LA GRANDE — Today, Foothill Road in La Grande is an often-traveled road and home to many dozens of farmers and families. But Lawrence “Spark” Smutz, who has lived on the Smutz Farm on Foothill Road for more 60 years, remembers the road a little bit differently.

“Back then, there were not many people living on the road, and most of the houses were relatives of ours, so our house was the center of it all,” Smutz recalled. “The road wasn’t really developed, and it was a lot slower, too.”

Smutz grew up on the farm, where he spent his time outside of school milking the cows and feeding the other livestock.

“We would drive the cows to pasture on horses,” Smutz said. “We would take them up Gekeler Lane through C Street, and we would drive them through town. At that time, the people in town enjoyed watching it. We couldn’t do it today.”

Smutz, and his wife Barbara, are the third Smutz generation to live on the farm, which their family bought in 1910.

In 2010, the Smutz Family Farm was designated a Century Farm, an award given by the Oregon Century Farm and Ranch program to honor farmers and ranchers whose families have worked on the same land for 100 years.

“It was a lot of work to apply, and a very long process,” Barbara Smutz said. “It took almost a year to get all of the documents together.”

What began as an application for Century Farm status turned into a year-long project that involved digging through boxes of pictures in the Smutz attic and several visits to the Joseph Building to track down deeds, genealogical records, letters, personal accounts and much more.

While piecing together the history of the farm, Barbara Smutz also assembled a history of the Smutz family and put it into a book. As a research and archivist enthusiast, she found that there was no shortage of information on the history of the family, which took her two months to write.

“I was just overwhelmed — this is not a small amount of information,” Barbara Smutz said.

A century of history

I.D. Smutz, Spark’s grandfather, moved from Kansas to La Grande via train in 1895, with plans to become a teacher. By 1897, he was teaching in La Grande, and he soon met Dora Gekeler, daughter of George and Catherine Gekeler, one of the first families in the Grande Ronde Valley.

The couple were married on Aug. 29, 1897, and they bought a farm on Sandridge Road in Alicel in 1900, where they lived for 10 years.

By 1910, Dora Smutz decided she wanted to move closer to her family, so the couple traded houses with the W.R. Jasper family, which lived on what’s now the Smutz farm on Foothill Road. Jasper and Smutz paid each other $16,000 for the farms, marking the beginning of the Smutzes’ legacy on the farm.

Some of the original structures are still in use today. The main living area of the house has only been slightly renovated, including the addition of the new kitchen and a floor replacement. The smokehouse behind the house has been there since the house was built, over 115 years ago. The two barns originally built are still in use today.

The property, which takes up 749 acres, was originally home to horses, chickens, hogs and cattle. The Smutz family raised wheat, barley and hay since the inception of the farm, and the farmers who rent the property today continue to grow those crops.

In 1928, I.D. Smutz’s health began to deteriorate, so he sold the house and property to his wife, Dora Smutz, to keep it within the family in case of his death.

The hundreds of acres and extensive assets were sold for $1.

When Dora Smutz died in 1935, her six children inherited the land, three of whom sold their shares to the others. The remaining owners were Charlie, D and Lynn Smutz, known as the Smutz brothers, who maintained the land for several years.

A dozen years after the transfer, Lynn Smutz and his wife, Thelma Smutz, bought the land from the other brothers, and they continued to raise cattle and farm the property.

The couple had two children: Merrill Smutz and Lawrence “Spark” Smutz, who grew up helping on the farm. Merrill Smutz died before his mother, Thelma Smutz, so in 2000, when Thelma died, Spark Smutz and Barbara Smutz became the sole owners of the property.

2010 marked 100 years of Smutz ownership of the property, making them eligible for Century Farm status — a title held by 1,227 farms and ranches in Oregon.

Spark and Barb

Spark Smutz has lived on the farm his entire life — longer than anyone else has. Growing up, he divided his time between attending school and helping out on the farm, while finding ways to have fun on the side.

He remembers every Fourth of July celebration involving a family reunion filled with lively games, tables of food and (mostly) legal fireworks. He also remembers getting polio as a boy and putting his bed by the front window so he could wave at the family members who would drive by.

After high school, he joined the army and served in the Vietnam War for two years.

“That was the longest time I’ve ever been away,” he said.

“No, that’s the only time he’s ever been away,” Barbara Smutz responded.

Within a year of returning, Spark met Barbara — who grew up in John Day but moved to La Grande to study elementary education at EOU — and they got married in 1971.

In their early 20s, the couple spent their time making frequent trips to the river with friends, attending school dances and going to football games, followed by afterparties.

“We did a lot of crazy things,” Barbara Smutz said. “I lived in the dorms, and that was a whole different life than Spark, because activities happened all in the middle of the night.”

After getting married, Barbara moved into the farmhouse, where the couple have lived together for 50 years.

In the years following, Barbara Smutz worked as a special education teacher at several schools. All together, she spent 32 years as an educator, including 15 years at La Grande Middle School.

Meanwhile, Spark Smutz worked at Union Pacific Railroad in La Grande for 34 years while maintaining the farm.

The couple have three children, all of whom graduated from La Grande High School and now live throughout Oregon. While raising their children, Barbara and Spark became very involved in the community.

“We were among the parents who started the first La Grande FFA booster club, that was around 1996,” Barbara Smutz said. “And then when our kids grew up, we got involved again because our grandchildren all did 4-H and FFA. Those were fun times.”

Moving forward

Even though the farm is generally quiet these days, Spark and Barbara keep the Smutz family legacy strong by collecting pictures, letters, genealogical records and more in scrapbooks and collections around their house. On the second floor, old pictures fill up every available space across the wide walls.

“I just think it’s amazing, all the things that have happened in this house and family,” Barbara Smutz said. “Just to know that all these things have happened, and seeing the differences in time and how far we’ve come as a society, it’s been quite the experience.”

Besides archiving family history, the couple likes to host family gatherings for Smutz and Gekeler relatives all across the country.

“A few years ago, we decided to have a Gekeler reunion, and we invited people from all over the U.S. and asked all of them to send in a bit of information about their family,” Barbara Smutz said. “Well, they did, and the book became an inch thick.”

The couple’s three children live in The Dalles, Pendleton and La Grande. One of their daughters, Keri Polfer, lives next to the Smutz farm with her husband and three kids. According to Barbara Smutz, Keri will likely be next in line to take care of the farmhouse.

“The house is a lot quieter now, there’s not as many celebrations anymore,” Barbara Smutz said. “We’ve kind of modernized things. Even in the house, we put a new floor in, but of course everything rolls to the front window.”

Spark Smutz chuckled at this, and added, “it always has.”