LEAH NASH PHOTOGRAPHY

STORIES | ESSAYS: Rural Poverty in Oregon

In the southern tip of Oregon's Willamette Valley lie many once booming lumber towns. In their heyday people without a high school degree could work at the mills earning more than the high school principal. But by 1990 the last of the mills had closed, a result of shifting markets, a dwindling supply of logs and tighter environmental rules. Jobs were lost by the 100s, sending its population reeling in ways that are still playing out. Residents now live with lowered expectations, and a share of them have felt the sharp pinch of rural poverty. Now minimum wage jobs or unemployment are the norm and many families survive on food stamps and food banks. These towns are examples of a national trend, the widening gap in pay between workers in urban areas and those in rural locales. This story was created for The New York Times.

Nancy gets a food box from the Community Sharing Program at Cottage Grove. Nancy, who is currently not working, has 13 children and is a recovering meth addict along with her partner Brett who lost his dry wall business to the drug. Now he runs a program called "Celebrate Recovery" through a local church which helps other addicts.
   
Dazzle walks to the creek in the back of her trailer park with her daughter Viviana, son Dillinger and their dog Dash. Dazzle gets $400 worth of food stamps and will corn row hair to pay the $205 it costs for her trailer space rental. Dazzle, who says her mother is a "bag whore" has three children and says she is on medication for schizophrenia and depression.
   
A booming lumber town in the 50s, 60s and 70s Oakridge, OR has been struggling for ways to retool its economy ever since the decline of logging. In the early 1990s the closure of the major employer in the area, the Pope & Talbot's Mill took 500 to 600 jobs and in 1991 a fire destroyed most of the remaining structures. Though the area was transformed into an industrial park the majority of the land remains untouched.
     
  
At the Emerald Valley Mobile Home and RV Park in Cottage Grove, OR Nika hula-hoops, while her mother Lisa and neighbors, Kelli and Derrick, watch. The family has lived in the park since December when Lisa bought the trailer for $300. Lisa is not working but is applying for a job doing janitorial work at a pizza place. Currently she receives $399 in food stamps and with help from her mother and the church, she gets by. In 2004 she and her family lived in her station wagon for a few months.
   
Wade and George live in mobile homes in the yard of Wade's mother's home in Dorena, OR. Neither work and George collects $900 a month in disability because of a back problem. Wade spent 19 years fighting wild fires but then was forced to stop when he started having seizures in 1998.
   
In Oakridge, OR Dazzle spends time with her three children at the stream in the back of their trailer park. She doesn't work and is hoping to get on SSI disability. "If I worked at McDonald’s or Dairy Queen, it would almost cost me more to pay someone to care for the kids."
     
  
Viviana and Dillinger play in the yard of their mobile home while family friend and roomate, Heather, watches them. A total of five share the trailer that the children's mother Dazzle bought for $3,000 when she moved from Las Vegas four years ago.
   
Located one hour southeast of Eugene on the western slope of the Cascades, Oakridge, OR has fallen on hard times. About 700 residents, from a population of about 4,500 in Oakridge and the surrounding area, visit a charity food pantry each month to pick up boxes of groceries worth $100 apiece. Two-thirds of public school students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, meaning their families are near or below the poverty line. About 260 of the town’s 1,200 housing units are single-wide trailers.
   
"This is the hardest thing I've ever done," says mother Shella. She has secretly been living in a RV in the woods on the outskirts of Oakridge, OR for several weeks this summer with her husband Robert, and their two children, Journey, 2, (pictured) and Genesis, 1. The family is trying to save up enough money to move on to Portland but with the cost of gas, find it difficult to make ends meet. Robert is sometimes able to find day labor in town and Shella will pick berries to make jam but they are not sure what is next for them.
     
  
Karen often watches Derrick, her great-grandson. Karen and her husband Jim used to have good paying jobs at the lumber mills but that changed when the mills closed. Jim, who has a 7th grade education work in the mills from 1955-1992 and retired soon after he was laid off. But Karen who worked in the mills from 1976-1989 then took a much lower paying job as a care-giver. "It was a hardship, but we've always found something to do," says Karen.
   
Kaydee gets ready to work the graveyard shift at the Village Inn Restaurant. The restaurant recently changed hands and is now open 24 hours to attract truckers who drive through the town of Oakridge, OR. Kaydee lives in a trailer with her son, Derrick, 1, her mother Tami, and Tami's fourth husband. Kaydee is the only one in the household who is currently employed.
   
At 1am Kaydee serves a customer at the newly reopened Village Inn Restaurant. Mayor Sue Bond claims that town of Oakridge is on the rise and that younger people like herself are moving to town and starting small businesses. "There's a lot of energy here," Bond says. "A huge new subdivision is being planned near the golf course, we're building a new library and our industrial park is now shovel-ready. This town is brimming with promise," Bond insists.