Black Rock is an unincorporated community and former logging camp in Polk County, Oregon, United States.[1] It is located about three miles west of Falls City, in the Central Oregon Coast Range on the Little Luckiamute River.[2]
Louis Gerlinger came to Polk County in 1903 and bought 7,000 acres of timberland that included the area of Black Rock.[3] In 1905, Gerlinger's son George T. Gerlinger bought an existing sawmill in nearby Dallas as well as the right-of-way to build a logging railroad into the Black Rock area.[3] He had previously built a logging railroad from Vancouver to Yacolt in Washington.[3]
Black Rock, founded in 1905, became the western terminus of the Salem, Falls City and Western Railway (later the Southern Pacific Railroad's Falls City branchline), which hauled timber into Dallas.[3][4] The locale was probably named for an exposed ledge of black shale.[4] Black Rock post office was established in 1906, with Louis Gerlinger, Jr. as the first postmaster.[3][4] Some people who worked in the Black Rock area lived there, while others came from Falls City or Dallas.[3] As the town grew, it eventually had three stores, a drug store, a barber shop, a restaurant, two saloons, a one-room schoolhouse, bunkhouses and cookhouses for single men, living quarters for families, and a train depot.[3][5] The town of Black Rock was platted in 1910 by Charles K. Spaulding, with 22 blocks and lettered and numbered streets.[3] High population estimates vary from 600 to 1500.[3][5]
Black Rock grew quickly between 1905 and 1913, as lumber companies located in the area to access the vast stands of Douglas fir and other timber of western Polk County.[5] In 1910, beside the Gerlingers' Dallas Lumber Company, three other companies—Great Western Lumber Company, Falls City Lumber Company, and Charles K. Spaulding Lumber Company—operated in Black Rock.[5] The Jay S. Hamilton Lumber Company was operating in Black Rock in 1915.[6][7]
By 1913, the area's timber resources were already being depleted and as the lumber companies began to move out, the town began a steady decline.[5] The post office closed in 1943, and Black Rock and the 19,000 acres surrounding it were incorporated into the U.S. tree farm system.[3][4] Part of the tree farm burned in 1945 but it was replanted.[3] By 1960, the town only had a log dump and a security guard.[3] The railroad was abandoned in 1960, and logs were hauled to the mills using trucks; at some point the railroad tracks were removed.[3][4] Although the USGS classifies Black Rock as a populated place, today there is nothing at the former townsite, which is entirely forested except for two mill ponds.[1][4][5]
The former George T. Gerlinger State Forest is nearby—it is now the site of a popular mountain biking area managed jointly by the Black Rock Mountain Bike Association and the Oregon Department of Forestry.[8][9] The Black Rock trails are the first sanctioned freeride area in the state.[10]
