Rand, Ed, House

The basement and first story of the Ed Rand House (1909), at 1700 4th Street in Baker, Oregon, was constructed of tuff, a native volcanic rock quarried in the Pleasant Valley area southeast of the city. Ed Rand was Sheriff of Baker County from 1906 to 1914, and, according to local tradition, the stone for his house was surplus from the County Courthouse and Carnegie Library projects, completed in 1903 and 1909, respectively. In any event, the solidly-built house in the Craftsman tradition is significant as one of the only two private dwelling places in the city built of tuff. That Baker's downtown is distinctive for its numerous public and commercial buildings of tuff was acknowledged at the height of the city's upbuilding. Polk's Baker County Directory for 1914 pointed out that "all of the public buildings and most of the business and fraternal buildings" in Baker were "built of native stone quarried twelve miles south of the city," and concluded: "[Baker) is the best-built city of its size in Oregon." The population in 1914 was 8,000. Baker was the center of trade for a once-active gold mining district in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. With the coming of the railroad, it prospered as a shipping center for livestock and farm produce, principally wheat. Ed Rand had worked as a logger and carpenter-contractor upon his arrival in Baker County in 1896. It is understood that Rand himself supervised the construction of the house he occupied on 4th Street in Baker from 1909 to 1918. The design may have been derived from a builder's playbook. With its compact massing, prominent dormers, use of diapered, leaded window panes and many small panes in the upper window sash, convenient interior layout, and well-crafted woodwork, including a column screen setting off the living room from the entry stairhall, the well-preserved one, and a half story house embodies the essential characteristics of the affordable type of dwelling promoted by The Craftsman magazine between 1901 and 1916. It was made distinctive, however, by the use of a building stone peculiar to the region. Forming the southwest corner unit of a block-long row of bungalows of more-or-less comparable date and varying styles, the Rand House possesses integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, and association with Baker's era of greatest prosperity and with one of the city's notable historical figures. Ed Rand was born James Edward Rand in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, on June 2, 1862. He left home at the age of 14 to work as a logger. He came to Hood River, Oregon in 1888, where his parents had settled in 1885. He worked there as a logger and farmer. He was married in 1892 to Luella Jane Turner, daughter of David Alyn Turner, a Hood River pioneer from Missouri. In 1896 the young Rands moved with their daughter Ethel to Baker County. Rand worked first as a logger, then as a carpenter and contractor. He was appointed Marshall of Sumpter in 1899 and served six years. At that time Sumpter was a wild booming gold mining town with a population of between 4,000 and 6,000. Rand was successful in keeping law and order in the mining town. His most famous exploit was the capture of three notorious outlaw brothers, the Carters, single-handedly. Rand was elected Baker County Sheriff in 1905 and served four two-year terms from 1906 to 1914. While Sheriff of Baker County he had a tilt with Governor Oswald West. Ordered by Governor West to "close up" Copperfield, a settlement with little more than a corporal's guard of residents, Sheriff Rand informed the Governor that under advice from the District Attorney it would be impossible for him to legally obey the orders. The Governor then declared martial law in Copperfield and sent his secretary, Fern Hobbs, there in command of a small number of National Guardsmen. In 1909 Ed Rand built his stone house on the corner of 4th and Auburn in Baker. In 1918 he moved to Portland with his wife and daughter.

His son, Dewey, born in Sumpter in 1898, had enlisted in the Army. While in Portland, Rand served as a deputy U.S. Marshall. In 1922 Rand resigned his post in Portland and returned to Baker City at the invitation of its citizens to serve as Chief of Police during a "clean up campaign", a position from which he resigned after five months to become deputy State Fire Marshall. Rand died of heart failure in Baker on December 20, 1925, while on State business. Dewey Rand, Sr., the son of Ed Rand, is 83 years old and lives in Salem. He has remained active as the editor of a neighborhood newspaper until recently. He recalls that he was eleven years old when his father built the house. He left his family in Baker in 1917 to fight in the First World War. Because he hadn't seen the house since that time, his memories of it were general. He remembered that the family spend much of the time in the kitchen because that's where the big stove was, and it was always warm. The stove burned wood or coal. The coal came all the way from Utah. Wood was delivered to the side of the house and a steam engine would come around and saw it up. The following is an account of the ownership and occupation of the Rand House property since 1892. In 1892 Mrs. Margaret Ireland purchased Lots 8 and 9 of Block 16 in the U. S. Townsite of Baker City for $500. The following year, Mrs. Ireland purchased an additional 10 feet by 100 feet of the adjoining Lot 10 for $1.00. By 1900 a wood frame house was built on the property, but not where either of the existing houses stands on Lot 8 and Lot 9. In 1900 or 1901 Harry E. Foster bought the two lots for $500.00, and apparently, Margaret Ireland continued to occupy the house even though Mr. Foster owned it. City directories show that by 1903 Mrs. Ireland no longer occupied the property. In September 1908 Ed Rand bought the property for $1,500, tore down the wood frame house, and built the existing stone house on Lot 9 in the summer and fall of 1909. In 1911 or 1912 a frame bungalow was constructed by Rand on Lot 8 north of Rand's stone house, and the two houses and lots were given separate legal descriptions for the purpose of sale. Rand supervised the construction of his house, and Welsh stone cutters did the masonry work. In 1919 Ed Rand sold his stone house on Lot 9 for $4,500 to Thilda and Oscar Jacobson, sheep ranchers, who lived in the house until 1931 or 1932. After that time, Lee and Edith Stewart, relations of the Jacobsons, lived in the house, even though the house was still owned by Thilda Jacobson. Jacobson's son, Walter, married Stewart's daughter, Marian. At some point after 1932, the house and property were passed on to the Jacobson heirs, Walter, Ebba, Esther, Anna, and Lewis. In December of 1948, Edith Stewart purchased the property and house from the Jacobsons for $10. Edith and her husband Lee lived in the house until 1967. Lee was a machinist. He was the son of one of the pioneer families in Baker. His mother and father arrived in the Baker area in 1864. In 1966, the Stewarts' son, George, a bachelor, came to live with them. After 1967, the widowed Mrs. Stewart lived in the house for another two years.

Following her departure, George Stewart lived in the house by himself until 1978. The property was acquired by Norman Kerrs in 1978, and the title was transferred to the present owners in December 1979.