Business: Gable's Gold Coast

According to Governor Martin of Oregon, the southwestern corner of that State "has greater potential values than any other undeveloped section of the U. S." Crammed with 4,000-foot mountain chains, this wilderness has only three connections with civilization—a highway up the coast and 50 miles inland a parallel highway and Southern Pacific R. R. line. Between are said to lie rich deposits of chrome, copper, gold, iron, coal, limestone and platinum beneath an evergreen blanket of several billion feet of virgin timber. To exploit this domain has been a local dream for 50 years but only in the last three has exploitation actually begun, and that almost solely through the efforts of a onetime hunter of dinosaur eggs named Gilbert Elledy Gable. Since 1935 Gilbert Gable has wrought such changes in southwestern Oregon that the region has been called his "empire." Last week Emperor Gable was dethroned by the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Gilbert Gable is short, jovial and 51. Born in Pennsylvania, he never went to college, served for nine years before the War as publicity counsel for Bell Telephone Co. During the War he headed Liberty Loan drives. After it, he became an explorer, discovered dinosaur tracks in Arizona and a primitive Indian village. ''Lost Mesa," was made a chief of the Navaho tribe with a certificate written in human blood to prove it. Six years ago he took as his second wife Paulina Stearns, daughter of a wealthy Ludington, Mich, lumber family. In 1933 he went to southwestern Oregon for the first time.

Two years later, to the amazement of its 300 inhabitants, Gilbert Gable appeared at Port Orford, Ore., formed six companies to promote it as the only natural deep-water harbor on the rugged coast between Puget Sound and the Golden Gate. Fifty-four years before, Congress had appropriated $150,000 to develop Port Orford as a harbor of refuge, but nothing was done. Gilbert Gable proceeded to spend $750,000 doing it, most of the money going for a huge breakwater dock, an administration building, a new lumber mill.

On Labor Day, 1935, Promoter Gable gathered all of Oregon's bigwigs for the dedication. Dressed in dark silk shirt, riding breeches and boots, Emperor Gable was master of ceremonies, read a speech in which the instruction "chuckle" was written at appropriate spots. Said he: "I find myself shrinking into microscopic tininess beside the influence and the commerce we here set in motion." Next day an examiner of the Interstate Commerce Commission heard the application of Gilbert Gable's Gold Coast Railroad for a permit to build a 90-mile spur across the mountains into Port Orford from Leland on the Southern Pacific line 50 miles inland. Soon the Gold Coast R. R., life line of Gilbert Gable's empire since it would be the means of getting ore and timber to the sea or back East by rail, was granted an ICC certificate of convenience and necessity.