Located on Gillespie Butte in Eugene, Oregon is a wonderful old cemetery with headstones of town founders and rough characters. You access the cemetery by visiting a local park space. The drive up the butte leads you near one of those newly developed trendy building neighborhoods. It’s the kind of ugly fiercely sharp square buildings with rusty sunset colors and warehouse-like accents. The neighborhood’s website states that they’ve “created a utopian blend of convenient yet secluded living”. Fantastic, but that sounds terrible. Parking for the cemetery is at a steep incline and there are lovely views of the city. The land was donated for use as a cemetery by Rev. Jacob Gillespie and his third wife Elizabeth Moss Goodpasture in 1893. Earlier community burials were moved here after the 1893 donation.
Your walk is a beautiful one on a nice day. Grand oak trees greet you as you walk the open grass areas towards the cemetery. There are houses that border extremely close to the cemetery. I always wonder about what paranormal activity people experience living so close to cemeteries like this one. The houses here are common family homes and unlike the ones in the new development below.
An older section and a newer section divide the cemetery in two. The trees are enchanting and they shade some of the headstones. The ground is uneven and bumpy. It could be disorienting to some people. You wouldn’t have to live in Eugene long to recognize names like Harlow, Goodpasture, Young, Armitage and others found in family plots. Many folks drive Cal Young road every day and this is the cemetery where the man now rests. There is another name found here that isn’t familiar today as it once was, but on one cold February night in Eugene City, Riley Deadmond, caused quite a ruckus.
Wild character’s of Oregon’s settler-colonizer boom of the 1860s, Riley and his older brother Henry were the sons of Bluford and Emeline (Adams) Deadmond. Bluford was born in Virginia and Emeline was born in Tennessee. Their second son was William Riley Deadmond born in Marion County, Illinois March 1844. According to Emeline’s obituary published on November 12th 1909 in the Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review, the family crossed the plains to Oregon in 1853. Emeline was 87 when she died. She was the mother of 12 children and six of her children were still living when she died. Bluford died prior to his wife in 1900.
The commercial activity of Eugene City was located between 7th and 10th streets along Willamette. An 1884 map of Eugene City shows three saloons on the west side of Willamette between 8th and 10th streets. One of the saloons at that time was reported to have a cloth roof. The best estimate is that the Long Tom Saloon was located in this area in 1866. At one point in time, Deadmond himself was the saloon keeper of the Long Tom. Around November or December of 1865, Riley Deadmond assaulted James McCabe with a knife at the saloon. Riley was due to appear at the circuit court in February 1866 for the assault.
On the evening of February 10th 1866, Steven Gardner was the saloon keeper working the Long Tom. An unnamed boy was also inside the saloon. It was a Saturday night, around eight or nine o’clock. The weather had to have been cold, terrible, dark and wet. The Willamette Valley is at her ugliest in February. That evening Riley ran into James McCabe in the street asking him to come drink with him, the same man he had assaulted a few months prior. Riley made a comment that led town folk to think he was about to skip town before his day in court. Upon walking into the Long Tom Saloon on Willamette, Riley asked the boy to take a drink. When the boy refused, Riley attempted to force the young man to take a drink, to which Gardner, the saloon keeper, told Deadmond to leave him alone. He turned his attention away from the boy and grabbed a stool making a move toward Gardner, who flinched. Deadmond put the stool down and went to the other room grabbing a pool stick. Deadmond aggressively posed the billiards stick as a weapon at Gardner and shouted lewd comments. Gardner ordered Deadmond to stand down to which he did not comply, and Gardner shot him dead. The bullet came from a revolver which went through Riley’s left wrist and into his chest. It was reported he died instantly. Gardner had acted in self-defense in the killing of Riley Deadmond according to the law.
Riley Deadmond was 21 years old when he was shot dead and is now buried in the Gillespie Cemetery alongside the famous founders of Eugene. His headstone is rather large and his burial was one moved in 1893 to the land donated by Rev. Gillespie. The incident at the Long Tom Saloon in 1866 was not the first nor the last of the notorious and nefarious events on Willamette. It can be difficult to imagine now, but this area was a rough and tumble place and not for the weak. Maybe not so difficult to imagine. You can visit the Lane County History Museum’s website for a photo of the 800 block of Willamette taken in 1871 or 1872 for a later visual reference of the area. The new neighborhood development attracts potential buyers boasting about the elite city founders resting in the butte’s burials. Let us remember that there are a host of characters, famous and infamous, that were laid to rest in the Gillespie Butte Cemetery.
A huge thank you to the Lane County History Museum for their help in determining the best guess location for the Long Tom Saloon.
Until next Monday readers,
Spooky Mulder!
Spooky Mulder Feet 
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