group showing, please email the Forest House at fhr@snowcrest.net. For a more detailed history of the Forest House, the 1965 issue of the Siskiyou County Pioneer featuring the Forest House can be purchased at the Siskiyou County Museum.
