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Although the wine business is relatively new to the Chehalem Ridge, alcohol isn't.
In
the lush valley called Chehalem by the native Americans (translated peaceful
valley or valley of flowers), whites settled in the 1820s and 30s. Most
of the valley, which lay between the Chehalem Ridge and Dundee Hills,
belonged by land grant to an ex-mountaineer named Ewing Young.
Young established the first grain mill and the first moonshine still in this valley of Chehalem Creek . He was a rough man, not prone to the starched white collars people like pioneer Methodist missionary Jason Lee and his new Oregon Temperance Society wore.
Young was tantamount to the devil and, so, when a captain was needed for the dangerous, first cattle drive into Oregon from Mexico in 1837 (intended to help break the Hudson Bay Company's monopoly on meat), Lee heavily supported sending Young. Out of sight -- and who knows, maybe he wouldn't come back (but Methodists don't think those things).
Of course as you might guess, Young was successful, returning after 19 weeks with cattle to graze in the head-high grasses of Chehalem Valley. And returning to his still.
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