Anlauf, Oregon: A Douglas County Lumber Town Built by German Immigrants

01The Anlauf Family Comes to Oregon

Franz Anlauf and his wife Agnes left Germany in 1852, landing first in Pennsylvania. By the 1870 census, Franz — listed as "Frank" — was farming in Marathon County, Wisconsin. By around 1872, the family had pushed west again, building a homestead along Pheasant Creek in Douglas County, Oregon. Their son Robert filed the homestead claim that gave the community its name. Franz died in 1914 at age 91; Robert lived until 1940, dying at 83.

The family didn't just settle — they built an industry. Pius A. Anlauf, another family member (born in Wisconsin around 1877), worked as a sawmill engineer before operating his own mill. In 1911, Pius and Franz J. Anlauf filed a patent for improvements to logging bunks, the specialized equipment used to haul cut timber. The Anlaufs were loggers as much as homesteaders, and the settlement they built reflected both identities.

02A Small Town Along Pass Creek

Anlauf sits along what is now Interstate 5, roughly seven miles southwest of Curtin and north of Yoncalla in the upper reaches of Pass Creek. The Southern Pacific Railroad ran through the area — photographs in the Oregon Historical Society's collection show railroad infrastructure near Anlauf by at least 1907.

At its peak, Anlauf was never large. The community supported a post office, a train depot, a lodge, a general store, and a sawmill — the core institutions of a small Oregon lumber town. Peak population was roughly 30 people, even during the Great Depression era when many small communities saw temporary influxes of workers willing to take any available job.

The town had its share of color. During Prohibition, the Warren brothers earned themselves sentences in the state penitentiary for moonshine production in Anlauf — one of many small-town distilling operations that flourished in Oregon's remote valleys during the dry years.

03Why Was Anlauf Abandoned?

No single catastrophe killed Anlauf. The decline followed the pattern common to dozens of small Oregon lumber communities: as the timber industry consolidated and mechanized, small independent sawmills couldn't compete. The railroad reduced service to minor stops. Logging trucks replaced rail cars. One by one, the handful of families who had sustained the community moved to Drain, Yoncalla, or farther down the valley.

The post office closed, the general store shuttered, and the depot fell silent. Without the sawmill, the railroad, or enough families to justify a school, there was nothing to hold the town together.

04What Remains of Anlauf Today

Anlauf is accessible from I-5 Exit 161, labeled "Anlauf, Lorane" — though the exit has no services within five miles. A few scattered residences and structures remain in the narrow valley along Pass Creek, but no commercial activity survives. The Anlauf Cemetery, also known as the Comstock Cemetery, still stands on a hillside, its headstones recording the families — German immigrants, loggers, millworkers — who built and sustained this community across its brief decades.

The name endures on highway signs and maps, but the settlement itself has returned to the Douglas County forest.