name of Sparta was selected at that time. Sparta post office was established on October 29, 1872, with William W. Ross postmaster. This office was first established with the name Gem on August 7, 1871, with William Lynn White postmaster, and the Sparta office was provided by changing the name. The office may have been moved, possibly some little distance, when the name was changed. Facts about these changes in early post offices are not always clear from the records. Gem was the name of a mine. The compiler has a copy of a statement made by Packwood on June 26, 1916, the substance of which is that Packwood, I. B. Bowen, Ed. Cranston and C. M. Foster left Baker on January 8, 1871, to visit the locality where Packwood was preparing to build what is now the Sparta Ditch. They laid out a townsite and decided to name the place by spinning a four-sided wooden top with a proposed name on each face. Packwood wrote Sparta for his home in Illinois, and that side of the top turned up. H. S. Daly, in a letter on the editorial page of the Oregonian, October 7, 1927, says that Packwood did not name Sparta, but Dunham Wright, of Medical Springs, takes issue with him in a letter in the Baker Morning Democrat, October 19, 1927. Wright says he got his information first hand from Packwood. Irving Rand, of Portland, a grandson of Packwood, confirms the Packwood story. In view of all this the compiler thinks that Packwood was responsible for the name. Both Daly and Wright say that the locality was first called Koster, for Tom Koster, who discovered gold nearby. Daly also says the place was called Eagle City before it was named Sparta.
SPEAKER, Josephine County. Josephine Speaker was the only postmaster this office ever had and it was named in her honor. The office was on Wolf Creek about six miles east of and upstream from Wolf Creek community. It was in the northeast part of the county and depended on farming, lumbering and mining. The office was established September 20, 1905, and was discontinued March 31, 1925.
SPEECE, Gilliam County. Speece is a railroad station north of Condon. It was named for William Speece, a local resident.
SPEELYAIS COLUMNS, Multnomah County. These rock columns are on the south bank of the Columbia River near Shepperds Dell. They are the cores of old basalt volcanic vents, the softer coverings of which have been eroded away. They are named with the Indian word Speelyai, the name of the coyote god of the mid-Columbia region. See Lyman's Columbia River, page 8, et seq. The word is pronounced Speel-e-e, with the vowels long, and the accent on the first syllable.
SPENCER BUTTE, Lane County. Spencer Butte, elevation 2065 feet, is just south of Eugene and is a well-known landmark in the south part of the Willamette Valley. Spencer Butte was named in July, 1845, by Dr. Elijah White, while making an exploration along the foothills of the Cascade Range for the purpose of locating an emigrant road to the eastern states. Dr. White and a companion, Batteus Du Guerre, climbed the mountain, and the following passage quoted from his book, Ten Years in Oregon, (compiled by Miss A. J. Allen and published in 1848), describes their experiences on the summit: "They now took a delightful survey of the general features of the landscape before them. On one hand was the vast chain of the Cascade mountains, Mt. Hood looming in solitary grandeur far above its fellows; on the other hand was the Umpqua Mountains, and a little farther on, the
