Thirty years ago, on a cold Halloween eve, two young lovers from the Whiteaker neighborhood in Eugene set fire to the Oakridge Ranger Station in the Willamette National Forest. Close to midnight, and wearing black gloves, they placed two incendiary devices outside the rear of the ranger building. The 13,500-square-foot Ranger Station burned to the ground. 

Two days before the Oakridge arson, the pair tried to burn down the Detroit Ranger Station east of Salem. But the device snuffed itself out. Yet they still managed to burn a Forest Service truck. They spray painted an anarchist “A” symbol on the back door of the station with the demand to stop logging and the cryptic words “Earth Liberation Front.”

Thus began a long series of arsons from 1996 to 2001, by mainly Eugene-based “Elves” (as they called themselves).

The Earth Liberation Front, known as ELF, was a radical, highly secretive and nonhierarchical cell of eco-saboteurs who wanted to stop the destruction of nature at any cost (except for human harm). However, the destruction of property, corporations, institutions and organizations was all up for grabs.

An image of Joshephine Overaker from an FBI wanted poster, and Jacob Ferguson in a still image from the documentary “Pickaxe.”

Jacob Ferguson and Josephine Sunshine Overaker never served a day in prison for the fires they set. They even went on to commit numerous other arsons. Famously, Ferguson took a plea bargain while under investigation in 2004 and agreed to out all of his ELF comrades. Overaker is still at large, the only Elf never caught.

The two lovers were an odd match. Ferguson was a crusty drifter and speed-metal musician with dreads and a pentagram tattooed on the top of his head. His father was in and out of jail.

As a child, Ferguson liked to blow things up, including a water fountain at his high school. He even concocted explosives at home, once leaving the milky mixture in the fridge where his stepbrother accidentally drank it, sending him to the hospital.

Overaker came from an affluent family and went to an expensive boarding school in Arizona. Having studied holistic medicine and herbalism, she ultimately landed in Eugene. The two met during the last days of the Warner Creek Occupation and fell in love.

A still image from “Pickaxe,” the documentary about the nearly yearlong blockade of a Forest Service road at Warner Creek near Oakridge.

So what sparked the two lovers to cross the line of peaceful protest at Warner Creek to all-out arson? The answer might lie directly with the radical Earth First! Journal, which was located in Eugene at that time.

Earth First! Journal moved to Eugene in 1993. Its motto was “no compromise in the defense of mother earth!” A month before the Halloween arsons, the journal published a full-page letter promoting the ELF.

The article concluded: “We are fighting a war for the survival of our planet, so let’s hit the scum who are causing it with everything we can muster.”

The same issue called for an “ELF Halloween Smash” to cause some of the most destructive eco-sabotage and criminal damage ever seen. Ferguson and Overaker had read the ELF letter several times. It’s not difficult to conclude that the journal inspired them to commit the 1996 Halloween eve arson just a month after its publication.

But Earth First! Journal didn’t stop there. Two of their Eugene editorial staff, Kevin Tubbs and Lacey Phillabaum, were Elves themselves, setting numerous buildings and institutions on fire, most notably the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture in 2001.

During this period, Earth First! Journal seemed to actively promote burning down anything the Elves didn’t like.

Two months after the infamous October 1998 Vail Two Elk Lodge arson in Colorado, Earth First! Journal not only lauded the attack in its December issue, but it even ran a full page of detailed instructions on how to build a lethal incendiary device, in addition to a caricature of Santa with a sleigh full of bombs.

In other issues they published even more “holiday smashes” with drawings of punkish Elves holding Molotov cocktails and details on how to make them. One of the Earth First! Journal’s editors at that time, Rod Coronado, was a serial arsonist himself, jailed for torching a university lab that destroyed over 35 years of research data.

Although nearly all of the Elves were eventually caught, it seems that Earth First! Journal got off lightly. Freedom of the press is inalienable. But at some point, you’d think the journal’s editorial staff would have realized that what they were propagating was outright wrong.

It’s sad to think that a lot of lost and misguided kids fighting for a cause they loved were manipulated by some inflammatory and self-righteous publication. One that incited these activists to terrifying acts of arson that not only marred the environmental movement, but destroyed their young lives as well.

Tom Derungs is a writer and poet living in Eugene. He formerly worked for John Wiley & Sons publishing and Pearson Education and is now retired. He writes and performs music under the moniker Bobby Vacant.