High Desert Heroines: Tender tragedies

In the maze of juniper, sage, and tombstones at Camp Polk Cemetery there is a grove of silent children. Little ones who left their families much too soon with familiar names from the earliest days of Sisters, like Allingham and South. Among the earliest burials are two small graves, nestled under the trees with the name of Claypool, some of the first pioneers to search for a new life east of the Cascades.

The Claypools were one of the many pioneer families who arrived in the Willamette Valley of Oregon by way of the overland route across the Great Plains in 1846. Reverend Rueben Claypool was a...