Goats Road, and its two offshoots, J Mechling Road and Leavitt Lane are beautiful places to live in the scenic Mohawk Valley in Lane County, Oregon.  Hobby farms and country properties abound, and homes with acreage are popular, but not frequently on the market.  The Springfield Country Club is nearby on Sunderman and Marcola Roads, and some properties have Mohawk River frontage.  Mostly this area is a bedroom community to Eugene and Springfield, with both being only a few minutes away.

The Mohawk Valley is east northeast of Springfield and generally follows Marcola Road.  Goats Road bisects Sunderman Road 1/2 mile from Marcola Road.  Goats Road is about 1 1/4 miles long, and eventually dead ends.  Mechling Rd. and Leavitt Ln. are short offshoots from Goats Rd.  There are about 30 total properties on all three roads.  All three roads were named for owners that at one time held abutting property.  Information on the properties is below.

Goats Road was developed first, with the oldest house dating to the 1920s.  J Mechling Road and Leavitt Lane were developed mostly in the last 20 years.  Property sizes range from under an acre to over 50, with 5 acres and under being especially common.  Values, according to the County, range from 144K to over 500K, so there’s quite a range. Sales data from RMLS, over the last 24 months, reveal 0 actives, 0 pendings and 4 solds; information was current at the time of this posting.  Prices ranged from about 160K to 460K.

Zoning designations common along the Goats Road area are:  RR5 and EFU.  The area is not within any UGB designation, so land development and building permits are controlled by Lane County.  The Goats Road area is in the Springfield School District, and schools are Yolanda, Briggs, and Thurston.  Much of the Goats Road area is within the 100 year flood plain so flood insurance may be necessary.

The Mohawk Valley, including the Goats Road area, is part of the Western Cascades.  Some 30 to 40 million years ago this area was ocean and the volcanoes to the east of the shoreline erupted ash and lava to form the Cascades.  The Mohawk Valley area is thought to be about 30 million years old  At several times, the land tilted upward and the ocean eventually retreated to its present location, about 60 miles west.  The area was glaciated in the Pleistocene era, from 2 million years ago, until about 11,000 years ago.

The Mohawk Valley, and probably all of Lane County, is thought to have been inhabited for about the last 10,000 years.  The aboriginal inhabitants fared poorly with the coming of European settlers, mostly because of disease.  Europeans had antibodies which the Native Americans did not, and disease decimated the Natives.  The few remaining natives in the Mohawk Valley were moved in 1856 to the Grand Ronde Reservation, which most of us know these days for the Spirit Mountain Casino.

When the Surveyor General’s office surveyed parts of Mohawk valley from 1853-1855 there were about 17 settlers in Mohawk valley.  Now, there are between 3 and 4 1/2 thousand people, depending which areas you include.  75% of those work in Eugene Springfield and the average travel time to work is under 1/2 hour.

For the early settlers subsistence farming was their primary activity.  It is hard to imagine living here without good roads, power, water and central heat, but they did it; it was no doubt a very difficult life.  One lumber mill was present in 1855, near where the Riverview Market on Marcola Road now stands, but logging and lumber milling didn’t become an economic force until decades later.  Without a good means of transport, the settlers didn’t have much use for lumber, other than to build houses and outbuildings for themselves.  Early settler’s cabins were typically under 400 square feet.

The Mohawk valley is about logging, which took off in the 1890s when SP purchased the O&C lands.  Logging remained strong until about the 1960s or 1970s, when most of the big timber was gone.  About 1/2 of the Mohawk River Valley is still in industrial forest, and the trees are on a 45 year rotation.  Logging continues to occur in the Mohawk Valley, and I still hear it up in the woods, but is by no means the economic driver that it once was.  When you fly overhead or look at an aerial map, it’s easy to tell the logging sites.  Cut-lines tend to be at right angles or follow ridge lines and they stand out.

The area in the Goats Road area was originally settled by two pioneering families a little after 1850, the Gullifords and Hardys.  All of the property on Goats Road, J Mechling Road, and Leavit Lane can be described as Township 16S, Range 2W, and sections 26 or 35.  This is where William Gulliford and Charles Hardy had their original homesteads, established between 1852 and 1855.  Both appear to have come to Oregon via the Oregon trail in 1852.  In 1859, William Gulliford’s son John Married Julia Ann Hardesty, showing folks did love thy neighbors back then.  The original settlers chose the best ground for farming and grazing because their livelihoods depended on it.  Farming and grazing exist to this day along the Goats Road area.

Goats Road, J Mechling Road and Leavitt Lane are beautiful spots to own real estate.  Buying or selling country property in Lane County can be a challenge, but a good realtor who is familiar with the area can be a great aid to you. If you are interested in real estate along Goats Road or other country properties in Lane County, Oregon, please contact me.  Or you can search listings here.