Philomath High students Cole Barron and Jordyn Hood didn’t choose to work together — their teacher did. The result now greets anyone who’s seen the poster for this year’s Public Safety Chili Cook-Off — a cowboy roping his horse across a weathered, old-paper backdrop.
Barron and Hood were paired by teacher Nicole Stueve after each independently sketched poster concepts in separate classes — Barron in a course he described as desktop publishing, Hood in graphic design.
It’s a recurring assignment with Stueve giving the same poster project to several of her classes every year.
In this year’s “competition,” Stueve combined elements from each student’s individual work — Barron’s typography and Hood’s logo. Hood then designed a background and merged the pieces into a cohesive design.
For the logo, Hood said she wanted to steer clear of the cook-off’s usual visual shorthand.
“Normally people do like a chili pepper with flames, or western, I guess like cactus or stuff,” she said. “I wanted to try something new. I thought a horse and cowboy would be cool.”
The cowboy-and-horse concept nods to the event’s home at the Philomath Frolic and Rodeo grounds — a fitting anchor for a cook-off that, this Sunday, expects to draw its biggest field yet.
Barron said his original background design started out simpler before he decided it needed more visual interest, reworking it with an older-paper-style texture that gives the final poster its weathered, western feel. The two students said the project took about a day and a half to two days to complete, working in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Centering and curving the lettering around the logo, Barron said, was the trickiest part.
Neither student had collaborated with the other on a creative project before, though they know each other through sports. Both said they were caught off guard to learn their combined design had been chosen — Hood said she “was just doing it for the assignment” when she found out.
Barron has attended the chili cook-off once before, though Hood hasn’t, and if they decide to check it out this year, they’ll have plenty of company. The event, set for 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday at the Yew Wood Corral, has drawn 24 registered teams, the biggest turnout Police Chief Dave Gurski says he can recall, with entries split between law enforcement and a community partner division that grew so large organizers had to break it into two groups.
Running alongside the cook-off will be the Benton County Sheriff’s Office’s Emergency Preparedness and Services Fair.
2. Retirement ranking
A new ranking from MoneyLion named Philomath the 21st best small town in the country to retire in, out of 50 towns that made the list nationwide. Given how many small towns exist across the U.S., cracking the top 25 is no small feat for a town of Philomath’s size.
The rankings were built from towns with populations between 1,000 and 10,000 that scored 80 or higher on a livability index sourced from AreaVibes.com. From there, MoneyLion weighed each town’s average home value, annual cost of living and property and violent crime rates, with rent and cost-of-living figures counted most heavily in the final scoring.
The article, written by Heather Taylor, frames the appeal simply, noting that small-town retirement offers advantages like a lower cost of living and overall safety compared to big cities, without requiring residents to feel isolated.
Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, topped the list, followed by Jenkintown, Pennsylvania; Chardon, Ohio; Deer Park, Ohio; Decorah, Iowa; Fort Mitchell, Kentucky; Petoskey, Michigan; Aspinwall, Pennsylvania; College Place, Washington; and Fort Wright, Kentucky, rounding out the top 10.
Pennsylvania dominated the overall list with 15 towns in the top 50 — enough to help the East Coast claim 22 of the 50 spots overall. Oregon’s showing was more modest but still notable — Philomath was joined on the list by Jacksonville, which came in at No. 26, and King City, which landed at No. 40, giving the state three towns among the nation’s best for retirees.
This isn’t the first time an outside ranking has taken notice of Philomath. Three years ago, Philomath was listed at No. 4 among the best places to live in Oregon overall, citing the town’s low crime rate and strong quality-of-life numbers. That was a different methodology built around a different question — best to live in versus best to retire in — but the throughline is the same: whatever metrics outsiders use to size up small towns, Philomath tends to score well.
3. Sensory support
A load of donated lumber has given Philomath Elementary’s most vulnerable students a place to work, play and be supported — courtesy of a company that has become one of Philomath’s newer, but increasingly rooted, community partners.
Philomath Elementary Principal Eric Beasley reached out to Patrick Lumber this month with a thank-you that doubled as a community shout-out. The company had donated wood that was used to build a sensory table for a room at the school that supports students with disabilities.
Beasley said the longer 2-by-8 fir pieces let the school extend the tabletop and make it ADA accessible while also giving staff room to work alongside students from the end of the table. A comparable table bought commercially, he noted, would have come with a significant price tag.
Beasley asked that the school’s gratitude be passed along to Jeremy French, who arranged the donation and personally delivered the wood. It’s not the first time Patrick Lumber has shown up for the school — the company also donated toward a climbing wall at Philomath Elementary a few years back.
Patrick Lumber’s presence in Philomath is more recent than many might assume. The company was founded in 1915 and operated out of Portland for more than a century before relocating its headquarters to Philomath in 2023. Seven years earlier, Patrick bought the Mary’s River Lumber yard in Philomath, an original 8 acres later grown with adjoining 20-acre and 2-acre purchases.
For a company built on lumber, this donation put its product to a different kind of use — not framing houses or decking, but giving Philomath Elementary students a table built for them.
(Brad Fuqua is publisher/editor of the Philomath News. He can be reached at News@PhilomathNews.com).
