Saron Lutheran Church Basement

In the history of Saron Lutheran Church, which was built in 1886, I found that
a basement was dug under the church in 1923. There is nothing more than that
said in the article. A great deal of effort made that basement possible at the
cost of $3000.
First the church building itself had to be raised high enough to allow the
equipment that was needed to do the digging. To prepare for the process of
digging the basement, it was necessary to lift the structure. The first step was
to use screw jacks placed strategically on both sides of the building and slowly
raise it high enough to place wooden beams under the width and length of the
building. As the building was raised, a framework of the beams was added on
each side of the building and placed at right angles-to support the whole
structure. This process is called cribbing. Plus, support posts had to be placed
under the middle of the building as the cribbing process proceeded. When it
was high enough to allow horses and scrapers to go under it, the digging
began.
It was probable that first a channel was dug on both ends of the building and
gradually the scraper could excavate enough dirt to go underneath. In the case
of Saron Lutheran, the horse driven scraper entered under the building from
the north, filled the scraper and exited with the dirt filled scraper at the south
end. The dirt was then distributed on the west side of the church which
accounts for the slope of the church yard to the west.
The equipment that was used for the digging was a scoop-like bucket called a
Fresno Scraper that was pulled by two horses. The scraper could be bought for
$32. It was with this machine called a Fresno Scraper that Edward E.

Sachariason (1885-1980) and his brother-in-law Orvin Bangsund dug the

basement at Saron Lutheran Church.The Fresno scraper was invented in 1883
by a Scottish immigrant and entrepreneur, James Porteous. He had worked
with farmers in the Fresno, California area and recognized the dependence of
the Fresno Valley on irrigation and the need to make canals and ditches. The
Fresno Scraper had the ability to scrape and move a quantity of soil and then
discharge it at a controlled depth. The blade scooped up the soil instead of it
merely pushing it along, and ran along a C-shaped bowl which could be
adjusted in order to alter the angle of the bucket to the ground. The scraper
was produced at the Fresno Agricultural Works, formed by Porteous. Over the
next 30 years, the models kept improving and the one used in digging the
church basement was probably the 1915 model A sector of that scraper can be
found in the Sachariason grove of trees where Ryan Sachariason now lives.
The second Porteous patent relates to "means for limiting the rotation of the
scraper bowl to dump the load to a controlled depth" when the handle is
pushed up. The cross bar may be adjusted forward or back on the bowl side
plates to vary the limit position of the bowl as it strikes the tongue. The side
runners or shoes raise the cutting edge above the ground. The three principal
problems with this invention were: (a) the high rolling resistance of the iron
wheels in the soft or sandy soils, (b) the tendency of the scraper to overrun the
horses on firm down slopes, and (c) the short runners sinking into soft or
sandy soils.
After they had successfully finished that work, another church by the name of Hawk
Creek Lutheran asked them to come and dig a basement under their building. Both
Saron and Hawk Creek Lutheran are still serving as places of worship today. The
basements in both churches are still very functional. Saron Lutheran celebrated their
One Hundredth Anniversary of the church building in 1996 and the basement
has been used as a fellowship center for 86 years.
Verona Sachariason, March 28,2009