HISTORY CORNERs

From 1st one: Dec 93 or Jan 94  TO  6-16-95

Then a gap, then 11-1-96 to 5-21-98

  

#1   12-30-93

     This article is the first in what is planned as an ongoing series of articles about Council's fascinating past. 

    With all the digging going on in town, I thought it would be a good time to tell about some interesting discoveries from the last time the town was dug up.

    In 1940, the WPA was putting in many of the sewer lines that are now being replaced.  At the bottom of an eight foot deep trench under Galena street, west of what is now the Council Valley Market, the crew found a large spear head and a stone axe head.  Both were made of flint.  The spear head (which may actually have been a cutting tool) measured about four inches long. 

    Several arrow heads were found during the 1940 excavations, especially around the settling tank in the west part of town, and along the trench leading west from the tank.

    I've been told that if the present workers find any artifacts, the job might have to be stopped until an archaeologist can be called in to examine the site.  While this is both good and bad, the immediate result is that the workers might simply keep quiet about anything they find in order to keep the project moving.  That's understandable, but if it happens, the community will lose a once in a lifetime chance to learn more about how the native culture used this valley.

    Future articles, in addition to stories of Council's history, will keep you informed of what the museum is doing.  Several ambitious new members have been added to the museum board, and you will be seeing some good things happen.  This should matter to you.  It should matter to you because local history is incredibly interesting.  It enriches our lives in ways beyond measure.  And Council has one of the best historical collections in the state for this size town.   It should also matter to you because museums and other historical attractions account for a very high percentage of tourist dollars: cold, hard cash for our local  economy.

    Stay tuned.

 

#2        1-5-94

HISTORY CORNER        by Dale Fisk

            One of the most striking facts of life in the Council Valley about a century ago was the handicap of inadequate transportation.  When the Moser family settled here in 1876, there wasn't a road of any kind into the valley.    George Moser used a plow to scratch a ditch down the north side of Mesa hill, and by placing the upper wheels of the wagons in it, managed to keep them from tipping over.

         The basic route that the Mosers established was used up until about 1920, and is still visible in the first canyon east of the present highway.  It cuts down the hill and across the old paved highway.  If you look about 300 yards up the Middle Fork from the present highway bridge at the base of Mesa hill, you can see the abutments for the bridge the old "Moser grade" used. 

            When roads were finally built, they were what we would call four-wheel-drive trails.  These dirt roads were very often impassible (or even dangerous) for weeks at a time during wet seasons.  Until communities were big enough, and organized enough, to afford such luxuries as bridges, travelers used fords on smaller rivers, and ferries on larger ones.

            Railroads were the only mode of transport that was fairly dependable.  When Indian Valley was first settled in 1868,  the nearest railroad was in Utah.   By the time the Mosers arrived here, rails had just crossed Idaho's southern border.  The nearest major supply points were Boise or Baker, although there was a small store at Falk's crossing, east of present day Payette.  Six years later (1882), the railroad reached Weiser.  This was a milestone in the settlement of  Council.  Now it only took a journey of two days (one way) to get tew up, they didn't seem to age at all, but now, many of them are old.  Some, like the Ridge school house,  have begun to lean precariously ... and some have died.    It

ust doesn't seem right.  From my point of view, they were always here - like the mountains.   These men have been my reference points ... my Landmarks.

            There is little we can do to prevent the loss of living Landmarks.  But there is much that can be done to preserve the priceless legacy they leave behind them.   That's why I'm researching and writing their stories.  That's why the Council museum exists, and why it is so important to support it.

            For over a year now, the museum board has been diligently investigating a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to expand the space available for the museum's exhibits.  The room we have is inadequate for even the present collection, not to mention other heirlooms that would be donated or loaned if space were available.

            We have finally come up with an approximate plan for an addition to the City Hall building for the museum, and nailed down an agreement toward this goal with the initial financial backer: Evea Powers (Vernie Harrington's daughter).   She will match any money we raise, dollar for dollar, up to $10,000.  Through private grants and local contributions, we plan to raise enough for the addition.

            We are hoping that the community will pull together and help with this investment in a cultural and economic legacy that will benefit us and our grandchildren.

            You'll be reading and hearing more about this soon.

 

#3

1-12-94

HISTORY CORNER         by Dale Fisk

             It was a cold day, less than two weeks after Thanksgiving.  The Christmas season was starting.  The older students of Council's overcrowded old brick school were looking forward to moving into the new, $48,500  high school that was nearing completion across the highway from the courthouse.

             People who were listening to the radio were startled by the sudden interruption of regular programing.   It was announced that Japan had just attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  Soon after that, President Roosevelt announced that the United States was declaring war.   The word spread quickly through Council.  Whether they heard it in a store, or by a phone call, or on the radio, the shock of the news, and the date December 7, 1941, was indelibly stamped on the memory of everyone who was old enough to realize what had happened.  From that day on, the history of this nation, and the lives of millions, was irrevocably altered.

            A few days after Pearl Harbor, a new siren was installed in Council to serve as a fire and air raid alarm.  Military experts were saying that attacks by enemy planes this far inland were very probable, and blackout instructions were issued.

          As near as we can tell, the big bell that now sits in front of the city hall / museum building was used as an alarm before that time.  If anyone has any more information about this bell, please call me: 253-4582.

            A letter recently arrived at the Council Post Office from a WWII vet who is trying to locate someone he knew during the war.  The man who wrote the letter is Robert Hull, and he is looking for Robert M. Keyes.  The two men served together in the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment.  Keyes was the lieutenant in charge of the Demolition Platoon, and stayed with the unit until it arrived in New Guinea.  At that time, Keyes left the unit, and Mr. Hull has never heard what became of him.  Mr. Hull says that Keyes lived in the Council area, and may have owned a ranch here.  Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Robert Keyes or his relatives is asked to contact Robert M. Hull at 1926 S. Johnson St., Visalia, CA  93277 .   He will gladly accept collect phone calls at (209) 625-3027.

 

 

#4        1-20-94

HISTORY CORNER   

by Dale Fisk

            In my writings, I will occasionally use the term "Landmarks".  I'll try to explain my usage of that word.

         Just after 1900, a number of homesteaders settled on "the Ridge" west of Fruitvale, and a one-room school was built  in 1915 for the children of the new families.  My father was one of those children.  

         When I checked on the old school a couple years ago, it was in pretty sad shape.  The porch had fallen down a few years before. The brick chimney had long since been shot to pieces by squirrel hunters in lack of more suitable targets.  The weathered shingles had given up clinging to the roof, and now the whole building was leaning to the point of no return.  

        All my life I had seen that old school as a symbol of a precious heritage, and as a landmark in more than just the physical sense.  I saw the ghosts of noisy children running and laughing in the school yard.   I imagined figures whirling  around the floor at special Saturday night dances, as the notes of a fiddle drifted above their heads.  To me, this neglected old friend represented a way of life that had faded away like the echoes of the music and the laughter.  Now it stood empty ... silent ... dying.

            The old school finally collapsed under the weight of a heavy snowfall on the night of December 8, 1992.

            When I was a boy, I used to go with my father to the cattle auction.  I would listen to the men talk about politics, the price of cattle, or the best way to operate some complicated piece of farm equipment.  I thought they must be very wise, these men who held the world in their hands.  I was intimidated by the thought of ever being able to know as much about life as they did.

I learned a lot from those men.  As I grew up, they didn't seem to age at all, but now, many of them are old.  Some, like the Ridge school house,  have begun to lean precariously ... and some have died.    It just doesn't seem right.  From my point of view, they were always here - like the mountains.   These men have been my reference points ... my Landmarks.

            There is little we can do to prevent the loss of living Landmarks.  But there is much that can be done to preserve the priceless legacy they leave behind them.   That's why I'm researching and writing their stories.  That's why the Council museum exists, and why it is so important to support it.

            For over a year now, the museum board has been diligently investigating a once-in-a-

lifetime opportunity to expand the space available for the museum's exhibits.  The room we have is inadequate for even the present collection, not to mention other heirlooms that would be donated or loaned if space were available.

            We have finally come up with an approximate plan for an addition to the City Hall building for the museum, and nailed down an agreement toward this goal with the initial financial backer: Evea Powers (Vernie Harrington's daughter).   She will match any money we raise, dollar for dollar, up to $10,000.  Through private grants and local contributions, we plan to raise enough for the addition.

            We are hoping that the community will pull together and help with this investment in a cultural and economic legacy that will benefit us and our grandchildren.

            You'll be reading and hearing more about this soon.

   

#5 1-27-94

            Many long time residents of the Council area remember when this was a well known fruit producing region.  It was a dynamic, but relatively brief, time in our history.

             Although many early settlers grew a few fruit trees for their own use, William and Dora Black are generally credited with starting the first commercial orchard in the county.  The Blacks lived at the present day Gossard ranch on Hornet Creek.

            Even though local fruit was of high quality, the market was mostly limited to local sales until after the arrival of the railroad in 1901.  By 1904, B.B. Day, who now owned the Black place,  was shipping apples to markets as remote as Walla Walla and Nampa.  The next year, he was sending apples to Chicago by the railroad car full, and area farmers were beginning realize that there was money to be made in fruit.

             By 1909, orchards were the rage here, and it seemed that everyone was jumping onto the band wagon.  Local business men came up with a logo depicting a red apple accompanied by the slogan "The Home of the Big Red Apple" which was placed on envelopes, banners and other promotional material.(CL, Sept 17, 1909)   A metal printing plate for reproducing this logo is displayed at the museum in Council.

            That same year (1909), the famous Mesa Orchards began, about 8 miles south of Council.   This was also the year that the townsite of Fruitvale was established.  The name was doubtlessly a result of the fruit rage.

            In 1912, "The Council Valley Orchards Company" started developing orchards on the slopes north east of Council, mostly east of highway 95, and between Orchard Road and Mill Creek Road.  At one time, that whole area was almost one continuous orchard.

             By the fall of 1912, it was estimated that there were 3,000 acres of orchard within a twelve and a half mile radius of Council.  For about the next thirty years, fruit was a staple of Council Valley's economy.

            I have three questions this week.:

            1.  My best information is that, at its peak in 1929, the Mesa Orchards Co.  had 1,200 acres actually growing fruit trees.  It has been claimed that it was anywhere from "one of the largest commercial orchards under one head operated anywhere in the northwest", to "the biggest orchard in the world".   Does anybody have concrete evidence as to its actual size in relation to its peers?  Newspaper claims, opinions and memories don't count unless they can be corroborated.  An almanac printed during the 1920s might have this info.  Old horticultural journals might hold a clue.  Any solid leads would be very appreciated.

            2.  Early in World War II, the government considered Mesa orchards for use as a Japanese detention camp.  It was supposedly rejected as being too small to hold enough detainees, and yet I have read somewhere that local people remembered Japanese kids attending the Mesa school during the war.  If anyone has memories, or other info, about Japanese families being detained at Mesa, please call me.

            3.  In 1942, the last three apple trees that were planted by George Moser in 1880 were  destroyed. The trees stood in front of Bob Young's house near the corner of the high school property, and the street curved around them.  Somebody who knows where this exact spot was, please give me a call.  253-4582           

 

#6   2-3-94 History Corner

            As I write this, the old parsonage next to the Congregational church is being torn down.  By the time you read this, it may already be gone... another Landmark down the drain.  Right after I originally had this article all written and delivered to the newspapers, Dick Parker's outstanding article about the parsonage was printed.  He knocked big holes in my estimation of when the parsonage was built.  I had found a bit in a 1910 Council Leader paper  that said,  "The Congregational church has decided to install a regular pastor in the valley."  A meeting was reportedly called to decide site to build new parsonage.  Dick's more dependable date (1901) from church records made me realize how undependable old newspapers can be.

            As to the concern that the old papers on the walls of the parsonage were lost to posterity, there was only one local paper: Council Journal, Mar 25, 1902.  It was an issue of which there is no original or microfilm copy as far as I can tell, but it didn't contain any significant news relevant to Council history that can't be found in other issues.  The rest of the "wall  paper" was Saturday Evening Posts and other non-local publications.    

            More tidbits on the church or parsonage from my research:

            1912 -  A new organ was purchased by Rev. Stover

            1915 - Rev. Cox set out 20 shade trees around the church and parsonage.

            1922 - A Boy Scout troop (probably Council's first) was organized under the sponsorship of the church.  

            1927 - A Mr. Summer and a Mr. Teems, who had a sawmill on Johnson Creek, were starting a lumber yard across the street from the congregational church parsonage.

            1935 - The parsonage was extensively remodeled, and a bathroom was added. 

            1940 - The Council library was in the "annex" of the church.   A small rental library of new books was maintained at the parsonage, where books rented for 3 cents per day.

            Bill Winkler said the first religious service in the valley was held by Sylvester Shrieve, a Methodist minister, in 1879.  There were many traveling preachers until the late 1880s when the first regular services were conducted by Rev. Hopper who came up from Midvale once a month.

            In 1910, my great great grandfather, J.L. Baker, who was a Methodist preacher at Cambridge, was sent to Council to establish a church here.  Construction was finished and the building was dedicated on Sunday, Dec. 10, 1911.   It was located just across the highway, south of the present Starlite Motel.   The parsonage was just torn down just a few years ago.     

            The Methodist church was abandoned by the time the Nazarene congregation started  holding services there in the mid 1920s.  In 1934, Rev. F.D. Brown moved to Fruitvale and held Nazarene church services in the McMahan school house. [As noted in a later column, this was actually another new school.] While the Congregational church parsonage was being remodeled in 1935, the Nazarenes were tearing down the old Methodist church in Council and using the lumber to build a small church at Fruitvale.  It was built at the east end of  Jonathan Ave., just north of the road, and east of the ditch.  The building was later converted to a house that was owned by Fred Burt, and is still there.  In 1938, another Nazarene church was built on the south east corner of Dartmouth St. and Illinois Ave. in Council.  It was just demolished a couple years ago.

            Coincidentally, the first LDS church was also located in Fruitvale.  Beginning just after 1930, services were held in private homes there for a year or two.  In 1932, Elder J.L. Sandidge began holding services in the Legion Hall in Council.  In 1935, construction of a log church was started just south of Jonathan Ave. in Fruitvale.  It was wired for electricity, just in case power ever reached Fruitvale.  The building was completed and formally opened on Sept. 11, 1937.  Pete and Chris Friend converted the old church into a home which they torn down and replace with their current house a couple years ago.

            As you can see, we have lost a number of Landmarks fairly recently.  Another one that is about to fall is the old John Kesler (1867 - 1937) house.  It's the big, white, square house just south east of the airport.  The Keslers contracted with Adams county as a "poor house" in the 1920s to care for county indigents.  Frenchy David, the pioneer Seven Devils prospector who shot himself near Bear, spent some of his last days there.

            Stay tuned.      

 

#7   2-10-94 HISTORY CORNER

 

            I guess a few words about earthquakes would be appropriate, in light of recent events.  Most of us remember the quake in Idaho a few years ago, but there have been several over the years.

            The first one I could dig up in the old newspapers was on May 13, 1890.  Miners in the Seven Devils were shaken awake in the middle of the night.  The sound was described as "...a loud rumbling sound like that made by a number of horses stampeding."   I think it was Al Towsley who said he thought someone was trying to blow up his cabin with blasting powder.   Surprisingly, the quake was not felt by anyone on Hornet Creek.

            A few local people had friends and relatives in the great San Francisco quake of 1906, and sent help in the way of cash and supplies.  Weiser businessmen sent a railroad car of flour.  It was the biggest earthquake in the nations history at the time.  Think how horrible it must have been to have hundreds of victims trapped under rubble before they even had any kind of machines to move it.

            There were a couple of  local earthquakes in 1908.  The first was a fair sized trembler in the Meadows area.  The other was a smaller one, centered near Weiser.

            In 1915, a man in the Cambridge area awoke in the night to the sound of objects on the kitchen table rattling around.  Half asleep, he got up and put the cat outside, thinking it had been knocking things off the table.  The next morning everyone was talking about the earthquake.  It was centered somewhere in Utah.

            Only eight months later, in May of 1916, the northwest was rocked by what people in Boise called the strongest earthquake in the city's history.  Several chimneys collapsed, but there was little other damage.

            In 1920, there was another earthquake in the Los Angeles area.  It was experienced by a local man, Sterling McGinley, who was there at the time.

           

            This week, I want to ask several important questions. 

            First, when the Council area was just getting started as a community, it had no central core that could be called a town.  Several years before John Peters built a store where Shaver's now stands,  he established the first store in the valley at a location described as being on what was later "the Bedwell place".  This was about a mile, or a little less, north of town.  It most probably would have been somewhere along Galena Road, which was the main road out of town.  It might have been on the east side of the road.  Does anybody know the place?

            The first school, aside from classes in the fort, was also said to be close to this spot north of town, on what much later (1943) was the Ed Shannon place.  Where was this? 

            Speaking of schools, the library is collecting photos of old schools in this area.    There doesn't seem to be a photo anywhere of the Orchard school.  Does anybody have one, or know who might?    Please, somebody come up with one!

            Another picture we're looking for is one of Ham's Texaco service station.  Photographs can easily be copied without even removing them from your home.  If you have any iformation about these locations, or if you have any pictures from the past that you think might be interesting, please give me a call.  253-4582

 

2-17-94

4???????

HISTORY CORNER            by Dale Fisk

      Just within the past year or so, we have lost several Landmarks. The one with the most direct connection with the pioneers of the Council Valley was John Gould.  John and his brothers, Lester and Clarence, were local institutions, and we lost them only fairly recently.   Their father, George Gould, came to the Council Valley in the fall of1888.  That was a drought year followed by a mild winter.  The next winter ('89 & '90) happened to be just about the worst one in the history of this area... something like last winter, only with extensive flooding the following spring.  Hundreds of livestock starved, froze or drowned that winter and spring..

      In 1890, George aquired the ranch on Cottonwood Creek that is now owned by the Fraziers.  It was the Gould who built the present Frazier house.  By acquing this place, George felt he had  begun to establish himself, and he adopted the "90" brand in honor of the year of  this accomplishment.  The 90 brand has been in uninterrupted use by the Gould family ever since.

     In Feb. of 1893, George married a neighbor girl, Viola Duree.  All four of their children were born on that place: John - Jan. 3, 1894, Clarence - Sept. 15, 1895, Annie - Dec. 27, 1897, and Lester - April 16, 1905.

    In 1909, the Goulds traded ranches with the Becksteads who lived on a ranch 3 miles north of Council.  The Becksteads had built the large ranch house which still stands on the Gould place.  The ranch had been settled in 1878 by George Winkler, and was one of the earliest homesteads in the valley.    Mr. Winkler planted some of the first fruit trees in the valley here.  Although it was badly broken by snow last winter, I suspect the huge apple tree in front of  the old house today was one that Winkler planted.

            The big white barn on the ranch was built in 1915, and quickly became a landmark in itself.

            In 1938, when Clarence married Nancy Stover, the teacher at the White School just across the highway from the ranch, they built the smaller dwelling next to the main house for their home.   Clarence has been called a genious, and maybe he was in some ways.  To say the least, he was very mechanically creative.    A number of  the machines that he built are cached away on the ranch, including a water-powered generator, down by the river, that provided electricity for the ranch years ago.  Clarence died Aug. 8, 1987

            Viola Gould died in 1948.  When George died three years later, the estate was divided among the kids.   John and Clarence continued to run the main part of the ranch as one unit.  Lester acquired the place that Steve and Elsie Shumway now own.

            Lester died Sept. 1987   John died June 6, 1992

            Clarence's three children now own the ranch.  Donna Gould Nelson and her husband, Todd, now live on the Gould Ranch.

            If only that land could talk - what stories it could tell.   Like the time in January of 1895 when George Winkler was awakened in the middle of the night by an uproar in the chicken house.  Sleepy-eyed, George lit a lantern, picked up his shotgun, and stumbled out to the coop.  He proptly encountered the cause of the chicken's panic: a very large cougar.  Everyone but the cougar (and maybe a couple chickens) survived the evening's entertainment.

 

 

2-24-94 ?       

7 HISTORY CORNER  by Dale Fisk

            In one of the display cases at the museum, there is a pair of horse snow shoes.  That's right - snow shoes that were worn by horses.  In the days before good roads or snow plows,  pack animals were often the only way to haul supplies to remote mining towns.  In the winter, dog teams were sometimes used between  McCall and the Warren area, especially for carrying the mail.  I don't think they were used much for heavier hauling.

            Putting snow shoes on horses doesn't seem to have been a very common practice.  Mickey Aitken Hendrickson said that Eston Freeman, an early mail carrier to Warren, introduced snowshoes for horses in this part of Idaho.  People laughed at him and said they wouldn't work, but they did.  Hendrickson said they were used extensively in this general area.

The horse snow shoes in the museum are made of metal.  This may have been an uncommon  material for this purpose.  The ones that Hendrickson described were made of wood.  Wooden snow shoes were used on horses in the Buffalo Hump area, north of the Seven Devils.   A man who told about the ones used there, said they were made by crossing two boards to make a shoe about twelve inches by ten, with the forward corners rounded.  Holes were burnt into the boards to fit extra long calks and toes on the horse's regular shoes.  Each snow shoe was held on with bolts.  The horses seemed to like the snow shoes after they  learned how to walk a little spraddle-legged while wearing them.  The man said that  "...when the wooden contrivances are fitted on, they [horses] can be driven anywhere and are enabled to go along with greatest ease.  On these shoes they do not sink more than six inches at any time in the trail, and rarely over a foot in the loose snow."(From the Salubria Citizen newspaper, Apr 14, 1899)

            A hundred years ago, if you were to mention "snow shoes" to someone, they would have thought you were talking about what we now call skis.  And they referred to what we call snow shoes as "webs". 

            In the late l800's and the early part of this century, skiing was a whole different story from today's sport.   Almost everyone made their own skis.  They consisted of shaped and bent wooden slats with a loop to hold the toe of the skier's foot, and some method of holding the foot forward into this loop.  Our museum at Council has two pairs of these old-style skis on the wall, along with one pole.  It's amazing how huge they are.

            Before the 1920s, at least in this country, skiing was primarily a way to get from one place to another, as opposed to recreation.  Except for experts, it was almost literally a "straight forward" activity.  Slalom type turns were pretty much unheard of.   To go down a hill, you simply pointed your skis down the mountain and let gravity do the rest. 

            Instead of ski poles, a single, long, heavy pole was used, primarily for balance and braking.   If your speed became excessive, the pole was placed between your legs and the trailing end was pushed into the snow to create drag.

Stay tuned.      

 

 

3-3-94             9 HISTORY CORNER 

            Baseball was probably the first intramural sport played in Council.  Although travel was difficult, there were games between neighboring communities as early as 1890.  After the Pacific and Idaho Northern Railroad reached the towns along the Weiser River, games became common between teams located along the trains route.

            When the teams along the tracks adopted a league name, it was only natural to call it by the railroads initials - the "P&IN League".   There is a P&IN League baseball trophy in the Council museum.   In everyday local slang, the railroad was called the "Pin" or "the pin road".  Likewise, the sports league became known as the Pin League.  I would assume that when teams  were added to the league that were from towns that were not located along the railroad, it became known as the "Long Pin League".  If somebody has better info as to how "Long" got added onto the Pin League name, please give me a call.

            Weiser had a football team as early as 1906, but some of the Council boys had never even seen a football game, much less played in one, until 1922.   A team was established here, and showers were built in the old, brick, combination grade school / high school that year.  The first Council High School football  game was at home against Payette in November.  Council lost ten to nothing.

            Basketball came to Council High a short time after football, after the Legion Hall  was built in 1923.  The upstairs of the building served as a basketball court.  Even after the old high school was built in 1941, it was occasionally used for that purpose.

 

            I recently came across some old Council High School year books from the 1940s.  It's interesting how much has changed, and how some things are shared by every generation.  High School year books are a valuable resource for recording Council's past.  The pictures are priceless.  If you have an old Council High School year book, that you could donate, the Library and/or Museum would like to have it so it can be preserved for the whole community. 

            Ruth Husted has generously donated year books from 1941-42 through 1945-46.  They are unique because construction of the high school had just been finished in December of 1941, and because these were the war years.  Annuals from this time frame (and into 1947) contain photos of some well-known local folks that still live here: Everett Harrington, June Ryals, Leo Mink, Ferd Muller, Art and Alice Deeds, Eunice Madson, Ruth Husted, LaDell Merk, Alma Fisk, Mary Owens, Maxine Hallet, Norman Kilborn, Ed Kesler, Frank Hulin, and more.

            These kids got to go to school in a brand new high school after being cramped into the second story of the old brick school.   The new school must have been a marvel to them.  It was said to be "... not only the newest, but the most modern physical plant in the state".  It had a real gymnasium, and separate rooms for science, business, home economics, library, etc.   

            Does anyone know when the first year book for Council High came out?  We would welcome the donation of annuals from any year, but especially old ones.  They are the ones that will be the hardest to find, and are the most interesting.  If you have a year book that you could donate, please bring it in to the Library, or contact me. 

            A few weeks ago, I asked if anyone knew the whereabouts of Bob Keyes.  It turns out that quite a few people knew the Keyes family, and knew  that Bob now lives at Donnelly.  Several people called or wrote to Mr. Keyes, as well as to Mr. Hull who was looking for him.  Mr. Keyes didn't remember exactly who Mr. Hull was, and looked through his old photos, etc. to jog his memory.  I'm sure the two men had a pleasant visit, remembering experiences of 50 years ago.  My thanks, and theirs, to the people who helped get them together.

            Now I have another "Where Are They Now?" question.  I got a call from Frank Thompson who went to school at Council for only one year, during the 1940s, and moved away in about 1948.  Most of his school years were spent at the Cottonwood school.  He would like to know if anyone knows how to get ahold of Jay or Albert Thorp.  If anyone has an address or phone number for one of them, or of someone who would know how to contact them, drop a line to Frank Thompson at Valley, WA  99181 or call me at 253-4582.

            I need to correct a mistake from a couple weeks ago.  I said that in 1934, Rev. F.D. Brown moved to Fruitvale and held Nazarene church services in the McMahan school house, near where Raffetys live now.  It was actually the "new" Fruitvale school where these services were held, not the McMahan school.  The McMahan school had been abandoned for about eight years by this time, and had collapsed under heavy snow the year before.

 

3-10-94

10 HISTORY CORNER

            I guess it's time to stick my neck out.  Over the years, there has been a running battle between two camps on the issue of "the Council Tree".  Just where was it?   And was there more than one? 

            One side says there was a single tree, and that it was located just south of Mill Creek on the west side of highway 95.  The tree to which they refer is still standing, although it has long been dead.

            The other group claims that there was not one, but a grove of five Council Trees, and that they stood just north west of the present town of Council.  After reading every available issue of the Council Leader, the Adams County Leader, the Fruitvale Echo and the Council Advance newspapers between 1901 and 1944, as well as issues of the Weiser Signal, the Salubria Citizen, the Cambridge Citizen and the Cambridge News to cover 1882 to 1901 for which there were no Council papers, I have found not one single reference to a Council tree anywhere near Mill Creek.  Instead, I found numerous references to five Council trees located north west of town.  For a time, the Adams County Leader even had a big logo, along with the paper's name, across the top of the front  page of each issue that showed the five Council trees with Indians smoking a peace pipe under them.

            The clincher came when I read a high school history essay written in 1930 by Rose Freehafer (former Senator Jim McClure's aunt).  She personally interviewed Bill Camp, who had known some of the Indians in the area, and even spoke some of the Nez Perce language.  An Indian that Camp worked with told him that the Council trees were located on the Kesler place about three quarters of a mile north, and slightly west, of Council.

            Until the 1920s, there were five pine trees in a field at this location, in a group by themselves, but the landowner later cut down all but one of them.  When Arthur Hallet acquired ownership the land where the Council trees stood in 1917, all five trees were still there.  Arthur's son, Byron (Buff) Hallet said the last tree died in 1928, and was cut down for firewood.  Buff Hallet planted five young pine trees at the approximate location of the original Council trees in1986. They are growing on the south side of Airport Road, straight south of the Council airport.

            I suppose this will upset a few fondly held beliefs about "the Council tree", but it seems very evident that there were five trees, and that they were located at the spot mentioned above.  I have simply not run across one scrap of evidence to the contrary, or any hint that the site near Mill Creek is legitimate.  If someone can tell me how and when this Mill Creek spot came to be associated with the Council tree, I'm very curious.     

 

3-17-94

12 HISTORY CORNER

            Recently I asked for info about Jay or Albert Thorp because their old friend, Frank Thompson, was looking for them.  I got a call with info as to how to locate Jay, but before I could pass it on to Frank, I got a letter from Jay.  He gets the Record, so he saw the article and he sent a letter to Frank.

            Last week, I wrote about the Council Trees.  Dick Parker gave me some great info on that story.  It seems that Ralph Finn started the idea of a single Council tree near Mill Creek.  Before the three dams were built on the Snake River west of here,  Ralph was an advocate of an idea that had been proposed to build one giant dam in Hells Canyon instead.  He felt that the huge reservoir created by this dam would bring a great boom to Council, and he pushed the idea of making a tourist park at the Mill Creek site.  The pine tree growing there was to be promoted as the Council tree.   Dick says that Hugh Addington, and other old timers, always referred to there being several Council trees, and that they were located at the spot north west of town.  Hugh remembered the trees as being more or less in a line.

            I also got a call from Ervin Bobo who gave me some real gems of information.  The most exciting one, for me, concerned a pile of rocks on a hilltop on the Ridge, west of Fruitvale, at a spot called "Eagle Point".  This pile, made of chunks of basalt rocks, is about five or six feet tall.   My dad said that the pile was there when the first settlers arrived on the Ridge.  Nobody knew who put them there, or why.    My brother and cousin once took the whole pile apart to see what was under it, and found nothing.  They rebuilt the original pile, and heaped up another bunch, so now there are actually two piles there. 

            Lewis and Clark noted seeing a somewhat similar pile of rocks near the top of Lolo Pass.  They said, "On this eminence the natives have raised a conic mound of stones six or eight feet high and erected a pine pole fifteen feet long." (From the "Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition" edited by Reuben G. Thwaites, 1904, vol 3, p 180) This Lolo trail spot has come to be known as the "Indian Post Office".

             A few years back, a scholar of some type found more rock piles in the Lolo area and naturally figured they had a similar Indian origin as the one Lewis and Clark had mentioned.  Ervin was watching TV one day, and saw a program about these rock piles and their history.  He was pretty amused, and/or irritated at the education the public was getting about these rock piles, and called up the TV station.  You see, Ervin had a pretty good idea how the piles got there.  He had helped pile them up!  He was with a surveying outfit in the 1950s in that area.  They used an old method of surveying that incorporated line of sight calibration, using telescopic instruments.  Rocks were piled around the base of  a long pole with a big white flag attached to it.  Such flags were visible from miles away, and served as reference points for determining survey lines.  The rock piles were simply the remains of these flag pole supports.  I imagine the scholar was pretty red-faced.

            Ervin said that the Council area was surveyed in the 1880s, using this same line-of-site, flag pole method.  The rock pile on the Ridge sits on a bare hilltop that can be seen from many miles in several directions.  The Fruitvale area was just starting to be settled in the 1880s, and the Ridge was homesteaded after 1900, so the pile could have been made by surveyors before anyone lived in the vicinity.   On the other hand, since the Nez Perce Indians made at least one known rock pile that was similar to this one, I suppose it could be of native origin.  Anybody have more clues?

            I want to thank both Ervin and Dick for calling me.  Getting information like this is better than finding a gold nugget.  My thanks, also, to the others who have called.  I sincerely hope that anyone who can add a piece to the puzzle of the history of the Council area will call and fill me in. 253-4582

 

3-24-94 Missing

 

3-31-94

            It's amazing how recently electricity came to some parts of this area.  Thomas Edison lighted a section of New York City with electricity in 1882, but widespread use of the technology didn't appear until about the turn of the century.  Electric lights had appeared in Weiser in 1903, but no one here in the "upper country" had entered the electrical age by that time.  (With the possible exception of Iron Springs in the Seven Devils.)

            You might be surprised to know just how long ago plans were made for a power plant on the Oxbow of the Snake River south of Hells Canyon.   The present dam was finished in 1961, but plans were made for one at this site since just after the turn of the century.  At least as early as 1905, people were making big plans for that unique convolution of the river.   A concrete dam was planned that was to be 800 to 1000 feet long.    An electric generator was to be built at the bottom of a tunnel that would be blasted through the solid-rock neck of the bow.   It was thought that the generator could supply power to an area including the Seven Devils mines and Baker, Oregon.  The plan was finally abandoned about 1907 because of a lack of customers.  Very few people in the region had a single light bulb in their home.  Grandiose schemes that put the cart before the horse was not at all uncommon in those days.

            The same year as the Oxbow scheme made the news (1905), Dr. Starkey built the first hotel at his sanitorium, on the hill north west of the present pool.  He installed electric lights in each room of the hotel, and provided power by installing his own water powered generating plant on Warm Springs Creek.

            About this time, electricity was becoming the rage in the U.S.  At first, it was pretty much only used for lighting, but people soon investigated just about every possible use for the new miracle.  Since a railroad line was being contemplated north from Council to link Boise with Grangeville and Lewiston, it was proposed that it be an electric railway, powered by generating plants that would be built at intervals along the Salmon River. 

            Meadows was the first town in the upper country to have electricity, in 1908.  I'm not sure what the initial source of power was, but in 1910, the County Commissioners granted permission to build a power line to Meadows from what must have been a generator on the Falls of the Little Salmon River, some miles north of town.

            In 1911,  Isaac McMahan's nineteen-year-old son, Ernest, installed an electric power plant on their ranch at Fruitvale.  The generator was driven by water from the irrigation ditch.  Private generators like this were relatively rare at the time, and was thought by some to be the only one of its kind in the County.  That claim may or may not have been true.  Clarence Gould built an elaborate power plant on the Gould ranch, three miles north of Council, during this approximate time frame.  The building that housed the plant is still standing, just east of the river.  It think the generator itself may even be around the ranch somewhere.

            The beginning of general public access to electricity on the upper Weiser River valleys began in 1912 when the Adams County Light and Power Company installed a hyro-generator on Rush Creek, eight miles north of Cambridge.  The lights were turned on in Cambridge on Christmas day of that year.

            Before power lines reached Council, private generators were used by a few businesses in town.  My guess is that they were driven by small gasoline engines.  By 1913, the Opera House (now the theater) had electric lights.  The next year, Charlie Warner (not the one from Bear) installed the first electric fan in Council, in his barber shop, for the comfort of his patrons.  

            Right after the big fire that burned half of downtown in 1915, Council signed a contract with the Adams Co. Light and Power Co. to supply electricity from its Rush Creek plant.  The first lights powered by this source were turned on in a number of homes and businesses here on August 28, 1915.

            In 1923, a power line was extended north of Council to Orchard road to supply the fruit packing plants there.  Jack Darland provided the first electricity in Cuprum with his power plant in 1931.  A power line didn't reach the Fruitvale store until 1940.  At about the same time, line extensions gave lower Hornet Creek, and most of Council Valley, access to electricity.  I don't know when Bear and Cuprum was reached by power lines, but I think it was surprisingly late.  Would someone who knows give me a call? 253-4582

 

4-7-94

13th History Corner

            Picture yourself living in an area where you were born and raised, where your parents and your grandparents, and even their great great grandparents, were born and raised.  Imagine that these ancestors handed down a deep spiritual tradition, involving a reverence for your family and your country, around which you center your life.

            Now suppose man-like creatures from another planet come into your community.  Soon, they take over.  They chop down the trees that your great great grandfather planted, and are burning them in their camp fires that they build on top of your mother's grave. They walk into your house and tell you that you have to move out.  They tell you that your way of life is wrong, burn your Bibles (or other sacred books), and tell you that you are to stop practicing your evil religion.  Next, they force you to live in concentration camps. There is no food, and your children slowly begin to starve to death.

            Wouldn't most of us fight to our last breath against such a fate?  The tragedy is that a scenario very similar to this has already happened.   It happened right here in the United States when the natives of this country were conquered by Whites.  The differences in the situation from my imaginary one are subtle.  Basically, it was a clash of two irreconcilably different cultures.

            Indians were a source of constant anxiety for the earliest settlers in this area.  Settler's feelings towards Indians were very similar to how we would feel if vagrant motorcycle gangs were roaming our area today.  Indians were accustomed to a hard, or even violent, lifestyle.  White people in the early days generally thought of Indians as being very dirty.  And since Whites of that era usually only took a real bath about once a year, we can assume that some American aborigines were pretty unsanitary by modern standards.    Indians were seen as having backward ways of acting and talking, and manners that often seemed rude or arrogant.  They would often camp on ground claimed by homesteaders, and according to some reports, would turn their horses loose to graze in grain fields. 

            There were constant reports of Indian thievery which were often unfounded, but all too frequently were true.   Many of the displaced natives were desperate, and resorted to stealing to survive.  They had been uprooted from their homes and the only way of living they had ever known - left to wander in a hostile, bewildering nightmare with no way out.

            You can imagine what barbaric creatures white people must have seemed through Indian eyes.  Native Americans had a totally different view of private ownership and property rights. The idea of an individual owning a piece of land was so foreign to them that they often failed to even grasp the concept.  Their survival depended on being able to roam the land freely, sharing it as a group. Any one person owning a part of the earth was as ridiculous to them as someone owning the air.  It seems to them that white people cut the earth-mother into pieces to be bought and sold like their prostitutes, for whatever selfish purpose the owner pleased.

            In spite of the abuse that was being demonstrated against the members of their race, the Shoshoni Indians along the Weiser River showed themselves to be an extremely tolerant people.   Even after Whites began to take away their wintering grounds by settling in Indian Valley, the natives remained cordial to them, even going so far as to show the invaders how to harvest and preserve salmon from the rivers. Indians also became a source of hired labor on farms, helping with the harvest of crops. 

            Eventually, all of the natives in this area were forced onto the Fort Hall reservation.  They were told they must live like white people, but were given no means or training with which to do so.  Food was very often scarce or non-existent.  The concentration-camp existence they were forced to live under must have been almost impossible to bear.  In their culture, everything sacred, everything that gave purpose and meaning to their lives was based on their relationship with mother earth, from whom they had been ruthlessly torn.  What cultural values could they pass on to their children when almost every value they understood had been made irrelevant? 

            It seems bitterly ironic that a culture that outwardly professed spirituality, but was really based on materialism, so brutally crushed a culture so totally immersed in spiritual values.  Few people, other than women who have been raped, can understand the crushing emotional damage that results from someone violating and stealing the most precious, sacred, personal parts of your life, and being powerless to do anything about it.

            Today, the damage that was done to the natives of this country is insidious ... the stories of their lives mostly unknown... but their former presence here underlies everything that has followed them. The places where we now live, work and play, were all a precious legacy handed down from native fathers and mothers (Landmarks) to sons and daughters for almost 100 centuries longer than the blink of an eye that our European culture has been here.

            The museum in Council has an extensive collection of Indian projectile points and stone tools.  Recently, we have begun a long range project to classify them as to their where they came from, and how, when and by whom they were used.  The result will be an interesting display in our new museum space.   More on that subject, and how we need your help, soon.

           

4-14-94

15 History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            John Hancock was one of the very first businessmen in Council.  He and Milt Wilkerson built the first actual business establishment here in 1891.  Called the "Council Valley Hotel", it stood just south of the present Ace Saloon.  The picture of this building that is in the museum is the oldest photograph, that I know of, ever taken in what is now the town of Council. 

            About 1884,  John Hancock and a friend drove some cattle from Salmon River into the Seven Devils.  This was a common route for taking cattle and supplies into the Devils, especially before a road was built from Council.  After spending some time looking for stray cattle in the direction of the Snake River, the two men headed back east toward the Salmon River.  There were few trails, and they just trekked in the general direction. 

            When it got dark, they made camp without really knowing where they were.  Maybe they felt a little like mountain man, Jim Bridger.  Bridger once said he had never been lost in his life, but he had been mighty confused for several days.  When Hancock and Company got ready to build a camp fire, they discovered they only had one match.  After carefully preparing the tender and kindling, they struck their one and only chance at a warm supper and camp.  The match flared up and promptly went out. 

            Soon, they heard what sounded like a cow bell off in the distance.  Following the sound, they found the camp of an old man who was in the area trapping beaver.  The man welcomed them to stay for the night, and they gladly accepted.  During the course of the evening, they asked their host where they were.  He said, "About six miles west of Price Valley."  Since Hancock and his companion admitted to being lost, they called the place "Lost Valley".  The name has stuck to this day.

            About 1900, two brothers, Frank and Colonel Ryan, came west from Kansas, intending to take up land near Walla Walla, Washington.  Near Payette, they were told their was good homestead land available near Council.  One way or another, they found themselves in Lost Valley, and liked the place well enough lay claim to it.  Frank built a cabin in the middle of the Valley, and Colonel erected his more toward one edge. 

            Both brothers studied law during this time.  Frank got his law degree in 1905.  That same year, the Weiser Irrigation District filed on the land at Lost Valley for a reservoir site.  This didn't coincide very well with the Ryan boys' homestead idea.  A law suit followed.  While the dispute was making its way trough the courts, the reservoir was built in the fall of 1909.  The lawsuit was settled the next year.  The Ryans proved, ironically, that the highest and best use of the land was as a reservoir site.  They established that they should be paid for their homesteads on the basis of this value, and were paid $16,000 for the two homesteads - a substantial sum in those days.  Colonel went back to Kansas and practiced law.  Frank moved to Weiser, built a house at 747 W 2nd Street, and practiced law in that town until his death in 1956. 

            Frank's son, Harold "Hal" Ryan,  followed in his father's footsteps, and is now a Federal Judge in Boise.  I had a nice visit with him last week, and copied two old photographs of his dad standing in front of his Lost Valley cabin.  My thanks to Kenny Schwartz for telling me about Hal and this great story.

            As near as I can tell, Frank's cabin site was about where the middle of where Lost Lake is now.  My dad remembers seeing a cabin floating in the reservoir back in the late 1920s.  It was drifting near the campgrounds on the east side of the lake, just south of Slaughter Gulch.  Colonel's cabin may have escaped being flooded out.  Anybody know where it might have been located?

            Speaking of Slaughter Gulch, the story I got of how it received this name is that Isaac McMahan had of bunch of his cattle stolen and butchered there in the early days.  Anybody know any more particulars on this story?  253-4582

            A few notes on the Reservoir from old newspapers:   1912 - a lake trout was caught in Lost Lake that was as long as a man's arm.   1925 - Lost Valley Reservoir Co. was incorporated.     1928 - Nine salmon were caught just below the Lost Valley Dam.  1929 -  Lost Valley Reservoir  Dam was raised.

            Since last week, Lila Coats told me the power line reached Evergreen about 1950 or '51. Tina Warner and Gay Carter said that the power line only reached the Bear Cuprum area about 1979!  Tina also informed me that Jack Darland would have been a pretty young boy when he was credited by the paper as running a power generator at Cuprum in 1931.  Maybe it was his dad, Tony, or his grandfather, John. 

 

4-21-94 Missing

 

 

4-28-94

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            Big game animals have always been a big part of life in the Council area.  They were a basic source of food for the first miners and settlers. 

            When the Wilson Price Hunt expedition came through Idaho in the winter of 1811, the group led by Donald McKenzie passed through the southern part of the Seven Devils.  They almost starved for lack of game.   Deer were not plentiful in the Hells Canyon - Seven Devils area until several years after the establishment of the Black Lake Game Preserve in 1912.  This preserve, which covered 67,200 acres north of Black Lake, was abolished in 1935. 

            According to Charles Winkler, when his family came to the Council Valley in 1878, white tail deer were as common around Council as mule deer, although he said deer in general were not plentiful here back then.  Since that time, and until fairly recently,  white tailed deer were rarely seen.   Over the past twenty years or so there has been an increase in the number of white tail deer in this area.  They have generally been more common in the northern part of  the state during my lifetime.

            Elk were unheard of here in the early days.   There is a record of trappers sighting a large herd of elk in Long Valley in 1831,  but by the time the Black Lake Game Preserve was established in 1912, there were no known elk in Idaho west of the Island Park Divide near the Wyoming border.  Council's Socialist legislator, Earl Wayland Bowman, the author of the bill that created the Preserve, persuaded the state Game Warden to use $5,000 to buy Yellowstone Park elk from the U.S. government, and put them in the new protected area.

Another story says the U.S. Government donated the elk: 35 cows and 15 bulls.  At any rate, the elk arrived in 1915.  They were shipped in by rail, and when the train stopped in Council, a crowd of fascinated locals gathers to gawk at the strange new animals. 

            The elk were released near New Meadows, and for the next 34 years, they had a chance to adapt to their new habitat, undisturbed by hunters.  Elk were originally a plains animal, and they didn't naturally take to the higher mountains on their own.  For instance, the Rapid River drainage, where a number of elk herds thrive today, was pretty much devoid of the animals until they were pushed into the area in the late 1940s or early '50s.

            By the time the local elk hunting season was reopened in the fall of 1949, a large herd had established itself near the head of the West Fork of the Weiser River, just west of Lost Lake.  On  opening day of the first open season, a large number local men hunted this prime location.  This was also opening day of deer season, and either sex was legal game for both species.  For some time after it was light enough to shoot that morning, it sounded like there was a war going on in that vicinity.  In addition to bucks, does and cow elk, eighteen bull elk were killed.  A number of these bulls had trophy sized antlers.  One monster bull had ten points on one side and eleven on the other.

            The State enforced game laws in the early days as best they could, but before cars and roads were common, it was hard for an official to cover much territory.  Also, there were few game wardens in this part of Idaho.  For a long time, game laws were widely ignored by local people.  After 1923, Forest Service officers were supposed to help enforce game laws.  Apparently, this didn't help much. 

            Some of the early Idaho game laws are of interest:

            1889 - Illegal to kill buffalo, elk, deer antelope or mountain sheep between January 1 and Sept 1.

            1903 -  Moose, buffalo, antelope or caribou must not be killed at any time. Elk, mountain sheep and goat season Sept 1 to Dec 31.  Limits: one elk (either sex), two deer, one mountain goat, one mt. sheep.  A hunting and fishing license cost $1.

            1907- Elk, deer, mountain sheep and mountain goat season Sept 15 to Jan 1.  Hunting and fishing license still $1      

            1927 - A resident fish and game license cost $2.00

 

5-5-94

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            Following up on last week's History Corner, here is some info on other game animals.

            Mongolian pheasants were released in this part of Idaho sometime around the turn of the century.  Hunting them was not allowed until 1907.   In 1909 there was a report that Chinese peasants were being released into this area.  Chukkar partridges were introduced to the Snake River country, east of here, in the 1940s.  The bird that is being chased around the mountainsides this time of year, the Merriam's turkey,  is a recently introduced species to our vicinity.

            The 1907 Idaho season for prairie chicken, pheasant, partridge and turtle dove was Sept 1 to Dec 1, with a limit of 12 to 18.     Snipe, plover, ducks and geese were legal from Sept 15 to Jan 1 with a limit of  three geese, and 24 of any one of the other birds.  Quail season was Nov 1 to Dec 1 with a limit of 18.

            On a tape recording that Jim Camp made of  Hugh Addington, Hugh commented on how many grouse there were in the Seven Devils area in his younger days.  He said, "The grouse... was so thick that you could have a grouse any time you wanted one.  I've seen them on Horse Mountain after the grasshoppers so thick... just thousands of them! That whole country was just saturated with them."

            In 1891, a tongue-in-cheek report in the Salubria newspaper tried to point out how rich the mining district was by saying that several people were making a good living by shooting Seven Devils grouse which had gold nuggets in their craws.

            The subject of Salmon fishing could be a whole other column, so I'll stick with the smaller species.  The old pioneers of the Council area said that fishing was always very good here.  They considered the main Weiser River the best place to fish for trout, especially the deep holes in the river.

            In 1899, the local fishing season was from May 1 to November 1 for trout.  It was a felony to take fish by the use of dynamite, but that didn't stop some people from doing it.  As I understand it, dynamite was put into a jar, or some other watertight container, the fuse was lit and the lid put on.  The jar was thrown into the river, and the shock of the explosion would stun or kill any nearby fish.  The fish were collected when they floated to the surface, sometimes by the dozen.  I haven't heard of anyone practicing this method in

recent years, but it was not that uncommon for a few decades after the turn of the century.

            In 1903, there was a limit of 20 lbs. of trout, bass, catfish, grayling, or sunfish.  Any fish under 4" had to be thrown back.  No use of snag hooks, explosives or nets was allowed.  It was that year  that several Council people went on an outing at East Fork of the Weiser River.   Dr. Brown caught 325 small trout.  The next day, L.L. Burtenshaw caught 180 and T.W. Johnson caught 45.

            By 1905, fishing was allowed year 'round.  The limit was still 20 lbs.; limit of 30 lbs. in possession at any time.  Trout and black bass had to be at least 4" long.

            In 1912,  some Council men caught over 600 fish in the Bear Crk and Lick Crk area.

            In May of 1925, it was announced that,  "A new fish hatchery is to be built by the state on the Weiser river about 10 miles north of Council, ..." toward Evergreen.  This hatchery provided thousands of fish that were planted all over this area for many years.  The cement "ponds" are still there as far as I know.

            Looking back like this makes one think.  The salmon are gone here, and fading fast in other places...  some species of other game fish are becoming hard to find...  and what's the limit for trout now?  So much for the "progress" we have made by multiplying the population of our own species.

 

?5-12-94?

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            There is a grave south east of Lost Lake with a morbid, but interesting, story behind it.

            The story begins back in 1930, when cowboying was a lot different than it is now.  Most of the ranchers who summered cattle on the Forest's Warm Springs grazing allotment in the West Fork / Lost Valley area lived around Fruitvale. The Circle C ranch was the one exception, having bought the large McMahan grazing permit.    Most outfits didn't have a truck to haul horses or cattle, and nobody had a horse trailer.  When they had riding to do anywhere on the Forest, the only way to get there was to get on their horse and endure however many hours in the saddle that it took to get there.     

            There wasn't even a road up the West Fork of the Weiser River beyond the Finn homestead at the mouth of Lost Creek until the 1950s.  There was a crude road in to the reservoir from Tamarack that was put in when the dam was built in 1909.  The present road from Pine Ridge was built about 1935.  

            Because of the time and distances involved in traveling to and from Lost Valley, a "cow camp" was set up in the meadow, just over the little hill east of Lost Lake where the cowboys could stay.  About all that's left now is the old log corral.  The main campground was a couple hundred yards north west of it.

            That summer of 1930, Dick Fisk (my father who was 17 at the time), Ike Glenn, Sterling McGinley, Fred Glenn, and possibly some other cowboys, were camped here when a stranger, an older gentleman, approached the camp, carrying a pack on his back.  He introduced himself as Tom Cleggette.  During the course of their conversation, Cleggette mentioned that he was doing some prospecting in the area, and implied that he had found a little gold somewhere in that part of the country.  After a brief visit, the old fellow hiked off again.  As he left, Ike called after him to be careful.  Cleggette replied that he had been in the woods all his life, and knew how to take care of himself.  It would be the last time any of them ever saw Tom Cleggette alive.

            The next June (1931) Tommy Clay, who was riding for the Campbell ranch, and Fitz Mink, riding for the grazing association, were hunting cattle south east of Lost Lake, just south of where the present road from Pine Ridge tops out.  As they rode through the trees, something out of place caught there eyes.  Coming closer, they were stunned to find the badly decomposed body of a man crumpled up against the trunk of a tree.

            Sheriff Bill Winkler, who by this time was no spring chicken at the age of 65, and County coroner Bob Young came up from Council to investigate.  The clues they found told a tragic tale.

From a hunting license in the man's wallet, he was identified as Tom Cleggette, age 71.  The rest of the information on the license, including where he might have come from, had been obliterated by water stains. 

            A few hundred yards from the body, a crude camp was found.  It consisted of a tarp stretched over a ridge pole, with vertical logs forming a wall at one end.  A large pile of fire wood was stacked nearby.  Cleggette had evidently become snow bound here during the winter.  On the margins of a road map, he had written a sort of diary, little of which remained readable.  The one, ominous notation that was decipherable was dated January 11.  It consisted of the stark statement, "All is gone."  Apparently he had eaten the last of his food supply.  Another note began, "Tell ...", but the rest of the message had been washed away.

            There was some evidence that Cleggette had killed and eaten a deer during his ordeal.  He had finally fashioned a crude pair of snow shoes and tried to escape his dire predicament.  After a desperate struggle through deep snow, he only made it the short distance to where his body was later found before giving up.  It could have been that he was too weak to return to camp.  Or maybe he decided it was useless to even try.  In his hand was found a semi-automatic German Luger pistol.  Two shots had been fired.  One had pierced his heart.  Winkler and Young speculated that the second round, which had not entered Cleggette's body, had been the result of a contraction of his hand as he died.

            The men had planned to transport the body to Council for burial, but it was so decomposed that it wasn't practical.  For the past 63 years, Tom Cleggette's body has reposed under the spot where it was discovered.  No relatives or further clues to his identity were ever found.

            If you enjoy stories like this, please support our effort to improve the museum.  The word "history" is mostly "s-t-o-r-y".  Each item in the museum has a tale to tell, and we want to tell it.  We want to create a fitting place to preserve the incredible stories of what happened here... for you, and for generations to come.  Please consider a contributing whatever you can.

 

5-21-94???

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            Lately there has been some publicity concerning the Idaho State Seal, and the woman, Emma Edwards Green, who designed it.  You may not know that Emma Edwards (her maiden name) also designed a U.S. half dollar, lived in this area for a time, and taught school at Lick Creek.

            Emma's  father, a former governor of Missouri, came west to California in the 1840s, and later to Boise.  When Idaho became a state in 1890, the first legislature authorized a competition for the design of a state seal.  By this time, Emma had studied art in New York City.  She submitted a design, won the contest and was awarded $100 for her work.    A painting she did of the seal was exhibited at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.  The Idaho Historical society now has the painting. 

            Idaho has the distinction of having the only state seal that was designed by a woman.  Emma's name has been missing from the state seal ever since Paul Evans revised it in 1957.  Recently, Governor Andrus signed a bill to put her name back on the seal, along with Evans' name.

            About 1895, while living in Salubria (near present - day Cambridge), Miss Edwards submitted a design for a new fifty cent piece.  The woman depicted on her drawing for the coin was patterned after a local young lady who was an acquaintance of hers.  Emma's design was picked by the Treasury out of several hundred proposed.  Of course the coin is no longer in circulation.

            Emma Edwards was friends of Arthur and Pearl Huntley.  The Huntleys were a couple who had the ranch just south of Cuprum that is now owned by the Speropolus family.  In1896, Emma was teaching at the Lick Creek school.   I assume that the Lick Creek school was near the OX Ranch headquarters there, which was the location of a hotel run by Charley Anderson at the time.  (If anybody knows for sure where this school was at, please call me.)  This was ten years before Arthur and Pearl were married in 1904, and Emma was acquainted with Arthur Huntley at the time.  Emma stayed with the Huntleys for a time after their marriage.  Someone with a fertile imagination (not me of course) might wonder if Arthur and Emma ever courted, and just what the relationship between the trio was later.

            The summer that Emma taught at the Lick Creek school (1896) was also the year that Arthur Huntley's friends, the Caswell brothers, discovered gold at Thunder Mountain.  You may be familiar with the story of how Huntley had grubstaked the Caswells with $50, and consequently became quite wealthy from this investment.

             At some point, Emma Edwards married a miner named James Green, and lived with him in Boise. Emma Edwards Green died in 1942.

 

 

 

5-17-94…

 

?5-24-94…?

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            The year of 1862 probably brought more change to what was soon to become the territory of Idaho than any other.  The previous April, the breaking threads of national tension in the Eastern U.S. had turned into a rip at Fort Sumter.  By 1862 a giant gaping rent had torn the national fabric apart as the Civil War swung into its bloody stride.       But people in Idaho were too distracted to exhibit much interest in the War.  It was as if a curtain had opened, spot lights blazed and trumpets blared.  Thousands of fortune seekers dashed onto the pristine wilderness stage to begin a frenzied performance.

            If one month of 1862 were to be singled out as the most pivotal, it would be July.  It was that month that Levi Allen discovered copper in the Seven Devils.  That story has been told enough, including in Heidi Bigler Cole's recent book, that I won't detail it here.

            Also in July of 1862, another rich gold bearing area was discovered at Warren's Diggings, about 23 miles to the south east of Florence.  At almost the same time, enormous gold deposits were discovered in the Boise Basin in the mountains north east of present-day Boise.

             Another major event that fateful month was that Tom Goodale started a wagon trail through the Weiser  River territory.  Looking for an Oregon Trail shortcut, Goodale took a train of about 60 wagons from Boise, through the Emmett area, and across the Crane Creek hills to near present day Cambridge.  Here the party was at a loss as to how to proceed for about two weeks.  Exploring to the north, the Cuddy and Seven Devils Mountains convinced them it was not wise to continue in that direction.  To the west, they ran across John Brownlee's ferry, which he had just built across the Snake River near the mouth of Brownlee Creek..  Brownlee came to the wagon camp and made a deal with the group to ferry the wagons across the Snake without charge if they, in return, would build a road to his ferry. This was agreed to, and the road was built.  It probably following the well marked Indian trail that already existed on this route.

            While the wagon train was camped in the Cambridge area, a girl named  Martha Jane Robertson died on August 21.  She was buried near that location.  A monument commemorating this first White grave in this part of Idaho now stands in front of the Cambridge museum.

            Although it was never adopted as a popular route for west bound wagon trains, Goodale's cutoff between Boise and eastern Oregon quickly became a major route traveled by thousands of miners and others coming from Oregon to the Boise Basin gold strike. This cutoff became known as the "Brownlee Trail".

            Instead of continuing to Oregon, three wagons from Goodale's train split from the party near Midvale, and headed north for the mines at Florence.  The fate of these wagons, and the story of the eight men who accompanied them, has become a local legend.  Their story next week.

            Have you written that check yet?

 

?6-2-94…..?

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            Instead of continuing to Oregon, three wagons from Tom Goodale's train split from the group, near Midvale, and headed north for the mines at Florence.  Although whites started using a trail up the Payette River that same year, which went through Long Valley, past Payette Lakes and on to Warren and Florence, these men either didn't know about this route, or it had not yet been established.  One has to remember that, at this time, the vast area between Boise and Florence was totally uninhabited and, except for the earlier fur trappers, virtually unexplored by white people.  These men may have been the first to attempt to reach Florence from the south instead of via Lewiston.  They certainly were the first to attempt this route with wagons.

            The best known of the men on this expedition was Dunham Wright, a distant cousin of Abraham Lincoln.  Almost 70 years after this journey, Wright returned to the area to recount his adventures.  It was 1929, and Council was holding the first of several community "Pioneer Picnics".  Wright, then 87 years old, was the featured speaker at the event.  The following is a combination of his oratory to the crowd that day, quoted here from the June 14, 1929 the Adams County Leader, and letters written by Wright.  I have made some punctuation changes  and added my own comments within brackets ([]). 

 

   I was here, in these hills and valleys 67 years ago and was doing everything in my power to find a way out of here,...

    It was August 1862 that I passed through this district, and as we drove up this morning I wanted to see some of the old sarvice bushes from which we picked sarvice berries on that former trip.  Friends, without those sarvice berries, I would not be with you today.

    With seven other men I left the main emigrant train of 60 wagons at Middle valley and started to go to Florence where rich placer diggings were reported.  We started with three wagons.  The first day we left one wagon and doubled our ox teams on the other two.  Then we rolled rocks, cut trees, got down steep mountains by tying trees behind the wagons, and the hill sides were so steep that it seemed the wagons would tip over endwise.  [They went up the Little Weiser River drainage.] Then we came to more difficulties and finally to what looked like the jumping off place.  [This was at the head of the Little Weiser, overlooking the steep drop off into Long Valley.]  There we abandoned the other two wagons and cut up the wood of them to make pack saddles. 

 One of the men was a carpenter and had some tools with him.  Cinches and other straps were made from the canvas tops of the wagons.  We camped here for about two weeks

We had to make pack animals out of our cattle and that is a mighty hard thing to do.  Cattle won't stand for it.  But we put our blankets on them and we had one pony that we packed with our small quantity of flour and ammunition.  Everything in readiness we took a long last sorrowful look  at our old wagons that we had mutilated, leaving chains, trunks, and all other paraphernalia that could not well go on oxen's backs.

    Finally, when we started with this pack train, we did not proceed far when the pony rolled down the mountain side and landed in a small lake at the bottom.   It took two men half a day to get him back, delaying our trip down the mountain, dark overtaking us long before we were half way down, having to stop and tie our oxen to trees and so dark we had to feel for the tree, took our packs off and got into our blankets, etc. the best we could, tired, hungry and thirsty.  I woke next morning almost 15 feet below my blankets.

    When we got the pony out and repacked, we neglected to put on the ammunition, and went away without it.  Then we found ourselves in a hostile Indian section without ammunition.  The Indian signs were to be seen here - figures with arrows sticking in them, and we knew what that meant. [On peeled trees along the trail, the Indian s had drawn pictures of men, and an arrow was left sticking in them.] We did not take to the Indian trail, but traveled after dark among the lodge pole pine - tired, hungry, chilled, and anything but comfortable. I was then a boy of 20.

    We followed down a stream and came to a valley where there was high grass [Long Valley], and during camp, a yellow jacket swarm attacked our cattle, causing them to go bucking and bawling in every direction and scattering our food and bedding to every quarter of the compass.   It was the greatest stampede the world has ever known for the size of it I think.  Eight big steers going bucking, spiking, bawling, tails in the air, tinware rattling like a chaviri, they turned their packs underneath them and tramped our bedding and wearing apparel into strings, and tinware into a cocked hat, the whole thing looked as though it had passed through a terrible cyclone.]  We spent three days getting things together, salvaging what food we could find through the high grass and what clothing and quilts we could get that would hold together.

 

            Wright was almost overwhelmed by the ordeal.  He felt they were hopelessly lost somewhere in the uninhabited vastness of the Rocky Mountains.  The men camped at Payette Lakes for three weeks, trying to find a way out.  They climbed to the top of the highest mountain they could find in an effort to detect smoke from a friendly camp fire, but saw none.  They almost froze at night; having nothing but a few blankets to sleep under.  And they soon had almost nothing to eat but service berries.  He noted that in this strange country, the familiar stars in the sky were the only things he had ever seen before.  His gold fever, which had burned hot until that point, left him and never returned.

           

            Dunham continues:

 

    Like old Moses leading the children of Israel out of the wilderness, we had to lead out of that wilderness, but while he was forty years at it, we were only three weeks.  Finally we were obliged to take the Indian trail down the Salmon.  After many difficulties, we saw in the distance what we thought was a band of elk, but what proved to be cattle.  When we found they were cattle, we shouted for joy.  We had subsisted on a little piece of bacon each morning and those sarvice berries.  We were hungry and exhausted, but salvation was at hand.

            The young men finally made it to Florence, but they met with the same disappointing failure to strike it rich as most of the other fortune seekers there did.

            A few years later, early residents of Indian Valley found the wagons left behind by Wright's party, and were puzzled as to who would have taken them to such a remote spot, and why.  It remained a mystery for a good many years until Wright's story became known.  These early settlers burned what was left of the wagons to salvage the iron.  Iron was a precious and hard to acquire material in those days, given the distance to anyplace to buy it.  A good blacksmith could turn almost any piece of iron into a useful item.  The location where the deserted wagons was found became known as "Burnt Wagon Basin".  The Forest Service has planted a permanent marker on this spot.

            In a glass case at the museum, there are a few pieces of the wagons, some nails from them, and a photo of Dunham Wright.  Why don't you drop by and see it, and while you're there, drop some money in the donation jar?

 

6-9-94

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            All of the early mining done in the Seven Devils was "underground" as opposed to open pit.   The term "tunnel" is usually used to indicate a horizontal opening.  A "shaft" refers to a vertical tunnel, and an "inclined shaft" is a slanting tunnel that slopes at an angle, between vertical and horizontal. 

            The old style of underground mining was similar to modern methods except that there were few machines to do the work.  Except where huge, extremely expensive boring machines are used,  digging a tunnel still requires drilling and blasting.  Instead of pneumatic rock drills, early miners used a hammer and "star drill".  The hammer was usually a single or double jack.  The drill was a chisel which was up to several feet long, and had a star design on the business end instead of a single, flat tip.  One man would hold the chisel while another would drive it into the rock.  After every blow, the chisel was rotated slightly.  After the hole was deep enough, it was filled with blasting powder.  A blasting cap was placed on the end of a long piece of fuse and then shoved into the powder.  The fuse was lit, everyone backed off a safe distance.

            In a tunnel, after the smoke and dust had cleared, the loosened ore was shoveled into ore carts.  These hand-pushed ore carts had wheels similar to those on a railroad car, and  ran on a much smaller version of a train track.  This track was extended into the mountain as the tunnel was dug, and led back to the "portal" or opening where the contents of the ore carts were unloaded.  If the blasted material was not worth keeping, it was dumped off the end of the tracks onto the "tailings pile".

            This cart and track method of removing ore also applied to moderately inclined shafts, except that a powered hoist had to be used to bring up the carts.  On vertical shafts, buckets were used instead of carts.

            The blasting process was not without its hazards.  Even after dynamite replaced black powder, it was very touchy if it was too old, or especially if had been frozen.   And fuses sometimes burned much faster than they were supposed to.

            One of the most common types of accidents was the result of a "missed hole".  A typical mishap was reported in 1905, in the Weiser Signal newspaper.  The account said that  Ed Fulp and Fred Powell were seriously injured at the California Mine in the Seven Devils.  A number of charges had been fired, and all but one exploded.  Waiting a sufficient length of time, the men returned to investigate.  As they approached the spot where they had placed the charges, the remaining one exploded.   Both men were bowled over and showered with sharp pieces of rock.  They escaped with their lives, but were badly cut and bruised.

            Another missed hole accident happened at the Queen mine in 1906.  Bill Carrick and Fred Lincoln were on the night shift.  They were digging with picks when Carrick hit a "missed shot" left by the day shift, exploding the charge.   One piece of rock hit Carrick over the right eye, knocking him down and rendering him unconscious for a short time.  Lincoln was uninjured.  Dr. Peacock, the mine foreman, fired the day shift crew for negligence and carelessness.

            What may have been the most spectacular such stories on local record  involved one of the areas best known pioneers, Charlie Allen.  Charlie learned the dangers of mining the hard way in 1892.  He and two partners had dug a vertical shaft at their Lobo mine in the Seven Devils.  It was about 6:00 PM and Charlie wanted to knock loose an extra big bunch of rock so they would have plenty of work the next day.  The other two men cleared out before Charlie lit the fuse.  After the fuse was burning, Charlie yelled, "FIRE IN THE HOLE!"   As he scrambled up the first of a set of wooden ladders, he was 110 feet underground.

            Knowing the undependability of fuses, Charlie was in a hurry... maybe too much of a hurry.  Or maybe he was just tired at the end of a long, hard day.  At the 65 foot level, he had to change from one ladder to another.  He slipped.  In an instant, he was falling, headfirst, into the blackness below him.  About eight feet from the bottom of the shaft, he slammed into a rock ledge, landing on his side.  Charlie lay there in agony, knowing that he was about to die.  If the fall hadn't injured him beyond recovery, the double charge of giant powder just two feet below him would certainly snuff out his life like a candle in a hurricane.  It would only be a matter of seconds now.   dependability

            Charlie's companions waited at the top of the shaft.  They listened in horror as they heard him slip and fall.  A minute later, the muffled boom of the exploding powder shook the dirt under their feet.  Dust and air rushed up the shaft in front of them.  Feeling overwhelmed by the tragedy, they descended into the abyss to recover Charlie's lifeless, mutilated body.

            As the two men neared the bottom of the shaft, they heard something move.  They went closer, and there, in the light of their lantern sat Charlie, calmly smoking his corncob pipe.  He was scratched, badly bruised and generally a mess, but, miraculously, none of his injuries were life-threatening. 

            This account is based on an account of the events in the Idaho Citizen newspaper of Salubria, Feb 12, 1892   The editor noted that even though the story was hard to believe, the men swore it happened.

 

6-16-94

            I apologize for missing a week sometimes in writing the History Corner.  I have the roof off of our house, and have had to to burn the midnight oil on my remodeling job between rain storms.

            This time, I thought I would throw together a few things about one of the families that helped make this area what it is today.  Part of what peaked my interest is a grave of a fairly young woman, located under a pine tree just off the Council Cuprum road.

             Forty-two year old Frederick C. Wilkie, his wife Sarah, and their four sons, (Fred, Arthur, Ralph and Richard) settled on Hornet Creek at "Dale" (now called "Upper Dale") in 1882.  They lived where Mill Creek meets Hornet Creek, just south of the old Hornet Guard station.        

            In the spring following their arrival here, Sarah gave birth to a fifth son, Oscar Craig Wilkie.  (He was known by his middle name, Craig.) Almost exactly a year later, in March of 1884, Sarah died.  Her grave is about a quarter of a mile east the Wilkie homestead, about 100 yards above the road.  She was only 33 years old.

                Just over a year and a half after Sarah died,  in 1885,  Frederick married Fannie Fletcher.  A girl and two more boys were born during their ten and a half year marriage.  Frederick and Fannie were divorced in the spring of 1896.  During the time that Fannie was married to Frederick, she taught school at Upper Dale and at several locations near Salubria and Midvale.

            Frederick Wilkie had been a Major in the Union army during the Civil war, and was known locally as "Major Wilkie".  He was involved in local politics, serving as  justice of the peace and county commissioner.  He and his sons are probably best remembered for establishing one of the first sawmills in the area. 

             The first sawmill that  the Wilkies used was one Frederick bought in 1885 from A.F. Hitt, the man after whom Hitt Mountain near Cambridge is named.  Hitt had run an active lumber business with this mill on Hitt Creek some miles west of Cambridge, until one day in 1884, while working at the mill, he slipped and fell into the sharp teeth of the saw.  One of his feet was caught in the saw in such a way that the heel was cut off.  It was an extremely painful, debilitating injury that never did heal, forcing him to sell the mill the next summer.

            This sawmill was a "sash" type mill that had a saw blade that reciprocated up and down.  It was outdated even at that time.   When Hitt operated the mill, the Indians in the in the area didn't understand how it moved by itself and were extremely afraid of it.  They would come no where near it.    Former residents of Norway, however, are said to have had a different reaction to the sash mill.  The mill made a peculiar sound that resembled the rhythm of a Norwegian folk song, and any time a Norwegian came within hearing distance of a sash mill, it is said they had the irresistible urge to do a folk dance.

            By all indications, the sash mill was a water powered mill under the ownerships of both Hitt and the Wilkies.  It is thought that when Wilkies operated the mill, it sat beside the creek in the depression just north of the Council - Cuprum road, just before the road turns up Mill Creek.  It is probable that the creek here was named "Mill Creek" because of the presence of this early mill.  Also, the narrow canyon through which Mill Creek flows just before reaching Hornet Creek is called Wilkie Canyon.          

          There were very few sawmills in the Council Valley vicinity during the early years of settlement, and demand for lumber constantly increased as more and more people came to the area.  By 1891, the Wilkie sawmill was not able to keep up with the demand for lumber.  In 1894, they acquired new mill equipment.  The new set up probably had two circular saws which were aligned so that one cut the upper part of the log, and the other cut the lower part.

             The Wilkies operated mills in various locations in the head of Hornet Creek and Crooked River.  By 1899, they had mills both on Hornet Creek and  the Middle Fork of the Weiser River.

            Fred Wilkie Jr. had more scholarly interests than his sawmilling brothers.  He worked for several newspapers, including the Weiser City Leader, the Idaho Citizen (at Salubria) and the Idaho Statesman.  He later became president of the Northwestern Engineering Co. After a stint at a paper in Utah, he came back to Hornet Creek in 1900. His house was just across the creek from the Upper Dale school.  This house later belonged to W.R. Shaw (Deb Shaw's father).

            Although he didn't seem to take to the vocation of sawing boards, he didn't stray far from the family business after he moved back to the area.  He made his living here as an architect and carpenter.   When the old I.O.O.F. hall was built in Council in 1905, Fred Wilkie drafted the plans for the building.

            More on the Wilkies next week.

 

6-23-94

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            Of the Wilkie boys, Art and Rich were apparently the most ambitious.  The two seemed almost driven to achieve.    Whether it started out as the grand plan it would become, may never be known, but things began to fall into place in 1908.   About this time, Art Wilkie built a planing mill at the railroad about a half mile east of the main Weiser River, about six and a half miles north of Council.  Here, the road to the West Fork of  the Weiser branched off of the crude wagon trail that criss-crossed the river on up to Starkey where the trail ended.  The mill was probably built on the flat between the railroad tracks and the lone hill at the present site of Fruitvale.

             By the fall of that year (1908), the operation was in full swing and things were looking good.  The P+IN railroad even built a siding at the mill, probably at the request of the Wilkies.  But it wasn't long until their good fortune took a turn for the worse.  Sparks from the steam engine that powered the planer mill started a fire which destroyed the mill, the lumber yard, and  even the engine itself.  Undaunted by the major setback, the Wilkies immediately built another, even bigger mill on the same spot.

            It must have been late 1908 or early1909, when the Wilkies, under the name " Wilkie Traction and Transportation Company", built a road over the "Ridge" to the present site of Fruitvale.  The plan was to process the lumber from their sawmills here at their planer, and load it on train cars.  The tracks were closer to their operations at this point than at Council. 

            The Wilkies were some of the first people to use steam powered tractors, then called "traction engines", in this part of the country.  They almost certainly used them to build this route which became known as "the traction road".  Stationary steam engines had been in common use for some time in applications such as the Seven Devils mines.  But these mobile engines were something new, at least in this area.  One of the steam engines in Council's town square is thought to have belonged to the Wilkies.

            Maps of the area dated 1912, show the Wilkie Traction Road going east across the hills from the Peck place near Dale. (This is the old Armacost place - the OK ranch - a mile or so toward town from the old Hornet Guard station.)  Traces of it can still be seen here.  The road  went across to North Hornet Creek, then continued east, probably up what is now known as "Traction Gulch",  to the present end of the Ridge Road.  From the head of this gulch, it most probably followed the route of the present  Ridge Road except for a half mile or so just before it crosses the West Fork of the Weiser.  Here, the original road followed the creek bottom.  Sometime around the 1940s, it was changed to the side hill.  Before this, the original stretch of road here was sometimes a bottomless mud bog in the spring.

             Sometime between 1909 and 1912, homesteaders on the Ridge built a shorter road connecting the  Hornet Creek road to the Wilkie traction road.  It started just up from the Lower Dale school and went north west up what was known as "Warner Gulch", and connected with the traction road where the road now tees at the cattle guard.  This Warner Gulch road, along with the traction road that went on to the present site of Fruitvale, became the county road in 1912, and is now called Ridge Road. 

            At the time the Wilkie Traction road was built, about 1908, there were five homesteaders living on Pleasant Ridge.  By 1912, the Ridge had become a booming homestead area with about 26 families living on scattered dry land farms across the rocky hills between Hornet Creek and Fruitvale.      Using two traction engines, the Wilkies pulled three or four wagons at a time with each engine, hauling about 10,000 to 12,000 board-feet of lumber each trip.  By 1912, the Wilkies would ship about 7 million board feet of lumber from Fruitvale by rail.

             In 1909,  a post office was granted to a spot  near the Wilkie planer mill.  The general area had heretofore been referred to as "West Fork".  The new post office was officially given the name "Lincoln".  At the same time, Art Wilkie, along with some other men, formed the Lincoln Lumber Company, with Art Wilkie as president.  A young man named Andy Carroll became the first Postmaster.  Carroll, a friend and sawmill employee of the Wilkies, was also Secretary and Treasurer of the Lincoln Lumber Company.  The post office may have been in the Lincoln Lumber Company store which records show was managed by Carroll in April of 1910.  Andy's father, Joseph Carroll, who had run stores in Midvale and Council and had run the hotel at Lick Creek,  may have been involved with the store at this time.  Another source says that the store belonged to Rich Wilkie.  Almost as soon as the name Lincoln was granted by the Postal Department, the name was changed to "Fruitvale".

            After moving to Fruitvale, Rich Wilkie sold fire insurance, was a notary public, and helped publish a newspaper called the "Fruitvale Echo".   Art Wilkie, owned and operated the Fruitvale hotel for a time. (Joslin's house now.)   Aside from the family operations in this area, he was also was involved in logging operations at Tamarack for a time.   

            By 1910, things were going so well that the Wilkie brothers found the traction road inadequate to handle the demands that lumber and freight traffic placed upon it.  They made plans to build a railroad line between Fruitvale and Crooked River and organized a stock company to sell shares in the venture.  The planned route was to parallel that of their traction road.  For one reason , the rail line was never built. 

            More on Fruitvale and the Wilkies next week.       

 

6-30-94

HISTORY CORNER

by Dale Fisk

            At some point, the Wilkie brothers began to form a plan that would make the place where their new road met the railroad nothing less than the hub of the local universe.  Aside from serving their own lumber shipping needs, they realized that, with their new route, Lincoln would be the nearest railroad point to upper Hornet Creek and all of the Seven Devils mining area.  And it was also very near the hot springs at Starkey, which, since being reached by the railroad, was becoming a very popular tourist destination.

            As county after county was being created across the West, the competition between towns for the prize of becoming the county seat was very heated.  Sometimes it even resulted in violence.  When Adams County was carved out of Washington County in 1911, it was a custom made opportunity for Art and Rich.   The Idaho legislature appointed Council as the temporary county seat, but a permanent county seat would be determined on the next election, which would be in November of 1912.    If Fruitvale could become the county seat, it would turn the Wilkie real estate holdings into gold.

            The Fruitvale Echo newspaper began publication in April of 1912.    The publisher was listed as the "Fruitvale Commercial Club", but public perception seems to have been that it was published by Rich Wilkie.  And in reality, the paper may have been little more than a vehicle for his personal ambitions.  

             The new Fruitvale newspaper was almost immediately a thorn in the side of its rival, the Council Leader.  For months after the Echo first appeared in print, the Leader editor, James A. Stinson, patiently ignored the soap box editorials printed in the Echo as one would the tirades of a younger sibling.  His only comment was the veiled reference when the Echo first began publication, "It was only an 'Echo' drifted down from the hills."   Finally in September, Stinson reached his breaking point and cut loose with a scathing front page attack,  responding to a comment the Echo had made on an article in the Leader.  In one of the three separate shots at the Echo, Stinson said, "... the poor thing does the baby act by crying that we abused it.  If you can't stand it why don't you get a man in your place?"

            During the short life span of the  Echo, Rich Wilkie waged an incessant, unrelenting, almost religious crusade to make Fruitvale the county seat instead of Council.   Among other virtues, he extoled the central location of Fruitvale in relation to other communities in the county.  Wilkie spent a great deal of time and energy traveling all over the new county, especially in the Seven Devils, gathering 506 signatures on a petition to put Fruitvale on the upcoming ballot as an official candidate for county seat.  When the deadline for filing the petitions had passed, Wilkie went to court to bar New Meadows and Council from appearing on the ballot.  Represented by well known attorney Frank Harris of Weiser, Wilkie claimed that Council and New Meadows didn't gather the number of signatures required by law.  Wilkie also contested the names of 73 New Meadows petition signatures.  He must have gone through them with a fine toothed comb.

            The controversy dragged on for months, but by a few days before the election, Judge E.L. Bryan ruled that the law didn't outline requirements for inclusion on a ballot in such a case, and ruled that the towns could indeed appear on the ballot.

            At this time, some Meadows Valley people were still steaming from the fact that the railroad had been built to New Meadows instead of to the established town of Meadows.  They felt that land investors at New Meadows had pulled strings in order to make themselves wealthy.  Some thought that Wilkie's motives in his lawsuit were suspiciously similar, as he and his family had much to gain from the success of Fruitvale.

            When election day rolled around, the weather was miserable.  A blinding storm with a mixture of rain and snow plagued the area all day.  The weather proved to be an ill omen for the dreams of the Wilkie family.  Council won the county seat election by a land slide, with a total of 919 votes.  To add insult to injury, voters from the Fruitvale precinct gave 76 votes to Council, a number almost equal to the total number of 87 votes that Fruitvale received from all over the county!  The Seven Devils towns proved to be the most supportive of Fruitvale, but only by a narrow margin.

            When it became clear that Fruitvale was not going to become what the Wilkie family had hoped, they seemed to lose interest, and left for greener pastures.  Not long after the election, Ralph moved to Portland.  The following spring, Art and Craig moved their families to Ashton, Idaho.  In the election of 1924, Art, who was still living in Ashton, ran as a candidate for the Idaho Supreme Court judge.  Evidently he lost in the primary election.

            Rich Wilkie soon followed his brothers to south eastern Idaho, settling in Idaho Falls.  He eventually became a lawyer there.  He died there of a heart attack, in 1925, at the age of 49.

            A few years ago, some relatives of the Wilkies were in Council looking for local information on the family.  This was before I collected all of this, so if anyone knows how to reach them, please let me know.

 

7-7-94

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            One of Council's best known places of business in the early days was a store that once stood where the Council Valley Market 's parking lot is now.  The first merchants associated with the beginnings of this store were Sam, Harry and Abe Criss and a man named Cohen.  Initially, they had no store, but traveled up and down the Weiser River valleys, selling goods out of a wagon.   Every week, during the mid 1890s, their ad appeared in the Weiser paper:

 

COHEN & CRISS 

     The traveling merchants will sell you goods and strange to relate they

 DON'T WANT ANY CASH!

      But prefer to take chickens, eggs, butter, hogs and such things, allowing the highest market price for everything, and they come right to your door and get the produce and deliver the goods.  Carry dry goods, notions.

 

            By 1898, Cohen and Criss had stores Salubria and Council.  The one in Council was built in the fall of that year, about where Shavers is now.  It was operated by Sam Criss.  Carlos Weed's father, Carl Weed, had been in business with Sam Criss in one way or another about two years at this time.  Weed had joined up with Criss right after leaving college in Oregon in 1896, at the age of 22.

            In 1900, the Salubria Citizen newspaper reported an incident here concerning Weed:  "News has been received of a prize fight or some other kind of a scrap at Council between Carl Weed and Chas Irish.  Particulars are lacking."  And in another place in the same issue:  "Chas. Irish has sold his saloon business in Council and left for new fields since his bout with Carl Weed, in which he came out second best."

            In 1901, Abe Criss was on the train headed for Weiser.  Just as the train pulled into the depot, he dropped to the floor of the car - dead of a heart attack.  The Council store was soon bought out by Bernard and Herman Haas and run as the Haas Brothers store.

            In January of 1902, the store burned, along with several other businesses north of the town square (now the park) in Council.    The following April, the company was reorganized as Haas Bros. & Co.   Sam Criss and Carl Weed became partners with the new owners, and a new store  was built where the parking lot for the Council Valley Market is now.   In 1905, it measured 26 by 100 feet, and had two warehouses, one 30 X 80, the other 30 X 40.  The Knights of the Macabees held their elaborately costumed lodge meetings upstairs.

            The store became a center of activity in Council.  It was a common sight to see large pack trains loading supplies for the Seven Devils mines.  People came from as far as Long Valley to stock up here.       

            Sometime during the next five or so  years, Carl Weed became the owner and / or manager of the store.  In 1909, Tom Doughty ran it as a hardware store.  By 1912, George M. Winkler became partners with Carl Weed, and ran the store.  He sold guns, ammunition and farm equipment in addition to the usual assortment of hardware.

            By 1920, the business had become the Council Grocery Company.  At some time before this, Jim Winkler had become Carl's partner, but now was being replaced by Charles Weed, Carl's brother.  Charles had just returned from teaching at a college in China  for about 20 years.  The store soon became known as the "Weed & Weed" store.  The partnership lasted until 1928, when Carl bought out his brother.

            In 1941, the local paper reported that due to "ill health",  Carl had sold the store to Sam Cream of the Weiser Grocery Company.  If the paper had its facts straight, the new owner apparently never operated the establishment.  Soon after the Second World War started, scrap paper that was being collected for the war effort by school children was stored in the empty store building.  Finally, in 1943, the paper reported that Ernest Winkler, who had owned the building for several years, was tearing it down.  So ended a Council landmark.

            It was in 1941 that the present Council Valley Market building was built just east of the old Weed store.  It was originally the Golden Rule Store, and also housed the Adams County Bank.  I'm not sure exactly when the Golden Rule went out of business, but I remember it, so it must have been in the late 1950s.  I wouldn't mind hearing from someone who knows when it was, who ran it, etc.  Also, when did the bank move out?  Did it move from there to what is now the drygoods section of Shaver's?  Was that a different bank? 

            I have shown my slide show to two Junior High history classes, the Odd Fellows and the Grange.  It's a pretty interesting and educational presentation, so if your group wants to see it, give me a call.  I got an interesting call from former Council lad, Tim DeHaas, recently.  He gets the Record where he lives in Arizona, enjoys the History Corner and says that his neighbors down there enjoy reading it too.  And I was also able to help Barbara Pittman of Ukiah, CA get some info on her grandmother, Grace Hutchinson, who taught at the Upper Dale school in 1912.  She sent a donation toward the museum project.  So far we haven't been overwhelmed with people shoveling money at us, but now that I have a roof on my house again I'm gonna start trying to rock the boat a little.

 

7-14-94

HISTORY CORNER

by Dale Fisk

            Another store that was well known in Council was the Cool and Donelly feed store.  It stood just east of the current location of Norm's Corner, just south west of the Ace building.  It was a very long, narrow building, run by Fred Cool and Dale Donelly.

            Fred's brother, L.S. Cool, started the first newspaper in Council about 1901 or so.  It was called the Council Journal.  The office was on the north west corner of Moser and Main, just west of the old Winkler and Cox blacksmith shop.  (If you've seen my slide show, you've seen both of these.)  The Journal didn't stay in publication over a few years for some reason.  It was replaced in 1908 by the Council Leader, which was the predecessor to the Adams County Leader.

            Fred Cool originally had a store across the corner of this intersection, on the south east corner of Moser and Main.    Around the turn of the century, famous sawmill man, Steve Richardson had a store there.  By 1908, Cool was operating a feed store at this location.  In 1910, The Washington County Land and Development Company bought Cool's lot and built the Pomona Hotel there.  Fred then bought the lot east of  The Whiteley Brother's Store (now Norm's Corner) and built a new store.

            In 1912, an ad in the local paper proclaimed, "Public weighing on a Fairbanks scale by a licensed weigher, at Cools."  also selling "pure river ice", grain sacks, sack needles and twine.  Another mainstay that he sold was coal.  About 1914, Cool was joined in the business by Dale Donelly, who lived on Hornet Creek.  The two men sometimes organized shipments of hogs, cattle or other livestock via the railroad.

            In 1922, Cool retired, selling out the Donelly.  Cool moved to Portland and ran a hotel there for a number of years.  Donelly continued with the business for some time.  According to my father, Dale Donelly was one of the finest men he ever met.  I guess that's why he named me after him. He died when I was very young - in the 1950s.

            Somebody please tell me when Donelly closed the store, and / or when it was torn down.  It was before my time.  There is a photograph in the Idaho Historical Society's file in Boise of  the inside of the store.  But we don't have one at the museum yet.  If any one has a picture of the store, please let me know.  For that matter, you probably know by now that we are trying to collect all the old pictures we can.  The library even has budgeted some funds for this.  If you have interesting old pictures of  people or places in the area, let me know.  Tony Schwartz loaned me a few great ones recently so I could copy them.  My thanks to him on behalf of the community.

            Just for general information, it's easy to copy photographs.  About all you need is a camera with a lens that can focus (like most 35 mm cameras), and a magnifying lens.  I have a set of lenses that screw onto my camera lens, but before I got them, I just used a magnifying glass.  Most of the time I just use whatever color film I have in my camera: anything from 100 to 400 ASA.  To use color film on black and white photos, you have to use natural (sun) light.  If you don't, the picture will turn out an amber color.  A well lit window sill, but not with direct sun on the photo you are copying, works great.  The hardest part is holding still enough if you don't use a tripod, and focusing precisely.  I've had pretty good luck taking hand-held shots at a 30th of a second, but a tripod is best.    Give it a try.  It's a great way to share old family pictures and make sure those memories don't get lost.

 

7-21-94 Missing?

 

7-28-94

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

    The events of human history usually flow in a gradual progression, punctuated by major events that greatly change the direction and magnitude of that flow.  One of the major motivators in the European "discovery" and conquest of America was the almost insane lust for one thing: GOLD.  Columbus, and those who followed him, including the first white people to exploit Idaho, were motivated to a large extent by the possibility of finding untapped sources of this precious purveyor of wealth and power. .

    It's hard to pinpoint an exact starting point for the settlement of Idaho by white people, but probably the most influential domino to fall in the line of events occurred near the Sacramento River in 1848.  James Marshall was cleaning out the ditch down stream from the water wheel at John Sutter's sawmill, when an unusual looking rock caught his eye. The moment he picked up that rock, which turned out to be a gold nugget, it was as if he had set off an explosion that rocked all of North America, if not the world.          Beginning the following year (1849), a tidal wave of humanity that was almost unprecedented in the history of this planet surged west in a mad rush to strike it rich.  This flood of tens of thousands of gold seekers soon splashed some of its overflow into the Northwest and Idaho.

            In 1852, E.D. Pierce , a "49'er" and trader in California, came up the Columbia River to the Clearwater River.  He soon suspected that there was gold in the area.  During the next 8 years, there were a number of gold rushes to various areas in the North West, but resistance to any invasion of whites by the Nez Perce Indians prevented mineral exploration in the Clearwater and Salmon River areas.  A treaty was made between the United States and the Nez Perce which was to keep whites out of  their homeland.  Pierce however, was determined to exploit the area, and worked incessantly toward that end.

            Wrapped in a self righteous mantel of "Manifest Destiny", Pierce smuggled prospecting equipment into Nez Perce territory on the North Fork of the Clearwater in 1860.  He did indeed find gold, and began to energetically promote the area.  Word spread all over the west that a fantastic new gold region had been located.

            Although it risked starting a war with the Indians, the unscrupulous Pierce invited prospectors to sneak into the area, and even guided them to the most promising locations.  By May of 1861, nearly 1000 prospectors had invaded the Clearwater region to seek their fortunes, and many more were hot on their heels.  Several small towns sprang up, including Pierce, Elk City, and Oro Fino.  By the end of the summer, the white population of the area that would become Idaho had gone from almost zero to over seven thousand souls, all of whom were located in the Clearwater River area.

               That same year (1861), gold was discovered just to the south, and the boom town of Florence was established.  The gold along the Clearwater had been fairly evenly distributed in the ground, with few if any rich veins. But around Florence, the deposits were close to the surface and more concentrated.  Here, a man could become fabulously wealthy over night.  The result was an even more wild rush of whites to the area.  Faced with such an overwhelming deluge, the Nez Perce gritted their teeth and bitterly did what they could to resign themselves to their fate...at least for the time being.

            Next week - more gold discoveries, and the rush of fortune seekers leads toward the settlement of the Council area.

 

? 8-4-94

Corner

by Dale Fisk

            One of the most historical spots on any tour of the Seven Devils mining district would have to be the old townsite of Helena.  It was the first town to be established in the Seven Devils.  Helena was located several miles north west of the present site of Cuprum, up and over the steep ridge between Indian Creek and the Snake River, and .  It was tucked into in the Deep Creek drainage, just across Copper creek from the Peacock mine.

            Levi Allen discovered copper at what would become the Peacock mine in 1862, but because of  its remoteness and Indian wars,  the area wasn't exploited unit the mid 1880s.  Mining didn't really get started there until Albert Kleinschmidt arrived on the scene and poured massive amounts of money into the mines.  Albert had the famous Kleinschmidt Grade built in 1890.  Most of us think of the Grade as the steep set of switchbacks south west of Cuprum, but it actually started at the Peacock mine and Helena.

            The Weiser paper reported in 1884 that a new town was being laid out in the Seven Devils that was to be called "Copperville."  This may have been the beginnings of Helena, but there is some information that a tent town by that name, or by the name "Copper Town" existed at the South Peacock mine, just to the south west of the main Peacock mine, prior to the birth of Helena. 

            Again in 1887, the paper said that a new town was being established as "Anna Bristow".  Most historians have said that this was Helena before a name change.  But, three years later (1890) the Weiser paper again reported that "a new town" called Helena was being started. This time, a post office and about twenty buildings were under construction.  Town lots measuring 25 X 100 feet were selling for $50 to $150.  When you consider that wages at that time were around a dollar a day, an equivalent price in todays dollars at even $5 and hour ($40 per day), would be $2,000 to $6,000 per lot.  That's $32,000 to $96,000 per acre!

            Moses Fuchs, a Salubria business man turned miner, was apparently the main owner of  the Helena townsite, eventually holding title to 202 of the 237 lots.  He became the first postmaster, running the post office in a store he had built.   I have no idea as to the significance of these names and dates as yet, but Fuchs filed two plats of the townsite with the County.  The first, in 1897, was filed as the town of "Seven Devils" and designated as "The world's Greatest Copper Camp. Terminus - Weiser and Idaho Northern Ry [Railway]".    He filed an identical map in 1907 as the "Helena Townsite".  The townsite was about 1500 feet long, north and south, and about 600 feet wide.  The two streets running north and south were labeled "Center" and "Main".  The two avenues crossing them were called "Copper" and "Peacock".

            It is said that Helena was named after first girl born there: Helena Smith.  But it is much more likely that the town was named for other reasons.  Helena, Montana was THE copper town in the U.S., and it was common practice to name a fledgling town after a successful one in order to be associated with it.  In addition, both Albert Kleinschmidt and Levi Allen were from Helena, Montana.

            According to one source, Helena once had three mercantile stores, six saloons, one brewery, two assay offices, two saw mills, and was served by two small dairies.  The town was very active during the mining boom, but, like all human endeavors in that district, it eventually faded away.  By 1919, there were about 25 deserted log cabins remaining at Helena.  Some of them had fallen in, others were roofless, and only one or two were habitable.

            In the late 1920s, the townsite was taken by Adams County for back taxes, and sold at auction.  The entire site was bought by Jake Wallace of New Meadows for only $15.  A few weeks afterwards, this humorous letter appeared in the Adams County Leader:

 

    Mr. E.D. Wallace, President

    General Manager and Selling

        Agent of Helena Townsite

    Main Office, New Meadows, Idaho

 

    Dear Mr. Wallace:

        Having learned of your recent acquisition of the townsite of "Helena," Idaho, I hasten to write you to ask you if you have a good corner lot which you will sell me for a nickel.  Must be clear of incumberences with deed and abstract brought down to date.  Would prefer a location near the depot and post office and preferably on the street car line.

                            Yours Very Truly,

                            H.R. Ackley

 

 

                In 1988, a camper on the Snake River near Eagle Bar thought he was being environmentally conscientious by burning his toilet paper after using nature's outdoor facilities.  The result was a raging forest fire that destroyed over 15,000 acres .  The last two or three remaining structures at Helena that had stood for almost 100 years were burned as the fire swept through the old town site.  By the fall of 1991, erosion and salvage logging had virtually wiped out any sign of the town except for piles of tin cans.  The cans seem to have been simply thrown out the door when empty, and many of the buildings had a trash pile next to it.  Today, it's even hard to find the cans.

            This week, Ethel Gossard has made a donation in memory of her late husband Mac Gossard.  Thank you Ethel.

                        This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $1,790... we need at least $10,000 to start our much needed museum addition project.  Please help.  Donations made as memorials will be acknowledged in this column, along with he name of the person in who's honor the contribution was made.   Please send contributions to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612.  Make your check out to the Winkler Museum.

 

8-11-94

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            The main body of copper ore that was mined in the Seven Devils lays in one huge underground formation.  It starts at Lockwood Saddle, and slants downward like a giant subterranean wall, running north east all the way to Landore.   Along its path, the Alaska, Queen, Blue Jacket, Helena, Arkansaw and Decorah mines tapped into it.  All of these mines, except the last two mentioned were located in the Garnet Creek drainage. 

            As early as 1885, which was at the very beginning of the influx of miners to the Devils, a camp was established on Garnet Creek, just below the Queen mine.  Today, the collapsed opening to this mine sits just above the road that goes through Garnet Creek, connecting Lockwood Saddle and the main Cuprum - Landore road.  A huge, old metal ore bin has stood beside the tailings pile, right beside the road, for years.

            The camp on Garnet Creek was initially known as "Garnet", and had hopes of become a town.  I don't think it ever quite made that status, but it is mentioned by that name as the town a few times in newspapers of that day.  It has also been called the "Blue Jacket Camp", I suppose because the office for that mine was built there in 1899.  The two story log office building is still standing at the site of the old camp, about 100 yards down the creek (along the old road that runs straight down the canyon) from the main road and the Queen mine.  In old photos, which by the way are in the album at the library, there was hardly any brush here.  Now, the place is choked with it to the point that it's hard to see what's left of the dozen or so cabins that once stood along the creek.  The walls of the old cook house are still there and easy to see, just across the creek from the mine office.

            The old cook house was the scene of an odd but tragic event in February of 1901.  A young man named John Shroeder had been cooking at the camp since the previous July.  One evening after he put supper on tables, John stepped out the back door to get more wood for the stove.  About an hour passed before, Blue Jacket mine manager, Stuart French, and his brother William, realized that John had not come back inside.  The two men went to investigate.  As they stepped outside, they saw two hands protruding from under a large pile of snow.  It was John.    Apparently, a deep load of snow had accumulated on top of the uncovered pile of fire wood.  Instead of disturbing the snow by taking wood from the top of the pile, John had been undermining it for some time by removing wood from lower down.  His luck ran out when he pulled out one piece too many, and the whole thing collapsed on top of him, killing him.

            Another death took place in one of the cabins at Garnet, or very nearby.  Heidi Bigler Cole mentions the story of his death in A Wild Cowboy.  I've dug up a few more details.

            Albert Kleinschmidt's sons stayed in the mining district for many years after Albert sold out and left the area.   Two of the "boys", Harrison and Franz, had been living together near the Blue Jacket mine, but at some point a disagreement occurred, and Franz moved into Cuprum.   Harrison spent the winter of 1937 -38 alone in the cabin with his dog.  Toward the end of March, he felt something very wrong in his chest.  He sat down at his table and started to write a note stating that he had suffered a heart attack and needed help.  Just how the note was to get to anyone is unknown.  Maybe he planned to tie it to the dog and send him for help.  As he wrote the note, Harrison fell off his chair onto the floor.

            A week later, John Darland, Cuprum postmaster and proprietor of the Cuprum Hotel, became concerned that he had not heard from Harrison in about two weeks.  Darland headed for the cabin, finding nine feet of snow in the area when he arrived.  When he entered the cabin, Darland found Kleinschmidt dead where he had fallen.  The unfinished note was lying on the table, and the pen he had used to write it was still clasped in his hand.

            Evidently temperatures had been above freezing and Kleinschmidt's body had badly decomposed in the eight days since his death.  In her book, Heidi said that Harrison's dog had eaten part of the dead man.  I have heard this disputed, but Bert Warner says it's true.

            Darland went back to Cuprum and phoned sheriff Ed Wade and coroner Joe Ivie.  Along with Alex Shaw, they took Dr. Thurston's "snowmobile" as far as Bear.  The snowmobile was a model A Ford with skis instead of tires on the front.  There was one other like it in the area, operated by Gene Perkins to deliver mail between Council and Cuprum.

            The snowmobile couldn't make it any farther than Bear, so the men rode horseback to Cuprum.  From there, they had to take skis the remaining six miles to the cabin.  Kleinschmidt's decomposed body was wrapped in blankets and strapped to a pair of skis for the arduous journey back to Cuprum. 

            Harrison had a wife somewhere, and a son who lived in Seattle, but due to the condition of his body, he was buried immediately in the Cuprum Cemetery.  His photograph was integrated into the tombstone, and is still plainly visible.  The Cuprum cemetery is located short distance this side of Cuprum.  A small dirt road leads north west from the main road it.  Many of the grave markers have deteriorated or been destroyed, so the location and identity of all who are buried here is hard to determine. 

            The Council - Seven Devils tour is still in the works.  It's just a matter of waiting for a time when there will be less dust and the fire danger.   In the mean time, I will be presenting my slide show on Friday night, Sept. 23 at the Library meeting room at 8:00 PM.  I'll take you on a stroll up the main street of Council around the turn of the century, and tell you some things you've never heard before about why Council is the way it is today.  The informal admission price will be a donation of whatever size you see fit.

            This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $1,750... we need at least $10,000 to start our much needed museum addition project.  Please help.  Donations made as memorials will be acknowledged in this column, along with he name of the person in who's honor the contribution was made.   Please send contributions to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612.  Make your check out to the Winkler Museum.

 

8-18-94?

History Corner

            It's going to be interesting to see just when we can schedule this tour that I keep talking about.  It would be nice if it would cool down and rain before we invade that area. 

            One of the historical ranches along our tour will be the Gossard place on Hornet Creek.  William and Dora Black and their two sons settled on this ranch in1889. 

            A year after they arrived, the Blacks traded a milk cow to a nursery man in Boise for young fruit trees.  They added to their orchards as they were able, and it soon became the first, and largest, commercial orchard in Washington County.  At its peak, the Black place had about 1500 fruit trees, and a half acre of strawberries.

                Dora Black told of an incident they had with Indians in the early days:

   "The Nez Perce Indians came on their annual trip to Weiser and camped near our house.  We had a house full of friends from Weiser the same Sunday.  In the evening we were singing and dancing to the music of violin and guitar, raising lots of noise, when an Indian messenger came asking us to keep quiet. It was Sunday and the hour for their prayer services.  We were quite ashamed and kept still."

 

            In 1892, there was an outbreak of diphtheria that killed 9 people in the Council area.  Both of the Black's only children, sons died from the disease that December.  Harry was two years old.  Ralph was only two and a half.  The nearest doctor was Dr. Wm. Brown, 35 miles away in Salubria, and the medicine he sent arrived too late to save them.

            The graves of these little boys are visible from the both roads that go by the place today.  They were buried under a pine tree on the hillside, north west of the ranch buildings.  In those days it was believed that burial at night would help prevent the spread of the disease, so many diphtheria victims were buried after dark.  This may well have been how these little boys here were buried.  If so, what an eerie, heart-breaking ceremony it must have been.  The vast blackness outside the small circle of lantern light under this tree must have made it seem to Mr. and Mrs. Black that they were escorting their precious sons even farther than usual on their journey into eternity.

            Later, the family wanted to move the boys bodies to a cemetery near Council, but authorities would not allow it. Diphtheria is an extremely contagious bacterial disease and it was feared that disturbing the graves might cause a new epidemic.

            Originally an Iowa girl, Dora Black had taught school in Oregon, and then in Montana where she met and married William, before coming to Idaho.  Between 1893 and 1895, she taught in almost every school in the Council area.   Getting to and from the Upper Dale school was no problem, since it was practically next door. When she taught at the Lower Dale school, then called the "lower Hornet" school, Dora rode six miles, to and from work, each night and morning.  When engaged at the lower Council school (just north of town) and upper Council school (later called the "White" school, three miles north of town) she probably boarded with someone near the schools.  Since school terms only lasted a few months in those days, she would often be employed at two or more of these schools during the same year.  Dora helped mold the childhood minds of  such well known local citizens as Matilda Moser,  Jose Biggerstaff - White - Allen,  and Mary and Albert Robertson.        

            William Black, better known as "Billie", would seem to have been a jack of all trades who jumped from one career to another.  His parents may have started the trend.  Originally from England, they emigrated to Canada where Billie was born, then moved on to the U.S. when he was 16 years old.  He was about 30 years old when he came to this area.

            In 1896, Billie ran unsuccessfully against Art Wilkie and another man for the office of state representative.  Early in 1898, he was caught up in the fever of the Klondike gold rush, and headed north to strike it rich.  Along the way, he came to his senses and stayed in Washington until July.

            No sooner had he arrived home, when was determined to go back to Washington to make his fortune.  The Salubria Citizen reported that Billie sold his ranch to Benjamin Day, who ran the Inland Hotel in Salubria, for $4,000, and in turn, the Blacks leased the hotel from Day.   Dora later said that they traded the ranch for the hotel.  She said that one reason they gave up the ranch was that her father had died, and that his death added to the loss of their sons made her not care to live there anymore.   

            Dora, apparently also no stranger to a variety of careers, was already experienced in the hotel business, and ran the establishment while Billie went off to chase his dreams in Republic, Washington.  Those dreams were apparently short lived, as he returned within a few weeks to help run the hotel.

            Benjamin B. Day, originally from Ohio, had been a member of the Washington State Senate in 1886.  He lived in Warren before coming to Salubria at about the same time the Blacks had come to Hornet Creek.  Upon acquiring the Black ranch, Day set out to make it "... a summer resort and general stopping place for weary travelers ...".

            Ever on the move, the next summer (1899), Billie Black announced his retirement from his brief career as a hotel magnate, and the Blacks turned the business back to Mrs. Day.  By the next spring (1900), the sale of the ranch to Mr. Day had fallen through, Billie had become part owner of a mine in the Heath district, had leased the ranch to Al Jewell,  and was once again heading north with the gleam of gold in his eyes.  This time he hitched his star to the gold rush at Nome, Alaska.   And this time he actually made it there... but he only stayed a short time.            The following year (1901) Benjamin Day made another stab at buying Black's Hornet Creek property.  This time the deal stuck.  A year later, Billie and Dora were back in the hotel business, leasing the Vendome hotel in Weiser.  Again, this vocation didn't satisfy Billie's itch for very long.  By 1904, he was running a cigar store in Weiser.  From here, Billie's trail, at least through the local newspapers, becomes cold.  He apparently ran the cigar store for a longer period than most of his other callings had held him.  Billie died in 1931, and Dora continued to live in Weiser until her death in 1948.

             J.R. Sowash bought the place from D.D. Day in 1906 (for $11,000) and then sold it to August Kampeter the next year.  After August died  in 1936, his son, Bill, took over the ranch.  Bill and his wife, April, ran the ranch for many years until they sold it to Mac and Ethel Gossard  in 1971.

            I would like to thank Dr. Bruce and Rachel Gardner for a generous donation to the museum, made in memory of several people who have left us within the past year or so:

            Mac Gossard

            Chloe Ludwig

            Cleone Fraiser

            Dr. Fred Stovner

 

            This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $1,750... we need at least $10,000 to start our much needed museum addition project.  Please help.  Donations made as memorials will be acknowledged in this column, along with he name of the person in who's honor the contribution was made.   Please send contributions to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612.  Make your check out to the Winkler Museum.

 

8-25-94?

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            On our upcoming tour of the Seven Devils mining district, we will stop here.  It looks like a thousand other ordinary places in the mountains around Council.  A creek runs through a culvert under a gentle curve in the dirt road, brush and trees bury the hillsides in green, and the road continues on without giving the slightest hint of anything unusual.  The only clue that there is anything special about this location is a few symmetrically piled logs just off the road: the rotted remains of  a couple of cabins. 

            Like so many other places we pass by each day, this nondescript turn in the road once held the hopes and dreams of a generation that came before us.  This spot was once at the vibrantly beating heart of the Seven Devils mining boom.

            It started when E.D. Ford, who later developed the Black Lake mines, built a cabin along Indian Creek here in the 1890s.  In 1898, Thomas G. Jones came along.  He was a flamboyant, wealthy man who had been in on the discovery of the enormous Homesteak gold strike in Montana.  One story says that he won the land here in a poker game from Lewis Hall, president of the P&IN Railroad.  At any rate, Jones divided the land into lots and established a townsite that he dubbed "Landore" after his home town in Wales.

            By the end of that year (1898), the little burgh had a population of some 20 legal voters.  In 1900, a road was built from Landore to Bear that made for a shorter trip from the mines to Council.  It would also be less steep and muddy than the old route via Cuprum and the Huntley grade.  When the road was being planned, it was said that in good weather the new road would save two days every trip for loaded teams, and during the muddy season, teams loaded for that section might make the trip in from three to four days less time.  The shorter route caused Landore to replace Cuprum as the dominant town in the mining district.  A number Cuprum and Decorah businesses moved to Landore as a result.

            Landore grew rapidly, and by 1901, had a newspaper, a post office, several stores and hotels, and the luxury of long distance telephone service.  Just about all of these were located along the one main street which is now the curve in the road that I described at the start.

            The next year (1902) was a bad one in the Devils, and the area was very economically depressed as mining came to a standstill.  The newspaper, the "Seven Devils Standard", which had only recently relocated there from Cuprum, packed up and moved to Meadows.  Here, its name was changed to the "Meadows Eagle".  One of the Standard / Eagle editors, Ben Edlin, later became editor of the Weiser Signal for a number of years.

            Things picked up in Landore and in the Devils is general in 1904 when construction began on a copper smelter at Landore.  T. G. Jones gave the Ladd Metals Co. five acres to built it on.  Charley Allen set to work to supply 300,000 ft of lumber for the project from his Landore sawmill, and the company advertised for 5,000 cords of wood to fire the smelter.

            In one month, from June to July, the population of Landore went from eight souls to nearly 200 residents.  The result was a "tent town addition".  The school also grew from 2 students to 16.  Between July and September, over 800 loaded freight wagons had arrived in Landore with supplies, machinery, etc.  Every mining company poured tens of thousands of dollars into new machinery and general expansion.  Things had never looked brighter in the Seven Devils.

            The size of the town of Landore is an interesting topic.  Winifred Lindsay, who grew up in Cuprum and Landore, said she remembers it having a peak population of one thousand and three.  I have serious doubts as to the validity of that figure, but I suppose it's possible that this number was reached for a very short time. Lindsay said the population was very transitory, and shrank and grew radically from season to season.  It was said that between 5,000 and 6,000 people once lived within a 7 mile radius of Landore during the mining boom.

            The new wood-fired smelter at Landore was said to have used an unusual process. The Weiser Signal reported,  "The heat is supplied from a gas flame... from the carbon of wet rotten white fir wood mixed with oxygen and hydrogen at the proper moment."  This "water gas" was said to have burned with a white glow similar to that of an electric light and was free from soot.  I have no idea how much truth there is to all this, but the paper seemed very serious about it, mentioning it in several issues.

            But by winter, it was clear that the process was not working as well as the company let on.  In December, the company ordered 1,000 tons of coke to replace the wood as fuel.  (Coke is partially burned coal - the coal equivalent to wood charcoal, but it burns hotter.)  This seemed to work for awhile, and the smelter processed 60 tons of ore each day from mines all over the district.   At least one pure copper "matte" was freighted from the Landore smelter to Council.  The bar(s) measured 24" long by 10"X12" and weighed about 400 pounds. 

            Problems continued, and the smelter was rebuilt with a "reverberatory" furnace made of brick.  (A reverberatory furnace radiates heat from the roof onto the ore.)  As always, the company said the new process was a tremendous success.  But by fall, it was announced, "On account of being unable to procure the necessary fluxing material and proper fuel, without enormous extra expense to the company in the way of transportation, the Ladd Metals Company smelter at Landore has suspended operations indefinitely, but it is earnestly hoped they may be able to resume early next year."  It never resumed operation, and the doom of the Seven Devils mining district was sealed.

            Landore continued to struggle through the ups and downs of the mining cycles, but never could relive its short-lived glory days.  In 1916, half the town burned down when the postmaster went to sleep with a candle burning beside his bed.  Finally, by 1920 the town was virtually deserted, and the post office was closed.

            In 1941, fire lookouts reported dense smoke coming from Indian Creek, and they sounded the alarm.  It was soon learned, however, that it was only someone burning the old smelter at Landore to salvage scrap iron for the war effort.  At the time, there was a big pile of rotting firewood still stacked in the smelter from its wood-fired days - approximately 8 to 18 cords. 

            For years, the brick smelter chimney stood just a short way off the road, and served as kind of a landmark.  I have heard that it fell down fairly recently, but I'm not sure.  The old mine office and one or two other log structures are very far gone, and will probably not even be visible for much longer. 

            If you are interested, I have carefully drawn out a diagram with the locations and names of most of the buildings that once stood in Landore, based on a drawing by Anna Adams and on old photos.  These photos and the diagram are in the photo album at the library.   If you haven't seen this album, or haven't seen it is a long time, I have added over a hundred photos to it in the last year or so.

_____________________

            This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $1,700... we need at least $10,000 to start our much needed museum addition project.  Please help.  Donations made as memorials will be acknowledged in this column, along with he name of the person in who's honor the contribution was made.   Please send contributions to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612.  Make your check out to the Winkler Museum. 

 

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10-5-94????

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            Two small streams enter Hornet Creek, about nine miles out of Council.  The first is Hanson Creek.  It was named after the Rasmus and Anna Hanson family who came to live here about 1883.  When they came to the U.S. from Denmark in 1881 with their infant son, Soren, they spoke no English.  The Danish spelling of their name was "Hansen", but the immigration officials misspelled it "Hanson" on their papers, so rather than fight bureaucracy, the family retained that spelling from then on.

            The Hansons came West with a group of Mormons, and spent two years living at Logan, Utah before coming to Idaho.  The tongue-in-cheek story among the family was that Anna insisted on the move to Idaho because she didn't want Rasmus to adopt the Mormon practice of taking a second wife.

            Indians used to come through Hornet Creek twice a year in those early days, traveling up the creek in the spring, and then back down in the fall.  One fall in the 1890s, as the Indians came through, they took the Hanson's little blond-haired daughter, Anna, with them.  It took Rasmus two days to figure out what had happened to her,  catch up with the Indians and take her back.  The Indians gave him the excuse that she had wanted to come with them.  This type of  casual abduction by the Indians was not an altogether unusual occurrence in those days.

            During the mining boom, the Hanson family made extra money by selling vegetables to miners in the Seven Devils.  When their son, Bill, started school, Mrs. Hanson taught herself to read and speak English as Bill was learning to read.  (You may know Bill Hanson's daughter, Mattie Thomas.) 

            In 1896, Rasmus hired Elisha Stevens of East Fork and Mr. Sevey of Fruitvale to  build a big barn on his place that is still standing.  (Does anybody know Mr. Sevey's first name?  The Robertson - Sevey Ditch is 1/2 named after him.)  In later years, the Hanson place belonged to Sam King, and now belongs to his son, Larry Walling.

            In 1902, Soren Hanson of Hanson Creek married a neighbor girl, Dora Lakey, from the next creek up the valley.  The next creek up was, of course, Lakey Creek. 

            The families of John and Lewis Lakey settled along this tributary of Hornet Creek that came to be named after them in 1881.  In the museum, there is a small pocket watch that was given to Lewis and Pheby Lakey on their wedding day.  ( I'm not sure if we have it on display right now.)  If I have the story straight, they were married on their way west, near the Continental Divide.  The watch is said to have started west from Kansas in 1875.

            Lewis and Pheby Lakey, and their nine children, at first lived in a one room, dirt floor cabin.  Even if they would have had money to buy clothes, there were no stores any closer than Weiser.  Phoebe made pants for the boys out of seamless sacks.  Unable to buy shoes, they often went barefoot, sometimes even in the winter.

            Some of the Lakeys operated a sawmill here, and it has been said that Lewis planted the first orchard on Hornet Creek.  Pheby Lakey died in 1904 or '05, and Lewis followed in 1911 .  They are both buried in the Hornet Creek cemetery. 

              One dramatic Lakey family story from the spring of 1894 illustrates the hazards of the days before good roads.   At the time, there were no bridges on the road up Hornet Creek, and Jake Lakey, his wife and baby had to cross Hornet creek several times before they made it home from Council.  At one crossing, the team balked right in the middle of the swift, muddy water.  Just as Jake got out to urge the team forward, the raging torrent tipped the buck board over, throwing Mrs. Lakey and their baby out into the swift water.  Jake jumped toward them in time to catch the baby, and Mrs. Lakey was able to save her self by grabbing a hold of Jake's coat.  By making a desperate effort, Jake was able struggle to the shore with his family intact.  Their panicked, wild-eyed horses were swept away to their deaths, lunging and kicking frantically to escape a broken tangle of buck board and twisted harness.

            A donation came in from Jay Thorp this week. You may remember that, some time back, I mentioned that Frank Thompson was looking for Jay.  The History Corner got the two old friends in touch.  That was the second time this happened.  If any of you are curious about what became of an old aquaintance, let me know, and I'll mention it in this column.  There are people from all over who subscribe to the Record, and may know how to get in touch with that person.

            Also, a very nice donation arrived from "The Royal Order of the Golden Neckyoke Leatherhood", as a memorial in memory of Lila Downey, who was a charter member of the organization.  Thank you, on behalf of the community and those who knew Lila.    The letter along with the check was signed by Harold and Opal Smith.  Harold did some growing up in the Bear area, and wrote quite an interesting book about mountain man, Jim Summers.  His book is in the Council library.

            Thanks also to those others who contributed this week.  Every dollar helps and is very much appreciated.

            This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $1,750... we need at least $10,000 to start our much needed museum addition project.  Please help.  Donations made as memorials will be acknowledged in this column, along with he name of the person in who's honor the contribution was made.   Please send contributions to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612.  Make your check out to the Winkler Museum.

            Don’t forget my slide show Friday night at 8:00 ;.m. in the Council Valley Free Library meeting room.

           

10-13-94!

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            The spot with the most concentrated amount of history along our Oct. 22nd tour route might be the place where the Wildhorse road branches from the Council - Cuprum road. 

            Long before the arrival of settlers, Indians used this general location as a favorite campground.

            In the late 1800's, as many as 400 head of cattle ranged the Seven Devils area.  They were allowed to roam the mountains with little herding.  One of the cattlemen who had stock here during that time was John McGlinchy.  The McGlinchy family trailed cattle from their ranch near Payette to this area for the summer.  They maintained a camp here which included a cabin that stood just to the north east of the current cattle guard.  A pile of stones from the old chimney is still in evidence. Imagine what an isolated place this must have been in those days before there was a road anywhere near it.   John McGlinchy owned Zim's hot springs north of New Meadows for a time.  He sold it in 1904.

            Byron and Nancy Davis bought this land from McGlinchy in 1890, about the time that the Kleinschmidt grade was built and mining really got started in the Seven Devils.  Byron had been a scout for many emigrant wagon trains coming west, and later drove freight wagons between Umatilla Landing and Boise City.  Byron's older brother, Tom Davis, came to Boise City in 1864, and planted the first orchard and some of the first shade trees.  When he later gave his orchard to the city for a park, he asked that it be named after his wife.  That's how Julia Davis Park was established.

            The Davises built a big, two-story log house here on a stone foundation.  A  daughter that was stillborn is buried on the bench east of the road junction.  For a while, this location was known as "Old Davis" because it was the old Davis place.

            By 1912, a log school house had been built near the Davis place.  It was called the Crooked River school.  The school continued through the late 1920s, but by 1927, the attendance was only 4 students.  This lack of students was probably what led to the closure of the school soon afterwards. 

            In the fall of 1931, Lee Zink, who had the mail contract from Council to Cuprum, bought the school building.  He moved it a short distance, and converted it into a half-way stage station for winter use.  Otto Russell lived here for a time, tending the horses that were sometimes used to relay the mail on that part of the stage line. Even though a truck was used on the mail route by this time, the roads were not well maintained in winter, and horse drawn sleds often had to be used.

            An illustration of just how bad things could get on the mail route had occurred just two winters before Lee got the mail route. In the winter of 1929, Zink's predecessor on this route, Frank George, had set out for Cuprum with his mail truck, but had to abandon it after shoveling through snow drifts for several hours.  He finally borrowed a team and sleigh and continued on.  That team became too tired from wading the deep snow, so he borrowed another one.  With relentless dedication to getting the job done, he wore out five teams of horses by the time he reached Cuprum at 12 o'clock that night.  By the winter of 1932, Zink used two other men to relay the mail to Cuprum.  Zink took it to Old Davis, Oscar Russell took it to Bear, and Toby Warner carried it on to Cuprum.

            In late 1938, the Boise - Payette Lumber Co. (later called the Boise Cascade Corp.) sat up a portable sawmill here.  A small community sprang up in conjunction with the mill, with a cook house, office building, tool shed, gas and oil house and eight portable houses.  The company originally planned to saw logs here, then haul the rough lumber to Council.  From there, it was to be shipped by rail to Emmett for finishing.        A small dam, which is still in evidence, was built to form a log pond, but there wasn't a  adequate amount of water to consistently serve that purpose very well.  The plan was abandoned, and the company decided to build a sawmill at the present mill site in Council.  Before the portable mill was taken down, the timbers for the  framework of the first Boise - Payette sawmill in Council were sawed here. The Council mill burned down in 1958, and was replaced by the present mill.

            In late 1939, Andy Anderson, a logging contractor for the Boise - Payette Company, arrived in the area, and set up his headquarters here.   Soon, another school was started here for the children of his logging crew.  Katie Marble was probably the first teacher.  School was conducted in one  half of  on of the portable buildings, and the teacher lived in the other half.

            After only few years, the logging operation moved on, and the community was dismantled.  A number of the houses were moved to Council and set up west of the railroad tracks.  Some of the present houses are remodeled versions of these previously portable homes.

            The big tour is set to begin at 9 AM on the morning of October 22.  Meet in the Council library parking lot.  Find a friend to share a ride with if you can.  I've discovered that the road will be good enough for most cars.  Bring a lunch and your camera.  It's going to be a memorable day of seeing the locations of historic stage stops, mines, homesteads, schools, graves, town sites,  geology, etc. Because we are raising money for the museum addition, a minimum $5 per person donation is requested.  If you have any questions, call me.  253-4582 

 

10-20-94

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            Who are you? 

            Think about how you would answer that question.  Most of us might include something about where, and how, we were raised.  We might mention major events in our lives at certain ages that made us who we are today. Without knowing how someone grew up, you can never completely know them.

            Without knowing how and why a community or town grew up, you can never fully know it either. 

            So why is the town of Council located where it is?  This place was the intersection of  major trails that connected the areas north and south of here.  One trail went up Hornet Creek to the Seven Devils area.  Another went up the main Weiser River valley, and was used by miners and pack trains to reach Warren.  The third leg of the trail connected the other two branches with all the country to the south.  I'm not sure if the trails were created by Indians or whites, but I would guess they were Indian routes, adopted by whites.  Apparently, the intersection of these trails was right in front (east) of  where Ruben's is now.

            I think the trail toward Hornet Creek angled to the northwest, around the western base of the hill, and then turned west, crossing the Weiser River about where the bridge is now.  Later, Moser Avenue and other streets were laid out at right angles, and the more direct, original route of the trail in town was obliterated. 

            I'm not sure about the trail that went north, up the main valley.  It may have skirted the south edge of the hill like Illinois Ave. does now, and turned north around the east edge like Galena does.  I base this on the fact that Galena street was the road leading north out of town up until about 1920.  It seems like I read somewhere that the area just north of the hill was quite marshy, and caused problems with the road.  Can anybody confirm this? Call me.

            Why was this valley settled when it was?  It is the last valley up the Weiser River, and is also separated from the lower valleys by the geographic barriers of  the steep, narrow canyons along the river and the hills on either side.  It also has a smaller amount of farmable land than any of the lower valleys.  That's why it was the last to be settled, starting for all practical purposes in 1876, eight years behind the Indian Valley and Cambridge areas.

            The Seven Devils played a major role in the development Council.  The mining activity there furnished employment, and a market for a variety of products, including locally grown food.  But the thing that really made it possible for a town to blossom here was the railroad.

            In those days, the railroad was almost literally the life-blood of a community.  You have probably watched old western movies about how the fate of communities and individuals hinged on where the railroad was built.  This was no Hollywood fantasy.  Towns in this area, such as Salubria, Meadows and Roseberry virtually vanished after the tracks bypassed them.  The railroad was the only dependable way to move people and goods.  Without it, Council would have been nothing but a wide spot in the road, practically cut off from the rest of the world.  The need to transport ore from the mines of the Seven Devils  was the major motivation for building the railroad into the Council Valley.

            This weekend you can see the places that steered Council toward its destiny.  Like  obsolete, discarded foundation stones of our community, the crumbling mine shafts, rotting cabins and rusting steam boilers lay scattered through the mountains.  If only they could talk ... the stories they could tell. 

            Join us Saturday morning at 9 AM in the Library parking lot. Come along on our tour and hear some of the stories. Learn about your community and the places that made it what it is today. Bring your car. Sahre a ride if you can. Bring a picnic lunch, a camera, binoculars,, etc. The roads are good enough for most cars. We are asking for a donation to…

 

10-27-94 missing…

 

11-3-94?

            Quick riches from the earth was the dream of many around the turn of the century.  While the Seven Devils were stirring with excitement in this area, there were other places that sang the siren's song.  One of those was an extremely remote region of the Yukon Territory on the Klondike River.  The story of the Klondike gold rush of 1898 is almost  beyond belief, and is much to long to go into here.  In short, a journey of incredible hardship was necessary to make it to the gold region.  Three reckless young men from the Indian Valley - Salubria area, Wylie Anderson, Erwin Mickey and Jeff Saling, set out for the Klondike in March of that year. 

            In early April, they reached the point in the trail called  Chillkoot Pass.  At that time of year, it was a steep incline of snow, several hundred yards long, climbing up to the border between Alaska and Canada.  Canadian Mounties were stationed at the top to enforce the rule that every person had to have enough provisions to survive the journey to the Klondike.  It usually took more than one exhausting trip to get one's gear and supplies to the top of the pass.  Twenty four hours a day there was a shoulder-to-shoulder line of men (and a sometimes even a few women) climbing up the icy steps that were carved into the hill. 

            One fateful day, there was a rumbling on the mountain above the trail, and a mass of snow and ice hurtled down the hill, burying the trail and everyone on it.  About 100 people were killed.  One of the victims was Jeff Saling.  His companions, Anderson and Mickey, immediately returned home - thoroughly disillusioned.

            Two years later (1900), there was a similar gold rush to Nome, Alaska.  Gold nuggets had been found on the beaches there, and it caused imense excitement.  My grandfather, Jim Fisk, was an experienced metal worker, and earned his passage to Nome on a steamship as the steamfitter on board the ship.  He said that even before the ship docked, men were jumping over the sides and dashing up to the beach, expecting to pick up hands full of nuggets.

            Meanwhile (1900), in Council, the long awaited railroad  was coming, and it caused as much excitement and uproar as any gold rush.  Several hundred men were in the area, building the railroad grade.  Buildings were going up right and left.  Downtown Council went from a few stores and a blacksmith shop gathered around a town square to looking like a real town in a very short time.  New people were moving in faster than the old timers could keep up.  As was often was the case with new railroad towns, part of that influx was an element of society that Council could have done without. 

            On a Friday night in January of 1900, the owner of one of  the new hotels in Council gave a dance to celebrate the opening of his establishment.  Dan Moore was "calling" the dances - deciding whether the next tune would be a waltz, a shoddish, etc., and calling the movements if it was to be a square dance.  Sam Harphan, undoubtedly influenced by the liquid refreshment provided for the occasion, became angry with Moore for calling the wrong kinds of songs.  The obnoxious Harphan kept harassing Moore throughout the evening until, finally, it came to blows. 

            During their tussle, Harphan pulled a revolver and leveled it at Moore.  The explosion of the shot rocked the room.  The startled crowd, their ears ringing, turned to see Mrs. Fisher wincing with pain.  The bullet has missed Moore and hit her.  Moore pulled his own pistol, and shot twice, killing Harphan on the spot.  The paper didn't say how seriously Mrs. Fisher was wounded.  Evidently, the law took no action toward Moore, since it was obviously an act of self defense.

            Only five months later (June of 1900), another malcontent caused a similar incident in Council.  Charles Bowman had been hanging around the saloons of Council for two days, imbibing freely in their stock and trade.  One of the establishments that Bowman had patronized was the Headquarters Saloon, owned and operated by George Bassett.  The saloon was said to have also had a restaurant in connection, and prostitutes upstairs. 

            Before he was finished with his holiday on the town, Bowman discovered that he was flat broke.  Feeling that the saloon must have taken advantage of him, he went approached the bartender and demanded a refund.  The bartender refused, and Bowman left.  A short time later, Bowman returned and repeated his demand, this time at gunpoint.  The Cambridge Citizen newspaper noted that,  "Just at that juncture the bar-tender had business behind the bar in the region of the floor,..."      About that time, Mr. Bassett walked in, and Bowman turned the gun on him.  Bassett, evidently prepared for this turn of events, leveled his own weapon and fired.  Bowman was hit in the stomach, and one arm was shattered at the elbow .  Dr. Loder was called to the scene, amputated Bowman's arm and did what he could for the man, but the wounds were too serious.  Bowman died a day or two later.  Apparently, the law took a similar view of this shooting.

            Bassett later opened a second Headquarters saloon in Decorah.  It was the opulent sin palace that Winifred Brown Lindsay remembered seeing when she was a girl, after the saloon had closed down.  For those of you who went on our tour Saturday, I have figured out that Decorah really was on the wider flat just around the corner from the sign where we stopped.  Bassett's saloon, from Lindsay's description, was on the right (east) side of the road, and had a lawn that extended back to the creek.

            The Mining District tour was a big success.  Forty - five people came along, with 13 vehicles.  There were a couple people from Weiser and Payette, at least three from Cambridge and three from New Meadows.  In spite of dire predictions of rain and / or snow, it was a beautiful (but a little chilly) fall day.  The icing on the cake was that the tour raised more money for the museum than I had dared to hope: $431.00!  Thanks go to all of you who took part in the tour, especially to Kevin Gray and Gayle Dixon for their help and generosity.  Our fund now stands at about $2413.00  Stay tuned.

 

11-10-94!

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            This week I'm going to back up to more or less the beginning, and start a series of articles.

            We are all immigrants here in Idaho, but some of us have been here a few thousand years longer than others.  The first humans wandered across the Bering Strait land bridge from north east Asia to North America at the end of the last ice age.  The archaeological evidence is still being collected and evaluated, but so far seems to indicate that  the first humans arrived in what is now Idaho in the neighborhood of about 14,000 years ago.  One site in Southern Idaho contains human artifacts dated at 17,000 years ago, but this date is not universally accepted.

               During the first era after human arrival here, it appears that this part of Idaho was used lightly by people who mostly passed through it.   For a long time, the climate for these early Idahoans was cooler and wetter than it is now.  Most of their activities centered on the valleys along the Snake, Boise and other major rivers.  Then, about 4,000 to 6,000 years ago, the annual precipitation began to decrease and the temperatures rose.  This brought a climate something like we have today.  Much of southern Idaho became a desert.  Because water was more abundant here in the higher valleys along the upper Weiser River, they became more populated.

            The oldest directly dated native burial site in western Idaho was discovered  on the DeMoss ranch at the southern end of the Meadows Valley in 1985.  I think it was Craig DeMoss who was digging out a spring with a backhoe (a standard archeological tool for dedicate work) to get more water to flow, when he started seeing human remains.   The Indian graves there are estimated to be about 6,000 years old.

            By the time the second group of immigrants arrived on this continent, this time traveling west from Europe, two general groups of people had established themselves in what is now Idaho.  To an extent, the two native groups were separated by the natural geographic barriers of Hells Canyon, the Seven Devils mountains and the rugged country along the Salmon River.  To the north of these boundaries, was the "Shahaptian" or "Plateau" culture, which primarily consisted of the Nez Perce tribe.   To the south, was the Basin culture, composed mostly of the Shoshoni tribe. The west central edge of Idaho south of the Snake River, and eastern Oregon was home to the Paiute tribe.

            The Shoshoni, made up of several subgroups, were an offshoot of the Comanche tribe, and the two tribes had a common language up until sometime between 1700 and 1800.  In his journal of a wagon trip across Idaho in 1853, Henry Allyn spelled out, phonetically, the way that the Shoshoni pronounced the name of their tribe as "Shaw-shaw-nee".

            The Shoshoni as a whole were often referred to as the "Snake" Indians.  There are several stories as to why they came to be called by this name, but the most plausible one claims that a hand movement the Shoshoni used in "saying" their tribal name with sign language was a wiggling motion reminding one of a snake.  Interestingly, I saw a Western movie on TV recently, involving Comanche Indians.  A Comanche in this movie used a snake like movement in saying the name of his tribe in sign language.  I'd like to know if this was based on reality.  It makes sense, considering the Comanche's shared linguistic history with the Shoshonis.

            The names given to various Shoshoni subgroups can be confusing because they have been called different names by different people.  Whites often had trouble translating Indian names, and many times uncaringly came up with a bastardized terms that were "close enough", or they simply made up their own names for the natives.  One of these names for the poorest of the Shoshoni who managed to survive in the deserts of southern Idaho was "Diggers".  Many of the tribe names that are used today, including "Nez Perce", are non-native labels bestowed by whites. 

            Aside from the standard name of "the people", used by all tribes in whatever language they spoke, even the Indians themselves were not consistent, by white cultural standards, in what they called themselves.  Sometimes it depended on where they were and what they were doing at the time.  For instance, when northern bands of the Shoshoni were in the mountains where they often hunted mountain sheep, they called themselves "Tukadeka" (Sheep Eaters).            

            In general, the Indians in the northern part of the Shoshoni territory were called "Northern" or "Mountain" Shoshoni.  The Mountain Shoshoni group most commonly known as the Sheep Eaters were made up of scattered groups who ranged across the Seven Devils and Salmon River areas.  They survived by constantly moving from one place to another in small family groups, over a large territory.  During the summer, they roamed the headwaters of the Weiser, Payette, Boise, and Salmon Rivers, and wintered in lower elevations such as along the main Salmon and Snake Rivers.  Big Bar, in the upper Hells Canyon, was a favorite wintering spot.  When Charlie Warner farmed at the mouth of Kinney Creek along the Snake River in the early days, he found old sun-bleached mountain goat and mountain sheep horns that Indians had left hanging in the brush there.

            The Indians who spent a great deal of time in the general Weiser River drainage, were sometimes called the Weiser Shoshoni or "Weisers" by whites.  They were not necessarily a completely separate group from the Sheep Eaters, and in some old accounts are referred to as such.  The Weisers traveled in small family groups during the summer, but often had a common winter camp at Indian Valley, or near the mouth of Crane Creek.

            To some extent the Shoshoni shared the northern and western edges of their territory with the Nez Perce and the Paiute tribes.   On the north, the Nez Perce sometimes hunted and fished in the Seven Devils, Hells Canyon, and the upper reaches of the Weiser and Little Salmon Rivers.  As a result of contact with the Nez Perce, the Weisers adopted some elements of the Nez Perce life-style, such as heavy dependence on Salmon and Steelhead as a food source.  The interaction was generally, but not always, cordial.  Over the centuries there were times when the Shoshoni and Nez Perce fought each other.

            Relations between the Shoshoni and their Paiute neighbors to the west was also generally friendly.  The Paiutes that often lived with the buffalo hunting Shoshonis of Idaho and Wyoming became known as "Bannocks".

            I would like to thank Helen Robertson of Payette for a nice donation made in the memory of her late husband, Fred Robertson.  Fred passed away 20 years ago at the Robertson's cabin at Cuprum. 

            This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $2,490... we need at least $10,000 to start our much needed museum addition project.  Please help.  Donations made as memorials will be acknowledged in this column, along with the name of the person in who's honor the contribution was made.   Please send contributions to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612.  Make your check out to the Winkler Museum.  

 

11-17-94

History Corner

      As with most native Americans, the life-style of the Mountain Shoshoni can be divided into at least two eras: before the horse, and after the horse.  Before the Weiser Indians acquired the horse (probably around 1750), they were a quite different people from the classic romanticized image we have of the "noble red man".  In the summer, they lived in woven grass mat lodges, or temporary shelters made by placing deer hides or other skins over a frame of willow branches. Their style of dress was simple and plain.  It's hard to imagine Indians without fancy beadwork, but before Europeans introduced trade beads to Native Americans, the Weisers used porcupine quills, what sea shells they could acquire through trade, and other natural materials to decorate themselves.

            Another item that has become synonymous with Native Americans is the bow and arrow.  But it was not until only about 1,000 years ago that they acquired this weapon. Until that time, the atalatal was the only means they had of throwing a projectile.  The projectile was dart that was a little like a cross between an arrow and a light spear.  Most of the so called "arrow heads" that we find today were actually points used on atalatal darts.  Arrow points were generally smaller, and are sometimes misnamed "bird points" by people who find them today.  After they acquired the bow and arrow, Shoshoni bows made of wood and laminated with mountain sheep horn were highly prized among Indians all over the West.

            The source for much of the obsidian that the Shoshoni used for projectile points came from Timber Butte, north east of Emmett.  When highway 95 was rerouted down the north side of Mesa Hill in the 1970s, a locally used Indian quarry for stone tool materials uncovered when the cut was made though the small hill just south of the Middle Fork bridge.

            Before the horse, the Shoshoni eked out a subsistence by hunting primarily small game, and making optimum use of well over 100 species of plants.   They sometimes used poison tipped arrows, had snow shoes, and used dogs for hunting and as pack animals.  

            Winter was always a challenge to their survival.  One of the first, life saving foods that could be harvested when spring arrived was the root of the arrow leaf balsam root, sometimes locally known as sunflowers.  The first run of Salmon was also a vital, early-season food source.  The Weiser River was a major salmon spawning stream, with several species running up the river at different times over the summer.  The Shoshoni would gather at various locations along the Weiser to harvest the fish, generally catching them in nets.  Two other staples of the Weiser Indian's diet was dried chokecherries and service berries.  They returned to this area to pick these berries up until the early 1900s.     

            In the mid 1700s, the Shoshonis acquired horses, most probably from their Comanche cousins to the south.  The Nez Perce acquired their first horses from the Shoshonis.  Although some have claimed the Nez Perce acquired horses from plains tribes, this seems improbable.  The Shoshoni were more closely tied to the Nez Perce, both socially and geographically. Plus, there is a Nez Perce story of how they got their first horses from the Shoshoni and took them back over a trail through the Seven Devils.

            After the Shoshonis got horses, they were able to travel much farther, hunt big game animals more often, and meet socially in larger groups.  For the Weiser Indians the horse brought more frequent contact with the Nez Perce, plus new contacts and trade with more distant tribes.  As many other tribes had, the Shoshoni adopted many of the elements of Plains Indian life-style including living in hide tipis, wearing more stylish clothing such as feathered headdresses and war decorations, and practicing certain dances of Plains origins.  In general, between the coming of the horse, and the arrival of the white man, they enjoyed a period of greater prosperity than they had ever known.

            The more conservative, isolated Sheep Eater groups who lived farther back in the mountains, did not adopt many of the new ways.  Because of the harsh terrain, they didn't even make much use of the horse.  Although they spoke the same language as other Shoshonis, they retained an older, slower style of speech.  The other Shoshoni groups thought of these Sheep Eaters as being quite backwards.  Max Pavesic, the archeology professor at BSU, says the Shoshoni felt toward these Sheep Easters a little like we would feel about ignorant hillbillies.

            Stay tuned.

 

11-24-94

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

    The first white people to enter Idaho were those of the Lewis and Clark expedition on their way west in 1805.  On their return journey from the coast in 1806, a party was sent to the Salmon River from their camp near Kamiah to gather fish.  The party did not go far toward the Seven Devils beyond the confluence of the Snake and Salmon Rivers, but mentioned that both rivers appeared "to enter a high and mountainous country".

    Lewis and Clark asked some of their Indian guides to draw a map for them, showing the principle rivers of the region.   When the Indians obliged, their drawing showed a great river flowing across Southern Idaho and swinging north to near where the expedition was camped.  Lewis and Clark called this body of water "Lewis's River", but it later became known as the "Snake River" because of the dominance of the "Snake" Indians along its course in southern Idaho.  In making their own map of the North West to take back to President Jefferson, Lewis and Clark drew in other rivers, based on native descriptions, and named the various rivers after members of their party.  The Weiser River was named after Peter Weiser (or

"Wiser", as Lewis spelled it).  There was some confusion later as to the origin of the name when a well known trapper named Jack Weiser became one of the first white men to trap in the Weiser River area.    

    The first whites to venture close to Council came west with an expedition sent by John Jacob Astor.  Astor expanded his fur company interests to the north west coast in the spring of 1811 by establishing fort Astoria near the mouth of the Columbia River.  Aside from the limited exploration of Lewis and Clark, the area inland from there was unknown territory to whites.  Astor knew that the Columbia was somewhat navigable, and if he could find a route from the head waters of the Missouri River to the Columbia he would be several jumps ahead of everyone else in exploiting the new territory.

    The same year (1811), Astor hired Wilson Price Hunt, to locate such a route.  After reaching the Henry's Fork of the Snake River in October, Hunts expedition made dugout canoes from cottonwood trees, and proceeded in these crude boats down the river.  By the time the Hunt expedition reached a spot near the present site of the town of Burley, they were thoroughly defeated by the river.  They found they could no longer ride out the rapids, and often could not climb out of the canyon to go around them.  The party, which consisted of 65 people, including a seven months pregnant Indian woman and her two children (ages 2 and 4), had lost much of their gear, and was virtually without food.  The party split into five groups.  Three main groups continued north and west, each trying a different route.

    The group led by Hunt cut north to near present day Boise, then on to where the town of Weiser would later be established. From there, they proceeded up the Weiser River, then up Mann Creek to its head, and back to the Snake.  As they continued down the river toward Hells Canyon, on the 6th of December, Hunt's party rejoined one of the other groups from the original expedition.  Here, Hunt was informed that the mountains on the west side of Hells Canyon seemed impassible, but that the remaining party under Donald McKenzie had continued north on the east side of the river.  All three divisions of the expedition had seen no game, and was on the brink of starvation.

    It seems strange that the Hunt expedition saw no deer along the Snake River as they approached the Hells Canyon area in that December and January.  That area now has been the wintering ground of great herds of deer for many decades.

    Hunt decided to try a route north through the Weiser River valleys to reach the Columbia River.  This route made sense, even with our present knowledge of Idaho geography.  These valleys are the least mountainous way to reach the Salmon River drainage from southern Idaho.  This may well have been why the Weiser River was so familiar to the Nez Perce that Lewis and Clark encountered.   However, the Shoshoni that Hunt encountered along the Weiser convinced him that the snow was too deep in this direction. 

            Hunt then tried to get a Indians to guide him over an alternate route toward the west.  These natives must have thought Hunt was out of his mind to be trying such a journey in the dead of winter, and they wanted no part of it.  After much arm twisting, and several gifts, Hunt was able to convince one of the Shoshoni men to guide his party over the Blue Mountains and on to the Columbia.  The route they followed, with slight changes, later became a portion of the Oregon Trail.

    One has to wonder why the snow would have been too deep to the north of the Weiser River drainage.  The highest point, between the Weiser and Salmon Rivers by modern road is between Price Valley and New Meadows, and is not significantly higher in elevation than Council.  From there, a trip down the Little and main Salmon Rivers would have been hampered by relatively little snow.  If the main trail used by natives to reach areas to the north was a route resembling the Boise - Lewiston Trail route through the Seven Devils, then it would indeed have been impossible to have made such a journey in winter. 

 

12-1-94

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            Donald McKenzie led the group from Wilson Price Hunt's expedition that had forged on  north along the east side of the Snake River.   McKenzie was a rugged Scotsman from Canada.  Weighing over 300 pounds, this red-headed giant had tremendous physical strength and endurance, and was so energetic that he earned the nick name "Perpetual Motion".    He was very experienced in the fur business, and had a natural ability to lead men.  McKenzie was later to become governor of the Territory of Manitoba, Canada.

            McKenzie's party of ten men had no horses or food.  As they struggled along the snowless breaks of the Snake River, they took a route high up on the ridge tops.  Although they could often see the river far below them, they suffered terribly from thirst.  Try as they might, they could find no game to shoot.  Desperate for food, the men dug out an old beaver hide from one of the packs, and ate it.

            Finally, probably near the Seven Devils Mountains, the weakened and exhausted group was caught in a snow storm.  Their situation seemed utterly hopeless.  Finding a sheltered place, they sat down and tried to resign themselves to certain death.  It was then that one of the men looked out through the swirling blizzard, and beheld a sight that must have made him think he was hallucinating.  There, not far up the hill, was a bighorn sheep!  The animal was humped up under a rocky overhang, seeking shelter from the storm just as they were.  It must have taken almost all the strength the man had left to make his way to a spot where he could get a shot at the sheep.  He managed to drop the animal where it stood, which was fortunate.  Had the sheep been able to run any distance in that steep country, the men may well have been too weak to follow it.

            It's hard to imagine the elation these men must have felt. Their lives were saved.  No one knows just where this fortuitous event occurred; it would be interesting to know the spot.  Not doubt the men of the McKenzie party would have thought it appropriate to erect a monument on this location.

            After a difficult journey that totaled 21 days, the McKenzie group reached the confluence of the Salmon and Snake Rivers.  Historians have speculated the course taken by these men, and to make a long story short, nobody really knows.  They probably followed what would become known as the Boise-Lewiston Trail part of the way, but it is doubtful that they traveled through the most rugged part of the Seven Devils.  They probably cut to the east, and may have traveled through some part of the Rapid River drainage.  They may even have gone father to the east through Price Valley and hit the Little Salmon before the main Salmon. At any rate, on the Salmon River they encountered Nez Perce Indians who took care of them, and helped them continue down the Salmon, and on to the Snake and Columbia Rivers.  They arrived at Fort Astoria in February, about a month ahead of Hunt.

            In 1813, John Reid, a former member of the McKenzie's group from the Hunt expedition, returned to the mouth of the Boise River to establish a trapping camp.  With him was the Indian woman, Marie Dorion, her husband and two of her children.  Everyone in this outfit, except for Marie and her children, was killed by Bannock Indians early the following spring.

            Donald McKenzie returned to this same area with a large group in the fall of 1818, to trap and establish friendly relations with, and between, the Indians of the region.  In this party was Jack Weiser after whom the Weiser River has mistakenly thought to be named.  Also in the group was a Canadian named Francois Payette, after whom the town of Payette, the Payette River, and the Payette National Forest are named.  Francois Payette trapped and explored this part of Idaho off and on for about 18 years, and is said to be considered by some historians as one of the most important figures in the early history of southwestern Idaho.

            At the time of McKenzie's return to Idaho, there was a great deal of fighting going on between the Shoshoni and the Nez Perce and other Shahptin-speaking groups.  There was also a constant problem with vicious Blackfoot war parties raiding deep into Idaho from Montana.  After a number of council meetings, McKenzie was able to bring relative peace, at least between the Idaho tribes.

            In the eastern states, it had been the practice of whites to induce Indians to do the actual work of trapping, in exchange for trade goods.  In the west, however, the male natives generally spurned trapping as women's work, but by the time McKenzie left the area in 1821, many of the Shoshoni had begun to trap.

            During McKenzie's escapades in the Idaho area, he wanted to see for himself whether the Hells Canyon route was practical for travel.  About 1819, he and a party of men pulled a barge up the Snake River, starting from the mouth of the Clearwater River.  After almost two months of superhuman effort, they actually made it through, but it obviously was not worth it.  Nearly 50 years passed before anyone was foolhardy enough to venture onto this stretch of the river with a boat.

            The first recorded mention of exploration of the Weiser River drainage is that of a trapping excursion led by Alexander Ross in 1824.   By 1826, American trappers had penetrated deep into the Weiser River country as far as Payette Lake, and the Weiser River had become one of the area's prime sources of beaver pelts.

 

12-5-94

History Corner

            I got word from the courthouse last week that they were cleaning house and had some things the museum might want.  The most exciting thing they had was a stack of Adams County Leader newspapers from 1918 and 1919.  Until now, there were only three copies of 1918 Leaders remaining in existence, even on microfilm.  Now we have ten more.  There were no copies of 1919 Leaders before this find of 42 out of a possible 52 issues! 

            The Leader office was moved around town several times before it ended up where it is now. 

In one of the moves, all of the back issues for 1916 through 1919 that were kept in the Leader office  were lost.  Former County Clerk, Matilda Moser, who was a member of the first family to settle in the Council Valley, was responsible for initially saving the issues found in the courthouse.  She saved her  issues of the paper for many years.  The courthouse gang also gave us back issues that Matilda had saved for 1925 and 1948 through 1953.  We will keep them at the museum with some other ones from various years.  The Leader office also has these years issues on file, and they are on microfilm at the State Library in Boise.

            There are lots of records that the County stores for a few years and then discards.  Most of them are pretty boring statistics - records of routine expenditures, etc.  Once in awhile something interesting pops up.  In some receipts issued to Sheriff Ed Wade during the summer of 1941 there were some interesting expenses: 100 miles @ 7 cents per mile to investigate "Arizona cars with wild animals, supposed to the same people that were run out of Canyon County".

            The same mileage rates were paid for these duties:  Investigate two people "living in adultery" - "let get license at Council" ... "Move destitute woman from Hornet Creek to Mesa in order to keep them off Adams County" ... "Clear highway of crippled horse.  Reported by Fred Muller." ... "Get prisoner at Weiser for stealing 1 1/2 ton Chevy truck from Mesa" ... "Get prisoner at Walla Walla, Wash. and return to Council" ..."Wreck South of Council - L.V. Davis - two trips in cleaning up wreck and taking party to hospital."  I'll bet what goes on at the sheriffs office nowadays is just as interesting.

            On many of the otherwise uninteresting documents that were being discarded were the signatures of some of Council's "Landmarks":  sheriff William F. Winkler = signed as "W.F. Winkler", large, bold, sweeping across the page ... Geo. A. Winkler = energetic and sweeping, but not as big as uncle Bill's ...  Fred E. Weed = stylish, moderate in size ... Matilda Moser = classic, flawless script right out of the penmanship primer ... Sheriff Chester Selby (Loraine Ludwig's father) = large and easily read ... William Lemon (Leader editor, probate judge, owner of the Pomona Hotel, and owner of the big ,square, stucco building next to the Leader office) = signed as "Wm Lemon" with the W and the L very large and stylish ... Sheriff Frank Yantis = a large, stylish F, plain Y, moderate size over all.

            I thank Mike Fisk and the others at the court house for thinking of the museum.  If anyone else has "junk" that might be historically interesting, please let me know.

            After my inquiry about an outlaw corral somewhere in the hills east of Council a few weeks ago, someone told me about the remains of an old corral and cabin up Camp Crk.  Sounded like it is on a ridge on the south "breaks" of the creek somewhere.  Anybody know the story on this?

            Since this column is so fragmented already, I'll go off on another tangent that is more or less related to history.  This time of year you always hear a lot about people who "have forgotten the true meaning of Christmas."  In order to understand the "true meaning" or "original meaning" of something, it pays to look at its history.

            Way back before most religions were established, people were mighty glad for the time of year when the days stopped getting shorter and started getting longer.  This happens on or about the 21st of December by our modern calendar.  They used to call it the "Ule Tide" because it was kind of like the low tide of the ocean as it reaches the lowest point and then starts rising again.  The celebration of this season was about the return of the sun to bring more light to the world.  A few thousand years later, Christian missionaries decided to subvert this "pagan nonsense" with their own idea of a return of "the light of the world".  Even though most historians and theologists agree that Jesus was probably born closer to summer time, they began to promote the season as the time of year to celebrate of the birth of their Messiah, Jesus.  Since "The Church" dominated European culture and governments for quite a period we now have an indelibly established Christian tradition of "Christmas"  in our culture.

            There is a similar story behind Easter.  That's why we have such a strange mixture of eggs, bunnies and sunrise church services.

            So if you disagree with the way someone observes or doesn't observe Christmas, stop and realize that the tradition is thoroughly man made, and is not the original one.  There is no reason why everyone - Jews, Muslims, atheists and Christians alike - should not make this season special in their own way.

            I hope you have a very merry Christmas / Ule Tide.

 

12-8-94

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            The next expedition to venture near the Weiser River area was that of Captain Benjamin Bonneville.  In 1832, Bonneville took a leave of absence from the U.S. Army to lead an exploratory expedition through the Northwest.  Since claim to much of this territory in the  was in contention between the United States and England, it was suspected that Bonneville might have been spying for the United States.  No one has ever determined whether this was true or not.

            By this time, more outposts had been established in the vicinity of the Columbia River.  After spending some time at a base camp in southern Idaho, Bonneville set out for Fort Walla Walla.  Apparently Bonneville, like Wilson Price Hunt, was either undaunted by a journey of several hundred miles in the dead of winter, or else he was not aware of the rigors of the terrain and climate he was to encounter.  He began this journey on Christmas day of 1833, with 3 men, cutting across southern Idaho through the Snake River plain.   Upon reaching the Blue Mountains, they encountered too much snow to continue west.  As they had already traveled part of the way on the frozen surface of the Snake River, a decision was made to return to the Snake, and continue in this fashion down the river through Hells Canyon.  To their disappointment, the weather had warmed, and the water had become relatively free of ice except for narrow ribbons along the banks, and occasional ice "bridges" that spanned the river.  In spite of this, they went on, mostly using the ground along the shore when it was not too steep to do so.

            Imagine what it must have been like for these men when they tested the ice.   Picture yourself hundreds of miles from even the most crude outpost of civilization, in the dead of winter, on the back of a bug-eyed, snorting horse, as he edges across the rumbling, settling ice, while untold millions of gallons of water plunges mere inches below you through the deepest canyon in North America.  What must the nerves of these men endured on that last stretch of creaking ice before they admitted that it was just too foolish to continue? 

            Where the ice was too thin and rocky cliffs plunged straight down to the water, the party sometimes climbed far up the side of the canyon.  At one point, two of their horses fell into the river.  One of these horses was rescued, but the other was swept away by the rushing water.

            It is thought that they made it about as far as the mouth of Thirty-two Point Creek (just across the Snake from Sawpit Creek and Sheep Rock) before the steep walls of rock on either side made it impossible to continue down the river bank, and travel on the ice became too risky.

            The party then tried to climb over the mountains on the west side of the river, but after making it almost to the summit, they could find no way through this incredibly rugged country.  Their only alternative was to go back down the way they had come, but this proved even more difficult than the climb up had been.  After an exhausting ordeal, using rappelling ropes, they were able to get both themselves and their horses safely back to the river. 

            At this point, they considered killing their horses, drying the meat for food, and using the hides to make boats in which to continue down the Snake.  Before resorting to this dangerous alternative, they  decided to try once again to climb over the mountains to the west.  Knowing what we now know about the nature of the Snake River through Hell's Canyon, can you imagine trying to ride the rapids in a horse hide bull boat?  I would have almost certainly have been the last mistake Bonneville ever made. 

            The party back-tracked about four miles up river where they found a more passable, though still difficult, route over the summit, and succeeded in reaching the Imnaha River.   There, the starved and exhausted group found some Nez Perce Indians who fed and cared for them, and eventually guided them to Fort Walla Walla.  The Nez Perce had always been friendly to whites.  Captain Bonneville, as well as Lewis and Clark, noted that the Nez Perce were among the most friendly Indians they encountered in the West.  This tribe continued to befriend white people up until about 45 years later when their kindness and friendship was rewarded with murder, imprisonment, and the theft of everything they held sacred.

            Accounts written by Washington Irving of the hardships of the Bonneville and Wilson Price Hunt expeditions in the Hells Canyon area were widely read, with the result that the canyon, and the Wallowa and Seven Devils mountains on either side of it, were avoided, and remained relatively unexplored by whites for many years.  

            About 1834, the Hudson's Bay Company built Fort Boise on the Snake River.  Two years later, the fort was moved to a location near the mouth of the Boise River under the charge of Francois Payette.

            About 1840, the fur trade started to decline because of low prices in the East.  As the white trappers faded from the scene along the Weiser River, the Indians went back to their old, undisturbed life-style.  However, storm clouds were brewing on the eastern horizon.

 

12-15-94 …

 

12-22-94

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            In 1840, a branch of the Oregon Trail was established over the Blue Mountains, and by 1843 there was a flood of immigrants coming through the Boise area on their way to western Oregon.  One of the wagons that came through on this route in the 1840's was that of the Allen family.  Traveling with them on their way to the present site of Portland, Oregon was their young son, Levi Allen, who was later to play a key role in the history of the Seven Devils and the valleys along the Weiser River.

            In 1846, the United States acquired what is now the Northwestern U.S. in a division of territory with the British, and even more settlers came through on their way to Oregon.  Although the Weiser Indians were not directly influenced by the hordes of people, wagons and livestock, their neighbors along the Snake found the camp sites they had carefully used for untold generations destroyed.  The camps and streams were filthy from the immigrant's domestic animals, and the surrounding areas were bare of grass, and stripped of fuel for fires.  The Indians of the arid Snake River plain, who had already had to struggle to scratch out a subsistence, "... had to watch their food sources destroyed by whites ignorant of Indian culture and blind to the delicate balance of the area's natural resources."

            Deprived of their usual sources of life, the Shoshonis and Paiutes resorted to preying on wagon trains to survive: stealing horses and livestock.  Whites retaliated, and the situation quickly escalated into full scale war.

            In 1854, Fort Boise was abandoned because of this serious "Indian uprising".  For a number of years, native Idahoans along the Snake River massacred whites at every opportunity.  Aside from futile efforts by military authorities, most of what is now Southern and Central Idaho was practically "given back" to the Indians.  It was expected the vicinity would remain unsettled for another 50 years except as a stopping point for travelers who dared to pass through on the Oregon Trail under heavy military protection.

            But the discovery of gold along the Clearwater River started the beginning of the end of this hostile standoff between the races.  I've already written about the pivotal year of 1862 in this column - Levi Allen's discovery of copper in the Seven Devils, Goodale's cutoff, Dunham Wright's adventure and the gold rush to the Boise Basin.       

            At this time, most people came to settle or prospect in Idaho from more settled areas to the west of here, usually via the Columbia River.   The town of Boise City was established in 1863.  Freight started to be shipped to Boise from a landing along the Columbia at Umatilla, in a sort of reverse flow of the usual Oregon Trail traffic of immigrants.  It was not until later that central Idaho became a planned destination for supplies and settlers from points south and east, as "civilization" filled in the vast unsettled areas in those directions. 

            I would like to thank Tom Gaston for a generous donation to the museum.  Our balance is now about $2670.00            This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.  We need at least $10,000 to start our much needed museum addition project.  Please help.  Donations made as memorials will be acknowledged in this column, along with the name of the person in who's honor the contribution was made.   Please send contributions to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612.  Make your check out to the Winkler Museum.

 

 

 

 History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            If you have seen my slide show,  looked at the photo display I put up in the library, or spent much time studying the pictures in the museum, you have seen a small, white house that was built in about 1901.  It is visible behind the old Haas Bros. / Weed store that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago,  in a couple of old photos.  This house, still looking very much like it did when it was built, now stands at 104 N Fairfield, just north of the West One Bank.  It is now the home of Mr. and Mrs. Keith Fish.

            The house was built by one of the giants among early Council citizens - Luther L. Burtenshaw.   Burtenshaw was a lawyer, and was known to his friends simply as "Burt".  For almost four decades, he was an anchor of Council's civic life.  If anyone could be called a pillar of the community, it was Burt.  It was hard to find a community project or organization in which he was not either the leader or a key player. 

            Burtenshaw arrived in Council at the age of 40, just as the railroad reached town and a new era was beginning for the Valley.  Born in Missouri, he had come West with his parents by ox drawn wagon to the Willamete Valley in Oregon where he grew up.  After being admitted to the bar, he practiced law in Washington and Oregon before coming to Council.

            Burt and his wife, Nettie had one child, Edward, who was seven years old when the family set out to find a place to establish a law practice.  Upon arriving in Idaho, Burt made the acquaintance of fellow attorney, Frank Harris, at Weiser.  Harris recommended Council, and the rest is history.

            Burtenshaw was a muscular, bear of a man:  stocky, and maybe a little less than average in height.  He was not a person one would want for a legal adversary, much less an enemy.  It was said that he was "A man of dominant will and personality..." "Short and snappy in manner of conversation and often harsh in words of reproof and castigation, [but] after the heat of argument or battle of words he held no grudge and welcomed a return to friendly tranquility and good will."

            Burtenshaw was regarded by some as being the father of Adams County.  He was a tireless advocate of secession from Washington County, and wrote the bill that created Adams County in 1911.  It was Burt who came up with the name "Adams" for the new county.  He reasoned that since Washington County was named after the nation's first president, the new county formed from the upper part of it should be named after the second president.    When Adams County was formed, Governor James H. Hawley appointed Burtenshaw as the new county's first prosecuting attorney.  Burt was reelected to that office a number of times.

            Burt became an expected fixture at high school graduation ceremonies, which were often held at the opera house (now the People's Theater).  As a long-time member of the school board of trustees, he handed diplomas to many a Council graduate.  He could often be counted on to give the oration for these, or many other occasions.

            One thing Burt was renowned for was trap shooting.  He had honed his expertise with a shotgun since he was a young man.  While living in Council, he competed in trap shooting tournaments, often traveling long distances to do so.  But he reached his peak as a competitor in the sport after he was sixty years old.  In 1922, he won first place in more than one Idaho contest, and then went on to a regional competitions in Pendleton and Portland, Oregon.  The next year, there was a "Burtenshaw trophy" that went to any trap shooter who could win it 3 times. At the age of 65, Burt won the Capital News "high average medal" for the 1927 Telegraphic Trapshooting Tournament by hitting 192 out of 200 targets. Three years later (1930), at the finals in Boise, he shot 100 consecutive clay pigeons without a miss.  Out of a total of 200 shots that day, he only missed three times.  The next year, at the age of 70, Burt placed close to the top in the National Trap Shooting Tournament.   L.L. Burtenshaw became an honorary life member of the Pacific International Trap Shooting Association, a rare honor which had been bestowed upon fewer than a dozen people at the time.

            Nettie Burtenshaw was no stranger to firearms either.  She was quite a deer hunter.  After one particularly successful hunting trip in 1914, the editor of the Leader said of Nettie, "We will bank her against any woman huntress in the state."

            In 1926, Burt ran on Democratic party ticket for U.S. Representative, but lost the election.  Later, in the 1930s he became Adams County's state senator.  

            The first World War brought tragedy to the Burtenshaw household.  Their only son, Edward, had married, become an attorney, and was practicing law with his father when the U.S. became involved in the War in 1917.  Edward, like many other patriotic young men, soon found himself on the battlefields of France.  He made it through the bloody conflict without a scratch, and was no doubt looking forward to coming home.  But in November of 1918, just ten days before the armistice was signed ending the war, he died from influenza.  Three and a half months later, and half a world away, his wife gave birth to a baby boy.  He was named Edward after his father.

            It was over two years before the family could get Edward senior's body shipped back to the U.S.  Finally in June of 1921, Burtenshaws were able to lay Edward to rest under Council Valley soil.  The community rallied around the grief-stricken family at one of the largest and saddest funeral services ever held in Council.  It was held at the opera house, which probably held more people than any other building in town, but it  was woefully inadequate to hold the throng of people who came to comfort one of the town's most loved families.

            In 1938, Burt reached the end of his earthly trail, and was buried beside his son.  The Adams County Leader commented, "The vacant place he leaves in the town and community cannot be filled because Luther L. Burtenshaw was himself, a character, separate and apart from other men, an man that will be missed by all who knew him.

            We plan to do another anthology before too long, to raise money for the Museum.  Maybe Burt or Nettie will show up there and reveal more about their lives and what this area was like back then.

            Many of you have been reading and enjoying the History Corner since I've been writing it.  I've spent almost every spare minute of the past four years  - hundreds of hours - researching and writing these stories.  I don't expect to see a penny from it for myself, but I want to ask you a favor ... not for me, but for yourself, your community and for future generations.  Get out your check book in the next few minutes, and write out a check to the Winkler Museum ... just for five or ten dollars ... or more, of course, if you can afford it.  Then, the next time you are in the bank, or at City Hall, give it to the clerk as a donation toward making a permanent showcase for Council's history that we will all be proud of.  It is going to happen.  Be a part of it.

 

History Corner

This one may be out of order - don't know the date

            This little piece of earth that we inhabit is a stage upon which countless dramas have unfolded.  All around us, in the places we walk or drive every day, events have taken place that would startle us if we only knew what had happened there.

            In the museum there are several pieces of mastodon jawbone that were found less than a mile south east of Council.  It is thought that the earliest people here hunted these huge ancestors of the elephant.  Just think what kind of amazing scenes were "acted out" right here.

            Stories from the past can be just under our feet, or, as in my case right now, just over my head.  Right now I'm in the middle of a major remodeling job on our house.  This used to be a two story house before my uncle Hub remodeled it a couple of times.  Now, I'm putting the second story back on.  For the past few days, I've been taking out the original second story floor boards and joists to replace them.  I'm finding things there that fell down between the subfloor and first story ceiling in the time since the house was built in 1910. 

            I guess the item I found that relates back the farthest is a Christmas post card that was mailed to Cora Glenn in 1913.  Cora Sult was the daughter of Long Valley pioneers.  She married Joel Glenn in 1902.  They lived here, and had this house built.  "Joe" Glenn, as he was known, came to the Council area with his parents, William D. and Rebecca Glenn  about 1883.  After living at Cottonwood for a short time, I think they settled the place just above me here on West Fork, where Harold Hoxie lives now.  Apparently, after Bill Glenn died in 1893, his son, Tom Glenn, took over the place until 1915.  After that James Finn (Ralph's father) owned it, then Bolan Abshire.  My mother lived there for awhile when her parents rented the place.  In later years, Vince Schwartz, and then Tony Schwartz owned it.  Now Scisms have it.

            According to Hardy Harp's obituary, he settled the place where I live in the 1880s.  At some point, Joe Glenn acquired it.  Many of the ancient apple trees that are growing on this place were planted by Tom and Joe Glenn in 1912.  Joe and Cora Glenn had 14 children.  I think most of them were born, in this house.  The original building was 24 feet square.  Can you imagine 14 kids living in a house that size?

             I'm not sure who built this house, but I found a piece of construction paper in one wall with "H.H. Cossitt and Sons, Council, Idaho" printed on it.  Cossitt was a builder and lumber yard owner who is credited with building the old school house that stood on the hill in Council around the turn of the century.  He was Adams County's first coroner when the County was created in 1911.

            In 1924, my grandfather bought Joe Glenn's place and moved his family here from their homestead on the Ridge.  During one trip to haul furniture to the new home, Dad's brother, Sam, was run over and killed by the wagon they were using.  His funeral took place here in this house, a few feet from where I'm writing this.

            Another of the things I found in the old upper floor was the cardboard cover for an old  Edison cylinder record.  The title of the song printed on the end cap was "The Preacher and the Bear".  Dad remembers well the old phonograph that they use to play those records on when they lived on the Ridge homestead, long before they ever had a radio.  They played some of the songs over and over again.

            I also found a sheet of paper containing "Important Information".  It was "Directions for Assembling - Operating and Maintaining the Aladdin Kerosene Mantle Lamp".   Another find was a metal lid that reads, "KC Baking Powder, 50 oz. - 50 cents, Same price for over 30 years."

            Other items tell of a time when my uncle Hub lived here.  This is the house where our County Clerk, Mike Fisk, and his sister, Linda, grew up.  I found three Lincoln logs, half a dozen marbles, a one-piece wooden clothes pin, a few playing cards, illustrations from kids books from the 1950s or so, and the wrapper from a pack of Camel cigarettes that Hub used to smoke.

            What I found the most of was dirt... just plain soil from the ground.  I hauled out bucket after bucket full of it - probably 40 pounds or so.  There are dozens of  mud dauber wasp nests on the rafters, and it's my theory is that the dirt came from them, built up as they fell down over the past 84 years.  As I swept up the fine, powdery dust, I was reminded of how my uncle John caught tuberculosis, when he was a young man, from a neighbor boy who slept up there in the bed next to his.  It cost him a lung.  In spite of the fact that I was wearing a good respirator, I was hoping TB bacteria don't live that long.

            As I said, history is all around us if we take the time to look and learn.  The museum's job is to help you do just that, but we need your help.  Awhile back, the museum board was thinking about getting a WWII display that the Historical Society would loan us.  Then we got to thinking... where would we put it?  There's no room in the museum without taking up all the space where the City Council meetings and other gatherings are held.  There really isn't enough room for the displays that are there now.  We have the solution ready to launch as soon as we get the funds.  We need your donation.

 

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

 

            For the next few weeks, I'm going to be writing about events that happened between Council and the Seven Devils Mining District.  Some of you went along on  the museum sponsored tour of that vicinity  in 1990.  Since then, we have heard nothing but how much people enjoyed it.   Now we are planning another tour to raise money for the museum.  The exact plans haven't been made yet, so keep watching this column.  It will probably be in September.

            One of the most interesting things I have turned up in my research concerns the first settler in the Council area.  Whenever the subject comes up, it seems that the Mosers are always mentioned.  The George Moser family, who arrived in the Council Valley in 1876, was the first family to settle here, but they were not the first non-native people to make a home here. 

            As far as I can tell, the first person to settle in the Council area was a bachelor named Henry Childs.  He established a home at a location that will be on our tour.  It was about three miles up Hornet Creek, where Old Hornet Creek road now  forks from the Council Cuprum road.  Childs arrived here in 1868, some eight years before the Mosers.   

            Childs arrived here, alone, at the age of about 32.  He was a single man who never married.  Just why he came here is not clear, but he may well have been looking for gold at first.  He was known to have been a prospector.  At the time Henry Childs arrived in this area (1868), the Salubria and Indian Valleys were just beginning to be settled.  This was at the tail end of some very serious Indian conflicts in Idaho, and the trouble wasn't over yet. Ten years later, in 1878, when Bill Munday and two other Indian Valley men were killed by Indians in Long Valley, Childs was with a party of miners who were feared to have also been attacked and killed by the same Indians.  A military unit was sent to look for them, and they were found alive and well.

            Childs lived in this area for about 42 years.  He served as a justice of the peace in the mid 1880s.  He eventually moved back to his home state of New York in 1910. 

            It is because of Henry Childs that Hornet Creek got its name.  According to one account,  the summer that the Mosers arrived here was a bad one for hornets.  After one particularly bad hornet encounter that Childs had with these pests that summer, he apparently complained to his new neighbors, the Mosers.  From that time on, the creek along which Childs had settled was called Hornet Creek.  For a short time, the whole Council area was referred to as "Hornet Creek" since it was the location of the confluence of that creek with the Weiser River.  This was a common practice.  The Fruitvale area was, at first, called West Fork.

            Another spot along our upcoming tour is the location of the Lower Dale school house.  It stood near the place where the Old Hornet Creek Road comes back onto the Council Cuprum Road.  The school was built in 1906.  It was called the "Lower" Dale school to distinguish it from the school at "Dale" farther up the road.  The school at Dale became known as "Upper Dale" as a result. 

            The last mention that I can find of the Lower Dale school being in operation was 1942.  I don't know when it finally closed.  I hope someone will call me and fill me in.  I would really like to know.  And when was it torn down? (Call me: 253-4582)  Also, there are some pictures at the library of some kids in front of the Lower Dale school, with their teacher, Olive Addington.  The photos may have been taken in the early 1920s.  We would really like to identify these kids.  If you went to this school or knew people who did,  please go into to library see if you can help.

            Since forest fires are on our minds lately, I can't resist throwing out an amazing story I was just reminded of.  The fires near McCall have been burning for a couple weeks now, and have consumed 50,000 to 60,000 acres, last I heard.  In 1910, a fire burned for only two days in northern Idaho and western Montana ... an burned THREE MILLION ACRES.  It covered an area 160 miles long, and fifty miles wide.  Four towns and a number of mines and mills were destroyed, and over 100 people were killed.  It was the worst fire in the history of North America.

            Hey! I got some great news today.  The Council Exhibit Committee (quilt show) is donating $300 dollars to the museum fund.  Thank you!  Now doesn't that make you feel guilty if you haven't donated yet?  I know you plan to.   It doesn't have to be a lot.  If everybody in the area would just kick in the amount it would cost them to go out and have a hamburger, we would have it made.  If mailing is easier for you, send your donation to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612. 

            Be sure to watch for more info on the Council - Seven Devils tour.  It will be one of the most fascinating days you have ever spent.

 

 

 

 

History

 

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            You have probably stopped to read the sign at the old stage stop on the summit between the Hornet Creek and Crooked River drainages.  This spot along the route of our upcoming tour is known as "Kramer" or "Summit".  The Summit designation is obvious.  The name Kramer comes from Peter and Martha Kramer who came to live here at least as early as 1899.  It was in November of that year that Pete got the mail contract between Council and Curprum. 

            By 1900, a combination saloon and hotel called the Summit House was doing business here, run by the Ross Brothers - probably Dick and James, but I'm not sure.  Dick Ross had a homestead just west of Kramer, and the Creek there is named after him.  Dick was the City Marshal in Council in 1909, and a pair of brass knuckles that he confiscated from a trouble maker is on display in the Museum. James Ross briefly owned the Overland Hotel which, until the fire or 1915,  stood where the Ace / Grubsteak building is now.

            By 1901, Pete Kramer had a stage leaving Council six days a week at 7 AM and arriving at Cuprum about 6 PM.  It also went on to Landore and Decorah.  This schedule varied over time.  For a while, the stage traveled from Council to the Devils on Mon., Weds. and Fri.,  stopping at Summit (which was about halfway to the mining district) for the night, and continuing on the next day.  I think another stage took passengers the opposite direction, back to Council, on a similar schedule.  At various times, there were also stage stops at Lick Creek (where the OX Ranch headquarters are now) and at Bear.

            At its peak of activity, Summit was quite a busy place.  On the west side of the road there was the Kramer house, which doubled as a hotel.  Martha Kramer cooked for the guests.  Also on that side of the road was the post office, saloon, store and bunk house.  Some of these probably shared a common building.  On the east side of the road was a log barn and corrals for the horses, wagon sheds, a livery stable and blacksmith shop.  Dances were often held at Summit, and people would come from miles away.

            Pete Kramer was a slender, dark haired man.  He was born in Germany of  Danish parents, and had a heavy accent.  More than one source has said that he was a man who liked liquor. It is said that by the time the stage rolled into its destination, he would sometimes be obviously drunk.  His passengers were, in general, mostly men, and at times, they were also pretty well inebriated.

            Over the 23 years or so that he was in business here, Pete Kramer had various drivers, routes and vehicles.  In 1904, it was noted that his main rig was a four-seated mountain spring wagon, built a little on the Concord coach pattern, like the ones in the movies.  One of his wagons held up to 12 people.  His wheeled vehicles were generally pulled by four horses.  In the winter, sleds were used, pulled by two horse teams.

            The only pictures I've seen of Kramer's stages show open-top vehicles.  It must have been an incredibly dusty ride in the summer when dozens of ore and freight wagons used the Council - Cuprum road.  There is one photo in the museum of Kramer with a load of passengers in front of the old Pomona Hotel, and the caption notes that all in the coach were coated with dust.

            Eventually, Kramer got contracts to deliver mail all the way from Council to Black Lake and Iron Springs, and down to Homestead along the Snake River.  Stage drivers made $35 a month.    A few of the drivers, aside from Pete Kramer himself, were Norman Nelson, Roy York, Ralph Wilkie, the notorious Tommy White and Fayette Davis.

            Fayette Davis was the son of Byron and Nancy Davis, who settled the place where the Wildhorse road branches off.  Fayette's wife, Mary, was the first postmaster when a post office was established at Kramer in 1907. (The post office closed in 1910.)  Fayette ran the saloon there for a time.

            During the winter of 1906, Kramer and Bob Barbour went together on a deal to haul 3,000 tons of copper ore from the mines to the railroad at Council.  They hired 50 teams and sleds for the job.  They wanted to have as many as 75 teams hauling ore, but more of the right kind of heavy sleds were hard to come by.  It was reported that it took the sleds four days to make the trip.  I assume they meant round trip.

            By1920, things had pretty well fallen apart.  The mining boom had ended.  Autos and trucks were replacing the horse and wagon.  Pete and Martha Kramer were divorced that year.  Two years later Pete sold out and moved to Hillsboro, Oregon.  In 1923, Martha apparently married a man named Stevens.   M. D. Shields got the place after Kramers.

            Just a couple of minor corrections from last week.  It was an Indian who volunteered to go bring Anna Hanson back when the Indians took her.  He advised Rasmus not to go.  And it was Soren that was in school when Mrs. Hanson learned English, not Bill who came along later.  Also, I'm told Mr. Sevey's first name was Loring.

            We had a pretty good bunch at the slide show Friday night.  Everybody seemed to enjoy it, and almost $60 were raised for the museum.  My sincere thanks to those of you who turned out.  There were some people who couldn't make it that night, so I plan to show the slides again at some point.

            Believe it or not, the Council - Seven Devils tour is still on.  There are only two Saturdays that would be practical: Oct. 22 or Nov. 5.     The museum board has yet to pin it down.  Tell ya what... if you are interested in the tour, give me a call.  253-4582  I'm starting a list so we can get organized.  It will be an all day tour.  It will be a fund raiser, so there will be a charge.  If you have a big vehicle, like a suburban, and could take a couple extra passengers, that would make things go more smoothly.  I hope the seniors can get a bus load to go along.  I was just reading that a similar tour in 1968, with Winifred Lindsay as one of the guides, took about 200 people along! 

            This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $1,952... we need at least $10,000 to start our much needed museum addition project.  Please help.  Donations made as memorials will be acknowledged in this column, along with the name of the person in who's honor the contribution was made.   Please send contributions to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612.  Make your check out to the Winkler Museum.

 

 

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            Guess what? It's on!  October 22, we will be taking our Council to Seven Devils Mining District Tour.     If you have been following this column for the past few weeks, you know some of what lays in store on the tour.  The mining district played an essential role in the history of this area.  There are places along the road that you have seen as you drove past, but never knew the story of what happened there.  Once you learn, that place will never be the same to you again.

            Here's an example.  Last Saturday, Anna, Blaine and I went on a tour of the early events in the Nez Perce War, north of Riggins.  It was guided by local historian, Ace Barton.  He showed us a nondescript bench where a house sits beside highway 95 that I have driven by a lot of times.  It was the place where Mr. Devine, the first victim of the war, was killed with his own rifle by Nez Perce warriors.  On up the highway, we saw several other scenes of violence that are right along the road.  I had heard the stories before, but had never known just where things happened.

            For our tour, we will meet in front of the Council library on the morning of the 22nd.  Mark it on your calendar.  The exact time, whether the museum will provide a lunch and whether we will charge a set price or ask for donations will be determined by the time you read this.  Watch this column next week and look for posters around the area.  Unfortunately, elk hunting season will still be on that weekend, but it's just about our last chance to do this before it might snow up there.  We encourage anyone who can take an extra passenger to do so, in order to save on unnecessary vehicles.  Some ride sharing can be arranged as we get organized on the morning of the tour.  A vehicle other than a low-to-the ground car would be advised. 

            Here's another spot along the way that you will see on our tour:  Just about a half mile past the Kramer stage stop at Summit is the former site of the Rooker sawmill.    W.S. Rooker, a former business man and then Wild Horse rancher (1904 - ?), built a mill here in 1926.    Although it was sometimes called the "Crooked River Sawmill", it was actually on Dick Ross Creek, a branch of Crooked River.

            Early pioneers of Wild Horse built the original road out of that canyon to this point along the Council - Cuprum road.  At the time, the Council - Cuprum road was across the flat from the present road, on the west side of the flat. 

            Rooker's loggering crews and mill workers lived in tents until the mill was running and could provide lumber.  Then "lumber jack shacks" were built all over the flat.  The mill employed more than 30 men until it burned down in the fall of 1935.

            The summer before the mill burned, a notorious accident happened here.  Frank Fanning, who was about 75 years old, was working underneath the mill, probably cleaning out sawdust and pieces of slab wood that had accumulated there.  Not realizing he was so near the whirling circular saw above him, he stood up right underneath it.  Blood and hair sprayed the air as the saw cut through Frank's skull and into his brain cavity.  Miraculously, he was not killed.  In fact, the next week, Dr. Thurston announced that aside from having a metal plate where part of his skull used to be, Fanning would be "normal again after a few weeks."  Frank lived another 22 years, dying in a Weiser nursing home in 1957.

            Another event that happened at the Rooker mill, was that my maternal grandparents met here.  My grandmother, Mae Baker - Kite, was a cook for the crews as the mill was being built in 1926.  My grandfather, Russell Merk, was on a logging crew, but was hired to build an addition to the cook house where grandma was working.

            If you are interested in going on the tour on the 22nd, please give me a call.  This is not a necessity, but it will enable us to do better advance planning.  253-4582

            This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $1,962... we need at least $10,000 to start our much needed museum addition project.  Please help.  Donations made as memorials will be acknowledged in this column, along with the name of the person in who's honor the contribution was made.   Please send contributions to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612.  Make your check out to the Winkler Museum.

 

 

 

           

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

             Soon after Idaho Territory was established, the valleys along the Weiser River began to be settled.  The first non-natives to live along the Weiser were William and Nancy Logan who ran away from their parent's homes near Baker to get married about 1863. 

            At the time, Old's Ferry was about to be established to cross the Snake River at Farewell Bend about 12 miles below the mouth of the Weiser River.  The Oregon Trail crossed to the west side of the Snake River at Fort Boise, near the mouth of the Boise River.         

            The Logans figured that wagons traveling the Oregon Trail would soon be continuing along the east side of the Snake until they reached the easier and safer crossing provided by the new ferry.   

As things turned out, they  were right, and they took advantage of the fact.  The young couple built a house of willows and mud along the new route near the mouth of the Weiser River, and operated a successful road house for a short time.

            When Thomas Galloway and Woodson Jeffreys arrived at the present site of Weiser in 1864, the area was nothing but sagebrush desert.   Galloway opened a stage station and supply house, and generally catered to the traveling public.  The location soon became known as "Dead Fall".   In 1866, Jeffreys established the first post office here, under the name  "Weiser Ranch".  The post office was closed in 1870, but reopened in 1871 as "Weiser".  The location changed official title again in 1878 or 1880 to "Weiser Bridge".    

            All of these activities took place at what is now the east end of the town of Weiser, close to the Weiser River.    The name "Weiser Bridge" derived from the fact that there was now a bridge here across that river.   After the railroad arrived in 1882, the main part of  town shifted to the west, to its present location.    In 1883, the name was changed permanently back to "Weiser".  The original section of Weiser was sometimes referred to as "old town".

            Before hordes of fortune seekers started occupying Idaho, fighting between Indians and whites had been mostly restricted to the area along the Oregon Trail.  But after the non-native invasion of Idaho in 1862, the friction spread over a wider area.

            During the 1860s, whites in Northern California, Nevada, Eastern Oregon, Idaho and Montana were in a virtual state of siege as Indians rampaged anywhere they could.  The government tried a combination of treaties and military force to stop the depredation.  At first, nothing seemed to work.  Resentment toward the Indians grew to the point that statements were openly made in public newspapers advocating genocide.  In 1867, one upstanding citizen recommended inviting all the Indians to a feast containing strychnine to poison every man, woman and child of them.  Finally, in 1868, after a series of military confrontations referred to as the "Snake War", tensions were somewhat reduced.

            Meanwhile, the loop in the Oregon Trail to Olds Ferry had brought large numbers of emigrants across the mouth of the Weiser river on their way farther west.  This undoubtedly helped bring the Weiser drainage to their attention.  Many of them must have felt like the children of Israel wondering in the desert after months of traveling through mostly desolate, sagebrush wasteland.  By the time they got this far west, it was late in the season.  The land would have been baked dry by the summer's heat and punctuated only occasionally by narrow strips of green along the rivers.   As they trudged along, mile after mile, they must have grown weary of seeing land that was devoid of trees other than scattered Juniper.  When they reached the mouth of the Weiser River, the scenery would still have been the same depressing desert drab, but far off to the north they would have caught a glimpse of forest-clad mountains.  The word that there was a lush valley somewhere in that direction, surrounded by wooded hills must have peaked their interest.

             With the winding down of Indian wars in the general area, the idea of ending their journey and settling in a mountain river valley prompted some of them to investigate the valleys along Weiser River.  More than a few families continued on to eastern Oregon, settled down briefly, and then backtracked to this area.

             Mann Creek, and the valley it formed, was the first farmable ground north of the flat land near the mouth of the Weiser River.  Although not along the Weiser, it became the first settled land along the main line of travel up that river.  My guess would be that an Indian trail followed a similar path to the present highway to avoid the narrow canyon just south of present day Midvale.  From very early on, wagon trails to reach the upper Weiser River valleys went up Monroe Creek, then over into Mann Creek and on into Middle Valley. 

            The next valley up the Weiser River acquired the name "Middle Valley" because it was between the upper and lower valleys along the river.  The first settlers came here in 1868, but the actual town of Midvale wasn't started until 1903.  The first bridge across the Weiser River (other than the one at its mouth) was built at Midvale, on the site of the present bridge.  The first road to points north crossed the river here and proceeded through the "sand hills" to the north east.

             The next valley up the river was just north of the sand hills, and began to be settled about 1868.  The community of Salubria was established here, a little over a mile south east of the present site of Cambridge.  It was granted a post office in 1870.    The location was named Salubria because it was said to be "salubrious", which basically means "pleasant and beneficial to ones health".  The building of an actual town of Salubria began with the first store, which was erected in 1885.  Salubria was the only town in that vicinity until Cambridge was established along the railroad when the tracks reached the valley in 1900.  Almost no remnant of Salubria remains to mark the spot today.  To reach the site of the old town, turn south at the power station just this side of Cambridge.  Salubria was at the first intersection south of the highway.

            The next valley up the Weiser, where the Little Weiser River joins the main river, was more or less an extension of the Salubria Valley.  It was called "Indian Valley" because the Weiser Shoshoni often wintered there.  The Salubria and Indian Valley areas began to be settled at about the same time, about1868. 

            About the time the first settlers began to inhabit the Salubria and Indian Valleys in 1868, the first non-native person to establish a home in the Council area settled on Hornet Creek.  He was a 32 year old bachelor named Henry Childs.  Just what enticed Childs to this area is not exactly certain, but he was known to have done some mining and trapping.  He built a home and did some farming about 2.5 miles up Hornet Creek from the present site of Council.  His place was located where the Old Hornet road now branches from the Council - Cuprum road and goes across to the west side of the creek.  Hornet Creek was named after a nasty encounter that Childs had with a nest of hornets while he was clearing brush.

            The Salubria and Indian Valleys, and even Middle Valley, were referred to as the "upper valleys" or the "upper country".  The Council and Meadows Valleys were later included as part of the upper country.  Early upper country residents referred to the Weiser area as the "lower country".  This tradition continues today, and the terminology has evolved.  New-comers hearing an upper country person say they are going "down below" are often confused until it is explained that this generally indicates a trip to anywhere between Weiser and Boise. 

 

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            From 1862 on, some miners started traveling up the Weiser and Payette Rivers to reach the mining areas around Florence and Warren.   As the area around Boise City grew, the Weiser River route through the Council Valley became a principle avenue of travel for pack trains carrying supplies to the gold camps at Warren.  This route was easier to travel than the more direct but torturous terrain along the Payette River.  The Weiser River trail was also clear of snow earlier in the spring.

            Old timers who frequented the Council Valley in those early days told of huge groups of Indians gathering in the Council Valley.  Perry Clark, a member of the Idaho Territorial Legislature and later an Indian Valley school teacher, described what he saw near the present town of Council.  He said that from on top of the little hill just north of present day downtown, he could see "... many hundreds of Indians and thousands of head of Indian horses at one sight, literally covering the valley as a blanket."  In the early 1870's, Perry, who never actually lived here, named the place "Council Valley" because of the Indian "Councils" held here.

            The word "council" is, or course, a European term, and probably doesn't fit the principle nature of the native gatherings.  The Weiser Indians spent most of the year roaming in independent family groups, and had little use for political organization.  The Shoshonis were fond of festivals, and held large gatherings at least once a year where they would, among other things, hold council meetings.  But trade was probably the most important function of the gatherings, enabling each group to acquire items that couldn't be found in their own local area.  The next priority was probably having a good time.  At these festivals, the Indians would engage in competitive games, like gambling and horse racing, and generally celebrated the beginning of the salmon runs.

            Before 1862, the main annual Indian rendezvous was held in the Snake River Valley in the general vicinity between the mouth of the Boise River (near Parma), and the mouth of the Weiser River (near Weiser).  Held in the early summer, it would last for a month or more.

            After the introduction of the horse to Native Americans, members of more distant tribes began to attend the festive gatherings on the Snake River, and it became one of the biggest annual native gatherings in the Northwest.  It must have been an incredible sight: thousands of Indians with their camps spread out across the valley, surrounded by enormous herds of horses.

            Smaller festivals were evidently held in the Council Valley during that time.  Alexander Ross, a trapper who explored this area in 1824, reported encountering such a native gathering at a location on the Weiser River that would seem to indicate the Council Valley.  Although it is thought that he grossly overestimated their numbers, he reported seeing about 4,500 Indians with about half that many horses, and 900 teepees.

            After the sky seemed to open up and rain white men around the Boise Valley in 1862, the big native festival was relocated to the more remote Council Valley to avoid contact with Whites.  This is why Perry Clark and others saw so many Indians here.   This area was chosen partly because it had been relatively unaffected by the storm of white activity all around it.  In addition, Eagle Eye, the most influential leader in the area, was able to maintain peace between the various Indian groups.

            Although the Shoshoni band who roamed the Weiser River drainage was composed of independent groups, they did recognize Eagle Eye as their principle leader.  Born sometime during the fur trade era (1820s and 30s), he would have been in his 40s or 50s when white intrusion began in 1862.  Eagle Eye was very influential in avoiding native conflict, or even contact, with Whites.

            The Nez Perce name for the Council Valley is said to have been "Kos-ni-ma" (pronounced Quashnima).  The term indicates "red fish" or salmon.  The festivals here peaked about 1872 when about 800 Umatillas (Cayuses), 500 Nez Perces, 75 Klikitats, and 1,125 Shoshoni and Bannocks... a total of about 2,500... gathered here.  About 1876, the arrival of the Mosers to settle here, the battle at the Little Big Horn, and then the Nez Perce and Bannock Wars brought an end to the Indian gatherings here.

           

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            I mentioned the 1919 newspapers that the courthouse gave to the museum.  That year was an interesting time.  The First World War had just ended in Europe, but the joy of the end of killing was dampened by the awful knowledge that it was not the end of dying.  People were still dropping by the thousands ... and not just in Europe, but right in our own home towns.   

            The war had been the most horrendous the world had ever known, thanks to new inventions like airplanes, tanks, machine guns, submarines, trench warfare and poison gas.  But another blow followed the war like the second half of a combination punch.  A plague spread across the nation that, by 1919, had killed almost six times as many people as the number of American soldiers that had died in the war.  It was Spanish Influenza... and it killed millions around the world.  In the Council area alone, 16 citizens were claimed by it.

            It had started before the war had even ended, in 1918.  Reports came in that thousands of flu cases had appeared at Army bases across the U.S.

            Minnie Zink, who had a son in the war, ran a hospital of sorts in Council.  It was in her big square house on the corner of Railroad Street and Central Avenue. ( That's the spot where Dennis and Bea Maggard live now.)  Minnie's daughter, Mary Zink, and F.H. Morrison were kept busy nursing flu victims until they came down with it themselves. 

            Leo Rainwater  ran a grocery store in the building in which Sam Nightengale now has his TV and appliance store.  Rainwater had another store on that location when the big fire of 1915 wiped it out, along with half the business section.  He built back on the same spot.  Leo was known as a tireless worker, but in November of 1918, shortly after the armistice of November 11, he became run down and was put in the Zink hospital with a bad case of influenza.  By the end of the month, he was dead.  He was only 34 years old, and left a wife and baby behind.  The store was sold shortly afterward to pay debts.

            It was not actually the flu that killed most, people, but complications that caused: usually pneumonia .

            Council area schools were closed; churches stopped holding services; the People's Theater shut its doors.  All public gatherings were banned.  In January, 1919,  Ida Selby (age 40) and her son, Ray (age 20) died from the flu on the same day.   Ida's other son, Chet, (Loraine Ludwig's father) was still in the army in France.

            Whether by coincidence or from the flu, Teddy Roosevelt died that month.

            In Weiser a public policy statement read, "In the hope of stamping out influenza, the Weiser City Council, in conjunction with the school board, has ordered that all absentees from school shall be reported by teachers and that investigation, looking to quarantine, shall immediately follow such reports.  Police officers are authorized to call a physician to investigate any case of suspected influenza that has not been reported.  Violaters of quarantine will be vigorously prosecuted."

            Meanwhile, in Council, Public gatherings were allowed sporadically, as waves of the epidemic came and went.  Eventually, three quarters or more of Council school kids had already had the flu, and the school was set to reopen.  When it did, families that had not had the flu in their household were not required to send their children to school. The County Leader newspaper reported, "... the Health Officer shall visit the schools each morning for purpose of inspection and, further, that teachers shall watch closely for any appearance of illness on the part of pupils in order that if any suspicious cases appear they may be immediately cared for."

            By February, 1919, the paper had an Official Notice by Board of Health on the front page.  It said that the Spanish influenza epidemic seemed to be on the wane in the Northwestern U.S., but: "All cases of sickness in any way similar to influenza must be reported and a physician called AT ONCE.  Failure to do this is a misdemeanor punishable by fine." "All cases of Influenza shall consider themselves in rigid quarantine, the quarantine extending not only to the person sick but to ALL MEMBERS OF THE HOUSEHOLD for at least one week following the outbreak of the disease."  "Rooms occupied by Influenza patients must be thoroughly disinfected with formaldehyde at the time that quarantine is lifted."

            Over the next couple of years, even a few cases of the flu around Council caused scares that closed schools and public meeting places.  In 1920, there was the flu spread across Idaho, but it was not as serious as the year before.  But in the spring of 1922, it was bad enough to be called an epidemic again.  The Council school, churches and other public places closed temporarily.

            Some time back, I wrote about Council attorney, L.L. Burtenshaw.  You may remember that his, son, Edward, died of the flu just days before the armistice was signed.  After reading the 1919 papers, the picture becomes even more tragic.  The official War Dept. telegram bearing the news of Edward's death said that he had died on Oct. 6.  But the Burtenshaws had just received a letter from Edward dated Oct 20, saying, "... I am still in the land of the living ... and ... am well and feel fine."  The family thought that he must really be dead, and that the date must have been wrong on the notice ... but the nagging doubt before they learned for sure must have been terrible.  To aggravate their pain, just over two months after the death notice came, a letter arrived at the home of Carney Johnson, a Midvale boy serving in France and who was officially reported as having been killed in action.  The letter was from Carney saying that he was actually alive and well.  A few weeks later, Edward's wife gave birth to their son.

            Stay tuned.

 

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            A while back, a couple of my History Corners were about wildlife in this area.  Last week I had an interesting conversation with Jerry Thiessen who is researching a book on Idaho Wildlife.  He wanted information about when the first elk were released in this area.  I was able to provide him with some info on their release in the Meadows Valley in 1915.

            Until I talked to Jerry, it was my impression that elk were not found in the Weiser River area before they were planted here.  It turns out that there were scattered, small herds of elk in the Weiser and Payette River drainages when the fur trappers came here in the early 1800s.  When these mountain men traveled in large groups, as they did with the Hudson's Bay Co. expeditions, they often killed as many elk (or any other food animal) as they could when they had the opportunity.  They never knew when the next chance would be, so they stocked up.  Travelers on the Oregon Trail helped finish off the elk population when they passed though, sometimes roaming miles off the trail in search of meat.  As a result, the elk in this part of Idaho were gone by the 1850s.   By 1885, it was feared that elk would become extinct in Idaho.

            I had always wondered if reports of grizzly bears in this area were true or not.  Some of them probably were.  The salmon runs here would have provided a perfect food source for them.  Jerry's guess is that there were probably not too many because they need a large area for habitat.  Black bears, on the other hand, were probably very common.

            I had read that Big Horn Sheep were abundant in the Seven Devils before they were killed out.  Jerry says they may have been the most common animal in the State in the early days.

            There were also antelope in the Indian Valley area, and probably in Meadows Valley during some parts of the year.  They were very common in Baker and Malheur Counties in Oregon.

            The Winkler family reported seeing many white tail deer around Council when they came here in 1878.  White tails were sometimes called "Willow Deer" or "Brush Deer" because they liked the cover and feed that willows provided.  The river bottoms along the Weiser River used to be covered with dense thickets of  willows and cottonwood trees - prime white tail habitat.

            The story of what happened to the white tail habitat in this area was repeated in many other places.  First, livestock ate back some of the willows.  Thorn brush (Hawthorn) began to be more dominant because livestock preferred the more tender willows.  Then, settlers cleared the bottom lands for farming.  When the willow thickets disappeared, so did the white tails.

            Before the government organized to suppress forest fires, fires were more frequent but mostly burned the undergrowth, not the trees.  This left much less brush in the forests than there is now.  Because of this, there were fewer deer there, particularly mule deer.    

            Bitter brush has always been a prime source of feed for mule deer.  This large, sage-like bush that is so common here now (sometimes called buck brush), was not common except in very rocky places where fires could not easily reach them.  Bitter brush is not at all tolerant of fire.  Willows are fire resistant, sprout very quickly and grow in moist ground.  That's one reason the river bottoms remained brushy until they were cleared.

            Over the years, as fires were less common, the brush in the hills increased and so did the mule deer.  Their peak population was reached in the 1960s.  (Remember when we could buy two deer tags and shoot either sex?)  The brush is probably why white tail deer are becoming more common here now too.

            All this is probably an oversimplified version of the story, but it gives the general idea.

 

            Last week a very generous memorial donation was made in memory of Jay Quilliam by the "Royal Order of the Golden Neckyoke".  This group, of which Jay was a charter member, is a "vintage collection of veteran farmers who, at some time, planted and harvested with horses."  Much thanks.  Jay was one of the nicest people and best story tellers that I've ever met.

            This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $2,770.  We need at least $10,000 to start our much needed museum addition project.  Please help.  Donations made as memorials will be acknowledged in this column, along with the name of the person in who's honor the contribution was made.   Please send contributions to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612.  Make your check out to the Winkler Museum.

 

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            Before I begin this column, I apologize for using the term "white" so much to indicate someone other than a Native American / Indian.  Even though the word is not always correct (not all pioneers, settlers etc. were Anglo-Saxon), it has become deeply ingrained in American culture.  Sometimes there are simply places where "white" is the only word that gets the meaning across without going to ridiculous lengths to be politically or technically correct.

            All during the fighting of the 1860s, the Weiser Indians had mostly stayed to themselves in the more remote mountains of their territory.  Even so, they were falsely accused of numerous atrocities.  Typical of the mind-set of the time,  Eagle Eye acquired an unearned reputation among many whites as being a murderous savage.

            In 1867, based only on rumors, the Weiser Indians were declared to be hostiles.  A scouting party was sent from Fort Boise to find them, but Eagle Eye moved his band into the Salmon River mountains before the troops arrived.  At the Indian's abandoned campsite along the Weiser River, the soldiers found footprints measuring seventeen and one-half inches long.  The newspapers made big news out of this, and the legend of "Bigfoot" began.  (There actually was a hostile Indian named Howluck in the Owyhee mountains at this time that was called Bigfoot.)

            In 1868, after false reports that the Weisers had been causing trouble, soldiers were sent from Fort Boise to capture Eagle Eye's band.  The Weisers were forewarned and moved north, but the troopers caught up with them near the present site of Riggins.  The forty-one Indians in the group, including Eagle Eye, were arrested without incident and taken to Fort Boise.  Among their possessions was a pair of moccasins over sixteen inches long, stuffed with rags and fur.  Apparently, these were the source of the fake footprints seen the year before.

            After a personal meeting with the governor of the Idaho Territory, Eagle Eye was able to convince him that the Weisers were peaceful and would cause no trouble.  The Indians were released, but public pressure to put them on a reservation continued.   At this time, the number of members of the Weiser band fluctuated between 40 and 100 individuals.

            Eagle Eye had no intention of living on a reservation.  He had seen how other Indians had faired who had surrendered to this fate.  Some of them were so destitute that they had resorted to begging on the streets of Boise.  Eagle Eye let it be known that if the government would leave his band alone, they would live in peace without relying on support from the government.  The newly arrived settlers in Indian Valley also didn't want the Weisers removed from their area.  They realized that Eagle Eye's peaceful group provided them with some degree of protection from more hostile natives that were roaming the countryside.

            For the next few years after the Snake War of 1868, there was little fighting between whites and Indians in Idaho, but there was constant friction.  Groups of heavily armed Indians roamed freely throughout many parts of Idaho and Oregon.  And they were not all well behaved.

            All during the 1860s and 1870s, there was continual hue and cry to put all Indians on reservations.  But the management of reservations was a bureaucratic quagmire, and the money sent from Congress to support impounded natives was pathetically inadequate.  To keep the reservation Indians from starving, they were allowed to leave the reservations and fend for themselves for extended periods.

            In 1873, the Modoc Indians in south western Oregon chose to fight rather than return to their reservation.  The resulting Modoc War instilled deep apprehension in both whites and natives in Idaho.  Everyone realized that the situation here was teetering on the brink of the same kind of disaster.

            Even though Eagle Eye's band kept a low profile, they were the target of a great deal of white resentment because their territory was the site of larger and larger intertribal gatherings.  As tribes from outside the Council Valley began to visit this last place of refuge in growing numbers, some of the outside Indians stayed permanently.  In spite of the odds against peaceful coexistence, Eagle Eye was able to maintain relative tranquility between the whites and all the natives who visited, or lived, in his area. 

            In March of 1874, Eagle Eye was ordered to bring his band in to the Fort Hall reservation.  He refused, and because of a lack of funds, the authorities were unable to enforce the order.

    The next year (1875), the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce tribe was ordered to surrender to reservation life, and their lands were opened to white settlement.  This was the band of which Chief Joseph was a member, and was the last of the free roaming bands of  the Nez Perce. The Wallowas refused to come in, but the government was still too under-funded and disorganized to do anything about them or Eagle Eye.

            The following summer (1876), settlers on the upper Weiser heard rumors through local Indians about a big Indian victory over the horse soldiers.  The battle had supposedly occurred very recently in the buffalo country east of the Rocky Mountains.  Days later, vivid accounts came from Boise of how Indian savages had slaughtered Custer's valiant Seventh Cavalry on the Little Big Horn River in Montana Territory.  How the Weiser Indians had received word of this battle before local whites had heard about it left the settlers feeling uneasy.   News of the Custer massacre only accented the fears of Idaho whites, and deepened their resolve to rid the Territory of Indians.

            This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $2670. 

 

            One of the things that  makes history  interesting is seeing how different things were in the past.  And one thing that has changed around Council is the way people make a living.

            A lot of homesteaders came here with what seemed like a vague idea of how they were going to survive.  I wonder if many of them really knew what they were in for.  It seems like they sometimes selected land that had no chance of  growing enough to supply an income.  To survive, a lot of them took whatever odd job was available whenever it was available.  Come to think of it, there are people who move here now with the same approach, so maybe things haven't changed much in that regard.

            At the turn of the century, it was said that the principle industries of the area were farming, stock raising, mining and lumbering.  "Lumbering" centered on small sawmills scattered about the vicinity.  Of course all the work was done with hand tools and horses, with the exception of the saw and carriage at the mill itself.  It hardly resembled the modern industry we know today, which  started in the late 1930s with the advent of practical chain saws.  Even so, lumbering provided a good many local, seasonal jobs.

             In the early days, it seemed like everybody and his dog around Council had a mining claim somewhere.   In 1890, Idaho ranked third in the nation for total income from mining.  Montana was in first place, followed by Colorado.   Local claims were worked whenever the owners had the time.  Frank Mathias and Lewis Winkler spent so much time at the Golden Rule mine, up on the South Fork of the Salmon someplace, that it was pretty much their second occupation.  All winter they mostly did blacksmithing, but in the spring they would disappear for the summer. 

            Placer miners had to get to their claims as early as possible in the spring so that they could take advantage of the available water flow in nearby creeks.  Water was needed to wash the gold out of the ore.  Often times, on mountain claims, the water would only last a short time in the spring before it dried up.  This type of work must have been wet, muddy and cold early in the season.

            At one time there were actually coal mines on the Middle Fork of the Weiser River.  The first mention I found of one was in the spring of 1895, when Ed Barbour was reported to have discovered a vein of coal there, "...six miles above Farleigh's old mill".   He found pieces of coal that measured eight inches square. 

            In 1899, the Salubria Citizen paper noted coal deposits on Crane Creek and Middle Fork.  It said that the Middle Fork coal had been used by local blacksmiths for several years.  That same year, the Seven Devils Standard reported that a coal vein had been found on Rapid River near Pollock Mountain.  It was said to have been "between bituminous and anthracite" in nature, and burned readily. 

            In 1905, The Weiser Semi-Weekly Signal reported that Ben Shaw, C.A. Barber "and others" had found a four foot wide vein of coal near the warm springs on Middle Fork.  It said a big slab of "absolutely  pure coal" measuring 4' X 4' X 8' was found far down in the canyon a number of years before, and many had been looking for where it came from on the hillside above.   In January of the 1909, Charley Whiteley and John Kesler were working the mine.

            Does anybody have any idea where these coal deposits were?  Has anyone heard of Farleigh's sawmill on Middle Fork, or know where it was?  And while I'm on that general area, somebody told me about a corral somewhere in the hills between Cottonwood Creek and Mill Creek that is said to have been used by outlaws (?).  If you have any info on any of these, please let me know. 253-4582

            This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $2,413..

 

 

HC - 1-22-95

            Human beings are an interesting species.  When the first non-native people came to the West, they acted as if they had no concept of the idea that natural resources like timber, grazing, game animals or land had any kind of limits.  Like kids in a free candy store, they ate as much as they could as fast as they could.  It took a few decades for the stomach ache to set in.  Now, people have started running full speed in the opposite direction: don't cut any timber, kill any animals, graze any grass ... don't do anything that isn't "natural".  And spend six million dollars replacing the wolves that our grandparents paid to have eradicated.  I guess it would be more accurate to say they are "adding to" the wolves that are already replacing themselves.

             Trying to instantly turn around the long - time, fundamental practices of a society in this way is like throwing a ten ton truck into reverse at 90 miles per hour.  The only comfort to be found is in knowing that social tends often to go to extremes before they settle on a more sensible compromise somewhere in the middle.  So there is hope.... eventually.

            Last week, we were all shocked to hear that the Boise Cascade mill will be closing.  Talk about a Landmark.  Some of us can't remember a time when a mill wasn't there.

            It all started in the fall of1938, when the Boise Payette Company bought fifty-three acres from Bill Winkler on which to build a mill.  The paper reported,  "It is said that the life of the local plant during the time of cutting the adjacent timber will be approximately twelve years.  If, after that, the Meadows timber holdings should come to this plant, the life of the local plant would be indefinite." "When this operation was originally planned, the company had no idea of remilling and storing its lumber at Council but had planned to truck haul the lumber from the [portable] mill in the woods [at Old Davis on Crooked River] to Council, load it on cars there and ship it to Emmett for remilling."  "Neither the present roadbed or bridges between Council and Crooked river and Bear will stand the heavy traffic required by this operation."

             By the summer of 1940, the mill was in operation.  The mill, the new technology and the aggressive logging activity of the company brought a growth spurt to Council.  The population expanded as many new families moved in.  About a dozen portable houses were moved to Council from the camp at Old Davis to house these new arrivals.  The houses were put on land the company bought on the west side of the railroad tracks where remodeled versions of some of them continue to be used today.

            Mechanized logging had started in the 1930s, but the Depression had put a damper on many business ventures.  In spite of shortages of manpower and other basics during World War II, the demand for lumber and the momentum of the Boise Payette Co. was high enough to sustain a boom in the Council area.  After the war, two critical factors came together to start a new era in the timber industry.

            First, the housing boom that followed World War II created an unprecedented demand for lumber.  Second, by that time, chain saws, logging trucks, crawler tractors and other machinery needed for modern timber harvesting had evolved to the point of being fairly dependable and available.  In the old days, it had been a monumental task to build a road into the mountains to harvest timber.  With "cats" miles of roads could be built with relative ease.  Because logging had been on a comparatively small scale up until this time, there were vast roadless tracts of virgin timber on every side of the Council Valley.  Within only three or four decades after 1940, most of the Payette National Forest (except for Wilderness Areas) was logged at least once, and the majority of the roads now in existence on the Forest were built.

            As modes of transportation improved and the area centralized, the timber industry followed the same trend.  Most of the small sawmills scattered around the country disappeared as it became more practical to haul logs to big mills like the one in Council.

            The Council sawmill, and its associated logging operations quickly became a vital anchor of the local economy.  In 1957, the Boise Payette Company merged with the Cascade Lumber Company of Yakima, Washington, and adopted the name by which we know it today: the Boise Cascade Corporation.

            The next year, (1958) the fire siren sounded in Council in the middle of the night, and local citizens were stunned when they peered out their windows.  The sawmill was engulfed in flames!  The loss of this prominent part of the community was unthinkable.  But a new mill that sported all the newest technology arose from the ashes, and it became even more of a source of pride than the old mill. 

            Now, the community faces the unthinkable once again.  Looking at the big picture, the fifty-five year period from 1940 to 1995 has been a short one.  Eventually, the pendulum will find its equilibrium, the emotionalism and ignorance will subside, and a sustainable way of managing the forests that is balanced with the needs of people will emerge...maybe.  There is an enormous fly in the ointment. 

            At the time the mill was first built, there were just over 2 billion people on earth.  That number has more than doubled to about 5.7 billion.  The number of trees big enough to cut has not grown, or has even decreased.  In another 50 years, the world's population is expected to double again if we don't wise up.

            I apologize for climbing on my soap box, but I'm absolutely convinced that overpopulation is the most serious problem we face - not just in the future - not just in the "third world" - right here in Council, right now.  The whole ball of wax - the salmon issue, the sustainable forest issue, and every other environmental problem is either directly caused, or greatly exacerbated, by more people needing more natural resources of which there are continually less. There is no amount of recycling, replanting or conserving that can possibly keep up with the suicidal growth rate we now have.

 

History Corner 3-30-95

by Dale Fisk

            It was almost midnight as Edgar Hall approached the outskirts of Boise City.  His horse stumbled and almost fell as the exhausted animal struggled to keep going through the blackness.  The bottoms of Edgar's pant legs were stiff with dried, lathered horse sweat.  He had been in the saddle for 16 hours without a rest.  The bones in his backside felt like they had cut completely through the muscles to rub relentlessly against the hard leather seat of the saddle, and his legs ached for relief.  He had left Indian Valley at 8:00 AM that morning, and the only thing that had kept him going for the past 100 miles was the hope that Sylvester Smith was still alive, and that Edgar could send a doctor to him in time.

 

            The August 22, 1878 issue of Boise's newspaper, the Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman, was filled with accounts of various military units in pursuit of hostile Indians all over the West.  Almost as a casual side note, there was a brief remark among the outlying-area news items.  It said mail carrier, Solan Hall, had reported that Indians had stolen three horses at Indian Valley.  This simple announcement would turn out to be opening sentence in one of the most violent and tragic chapters in the history of Adams County.

            About a day and a half after the routine news of William Munday's stolen horses was printed, the quiet slumber of the troops at the Boise Barracks was disrupted about midnight by an exhausted, young man.  It was Solon Hall's 19 year old son, Edgar.  He said that a doctor was badly needed.  Three men had been killed by Indians, and a fourth victim was lying seriously wounded at Calvin White's cabin at Salmon Meadows (now called Meadows Valley).

        The story of the "Long Valley Massacre" has been retold and expounded until the real, factual details of the event may never be known.  There was only one eye witness who survived the massacre, and he left no first hand account.   It is known that the chain of events started on Saturday, August 17, 1878 when Indians stole some horses at Indian Valley.  Stories of the number of animals that were taken range wildly, from three horses to sixty.  Whatever the number, William Munday seems to have been the principle victim of the crime.

            One improbable account of a possible contributing factor in the thievery was an incident that reportedly occurred earlier that summer.  About 70 Indians under Eagle Eye's leadership were said to have been camped at Indian Valley  near the farm of Tom Hailey.  The Hailey place was south east of "downtown" Indian Valley, at or near the present Atkins ranch.  Hailey was said to have had an Indian wife.   The Indians were "holding pow-wows" in the evenings, on a hill near the Hailey house.  Hailey told them "If you don't stop that, the Whites will kill every last one of you."  So they stopped, but "kept plotting against the whites".  Because of this, a grudge was supposedly initiated against Hailey and/or whites in general.

            Spelling in those days was not standardized as it is today.  This applied to names as well.  The name "Hailey" was also spelled "Healy, Healey, or Haily" in various accounts.

            Solon Hall and his sons, Edgar and Abner (Abby), farmed at Indian Valley and carried mail on the 125 mile route between there and Warren.  William Munday was the Postmaster at the Indian Valley Post Office.  His name could also be spelled "Monday".  His house was at or near what is Ralph and Scotty Yantis's place now.  If you remember, in a recent History Corner I told how the panicked settlers had gathered at Munday's place before they built a fort, during the Nez Perce War the year before.

            One account says that Munday was working for Solon Hall at the time the horses were stolen, harvesting hay or grain.  Munday reportedly left his team tied to a wagon for the night, and they were gone the next morning.  Ellis Snow's account said that Munday owned a reaper drawn by four horses, and was cutting Hall's grain.  He said the horses were stolen after they had been turned loose to graze for the night.

            Munday was said to have been friends with certain Indians, and that he had hired them to help on his farm.  It is doubtful that the horses were stolen by these natives.  The Indians were probably one of many wandering fragments of hostile bands from outside the area that simply took advantage of the opportunity for the time-honored Native American practice of stealing horses from an enemy.

            To be continued next week.

            This column is written to promote the Council Museum.  We are raising money for a badly needed addition to our current space.  (Our bank balance is now up to about $3,350.)  Please help by making a donation at City Hall, mailing a check to Box 252, Council, or by dropping something into the "Pennies for the Past" jars around town.  You don't have to put your pennies into rolls.  We can do it for you. 

            Hey! We had a great turnout at the slide show Saturday night.  Thanks.  Hope you all enjoyed it.

            Bob Thompson sent photocopies of pictures of Placer Basin and more.  He also sent a list of people he remembered working there.  Thanks Bob!  I also got a call from people in Riggins who will let us copy their photos of Tamarack taken in 1915.  Fantastic!

            We finally met with the state archivist concerning the photo project.  I can't emphasize enough how important this project is.  For one thing, we are using your tax money.  That's where the Idaho Humanities Council  grant funds came from = about $3500.   To accomplish what needs to be done, we need your help.  We need new pictures that I know are out there.  This is the best chance we will ever have to preserve them.  One photo we are looking for is one of Dr. Gerber.  Surely somebody has a good one.

            Also, we need to recopy some of the photos that you have already let us copy.  Here is why.  First, this time we will be using a much better camera for higher quality copies.  Second, the negatives will be processed and stored in a way that will preserve them for the next hundred years and more, so that our grandchildren and their grandchildren will have the priceless heritage that we treasure. 

            The reason we haven't announced a time and place to bring pictures, etc. is that we need to wrap up a few loose ends first.  In the mean time, please find your old pictures - even ones not so old.  We are also interested in old, home movie footage, and are following up on some leads on that.  If you have any questions or comments, please call me at 253-4582.

 

History Corner 4-21-95

by Dale Fisk

            After interviewing Sylvester Smith at White's Cabin at Meadows, Parker's volunteer group set out for the ambush site.  For reasons unknown, Capt. Drum had not yet arrived at the site, even though his unit was much closer and knew about the attack at least a day earlier than the volunteers.

            Parker's group found 14 empty cartridges scattered around the bodies of the victims; their cartridge belts lay empty beside them. The rifles contained only empty shells.  This evidently was all the ammunition the men had with them, as it seemed obvious to Parker and the others that the Indians had not disturbed the bodies at all to steal anything.  It appeared that the Indians had left in a hurry immediately after being unable to find Smith.

            Figuring that the army troop would arrive soon and bury the dead, the four followed the trail of the Indians for two days and nights, until a heavy rain storm wiped out any sign of the tracks.  They returned to the battle site, and found that the army had buried the bodies and inscribed the names of the victims on a rock above the common grave.  Along with the names, were the date of the ambush (August 20, 1878) under and image of crossed rifles.  A hand carved on the rock pointed to the grave.

            Parker's group must have been completely out of rations, because they dug discarded bacon rinds out of the fire pits left behind by the army, and ate them.  The next day, Parker's group found the troop, spent one night with them and then went on to White's cabin to check on Smith.  The doctor had left for Boise the day before, leaving the assurance that his patient was recovering so well that he "could not be killed with and axe".   The four then returned to Weiser.     

            Captain Drum later reported what he had found at the massacre site.  He said that the bodies of the slain men were about sixty yards from the spot where they had been killed.  He continued:

    "The bodies had been thrown together in a pile by the Indians, but had not been scalped or mutilated.  At the moment of attack Munday had been shot dead by a bullet through he heart and had fallen from his horse, leaving his gun hanging to the horn of the saddle.  The gun was found where it had been dropped by Munday's horse when he ran from the scene. Groseclose was fatally shot soon after dismounting and his horse fell into the hands of the Indians, but being a vicious and refractory animal the horse escaped from them and was afterwards found running in the hills some distance from the scene of the murder and was with difficulty caught and brought in.  Tom Healy made a fight with the Indians, from behind the rocks where he first took up a position, as three empty cartridges were found at that spot.

 

            Parker reported that at least some of the horses had been killed, saying, "The carcasses of the horses were far apart in the valley."

            Smith had said that there had been at least 75 Indians in the group that attacked his group, but Drum found sign of only fifteen at the most, and maybe as few as only five.

             Drum's unit followed the Indians trail at least eight miles past the ambush site.   Here, at "Pearsall's Diggins", they found the bodies of two prospectors who had evidently been killed the day after the Munday ambush, by the same Indians.  One man was a Mr. Wilheim from Idaho City.  Not description was given as to how or where his body was found, but the Statesman printed a grizzly account of the second victim, Daniel Crooks of Mount Idaho: 

            "Crooks was found some distance from the spot where the two were first attacked, lying in the grass on his back.  The grass was beaten down all around him, as if a violent struggle had taken place.  He had been shot through the body, and the last shot, which seemed to have been given where he was found, was in the head at close range, tearing completely of the frontal part of the skull and brain.  He still held a rope in his hand and was probably running to get his horse,..."

            Many years later, Bill Winkler gave the distinct impression that Three Fingered Smith knew exactly who at least four of the Indians were.  They were supposedly Eagle Eye, War Jack(Shoshoni), Chuck (Lemhi Shoshoni) and Booyer (Blackfoot).  Winkler said that, after spending "some years" in Wyoming, Smith traveled about the country, locating and  killing Chuck and Booyer.   Apparently he couldn't locate War Jack or Eagle Eye.

            I find Winkler's story very improbable.  All during the investigation, there was no indication that anyone involved had a clue as to the identities of the Indians.  The only guess was made by  General Howard, at Walla Walla.  He believed it was hostile Nez Perce (returned from Canada) from White Bird's band who had done the killing.  One would think that if Smith knew who had murdered three of his friends and neighbors, he would have immediately informed Captain Drum and anyone else who could bring them to justice.  Aaron Parker met with Smith again only five years after the massacre (1883) and interviewed him a second time.  Again, either Smith evidently said nothing about who the Indians were or about his having wreaked revenge on them.  If he had, Parker would certainly have included it in his account.

            It is no surprise that Eagle Eye was a prime suspect, as he was usually blamed for almost every real or imagined native depredation that occurred within a weeks ride.   Ironically, there were eye witness reports that Eagle Eye had been killed in the battle with the Umatillas just the month before this massacre.  These reports were false.       

            Old time Indian fighter Ewing Craig "Pinky" Baird, who was an independent Indian scout during this time, and who was later a Council resident, boasted to Bill Winkler that he had personally shot and killed Eagle Eye sometime after the Long Valley Massacre.  Baird bragged that he had shot the Indian in the back while the man was getting a drink from a stream.   Either Baird coldly executed an Indian that he thought was Eagle Eye, or he was a bald-faced liar. Eagle Eye died of natural causes years later.  Whether or not Baird actually believed he had killed Eagle Eye, he went so far as to give Charley Winkler a pair of moccasins that he claimed Eagle Eye was wearing at the time he killed the chief.  These moccasins are now in the Winkler Museum in Council. 

            Sylvester Smith eventually recovered from his wounds, but his health was never the same again.  He probably wasn't actually known by his nick name "Three Fingers" or Three Fingered" until sometime after the Long Valley Massacre.  He received this title after an accident.   Visiting with a friend, Smith had one foot on the bottom rail of a fence, with his hands folded together, resting over the business end of his muzzle-loading shotgun.  His foot slipped off the rail, his knee hit the hammer of the gun and it went off.  When the smoke cleared, the middle two fingers on each of Smith's hands were gone.

            In 1929, the Sons of Idaho organization mounted a plaque on one of the rocks at the massacre grave site.   Part of our photo project, which is funded by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, will be to get some good photos of the grave site that were taken at about the time the plaque was placed there.  I've been told the grave and markers are about 200 yards north east of the Cascade Reservoir dam.  If anyone has better directions, give me a call.  I would like to find the spot.

            We have finally set a date for our open house and photo session at the museum.  We will be holding two afternoon - evening sessions from 1:00 PM to 8:00 PM on consecutive Fridays, May 5 and 12 at the museum. Please bring your photos at that time to be copied.  If you will not be able to do this, please call me and make other arrangements.  If anybody has a light table (copy stand) that we could use for a couple weeks to copy photos, please call me. (253-4582)    Stay tuned for more info.

 

History Corner 5-5-95

by Dale Fisk

            If you are reading this on Friday, May 5, the museum board is at the museum copying old photos, talking to people about the stories behind the pictures they bring in and generally having a good time while working very hard.  Come on in, whether you have photos or not.  We'll be here from 1 PM until 8 PM, and the same next Friday, the 12th.  I have a cassette tape recorded to go with the slide show about Council's history, so if you want to see it, you can on either Friday.  It's a half hour long.

            I have to tell you about the wonderful photo discoveries so far in this project.  Last week, I stopped at the Weiser Court House and saw Lisa McKnight, the great granddaughter of  Frank Harris.  Harris was an attorney and judge in this area in the early days.  Lisa has a photo album with pictures of Frenchy David and his daughter, the inside of the Blue Jacket Mine with men at work, views of Landore that I had never seen, and more.  She said I could copy any of them I liked.  I felt like a kid in a candy store.

            The next day, I visited with Willard Bethel in Boise.  He is June Childers's brother, and a great guy.   He was born, and spent many of his formative years, at Fruitvale.  He had a few great photos, including area pioneers such as Bill and Jane Harp, Miles Chaffee and George and Martha Robertson.  He also gave me the name and number of someone who probably has more.

            Then I spent several hours looking through the files of the State Historical Library and Archives.  I had done this before, and found over 60 photos that we don't have and are relevant to our local history.  This time, I went through a set of files I hadn't noticed before, and found bunches more.  Maybe the most interesting one was of Sylvester "Three Fingered" Smith, the man who survived the Long Valley Massacre that has been the subject of my last few articles.  It is a very poor photo, but what an exciting find!  We are working on a trade between the Historical Society and our museum for copies of some of these pictures.

            It is really sad to think about all the wonderful pictures that have been lost over the years.  I find mention of them once in a while in the old newspapers.  Here are a few examples.

            In the Idaho Citizen newspaper, Aug 7, 1891, there was mention that "Professor Rhodes has taken many photos of the Seven Devils recently."  The same paper, in 1896, said, "Photographer, D. Marsh, of Weiser, is in Council where he will remain about a week."  We may have some of his photos in our collection.  The Weiser Signal, July 16, 1904, talking about happenings in the Seven Devils, said, "Every eight days, Stuart French, the official photographer of the company, takes views of the town (Landore) to keep tabs on the splendid progress."  We probably have some of those too.

            One that makes me very curious is a reference in the Council Leader,  Apr 30, 1909.  It mentions a "folder" published by the Pacific & Idaho Northern Railroad with articles and photos about the area between Weiser to Long Valley.  What I wouldn't give for a copy!

            In the Council Leader,  Fri. July 2, 1909: "P. Van Graven, Weiser photographer took some fine photos of the Council area last week."   In the Council Leader,  Fri. July 2, 1909 it was mentioned that W.T. Colvin has purchased the Rocky Mt. photo car, and "will be a permanent stand hereafter at Council."  Does anybody know what that was about?

            In the Adams County Leader, Jan 23, 1931, it was reported that Frank Peters brought big timbers through town for the new bridge across the Weiser river at the mouth of Cottonwood creek, from Pole Creek with 2 four horse teams and special sleds.  W.F. Winkler took a good photo.  If we have those in the museum, I don't remember seeing them.

            Just about everyone has seen the 1911 or 1912 picture of Adams County's first officials standing in front of the first court house.  J.D. Neale was the superintendent of schools at the time and was in the photo.  Years later, in 1936, Neale said,  "I am always impressed with the brutal frankness with which myself and my friends there have their likenesses recorded for posterity." 

            The Adams County Leader, July 21, 1939 said that the  July 10 issue of Life magazine featured a photo of "Hell's Canyon".  Anybody have a copy of that issue?

            There is a picture of Council in the library, and at the museum,  that was taken from an airplane.  We didn't know exactly when it was taken, but I ran across info on it in the Adams County Leader for Feb 6, 1948.  The photo was on the front page.  It was taken by Howard Jeppson (formerly of Council) and Fred Ulrich of Boise in January of that year.

            Speaking of old photos and losing them.  Right now would be a good time to get out your pen and write the names of the people on the back of your family photos.  So many times, the older members of a family die and leave old pictures that nobody knows anything about.  Please don't let this happen to the priceless legacy you have to leave your descendants.   Go through your old pictures, write who, where and when on the back of them, and while you're at it pick out the ones that should be copied for the museum.

 

History Corner 5-12-95

by Dale Fisk

            Jim Camp told me something very interesting about the Long Valley Massacre site.  It's underwater.  No wonder I couldn't find it.  I knew that the Cascade Reservoir was only created fairly recently (1950s?).  Jim says he's pretty sure that the remains of the men killed in the ambush were moved to another location.  I have seen photos of a metal plaque (placed there in 1929) and of a marble headstone (placed when?) with the names of the men on it.  The head stone was surely moved to the new grave site.  If anybody has some information about this, especially the location of the new grave site, please let me in on it.  This is such a dramatic story, that it would be nice to know.

            We're making great progress on the photo project.  We have copied about 75 new photos so far, and we know of more that will be brought in.  I went to Geneva Barry's house last week and copied a bunch of pictures concerning Indian Valley history.  She has one of  her relatives standing in front of Solan Hall's old house.  The Lindsays bought Hall's house in 1881.  It stood about where Geneva lives now, at 700 Indian Valley road.

            Geneva told me a little about how a number of women from this area went to work in defense plants in Seattle and Portland during WWII.  During this 50th anniversary of the end of the war, most of the attention is, of course, going to the men who sacrificed so much.  Geneva's story is an interesting example.  She left two small children behind in 1942, and went to Seattle to work in a sheet metal plant.  She assembled air ducts for airplanes.  Then she worked as a welder at a ship yard in Portland for about two years.  She said jobs were scarce in this area, and the jobs that a person could find, didn't pay much.  I think she said they were paid 72 cents an hour in the defense plants, and that was pretty good money at the time.

            Geneva is related to the Lindsays, Linders, Haworths and Mannings of Indian Valley.  Mel Manning brought in some great pictures of the Mannings and other Indian Valley people, places and events.  We copied some of the rodeo at the Adams County fair that was held in Indian Valley in, I think it was the 1920s.  The "arena" seemed to be an open field with no fence around it, and the ground looks very hard to get bucked off onto.  Some of the pictures of area cowboys of the time look like they came right out of Hollywood.

            Speaking of the Mannings, one of the best stories to go with a photo is the one that goes with a picture of Edward Manning.  He is said to have been the one who is responsible for bringing the first crab grass to this area.  He raved about the hardiness and nutritional value of this new variety of grass, and bought enough to plant 40 acres.   Well ... it certainly is hardy.  Thanks Ed.

            Hank Daniels brought in some prints and slides of Council in the 1960s.  Remember when the drygoods department of Shavers was a bank?  Remember the old Ham's Texaco station?  Unfortunately, Hank didn't have a good one of the Texaco station.  We have a good one of  it in about 1925, but we would like a later one too.  Doesn't ANYBODY       have one?

            A couple people have mentioned having old home movies of the Council area.  The most exciting one was shot during the 1930s, and includes the Adams County Rodeo.  We are going to look into how to preserve or copy or get still photos ... or ? ... from these.  Anybody have any ideas or experience with this?  We would sure like some info.

            We are still looking for some pictures that we know are out there somewhere because they have been published in the local newspapers.  One is a view of the town square with the "Addington Auto Company" in the background.  It shows a large group of people planting the locust trees there in 1917 on New Years day.  Please, somebody help us find this one!  The text under the picture says that it came from "the Addington collection at the Council Library", but the library certainly doesn't have it now.  It was printed in the Record - don't know what issue.  All I have is the cut out clipping from the paper.

            Another one that we absolutely must find shows the McMahan school at Fruitvale in 1907.  It was brought to the Record by Millie Bethel - don't know what year, but it was January, and Don Mentor was the Council Mayor.  It's not important when it was in the paper, but I hope somebody can tell me who has this photograph now.

            Another one is of Council's main street (Illinois Ave.) looking west in 1913 or1914.  It shows the Weed store, Freehaffer's restaurant, Rainwater's grocery, and the whole north side of the street from there west to where Shavers is now.  It ran in the Record twice, and was brought in by Lydia Bokamper.  Please help us track it down.

            We will be at the museum again this Friday (May 12) from 1 PM to 8 PM copying photos that you bring in, and generally gathering info and working on our photo project.  Bring in your photos or just drop by to get in on the fun.  If you have photos that are in an album, we can copy them without taking them out or harming them in any way.

            Don't forget about donating anything you can to our museum improvement project.  The pennies are still rolling in.  If this were a contest, the Seven Devils cafe and the Library would be neck and neck as to which penny collection jar received the most money so far. 

            I took my slide show to the fourth grade class last week, and they put together a donation of $9.67 for the museum.  Then Jeremy Stoker brought me another $1.50 on his own.

            Our bank balance is now close to $3800.   Our very sincere thanks to all of you who have given to this cause, in whatever amount.  It is very, very appreciated.

 

 

            History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            I'm sad to say that Council has lost another Landmark: Bert Rogers, publisher of the Adams County Leader. 

            The first newspaper in this area to regularly print Council news was the Weiser City Leader, established in 1882.  It changed names and ownership several times over the years, but is essentially the same "Signal" paper as is printed there now.

            The next was the Idaho Citizen, beginning in 1891 at Salubria.  It soon became the Salubria Citizen, and when Cambridge was established, the paper moved there and became the Cambridge News.  It is also still in business.

            The first paper in what is now Adams County was the Seven Devils Standard at Cuprum in 1898, published by C.W. Jones.  Jones was a man with big dreams who didn't seem to stick with anything very long.  He sold out to D.C. Boyd in February of 1899.  The Standard was shortly taken over by R.E. Lockwood and Frank Edlin.  The paper lasted through July 1902 when it was moved to Meadows to be published as the "Eagle".

            In the meantime, C.W. Jones is said to have established the town site of Decorah in late 1900.  If Jones did indeed establish Decorah, he apparently had no grandiose plans to ride this horse to fame and fortune, and bailed out very early in the game.  By 1902, he was in Council, busily publishing the "Advance" newspaper, in head to head competition with  L.S. Cool's  "Council Journal" which had been established in October 1900.  The Journal office was located on the north west corner of Moser Avenue and Main Street.  By 1905, Cool had acquired the Advance.  He published this paper in his home across Main Street and north of his former address.  This house later became the first Adams County Courthouse in 1911, and still later, it was Bill Winkler's home.  The Advance ceased publication when Cool left Council for Weiser sometime in 1905.

            Council had no paper for a few years, until in October of 1908, the first issue of the Council Leader was published by Ivan M. Durrell.  It was a four page paper until 1910, when it became eight pages.  Much of it was preprinted material that was syndicated to many papers, and contained national news and advertisements.  In 1911, the paper became owned by stockholders in the community under the name " The Council Publishing Company".  An attorney named James Stinson joined the Leader staff as editor, with Durrell as manager.

            At this time, there were two other newspapers in the newly-created Adams County: the Meadows Eagle and the New Meadows Tribune.  They were joined the next year by the Fruitvale Echo, and all four worked hard to promote their respective communities as the only one fit to become the center of government for the new county.

            In 1912, Stinson was replaced by Fred Mullin who had been publishing the Long Valley Advocate.  It is unclear where the Leader office was until this point, but in November of 1913, it was moved to a little building on the alley behind Dr. Brown's new brick structure on the north west corner of Galena Street and Illinois Avenue.

            Mullin was fond of editorializing, and had an acid pen when provoked.  An in-print feud developed in 1914, between Mullin and William Freeman of New Meadows who was running for political office.  Freeman finally ordered Mullin to cancel his subscription, writing, "Kill it! Pie it! Hell box it! Anyway to relieve me."  To which Mullin replied, "The above pus runs from a sore in the Meadows valley that has been lanced and he wants to represent us in the state legislature."

            In 1915, the Council Publishing Company was dissolved, and the paper was sold to Fred Michaelson who also served as an Adams County probate judge.  Michaelson had run a paper in Sauk Center, Minnesota where he employed a young man named Sinclair Lewis.  Lewis later went on to become one of the best known authors in the U.S.   It was Michaelson who changed the name of the "Council Leader" to the "Adams County Leader".

            Unfortunately, all the issues of the Leader from mid 1915 through 1919 that were kept in the newspaper's office were lost when the office was moved to another location in town.  Most of the 1919 issues have been replaced recently, from those kept by Matilda Moser at the Courthouse.   But the others, aside from a few, scattered issues, are a priceless window into the past that is gone forever. 

            By 1920 the Leader was the only paper being published in Adams County.  That year, the office was moved to an apartment house at __ Michigan Avenue. This big, old, square, stucco building is still standing, and can be seen in old photos from as early as 1912. It is rumored to have housed prostitutes in the apartments upstairs during Council's wilder days.

            In May of 1922, the paper was sold to E.E. Southard.   He started printing the first comic strips to appear in the Leader.  In 1926, the paper was purchased by William Lemon, another gentleman who served as a probate judge for the County.

            When the Pomona Hotel was sold at public auction in 1928, Lemon bought it and moved there with his newspaper.  During the depression, the paper almost went under.  It was reduced to its former size of four pages for a few years.  In 1937, the present Adams County Leader office building was constructed at 105 Michigan Avenue, just south of its old headquarters (the big stucco building).

            In 1937, Lemon leased the paper to his right-hand man, Carryl Wines.  Wines ran the paper until 1944, when Lemon sold it to F.E. and Harriet Rogers of Long Beach, California.(Adams County Leader, Aug 4, 1944)

            FIND WHEN F.E. DIED, THAT'S WHEN BERT STARTED HELPING HIS MOTHER.  SHE RETIRED FROM ACTIVE PUBLISHING IN __ .  NOTE BURT'S ACCIDENT,ETC.

             Bert took over the Leader in 1948, and has run the presses ever since.  As far as I know, it is the last publication of any kind to be still using the old lead type machines that were antiques long before now.  Bert may have been the last person who really knew how to run one.  How he kept the old machinery running, when replacement parts must not be made anymore, has to be a story in itself.

            Our heart-felt sympathy goes out to Shirley and the family.  Bert will be missed.

            If anyone has old copies of the Leader for these missing dates, mid 1915 through 1918, please PLEASE let me look at them.  The Leader has been one of the main sources of information for the history that I am writing.  Also, any old clippings about local history from any source would be very welcome.  Some of you have already contributed invaluable pieces of information like this, and you have my sincere thanks.  Pictures are also very important.  Fran Caward just sent a wonderful photo of Dora Black and another of Dora and Billie.  Bob Thompson, an old Fruitvale boy (now in Spokane), called last week to say he is sending photos of  the Placer Basin mill and buildings!  He says hello to all his old friends here.

            This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $2770.  We need at least $10,000 to start our much needed museum addition project.  Please help.  Donations made as memorials will be acknowledged in this column, along with the name of the person in who's honor the contribution was made.   Please send contributions to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612.  Make your check out to the Winkler Museum.

 

History Corner 2-8-95(?)

by Dale Fisk

            During the Bannock War, a significant wagon train reached Boise.  This group of immigrants contained more people who would become pioneers of the Council Valley than any single group before or since.   It also must have been one of the most complexly interrelated groups.  Among the crew were:

 

 Hardy and Rena Harp, and their two small sons

 William and Jane Harp, and two sons

 Sam Harp (single)

 16 year old Elizabeth Harp

George and Martha Robertson (Martha was the sister of Hardy, William, Sam and Elizabeth                 Harp)

James Copeland and his very pregnant wife, Ida

George A. and Letitia Winkler and their children:

            George M.(1856-1920), Mark (1858-1921), William F. (1866-1939),  Lewis (1867-  1952), James (1869-1956)

 

            The group was bound for the Council Valley, enticed there by the presence of the Keslers.  Martha Kesler (Alex's wife) was Letitia Winkler's sister and Ida Copeland's mother.  When the group had reached Missouri, George M. Winkler (George and Letitia's son) and Elizabeth Harp had eloped and gotten married before returning to the caravan.  Now, the Robertsons, Harps, Copelands, Keslers and Winklers were all related to each other through one marriage or another.

            Since Boise was the last real outpost of civilization in the general area, the Harps and Robertsons decided to stay near there until they could decide for sure where they wanted to settle.

            The Winklers and Copelands rolled into the Council Valley on August 6, 1878.  The worst of the Bannock War was over, but the settlers here were still spending time in the fort. When Ida Copeland gave birth in a small log cabin near the fort in September, William Copeland became the first white child to be born in the Council Valley.  Edgar Moser has sometimes been credited with this distinction, but he was not born until about four months later, in January of 1879.  The first white girl born here was Matilda Moser, in 1881.

            It is interesting to note that about this time the Council area was often referred to as "Hornet" or "Hornet Creek".  This seems reasonable, since it is at this point along the Weiser River that Hornet Creek enters it.   

            Lucy McMahan  said, "In 1877 the settlers met to name the valley.  The majority wanted to call it "Moser Valley", but Mr. Moser objected to the name.  So they decided to call it Council Valley,...".    The next year (1878) the Postal Department allowed "Council Valley" as the official name of the post office here.    

            George Moser's nickname was "Buckshot", and some early residents referred to the town by that name, even long after the it was officially named Council in 1896.

            I would like to thank Mary Owens for a donation in memory of Ed Kesler.  Thanks Mary. Our fund stands at about $3,240.   The Pennies for the Past drive is kind of fun, and is bringing in a pretty good haul of them - about $50 worth so far.  Keep 'em comin'!  So far, none of our grant applications have panned out, but ACDC may be able to get a good chunk of money from Farm Bill funds. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

            Don't forget the slide show Saturday night (25th) at the library at 8 PM.  I guarantee you will learn some interesting things you didn't know about the history of this town.

            Our plans to make plans with the state archivist didn't pan out last week (twice), so we are trying again today (Friday, 24th).  We kind of have to wait until we meet with him to start our photo gathering campaign.  The short version of the story is that we got a grant from the Humanities Council to copy and preserve historic photographs.  Please start digging them out of the closets!  This is our big chance to do it right.  Remember, we are especially desperate for old Fruitvale photos.  There don't seem to be any of the old stores.  We need pictures of people, places, events .. anything relative to Council's history up to the present. 

            Next week starts the only real story of Indian vs Settler violence in the history of this area.  Don't miss it.

 

History Corner 2-13-95

by Dale Fisk    

            The year after the Moser's arrived (1877), two more families settled in the Council Valley: the Whites and Lovelesses.

            Robert and Ellenor White and their children had traveled West with the Mosers, but had spent the winter in Boise before continuing to Council Valley.  Robert later became Council's first Postmaster, first school teacher, and probably the first justice of the peace.

            Zadock Loveless was a widower who came here with his son Bill.  They took up a parcel of land that joined the north end of the Moser property.  Lucy McMahan, an early pioneer of the area, said that Loveless built the first house in Council in 1876, but didn't live here until 1877.

            The new families had barely settled into their new locations, when a storm of terror blew in from the north.

            The following story is purely fictional, although the names, ages, places and background events  depicted here are true to the facts as recorded.    

            George Reibolt was dog tired and sagged wearily in the saddle as he rode into the Council Valley.  He had been riding all night in a desperate effort to get to Boise as soon as possible. 

            As Reibolt approached the Moser place, there was a wagon and team out front. Sixteen-year-old  Lewis Harrington sat in the shade of the wagon and watched the rider approach.  Lewis's nine year old brother, Robert, and their younger sister, Mary, were playing along the creek about a hundred feet south of the Moser cabin.  George dismounted in front of Lewis. 

            "Son, will you water my horse for me?"  Lewis took the reins.  "Make sure he drinks slowly, and not too much.  He's pretty hot," George added.  Lewis was irritated that the man would think he needed to be told how to take care of a horse.  After all, he was practically a grown man.

            George turned toward the cabin as two men sauntered out to greet him.  Introductions were made all around.  The younger man, who appeared to be about forty, was Reil Harrington.  Harrington, a widower, had come to Indian Valley with his four children the year before.  His oldest boy, James, had not come with them today on this trip to examine some potential homestead land on Hornet Creek.  George Reibolt had never met George Moser, but he had certainly heard of him.

            "You look like you're in a devil of a hurry, George,"  Moser said.

            "Yes Sir, I am."  Reibolt handed him an envelope. "I left Warrens late yesterday, and I need to get this to Governor Brayman as soon as possible."

            Moser unfolded the letter, and, with Reil looking over his shoulder, began reading.  The first sentence sent a chill up his spine and almost made him drop the letter: "The Nez Perce Indians are on the warpath."   As he read on as quickly as he could, his anxiety grew. Names and locations of men, women and little children who had been murdered seemed to go on interminably.  Worst of all, it was obvious that the savages were heading SOUTH.  One statement referring to the little town of Mount Idaho jumped out at him:"It is greatly feared that the entire Settlement has been annihilated...."

            Moser and Harrington finished reading the letter and looked up silently at Reibolt as if they wanted him to say it was all untrue.  Instead, he added to their fears.

            "It gets worse," he started hesitantly.  "Cavalry troops had a fight with the savages in White Bird canyon, and got beat pretty bad ... lost 36 men.  The hostiles are headed this way, and the soldiers can't stop 'em."        

            The shaken men abruptly wrapped up their conversation, and Reibolt went on his way south.  Reil Harrington gathered his children into the wagon and hurried along the rough wagon trail in the same direction.  The word was spread quickly, and soon the Whites, Lovelesses and Henry Childs followed Reibolt and the Harringtons.

            -

              Some of the early "information" that spread about the Nez Perce war was untrue or exaggerated, but is included because it is what the settlers heard.    The last statement, attributed to Reibolt, is from a letter sent to Governor Brayman from Milton Kelley of Indian Valley, and sent on to Boise with Reibolt.  Although it was initially reported in the letter that 36 soldiers had been killed at Whitebird, there were really 34 killed and four wounded.  No Indians were killed until later battles.

             When the Council Valley settlers arrived at William Munday's farm  (at or near the present home of Ralph and Scotty Yantis), they found about 20 to 25 women and children, and about that many men, gathered in a confused state of panic.

            Among this congregation was the family of Alex and Martha Kesler, and Alex's brother, Andrew.  They had arrived in the Salubria Valley about a year earlier.         Only about two thirds of the men had guns, and ammunition was very scarce.   George Reibolt continued on to Boise, accompanied by Edgar or Abner Hall.  They carried letters from the local citizens in which they practically begged Territorial Governor Brayman to send 100 well-armed citizens, 25 more guns for local men, and 2,000 rounds of ammunition.   On the outside of one letter, was penciled, "Those Indians are blood thirsty.  They are getting all the supplies and Liquor they want and will jump on fresh horse and come here in 36 hours after they leave Salmon if they come this way."

            The fear that Council and Indian Valley settlers had of Indians during this time is hard to overstate.  The morbid details of the Custer disaster, that had occurred almost exactly a year earlier, were still a common topic of discussion.  Indians were pretty much roaming wherever they pleased all over the Territory during this time, and now there was serious concern that Eagle Eye's group would join in the fighting and slaughter every white person they could find.

            The fear of Indian attack in this part of the Territory almost invariably proved  worse than the actual danger.  According to Indian Valley lore, in one tragic case, it was fatal.  Margaret Hall was left home alone at Indian Valley a great deal of the time because her sons (Edgar and Abner) and husband (Solon) were often gone, carrying mail.  She was hysterically afraid that Indians would attack her at these times.  In 1877 her fear overcame her and she took her own life rather than live with such horror.  Such stories are not altogether uncommon in the history of the West.  More than a few pioneer women felt overwhelmed by feelings of being trapped and alone in the middle of nowhere. 

            Again, I'm sad to note to passing of another Council Valley Landmark.  Ed Kesler was, if I have my facts straight, the great grandson of Alex Kesler, mentioned above.  He will be missed.  Ed was involved with the museum as much as his health would allow during the past couple of years.        This column is written to promote support for the Council museum.   The current balance in our account is about $2,900.  We need at least $10,000 to start our much needed museum addition project.  Please help.  Donations made as memorials will be acknowledged in this column, along with the name of the person in who's honor the contribution was made.   Please send contributions to P.O. Box 252, Council, ID 83612.  Make your check out to the Winkler Museum.

 

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            Human beings are an interesting species.  When the first non-native people came to the West, they acted as if they had no concept of the idea that natural resources like timber, grazing, game animals or land had any kind of limits.  Like kids in a free candy store, they ate as much as they could as fast as they could.  It took a few decades for the stomach ache to set in.  Now, people have started running full speed in the opposite direction: don't cut any timber, kill any animals, graze any grass ... don't do anything that isn't "natural".  And spend six million dollars replacing the wolves that our grandparents paid to have eradicated.  I guess it would be more accurate to say they are "adding to" the wolves that are already replacing themselves.

             Trying to instantly turn around the long - time, fundamental practices of a society in this way is like throwing a ten ton truck into reverse at 90 miles per hour.  The only comfort to be found is in knowing that social tends often to go to extremes before they settle on a more sensible compromise somewhere in the middle.  So there is hope.... eventually.

            Last week, we were all shocked to hear that the Boise Cascade mill will be closing.  Talk about a Landmark.  Some of us can't remember a time when a mill wasn't there.

            It all started in the fall of1938, when the Boise Payette Company bought fifty-three acres from Bill Winkler on which to build a mill.  The paper reported,  "It is said that the life of the local plant during the time of cutting the adjacent timber will be approximately twelve years.  If, after that, the Meadows timber holdings should come to this plant, the life of the local plant would be indefinite." "When this operation was originally planned, the company had no idea of remilling and storing its lumber at Council but had planned to truck haul the lumber from the [portable] mill in the woods [at Old Davis on Crooked River] to Council, load it on cars there and ship it to Emmett for remilling."  "Neither the present roadbed or bridges between Council and Crooked river and Bear will stand the heavy traffic required by this operation."

             By the summer of 1940, the mill was in operation.  The mill, the new technology and the aggressive logging activity of the company brought a growth spurt to Council.  The population expanded as many new families moved in.  About a dozen portable houses were moved to Council from the camp at Old Davis to house these new arrivals.  The houses were put on land the company bought on the west side of the railroad tracks where remodeled versions of some of them continue to be used today.

            Mechanized logging had started in the 1930s, but the Depression had put a damper on many business ventures.  In spite of shortages of manpower and other basics during World War II, the demand for lumber and the momentum of the Boise Payette Co. was high enough to sustain a boom in the Council area.  After the war, two critical factors came together to start a new era in the timber industry.

            First, the housing boom that followed World War II created an unprecedented demand for lumber.  Second, by that time, chain saws, logging trucks, crawler tractors and other machinery needed for modern timber harvesting had evolved to the point of being fairly dependable and available.  In the old days, it had been a monumental task to build a road into the mountains to harvest timber.  With "cats" miles of roads could be built with relative ease.  Because logging had been on a comparatively small scale up until this time, there were vast roadless tracts of virgin timber on every side of the Council Valley.  Within only three or four decades after 1940, most of the Payette National Forest (except for Wilderness Areas) was logged at least once, and the majority of the roads now in existence on the Forest were built.

            As modes of transportation improved and the area centralized, the timber industry followed the same trend.  Most of the small sawmills scattered around the country disappeared as it became more practical to haul logs to big mills like the one in Council.

            The Council sawmill, and its associated logging operations quickly became a vital anchor of the local economy.  In 1957, the Boise Payette Company merged with the Cascade Lumber Company of Yakima, Washington, and adopted the name by which we know it today: the Boise Cascade Corporation.

            The next year, (1958) the fire siren sounded in Council in the middle of the night, and local citizens were stunned when they peered out their windows.  The sawmill was engulfed in flames!  The loss of this prominent part of the community was unthinkable.  But a new mill that sported all the newest technology arose from the ashes, and it became even more of a source of pride than the old mill. 

            Now, the community faces the unthinkable once again.  Looking at the big picture, the fifty-five year period from 1940 to 1995 has been a short one.  Eventually, the pendulum will find its equilibrium, the emotionalism and ignorance will subside, and a sustainable way of managing the forests that is balanced with the needs of people will emerge...maybe.  There is an enormous fly in the ointment. 

            At the time the mill was first built, there were just over 2 billion people on earth.  That number has more than doubled to about 5.7 billion.  The number of trees big enough to cut has not grown, or has even decreased.  In another 50 years, the world's population is expected to double again if we don't wise up.

            I apologize for climbing on my soap box, but I'm absolutely convinced that overpopulation is the most serious problem we face - not just in the future - not just in the "third world" - right here in Council, right now.  The whole ball of wax - the salmon issue, the sustainable forest issue, and every other environmental problem is either directly caused, or greatly exacerbated, by more people needing more natural resources of which there are continually less. There is no amount of recycling, replanting or conserving that can possibly keep up with the suicidal growth rate we now have.

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            During the Bannock War, a significant wagon train reached Boise.  This group of immigrants contained more people who would become pioneers of the Council Valley than any single group before or since.   It also must have been one of the most complexly interrelated groups.  Among the crew were:

 

 Hardy and Rena Harp, and their two small sons

 William and Jane Harp, and two sons

 Sam Harp (single)

 16 year old Elizabeth Harp

George and Martha Robertson (Martha was the sister of Hardy, William, Sam and Elizabeth                 Harp)

James Copeland and his very pregnant wife, Ida

George A. and Letitia Winkler and their children:

            George M.(1856-1920), Mark (1858-1921), William F. (1866-1939),  Lewis (1867-  1952), James (1869-1956)

 

            The group was bound for the Council Valley, enticed there by the presence of the Keslers.  Martha Kesler (Alex's wife) was Letitia Winkler's sister and Ida Copeland's mother.  When the group had reached Missouri, George M. Winkler (George and Letitia's son) and Elizabeth Harp had eloped and gotten married before returning to the caravan.  Now, the Robertsons, Harps, Copelands, Keslers and Winklers were all related to each other through one marriage or another.

            Since Boise was the last real outpost of civilization in the general area, the Harps and Robertsons decided to stay near there until they could decide for sure where they wanted to settle.

            The Winklers and Copelands rolled into the Council Valley on August 6, 1878.  The worst of the Bannock War was over, but the settlers here were still spending time in the fort. When Ida Copeland gave birth in a small log cabin near the fort in September, William Copeland became the first white child to be born in the Council Valley.  Edgar Moser has sometimes been credited with this distinction, but he was not born until about four months later, in January of 1879.  The first white girl born here was Matilda Moser, in 1881.

            It is interesting to note that about this time the Council area was often referred to as "Hornet" or "Hornet Creek".  This seems reasonable, since it is at this point along the Weiser River that Hornet Creek enters it.   

            Lucy McMahan  said, "In 1877 the settlers met to name the valley.  The majority wanted to call it "Moser Valley", but Mr. Moser objected to the name.  So they decided to call it Council Valley,...".    The next year (1878) the Postal Department allowed "Council Valley" as the official name of the post office here.    

            George Moser's nickname was "Buckshot", and some early residents referred to the town by that name, even long after the it was officially named Council in 1896.

            I would like to thank Mary Owens for a donation in memory of Ed Kesler.  Thanks Mary. Our fund stands at about $3,240.   The Pennies for the Past drive is kind of fun, and is bringing in a pretty good haul of them - about $50 worth so far.  Keep 'em comin'!  So far, none of our grant applications have panned out, but ACDC may be able to get a good chunk of money from Farm Bill funds. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

            Don't forget the slide show Saturday night (25th) at the library at 8 PM.  I guarantee you will learn some interesting things you didn't know about the history of this town.

            Our plans to make plans with the state archivist didn't pan out last week (twice), so we are trying again today (Friday, 24th).  We kind of have to wait until we meet with him to start our photo gathering campaign.  The short version of the story is that we got a grant from the Humanities Council to copy and preserve historic photographs.  Please start digging them out of the closets!  This is our big chance to do it right.  Remember, we are especially desperate for old Fruitvale photos.  There don't seem to be any of the old stores.  We need pictures of people, places, events .. anything relative to Council's history up to the present. 

            Next week starts the only real story of Indian vs Settler violence in the history of this area.  Don't miss it.

 

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            I've been interrupting the chronological flow of these articles with things that come up.  This week, I'll get back to where I left off.  You may remember I was telling about the Indian wars in Idaho in the 1860s, then how they subsided about 1868, and the Weiser River Valleys began to be settled.

            I mentioned Henry Childs, who was the first known settler in the Council area.  Another old bachelor, who lived farther up Hornet Creek than Childs, was John Mulligan.  It isn't known just when he arrived here, but it may have been before the first family arrived in 1876.

            By 1870, the heyday of placer mining in Idaho Territory was over,  other occupations pulled ahead, and the population shrank from its previous high of 20,000 down to 15,000.

            All during the 1860s and 1870s, there was continual hue and cry to put all Indians on reservations.  But the management of reservations was a bureaucratic quagmire, and the money sent from Congress to support impounded natives was pathetically inadequate.  To keep the reservation Indians from starving, they were allowed to leave the reservations and fend for themselves for extended periods.

            In 1873, the Modoc Indians in south western Oregon chose to fight rather than return to their reservation.  The resulting Modoc War instilled deep apprehension in both Whites and natives in Idaho.  Everyone realized that the situation here was teetering on the brink of the same kind of disaster.

            Even though Eagle Eye's Shoshoni band along the Weiser River kept a low profile, they were the target of a great deal of white resentment because their territory was the site of larger and larger intertribal gatherings.  As tribes from outside the Council Valley began to visit this last place of refuge in growing numbers, some of the outside Indians stayed permanently.  In spite of the odds against peaceful coexistence, Eagle Eye was able to maintain relative tranquility between the whites and all the natives who visited, or lived, in his area. 

            In March of 1874, Eagle Eye was ordered to bring his band in to the Fort Hall reservation.  He refused, and because of a lack of funds, the authorities were unable to enforce the order.

            The next year (1875), the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce tribe was ordered to surrender to reservation life, and their lands were opened to white settlement.  This was the band of which Chief Joseph was a member, and was the last of the free-roaming bands of  the Nez Perce. The Wallowas refused to come in, but the government was still too under-funded and disorganized to do anything about them or Eagle Eye.

            The following summer (1876), settlers on the upper Weiser heard rumors through local Indians about a big Indian victory over the horse soldiers.  The battle had supposedly occurred very recently in the buffalo country east of the Rocky Mountains.  Days later, vivid accounts came from Boise of how Indian savages had slaughtered Custer's valiant Seventh Cavalry on the Little Big Horn River in Montana.  How the Weiser Indians had received word of this battle before local whites had heard about it left the settlers feeling uneasy.   News of the Custer massacre only accented the fears of Idaho whites, and deepened their resolve to rid the Territory of Indians.

            (I can't remember who told me the story just mentioned.  If anyone can give me the name of an old timer from whom they heard this, I would feel better about including it in my book.  Call me: 253-4582.) 

            The family of George and Elizabeth Moser was the first white family to settle in the Council Valley, arriving in the fall of 1876.   When the Mosers first arrived at the present site of Council, they camped along a tiny creek, a short distance west of where the creek flowed between a small, rocky knob and a larger hill that sat, somewhat conspicuously, in the southern part of the valley.    This camp site was in what would someday be the west side of Council, just west of the present intersection of Moser and Railroad streets, near where the train depot later stood.   The fact that much of the area was a jungle of brush indicated that there was good farm land underneath.

            Near this location, there was a fork in the well-worn trail through the valley.  The west branch was an Indian trail that went up Hornet Creek, and on to the Seven Devils Mountains.  Even though copper deposits had been found in the Seven Devils fourteen years earlier, there was little or no mining activity there when the Mosers arrived.  The main trail, probably also originally and Indian path, was being used by pack trains going on north to Salmon Meadows (later called Meadows Valley) and the gold mining country around Warren and Florence.    There were still no wagon roads this side of Indian Valley at that time, but the trail north was well traveled.  Since Warren had swollen to a population of about 5,000,  pack trains of  up to 100 animals sometimes traveled this route, just to supply the town with flour from Cuddy's mill near present-day Cambridge.

            Soon, the Mosers built a log cabin (and another one shortly afterwards) just north of the creek and south west of the hill.  The cabins were about where Ruben's is now, west of the town square (park).  In one old photo, it looks like one of the Moser cabins may have stood right in the middle of what is now Moser Ave.  Their homestead encompassed most of what would become the west side of Council, including the town square, Courthouse hill and the land on which the schools now stand.

            You may notice that "Moser" Avenue is generally misspelled as "Mosher" on the street signs.  This mistake was made at least as early as 1899 by an engineer who drew the first plat of the town.   He spelled it right every time in the plat text, but when he wrote it on the map itself it was wrong.  Elizabeth Moser didn't notice it for a good reason - she was illiterate.  She signed the document with an "X".  Every time the plat was copied from then on, engineers simply duplicated the names from the old plat.  This is why we have lived with this insult to Council's first family for almost a hundred years now.  Every editor in every newspaper within a hundred miles of here has ignored this stupid mistake and printed it as "Moser" when referring to this avenue.  I think it's about time the name of the avenue was spelled correctly.

            To remind you just what the plan is at the Council museum, if we can raise $10,000, Evea Harrington Powers will match that amount so that we will have $20,000 to improve the museum.  We have plans drawn up and approved to build an addition onto the City Hall building where the museum is now housed in very a crowded space.  We have about $2,900 so far.  We have applied for several grants, but none have come through.

            I would like to thank Carlos and Ella Weed for a very generous donation.  Carlos reminded me of the fact that your contribution to the museum is tax deductible if you itemize. I hope you will think about helping with the project by donating.  A museum with a higher profile in the community is the single most cost effective thing Council can do to increase its tourist trade.  If you are serious about improving Council's economy, get behind this plan.  If ever we needed this, it is now.  We can sit and cry about our bad luck, or we can stand up and pull together.  Mail contributions to the Winkler Museum, Box 252, Council, ID 83612.

           

History Corner 5-26-95

by Dale Fisk

            On Saturday, Anna, Blaine and I went on a ride with the Backcountry Horsemen.  We went through some beautiful country along the West Fork of the Weiser River that has some interesting history.   Unfortunately, much of the history that I have on this specific area is sketchy, so I would appreciate help from people who know more about it.

            Some of the riders unloaded at what has been known during my lifetime as the Harvey and Hazel Harrington place on West Fork.  It used to be known as the old Bridgewood place.  I don't know much about James Bridgewood or his family.  They were here in 1913, and the Leader said they moved here to stay in the spring of 1915 from Mountain Home. 

            The Bill Bear family lived on this place a few years later.  Bill had a daughter named Frieda who was remembered as having a beautiful singing voice.  She sang at Fruitvale literaries.  Literaries were common in the days before TV and radio.  People would get together at the local school house and entertain each other with popular songs and the recitation of long poems like "The Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight" and "Picture on the Barroom Floor". 

            I'm going to tell you about a tragic event about the side of life that is pretty much avoided (for good reason) by local historians.  In talking to Heidi Bigler Cole, and other people who know about local history, I keep hearing "... that's not the whole story, but it gets scandalous, and their relatives are still living here."  If someone were insensitive, they could undoubtedly write a whole book on the subject.  Anyway, story of Frieda Bear is one in which "scandal and shame" led to her death.  She became pregnant by a young man from a well known Fruitvale family of the time.  She tried to abort the pregnancy herself, and died - probably from bleeding or infection.

            At the beginning of our ride, we crossed the river near the mouth of Rocky Gulch, and passed near the old Ryals homestead.  William Ryals married Laura Robertson, and they had a cabin there just after 1900.  The cabin was just north of the mouth of "Ryals Gulch" on the west side of the West Fork.  Their son, Everett (Mel Ryals's father), was born in 1904. William worked away from home much of the time.  When he was gone, Laura was apprehensive about the mountain lions in the area, and sometimes had her sister, Millie Robertson (later Bethel) come spend the night with her. William died of what may have been stomach cancer at the age of about 29, when Everett was about four years old.  Laura was better known as being married to her later husband, Jim Ward.

            We rode up Muckenstrum Canyon, and stopped for lunch at the old Muckensturn homestead.  Lee Muckensturn and his son, Frank, lived here, apparently up into the 1930s.  Local people pronounced their name as "Muckenstrum" and the canyon is still known by that name.  La Dell Merk thought their was a second son.  Anybody know about that? 

            On top of the ridge west of the river, somewhere just south of where the power line now cuts across,  we went right by the old Fred Aiken homestead.  What a dry place this must have been.  Aiken was a World War I vet who told stories about his experiences.  The whistling sound that enemy shells made as they plummeted toward the trenches, and the boom when they hit the earth, was stamped indelibly on his memory. 

            During prohibition, Fred drank several alcohol - laden substitutes for liquor to get inebriated.  Among his favorites were lemon and vanilla extract.   Sometimes,  he would take a wagon and team to Council by way of Hornet Creek, and come back intoxicated to the point of being semi-conscious.  Occasionally, his horse would get him as far toward home as the Marks place.  They would bring him in an give him a place to sleep until morning, when he would go on home.

            Lemule Haines, a man with one wooden leg,  homesteaded  just to the west of Aikens's.    Haines had several sons.  At least one of them became blind from drinking the rot-gut moonshine that they made.  Another son died from it.

            As we rode south, back down the ridge toward the river, we could look down on the old Farlien place.  Denny Rice built the house there, and Scisms own it now.    Jacob Farlien, and his sons Dan, Henry (Hank) and Bill, lived on the east side of the river, north of Rocky Gulch.  They were well known house builders in this area around in the early part of the century.  Jacob died in 1913

            A meadow along the river that is known by some as the "Dillon Flat" is farther up the West Fork, and we didn't see it on our ride.    This spot was owned in the early 1900s by Benjamin (B. J.) and Lena Dillon.   Both Dillons were school teachers around Council about 1903.  They married here about that time, then moved to Hagerman, Idaho, returning to teach here in 1906.  They probably established their homestead on the West Fork at that time.  The couple lived in Cambridge for a short time shortly after 1909 while Mr. Dillon apparently moonlighted as a preacher in the Council and Cambridge areas.  By 1911, the Dillons were again living here.

            Ben was also an attorney, and was once described as "...one of the ablest speakers in the county ..."  In 1912,  he became the first elected Adams County Prosecuting Attorney.   He resigned from this office in 1921.

            Lena Dillon  taught at the McMahan school house, at least during 1911, 1912 and 1922.  Her maiden name was Wiffen, and her sister, Lillian, was married to Art Wilkie.

            We were hunting mushrooms there a couple weeks ago, and noticed that there are a bunch of blackberry bushes still there at the Dillon place, and one lonely apple tree.  The Fruitvale Echo newspaper reported that the Dillons had as many as three acres planted to potatoes here in 1912.  Where the house must have stood, there are the rusted remains of a Majestic brand cook stove and a set of bed springs.

            I would appreciate hearing from anyone who can add to this knowledge about the people I've written about here. 253-4582

            Don't forget about the nice quilts that the Worthwhile Club made that are being raffled off  to raise money for the museum.  The quilts are on display in the window at Shaver's where you can buy tickets.

            I keep forgetting to tell everyone that your donations to the museum are looked upon very favorably by the Idaho tax code.  You get a 50% tax credit for donations up to $100 (maximum total) on your Idaho taxes for contributions to educational entities such as historical museums.  In other words, a $100 donation to the museum could only mean $50 out of your pocket.  What a deal!

 

History Corner  5-19-95

by Dale Fisk

            All the recent talk about state's rights reminds me of another time in America when people were outraged at the Federal Government for some of the same reasons as they are now.  It resulted in the biggest loss of life in this country that ever came before or since.  More Americans were killed over this issue than all those who lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars combined plus every other U.S. war in history thrown in.  In just three days of this conflict over state's rights, almost as many men were killed as were lost in Vietnam.

            Of course I'm referring to our Civil War.  Slavery was one of the issues that led up to the war, but think about one obvious fact.  Why would anyone give their life for something they already had?  Slavery was perfectly legal in every state that rebelled against the Union.  Slavery didn't become a major focal point of the conflict until Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation half way through the war, as a tactical maneuver designed to cause chaos in the South.

            Then, as now, one of the main issues was that many in the South saw the government as an overbearing bureaucracy that was dominated by city people who didn't know or care anything about life in the South, i.e. - Northerners who represented a more urban and industrialized way of life.   But enough about that.

            I have to note the passing of a true Landmark in the Council Valley - Fred Lappin.  He was a fine man.  His father was one of the first fruit growers here, and Lappin Lane is named after the family.  Fred ran the ranch that Rich Anderson has now, for many years .

            Our photo session Friday was great.  We started copying photographs just after 1 o'clock and didn't really get a break until we quit at 8 PM.  We copied about 120 photos!  It's hard to pick favorites, but Galen York should get a prize for bringing in the only known photo of the Middle Fork school.   Galen also had pictures of teams and scrapers building the Lost Valley Reservoir Dam.

            Other photos included one of a sawmill crew at Tamarack in 1915, the Shaw and Harrington families, the old Congregational church (the one before this one), the Adams County rodeo in 1949, Ike, Lillie and Herbie Glenn, and many more.

            Bobbie Darland brought in a photo of a young Dr. Dora Gerber, our former resident Dentist of many years.  This was in keeping with the fact that the Idaho Historical Society delivered some of Dr. Gerber's equipment to the museum that day.  They brought her old chair, a white cabinet full of instruments, and boxes containing some other interesting devises, tools, denture making supplies, and ... a big box full of wicked-looking drill bits.

            An boy did the stories start to fly!  Almost everybody who came in had a story to tell about their experiences with Dr. Gerber.  The general consensus was that she did not mind inflicting pain. 

            My own memories of her come from early childhood.  The anticipation of the ordeal while in the waiting room was almost as bad as the actual drilling.  She only had the old fashioned, slow, grinding drill that felt like your skull was going to vibrate apart.  One of the most welcomed news in my young life was that my parents were going to take me to Weiser to a dentist that actually used novocaine to deaden my teeth before he drilled them!

            People say that she did use novocaine for procedures other than simple drilling and filling.  But that doesn't mean it was always used effectively.  Many of you know what a good story teller Dick Parker is, and I can't do justice to his talent, but basically the story goes as follows.  Dick had a couple of teeth that were bothering him.  Dr. Gerber took a look at them and said (almost with what seemed like delight in her voice) something to the effect that he could kiss those teeth goodbye.  The way she injected the novocaine was absolute proof in Dick's mind that speed and efficiency don't equal tender, loving medical care.  The whole dose entered his gum in about half a second.  The good doctor immediately brought out her pliers and wrenched the teeth from their sockets.  Dick said that about the time he walked out the front door, the novocaine took effect.

            On the positive side, people say she made some of the finest dentures to be found anywhere.  I hear that her assistant, Mrs. Rubottom, was a valuable asset in this regard.  There are still people wearing dentures that were made at Dr. Gerber's office.  Her prices were also very reasonable.

            It must have been in 1980 that the Health Department closed Dr. Gerber down.   The Historical Society was called in to take her equipment.   I'm not clear about how they could legally take it, but her methods had become pretty unsanitary.  Even her fellow animal lovers probably didn't appreciate being worked on with dogs, cats and chickens wandering about in the same room.

            The guys from the Historical Society said that while they were hauling her equipment out the door, she kept trying to grab things out of the various cabinets, etc.  It was a sad end to the career of a genuine pioneer.

            As near as I can gather, she came to Council from Kendrick, Idaho in the 1940s.  Her office was on the north end of the upstairs of the old Drug Store / Doctor's office building that now houses the Ceramic shop.  (On the north west corner of Illinois Ave. and Galena St.) She was born in 1889, and would have been about 80 years old when she was forced to retire. She lived to be over 100. 

            She had a gold mine somewhere up in the Salmon River country.  She spoke the Nez Perce language, and someone said that it was the Indians who told her where to find the gold deposit.

            I would like to put together more information about Dr. Gerber so that we can have some to go with a display about her and her work for the museum someday.  We also need more photos  of her.  The only one we have shows her long before she came to Council.  I would also like to collect more stories and information about her.  We know that she has at least one daughter that is said to live in Alaska.  If someone has her address, please get it to me. 

            I would like to point out that we do not have room for any of the dentist equipment, and it was crowded in along side the already crowded items in the museum.  This is just one example of the kind of thing we face because we simply are out of room.  The addition to the museum for which we are raising money will help solve this problem.  We need your help.  Donations can be dropped off at City Hall, mailed to me at box 252, Council, or put in one of the Pennies for the Past jars around town.   

 

6-2-95

            I'm still getting conflicting accounts about the location of the Long Valley Massacre grave site.  If I find it, I'll let you know.

            The next year after the massacre (1879) there were several murders along the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, and Sheep Eater Indians were accused of committing them.  Troops were sent into the area from Boise to capture the "hostiles".   The Army spent four months struggling through the rugged country just trying to locate the Indians.   Over sixty army mules or horses were lost; most of them killed by falling off the trail on precipitous mountainsides.        Ironically, on August 20, exactly one year to the day after the Long Valley Massacre, one of the cavalry units sent after the Sheep Eaters rode into a very similar, fatal ambush.  One soldier, Private H. Eagan was killed.  This pathetic four-month-long campaign that became known as the "Sheep Eater War", managed to round up a total of 15 warriors and about 36 women, children and old people. 

            It's interesting to note that among the captured Indians were two men that were later rumored to have been involved in the Long Valley Massacre: "Tamanmo" (or War Jack) and a Weiser Indian named "Buoyer".  War Jack was listed by Lieut. Brown, in his journal, as being part Bannock and part Nez Perce, and that he claimed to be the successor to Chief Eagle Eye.  His wife and children were also captured.  Brown said that Buoyer had only been in the area for about a year, and did not know the country well.

            In the early 1880's some Indians still roamed the Idaho mountains. Most were eventually captured, or they surrendered, and were sent to the Fort Hall Reservation.  Small groups of Weisers were allowed to leave the reservation from time to time to hunt, fish and gather berries in their old territory.  This practice continued into the early 1900's.  Many of the old timers around Council when I was a kid remembered Indians coming through here.  An Indian woman took a liking to Ike Glenn (Georgiana Parker's father) and tried to buy him from his parents.

            Two small groups of Weiser Indians under Eagle Eye and Indian Charley, secretly established permanent homes in a very secluded, out-of-the-way valley south of Long Valley, west of the Payette River, near present day Banks, Idaho.  These families built cabins, raised gardens, and planted fruit trees.  By combining both white and native life-styles, they were quite self-sufficient.  Eagle Eye and Indian Charley were each able to die here, as they had lived: in peace.

            I ran across an interesting item in the Salubria Citizen newspaper for June 19,1896 quoted from another  Idaho newspaper, the "Index":   "Eagle Eye, chief of the Dry Buck Indians is dead, and the tribes are making a powerful lamentation over his remains."  It said they put his body in a pit for 10 days, and were taking it out and burning it.  The paper blatantly made the claim that Eagle Eye, "was a leader of the band that killed Monday, Haley and Groseclose in Long Valley about 16 years ago."

            It would seem that the type of unobtrusive settlement that Eagle Eye's group had established would have been an ideal solution to "the Indian problem".  For many years, whites didn't even know they were there.  But when they did find out about them, the dark side of human nature raised its ugly head.  Even though the Indians filed for rights to their land under the Homestead laws, they were eventually coerced into giving up even this last fragment of their homeland.  About 1900, the last remaining members of this group of free native people was imprisoned at the Fort Hall and Lemhi Reservations. 

            For native Americans, the concentration-camp existence they were forced to live under must have been almost impossible to bear.  In their culture, everything sacred, everything that gave purpose and meaning to their lives was based on their relationship with mother earth, from who's arms they had been ruthlessly torn.  What cultural values could they pass on to their children when almost every value they understood had been made irrelevant?  It seems bitterly ironic that a culture that outwardly professed spirituality, but was really based on rampant materialism, brutally crushed a culture so totally immersed in deep spiritual values.

            Today, the wrong that was done to the natives of this country is almost insidious...the stories of their lives mostly unknown... but their former presence here underlies everything that has followed them. The places where we now live, work and play, were all a precious legacy handed down from native fathers and mothers (Landmarks) to sons and daughters for more than 100 centuries longer than the blink of an eye that our European culture has been here.

            Imagine a time line, with each foot representing 1,000 years.  Going backwards from the present to a point14,000 years ago, about when the first Americans arrived here, the line would be fourteen feet long.  Columbus arrived on this continent only six inches ago.  Idaho Indians got horses about 3 1/2 inches ago.  And the Mosers arrived to settle the Council Valley less than 1 1/2 inches ago.

            You may remember my saying how where we live now is like a stage where many unknown dramas have been acted out.  Maxine Hallett found an arrow head on the ground just outside her Coleman apartment last week.  What stories lie behind it will never be known, but it represents volumes of fascinating tales that lie literally under our feet.

 

History Corner6-9-95

by Dale Fisk

       Settlement of this area didn't stop during Nez Perce, Bannock or Sheep Eater Wars.  I mentioned Calvin White in the Long Valley Massacre story.  It was he who discovered Three Fingered Smith lying wounded near Payette Lake.

       White was the first settler in the Meadows Valley, and had only arrived there the year of that massacre and of the Bannock War (1878).  He was born in Boston in 1833, and started out his long and eventful career when he was just a boy, going to work on sailing ships.  He followed the sea until he was 30 years old, traveling all over the world.  He apparently got gold fever and wound up in the Boise Basin during the heyday of that area in 1863.  There is a portrait of Cal White, taken during this time, in the files at the State Historical Library.

       At a social occasion near Falk's Store in the Payette Valley, White met, and quickly fell in love with Lydia Hopper, a girl from a wagon train headed west.  After the train moved on, Cal caught up with it near Baker, and the two were married on the spot.  This whirl wind romance apparently worked out.  They eventually had nine children.

       After living briefly in Garden Valley and Horseshoe Bend, Cal moved his family to Indian Valley about the time of the Nez Perce scare in 1877, and then moved to Meadows the next year, perhaps before the Bannock War heated up.

       If you remember, by 1878 there were only a few families in the Council Valley.  It was that fall that Robert White (no known relation to Calvin) became the first postmaster in this area when a post office named "Council Valley" was opened.  The "office" was nothing more than a small box containing mail that he kept under his bed in his home just north of the present town.  There were no individual post office boxes.  People may have followed what was sometimes the custom in those types of situations in which each family looked through the box for their mail.  So much for privacy.

       When Calvin White made his move from Indian Valley to Meadows, the Meadows Valley was known as "Salmon Meadows".  The name later evolved to "Meadows Valley".  At the time, there was no road north of the Council Valley.  White and his partner, W.C. Jennings took the first wagon through between the valleys.  They followed the Weiser River bottom, crossing the river repeatedly as the canyon narrowed.  They finally gave up this tactic just beyond Starkey.  From there, they climbed up onto the ridge tops north and west of the river.  Their exact route is unknown, but they reportedly passed through Lost Valley and Price Valley.

       Soon afterwards, White and some of  the settlers in the Council Valley, built a crude wagon trail between the valleys.  The route went over Fort Hall Hill, then dove into the brushy canyon and forded the river  37 times between Glendale and Tamarack.

       The White family established the first home (not counting Packer John Welch's layover cabin) in Meadows Valley, as well as the first store and post office.  Cal was the first postmaster and carried mail between Indian Valley and Warren.  Calvin White died at the age of 94 in 1927.

       As nearly as I can tell, it was in 1879 that William Rayle Harrington, as well as Rufus Anderson, came from Indian Valley to settle on Hornet Creek .

       It was during this time, before Weiser became established enough to have well-stocked stores, Council Valley residents often went to Boise or Baker City for supplies.  A trip to Boise and back took from ten days to two weeks.  Even after a wider range of supplies were available in Weiser, it was still a four day journey round trip with a wagon. 

       In 1882, the Oregon Short Line Railroad reached Weiser.  The company was building tracks from Ogden, Utah to Huntington, Oregon to meet a line coming east from Pendleton, Oregon.  Having a railroad as close as Weiser was a boon to the people of the Council Valley.  It meant that they were that much closer to a real shipping point ... that much closer to being connected to the outside world.  Thanks in large part to the closer proximity of the railroad, the population of the Council Valley area rapidly grew throughout the 1880s.

       I got a call from Fred Thompson, a former Fruitvale resident (Bob's brother) on Saturday night. .  Fred now lives in Bishop, California.  He said he has a picture of the Bill Bear family that I mentioned as having lived on the West Fork.  He plans to send us a copy of it and some other picutures.  It's great to here from people who used to live here and who either still get a Council paper, or have a clipping of the History Corner sent to them.  I hope any of you out there will keep in mind that we are still looking for old photos of this area.  Don't hesitate to write to me at Box 252, Council or call (208) 253-4582.  Also, if you have other things like scrap books or other information that can add to the story of this area, I am very interested in seeing them.

       Don't forget our fund drive to improve the museum.  Things have been awfully quiet on that front lately.  Save your pennies too!  Our fund is about $3782 right now.

 

6-16-95

            This week, I have the great pleasure of announcing the most significant development concerning the museum since the launching of our fund drive.  The museum project will be receiving $7,000 that ACDC  applied for from Farm Bill money!  This money will boost our funds over the top of the $10,000 that we need to match Evea Powers's pledge to equal that amount.  This means that we can go ahead with final plans to expand the museum!

            The museum belongs to the town of Council, and a general plan for the addition was approved by the City Council some time back.  There are still some important arrangements to be made as to exactly how the museum activities and city activities will each compliment the function of the other.  Hopefully, these loose ends will tie up easily and the project will get underway soon.

            Even though this means we have reached a goal that we have been working very hard toward for several years, it doesn't mean we will stop raising funds entirely.  The amount we have nailed down should get the addition built, but we will still encounter some expenses as we move and improve the displays.  Basically, the more money we have to work with, the better job we can do of making Council a better place to live.

            Last week, I ended this column by mentioning the rapid growth in the Council area in the 1880s.  In another History Corner some months ago, I wrote about how the town almost got established north of where it is now.  The first two post offices, the first store and the first organized school were located on Galena Street (which was the road through the valley) about a mile north of the present town.

            The first business in the Valley was the Moser home, which was located about where Ruben's is now.  They often housed and fed travelers in their cabin.  The next business was probably a blacksmith shop established in 1884 by Frank Mathias. Frank and Clista Mathias's homestead encompassed much of what is now the east side of Council.  Their home was at or near what was, until very recently, 303 North Galena street where Fred York's house stood.  The blacksmith shop was just south of it on the same (east) side of the road

            By 1885, their were about 300 settlers living in the Council Valley.  Activity in the Seven Devils had picked up with arrival of Albert Kleinschmidt.   There were enough settlers living in the Cottonwood Creek area south of Council that a post office, called "Rose", was established there that year

            In the spring of 1885, this "news" item from the Council Valley appeared in the Weiser City Leader:  "There is a new town in this valley, which already has two saloons and a blacksmith shop; they will probably call it Snortville, or Spitfire.  There is a young lady in Council who loans twenty dollar pieces to all parties who can give good security." One of the hallmarks of 19th century newspaper writers was heavy doses of  inside jokes and good-humored leg pulling.  Part of this item in the paper, especially the part about the young lady, may have been exaggerated or even untrue.  Nevertheless, it does indicate the beginnings of a town, as opposed to a scattered community.  The speculated names for the town were probably based on local nicknames.  Robert White's nickname was "Uncle Snort" because he was such a story teller.  The identity of the two saloons is a mystery, unless someone dispensed liquor out of their home, as there were no saloons here at that time.

            John Peters came up from Weiser to establish the first store in the Council Valley (at the location I mentioned north of the present town) in 1888.  By this time, so many new families had moved into the Valley that the Weiser paper said the Council Valley was "... cultivated clear up to the timbered foothills.

            Plans are being made to have an old fashioned booth at a couple of upcoming local events, partly to promote and raise money for the museum.   The events are the Arts and Crafts Festival at the Quilt Show on June 24, and the big fund-raiser for Council scheduled for August 5 & 6.  Some help is needed from people in the community.  A small, horse-drawn wagon may be needed if one hasn't been found by then.  Also needed are: old-style  "prairie" type dresses, bonnets, etc. for costumes ...  two small, old-fashioned trunks ... and a small, old-fashioned table.   The dresses, etc. can be dropped of with Nadine at the General Store in Council.  Also, volunteers are needed to help with the booths.   If you can help with any of these things, please call Irene Dodge (253-4711) or Mary Sterner (253-6930). 

 

6-19-96  The Jim Summers story, continued from the last two columns.

            Last week I wrote about a fight with Indians that involved Jim Summers and a man named Rattlesnake Jack in 1880.  Rattlesnake Jack's, real name was B.E. Said.  His earthly career had a colorful end when he was shot and killed by a Weiser deputy sheriff only two years later, in1882.  Jack got drunk in a Weiser saloon one evening, and started getting extremely obnoxious.  The sheriff's office was notified, and a deputy was dispatched.  When the deputy tried to arrest him, Jack pulled his revolver and shot at the deputy.  Several shots were exchanged, and the deputy retreated to get bigger artillery.  When the deputy returned to the saloon with a shotgun, the gun battle continued but soon ended when Jack received a mortal wound to his chest.  The editor of the Weiser newspaper said that when Rattlesnake Jack was sober, he was a quiet, industrious and inoffensive citizen. (Weiser City Leader, Nov 4, 1882)

            Rattlesnake Jack was buried in a location that was evidently not in an organized cemetery.  Almost twenty years after his death, his grave was inadvertently disturbed.  It was in late 1898 or early 1899 that the railroad began construction of the line to Council.  As the line was being built from the main line at Weiser, Jack's remains were accidentally dug up by the grading crew.  An enterprising Weiser business man acquired the bones and put them on display for the "enjoyment" of his customers.

            Jim Summers only lived about 13 years after the shootout with the Indians.  Toward the end of his life, cancer had completely destroyed his right eye, and he wore a handkerchief to cover it.  He was in pain much of the time, but didn't complain about it much.

            In 1889, the Weiser Leader reported that Summers was is dangerously ill at Pine valley, Oregon, and that there was little hope for his recovery.  "He lost one of his eyes several years ago, the effects of which he never recovered.  He has been under medical treatment for 6 months . . . now paralysis has set in."

            Apparently, Jim recovered enough to return to life on Cuddy Mountain.  In September of 1893,  he was found dead there.  According to James Thorp, his grandfather was the one who discovered Jim's body.  Mr. Thorp writes: "My grandfather was riding for cattle on Cuddy Mountain and came upon an apparently abandoned camp, but upon investigation discovered the body of Jim Summers.  Further investigation turned up several head of horses, corralled or tethered, that were in bad shape for lack of feed and water.  He turned the animals loose and buried Mr. Summers.  This in itself was a feat as my grandfather was a one-armed man."

            In his recollections of local history, Frank Harris said that two prospector friends of Jim's found Summer's body.  Harris said that as they approached a small grove of quaking aspen, they saw Summers's lying dead among the trees.  They buried him near that spot.

            Summers was alone when he died, so the exact date of his death was never known.  He was 56 years old.

            Jim Summers's grave is shown on Forest Service maps, and is located right beside road #234. To reach Jim Summers' grave, turn west from the main Council - Cuprum road just before the old Hornet Creek Guard Station, and take road #055.  For the most part, this road was built in about 1924 to reach the Cuddy Mountain mines, the remains of which can still be seen along its route, about 8.5 miles from the Council - Cuprum road.  This rocky road is shown on maps as a four wheel drive road, and it is that.  At the top of the mountain, road #234 turns north along the ridge top.  The view here in all directions is heart-stopping: especially that of the Pine Creek Valley in Oregon and the Snake River canyon far below to the west.   Summers's grave, marked with a marble headstone, and fenced with poles, sits right above road #234, about 3 miles from where it branches from #055.  A modern cabin and corrals are located here as well.  The total distance from the main road is about 13 miles.

    Ron Hillman told me that Helena Schmidt told him that Summers is actually buried down the canyon below the grave marker.  I haven't questioned Helena about this yet, but if anyone knows  about a different grave location, please give me a call.

 

HISTORY CORNERS

11-1-96  to 10-30-97

 

11-1-96

     In 1901, construction was started on a gravity-operated aerial tramway which to carry the ore three quarters of a mile from the Summit mine to the mill below Black Lake.  The unsupported span over the lake was 1,500 feet, and was thought to have been the longest single span in the world at that time.  The cable for the tram was freighted to the Lake in one long piece, on two wagons.  Anna Adams said that the crews worked almost a month "...jacking it up over high dive, [and getting it strung out] from the mine to the mill across the lake."

            After a crew worked all winter to finish the mill, it began operating in May of 1902, with about fourty men employed, including those in the mines.   The first bullion from the mill netted $5,000 after it was shipped to the gold mint in Denver.

            The tramway was not completed before the mill started production, and the ore was probably hauled to the mill by wagons.  By the time the mill shut down for the season in November, the tram was in place, but didn't operate properly.  It was supposed to run by gravity, with  the weight of the loaded ore buckets pulling the empty ones up.  The Meadows Eagle announced,  "The Salzer-Ford company has been compelled to assist their gravity aerial bucket tramway with water power.  The long span across Black lake seems to be too much for the gravity system."

            The next year (1903), the operation was really rolling, with sixty men employed.  After the first eight days of operation in March, the mill yielded forty pounds of gold.  This was in stark contrast to the copper mining part of the district, which was suffering a depressing lull.. 

            Robert Barbour, the famous moonshiner, was the first Postmaster at the post office that was established at Black Lake on September 18 of that year.  (Barbour was succeeded by John Nelson, a cook, who held the position until the post office was discontinued in October of 1907.)

            By October, the Black Lake mines had produced $75,000 in gold.  But the year was to end on a very sour note.  It started when a shortcut was taken in processing the ore.  The wet ore was initially put through a drier before it was crushed.  It was discovered that the ore didn't need to be dried to process properly, so the mill shut down, and a conveyor belt was built to bypass the drier.  After this was done, the mill processed wet ore for one afternoon, and then shut down.

            The next morning was October 31 - Halloween.  At 5:30 AM, the men awoke to someone yelling, "FIRE!".  Smoke and flames were pouring out of the mill.  A mad dash by all hands was made for water hoses.  Careful plans had been laid for just such an emergency, even to the extent of placing the water hydrants inside the mill so that they would not be frozen in case of a fire during cold weather.  The only problem was, the fire was also inside the mill,  and it was too hot for anyone to enter.  By despirate work, the men managed to save the bunk houses, stores and sawmill that were only a few yards away, but in a matter of minutes, the mill was little more than ashes.

            It was thought that the most probable cause of the fire was spontaneous combustion caused by damp ore mixed with lime.   But there was a rumor that someone nursing a grudge against the Fords had set it.    Thomas Nelson, editor, the Cambridge Citizen newspaper had his own explanation.  He said, "There has always been an unseen force holding back all kinds of progress in the Seven Devils, which may in a measure account for the burning of the Ford mill."

            Regardless of the origin of the fire, operations at Black Lake came to a grinding halt.  Since the first snow would fall any day, it was too late in the year to rebuild, and the camp was abandoned for the winter.

            The Black Lake mill was only insured for $20,000 - just one fifth of what it had cost to build.  In spite of their losses, the Ford brothers were not defeated, and immediately started making plans to rebuild.

            More next week.

 

 

 

11-8-96

            Construction on a new mill at Black Lake started in the summer of  1904, and took only ninety days to complete.  In the process, a water-powered electrical plant was installed and all the buildings were wired for electric lights. This time some fire hydrants were placed outside of the buildings.

            By early fall, the mill jumped into full production, processing 75 tons of ore per day - a 50% increase over the capacity of the old mill.

            It must have seemed that editor Nelson. might have been right about an "unseen force" haunting mining efforts the Seven Devils when misfortune soon struck again.  Only $25,000 in gold had been produced before a worker accidentally dropped a sledge hammer into the ore crusher, badly damaging it.  Again, the entire operation was shut down.

            While repairs were being made to the crusher, another blow came.  Nick Klosaner's saloon and Bob Barbour's store (probably containing the post office) were totally destroyed by fire.

            Still undaunted, the Fords forged ahead.  They invested in an unusual luxury in those days: an air-driven drill.  Drills were used, as they are now, to drill holes in which to place explosives.  The usual method at the time was the old-fashioned way.  A steel rod with a star-shaped tip on the drilling end was held by one man and driven by another with a sledge hammer.

            In spite of all the confidence, in spite of the years of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars invested, the Black Lake mines began to struggle.  In 1906, less than $10,000 worth of gold was produced.  By 1909, no gold at all was reported.

            In 1911, Ed Ford turned his attention back to a project that he had started years before.  In 1905, he had found a place along Crane Creek, south of Indian Valley, where he thought a reservoir should be made.  He worked on plans for the reservoir for several years.  The dam must have been built shortly after1911.  If anybody knows just when it was built, please let me know.

            The final blow to the mines at Black Lake came with the outbreak of World War I in Europe.  Germany was the primary source of the cyanide that was so vital to processing gold ore, and the Germans had other plans for their cyanide than exporting it to potential enemies like the United States.  The price of the chemical shot up beyond reason.  The mill was shut down for the last time in 1914, but a small crew kept working the mines.

            In the spring of 1916, Sim Ford was making plans to work the mines another season.  Before he could put his plans into action, all of his supplies burned when a good share of the town of  Landore went up in flames.  Also about that time, the remaining Salzer brother died, apparently without designating ownership of his share of his Black Lake interests.  Rather than try to overcome these obstacles, the mines and the mill were abandoned.  In some unexplained way, the Ford's and Salzer's Idaho Gold Coin Mining and Milling Company ceased to exist.  As a result, there was no legal owner willing to take responsibility for all the equipment at the lake.  It was simply left there.

       It has been estimated that a total of only about $125,000 in gold was taken out of the mines at Black Lake by the Salzer - Ford partnership.  This would have done little more than pay for just one of the mills they built.  Winifred Lindsay, on the other hand, said that the company ended without any debt

            By 1919, geologists, Livingston and Laney noted that most of the supplies and equipment at Black Lake had already ". . . been stolen or wantonly destroyed."

            My father, Dick Fisk, remembers seeing the mill in the 1930s.  He said there were hundreds of feet of new rope, cable and eight-inch pipe still there.  There were scores of tin cans full of food, but with the labels rotted off, stacked in store rooms.  The story of Alva Ingram hauling out lengths of pipe about this time is a classic illustration of what happened to much of the abandoned property.

            More next week.

 

 

11-15-96

            The abandoned property at Black Lake was eventually sold off by Adams County for back taxes.  I believe the Forest Service owns much of the ground now.  Ironically, the mill that was built back after the disastrous fire of 1903 was intentionally burned again during World War Two.  This was done to salvage the scrap iron in it for the war effort.

            Charlie Winkler claimed much of the tramway cable used at the Mesa Orchards came from the Black Lake tram.  And I've been told that Hugh Addington said the cable from the Mesa tramway was later used to build the first ski lift at Sun Valley.  If anyone has any more information on either of these stories, PLEASE tell me.

            Today, the Summit mine above the lake is still very visible.  The one remaining tunnel is about six feet tall and about that wide.  It goes back into the mountain about 75 yards or more.  There were two tunnels, and I assume this was the upper one.  It followed an ore vein that was 200 feet long and about two feet wide by 500 feet deep.  The lower tunnel was about 200 feet below the upper tunnel and went about 1,200 feet through rock, then about 1,000 feet on the ore vein.

            The old tram supports have all fallen down now.  Until a couple years ago, there was one standing on the edge of the cliff overlooking the lake.  There are also long lengths of cable and a few broken and twisted ore buckets on the hillside between the Summit tunnel and the cliff.  And there are still hundreds of rotting boards from the buildings that used to stand just back from the cliffs.   

            The Maid of Erin mine is also still very much in evidence.  As I mentioned, it's about 300 yards east of the outlet of the lake at the north end.  The base of a cabin still sits there, and there are a number of boards, peices of metal and a few bricks.  Both of the two tunnels there have collapsed.  The lower tunnel went about 800 feet into the mountain.  Where it collapsed, there are a couple of small openings to the surface where very cold air blows out like and air conditioner.  There has to be another opening for that air to circulate through like that.  It isn't coming through the upper tunnel because it's completely closed off.  It must be the vertical shaft.  More on that later.

            The quartz vein at the Maid of Erin was very narrow, varying in width from only a few inches, up to about three feet.  It is now exposed where the lower portal collapsed.  The quartz has a very pretty reddish purple color mixed in with a small amount of white.   

            The Maid of Erin was reworked in the late 1930s by a crew hired by Howard Hinsdale of Portland, Oregon his partner, a man named Higgins, who was also from that area..   Before it was reworked, the tunnel dead-ended at the 800 foot point mentioned above, and a shaft may have gone upwards for some distance from there.  A shaft of some kind may have gone completely to the surface, accounting for the strong draft that came through the mine even before it was reworked.  The reworking opened (or reopened) a shaft straight up, all the way to the top of the mountain.   Men climbed up the shaft on wooden ladders or hiked up the mountain to the top and then climbed down into the shaft on ladders.  There were landings and side tunnels (drifts) about every 50 to 100 feet along the shaft.  On the opposite side of the shaft from the ladders was an ore shoot leading to the tunnel below.  Ore was dumped into this chute to get it to ore cars which ran on tracks in the tunnel at the bottom.

            The ore was taken to the mill at Placer Basin for processing.  Alta Ingram used his 1 1/2 or two ton truck to haul it.  The road was in no better shape than it is today, and was very hard on tires. 

            Placer Basin was being reworked by Hinsdale and Higgins also, starting about 1934.  The claims were owned by the Hamill family of Fruitvale.  Gilbert and Nellie Hamill and their sons, Ray and Harold, moved here in 1910 when they bought 80 acres at foot of Fort Hall hill.   While Ray was working for the Forest Service in the 1930s, he became interested in Placer Basin.  The Hamills paid $10,000 for the property.  Before the mill was built, the ore was shipped to Murry, Utah for smelting.  The mine was closed in 1942 by Federal order because only strategic metal could be mined during the war.

            A "mucker" working for Hinsdale and Higgins was paid $4.50 per day.  They did all the least skilled work - shoveling ore into the cars, etc.  A "miner" was paid $5.00 per day.  They did all the pick work, drilling and blasting.  This was good money during the depression, especially when people were thankful for any kind of job. 

            I need to thank Lloyd Hamill, Robert Thompson, and especially Paul Phillips, for much of the information in this week's column.

 

11-22-96

             I found some information concerning Olaf Sorenson's grave.  When Eliza Sorenson Draper died in 1935, the paper said Olaf died in 1905 and "is buried in the Kesler Cemetery".  So maybe his body was moved off of the hill after all.  Just goes to show, once more, that the truth doesn't always make the best story. 

            Last year Robert Thompson sent me a list of some of the people he remembered working at Placer Basin and the "Smith Mountain Mill" in the 1930s.  I'm just gonna throw 'em in for those of you who remember these people.

            Owner - Howard Hinsdale of Portland, Oregon - also owner of Umpqua Navigation (tug boats, etc.) - later traded it for stock in Bohemia Lumber Co.

            Superintendent of mine - Carl Ingram.  Foreman and shift boss was his son, Walt Ingram.  Chet, his younger brother, was one of the miners.

            Cleve Reed was a blacksmith.  Mrs. Reed (Lulu) was head cook.  She was the mother of Frankie Ingram (a miner) - his wife, Mildred, worked in the cook house. 

            Harold Burns was the teamster.

            From Fruitvale:  Fred Glenn (ran hoist), Hub Fisk, Ray "Stub" Yantis, Fred Yantis, Bill Baker, Roy Benz, Clifford "Nip" McMahan, Robert Thompson

            From Council - Byron "Buff" Hallett, Floyd Gilmer, Bill Watson, Penny Emery, Ben Barbour, Cecil Huston and his uncle, Bill Huston, Dick Blurton, Merle Ball, Cecil Ball (who was killed in a cave in), Asa Whitney and sons, A.D., Floyd and Melvin Whitney - Chet Selby, Paul and Hank Phillips, Mr. Lee (older man) and two sons, Verne Lee (who was the diesel engineer and a good one) - the younger Lee brother's first name I can't recall, Emsley Glenn (who was killed by a falling tree - Earnest Lutiger was working with him in the woods cutting mine timbers), Max Boesigger was another diesel engineer from Boise (was captured on Wake Island in WWII), Ray (Roy?) Armacost, Kermit Krigbaum.

            From Oregon - Roy (Ray?) Rockwell, Ellis Allen, Carnahan (older man), Fred & Hank Titus, Fred Davis, Mary Gover (worked in cookhouse) Floyd Pollard, Ben South.

            Ray Lindgren, from Bear, was the step son of Jesse Smith.  Jesse's brother, Bill Smith, helped blacksmith, Cleve Reed.  Mrs. Smith worked in the cookhouse.

            From Troy, Idaho - Calvin Suksdorf and son Calvin, Tommy Gregg (don't know where he was from - was a cousin of Chet & Walt Ingram)

            Carl Anderson from Portland was a mining engineer.  His son, Johnny, worked there some also.  Fred Bartels worked with Carl Anderson.  He was from Cottage Grove, Oregon.  Owen Terry was another engineer.

            Alva Ingram did a lot of trucking up to the mine and mill (hauled cordwood from Landore that had been cut during WWI.)

            _?_ Phillips also worked for Bill Hunsacker at a small mine below Placer Basin.  It was located below the road on the last steep grade before the Basin.  I believe it was called the Little Giant. [Both Hank and Paul Phillips worked there at the Little Giant.  It was about 1/4 to 1/2 mile east of the main road.  The road to it left the main road just at the foot of the steep grade before Placer Basin.  Bill Hunsacker built a cabin there about 100 yard before the turn off to the mine on the west side of the main road.]

            Roy Garrison also worked some at Placer Basin.  Also Harry Raines.

            Museum notes -  We are planning an exhibit that we need help with.  There are some items that we would like to see if someone would donate to the museum, or loan for a minimum of two years.   For a pioneer house exhibit we need the following items, made before 1900, or copied from a pre-1900 pattern: a half-size (or small) bed, a hoosier (semi-portable kitchen cabinet), a kerosene lamp, an old fashioned apron (maybe someone could make one?), and a trunk.  If you have any of these, or have other things that would fit into this exhibit, please call Connie Mocaby at 253-4408

            Also, we still need help at the museum.  We're usually there on Tuesdays from 10:00 AM to about 4:00 PM.  Our goal now is to have it open this spring.  We're going to need volunteers to man the place.

 

12-13-96

            Like many of the mines in the Seven Devils district, the Iron Springs mining operation lost money for virtually everyone involved with it.  Whether it was simply an elaborate scam, as many claimed, is not clear.  But in its several years of operation it is said that not one shipment of ore ever left Iron Springs.

            The story of Rankin Mill parallels that of Iron Springs.  Both camps were being developed at about the same time, and eventually had the same owners.

            Not long after the Ford brothers built the road to Black Lake in 1900, H.D. Rankin appeared on the scene.  Rankin, a chemist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had invented a machine that could make nitric acid by combining the molecules of air and water by means of an electrical charge.  Nitric acid was used in a leeching process to extract gold from gold bearing ore, and Rankin's main objective would seem not to have been to make his fortune by merely mining gold.  He was an ambitious business man, and the principle stockholder in the Rankin Chemical Reduction Company based in Chicago, which reportedly had assets worth about $10 million.  If he could find a place to prove that his nitric acid making device would be a practical part of gold mining operations, he could revolutionize the industry.  Then, as became a familiar theme in the Seven Devils, he could find his pot of gold in the pockets of investors in his company stock rather than in the ground.

            Rankin agreed to buy several mines on the West Fork of Rapid River, about 6 miles north of Iron Springs, from Tom, George, and Jim Potter, and Jim Ross.  The Star, Jackley and Champion mines were the principle claims.   When the Iron Springs Company built a road into its claims in 1902 Rankin built a road from his holdings to connect with it.

            Rankin's operation in the Seven Devils was called the Rankin General Milling Company.  At a cost of $50,000, he built an ore mill, a nitric acid "factory" and a hydroelectric plant to power them

 and provide lighting.  Rankin was evidently in such a hurry to get his operation going that he had some of the equipment brought into this remote location in the dead of winter.  The Cambridge newspaper for Jan 9, 1903 reported that the Rankin Mill machinery had made it as far as Black Lake. The paper said the job had taken fifty horses to get it through snow up to fifty feet deep.

            About a quarter mile up stream from the mill, a small community sprang up where about 55 Rankin employees lived.   The little town was named "Rand", evidently after a man by that name.  A post office under that name was established in the fall of 1903.  Ruth Lake (about 2 miles south of Rankin Mill) was named after Mr. Rand's daughter, Ruth Rand, who was the first child born in the town.  A Forest Service sign identifies the site as "Old Town", but it was not known by that name during its active existence.  Not much is known about the town, except that it also had a hotel and a blacksmith shop.  The community

eceived its mail by way of Pollock, and supplies often came by pack train from Grangeville.

            More next week.

            We're still making progress a little at a time at the museum.  We got calls on several of the items we needed for the house exhibit.  Now we would like to get an old fashioned house dress that is small enough to fit on a mannequin.  It needs to fit into the 1900, or before, time slot.  We may also need shoes for that mannequin.  Some of you who made, or have, clothes from the Centennial might think about what you have that you could loan or donate. 

            Another thing we need is old fashioned windows and doors with windows to put into the walls of several planned exhibits, like a sheriff's office, doctor's office and dentist's office.   These should fit into a 1900 to 1930 time frame (or maybe a little later).   They don't necessarily have to have glass in them, as we can replace it.  An old screen door might even work if it's one that we can put glass or Plexiglas into.  The idea is to place these so that the exhibit can be viewed through them, but the items will be protected from handling, etc.  If you ever get a chance to visit the Idaho Falls museum, they have a fantastic little town set up on the lower floor.  We can't hope to match that, at least not yet, but that's the general idea that we are shooting for with these exhibits.  The sheriff's office is the one that excites me the most because we have so many things that Bill Winkler used when he was sheriff.

            Two other items we will need:  Any track lights, track light components, or similar, small spot-type lights.  Old-fashioned wall paper for the rooms mentioned above.

            Oh, there is one other thing we could really use: HELP.  We are usually at the museum on Tuesdays starting at 10 AM.  Drop in to help, or just see what we're doing.

 

12-20-96

            In September of 1903 the newspapers reported, "These facts have been made evident by a short test run made at the Rankin mill on Rapid river Monday evening, when, in the absence of a lot of necessary machinery, 50 pounds of nitric acid, the main reducing agent, sufficient to reduce 2 1/2 tons of ore, was manufactured from the air we breathe, in one hour and fifteen minutes, and the fact was also demonstrated that ore can be reduced at a cost of less than two mills per pound."  "The success of the Rankin process will make it possible for every mine of any value to be worked at a profit.  The mine owner can do the work himself if necessary and will not need more than a week's grub stake to start in with."  In January of 1904, the Weiser Signal claimed that Rankin had produced 500 pounds of Nitric acid in only thirty minutes.

            As so often was the case in the Seven Devils, much of the acclaim about the success of Rankin's process was exaggeration or outright falsehood.  Much of the hyperbole was  no doubt supplied to the newspapers by Rankin himself.  For one thing, the equipment needed was not simple or cheap.  Just the ditch and flume to bring water power to the machinery at Rankin's mill was over a mile long and must have cost more than "a week's grub stake". 

            Only a month after the Signal's fantastic claims about how much nitric acid Rankin was producing, it reported that the power the electric plant could generate was insufficient to run all of his equipment.  Rankin had enough power for his acid factory and lighting, but not enough for the ore mill.  This, however, may have only been what Rankin told the paper in trying to save face and the faith of investors in his invention.  It is probable that he didn't have enough voltage to make nitric acid all along.  Nitric acid (HNO/3) is composed of hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen.  Hydrogen makes up 11.1% of water, and is easily combined with oxygen, which composes 21% of earth's atmosphere.  Nitrogen, on the other hand is much harder to extract from the air.  Even though it makes up 78% of our atmosphere, it takes a very powerful surge of electricity, such as a lightening bolt, to link together the oxygen and nitrogen as Rankin was trying to do.

            The problems with his nitric acid mill were not the only clouds in Rankin's sky.  He still hadn't paid for the claims he had taken over.  By early 1904, the Potter brothers were tired of waiting for their money.  They locked up the Star mine which was only about 50 yards above the mill, stood at the mine entrance with rifles, and would not let Rankin's employees remove any ore.  (James Potter claimed the whole story was false.)  The confrontation wound up in court, and the Potters and their partner Jim Ross won the case.  Apparently this was too much for Rankin.  In the summer of 1904, the post office closed and everything was abandoned.   It is said that Rankin walked out of Rapid River with nothing but the clothes on his back.  But Rankin was not totally defeated.  It was later reported that he had a large nitric acid making plant in Joliet, Illinois, and was planning one at Salt Lake City.

            In 1905, the Iron Springs Company bought out the Rankin Mill properties.  The ore mill was converted into a more traditional cyanide plant.

            When the Iron Springs company went under the camp was again abandoned.   The wagon road to Rankin Mill soon deteriorated, as there was no reason to maintain it.  Because the area was so remote the buildings and equipment at Rankin's diggings were left mostly undisturbed.  As late as the early 1950s several of the buildings were still standing.  The last I heard there were rotting ruins of many of the buildings, in addition to the heavy machinery of the mill.  An ore car may  still sit on a section of rail that ran from the mill to the portal of the old Star mine. At the site of the blacksmith shop, remains of the hearth, old wagon parts, and the metal frame of the bellows may still be there.

            Museum notes.  Toward the end of the year, people think about ways they can allocate money for the best tax advantage before January first.  Remember that Idaho has a 50% tax credit for donations to educational institutions like your museum.  The maximum total you can donate and get a tax credit is $100.  The 50% credit means you get half the amount you donated taken off of what you owe the state in taxes.  The State is actually giving half  your money back to encourage you to donate.  For those of you who would like to help the museum, but don't have time, or live too far away, this would be a great way to help out.

            The museum would like to thank Stan Matthews for loaning the museum some great items for exhibits.  I'll be writing more about what we need.  One of our biggest concerns is the need for volunteers to man the museum next summer.  Please think about how you could help in that way, by either volunteering or by helping to find people who will.  Bear in mind the idea that your club or organization could help in this way.

            Since this is the last issue of the paper before Christmas, I hope you all have a great one.  If you gather around the old photo albums, how about doing your family a big favor: write on the pictures who is who, and other information, before that knowledge is lost.

 

12-27-96

            Two of the first things people notice when they drive trough Council are the old steam-powered tractors sitting in the city park.  This type of machine was originally called a "steam traction engine".  I don't know just exactly when traction engines started being used in the Council area.  Stationary steam engines were used for a long time at places like the Seven Devils, but I don't think these tractors appeared until at least some time after 1900.

            The first portable steam engines appeared in the eastern U.S. about 1855, and were used only for plowing fields.  Because it took time for a suitable steering mechanism to be developed, they did not come into common use until the late 1870s.  The first mention of a steam tractor that I have found in this general area was in the Weiser Signal in 1905.  In the Council area the Wilkie family, on Hornet Creek, were some of the first people to use steam tractors.  They used traction engines to build the Ridge Road about 1909, and the road was even called the "Traction Engine Road" for awhile.  I have no doubt that Traction Gulch, which is a tributary of North Hornet Creek, is so named because the road either came up it or near it.

            The most common use of traction engines here seems to have been to power threshing machines and sawmills.  The Wilkies used their engines to power several sawmills and planing mills that operated all over this area.  Prior to these portable steam engines, sawmills were limited to locations where water power was available, such as at the original Wilkie mill sight near the Hornet Guard Station.

            Old newspapers mention threshers operated by Jackie Duree, the Winklers, and Press Anderson before the turn of the century.  These may have been big combine-like machines that were pulled through the fields by huge teams of horses.  I don't know just when people started using steam engines to power stationary threshers, but it was common by the 1920s.

            Many of the farmers would get together and use the few available threshers.  Pug Robertson of Bear, and Jim Henson of Pleasant Ridge were two men in this area that traveled around at harvest time, pulling a thresher from farm to farm behind their steam traction engines.  Looking at the photos we have, Pug's steam engine appears to have been made by the Rumely Products Co.  This engine probably weighed about 10 tons, and had 20 horse power at the draw bar.  (Not very powerful compared to modern tractors.) 

            Threshers were also manufactured by many of the same companies who built steam engines.  Pug's thresher looks very much like an "Agitator" model, made by J.I. Case before 1900.  These old-time threshers used the "vibration" or "shaker" principle to separate the grain from the straw.  This method was put to use in the 1850's, and the basic technology is still used in most modern combine harvesters.

            One aspect of operating these old engines is one that is seldom seen anymore.  That is the use of a belt, run from the engine to the machinery to be powered.  (If I get something wrong here, some of you older and wiser readers please call me and set me straight.)

            It wasn't that long ago that most tractors came equipped with a large, flat-surfaced pulley to run a belt.  One end of the belt went around the pulley on the tractor (or steam engine) and the other end went around a similar pulley on the thresher or other machine to be powered.  Although I will be writing in past tense, I realize that some farmers and ranchers are still using some belt-powered equipment.

            One thing that always intrigued me was that the pulley was sometimes shaped the opposite way that it seemed it should be: bigger around in the middle than on the edges.  This made the belt grip harder in the middle, and that caused the belt to center on the pulley.  At least that was how it was supposed to work.  It took some maneuvering of the tractor to line up its pulley just right with the machine's pulley.

            The belts varied in width from three or four inches for smaller jobs, and up to about eight to ten inches wide to run a large machine.  Sometimes the belts were very long, with the engine and machine being ten, twenty, or even more feet from each other.  Depending on the desired direction of rotation of the machine's pulley, the belt was sometimes given a half turn between the engine and the machine, giving it the appearance of a figure eight.

            The belts were made of a fiber that was impregnated with a rubber type substance.  The ends were laced together with leather strings, or with special clamp that looked like a row of connected staples.  To get the belt to grip better, "belt dressing" was applied to it.  Belt dressing was a sticky substance with the consistency something like tar.  It's too bad that smells can't be written down or recorded.  The smell of a hot belt and belt dressing is pretty unique.

            Needless to say, this kind of belt hook up was not something you wanted to be careless around.  A loose flap of clothing or a hand could get caught between the belt and pulley, and you could get badly hurt or killed.

            More next week.

 

1-3-97

            With stationary threshers, the grain had to be cut, bundled and tied into sheaves, and hauled to the thresher.  The sheaves were thrown into a feeder opening.  The cleaned grain came out a chute and into a sack.  Each sack was sewn closed by hand, with string and a special needle which was usually about 3 to 5 inches long.  Sack sewers became very skillful, and took pride in the speed and quality of their work.  The straw and chaff came out of the thresher through a long pipe or conveyer, making a big pile on the ground.

            Great care had to be taken that sparks from the steam engine's smoke stack didn't land on the straw pile, as it was extremely flammable.  The loss of the straw and chaff would not be the real problem; the grain field could turn into a raging inferno in a matter of seconds.  The very flared smoke stack on the Case engine in the park. was designed to reduce the number of hot sparks that made it out the stack.

            In addition to the crew directly involved in threshing the grain, it sometimes took two or more men to operate the steam engine, including hauling wood (or coal), and water.  One of the motivations toward the development of gas powered tractors, aside from reduced fire danger, was to reduce the number of men needed to run a threshing operation.

            The Case engine in the park is a 20 horse power model, patented in 1899.  This may be the one that the Wilkies bought and took to their operations on Hornet Creek in the summer of 1910.  It is said that this engine was used by Jim Hensen to power the thresher that he operated on the Ridge and the Fruitvale area.  It may also have been used for plowing in that area.  

            In later years, Lawrence Warner used this engine to power a sawmill near Bear.  After Warner was done with it, Hugh Addington and Merlin Naser bought it.  They also acquired an engine, made by the Advance Thresher Company, that they found abandoned at Placer Basin.  The two men did extensive repairs on this second engine to get it running.  Both engines were driven to Council under their own power.  The bars, or lugs, that were originally bolted onto the rear wheels to provide traction were removed so they wouldn't damage the roads on the trip to Council .

            As Merlin was driving the Wilkie engine to town, he oversteered and it tipped over on its side in the Summit Creek draw between the Kramer summit and the North Hornet summit.  Both the engine and Merlin were unhurt in the accident.  The engine was left there until the next spring, when they got a logging truck to stop and help tip the engine back upright.  Merlin and Hugh drove the engines in parades for several years.  After Naser died, Addington parked them in the park in the center of Council where they remain today.  Merlin Naser's son, Delbert, donated his interest in the Advance engine to the town of Council.  It is my understanding that Hugh Addington's son, Bruce still has the other percentage of ownership.   

            The Advance Thresher Company (est. 1881), was bought by the Rumely Co. in 1911.  The engine in the park is probably a 12 to 16 horse power tractor.  As with most other steam engine manufacturers, the Advance Company also made threshers.   

            The rear wheels of Advance engines were generally placed farther forward than most.  Most traction engine builders reasoned that the rear wheels should have all the weight possible on them.  The Advance company, however, claimed that the most favorable footing for the drive-wheels was where the engine would have sufficient power to barely slip the wheels.  They reasoned that any additional weight on the drive-wheels would serve no good purpose, and would bog the engine down in soft ground.  By transferring the excess of weight from the drive to the front wheels, a better steering engine resulted.

            It's pretty hard to notice the wheel placement at the moment, since a mountain of snow has been piled on the poor old engine.

            Just as an interesting side note, Hugh Addington's father, Bud, tried to sell steam-powered cars when he owned the Addington Auto Company in what is now the "Ace" building, just across the street to the east of the old steam engines.  An ad in the Adams County Leader, Dec 31, 1920, said that these Baker Steamer autos and trucks ran on any oil type fuel.  This made them less expensive to operate, plus the vehicles got 20 to 30 miles per gallon.   Water was condensed after becoming steam, and then reused.  The ad said that there were fewer moving parts than in a gas engine, they lasted longer, and needed fewer repairs.  The ad said that these vehicles would be the "wave of the future". 

 

1-10-97

            By this time guess most of you realize that the flooding we just went through is a pretty historic event.  I haven't heard of a living person who remembers anything this bad along the Weiser River.  It reminded me of stories of 1890.  I already wrote about this in one of my columns, but it seems appropriate to look it over again since it is so similar to our current situation.

            By 1888 it had been twelve years since the first family ,the Mosers, had arrived, and there were quite a number of homesteads in and around the Council Valley.  The community was in its infancy.  Here are some of the things that occurred that summer:

            John Peters established the first store here, and the makings of a town were starting to form around it about a mile north of the present town.  Calvin White established the first store in the Meadows Valley.  Ten bridges were built over the Weiser River between Council and Price Valley.  (Before that it was necessary to ford the river a couple dozen times to make that trip.)  The first wagon load of copper ore was taken out of the Seven Devils.

            The winter of 1888 - '89 was very mild, with little snow.  By the following summer, a severe drought had set in.  The Weiser River was lower than anyone could remember, and the water was warm.  The Snake River was so low at Weiser that a man was able to drive a wagon across it, and the water barely came up past the axles.  In a time when many, if not most, people's livelihoods depended on growing crops or a big garden a drought like this one was very serious.

            Idaho was only a territory then.  That November the vote was taken to determine whether it would become a state.  Council Valley people voted 30 to 28 against it.  (The rest of the Territory was in favor, and the State was admitted to the Union the next summer.)

            By the fall of 1889, people were literally praying for rain or snow.  That winter, their prayers were answered ... and answered ... and answered.  Snow fell early, and kept coming.   By January, there was four feet in Middle Valley (Midvale).   Mail carriers had trouble getting through the canyon between Council and Meadows, and thirty feet of snow was reported at Warren.  For some reason, the precipitation was not consistent throughout the region.  In some places, like Bear and Cuprum, the snow level was at, or even below, normal.

            On the first day of February, the snow had settled to three or four feet deep in the Council Valley.  That was the day it started raining. 

            You may realize that if we had had ice in the rivers this year, the flooding would have been even worse in places.  In 1890 thick layers of ice broke up and formed huge jams all along the Snake and Weiser Rivers.  Angry chocolate torrents hurled headlong over riverbanks, destroying everything in their path.  Horses, cattle, sheep and buildings were swept away like specks of dust in a windstorm.  On Hornet Creek alone 88 head of cattle and horses were drowned.  Mud and rock slides wiped out wagon roads and railroads.  Every one of the new bridges over the Weiser River between Council and Meadows was utterly obliterated.   Transportation all over the region was at a complete standstill.

            On the first of February there had been three to four feet of snow in the Council Valley.  By the end of the month there was so much bare ground that some ranchers turned their cattle out to graze.

            This flooding sounds even worse than what we just had.  Of course in those days life was much different than it is now.  First, there were far fewer people, buildings, etc. here to damage.  The roads were nothing more than dirt wagon trails, and were a lot cheaper to repair.  All ten bridges up the canyon only cost $540 total to build.  (Of course that would be something like $40,000 in today's money.)  It would have been a lot of work to repair a washed out place in a road though because they had no machinery - just horse and man power.   Nobody had electricity, so nobody missed it -  same for TV, telephone or radio.  Everybody had wood stoves for heat and cooking.  Nobody was used to getting into a vehicle and getting to Weiser in an hour.  It took two days with a wagon when the roads were in good shape.  And nobody dreamed anyone would ever fly anywhere.

            I started to write that there was no railroad closer than Weiser to wash out.  It's pretty ironic that were basically back to the same situation on that score.

            I tried to get out and videotape the flooding in the area, but I could only make it a couple hundred yards from home, except up West Fork.  What I would like to do is compile a video of the flooding by getting some of the footage that other people took.  Still photos would work nicely too.  If it comes together, I'll put a copy in the library.  If you would like to contribute to this video give me a call or drop tapes or photos off at the library.  Hopefully this won't happen again in our lifetimes, and we need to get a record of it.

 

1-17-97

 

            Researching and writing history can be tricky.  I try very hard to be accurate and factual in my writing, and yet I know that some of what I write is untrue.  All the information I get came from a human being in one way or another.  All history is someone's version of what happened.  Often the stories I write were filtered through the viewpoint of several people.  For example, much of my historical information comes from old Salubria, Cambridge, Weiser and Council newspapers.  What was written in them was usually related to the editor by someone else.  If he was lucky it was eye witness; if not he got the story from someone who heard it from a first-hand observer.  The editor wrote his understanding of the story, and then I write my understanding of his story and put it into the context of my knowledge and understanding of the bigger picture.  So you can see that there is oportunity for misinformation to creep in.

            Even if you get the facts right, there is the interpretation to worry about.  Historian, Shelby Foote, once said, "Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made."   Last week I mentioned that the citizens of Council Valley voted 30 to 28 against statehood in 1889.  Then I said, "The rest of the Territory was in favor, and the State was admitted to the Union the next summer."  A friend of mine took that to mean that every other part of the territory, except Council Valley, voted for statehood.   Of course I knew what I meant, but I didn't word it carefully enough.  I should have said something like, "A majority of the voters in the rest of the territory as a whole voted in favor, . . ."  It makes we wonder how many times I've miss-worded something, or how many times I've misinterpreted what someone else wrote and then passed it on.

            Sometimes people see the same event differently, and there is more than one version of the same story.  If the originators of both versions are convinced they have the one and only true account, it gets a little perplexing. 

            And even hindsight changes with time.  It's been said that what is told as history not only tells us about the past, but tells us much about the time in which it was told.  Current conditions and social attitudes influence the viewpoint of any historian.  Writers interpret events in a way that fits with their own sense of values and the cultural attitude of their audience (readers).

            For instance in the last century writers didn't have any reservations about denigrating people who were different from the "norm" in any way.  Newspapers openly printed slanderous statements about blacks, Chinese, Japanese, Mormons, American Indians, and even ethnic groups that we don't think of as minorities anymore.

            One thing that became obvious early in my research was that people will often choose to pass on an exciting fictional story over a not-so-exciting true account.  This has led to a number of  inaccurate, local myths.  I was bemoaning this fact to Frank Anderson one day a few years ago.  He just grinned and said, "A lie well told and stuck to is better than the truth."   That must have been the attitude of  "Pinky" Baird.  His story illustrates both changes in cultural attitudes and the fact that people will sometimes just lie.

            Ewing Craig Baird, nicknamed "Pinky", was an old-time Indian fighter who lived in Council.  The story of his childhood says that Indians killed several members of his family, and that this resulted in Baird having a life-long hatred of Indians.   There is a pair of Indian moccasins in the Council museum that he gave to Bill Winkler.  Baird told Winkler that the moccasins had belonged to local Shoshoni chief, Eagle Eye.  According to Baird the last time he saw Eagle Eye alive was when the chief was standing in a stream getting a drink.  Baird said that the Indian jumped in the air and fell dead, and that's how he got the moccasins.  In other words this was Baird's way of bragging that he had killed Eagle Eye.  Today we would call it cold-blooded murder.  In those days, Baird was looked up to for eliminating a "bloodthirsty savage". 

            As to the truth of the story, Eagle Eye actually died of natural causes.  Baird claimed to have killed more than one Indian in this area, so he may have murdered an Indian he thought was Eagle Eye.  By the way Eagle Eye was known, by informed people, as more of a peace maker than a warrior.  Less knowledgeable people thoughtlessly classified him, along with all Indians, as a savage killer.

            The museum still needs someone to donate a door.  We would like one that is fairly old-fashioned with a large window in the upper half.  It doesn't matter if it is a single pane of glass or several smaller ones.  If it doesn't have glass in it we can replace it.  The window area needs to be large enough that part of a room exhibit can be easily viewed through it.            If you have one you can part with, please give me a call.  253-4582

            Also, some of us who are working on the video about the railroad would like to borrow any photos, videos or home movies you have of local trains or anything to do with the railroad.  Give me a call if you can share any.

 

1-24-97

 

            This week I'm going to start basing a series of columns on a really priceless manuscript that Edna Johnson let me copy.  It is basically an autobiography written by Ida Logan Hitt.  She was the wife of A.F. Hitt, the man after whom Hitt Mountain, near Cambridge, is named.  It was written in the late 1930s when she was in her late 70s.  She died at the age of 81 in 1939 at Portland.

            Ida's mother was Lavina Anderson who married David Logan.  When Logan died, she remarried Tom Price in 1884.   Tom Price is who Price Valley is named for.  Lavina's brothers, John and Rufus Anderson, were well known Indian Valley pioneers.

            Ida had distinct memories of coming west in a wagon train in 1868.  The 1860s was the worst decade of violence between whites and Indians in American history.  One story in particular illustrates how afraid of Indians people sometimes were.  One morning the group saw what they thought were Indians coming from a defile in the Black Hills. 

            "They came single file, and seemed to be coming directly to our camp.  There being only one man and two pistols, one of the guns was offered to the man.  He refused it, ran and crawled under the bed, wrapping a buffalo robe around him, also covering up his head and face.  My mother took the discarded weapon, determined to do what she could to defend her children.  Another woman having the other, they were ready to die fighting.  The Indians kept coming until at least 300 warriors were in sight, a formidable array for two women with revolvers to fight.  Other women armed themselves with axes, butcher knives and clubs; one had a broom.  I was 9 years old and remember this vividly. In the excitement they failed to notice that the hostile band was passing by the camp some hundred yards away.  All at once the procession stopped and the Indians turned their faces directly toward us.  Oh what joy!  They were antelope.  After staring a moment, away they ran.  My mother dropped the pistol and sat down on the floor of the tent.  Most of the women began to cry.  For my part, I could not understand why they cried when they found there was not danger."

            It's beyond me why they would have been traveling in such a small group, and were so poorly armed.  Apparently Ida's father wasn't with the family because he had been drafted into the army.  There are places in this manuscript that are very vague, or where things are left out.

            The Logans had planned to go on to Oregon, but decided to stay at Weiser when they found a relative living there.  Soon they moved on to Middle Valley (Midvale).

            In those days hogs were a common animal to raise - both for sale and home consumption.  Council's first family, the Mosers, sometimes drove large herds of hogs to the Boise Basin to sell them to the miners there.  Ida wrote of her family's experiences: "As the spring advanced the hogs were turned out to forage, but were fed a little wheat in the evening so they would come to their covered log pen.  It was the fear of bear that made such a pen necessary.  One night a bear came.  We heard the pig squeal, but when the men arrived with their guns the bear was gone, taking a nice young shoat along.  He had coolly pulled four logs off, seized the pig and was gone.  It showed it was a large bear, perhaps a grizzly; his footprint was enormous."

              It was quite common during the early settlement of the valleys along the Weiser River for farmers to have problems with bears killing livestock; especially pigs.  In 1882, George Moser and some other men pursued a bear that had been killing Moser's pigs.  After the dogs cornered the bear, it attacked Moser, badly wounding him by tearing away chunks of flesh from his legs.  Moser recovered, but the wounds bothered him the rest of his life.

            Some reports say that the bear that attacked Moser was a grizzly, but this has not been confirmed.  (The museum has a few claws that are said to be from this bear, and they do look like grizzly claws.)  Early reports of bear incidents were not usually clear as to the species of the bear.  People in those days seemed very inclined to exaggerate and overdramatize just about any aspect of life, so some stories about grizzly bears probably really involved black bears.  There probably were, however, a few grizzlies in the Council area.  The abundant salmon in the Weiser River would have been an ideal food source for them. 

            A  grizzly was said to have been killing livestock near Alpine in 1874.  This animal reportedly weighed over 600 pounds and had a ten inch long track.  In 1896, Gilbert Smith, the State Senator from Meadows, killed a bear that reportedly measured 9 1/2 feet from tip of nose to end of tail.

            More next week.

 

1-31-97

History Corner

by Dale Fisk

            Continuing from Ida Hitt's autobiography:

            "There was no travel during the winter excepting the mail man coming by once a week.  Before spring we ran out of flour and had to grind wheat on the coffee mill for graham flour to make bread.  There was no chance to get any supplies until the roads could be traveled in the spring, as it was 150 miles to Boise, our nearest market.  We also ran out of butter; as everyone packed their butter in summer for winter, all the cows were dried up in the late fall, with no milk.  (We knew nothing about canned milk; think it hadn't as yet been invented.)"

            "When spring came Uncle John and John Sailing took up homesteads across the Weiser River, Making it 2 miles to their places.  No one planted anything but gardens, as the men could go to other valley's and work thru thrashing and get all the wheat they needed."

            "One day a man came and made a proposition to Ma & Pa that he furnish the cows and they milk and make butter for half of it.  It was soon arranged and the man brought the cows and their calves.  In those days it was not known to take the calf away from its mother and feed it milk.  There was plenty of range for the cows.  There were 15 of them, Father milked 7, Mary 5, and I three of the gentlest.  But alas, no more sleeping mornings until ready to get up.  At 5:30 we had to crawl out.  Many mornings it seemed I just couldn't, but up I had to get.  Besides all the fresh butter we could use, we had lots of cream and milk to use, also cottage cheese. Mother made quantities as it was good for the chickens too, also milk to feed the hogs.  The butter was worked over twice, then packed in wooden tubs made for that purpose, 50 lbs. in each.  Every one ate packed butter thru the winter and early spring, in fact until the last of May.  As the cows ate grass on the range they also ate wild onions that grew up as early as the grass, but by the last of May were withered and the seed blown away."

            About 1872 the Logan family moved to the Salubria Valley.   This is the valley in which Cambridge sits now.  Salubria was the only town there until the railroad came in 1899.  The town of Salubria was a little over a mile south east of present-day Cambridge.  Mary, Ida's older sister who was sixteen, married Frank Mickey in 1873.   "As Mr. Cuddy had moved to Cuddy Mtn., built a saw and flour mill, my sister's husband was among the foremost pioneers."

            "As soon as the law allowed, there was a son born to the Mickeys.  When the Nez Perce war broke out on the 20th of June 1877, they had 3 children, Irwin, Cora and Everet; the latter was not yet two.  In the meantime my Uncle John and Uncle Rufus had moved to Indian Valley; my mother also with us 3 children.  By this time I was getting along in years, was 19 years old.  In that time I had six proposals of marriage, but would have none of them until the handsome young Mr. Hitt came along, at least I thought him the handsomest man on this earth, or any other.  We were engaged for 2 years, as he had bought his partner out and had to pay it off before we could marry.  The Indian war changed that."

            Continued next week.

 

 

 

Articles from 2-1-97 thru this one (3-21-97) are about Ida Hitt and are straight out of my book. 

This is the end of 3-21:

            There are so many mistakes and distortions in Ida's version of this story that it would take a whole column to straighten them out.  More from Ida next week.

            I'm told that Dr. Gerber died in the summer of 1990.  She was born in September of 1889, so she was almost 101 years old.  We have the walls of "her" office finished in the museum.  (Actually, we have built a three-room complex with a sheriff's office, Dr. Gerber's office, and a medical office that will probably be Dr. Brown's office, more or less.)  What I would like is for people to give us quotes about Dr. Gerber that we can print and place in the exhibit.  My plan is to just put up the quote, not necessarily who said it, so don't be afraid to be honest.  If you can help us, please write down a very short statement about an experience with Dr. Gerber.  Here's an example of one I'd like to use: "I've gone to sleep in a lot of dentist's chairs, but I never went to sleep in hers."   Please either mail your quote to me at box 252, Council, or call me at 253-4582.  Even if you just have a story that we might be able to get a quote out of, give me a call.

            Another thing we would like to do is stuff a chicken to put in her office exhibit.  That may sound odd to someone who is unfamiliar with Dr. Gerber, but if she was just your average dentist do you think we would be making a whole exhibit in the museum around her?  It will be an interesting exhibit.  Anyway, we have a volunteer to do the stuffing, and think we think we may have someone willing to give us a chicken.  But if you have a chicken that you are willing to give to the cause, keep us in mind.  I'm told she raised Bantam chickens, among others.

            If anyone has some extra 7" stove pipe, we need a section about 3 feet long, an elbow, and a short piece, maybe about 6 inches long for the stove in Bill Winkler's sheriff's office.

            As always, we can still use help at the museum every Tuesday. 

 

3-28     Ida Hitt's memoirs continued.  It is 1878, after the Long Valley Massacre.

                        More next week.

4-3-97        This will conclude Ida Hitt's memoirs.  We pick up her story about 1884.

            The man Amos Hitt sold his sawmill to was Frederick Wilkie.  I found mention of the sale in an 1885 newspaper.  Wilkie operated it near the present site of the old Hornet Creek Guard Station.  It was one of the first sawmills to operate in the Council area.  Ida continues:

            Ida Hitt had nine children.  She wrote the manuscript that I have quoted from in the late 1930s.  He died in Portland, Oregon in 1939 at the age of 81.

            I hope that you have enjoyed reading Ida's writing.  I found it fascinating to read a first hand account of such dramatic events as the Nez Perce and Bannock Wars, and how they effected the people who lived in this area.  In some ways those times were not very long ago.  It's amazing how much things have changed.

            I also hope that this makes you realize how valuable your memoirs could be to your family someday.  If you recall, some time back I said that it would be a priceless gift to your descendants for you to write down the story of your life.  You may not have lived through such dramatic days as Ida Hitt, but things are always changing.  Someday it will even be interesting to hear about the first computers we had just a few years ago because they will seem so crude by future standards.  What am I saying?!  A computer more than three or four years old is already behind the times.  Anyway, if you haven't written anything down yet, there's no time like the present.

            I'm still looking for Dr. Gerber quotes to use.  I got a couple of good ones this week.

            In 1996, volunteers spent over 600 hours working on the museum.  That's the equivalent of one person working almost four months.  And that's not counting MANY hours some have spent at home working on museum projects.  Because of the legal requirements concerning the bidding process I don't feel I'm at liberty to say too much yet, but the museum addition is going to built this summer.  We are planning to follow the example of the Cambridge Museum, and open the "old" part of the museum (which will be almost totally new exhibits) on about May 15.  The plan is to have it open from 10 AM to 4 PM.  We will need volunteers to be at the museum for one of the two, three-hour shifts each day: 10:00 to 1:00 and 1:00 to 4:00. 

            I'm still very willing to take any pennies you may want to donate to the museum.  Another fund raiser that Connie Mocaby is organizing is a home tour in June.  She has several homes lined up but needs a few more.  If you have an interesting house in the Council area that people would enjoy seeing, please give Connie a call.

 

4-10-97            I ran across an old "Frontier Times" magazine from May 1977 that has an article by Charles Luck, a man who came through Council in 1902 on his way to the gold fields at Thunder Mountain.  Gold was discovered at Thunder Mountain in 1896 by the Caswell brothers.  They were friends with Arthur Huntley who owned a ranch just south of Cuprum where the Speropulos place is now.  The Caswells cut Huntley in on their discovery because he gave them a grubstaked of $50.  The gold deposits at Thunder Mountain turned out to be very big, and they all became rich. 

            By 1902 Thunder Mountain was big news, and a gold rush started to the area.  The railroad had reached Council the year before, and since this was the nearest rail point to Thunder Mountain hundreds of people came through here.

            Mr. Luck wrote:  "In May I joined the stream and assembled my outfit at Council, the railroad terminus on the west.  There we camped for a while and watched the crowds go by.  It was an outfitting station.  The traders in that little town made money."

            "As pack horses were an essential part of every outfit, every available horse was bought and then the boys scoured the hill for cayuses.  They drove them into corrals, wild eyed and with kinks in their tails.  They roped and threw them, put on a breaking bridle, slipped the blinder over their eyes, cinched on a pack saddle and sacks of sand and let them buck.  After two or three days of this they sold them to the Argonauts from the East for trustworthy pack horses.  And the Easterners bought greedily.  They knew a horse when they saw one.  It was an animal with four legs, one on each corner."

            In the midst of this scramble, wagon loads of building supplies were making their way to Arthur Huntley's ranch where he was constructing an extravagant, three-story mansion.

 

            Earl Wayland Bowman arrived in Council in 1902, and later gave a vivid description of the town:

            "Dirty?  My gracious!  There were pigs wallowing along the streets, beer kegs piled out by the half dozen saloons, trash and litter everywhere and dogs - dogs! Suffering saints, I never dreamed there could be so many in a place so small!"

            "Don't you remember the ricks of manure that lined the main street - the accumulation of God knows how many years from the old barn where the stage horses were kept?"

            "The Thunder Mountain rush was on, and everything was hurry and hustle and rustle.  Pack trains stood in front of Lowe & Peter's . . ." [This store was where Adams County Real Estate is now.]

            "Freight wagons and mountain outfits lined the streets and Haworth's, Weed & Criss', McMahan's were busy - busy loading them for the hungry rush to the Devils, the Big Creek country, Thunder Mountain, Warrens."  [Weed & Criss' store was where the Council Valley Market parking lot is now.  McMahan's was about where the public restrooms are, south of the park.]

            "There was money everywhere.  Things were moving and Lew Shaw's, Denny Ryan's, the Old Overland Bar - where Bob Braden mixed any sort you wanted - and all the other irrigation emporiums saved the populace from perishing on the arid desert of unquenched thirst!" [The Overland was where the Ace is now.]

 

            In spite of Bowman's mention of  freight wagons, etc. loading ". . . for the hungry rush to the Devils, . . ." the Seven Devils mining district was having a dismal year.   After the Thunder Mountain gold rush subsided somewhat, the nearness of the railroad helped revive the boom in the Devils.  As many as eighty wagons were eventually employed by the mines to haul ore.  They turned the road along Hornet Creek, and the streets of Council, into a river of dust as they rolled through town to unload heavy sacks of ore onto train cars at the east end of town.

            It was in 1902 that the first automobile that had ever passed through Council stopped a few minutes in the town square.  At this time cars were little more than a rich man's toy.  Most local people had never seen a car, and it drew quite a crowd. Lucy McMahan said that the car created as much excitement in Council as when Lindbergh later flew nonstop across the Atlantic.

 

4-17-97

Those of you who have only been taking the Adams County Leader were probably a little surprised last week to get a copy of the Record instead.  The merger of the Leader and the Record happened very quickly.

            For those of you who enjoy the History Corner, you won't be without it because of the merger.  It's hard to believe, but I have been writing this column for both papers for three years now.  I intend to continue writing it for the Adams County Record for as long as I can come up with a new subject each week.

            While looking for a subject to write about this week I ran across my notes on a colorful character who used to live here: Hannibal F. Johnson. 

            Johnson was a miner and poet, who acquired the title "Seven Devils Johnson" from the local residents.  Johnson, born in Indiana in 1830, came west looking for gold, and was in the Boise area in the early 1850's.  He later located a mining claim in the Seven Devils about 1884. 

            The first time that I know of that Johnson became a published poet was in the Weiser Leader, Sept 27, 1889.  A 24 verse poem by Johnson was printed in that edition of the paper, but his name was not even mentioned.  Credit for the poem was given simply to "a Seven Devils Miner".  A number of you have probably heard or read this well-known poem that begins:

            "I'm sitting on a mountain high

            With blood and thunder in my eye,

            For I've been trying for an hour

            To bake a cake with Cuddy flour.

            But damn the stuff, it will not rise.

            And that's why blood is in my eyes.

            It's not because the dough's not sour,

            For sour as hell is Cuddy's flour."

 

            Johnson wrote the poem as good-natured teasing of John Cuddy.  Cuddy was having trouble adjusting the burrs in his flour mill near Salubria, and they were not grinding the wheat properly.  The newspaper said of Johnson's poem: "We publish the same by request, believing it to be written in a good spirit toward Mr. Cuddy and that it is aimed as a farewell to his burr mill flour."   The editor went on to say that Cuddy had installed new milling equipment, and implied this should improve the quality of Cuddy's flour significantly.

            About a month later, in the Oct 25, 1889 issue, the paper printed another of Johnson's poems, "Farewell to Idaho".   Again, credit was given only to "A Seven Devil Miner".

            In 1892 Johnson ran for the office of Washington County Senator against T.C. Galloway, of Weiser.  During the campaign, Galloway called Johnson "Pine Tree Johnson", claiming that Johnson had real no home and lived under a pine tree. 

            By this time, Galloway had already become a living legend in this part of Idaho.  You may remember him being mentioned a couple of time in Ida Hitt's memoirs.  Galloway was a pioneer and pillar of the Weiser community, and led a group of volunteer militia during the Indian Wars of the 1870s.  A street in Weiser is named after him.  In spite of the fact that Johnson had to have been a relative unknown, Johnson won the election and served one term.

            More on Seven Devils Johnson next week.

 

4-24-97      In the early 1890's R.E. Lockwood, for whom Lockwood Saddle is named, was doing some mining in the Seven Devils.  He was staying at a camp in the head of Rapid River near the North Star mine.  One evening Hannibal "Seven Devils" Johnson visited the camp, and all of the men present became caught up in lofty discussions of philosophy and literature.  Lockwood later wrote that it was a "feast of reason and a flow of soul".  Johnson recited one of his poems for the group:

"Some sing of life in cities fair.

Some sing of homes in valleys green

Some sing of pleasures on the beach.

Where wealth and gayeties are seen.

But I will sing of grandest scenes

That ever met the human eye.

Of forests green, of crystal streams,

Of turrets reaching to the sky."

 

            Lockwood recalled, "There, with true nature in all her vastness and grandeur spread out beneath us, (we were at an altitude of about 8,000 feet) with the green forests stretching away for miles, with mountain 'turrets reaching to the  sky' above us, it was easy to appreciate the impulses which inspired the lines."  

            I'm not sure if Lockwood already knew Johnson at this time, or if this was their first meeting.  I'm also not sure if Lockwood was the editor of the Weiser Signal newspaper at the time that Johnson's poems were first printed in that paper.  He was the Signal editor around this time, and must have been associated with the paper when the campfire recitation occurred.  At any rate, Lockwood was so enthusiastic about Johnson's poems that he risked his own money in 1895 to publish a 125 page book of the poets works, entitled "Poems of Idaho".  The book sold for 50 cents.  I've never seen a copy of it, but I remember finding it listed awhile back as being in an Idaho library somewhere.  Many of Johnson's poems were about mining and life in the Seven Devils.

             Johnson apparently never married, and did a great deal of traveling from place to place around the country, pulling a two-wheeled cart.   He was a good natured man with a keen sense of humor, and seemed to be liked by almost everyone.

            In a time when doctors were few and far between, Johnson was in demand as an authority on home remedies.  His father was a doctor, and had built the first house in Carthage, Missouri, where Hannibal grew up and was educated.  He studied medicine with his father, but not liking the profession he abandoned it. 

            Since last week, I ran across some info that should have gone with Johnson's early history. He crossed the plains with his parents by covered wagon, coming to Eugene, Oregon in 1853.  He mined until the outbreak of the Rogue River Indian War when he became a soldier.  After his first term of enlistment he and five other soldiers were surrounded by 125 Indians.  One of the soldiers was killed, but the rest escaped.  In 1858 Johnson was part of the Frazier River gold rush.  In 1862 he came to Florence and Buffalo Hump, then

arren, Walla Walla, and Auburn, Ore.  He packed and freighted to the Boise Basin until 1865.  That fall, he took a 28 animal pack string to Blackfoot, Montana, where he sold the pack outfit and started mining.  In 1868 he came to the Salmon River country and then Willamette Valley of Oregon.  Last week I said he came to the Seven Devils about 1884.  This info says he came to the Devils in 1882 and located the Golden Eagle mine.  He exhibited some very rich ore from that mine at the Worlds Fair.   He was offered $36,000 for this and other claims, but turned the offer down.

            I'll have more on Seven Devils Johnson next week.

 

            I got a call from Eldora Peebles on Monday.  She lived in the Council area for years and now lives in Weiser.  She says hello to all her old friends up here.

 

 5-1-97

            Hannibal Johnson had four sisters and two brothers.  One brother, Pleasant W. Johnson, was seven years younger than "Seven Devils", and lived with Hannibal on Rapid River at one time.  Pleasant W. Johnson was always called P.W. Johnson in newspapers.  People were almost always referred to by their first two initials in early newspapers.  I have sometimes read about someone in a decade's worth of papers before learning their first name.  

            It may well have been P.W. Johnson that induced his better-known brother to Idaho.  P.W. came to Idaho in 1861, and lived in Florence during the gold rush there.  He claimed to have owned the first ounce of gold that was mined at Warren.  In 1862 he went to the Boise Basin, then explored Oregon and Nevada as a prospector.    P.W. came to Council in 1900 at the age of 63.  In the census for that year he is listed as an accountant by trade.  Within two years of coming here, he was a "senior member of S. Haworth & Co" and secretary of the Council Board of Trade (which apparently was a kind of promotional organization for the Council area).  He shared his brother's interest in mining, and jointly owned a gold mine with Hannibal on Rapid River.  He also had claims near Iron Springs and Thunder Mountain.  Another thing P.W. had in common with Hannibal is that he also never married. 

            In 1903 through 1905 P.W. Johnson is listed as chairman of Council Board of Trustees.  This would probably be the equivalent of a mayor's position.  In 1905 he was working on a second book: "Fifty Years Out of Congress" ( a history of the Northwest).  His first literary work had been "Johnson's Encyclopedia of Transportation", which became an industry standard.  He wrote it during 8 years of employment (1880-1888) as General Freight Agent for a steam ship line on the Oregon coast.

            One source says that P.W. Johnson homesteaded on White Bird Ridge after leaving Council.

            Some of the activities of Hannibal Johnson can be traced by following old newspaper accounts: 

            Salubria Citizen, Apr 21, 1899 -  Seven Devils Johnson is "canvassing for two books . . .'The Illustrated New Testament' and a history of our war with Spain."  [I assume "canvassing" means selling door to door, more or less.]

            Cambridge Citizen, Mar 15, 1901 - "H.F. Johnson has taken the agency for a chemical fire extinguisher, and will be traveling the area demonstrating what his machine will do."

            Johnson played the fiddle, and is said to have held it in a unique way.  Someone described it as "holding it on his lap" instead of under his chin.  I would guess that he held it in the way some Cajun fiddlers do, in the crook of his elbow.  When someone is holding a fiddle like this, while sitting, the elbow is often rested on the leg, giving the appearance of having the instrument in one's lap.

            Hannibal Johnson must have been a truly remarkable man.  At the time Lockwood heard his poetry around the campfire, Johnson was over 70 years old and was still wandering some of the most rugged pieces of real estate on earth.  At some point between 1906 and 1910, when he was between 76 and 80 years old,  Johnson claimed a 160 acre homestead at one of his mining claims near Rankin Mill in the Seven Devils.  Although it would have been a very high elevation to have an orchard, it is said that he established one there, with about 100 trees on approximately two acres.  I've read that some of the trees are still there.  Hannibal also raised chickens and had a large garden covering about one and a half acres.  His home was a 18 X 20 one-room log cabin.   In this house, he had a sizable library, and did a lot of writing.  He got a pension of $8.00 per month from his Indian fighting days on the Rogue River.   He walked 10 miles to old Pollock to get his mail, and occasionally lectured in Riggins on political subjects.  I have heard that Johnson Creek (the one closer to Pollock) was named after Seven Devils Johnson.

            Johnson's "claim" to his homestead was not a legal one.  He was required to file under the Homestead Act of June 11, 1906 (concerning homesteads on federal land) but, he insisted that he didn't need to because he had been living there before the forest reserve was created.  The Forest Service eventually persuaded him to apply properly, and his application was approved in 1910.

            Johnson sold his homestead to Jay Rhodes at some point.  This location later became "Hannibal Ranger Station".

            Apparently Johnson wasn't living at his homestead very much during the time he was getting his homestead approved.  He is said to have moved to California in 1910, the year his homestead was approved. 

            During his last few years in Idaho, Johnson spent his summers near Pollock where he had mining properties, and spent the winters with the Alex Kesler family at Council.  One source says that he was spending his winters with a niece in California before he moved there year 'round.  Another source says he spent considerable time in later years at the Robinson ranch on Bear Creek.   

            Johnson returned to visit friends in Idaho about 1930 at the age of 100.  He died not long after that trip, and true to the unusual way he lived, he was one of the few men to speak at his own funeral.  Johnson had brought the first phonograph to the Council Valley, and he must have had an unusual interest, for his time, in phonographs and recording.  With extraordinary foresight, and the help of Robert Young of Council, Johnson recorded his funeral oration on a phonograph record.  Part of the agreement when he sold his homestead to Jay Rhodes was that Rhodes was to see that the recording he made was played at his funeral.  And it was.

            Connie Mocaby is organizing a home tour for June to raise money for the museum.  She already has several interesting homes lined up, but would like a few more.  If you are interested in helping the museum by allowing your house to be shown, please give Connie a call at 253-4408.

            I mentioned that we plan to stuff a chicken for Dr. Gerber's office, and I thought we had someone in mind who might donate a chicken.  My mistake.  We need someone to donate a chicken - preferably a bantee.

            Your club or civic organization may get a letter from the museum (or may already have received one) about helping with volunteers to man the museum this summer.  Please give it serious consideration.  We haven't determined an exact opening date at this moment, but should by the time this hits the presses.  It will be some time in the second half of May.

 

History Corner  5-9-97

            I have a question.  Does anyone know where the Cuprum school used to be?  I'm not talking about he Landore - Decorah school, but one that used to be at Cuprum itself.  The museum has a picture with the school in the background, but I don't know where it was.  The old bell from the school is still at Cuprum, sitting in someone's yard.

            We have had some nice donations and loans made to the museum in the last few weeks.  Shirley White brought in a dinner fork she found at the old Middle Fork CCC camp.  It has "CCC" stamped on it and a number that I think is probably the camp number.  Bud Gross brought in an old fire extinguisher.  Shirley Glimser donated some old shoe lasts from Ralph Finn's shoe repair shop that stood where Glimser's Adams County Real Estate building is now. 

            Henry Daniels donated several nice odds and ends for our mining exhibit.  He really helped our mine tunnel exhibit by loaning us an ore cart and rails to put it on.  It was just what that exhibit needed.  Henry is also going to do a painting for the museum that will be part of the Native American exhibit.  It will be a scene showing a big, native festival as seen from "school house hill".  For those of you unfamiliar with Council's history, Council got its name from these Indian gatherings.  Indians met here from all over the Northwest to have a big party and harvest salmon.  Early, white pioneers thought these big festivals were "council meetings", and so called this the Council Valley.

            Jack Wassard made a beautiful and authentic atlatl for the Native American exhibit.    The atlatl was a weapon what natives used for thousands of years before they got bows and arrows.  You'll have to come in an see it.

            I should also mention some donations that were made not so recently.  Tod Nelson donated a big section of wooden pipe that was first used as water pipe in Council and then installed for irrigation at the Gould ranch.  Boise Cascade gave us the old mill whistle.  Sue Lambert donated an old-time kitchen apron.  (By the way, Sue, we haven't forgotten the receipt.  Please be patient.)  Don Wood donated an outdated resuscitation kit that was used in Council.

            On behalf of the museum and the community, I would like to thank all the people who have donated or loaned items, or who have helped the museum in other ways.  There is so much to do, so few people, and so little time that we often neglect to show adequate appreciation.  So, thank you!

            We have finally figured out when the museum will open: May 31st.  We have sent out several letters to local organizations asking for help in staffing the museum this summer.  The museum will be open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 AM to 4 PM, and Sundays from 1 PM to 4 PM.  This way the day can be covered by two, three-hour shifts.  Three hours is not that much time to give at a time, and it will probably even be fun.  We may find it hard to find people who are willing to give up three hours out of their weekend or holiday, so please give that some thought.  If you can help, please call Mary Sterner at 253-6930.

            Over the past few months, a few people have mentioned that they might be able volunteer at the museum for a shift or two.  Those people need to call Mary.  We may have forgotten that you said anything, or may not know if you are still able to help, so please call.

            We are still looking for a chicken to stuff for Dr. Gerber's office.  If you have one you can part with, please give me a call at 253-4582.

            The museum is still collecting pennies for the past, so if you have a pile of pennies lying around that you don't want to mess with, give me a call.

            Sometime before our opening on May 31, we are going to put a "MUSEUM" sign with four-foot-high letters on the front of the museum.  Dale Lyttle has the letters finished.  Now it's a matter of getting Idaho Power, or someone else with some kind of hoist that will reach that high, to help us put the sign up.  It's about 30 feet up to where the letters need to be bolted on.  I if this sounds like fun to you, or if you have a farm hand, etc., that will reach up to 25 feet or more, give me a call.  We can also use a few hands that aren't too afraid of heights.

 

History Corner 5-15-97

            When I was preschool age, in the mid 1950s, I remember going to a couple of activities at the Fruitvale school.  I had older cousins who attended there.  It was about that time that the Fruitvale school closed.  It wasn't too long until Lillian and Marvin Imler bought it and converted it into a house.  They're both gone now, but the house still overlooks Fruitvale, just up the hill east of the old post office / store.  It's boarded up now and gets little, if any, use.

            When the Fruitvale school closed, the kids were bussed to Council.  This was the story of many of the similar, little, community schools in this area.  During the 1940s and 1950s many of them were closed and the students were bussed to Council.  Bear was one of the last holdouts, closing in 1968.

            I remember visiting the grade school at Council after my older brother, Clint, started attending there.   Being a kid, one of my most vivid memories are of the big slide at one end of the building.  It was for a fire escape, but, at the time, it was more likely to be used in case the old building started to collapse.  I don't know if the kids ever actually slid down that slide during fire (or collapse) drills, but it was my impression that they did.  I thought it must have been tremendous fun, and I was very envious.

            Getting back to the danger of the building collapsing.  I seem to remember hearing that they had drills like fire drills for the kids to practice how they would get out of the building if it started to fall down. At the time, that too sounded exciting.  I don't imagine it made any parents very happy.  I didn't know much about the old school building until I started doing all this research a few years ago.

            The school was built in 1907 to replace the overcrowded one on "school house hill" just north of downtown Council.  After the railroad had reached Council in 1901, the population had increase a lot.  An additional wing had been put on the school on the hill, almost doubling its size, but it soon became too small as well.  In 1907 a two story brick school was built in a field at the southeast end of town.  This was just east, across the street from the present LDS church, about where Economy Roofing stacks some of their trusses, etc.  There is a photograph of the old school over the door of Economy Roofing.

            For some time there was only a grade school in Council, and in other small, rural Idaho towns.  Council students who wanted to go on to high school had to go at least as far as Weiser.  A few years after the brick school was built, high school classes were started in this building.  By 1922 there were seven high school rooms in the school.  I think it was about this time that another wing was added to the school because it was getting too crowded.

            Many people who grew up in Council have countless memories of days spent at this old school.  If any of you care to write down any of them, I'd like to hear from you.  If you do write, please let me know if I can use your stories in my column.

            By 1957 the school was in bad shape.  A Boise engineer was called in to examine it.  The following are snippets from the engineers report printed Adams County Leader, Dec 27, 1957:

            "The Council grade school building is a composite of two buildings.  The west half is a brick-veneered, wood frame structure approximately 50 years old.  The veneer on the west wall has collapsed and been replaced with wood sheathing.  The east half is approximately 40 years old.  It has masonry (2-course) brick exterior walls . . . ."

            "The interior of the entire building has been finished with wood lath and plaster.  This has been replaced on most of the ceiling by acoustical fiber board."

            Many of you probably read that part about lath and plaster without a second thought, but some of you younger readers may not know what lath a plaster walls and ceilings were.  I say "were" because I don't know that it's ever done anymore.  "Lath" was a subsurface made from strips of wood.   Each strip was about 1 to 1 1/2" wide and about an eighth inch thick (or a little thicker).  The lath strips were nailed to the studs and ceiling joists and spaced about a quarter inch or less apart.  Plaster was then applied over the lath.  The lath is what held the plaster to the wall or ceiling because some of the plaster oozed though between the strips to anchor it.  I think plaster was put on in at least two coats - a "scratch" coat and a finish coat.  Plastering used to be a trade in itself, and probably took some skill to do it right.  Most old buildings have, or had, lath and plaster walls and ceilings.  I'm not sure when it started being used, but drywall (sheetrock) has pretty much, if not completely, replaced lath and plaster.  Drywall is much cheaper, more durable, and easier to install.

            More on the old school next week.

            On Monday, Andy Roundtree from Idaho Power came up with a hoist, and we put up the "MUSEUM" sign on the north side of the building.  We're hoping people can't drive through town without seeing it.  Dale Lyttle made and painted the letters.  Dale and his dad, Lee, ran the ground operations while Andy and I threaded our way through the power lines and bolted the letters on.

            If you didn't catch it, the museum is going to open on May 31st.  We won't be "done" by any means, but I think you will be impressed with the changes so far. 

            We have learned that the museum qualifies for the Senior Community Service Employment Program.  That's a Federal program that pays people who qualify to work at certain jobs.  What we hope to do is get a few people to man the museum this summer so we can cut down on the volunteer requirements.  We already have one interested person, and we would like to have a couple more.  The job pays minimum wage, and would entail being at the museum and performing a few light duties from 10 AM to 4 PM.  We will try to be flexible on who works what days.  To qualify, you must be 55 or older and have no more than a certain income ($9,865 for a family of one, $13, 265 for a family of two).  If you qualify and are interested, please call me right away at 253-4582.

            This does not mean that we won't need volunteers.  We appreciate those who have expressed interest so far.  This is a real head-scratcher as to just how to arrange scheduling while keeping all our options open.  I hope you will all bear with us while we muddle our way through our first season.

 

5-22-97

            Carlos Weed called me with a few details on the old brick school.  He and it were born the same year: 1907.  He started school there in 1914.  The addition was started in the summer of 1922.  That summer the basement was excavated and plumbing was installed - something the older part of the school didn't have.  That fall, a cold snap hit, froze all the pipes, and caused them to burst.  It must have been disappointing to have to continue using the outdoor toilets until new plumbing could be installed.

            By 1957 the old school was in bad shape.  A Boise engineer was called in to examine it.  The following are snippets from the engineers report printed Adams County Leader, Dec 27, 1957:

            "The Council grade school building is a composite of two buildings.  The west half is a brick-veneered, wood frame structure approximately 50 years old.  The veneer on the west wall has collapsed and been replaced with wood sheathing.  The east half is approximately 40 years old.  It has masonry (2-course) brick exterior walls . . . ."

            "The interior of the entire building has been finished with wood lath and plaster.  This has been replaced on most of the ceiling by acoustical fiber board."

            Many of you probably read that part about lath and plaster without a second thought, but some of you younger readers may not know what lath a plaster walls and ceilings were.  I say "were" because I don't know that it's ever done anymore.  "Lath" was a subsurface made from strips of wood.   Each strip was about 1 to 1 1/2" wide and almost a quarter inch thick or so.  The lath strips were nailed to the studs and ceiling joists and spaced about a quarter inch or less apart.  Plaster was then applied over the lath.  The lath is what held the plaster to the wall or ceiling because some of the plaster oozed though between the wood strips to anchor it.  I think plaster was put on in at least two coats - a "scratch" coat and a finish coat.  Plastering used to be a trade in itself, and took some skill to do it right.  Most old buildings have, or had, lath and plaster walls and ceilings.  I'm not sure when it started being used, but drywall (sheetrock) has pretty much, if not completely, replaced lath and plaster.  Drywall is much cheaper, more durable, and easier to install.

            The engineer continued his report, referring to the two foot crawl space under the first floor and then to the foundation. 

            "The foundation wall under the west half is of stone and mortar is approximately 2 feet thick.  There are stone and mortar pilasters 16 feet apart under the first floor beams.  The mortar between the stones has almost completely deteriorated in the visible areas.  It is possible to remove this mortar with very little effort since it is about the same consistency as damp sand.  The exterior of the foundation above the ground line also shows signs of extensive deterioration.  In several spots, the concrete can be scraped away with the bare hand."

            Referring to the 8"X8" wood columns that supported the first floor: "Several columns are rotted at the ground line to the size of a 3"X3" member."

            "The masonry on the exterior walls is in an advanced state of decomposition.  The bricks are badly weathered and their surfaces are generally soft.  The mortar between the brick is generally soft and it was noticed in some particular areas, is completely gone on the outside course of brick."

            "Above the first floor windows on the south side, the masonry has bulged out to a severe degree.  Since the inside wall appears unchanged, this displacement is no doubt in the outer course of brick only, which means that the two courses of brick have separated and rain water may be trapped in this area.  If this should be the case, it would take very little freezing and thawing to completely disengage this part of the wall from the structure.  Since this is one of the major bearing walls in the east half of the building, a failure in this area would cause a general collapse."

            The engineer said a wall on the east end of the building was also leaning slightly: "Some of this displacement appears to be recent, and a wall failure in this area could be imminent."

            The electric wiring was ". . . composed of cloth-insulated wires supported on porcelain split-knobs. . . ."  ". . . this type of wiring is outdated and creates a definite fire hazard."

            "In our opinion, the physical condition of the structure is such that a general failure could occur at any time. It is impossible to predict whether extensive collapse will occur immediately, or whether the structure might remain reasonably intact for a few more months or even a few more years.  It is apparent that the building is structurally dangerous and far below reasonable standards of safety for a public building of this nature."

            "We recommend that you take immediate action to condemn the building for further use in the interest of the safety of its occupants."

            More next week.

            Time is running short folks.  We need volunteers to man the museum.  We would like to get the first two weeks booked as soon as possible.  The SCSEP program to pay people to be at the museum is not a sure thing at this point, and we want to be prepared.  Please call Mary Sterner at 253-6963.  If she's not home, give me a call (253-4582) and tell me what days and times would fit your schedule.

 

5-29-97

            The old brick school was condemned and closed in December of 1957.  The students had an extended Christmas vacation, then began classes on January 6, 1958.  Since the old school could not be used, superintendent Jack Wing and a number of volunteers had to improvise.  Books and other teaching supplies and equipment were hauled to locations all over the community.  The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade classes were conducted in the Legion Hall, with "the split grade" at City Hall.  The 4th, 5th and 6th grades were bused all the way to the Mesa school.  The 7th and 8th grades were conducted in rooms in the high school.

            (I've covered the story of the high school in a previous column.  The short version is that the old brick school got very overcrowded, so a new high school was built in 1941.  It stood on the same spot as the present Council High School.  More on that later.)

            Covering the story of the unique classroom locations, the Adams County Leader, January 10, 1958 reported: "The hot lunch program has been organized and is now functioning again with the IOOF hall being used as headquarters.  by staggering the dinner hours, the hall has been most satisfactory.  The hot lunches are also being transported to the Mesa school by means of private vehicles."

            For those of you who aren't familiar with the old IOOF Hall.  It stood where the east section of Shaver's is now.  It was a two story building with a false front, built in 1905.  I think most of us remember it as being white, but it was painted a dark color in it's early years.

            Even as classes were first starting the scattered locations, the School Board was beginning to plan the construction of a new grade school.  It was to be built, ". . . just south of the high school, on the property where the baseball diamond was formerly located.  The new ball diamond will be located further south on the former Jim Winkler property."  The cost of the new school was estimated at $176,576.00.

            Everybody got through the remainder of the school year with classes in the odd locations.  That fall, school started, using the same, or similar, places.  Here's where my memories kick in again.  I turned six years old in 1958.  There was no kindergarten in Council then, so when I turned six I started school in the first grade.  Our classroom was in the basement of the Legion Hall, in the southwest corner.  Our teacher was Erma Armacost.  One thing that stands out in my memory is the how the burning coal from the furnace smelled.  That's not a very common smell anymore since few places heat with coal these days.

            I'm not sure when the new grade school was finished and we moved to it, but the school was dedicated on February 28, 1959.  The new building seemed very big and very nice.

            Five years later the high school had become overcrowded.   On May 18, 1964 local citizens voted on a "plant facilities fund levy".  It was said that if the levy passed it would, ". . . provide for future expansion of the [high] school building or buildings without the necessity of an expensive bond sale."  The levy failed.  That October the levy became irrelevant when the high school burned to the ground.  There were wild rumors that superintendent Wing had set the fire because he was so frustrated that the levy had not passed.  The actual cause of the fire was never discovered.

            For the second time in less than a decade, Council students attended classes all over town.    I remember them using the Legion Hall, the IOOF Hall, and the Congregational church annex.  There may have been more places, but I don't remember them.  Incidentally, this was at least the third time that students attended classes all over Council.  Before the old high school was finished in 1941, the old brick school had become so crowded that the high school kids went from building to building to attend classes.

            Construction started on a new high school (the present one) in the spring or summer of 1965.  As luck would have it, the building was finished in 1966, just as I was starting high school.  It was as if every time I started attending another school they built a new on for me.  Everything in the new high school was new - the desks, chairs, books, doors, walls, PE equipment, . . . everything.  There was not a mark or a scratch anywhere.

            Don't forget the museum is opening Saturday.  Drop by between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m..  For this summer, the museum will be open those hours Tuesday through Saturday, and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays. 

 

ONE missing

 

6-12-97  Larry Kingsbury, the Payette National Forest Archaeologist, sent me a copy of a letter he ran across, and I thought some you might enjoy it.  It is from a scout named Thomas Singleton.  As usual, some of the handwriting is hard to read.  Anything within brackets are my comments or questions.  Eagle Eye, mentioned here, was considered the most prominent Shoshoni leader in this area.

 

"Fort Boise, I.T. [Idaho Territory] January 31st, 1869

"Sir,

            "I have the honor to report that in compliance with Special Order No 4, dated [11th?]  Ins. Fort Boise, I.T. January 18th 1869.  I left this Post on the 19th inst. with Sergeant Howard, Privates Vernen of Co. "H" 23rd Infy. and 3 Indian Scouts provided with ten days rations and the necessary transportation, forage, etc., for the purpose of ascertaining if Eagle Eye and his Warriors were still in the vicinity of Middle Fork of the Weiser River, I.T.

19th - Marched ten miles, and Camped at Dry Creek.

20 - Marched twenty five miles, and camped at Stuarts Station, on the Payett [sic] River.

21st - Crossed the Payett River, and followed a trail leading due north, and camped at the head of Big Willow Creek - distance marched 30 miles.

22nd - Marched 30 miles, and camped at night on Crain Creek.  The country through which we marched after leaving Big Willow Creek is very rough.  The snow varying from 3 to 4 feet deep. At 7 O'clock P.M. it commenced snowing, and continued 3 hours with very cold wind from the north.

23 - Marched a few miles up Crain Creek, and came upon a trail which we followed all day, and which finally brought us into Eagle Eye's Camp, which is at the head of the South East Creek of the Weiser River, about forty miles from Crain Creek.

            [This location would seem to be along the Little Weiser River east of Indian Valley.]

            Eagle Eye's Camp is situated in a deep rivine.  The country on the south side is very uneven, on the north side are the Weiser Mountains.  The Indians having discovered us descending the hill signaled our coming by giving a few yells, and running from one lodge to another, for about five minutes when they all disappeared with the exception of one who proved to be Eagle Eye's second chief.  He came out to meet us.  I informed him that we were friends from Boise, and had come to visit Eagle Eye and his warriors.  He then reached me his hand in token of friendship and passed 'round among the scouts.  The leading the way, we advanced into camp when Eagle Eye and his band came out and bid us welcome.  I found two white men living in the camp and that a third one lived there, but had gone down to the Settlement to purchase stores.  I ordered the two remaining out of camp.  I also ascertained that 10 warriors with 18 women and children (the most miserable party I ever beheld) arrived in Eagle Eye's camp on the 14th inst.

24th - Had conversation with Eagle Eye and his warriors and learned from them that the reason of Eagle Eye's not reporting at Fort Boise as he agreed at the time Col. Sinclair brought him in, was occasioned by these three white men above mentioned who it seems have been tampering with him.  Eagle Eye promises faithfully that he will try his utmost to keep the white men away from their camp in future, and to report at Fort Boise every moon.

            I gave the Indians that came into Eagle Eye's camp on the 14th inst. to distinctly understand that if any of them left camp at anytime, Eagle Eye's warriors would go out and kill them.  They resolved to be submissive, and to accept Eagle Eye as their Big Chief."       

            I'll continue with this letter next week.

            We now have two people to staff the museum for the summer.  Bobby Darland and Mike Ward are being paid through a Federal program that aims to give senior citizens a toehold to get back into the work force.  Please stop in and see the museum soon.

            I just got back from Wenatchee, Washington where my daughter graduated from high school (with honors and in the top 10% or her class of 320 kids).  We stopped in Coeur d'Alene to see Jeff Connaway.  Since leaving Council he has developed quite a sign business there.  He had to demonstrate his computer-operated sign machine for me, and in doing so, made the museum a nice sign for the front door with the hours the museum is open.  Great guy!

            Don't forget the home tour on the 21st.  This is an oportunity to have a fun day and contribute to your community.  What could be better?

 

6-19-97  First I need to apologize for the mix-up in my columns for the past couple weeks.  In my rush to leave on my trip to Washington the same column got printed twice.  I have one more column written about Council's schools that I will put in next week.  In the mean time, here is the second half of Thomas Singleton's letter from January 1869:

            "Twelve inches of snow fell during my 36 hours stay in [Eagle Eye's] camp.

25th - Left for Fort Boise, I.T.  Owing to the quantity of snow that fell during my stay in Eagle Eye's camp, and not deeming it advisable to recross the country through which we came, on account of the increase of snow, I therefore concluded to take the road leading through the settlements.  In passing through the upper Valley.  I found the snow three feet deep and it was very difficult to keep the trail.  Camped at the three Forks of the Weiser River twenty miles from Indian camp.

            [The "settlements" must mean the new towns along the Weiser River, most of which started to be occupied by homesteaders just the previous spring (1868).  The "upper Valley"  refers to Indian Valley.  The Council Valley was only occupied by Henry Childs, and possibly another bachelor or two.  There were no wagon trails, much less roads, north of Indian Valley.  "The three forks of the Weiser River" must refer to the Cambridge / Salubria vicinity, since that's where the Weiser is joined by Pine Creek and the Little Weiser.]

26th - Crossed the divide from the upper Valley to the Middle Valley.  Snow from three to four feet deep.  Camped on Mans [sic] Creek distance marched 16 miles.

27th - Marched from Mans Creek to the head waters of the lower Valley.  Commenced raining at 3 O'clock PM and continued until dark, when we camped at the head of lower [obscured by National Archives stamp] marched 25 miles.

28th - Marched 32 miles and camped at Butter Milk Ranch.

29th - Marched 32 miles and camped at Stuart's Station on the Payett River

30th - Marched 12 miles and camped at [unclear] Burges [?] Payett Ranch

31st - Marched 28 miles and reached Fort Boise I.T. at 6 o'clock P.M.

            Total distance marched 330 miles.

                        I am Sir,

                                    very respectfully,

                                                Your obdt. Servt.

                                                            Thomas Singleton,

                                                                        Interpreter and

                                                                                    Chief of Scouts

           

To

The Post Adjutant

Fort Boise I.T."

            I my column for two weeks ago but not printed I thanked the volunteers who acted as hosts at the museum during our opening week.  But since they never saw it, THANK YOU!  We couldn't have been open without you.  As I said last week, we now have two people who are being paid (thru a Federal program) to be at the museum.  This should mean that we won't need volunteers except for an occasional emergency.  So if you scheduled a shift at the in advance, you won't need to do it now.

            Another thank you goes to Dale Lyttle for the nice "Museum Entrance" sign out front.  It looks great.

            It's here folks - your chance to help the museum and have a good time.  The home tour is Saturday from 9 AM to 5 PM.  Last I heard, we hadn't sold enough tickets to even pay our printing costs.  Please buy a ticket at U.S. Bank or the Frame Studio in Council, or at U.S. Bank or the Heartland Studio in Cambridge, or in New Meadows at Key Bank or Beyond the Trees, or in McCall at Key Bank or Krahns.

 

6-27-97

Bob Hagar wrote to me with some memories of the old Council school:

            "Enjoyed your column in last week's Record about the old grade school.  Since our family lived about a block from the school (three blocks when the snow was too deep to take the 'short cut').  I recall how some of us kids eagerly watched while the covered fire escape slide you mentioned in your column was being built on the north side of the building.  The slide was wide and the bottom was lined with a piece of slick metal . . . and it was a test of a kid's athletic ability to try to crawl or walk up the slide. . . until somebody boarded up the bottom of the slide during the summertime.  A few other memories about the old building follow.  Why is it one always remembers the forbidden activities?  Of course it was the 'other kids' who always did them:

            -Finding the access to the 'attic' in the building and hiding out in the belfry or tampering with the bell so it couldn't be rung on time.

            -During some of the winter power failures they would dismiss school if the temperature in the room dropped below a certain value, so as soon as the teacher would step out of the room for a few minutes, enterprising students would hang the thermometer out the window to hasten the process.

            -When the snow would start to melt on the time roof it would create some great overhangs of snow and ice.  A well thrown snow ball would bury an unsuspecting classmate who might be passing beneath.

            -During one particularly severe winter the snow piled up so deep under the eves that the quickest exit from the building at recess or lunch would be to jump out the second story window after distracting the poor teacher.

            -The ice on the steep steps on the west side of the building was great for sledding, except don't slip backwards as I did early one afternoon while in the second grade and then having to wait until nearly midnight until Doc Thurston got back into town so he could set and cast my broken arm.

            -I wonder if anyone knows what happened to the swing sets and merry-go-round that were on the school grounds.  As I recall they were ruggedly fabricated from heavy pipes and should survive today somewhere.  Very heavy.  It took a crew of several kids to carry the merry-go-round that from the school grounds to the middle of the highway 95 in front of the People's Theater on Halloween night."

            -

            I'm not sure what happened to the swing set.  (Wasn't it in the park by the courthouse?)  The County Commissioners just gave the merry-go-round to the museum.  I thought maybe it was as old as the school (1907), but the date on it says 1928.  It is heavy too.  Roy Mocaby lifted it onto a trailer with his tractor so we could haul it off.  It must have been quite a job for kids to carry to the highway.   When the museum addition is done, we plan to put it on the grounds somewhere - either fixed up and working, or as a stationary "bench", depending on how safe we can make it and if the City approves.

            Bob Hagar's memory about rigging the school bell reminds me of a story I once heard about a school bell at Garden Valley.  The kids turned the bell upside down and filled it with fresh cow manure.  When the teacher pulled the rope the next morning, the whole load came down on top of her or him.

            Some time I'd like to collect stories about local Halloween pranks pulled in the past.  If any of you care to write or call me about those, it might make an interesting column.  Seems like I remember someone saying something about a wagon being taken apart and reassembled on top of Sam Criss's store where Shavers is now.

 

DIDN'T COPY THIS ONE BECAUSE IT WAS MOSTLY QUOTES

 

7-10-97

Last week I quoted the Idaho Magazine from December 1905 as it outlined Council's attributes.  I'll continue quoting from it, and add comments.

            "Among its [Council's] engines of civilization is an inviting, three department school house, which tops Council Hill."  This is the hill just north of downtown.  It has been labeled with several names, but the one I'm most familiar with is "school house hill".  This is the school that was replaced in 1907 by the brick school I've been writing about. 

            "Some 150 pupils are presided over by an able corps of teachers; Prof. G.F. Gregg, principal, who is admirably assisted by Mrs. Olive Freehafer and Miss Maud Peters."  That's a lot of kids to put into what was a relatively small building! 

            Two of the teachers, George Gregg and Maud Peters married each other seven months after this article was published.  Maud was the daughter of John Peters, an ambitious, Weiser businessman who built the first store in the Council Valley.  After marrying Maud, George Gregg joined his father-in-law in running a couple of successive business here. 

            Gregg was later appointed as the first probate judge in Adams County.  He is shown in the well-known picture of the first County officials in 1911.  (This picture is currently on display on the outside wall of the Bill Winkler's sheriff's office in the museum.)  In this photo Gregg looks very gaunt.  The reason is that he had tuberculosis.  He died from it only three years later, in 1914.

            The other teacher, Olive Freehafer would have been a relative of our former Senator, Jim McClure.

            "The Congregational Church is an architectural gem, as also is its parsonage, structures which together represent an outlay of at least $2,500, and the soul's health of this community is zealously looked after by the members of this denomination."  Neither of these buildings are standing today.  The article refers to the old Congregational church that was demolished and replaced by the present church in 1950.  The old church sat where the church's parking lot is now.  The parsonage was torn down just a year or two ago.

            "The I.O.O.F. have recently erected a $3,500 building, one of the most commanding and pretentious in the town.  Fraternally the place is well represented by the I.O.O.F. [Odd Fellows], Rebecahs, K.O.F.M., L.O.T.M., and United Artisans."  I've written about the Odd Fellows Hall that stood where the eastern section of Shaver's is now.  The tall, false-front building was a landmark in Council for many years.  I have to wonder if the K.O.F.M. was a misprint and should have been K.O.T.M. (Knights of the Macabes).  I don't know what L.O.T.M. was unless it was a ladies' auxiliary to the K.O.T.M.  I don't have a clue about the United Artisans.

            "The Advance [newspaper], since 1901, has jealously guarded the interests of all this section and has proven a potent factor in its moral and material advancement.  Its founder and conductor meanwhile has been L.S. Cool."  Levi S. Cool's brother, Fred Cool may have been better known than Levi was.  Fred was Dale Donnelly's partner for many years in the Cool and Donnelly Feed Store.  It sat about where the public restrooms are now, south of the town square.

            The list of Council's businesses reflects the differences in the area's economy and needs compared to the present.  "On Council's commercial, industrial and professional calendar we find six general stores, one drug store, one planing mill, three saw mills, one harness shop, one hotel, three livery stables, three blacksmith shops, three restaurants, one bakery, one jeweler, two millinery stores, one newspaper, one physician, two attorneys, one meat market, two barber shops, four saloons, two stage lines, one lodging house, four contractors, builders and carpenters."

 

7-17-97 I forgot last week to thank Terri McFadden Ellsworth for the "Time Out" doll she made to raise money for the museum.  It was really cute.  Terri is a alumnus of Council High School from the days when I walked those halls.  Her doll was auctioned off in the park on the 4th, and, unfortunately, it only brought a fraction of what the dolls regularly sell for.  We really appreciate all the work she did in making the doll.

            Bruce Addington's daughter, Carolyn Addington McDonald loaned the museum several old, family photo albums so we could copy any photos we wanted from them.  Thanks Carolyn! 

            Dave Mink came through with some Mesa Applesauce cans with labels on them!  Thanks Dave!  This seems to me what the museum is all about: preserving things like these labels that are so unique and meaningful to this area.  We're still looking for a Meadows Valley Pea label. 

            Dave also loaned us some old letters from Mesa that he was given.  They are so interesting that I thought you might like to read parts of them.  For those of you who are new to the area, Mesa Orchards was one of the biggest orchards in the Northwest.  Some claimed it was the biggest in the world.  It was spread out over the rolling hills around the present site of Mesa, about eight miles south of Council.

            The letters were all written in 1930, the beginning of the Great Depression, so many of them concern overdue bills.

            One such letter is from William Lemon, the editor of the Adams County Leader.  It is actually dated Dec. 1, 1929:

            "E.G. [Enderse Van Hoesen]: Taxes and other items are causing me to squirm a little and a check will be appreciated at this time.  I did not send the bill to Edwin Snow for publication of the Mesa Sheep Co. dissolution notice.  It was $9.00.  I can send it to him if necessary.  Lemon."

            The Van Hoesen family operated the orchards at the time, along with H.J. Woodmansee.  I believe Enderse was the Secretary / Treasurer for the Company.  One of the letter heads still in use in 1931 says "Van Hoesen and Seymour".  Charles Seymour was killed in a fire at Mesa in December of 1920, and off the top of my head, I don't know if another Seymour was involved in the orchards after that.

            Many of the letters are to or from "Reilly Atkinson & Company, Inc." of Boise.  Apparently the orchards bought many of their supplies from them.  One letter contains revealing details about the operation:

            "Gentlemen:  The writer was sorry to have missed you when he called on you at Mesa the other day.  No doubt your brother has given you the inventory as shown on our books.  You will note from this inventory you are considerably back on your payments as per our contract for this year.  Briefly, our records show - bushel tub baskets - 65,197 - which is approximately eight cars of baskets and you inventory on this item as of last Thursday was approximately 600 dozen, making you short on your payments in the neighborhood of $10,290.00 covering approximately seven cars."

            "Our records show you have on hand - 19" corrugated caps - 79,399 but you actually have not over three or four thousand on hand, as of last Thursday, making a shortage on payments on this item of approximately $1,080.00."

            "As to Liners, our records show - bushel Hiat Liners - 100,299 - whereas you have on hand three or four thousand, making a shortage of payments on this item approximately $2,220.00.  The above makes a grand total amounting to $13,590.00 which has not been reported by you, but which has been used."

            The above, with the notes which we hold, amounting to $13,500.00, plus merchandised invoiced to you on direct shipments and items out of our Payette stock, also the two shipments of paper, all totaling $3,349.74 makes a grand total owing to us by you of $30,439.74 which is entirely too much for you to be owing us at this time of the year  Our agreement was that you were to pay for merchandise used and you were to remit to us each week.  We realize that you have been away for some time and no doubt have gotten behind in your payments, but we want you to know the exact status of your account, as it is a very serious matter with us.  We have our trade acceptances coming due each day and we are needing money very badly to take care of our own obligations."

            "Assuming these figures are correct we see no reason why you can not make additional remittances at this time as the total owing us is much greater tan the merchandise which you have actually on hand."

            More next week.

            I just found out that the Indian Valley Community Church is 100 years old this year, and there will be an open house on August 2nd and 3rd.  I'll have more information on this next week.

            The biggest news is that this week we are finally advertising bids for the museum addition!  I don't have many details at the moment, but things are going to be moving rapidly very soon.

 

7-24-97

The thing that makes history interesting is how it relates to the way things are now.  One example of this is the Indian Valley Community Church.  It is 100 years old this year, and an open house will be taking place on Saturday and Sunday, August 2nd and 3rd, to celebrate the centennial of this local institution.  The church will be open from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM on Saturday (the 2nd).  Then on Sunday the regular services will start at 10:00 AM and last until 12:30.  Following the services there will be a potluck dinner.

            The church was originally built nearby on land donated by Sylvester Haworth (Mrs. John Manning's father).  Mr. Haworth also gave the community an acre for the Indian Valley Cemetery.

            Construction on the church was started in 1897, but it was not completely finished because the cost was more than had been estimated.  A $400 interest-free loan was obtained in the fall of 1898 to finish the building.  That may not sound like a lot of money by modern standards, but at average wages of one dollar for a ten-hour day, that would be roughly the equivalent of $32,000 today.  (That's figuring an eight-hour day at $10 per hour times 400.)  The loan was finally paid off 68 years later.

            The Deacons of the church in 1897 are listed as: J. Alva Steward, Andy Lay, J.W. Hildereth, H.J. Imler, David Hutchinson, Mrs. Harriet Hutchinson, Mrs. Gray, and Marquetta Byers.

            For most of its existence, the church has had only temporary pastors.  Records show that in 1902, a lay minister named Boylan was paid $100 to shepherd the congregation for one year.   The money was raised through pledges.  Again the relative value of money at the time is noticeable, as many of the pledges were for 25 or 50 cents.  What must have seemed like a very expensive bell was purchased for the church about that time by A.J. Huddleson of Cambridge for $68.40.

            Reverend Howard Stover, who came to the Congregational Church in Council in 1905 and left in 1914, also pastored the Indian Valley church for several years.  It was very popular in those days for every community to have a band.  Under Reverend Stover's supervision, one was organized at Indian Valley.  The band's 14 members consisted of 13 young men: Thomas and Clarence Hutchinson, Ellis Snow, Earl Byers, Willard, Jess and Albert McDowell, Tilford Lindsay, Roy and Jim Hern, Phillip, and Bob and Paul Ware - and one girl: Orrill Lewis.

            Early records of the church are sketchy.  It was incorporated October 13, 1913.  The next year the church was moved to its present location.  It was put on skids and pulled by an astonishing 25 teams of horses!  This must have been quite an event, and taken more than a little horsemanship. 

            The land for the new location was donated by Jim and Flora Linder.

            At some point, the Pastor of the church was the one who held the mortgage, and the land where the church had formerly been was given to him to clear the debt.  He later sold the property to Tom Murphy. 

            Records from 1916 on are almost nonexistent.  It is known that two American Sunday School Missionaries - a Mr. Chandler and a Mr. McKay - worked in the Indian Valley area. 

            There was a period when attendance at the church was very low.  During this time, Hildred Manning, Hazel Johnson, and their daughters walked to church every Sunday to keep the Sunday School open.

            In the spring of 1949 there seemed to be a revival of interest in the church.  Money was raised for repairs.  The place where the "annex" was pulling away from the main auditorium was fixed, and the building was painted.

            One of the more interesting fix-ups was replacing the two front doors which were damaged during what must have been a wild a dance one night.

            The first couple on record as being married in the church was Lucille Manning and Richard Higgins in 1952.  As part of the wedding preparations, the bride's parents bought new wall paneling for the church, and it was installed by Duane Borror, a youth pastor from Cambridge.

            By 1955 the floor was so worn in one place that it was feared that someone might fall through it.  Again, money was raised and a crew of local men spent three days putting in a new floor.

            I'll have more on the Indian Valley Community Church next week.

            The initial blueprints for the museum addition are at the museum for anyone who cares to look at them. 

 

7-31-97  The story of the church in fairly recent times is mostly one of repair and improvement to the building and its facilities.  In every case, it took hard work and dedication on the part of local people.

              In 1955 a memorial fund was started.  Among other projects, it paid for new windows and casings.

            When the Baptist church in Cambridge bought new pews, the Indian Valley church bought their old ones for $80.00.  At one point the foundation of the church had settled badly.  It took more than two years to raise the money to repair it.

            There was a great deal of trouble getting the deed to the church settled.  It took about 30 years to get everything straightened out. 

            In 1970 a furnace was installed.  At some point, Jolaine Huey and her class cleaned up a room in the upstairs of the annex.  A stairway was built to it, and it was converted it into a classroom.  Other improvements over the years include a new vestibule, new doors, a cross, and pew seat covers. 

            In 1985 & '86 a fellowship room, kitchen and bathrooms were added.  The added rooms had "modern day", low-maintinance siding, and an on-going effort is being made to side the entire building with it.  In 1986 & '87 water was piped to the church.  This added a very big convenience. In 1987 & '88 the sidewalks were expanded.

            This year Malcolm Huey bought a organ at an auction and gave it to the church.

            The work on the church is, of course, an on-going effort.  The belfry has been repaired three times over the years, and is in need of work again.  The floor in one part of the sanctuary is starting to sag..  The chimney needs to be torn down and the wall straightened.  The roof  and the ceiling need work.  If the past is any indication, these projects, and more, will be accomplished by people with the same kind of spirit and dedication that has been evident at Indian Valley since pioneer days.

            One of the most enjoyable parts of my researching local history has been reading old newspapers.  To finish out this weeks column, here are a few of my notes concerning Indian Valley from the newspapapers:

            Idaho Citizen, Oct 30, 1891 -    New Post office established at Isaac McMahan's store in Indian Valley called Alpine.  Lucy McMahan - postmaster.

            Salubria Citizen, Feb 24, 1899 –

    The stage will now leave Weiser at 7 a.m., railroad time, and arrives at Salubria at 2 p.m.  "The time for the trip from Meadows to Weiser is 27 hours.  This will cause the stage to make the trip from Indian Valley to Meadows in the night."

            Weiser Signal, Jan 28, 1905 -    The Dale literary society debated the Indian Valley literary society.

            Council Leader,  Jan 1, 1909 -    Middle Valley has 25 phones.   Indian Valley has  27.

            Council Leader,  Sept 9, 1910   -  A.E. Hinke to build hotel in Indian Valley 30' X 56'

            Council Leader, Aug 1, 1912 -  "As many as 20 wagon loads of people from Indian Valley, Cambridge and other points have passed through here yesterday and today on their way to the hills north of town after huckleberries."  

            Council Leader, Aug 22, 1912 -    The Indian Valley Post office and telephone exchange have been moved from the A.M. Henke building to the IOOF hall.

            Council Leader, Dec 11, 1914 -   "...new road directly west from village of Indian Valley and connecting with the public road at the Richland school house."  A new concrete and steel bridge across the Little Weiser River will save miles.

            Council Leader, Feb 19, 1915 -   Phone lines are hooked directly to Indian Valley now "and we can talk to our neighbors to the south at 15 cents per talk instead of 40 cents, as heretofore."

            Council Leader, Sept 10, 1915 - New school room at Indian Valley.

            You may have noticed that some demolition is happening on the south side of the museum to get ready for the addition.  By the time you read this, the bids on the job will have been opened.  I will announce the contractor next week.

 

8-7-97      First, the big news.  After five years of work and frustration, the plans for the addition to the museum are finally starting to become more than a dream.  The job will be done by McAlvain construction.    

            Many of you remember, or still know, Doug and Sarina McAlvain.  They used to live at Fruitvale, and they still have a weekend house there.  (It was on the home tour.)  Doug told me some time back that he would build the addition for the money we had available, and he would donate whatever it cost him over that.  Torry McAlvain (Doug's son) has been planning the project along with Clinton Yaka (who married Tuesday McAlvain) of BRS Architects in Boise. 

            I couldn't say much about this until now because we were legally obligated to advertise for bids, even though we couldn't imagine anyone underbidding McAlvain Construction.  Their company was the one and only bidder.   Construction should start any day!

            My writing about Mesa Orchards got sidetracked because of the Indian Valley Church doings, but now I'll get back to it.

            There are several names in the old records Dave Mink loaned me that are mentioned as having apples packed or shipped by the Mesa Company, or who bought baskets, etc.: Tom Nichols, Charles Lappin, Stephan Nock (Mesa), Phil Bury (Mesa), Gray Brothers (Mesa), Frank Messing (Mesa), A.H. Keckler, Clyde Rush (Mesa),  H.L. Brooks, a Mr. Dahlgren, Hoover, I.L. Thurston, Wing, Walling.

            Other items from the old Mesa files:

            A bill from Reilly Atkinson & Co. of Boise lists three 8 foot ladders and two 10 foot ladders at 50 cents per foot - twenty 10 foot, and six 12 foot "Larson" ladders  at 48 cents per foot.

            A hand-written letter from Kenneth Harrington dated Nov. 13, 1930:  "Dear Sir, I have never received my check for the last apple picking.  I left my name and address so the check could be mailed to me.  I am sure it has been overlooked."  The letter is written in pencil, as are many of the other documents.  It must have been much easier to write with them instead of the old fountain pens or other types of pens.  A note at the bottom, in different handwriting, says,"mail check - $19.28" and below it, "check mailed 11/22/30".

            Another letter: "January 18, 1930 - Mr. Henry Heimsoth, Council, Idaho - Dear Mr. Heimsoth: We believe that we have a bay horse of yors down at our barn and we will appreciate it if you will come up and see if it is yours because if it isn't we want to advertise this horse at once.  Very truly yours, Mesa Orchard Company."

            And another, unsigned letter from the orchards, concerning Lost Valley Reservoir: "April 10, 1930  - Mr. Ed Holbrook, Tamarack, Idaho  - Dear Mr. Holbrook:  I am enclosing a few post cards which you can fill out and send to me after you make a trip to the reservoir.  Keep track of your time and we will adjust it with you.  I do not think it is necessary to go over more than three times a week until the water gets up to the concrete part in the spillway.  Would like to get it about half way up on the concrete before opening the gate very much so that we can be sure of filling the reservoir.  If there isn't much change perhaps you had better shut the gate again."

            You may know that the Mesa Company had the reservoir built so that they could trade water rights from it for water rights from Middle Fork.  Just what their involvement was in the management of the reservoir, I don't know, but they evidently kept a close eye on it at this time.  I seem to remember seeing the Van Hoesen name on old Lost Valley Reservoir Company documents.

             A letter from Holbrook about this time said, "I went over to the dam yesterday and I had some time getting over from Strawberry.  It took 7 hours to make the trip.  There was a lot of snow on the north slopes.  The water stood at 1770.  I will go over again tomorrow and that will give me some idea how fast it is raising."

 

8-14           More from the 1930 Mesa Orchards file cabinet.

            There are a number of letters similar to the one from Harry J. Deally & Co. of Pittsburgh that begins, "We would be pleased to represent you in this immediate territory as to the sale of any fruits or vegetables you may have to offer in car lots."  Others like it in the file are from dealers in New Orleans, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, New York, Dallas, Houston Tulsa, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Memphis, Kansas City, and St. Louis.

            A letter from Mesa states: "The Mesa Orchard Company grew and shipped a total of 265 cars of fruit during the past season.  Five cars of the above consisted of pears and eighteen cars of peaches, leaving a balance of 242 cars straight apples.  Our fruit this season will be sold through the Federated Fruit & Vegetable Growers, Inc. of new York City."

            In letters referring to a financial statement, total assets of the Mesa Company are listed at $438,286.68.  $197,828.45 of that amount was the value of buildings, the tramway, machinery and equipment, leaving $240,464.23 worth of land and fruit trees.  Liabilities totaled $111,858.09 most of which was not in the form of bank loans, but "carried in the east on a long term proposition."

            Mrs. Albert Campbell wrote: "Would you please ship a box of Delicious apples to my sister, Mrs. Henry Fouts, 501 West Lincoln St., Clarinda, Iowa.  I want choice apples, but not the extra large size.  I hope they are not all gone.  Please send them by express, C.O.D.  I am enclosing a check for you to fill out for the price of the apples."

            Another letter asking apples to be mailed came from the Council Pharmacy.  The letterhead says, "Council Pharmacy, The Rexall Store - A.E. Alcorn, Proprietor - Drugs, Tobaccos, Stationery, School Supplies".

            Another Council business that wrote to Mesa is one that you may be less familiar with.  The letterhead reads, "Council Box and Lumber Co. - Manufacturers of Pondosa Pine & Box Shooks".   According to an invoice in the file, the Orchards bought "88 bundles Tops and Bottoms" from the company.  The sawmill operated by this company was located just north of the old "stock yards" in the west part of town.  A big cement foundation used for the sawmill's machinery still sits in June Ryals's back yard.

            Joseph Carr represented the "New Zealand Insurance Company, Limited".  A letter from Carr billed the Orchards for a policy covering $3,000 worth of merchandise in the company store.  Coincidentally, Carr was also a pioneer fruit grower in this area.  He is credited as being one of the people who started the fruit industry here, and was the originator of the name "Mesa Orchards".

            A loan agreement in the file from the Continental Oil Company lists a "T-176 G&B hand operated visible pump", along with hose, nozzle, a "Conoco advertising globe" and three "60-gallon Bennett Hi-boys".

            A letter from United States Cold Storage Company of Kansas City, Mo. begins, "Dear Mr. Van Hoesen: Perhaps you remember our conversation in regard to the motion picture film of your orchard operations.  I would like very much to run this picture in our booth at the Apple Show to be held in Kansas City, December 11th and 12th of this year.  I am sure it would be of great interest to the attending growers, and it would also advertise your product on this market.  If you can conveniently send me the film I shall take good care of it and promise to return it immediately after the show."  Van Hoesen wrote back, "I have just returned from a two weeks trip to the coast where Mrs. Van Hoesen is now recuperating from an operation." "It certainly would have been fine to have shown the movies of our operations here at Mesa at the Apple Show.  However, there is no way of getting the films back from you in time.  They would have to go by parcel post air mail and on account of our train service the parcel would arrive in Kansas City too late.  However, if you desire the film at any other time, please let me know and I will send them to you."

            Those films may still be somewhere on a shelf.  The chances of us getting copies of them may be slim, but wouldn't they be priceless?  Drennan Lindsay tells me that Enderse Van Hoesen's daughter, Beth (Mrs. Mark Adams) is living in San Francisco.  Drennan said she thinks Mynderse Van Hoesen's son, David, is also living in that area.  If anyone out there has more information on how to contact these people, or about the films mentioned, please contact me.

 

8-21-97  Awhile back Bobbie Darland brought a jar to the museum.  It has a label on it that reads: "Council Valley Brand Dill Pickles - One Quart - Packed by J.R. Finn & Sons - Council, Idaho.  On the jar's green label is a drawing of a mountain valley in which several Indians are gathered.  One of the Indians, wearing a war bonnet, is holding up a jar.   The jar on which the label is glued is an ordinary Kerr canning jar.  This is the first I had ever heard of the Finns marketing dill pickles.  If anyone has more information about these pickles, let me know. 

            I know Ralph Finn was an interesting person, and I think he made goose calls, among other things.   It might be interesting to do an exhibit around him some time if we can gather enough interesting items.  If anyone has some memorabilia of Ralph's that they would like to donate, bring it by the museum.  If we get enough interest, we might like to take a few things on loan too.  I don't know where Eunice Finn moved to, but if anyone knows her well enough to ask her about items she might be willing to donate or loan . . . .

            Along the line of labels, I still haven't heard anything about a Meadows Valley Pea can label.  I heard that Bob Rumiser may have had a can with the label on it a few years back.  I guess Bob has passed on, but maybe this will give someone out there a place to start looking.

            Some of you may have read an article about our museum in the Argus Observer a few weeks ago.  It had a lot of mistakes in it, but they say any publicity is good publicity.

            I'll finish up with a couple more items from the Mesa file.  On Feb 5, 1930 Enderse VanHoesen wrote a letter to the "General Insurance Company of America" agent in Weiser:  "We had a fire on December 10th around noon which destroyed our boiler-house.  You are probably aware of the fact that we were washing apples at the time and since our water supply was shut off we were compelled to use a portable electric motor and pump to pump water to the boiler.  This portable outfit we use for irrigation purposes and for other work dealing with our orchard business."  He went on to list the prices of a pump and electric motor that was lost in the fire.  The total loss was $85.

            As I mentioned before, many of the letters in the files concerned debts owed by Mesa.  The most interesting one was from the "Stubbs Electric Company" of Portland.  At the top of the letter, a straight pin is stuck through he paper.  The letter reads, "Gentlemen:  Here's a pin.  Looks a good deal like any other pin -- doesn't it?  But it isn't an ordinary 'common or garden variety' pin.  It is a really and truly magic pin.  It will relieve you of a lot of bother, and us a lot of worry.  It will set you square with us, and help us square up with the other fellow -- so be careful don't lose it.  Better be sure of it and play safe, for it is the pin you will want to use to attach your check to this letter in payment of your balance as of January 31st which amounted to $14.95.  Thank you for the check.  No charge for the smile we hope you get out of this little letter."

            Below the signature of the credit manager is typed, "P.S. Please hurry.  We want to use the magic pin on another fellow."

            Straight pins used to be used a lot instead of paper clips, and they worked very well to hold papers together.  I suppose they were a little painful once in a while if you handled them wrong.

            A letter to Myderse VanHoesen from Martin Calwhite of Weiser on May 15, 1930: "Dear Friend, This is a confidential letter to you.  Sanford Becktel worked for me about 2 mos.  I find him very crooked and can't be trusted.  I think he has gone to Mesa to get work of you.  Mr. Williams the Banker here will tell you the same.  I feel you are a friend of mine is the reason for letting you know.  P.S. He is a penitentiary bird."

            As I write this, nothing has been done on the museum addition except for demolition work that I did with help from a few guests of our county jail.  They were great help by the way, and we appreciate it.  Hopefully we'll see big things happen on the addition soon.

 

8-28-97  About a month ago I quoted from articles the Idaho Magazine from December 1905 about the Council area.  I got sidetracked by other subjects, but I want to come back to that magazine because it gives such a detailed picture of life in this area that year.

            One paragraph said, "Alluring indeed are the inducements hereabouts for the establishment of a woolen mill as at least 200,000 head of sheep are grazed in the environs of Council; and excelsior factory, for dense and almost incalculable is the growth of cottonwood in all the country side.  And this balm or cottonwood, it has been demonstrated by experiment, makes the finest kind of pulp for wrapping and printing papers, and excelsior for mattress stuffing amid for packing purposes."

            Why the writer jumped from sheep to cottonwood trees in one sentence eludes me.  My dictionary says "excelsior" is "fine curled wood shavings used especially for packing fragile items".  I would assume that cottonwood trees must have covered much of the valleys along local rivers before fields were cleared.  I know this was the case along the West Fork, plus there were great masses of brush.

            "Apples grown in this region are distinguished as among the finest and most delicately flavored of any grown in the United States.  Moreover, it is noteworthy of all fruits produced here that they are absolutely free from all worms or other pests.  Tempting opening here also for a bank, a creamery, a laundry, an electric light and power plant, a foundry and flouring mill.  There is an exceptional opportunity for the founding of a horse ranch hereabouts and the introduction of blooded cattle and horses in is needed."

            As far as a bank was concerned, the "First Bank of Council" was being planned at least a month before this issue of the magazine was printed.   The Nov 18, 1905 issue of the Council Leader said,  "A bank for Council is an assured fact.  The directors for the first year are C.M. Jorgans, J.F. Lowe, Frank Hahn, Isaac  McMahan, and John Ennis."  The bank had no building in which to do business as yet, but rented half of the first floor of the Odd Fellows Hall.  Harry Criss rented the other half for his store.  The bank opened on February 1, 1906.

            In April of 1909, Jim Winkler got the contract to build a new building for the bank.  By September the building was completed.  It is still standing and very familiar to everyone here as the present Drug Store.  Apparently the bank moved into one half of the building in 1909, and Sam Criss used the other half as a general merchandise store.

            This was a boom period for Council, and the area was growing faster than anyone could keep track.  In February of 1910 Council got a second bank.  The "Council State Bank" opened in a small building belonging to William Fifer.  It was located about where Shaver's parking lot is today.  Fifer ran a jewelry store there for many years.  Being a "jeweler" in those days usually involved watch and clock repair.  A clock that Fifer made, or at least sold, is hanging in the Adams County Courthouse, and still works.

            When the big fire of 1915 destroyed much of downtown Council, the cement walls of the First Bank of Council (the present drug store) were what stopped the flames from spreading farther west.

            The First Bank of Council failed in January of 1926.  This infamous event is well remembered by older members of our community.  Whenever the subject of the failure of the bank comes up, the name N.H. Rubottom immediately surfaces.  Because he was the bank president, he was blamed for the failure and the consequent loss of money by many people here.  Rubottom was arrested and charged with embezzlement of $1300.  The atmosphere in Council was so heated that the trial was moved to Weiser.  He was found not guilty, but never came back to Council.

            In January of 1940 the Adams County Bank opened in the former First Bank of Council building (drug store).  Before that time, the building had been used by the Howell Company as a furniture display area.  A doorway was cut through the cement wall "to allow entrance from the store".  In the back of the "Elite Repeats" store, there is now a vault door with "Adams County Bank" written on it.  This vault door was moved there from the old bank next door.

            In 1941 the building that is now the Council Valley Market was built, and the Adams County Bank moved into half of it.  The other half became the Golden Rule store.  I remember that store still being in business in the late 1950s or early 1960s.  The first bank in my memory here was the Idaho First National, located in what is now the dry goods department of Shaver's.  If I remember right, it went from there to the present bank site.

            As I write this the museum board hasn't decided how much longer the museum will be open this fall.  The program for our paid employees runs out at the end of August, so we are going to need volunteers to host the museum until it closes.

 

9-4-97      I would like to thank Phil Soulen for calling me with Beth Van Hoesen's address and phone number.  Phil's father was a brother of Enderse Van Hoesen's wife, Freda.  I'm going to see if she, or some of the other family members has any photos or other memorabilia from Mesa that they would be willing to share with our community.

              Since I've been writing about Mesa, and because of a lack of time to write lately, I'm going to review some of what I've already written in this column about the local fruit industry.

            Early settlers in the Council area tried to be as self sufficient as possible.  This was partly because they were so far from any place to buy things even if they had a way to generate cash to make such purchases.  But they also had a strong sense of individualism and independence that lingers in some of their descendants to this day.   Whatever they could not or would not buy they either made, grew, or got by without.

            Naturally food production was basic to their survival, and they tried growing a wide variety of crops.  Early favorites were corn and beans.  In the early 1890s one traveler through the valley noted that these two vegetables were being planted in almost every field.  Sugar cane was grown here very early on, and later, in the 1920s and 1930s,  sugar beets were a popular crop.   Just after 1900 peanuts and tobacco were grown in Washington County (which included Council at the time), but this was probably in warmer climates closer to Weiser.

            One agricultural endeavor that was an early and immediate success here was fruit; especially apples.  George Moser and George Winkler planted the first fruit trees in the Council Valley at about the same time, around 1880.  Winkler was the first to actually harvest any fruit.

            Although many early settlers grew a few fruit trees for their own use William and Dora Black, who settled on Hornet Creek about 1888, are generally credited with starting the first commercial orchard in the county.  The Black place is now the Gossard Ranch.  Samples of fruit from the Black's orchard took a prize at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, and some of their fruit was even sent to London and Paris for exhibition.

            Even though local fruit was of high quality the market was mostly limited to local sales for lack of a timely means of transporting it.  This changed with the arrival of the railroad at Council in 1901.  By 1904 B.B. Day, who now owned the Black place on Hornet Creek, was shipping apples to markets as distant as Walla Walla and Nampa.  The next year, he was sending apples to Chicago by the railroad car full, and area farmers were beginning realize that there was money to be made in fruit.  By the end of 1905 about 5,000 new fruit trees had been  planted in the Council area.  The same number of trees were planted here in the spring of 1906.

            Other fruit pioneers in the Council area about this time were A.E. Wiffin, Seward Piper, Morgan Gifford,  Eliza Sorenson, and Joseph Carr.  These orchards were on the slopes just east of town.   Carr, who arrived here in 1903, is credited by some as initiating the fruit growing boom in the Council Valley.   In 1907 he took an exhibit of apples to the National Horticultural congress at Council Bluffs, Iowa, and brought home seven silver cups as prizes, plus a number of medals and ribbons.  At least one of these cups, along with others won between 1907 and 1909, are in the Council Valley Museum.

            That same year (1907) local fruit men organized the Council Valley Fruit Growers Association.  They encouraged the planting and promotion of commercial orchards, and triggered a dynamic chapter in Council's history.

            By 1908 there were about 175 acres of young fruit trees growing in the Council area.  The Growers Association sent an exhibit to the Boise fair, and won 22 first prizes and 8 second prizes on their apples.   And apples were again sent to the National Horticultural Congress in Council Bluffs, Iowa where they won 17 prizes. 

            Suddenly, orchards were the rage in the area, and it seemed that everyone was jumping onto the band wagon.  Local business men came up with a logo depicting a red apple accompanied by the slogan "The Home of the Big Red Apple" which was placed on envelopes, banners, and other promotional material.   A corporation called the "Washington County Land and Development Company" was organized to promote the development of the Council Valley.

            The editor of the Council Leader newspaper championed the cause by bragging, ". . . Council Valley possesses a peculiar climatic condition which worms cannot become climated to."  He also claimed, "An apple failure on account of frost is something that has never been known of here."

            In the spring of 1909, about 20,500 young fruit trees were shipped to the Council Valley to be planted.  The Forest Service even joined in the frenzy by designating the Stevens Ranger Station near the East Fork of the Weiser River as an experiment station where various fruit trees were to be grown to determine which varieties were best adapted for the local climate.

 

9-11-97  The most ambitious fruit-growing plan of all in 1909 was a project that would eventually be called the "Mesa Orchards Company".  The goal was nothing less than the biggest orchard in the United States to be planted on a mesa eight miles south of Council.  There was already a post office at this location in 1908, under the name "Middle Fork".  The name of the post office wasn't changed to "Mesa" until 1912. 

            J.J. Allison started the idea for Mesa Orchards in 1908.  He had searched all over the West for five years for just such a place.  The land he found south of Council was being dry farmed without much success by several homesteaders.  Allison interested eastern investors, and organized the Weiser Valley Land & Water Company which purchased several thousand acres from the homesteaders.  The company then sold ten acre parcels to individual investors at $400 to $500 per acre.  For that price, the company would plant fruit trees, care for them for five years, plus pay 3% interest on the buyer's investment.  After five years, the owner could operate independently, or the company would continue to do the work for 10% of the net profit from the land.  The company would also build a house for the buyer at what it cost the company for "materials, labor, and supervision".

            Construction on Mesa projects actually began in 1909.  Some tree planting was done in 1910, but irrigation was not adequate, and most of the trees died.  An ambitious scheme was devised whereby they would take irrigation water for the orchard out of the Middle Fork of the Weiser River.  The only problem was that all the water rights to this river had already been taken.  Their solution was to build a $50,000 dam on Lost Creek, about 25 miles to the north, where they could obtain water rights.  They would then trade this reservoir water for water they would take from the Middle Fork.  But before a single drop of water could be put on the Mesa Company's land an elaborate, seven-mile-long, wooden flume would have to be built to convey the water from the Middle Fork, plus several miles of ditches (at an estimated cost of $300,000) would have to be dug.   Water was hauled in barrels on wagons until the irrigation system was finally completed in 1911.

            By the fall of 1909 the Lost Valley Reservoir dam had been completed and Council Valley fruit had won several more top prizes at the Horticultural Congress in Council Bluffs.  The Mesa Company had ordered 80,000 nursery trees to set out the following spring, was building a sawmill on the Middle Fork to cut lumber for the flumes, and had 100 men employed digging ditches.

            Also in 1909 a new townsite was established about seven miles north of Council.  In keeping with the local trend of the day it was called "Fruitvale", and most of the streets were named after apple varieties.  The name "Fruitvale" was the idea of Lucy McMahan.  There was also a division of Weiser named Fruitvale at the time. 

            Mentioning Lucy McMahan reminds me to get on my soapbox about misspelled street names.  As you know, it irritates me that the street in town named after the first family who settled here, the Mosers, is spelled "Mosher" Avenue.  Now they have named a lane at Fruitvale after the McMahans and spelled it "McMahon".  (#*'~@!!!! )

            Profits on investments in apples  in 1909 were said to be $100 per acre on six year old trees, and $600 per acre on 10 to 12 year old trees.  Peaches, pears, plums, grapes and prunes were also becoming popular.  And strawberries were a favorite, yielding $500 to $900 per acre to the grower.  Considering how fast and loose promoters played with facts and figures it is anyone's guess as to what the actual profits were.

            The desire of investors and homesteaders to get in on this type of money-making band wagon produced a multitude of land schemes during this general time period.   A popular practice of promoters was to buy land cheap, plant fruit trees, then sell tracts at high prices to people from the east who had idealistic visions of a homestead in the great western outdoors.  Thousands of acres were exploited in this manner, and it had a negative influence on fruit prices at times, even though the land involved was often not suitable for growing fruit.

            In the spring of 1910, local growers ordered 300,000 more trees, and the Mesa Orchards Co. was hiring every man they could find.

            More next week.

            Guess what!?  Work has begun on the museum addition!  Finally.

 

9-18-97            By 1912 another ambitious fruit growing effort was starting on the slopes north east of Council, east of highway 95 between Orchard Road and Mill Creek Road.  The power house behind this project, called "The Council Valley Orchards", was C.E. Miesse (pronounced Mee-see) of Chicago.  Miesse had been the president of the Weiser Valley Land and Water Co., but had resigned.  Now, as president of this new company, he was overseeing the planting of 17,000 peach trees, 2,000 pear trees, and the addition of 13,000 apple trees on land that a short time earlier had grown nothing but ". . . sage brush, rocks and a tangled mass of shrubbery, . . ."  The goal was a 500 acre orchard that would employ 75 to 100 men seasonally and 1500 workers to harvest the crop.

            The "Orchard District", as this area came to be known, included independent fruit growers along with those in the "Council Orchard Company".  The district developed rapidly, and soon had a population that supported its own school.  The "Orchard School" was on the south east corner of the intersection of Mill Creek road and Missman road.

            Since newly planted fruit trees would not yield a crop until they had acquired some degree of maturity both the Mesa and Council orchards adopted the successful practice of growing potatoes between the young trees.  Asparagus was another crop grown in this way at Mesa.  The plants kept sprouting up for years after the company had stopped planting them.

            In 1911 the Mesa Orchards Company built a temporary school.  In the summer of 1912, one of the more expensive school houses in Adams County was built at Mesa at a cost of about $5,000.  The brick building had two classrooms plus an assembly room for public gatherings.  All this for only nine students initially.

            By the fall of 1912 it was estimated that there were 3,000 acres of orchard, worth at least $500 per acre, within a twelve and a half mile radius of Council.  The reputation of the Council area as a fruit-growing cornucopia was attracting investors from all over the U.S.

            That fall some Illinois men arrived to look at the local orchards.  According to the Council Leader, they had heard that ". . . Council Valley was regarded as one of the safest and best fruit districts in the state, . . .", and they proclaimed this area was ". . . almost a miracle in fruit raising."  The editor, who accompanied the men on their local tour, went on to say,  "While going through Mr. Hildenbrand's big orchard he offered us one hundred dollars if we could find a single worm in his orchard."

            Even though the orchards didn't seem to have any problems with insect pests, "blight", a contagious disease that killed trees, was present and very much feared.  A State fruit inspector made regular examinations of local orchards, and outbreaks of this affliction were taken very seriously.  Several local orchard men were actually arrested and tried in court for not destroying their infected trees after the inspector had ordered them to do so.

            Local fruit growing businesses continued to be successful, even through the agricultural depression of the 1920s, and provided badly needed seasonal jobs for local residents.  But this self-proclaimed fruit grower's Eden was not to be without its serpent.  As the automobile became more common, and people and goods traveled faster and farther, noxious weeds and crop damaging insects began hitch-hiking into the area.  By 1920 the blister mite, one of the worst enemies of fruit growers of that time, had appeared in orchards at Council and Mesa.

            In 1920 the Mesa Company finished a unique, $45,000 tramway to carry fruit to the railroad three and a half miles to the north.  It consisted of 48 wooden towers which varied in height from 20 to 45 feet.  Its 42 steel baskets each carried six to eight boxes of fruit.  

 

             The community at Mesa had its own general store /post office, a school, several homes and a dozen smaller cottages, a bunkhouse, a machine shop, a number of packing sheds, storage cellars, company cookhouse, and other buildings.  One feature that the original promotion had promised never became a reality.  Originally, a railroad depot was planned near the foot of the mesa, and a trolley line was to take passengers to and from the depot there.

            It is hard to say whether the Mesa Orchards Company achieved its goal of having the biggest orchard in the nation.  Some have claimed that it was the biggest orchard in the world.  Since human nature ardently follows the adage that a good story is better than the truth, the actual size of the orchard in comparison to its peers is hard to pin down.    At its peak from 1920 to 1929, there were 1,200 acres actually growing fruit trees at Mesa: significantly short of  its goal of 4,000 acres.  During apple harvest, about 200 pickers were employed and the company had a total payroll of about $150,000.  A 1929 issue of the Adams County Leader printed what may be a realistic estimation of the Mesa Orchards as, ". . . one of the largest commercial orchards under one head operated anywhere in the northwest."

            More next week.

            Last week Charlie Fry's daughters came in and donated some great pictures of the Van Hoesens and Mesa.  One is a color, panoramic shot of the orchards from end to end, and shows the school, store, the houses, packing sheds, etc.  The museum is working on collecting labels from Mesa fruit boxes, etc.  It is now possible to reproduce them with a laser color copier so that they look exactly like the original.  Aside from the value of exhibiting them, we may be able to frame the copies and sell them to raise funds.

            The museum has now officially closed for the 1997 season.  Sunday, September 14 was the last open day.  Many thanks go to the volunteers who hosted the museum for the last two weeks.  When we reopen next summer we will probably be operating with volunteers only, so we will need people to help.  I'm hoping a number of you will donate one three-hour shift a week so that we don't have to continually recruit people.

 

9-25-97              During the 1920s the Orchard district expanded until fruit trees covered almost the entire area between Mill Creek and Orchard Road east of the highway.  Men such as William Hoover, Lawson Hill, Addison Missman, Tom Nichols and Frank Scholl were some of its prominent producers.  These men, and others, built "packing plants" where apples were sorted, boxed, and then shipped via the railroad.

            Hoover's packing plant was located on the south east corner where Orchard Road and Missman Road intersect.  When it was built in 1926 it was said to be the biggest one in the Council area, second only to Mesa's.  It had a cement floo r, contained a grading machine, and could store almost 80 railroad car loads of apples.  (The largest cars held 795 boxes and took about a day to load.)  When the packing plant was built, it took six railroad car loads of wood shavings for insulation to fill the walls.  Hoover employed 40 pickers in 1927, and kept at least 40 more workers busy at the packing plant. 

            Each box of apples from the Hoover plant was labeled with the number and kind of apples.  Another large label on the end of the box featured a big red apple on which was printed, "Council Brand, Idaho Apples".  Also on the apple was the image of several Indian chief's holding a council meeting.  (If anyone out there has one of these labels, or other produce labels from this area, please consider loaning them to the museum for us to photocopy.  Call me if you can help... 253-4582)

            In the early 1920s a railroad spur was built to service the packing plants in the Orchard area, and the power line was extended to them as well.  The rail spur left the main line about where Orchard road now crosses the old railroad grade and went straight east about to the highway.  Addison Missman (for whom Missman road is named) built a big packing plant next to the main rail line and just north of the new spur.  Bill Hoover built a second building along the south side of the spur, near the highway, from which to load fruit into railroad cars.  Frank Scholl had a similar structure between Hoover's loading facility and the main railroad.

            Charles Lappin had an orchard to the north of the Orchard district on Lappin Lane.  (Lappin Lane of course is named after him.)  Lappin had one of the first commercial orchards in the valley when the "fruit boom" began about 1907.  In 1927 he employed 35 workers during the apple harvest.  Frank Galey was another well known fruit man.  He had a sizable orchard on Mill Creek.   

            Lawson Hill's place was on the south east corner of Mill creek road and Orchard Road, and Bill Spahr's was just across the road to the north.  Mrs. Spahr (Lucy) taught school at the Orchard school for a time, in the 1920s.  At this writing, the old Spahr orchard is the only orchard in that district that has remained more or less intact.  The Spahr house (still standing at this writing) drew attention as being unusual when it was built in 1935.  It was built out of rock, and also sat on a natural rock foundation from which  the basement was reportedly created with dynamite.

            Tom Nichols built a packing house on the north side of Orchard Road, about a quarter mile east of Missman Road, in 1924.  Years later Herb Woods converted the packing shed into a home where he and his wife, Jewel, live now.  

            More next week.

 

10-3-97              The stock market crash in the fall of 1929 proved to be the beginning of the end for the local fruit industry.  As the nation sank into the Great Depression local orchards were pulled down with it as fruit prices plummeted.

            As the fruit market failed to yield an adequate return, trees in the Orchard district were not maintained as well as they had been.  The trees were older now, requiring more water, and water had become harder to get.  Disease began to spread through the orchards, and many of the trees were destroyed.  Only those trees that received adequate water and care survived the Depression years.  Eventually all of the land in the Orchard district was sold off for homes and small farms.

            By the mid 1930s the Mesa Orchards were so far in debt that the court ordered its property to be sold.  The property was purchased by the Western Idaho Production Credit Association.

            The Mesa tramway stopped being used about 1934.  After the North - South Highway was built and paved down the hill to the railroad, trucks were used to haul the apples to the tracks.  In 1940, the tramway towers were in such dilapidated condition that the highway department declared the tram a safety hazard, and it was torn down.  One story says that parts of the tram were taken to Sun Valley and used for the first ski lift there.

            During World War II, the government used houses at Mesa to hold a few Japanese families in detention.

            The Production Credit Association sold the orchards to A.H.  Burroughs Jr. in 1943.   Burroughs was a relative of the founders of the Burroughs calculator company.   He ran the orchards for 11 years, and established a cannery that made applesauce from the inferior apples.  By that time there were only 700 productive acres.  (We just got the photocopies of our Mesa Applesauce labels done.  They look great.)

             The 1945 and 1946 seasons stood out as being profitable. Demand and prices for apples were high.

            The wooden flume continued to be used up until Burroughs sold to the Byron Ball family in 1954.  It was abandoned when government regulations made the cost of rebuilding unreasonable.  I picked up an interesting piece of information about the flume recently.  I'm told the Middle Fork downstream from the flume's diversion dam used to go dry during the summer because of heavy irrigation by Mesa.

            After the flume was abandoned, there was no use keeping the water rights from the Middle Fork, and they were sold.  After a series of crop failures and the death of Mr. Ball, the orchards fell into disuse.  About 1967 Emma Ball sold to rancher from Parma who took out many of the trees for pasture.  Later the deal fell through.  Much of the land has since been used for livestock production or sold off to individuals.

            Water would prove to be a critical issue at Mesa from the beginning to the end.  In 1994, much of the land at Mesa was subdivided, and lots were sold for home sites.  Wells started going dry as the water table sank.

            Even if it were possible to resurrect the success of Council's fruit growing glory days it could never be the same.  Modern fruit orchards, like many other businesses, have streamlined and standardized their product for mass consumption until only a few varieties are now grown.   Local orchards used to grow many varieties of apples that few of us have even heard of today.  In 1904 B.B. Day exhibited 43 varieties of apples at the Idaho State Fair.  Seventy-five varieties were exhibited from Washington County.  Since 1900, about 6,000 known varieties of apples (86% of those ever on record) have become extinct.

            Perhaps the most sad and fitting epitaph for Council Valley's fruit industry came when the last of the apple trees planted by Council's first family were cut down.  George Moser had planted an orchard where the high school now sits.  By 1941 all but three of the original trees had died or were removed.  Out of respect for this Moser legacy, the street even curved around these last trees where they grew on the corner, north west of the, then new, high school.  They were thought to be the oldest trees in the valley.  These stalwart old Landmarks that had witnessed the birth of a community, gave their lives to the bulldozer for street improvements in May of 1942.

 

10-9-97  Some of you know that, in addition to a general history book, I have been working on a self-guided tour book about the area from Council to the Seven Devils Mining District.  I have a very rough draft done on the general history, but haven't had time to work on it lately.  The tour book is not even to the rough draft stage yet.  I'm going to put some of it in my columns so that you readers can tell me where I go wrong or add to the info I've gathered.  If you read something here that you know if wrong, or if you can add to the story please contact me.

            I don't have much on the Hornet Creek Cemetery.  The earliest grave, according to my info, is that of Charles Adams who was interred here in about 1884.  I have no idea who he was.  In the following decades, many Hornet Creek pioneers were buried here.

            According to the Adams County Leader for Sept. 8, 1922, Hornet Creek residents formed a corporation to "...legally hold in trust the title to the Hornet Creek cemetery, and to procure and hold title to a road leading to the same, and to transact any business...." concerning the cemetery.    Except for the fact that it is still an active cemetery, that's about all I can find on it.

 

            The old road up Hornet Creek used to swing north to cross North Hornet Creek above where it currently crosses it.  The old route and bridge abutments are still in evidence.

            If anyone knows who first settled the place here where Hortons live now, or if you know any interesting stories about the place, please tell me.  I remember a big, old, square house stood south of where Horton's is.

            Before bridges were common on country roads such as this, crossing even small streams like North Hornet could be a hair raising experience during spring runoff.  In the April of 1913, Bert Rose had to cross North Hornet Creek here as he came home from Council.  The Adams County Leader reported his experience:

 

    When he drove into the creek the current was so strong that the horses and buggy were carried down stream about 300 feet and it was all he could do to save the horses by cutting the tugs and freeing them.

    The buggy was wrecked, and besides this, he lost his valuable slide trombone, together with a bill of groceries, hardware, etc., which he was taking out to his ranch.

    Mr. Rose had a desperate struggle with the furious waters even to save his team, and can count himself fortunate, although the loss falls heavy on him.

 

            I may regret this because there are so many members of this family out there, but I'm gonna make a brief stab at the history of the Harrington family. 

            The Harrington family has roots in the Council area that go back to the very earliest settlers here.  I run into a problem right of the bat.  The earliest Harrington patriarch here, William Reil Harrington (1835 - 1922), was known by his middle name which was spelled either "Reil" or "Rayle".  Evea Harrington Powers tells me she has settled on "Rayle" as the correct spelling.  On the other hand, just about all the newspapers and other writings have spelled it "Reil".  Also, he was said to have had the nick name "Riley".  This would have been a play on his middle name, and leads me to think the name had a long "I" sound as opposed to a long "A".  Words spelled with "ei" are often pronounced as a long "I".  Do any of you family members have any more information?

            Reil Harrington married Martha Loveless, in Illinois.  Martha and Reil had three sons, James, Robert and Lewis, and one daughter Mary.  Martha died in Kansas in 1871, when her children were very young.  Martha's father, Zadock Loveless was one of the very first settlers in the Council Valley, arriving with his son, William, about 1877.  Reil and his children came to settle in Indian Valley about the same time that Loveless came to the Council Valley (1877).  About 1881, Reil moved his family to Hornet Creek.  Can anyone tell me where they lived?  Reil's brother, Clark, also came to Hornet Creek about this time.  Clark was the first postmaster at Upper Dale. 

            Mary Harrington married John Draper and had several children.  One son, Jim, was one of the first automobile wreck fatalities in Adams County.   Mary never learned to read or write, but she was very knowledgeable about folk medicine.  When her grand-niece, Evea Harrington was born, the baby's navel didn't heal correctly.  Evea's mother had followed the standard practice of scorching a square of cloth and putting it over the belly button, but for some reason, it still failed to heal.  Aunt Mary placed four plump raisins around the navel area, and it healed perfectly.

            Lewis Harrington moved to Kooskia, Idaho where he died in 1961 at the age of 100.  I have no idea what became of James Harrington.

            Robert Harrington began what would become the biggest and best known families on Hornet Creek when he married Lillie Montgomery in 1890.  Their first home was about three miles up Hornet Creek from Council, near the old Henry Childs place.  This is near where the Old Hornet Road leaves the Council - Cuprum Road.  They had their first child, Elsie, there.  Family lore says that one day, when Robert happened to be in a discouraged mood, a man came along and offered to trade him a jackknife for the property.  Robert took him up on the deal, and moved to North Hornet Creek.  Over the following years, they brought 15 more children into the world at this ranch.  One died in infancy.

            The Harrington family tree has to be the most complex and interlinked ones anywhere.  You know how they say that half the people in Council are related to each other.  I'd guess that at least half of those are related to the Harringtons in some way.  One interesting aspect of the Harrington story is that four of Robert's sons married all four of Bill Marks's daughters.

 

10-16-97           No sooner had I decided to leave the subject of Mesa and go to the Council - Seven Devils tour than I received some great Mesa material, so I'm going to be revisiting that subject for the next few columns.

            I recently got a reply from a letter I wrote to Beth Van Hoesen, daughter of Enderse and Freda Van Hoesen.  She says:

            "For starters I am sending you some notes by my uncle, Myderse Van Hoesen, about Mesa.  I also have a scrapbook of photos and clippings about the orchard, and I'm quite sure I have the [movie] footage of the Mesa Orchards operations you mentioned.  It may take awhile to locate it."

            "At the moment I am recovering from hip surgery but I'll get about it as soon as I can be more active.  I'm excited about your project and a museum at Council.  My mother, Freda Van Hoesen, is still living at age 97.  Her mind is clear, so perhaps I can get some more information from her."

            "I lived at Mesa until I was 7 years old and went to the Mesa school for the first grade.  We lived in the 3rd of the large houses.  When the men returned from work they would parade in front of our house.  I had both a lemonade stand and later had a rummage sale from clothes in our attic.  My father put a stop to that when he found me selling his tux."

            I remember my father auctioning box lunches in the hall above the garage.  The men would eat with whoever's lunch they bid on.  They put benches in for movies.  I remember seeing 'King Kong' and 'Little Miss Marker' ."

            "A friend of mine, Zelda Mae Semour lived down the road in a two room shack.  I went to her home once.  The main room was dark, and an old man was sleeping on a bunk in his underwear.  Another man in overalls was eating beans out of a can.  Her mother told Zelda Mae to take me into the bedroom, a light cheery room with violet chenille bedspread and a doll with a satin skirt on the pillow.  What a contrast from the dark living room.  There were 500 transient apple pickers at harvest time.  Few of the school children had shoes."

            "The spring was beautiful with the trees in bloom, gardens with lilies of the valley and lilacs.  In summer we often went to McCall to visit my Uncle Harry Soulen and cousin Phil.  We also went to Starkey on the way to McCall."

            This week I'll start on the notes that Myderse Van Hoesen wrote about Mesa, and I'll continue it next week.  Myderse wrote the following in February of 1973:

            "As I recall, it was either Dr. Carter or Captain Carter who interested a number of Eastern financial people, particularly in the New York, Pittsburgh or Philadelphia areas, in the development of a fruit orchard on the "Mesa" in Idaho.  I well remember some of the publicity which stated that the sage and buck brush grew "more lush" on the Mesa than on the surrounding country side.  Why shouldn't fruit trees do the same?"

            Apparently a number of those who invested in the development grew impatient with the time involved for fruit trees to mature, and when asked to put up more money they decided to send my father, David W. Van Hoesen, then a practicing corporation lawyer in central New York State, to Idaho to investigate the project and report back.  My father became quite enthusiastic about the possibilities at Mesa, and advised his 'clients' that they should 'stay with the project'.  When some of them refused to go along my father bought out their interests and finally became so heavily involved financially, that he decided to give up his law practice and go into the fruit business a 'Mesa'.  I think he was influenced by an inherent desire to be a producer rather than just a consumer, of some of the good things in life.  I think we would now call it adding to the Gross National Product.  I also know that he wanted to get into a business that Enderse, my brother, and I could work into and perhaps take over."

            "When the decision was made, probably sometime around 1913 or 1914, my father influenced J.P. Gray, a close friend and business associate, to become a partner with him in the project and to go to Idaho to take over the management of the orchard development.  Jude Gray did excellent work in bringing the Orchard into production.  He was the Postmaster at Mesa, did all of the buying for the store and the numerous operating supplies for the Orchard, and sold and shipped the fruit.  I recall that during this period the jack rabbit became and orchard pest, particularly in the winter when they would girdle the trees just above the snow line.  Jude Gray started raising Beagle Hounds, as they could tire out and run down a jack rabbit, and he raised some prize specimen of Beagles.  I can almost still hear them yelping profusely on a rabbit chase.  I presume they scared to death about as many rabbits as they caught, but they kept them under control."

            Continued next week.

 

10-23-97           Mynders Van Hoesen's writing, continued from last week:

            "In the early Spring of 1918, about the middle of March, my brother, Enderse, our cousin Van Hart, and I arrived at a railroad siding several miles from Mesa on the "Pin" road, (The Pacific and Idaho Northern).  Our trunks and belongings were dumped off the one car train into the snow at the siding, and we shivered in the cold waiting for a sleigh from Mesa to come and pick us up, and wondering why we had ever agreed to give up the comforts we had become accustomed to and come to this god-forsaken place.  There wasn't a person or habitation in sight.  But after we were established in a tent on the townsite and had been given a hot dinner at the cook house, then about a half mile from the townsite at the barns and livestock area, we became enthusiastic again."

            "It was some time before our arrival at Mesa that my father had made an offer to J.P. Gray either to buy him out or to sell out to him at a specified price.  Jude Gray elected to sell and later went into the fruit business near Nampa, Idaho, quite successfully as I recall."

            "My father came to Idaho in March of 1919, after having disposed of all his interests in New York State.  He brought with him, as a partner, Charles P. Seymour, a long time friend and business associate, and until Mr. Seymour's death in the packing house fire, I think some time in 1920 or 1921 [It was December 1920], the Orchard was owned a operated by the partnership of Van Hoesen and Seymour."

            "It was during this period, commencing in the Spring of 1919, that an extensive building program was undertaken.  The store and Post Office were greatly enlarged.  Harry Mills, assisted by his good wife, Lyda, had complete management of the store during the entire Van Hoesen era at Mesa.  My brother, Enderse, assisted by Lillian Pettit, a sister of Clyde Rush, was the Post Master.  Lillian also did all of the book-keeping for the entire operation, including payroll records, and assisted in the store during rush hours."

            "A large cookhouse facility was built near the store, and a fully equipped garage and machine shop with a community entertainment center on the second floor, was rushed to completion.  It was during this time that the Van Hoesen and Seymour houses were built as well as several smaller houses for the year 'round employees.  The packing house and fruit storage buildings were enlarged and the equipment modernized, and a separate warehouse for storage of orchard machinery and equipment was constructed.  A well was drilled in the center of the townsite, after Bill Lynch, our head carpenter, located an underground stream with the use of a willow wand.  A nearly adequate supply of excellent water for domestic purposes was obtained, and we thereafter enjoyed the luxury of good water under pressure, and no longer had to melt snow in the winter for cooking, washing and bathing."

            "One of the unique facilities conceived by my father, and constructed during this period, was the aerial tramway running from the packing house over the rolling country about three and one-half miles down to a new siding, 'Mesa', on the 'Pin' road where we also built a storage facility.  While quite a tourist attraction, the tramway was an absolute necessity during those next few years.  the roadway was almost impassable in the winter months when much of the fruit was shipped, even for the teams of horses and sleighs, and it was difficult to keep the fruit from freezing on the long haul to the siding.  We could cover the tramway carriers with heavy water-proofed canvass which protected the boxes and baskets of fruit during the shorter trip from rain, cold, and sleet.  Also the tramway could load cars at the siding twenty four hours a day without the resulting mix-up when one sleigh load of fruit would arrive out of sequence, and destined for a different car than the one being loaded.  The tramway received a lot of publicity.  I recall a couple of fellows arriving at the Orchards one day and asking if they could inspect the tramway.  It turned out they were from Honolulu and had been sent to Mesa by some Hawaiian Pineapple interests to ascertain if a tramway would be feasible to transport pineapples from the fields to the cannery.  Incidentally, we thought they would be impressed when we told them we had about 1250 acres in fruit trees, but upon being asked their acreage they replied that the small area they were thinking about contained about 12,000 acres."

 

10-30-97           "After the death of Mr. Seymour sometime around 1920, my father took in as a partner Horace Woodmansee, who had had a successful business career with the Wickwire-Spencer Steel Company in central New York State, and a long time friend of my father.  The Woodmansee family moved into the Seymour house.  The third home in this area was built for Enderse I believe some time in the fall of 1922."

            "Mr. Woodmansee was instrumental in building an Evaporator near the packing house to take care of some of the unmarketable fruit.  It was quite successful although we had to ship in several cars of coke, by tramway of course, to burn in the furnaces to "evaporate" the apples."

            "Mr. Woodmansee also engineered the construction of 'earthen storage houses', (underground storage), when the production of the Orchard exceeded the capacity of the existing storage space.  It also permitted us to hold more of the fruit longer and wait for a possible rise in the market price."

            "It was in November of 1921 that David W. Van Hoesen was elected State Senator from Adams County - a Democrat from a strongly Republican County.  He was serving a second term in Boise when he died on January 15, 1923.  His son, Enderse was appointed to fill out his term and he was elected for a second term as Senator from Adams County."

            "Soon after my father's death, George Donart, with his usual astuteness and wisdom recommended and then took care of the incorporation of the orchards and we were thereafter known as the Mesa Orchards Company.  Throughout all the years we were at Mesa we leaned heavily upon George Donart for advice and help and he never failed us."

            "Each fall of the year, when the picking season started, many families from several miles around Mesa would move to the town-site, set up camp and help pick and pack the fruit.  the fruit harvest and packing could not have been accomplished without the hard work and loyalty of these fine families.  For wrap packing the apples, which is quite an art, 'apple knockers' would appear from as far away as Florida, Texas and Southern California, where the season was earlier and the harvesting and packing just completed.  The favorite place to stay for this 'elite' group of individuals was the home of 'Mother Rush' as she was known to all, the mother of Clyde rush.  She took care of them each year and catered to their idiosyncrasies, which they loved."

            "In our early days at Mesa the Van Hoesen and Seymour wives, and later Mrs. Woodmansee conducted religious services each Sunday in the School House.  The services were well attended in spite of the fact that usually there had been an all night dance with supper or breakfast in the dance hall above the garage, or a late movie with the hand operated moving picture machine.  Bill Evans, who for many years drove his team of mules to Council and back every day except Sunday with the mail and supplies, used to occasionally bring movie films on Saturdays from the theater in Council.  After running them we would put them on the early morning stage coach for delivery at Weiser.  I don't think anyone connected with the consignment knew that the films had been hi-jacked for showing in Mesa.  Later and after the North and South HIghway had been constructed through Mesa and into Council, Howard Rush, Clyde's younger brother, used his truck to carry the mail and supplies and to perform the many errands in Council that were always requested."

            "During all of the Van Hoesen 'era' at Mesa there were a few 'outside' owners, most of them the original investors who had 'stayed with the project' and owned one, two or three ten acre tracts in the Orchards.  These Orchard tracts were cared for and operated under contracts with the owners along with the balance of the Orchards under our management.  In addition there were several 'Local' owners who lived on their tracts and cared for them individually.  Some of these were Clyde Rush, Gus Keckler, Peter Dahlgren, John DenBoer, H.L. Brooks, Stephen Nock, the Messingers, Ed Hart and perhaps one or two more."

            "Fruit shipped from Mesa ended up in some of the strangest places.  I recall receiving a letter from a fellow in Cairo Egypt, enclosing a wrapper from one of our apples, telling how much he had paid for the apple and wondering how much we got out of it."

            "We eventually found a market for some of our highly colored small red apples.  We learned that in the Netherlands and some of the Scandinavian countries it was customary to tie small red apples on trees for Christmas, since after Christmas they could be eaten.  Numerous car loads of these small red apples were shipped to Holland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark to arrive just before Christmas."

            "We had a lot of fun at Mesa and it hurts us to see the trees pulled up."

 

11-6-97  This week I'll get back to our tour going toward the Seven Devils.

            Upper Dale was originally known simply as "Dale" until a school was built much closer to town that was called "Lower Dale".  The first Postmaster at Dale was Clark Harrington in 1888.  The post office was almost certainly in Harrington's house, and as postmasters changed over the years the office moved to the home of the new postmaster.  At one time the post office is mentioned as being a short distance south of the school.  I have heard that Lee Cole's place was a post office at one time.  In 1899 Mrs. Mose Elliott was postmaster.  The Weiser Signal, Jan 28, 1905 mentioned that the Dale literary society debated the Indian Valley literary society.  It also said that the "...postoffice has lately moved from Mose Elliott's to Grandpa Wilkie's."  In 1908 George T. Russell is mentioned as postmaster at Dale.

            The Upper Dale school has been a landmark on Hornet Creek for many years.  As near as I can tell, the present building was built about 1910.  There was another school building there before that.  Robert Harrington and his brothers and sisters got at least some of their educations there.  I really need more information about the school if anyone can help me.  It must have closed sometime in the 1940s or '50s, but I'd like to find more precise info.  I have also read that the building was sold to the community for $1.00 about 1956.  Can anyone confirm that?  If you can fill me in, please call. (253-4582)

            While I'm asking for information, here's another question.  The museum has some square nails that are said to be from "the Mather house" that was torn down in 1959.  The house may have been built about 1890.  I'd like to know where that house was, and any other information about it.  If you know something about the Upper Dale school or this house, please don't assume that someone else has already called.  I don't usually get many calls in response to questions.

            The original, main road turned west just past the school and is now called Upper Dale road.  When the county abandoned it for the present route of the Council - Cuprum Road in 1900, Billie and Dora Black and Dora's father, Jeremiah Elliott,  had only lived along the old road for a few years, and they were very angry about the change.   The families of O.S. Shearer, Andrew Peck and Robert Nelson benefited by the new road running closer to their houses.  

            A long letter from "Hornet creek residents" appeared in the Salubria Citizen newspaper, blasting the road change.  In part it read,  "Mr. Peck abandoned his location on the road for another ... and now by cunningly devised schemes and questionable methods seeks to deprive his old neighbors ... of the county road ... if they do not keep the road as the county road, they will have gotten a good private road at public expense, . . . ."    Commenting on the new stretch of road the letter said, "Yes, they will have a good road over a rocky hill for about a mile, with large rocks above it which will be continually rolling down into the road, and a swamp stretch for about 300 yards.  The road is about two miles long, for which they seek to throw out one and one-half miles of the best road between Council and the Seven Devils."

            The house that stands just across the creek west of the Upper Dale school is an old one.  Fred A. Wilkie ( the oldest son of Frederick Wilkie) lived here when he moved back to the area in 1900.   (I'll have more on the Wilkies later.)   In 1925, when Wilkie failed to pay his property taxes on this place, William R. Shaw was the highest bidder at the County auction.

            Bill Shaw was one of Idaho's earliest pioneers.  His life began on the plains of Missouri where he was born during his parents trip west in a wagon train in 1858.  After living for a few years in Wyoming, the family moved to the present site of Weiser in 1866 or '67 and developed a homestead.  During the Nez Perce and Bannock Wars of 1877 and '78, Bill served as a scout under Captain Galloway in the Idaho Volunteer Militia.  He was only 18 years old when he enlisted.  When he was 19 he swam the Snake about a mile below Weiser to recover horses that had been stolen by Indians.

            Bill married his wife, Lena, in 1882.  They eventually had 13 children.  Two of them were twin girls that caught whooping cough and died at the age of only five months.  Bill and Lena came to live on Hornet Creek (at another location) in 1917.   About 1934 Bill made medial history in the Council area by surviving spotted fever at the age of 76.   Bill and Lena Shaw both died in 1942.

            Bill's and Lena's son, Delbert Shaw, was the best known of their offspring.  Although he pursued several other vocations, "Deb", as everyone called him, became renowned as a rattlesnake hunter.

            Continued next week.

            Have you seen how the museum addition is progressing?  It really feels good to see five years of dreaming and work finally becoming a reality.  For those of you who live outside the area, the addition is all framed and is scheduled to be completed (to the point where we will do the finish work) by about November 15.

            I'd like to remind you that Idaho has a very generous tax credit for donations to institutions like our museum.  You get half of your donation taken off of your State taxes!  In other words if donate $40 you actually only lose $20 out of pocket after the tax credit.  The maximum you can give and still get a tax credit is $100 which will get you the maximum credit of $50.  Something to think about as the end of the year grows nearer.  Also, the museum is going to be VERY much in need of funds after paying off the addition and building new exhibits to fill it.  Please send donations to "Council Valley Museum, Box 252, Council, ID  83612".

 

11-13-97           Since last week I was informed that Mose and Hattie Elliott sold the land for the Upper Dale School to Adams County in September of 1902 for $50.  The school was evidently built in 1903.

            More on the Shaw family who lived near the school:

            Bill's and Lena's son, Delbert Shaw, was the best known of their offspring.  Although he pursued several other vocations, "Deb", as everyone called him, became renowned as a rattlesnake hunter.

            Deb was a butcher, and ran the Council Meat Market in the early 1930s.  In part, the rattlesnake hunting was just another aspect of this line of work.  He shipped snake meat to restaurants back east.

            Deb harvested rattlers in the spring as the snakes came out of their winter dens, and again in the fall as they congregated at the same dens.  He took the snakes alive, using a wire hook fastened to the end of a broom handle.  The snakes were put into a burlap bag until Shaw got home.  Here they were transferred to barrels where they were kept  until they were killed, frozen and shipped.  For a time Deb also shipped live snakes to be milked for their venom and for use in zoos. 

            In spite of handling live snakes for over thirty years, Deb Shaw was never bitten by one.  He did have some close calls when rattlers struck his pant legs, shirtsleeves, and one time even the top of his head but failed to break the skin.  He also had other alarming incidents.  One time Deb came home with three or four snakes in a sack and didn't bother to transfer them to a barrel.  Instead he put the sack on the floor in his house, putting off the job until after a good nights rest.  The next morning he awoke to find a rattler coiled and rattling in the middle of the floor.   He began to wonder where the rest of them were - under the bed, or hidden in some other dark corner, ready to ambush him?  As it turned out, only the one snake had escaped.

            In 1960 Deb achieved a few minutes of national fame when he appeared on the popular TV program, "What's My Line".  

            One of Deb's favorite spots to find snakes was along North Hornet Creek.  As early as 1906, rattlesnakes were a problem there.  That year, the Weiser newspaper reported, "For a number of years there has been known to exist a number of dens of these  snakes along the rocky bluffs that border Hornet creek valley, and a few years ago an effort was made to exterminate the largest colony, at which time more than three hundred were killed in one day without exhausting the supply.  Failing in the effort to kill them the ranchers living adjacent to the den fenced the snakes in with a tight board fence."  The last comment is probably a classic example of newspaper humor of that time.

            Deb was not the first in the area to profit from hunting rattlesnakes.  In 1912, the Council Leader reported that R.B. Bailey of Glendale, "... expects to hunt rattlesnakes for a livelihood the coming summer.  He was very successful last season in killing rattlers, having killed something like two thousand, which averaged him three dollars each, or $6,000 for the summer's catch."  The paper said that Bailey marketed the hides, oil, poison and gall. If he actually made that much money it would have been a small fortune in those days.

            Deb and his father also did some mining in the Seven Devils.  In 1936, they had just finished blasting out a mining hole.  One charge hadn't gone off, but did so just as Deb bent over to look in the hole.  A shower of rock was driven into his face and chest.  This type of accident was called a "missed hole" and was not an uncommon occurrence in mining districts.  Deb had to be taken to Boise to have some of the rock removed.  It soon became apparent that the most serious damage had been done to Deb's eyes, and he never recovered the sight in one of them.

            Deb was not so lucky in another accident.  He was climbing through a barbed wire fence when the shotgun he was carrying went off. The charge hit him in the chest, killing him. 

            Can somebody tell me what year Deb died? 

            I think I was told that the film that was made showing Deb handling snakes has been lost, but there are still some pieces that were edited from the final footage.  I'll be looking into getting copies of these for the museum.

            The museum is trying to assemble and exhibit on the local fruit industry for our upcoming season.  If you have items related to this subject that you think would be interesting for this exhibit please let me know if you could loan or donate them.  We don't really have much except pictures (we welcome more of them too).  We especially want box or basket labels.  Also, if you would like to help with this project, we need all we can get.

            Also - would the person who dropped off the Mesa apple box please remind me who you are?  So many people mention things to me, and my memory leaks like a sieve.

 

11-20-97           I need to say thanks to several people.  First, to Bob Hildeman of US Bank in Boise for some very personal service.  Bob is helping us bridge the financial gap between paying for the museum addition and the time we get our grant money a couple months from now.

            The next thank you, and it's a big one, goes to Sid and Amy Fry.  Sid is Charlie and Elsie Fry's son.  When Elsie died this past summer, Sid inherited a portion of her savings.  Sid and Amy felt that Elsie would have liked the money to be donated to the Council museum, so that's just what they did.  Their donation was made in memory of Charlie and Elsie Fry.  We appreciate this so much!  It couldn't have come at a better time.  We are facing some serious expenses as we start telling the story of Council's past with exhibits in our new addition.

            Remember, we need fruit industry related artifacts, either loaned or donated.  Another thing that is very needed is "oral histories".  There is a real need to collect stories from people who worked at Mesa and other orchards in this area.  I wish I had the time to do this, but I simply don't.  If you are interested in interviewing someone, maybe you have a relative who would talk to you on tape, let me know.  Also, you people who have personal memories of Mesa, or for that matter any other stories from our past, you could write them down or record them on tape.  All you have to do is look around to see how much the world is changing.  If you and I don't preserve a record of how things were, no one will.

            Sid Fry sent a few memories along with the donation:  "I lived in the Orchard area, kitty corner from the Hoover Packing House from about 1938 to 1948, and the first job I ever had was driving a John Deere tractor pulling a sprayer through the orchards of John Hoover."

            "My first school was the Orchard School, and I remember sometimes getting there by riding behind my friend Cecil Vogt on his one-eyed horse named 'Nancy'.  I also recall the day Mrs. Burt wrestled Galen York to the floor and soaped his mouth for using foul language.  I was talking to him a couple years ago and he also recalled that event, but in addition remembered that I was the one that ran outside to the water pump and found the soap that she used."

            "Dale, my wife and I still have the 'Fry Ranch' up the Middle Fork where Mesa had their dam and the flume and siphons originated.  The ranch brings us back to the Council area, and the next time we are over there we will see you and the museum.  I hope someone has given you a picture of that Orchard School."

            As to the picture of the Orchard School, no we have never been able to find one.  If anyone has one, please let us copy it!

            I suppose the news will be in this issue of the paper, but I heard that Irene McMahan died last week.  She was 102 years old.  Irene was a member of the McDowell family who pioneered  Indian Valley.   She married into the McMahan family which was another pioneering family, here and at Fruitvale.  This reminds me of how sad it is that the lane at Fruitvale that was named after the McMahan family is misspelled as "McMahon".  (I'm also not gonna let up on this ridiculous "Mosher" Avenue that should be spelled "Moser" issue until something is done about it!)

            Sally Thurston Clark was the one who told me about Irene's passing.  Sally remarked about Harriet Rogers, who also died recently at the age of 104, and she (Sally) said,  "Those old gals are probably upstairs laughing at us."  Well put.

            Well, I've about used up my quota of ink and didn't get back to the Council - Seven Devils tour route.  I'll get back to it eventually.  Stay tuned.

 

11-26-97           Back to our Council - Seven Devils tour.  I wrote about the Black place a long time ago, but I hope you won't mind if I do a quick review.  

            In 1889 William and Dora Black and their two sons settled on the Hornet Creek ranch that is owned now by the Gossard family.  They came from Spokane, Washington to live near her father, Jeremiah Elliott, who had settled here five years earlier.

            A year after they arrived, the Blacks traded a milk cow to a nursery man in Boise for young fruit trees.  They added to their orchards as they were able, and it soon became the first, and largest, commercial orchard in Washington County.  At its peak, the Black place had about 1500 fruit trees, and a half acre of strawberries.   William Black is thought to have dug the original ditch to this place from Hornet Creek.  A much improved version of this ditch still runs through the ranch. 

    Samples of fruit from the Black orchards took a prize at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, and some were sent to London and Paris for exhibition.  This kind of success inspired other people in the Council area to start orchards, and the vicinity became famous for its high quality fruit.  After the turn of the century, orchards sprang up all the way from Fruitvale to the famous Mesa Orchards.

     Dora Black told of an incident they had with Indians in the early days:

   The Nez Perce Indians came on their annual trip to Weiser and camped near our house.  We had a house full of friends from Weiser the same Sunday.  In the evening we were singing and dancing to the music of violin and guitar, raising lots of noise, when an Indian messenger came asking us to keep quiet. "It was Sunday and the hour for their prayer services."  We were quite ashamed and kept still.

 

            In 1892, there was an outbreak of diphtheria that killed 9 people in the Council area. Both of the Black's sons died from the disease that December.    The nearest doctor was Dr. Wm. Brown, 35 miles away in Salubria, and the medicine he sent arrived too late to save them.  My original information was that the boys were ages two and eight, but I've been told the ages on their grave stones don't agree.

            The boys were buried under a pine tree on the ranch.  In those days it was believed that burial at night would help prevent the spread of the disease, so many diphtheria victims were buried after dark.  This may well have been how these little boys here were buried.  If so, what an eerie, heart-breaking scene it must have been.  The vast blackness outside the small circle of lantern light under this tree must have made it seem to Mr. and Mrs. Black that they were escorting their precious sons even farther than usual on their journey into eternity.

            Later, the family wanted to move the boys bodies to a cemetery near Council, but authorities would not allow it. Diphtheria is an extremely contagious bacterial disease and it was feared that disturbing the graves might cause a new epidemic.

            The fence around the graves was built, using pickets with carved, pointed cupola type tops.  Wooden pegs were the only fastening devices used.  The white picket fence around the graves can be seen today in a hillside field to the north west of the ranch buildings, above the road.  The Gossard family rebuilt the fence in the early 1980s.   The old pine tree that stood guard over the graves for  over 100 years began dying in the early 1990s.

            Progress on the museum addition has been slow, the drywalling is done.  A big thank you goes to S&S Drywall for donating the labor for this part of the project!  It's great to have good neighbors to help when you need it.

            A gentleman from Louisiana named Huston Fruge called me Sunday evening.  He was stationed at the CCC Camp on Middle Fork from July 1940 through December of that year.  When he passed through Council last summer he heard about the video of Dr. Thurston's home movies which includes shots of the CCC camp.  He left his address, and I mailed him a video.  When he called me, he said he knew most of the boys who came walking toward the camera in the movie footage of the camp.  They were about all from northeast Louisiana.  He said they left there as a group of several hundred, and about 250 of them wound up at the Middle Fork Camp.  While Mr. Fruge was stationed here, he spent some time at a spike camp NW of Council, and fought a fire in the Seven Devils.

            Mr. Fruge also talked about the plaque that is located along the Middle Fork road.  He said he and the other CCC boys were working on the Middle Fork road when Thomas J. Fletcher slipped and fell, hitting his head on a rock.  Mr. Fruge described Fletcher as being unconscious after the fall and blood was coming from his nose and mouth.  Fletcher died from the fall.  Mr. Fruge didn't know for sure who put up the plaque in honor of Fletcher, but assumes it was the CCC.  The plaque is bolted to a rock exactly seven miles up the Middle Fork road from the highway, about eight feet up from the road.  Mr. Fruge said that he and his friends would like to see the plaque taken down and put in the museum because it is being damaged where it is.   Someone has shot it a couple of times with a rifle.

 

12-4-97  In the early spring of 1911, two wagons slowly made their way north along the muddy road into Council.  In the first wagon was 36-year-old Jim Fisk and his 31-year-old wife, Mary.  In Mary's arms was their first child, a baby boy that was born only a few months earlier.  Tied behind the wagon was a colt named Rondo.  In the second wagon was Bill and Nellie Marks and their daughters, Mildred and Hazel.  Hazel was only about six months old.

            The Fisks had come from Tillamook, Oregon where they had met and married the previous year.  They had seen advertisements in newspapers about land that was available for homesteading in this part of Idaho.  On their way here, they met Bill and Nellie at a camping place.   It turned out that the Markses had read the same ads and were also going to Council, so the two families traveled together.  Grandma remembered the trip as being the hardest she had ever made.  It seemed to take forever to come clear across Oregon in the wagon.  It must have been even harder for Nellie with an additional small child.

            These were some of the items in the newspapers that spring:.  Council was now a part of a new county named "Adams".   The new "opera house" in town (now the People's Theater) was showing moving pictures twice a week.  The son of O.G. Shearer choked to death on a bean he was eating for lunch at the Hornet school.  Ova J. Allen was on trial for beating a school teacher with a club at the Bear School because the teacher (Mrs. Burris) had corrected Allen's child.  The railroad had just reached New Meadows.  The Pomona Hotel had just been built and was about to open for business. 

            Within the next year or so, the Fisk and Marks families took up homesteads within walking distance of each other on Pleasant Ridge, about seven or eight air miles north east of Council.   By April of 1912 the Fisks had another baby boy, Herbert.  Eight months later, their first child ate the heads off of some matches and died.  They later had four more children, one of whom was my father.  The Markses had two more girls and a boy.  The Fisk and Marks kids spent their early childhoods together, including attending the one-room Ridge school.  Rondo, the colt behind the Fisk wagon on the long trip, became one of the best work horses in the country, and served the family for many years.

            In 1924 my grandfather expanded his land holdings when he bought Joe Glenn's place closer to Fruitvale and moved his family there.  In 1926  Hazel Marks became Hazel Harrington.  She and her four sisters each married sons of Robert Harrington.  In 1939 Hazel and Harvey Harrington again become a neighbor of the Fisks when they bought a ranch a couple miles up the West Fork of the Weiser. 

            As I grew up on the Fisk ranch, I came to see Hazel and Harvey as living "Landmarks" - people who seemed like they would always be here to be reference points in the world.  As of last week they are both gone.  Every time we lose one of our Landmarks the world becomes a little less familiar. 

            I would like to thank the Worthwhile Club for a donation they made in memory of Irene McMahan.

            On a much lighter note, Sid Fry's recollections of the Orchard school brought back some memories to Galen York.  Galen wrote them down and gave me permission to use his story here.

            "If I remember correctly it was the spring of 1944.  School at Orchard had finished, and it was a few days before fishing season opened.  Eddy and I decided to go fishing.  We got some line, hooks, and a few worms and cut us a willow pole; fixed a first class outfit.  We were fishing in the small stream about 200 feet north of mill creek road, a short distance west of Missman - Mill Creek intersection known as "Last Chance Creek".  We had 4 or 5 trout 6 or 8 inches long, and were really enjoying ourselves on a nice sunny day, when someone hollered at us.  We looked up to the road where this man was standing by the fence.  He said, "Hey boys come up here, I want to talk to you."  So we picked up our fish, and walked up to where he was to get aquatinted.  He told us to get into the pickup.   We did because he showed us his badge, and said he was Fred Clarke, the game warden.  We decided right off we were aquatinted!"

            "Well now, it would not have been so bad if he had just took us home, told our parents and kicked us out.  No way!  He drove up Mill Creek,  high orchard road and across Missman Road to where we started for what seemed like an eternity, as I think he stayed in first gear in the pickup all the way.  He chewed our butts, told us how bad we were and how terrible it was to fish out of season.  His vocabulary was more than Websters Dictionary!  By the time we got back to our point of beginning, I am sure we had reached an agreement not to fish out of season again."

            To this day I have never gone fishing with Eddy Garver again.  What with the laws and rules of today, we would probably be arrested before we got out of town.  I would bet the game warden smiled as he ate those fish for supper!" 

12-11-97           I heard from Houston Fruge again, the guy who was stationed at the Middle Fork CCC camp in 1940.  For the younger readers (well, there might be a few who may not know this), the CCC, or Civilian Conservation Corp, was established by the Roosevelt administration to provide work and job training for young men during the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Camps were established around the country, and were modeled after military camps. 

            Mr. Fruge sent me a photocopy of kind of scrap book of the Middle Fork camp.  The cover says, "Memories of Company 6421 C.C.C. Camp Council, F-413 - Summer 1940".  Inside the cover is a memoriam to "Thomas H. Fletcher July 26, 1940".  The next page has a dedication to the Company Commander, Lieut. William O. Cromwell.  A list of camp personnel shows Lieut. Nelson Singleton as "Subaltern", Stewart McCutcheon as Camp Educational adviser, and Major William S. Fowler as Company Commander of Co. 1996.  Alvin Thurston was the camp physician which helps explain why he took so much movie footage of it and the men.

            The Camp history says that Company 1335 CCC, Camp F-413, located about five miles south of Council, Idaho on the North and South highway, U.S. 95, was first organized at Fort Monroe, Virginia, May 21, 1933 and was designated at that time as Company 1335.

            From Fort Monroe the Company moved to Pine Valley, Utah, CCC Camp F-17.  Later it was moved to Leeds, Utah, CCC Camp F-24.  From there it was moved to Upper Beaver Headquarters, Boise, Idaho and was known as Camp F-146.  The Camp was next moved to F-108, French Creek, Riggins, Idaho where it was engaged on the Salmon River project in the Idaho National Forest during the winter and spring of 1934 and 1935.  From French Creek the Company was moved to F-169, Cambridge, Idaho where the work project was in the Weiser National Forest.  On January 18, 1938 the Company was moved to the Middle Fork site south of Council.

            "On July 8, 1940, Company 1996 was disbanded.  Almost immediately Company 6421, consisting of men from southwestern Louisiana of the Fourth Corps, arrived and began the occupancy of Camp F-413."

            "Company 6421 received its beginning when 200 enrollees from Camp Reaves, Vernon, De Ridder, Hackberry, and Abbeville left Louisiana for Council, Idaho as their destination under the command of Lieut. William Oliver Cromwell and Lieut. Nelson Singleton as Subaltern."

            "The Company strength at this time stands at 196 consisting of Leaders, Specialists, Asst. Leaders and members."

            "Following a long ride from Louisiana across the southwest the new men arrived at Mesa siding about 2:30 A.M. Tuesday July 9, 1940.  All were surprised and amazed upon being aroused from their berths by the welcoming committee from old 1996 Company.  Rapidly a rumor spread that a raid by the Indians was imminent, but we all too soon learned that Idaho is wild in looks only and that the once savage Indian has long since become mild."

            "After a short trek into Camp the men were given an early breakfast before starting the day's business of getting settled.  This is the day that will be long remembered because the problems before us all were a bit tough and can now be recalled vividly.  It seems as thought the day's routine was an endless procession of roll calls, shots in the arm, clothing issues, markings, hurrying from barrack to office, to supply room or mess hall, all midst a world of bewilderment.  That evening after supper they left the camp in droves to explore the nearby hills which were mountains to them."

            "The next day camp routine and various programs did begin in earnest.  There was a trip to the project, and instruction in the use of hand tools.  They were not tenderfeet in this respect because all knew the use of the ax and saw."

            "The work project that this Company is now engaged in is that of road construction.  They have completed about seven miles of road up the Middle Fork of the Weiser River.  The purpose of this road is to provide protection in a forested region containing splendid recreational areas and in addition a stand of timber of commercial value."

            "Much of the work is done by hand crews, who strip the top soil along the right of way and also remove the brush and trees from this area.  They are followed by a jackhammer and then powder crew who blast the rocks and stumps from the road bed.  Bulldozer operators follow in the near future and it is these powerful machines that cut the road down to the grade level charted by the surveying crew.  After this comes the finishing work of placing sand and gravel which is leveled and smoothed by grading machines."

            "During the summer months members of our Camp are on call for forest fire fighting duty and then during the winter on crew is also busy upon forest improvement work.  Other work is being done, namely: Repair & Maintenance of Equipment and Wood Procurement."

            "These various projects furnish a wide range of experience that is used to good advantage in job training.  There is opportunity to train several machine operators because all machines are enrollee operated in this company.  There is training in mechanics, blacksmithing, warehouse man, jackhammer operation, powder man, surveying, carpentry and forestry.  In addition to the above jobs, there is also the work of operating and maintaining the camp itself which furnished ideal training for cooks, baker, clerks, storekeepers and stewards."

            It's interesting that "blacksmithing" is mentioned.  This must be an indication of the state of the art of welding, etc., at the time.  It's also interesting to note that the use of bulldozers was fairly new technology.  Notice there is no mention of chainsaws to clear the road right of way.  There were a just a couple, big, awkward power saws in this area in the late 1930s, and they were a long way from what we have now.

 

History Corner 12-18-97

by Dale Fisk

            A couple weeks ago I was informed that Rufus Anderson's grave headstone has been relocated to the Kesler Cemetery.  Rufus was one of this area's earliest settlers.  He and his wife, Nancy, arrived on Hornet Creek, as best I can gather, in 1879.   Just how long Rufus lived here I don't know.  He lived out the last days at the old soldier's home at Boise and was buried in the military cemetery in the foothills.  Janet Johnson, who is a relative of Rufus's, brought his original headstone here because it was being repeatedly vandalized in the military cemetery.  She placed the stone between that was his wife and son in the Kesler Cemetery, and put a different marker on his grave at Boise.

            I'm not sure off the top of my head which son is buried in the Kesler Cemetery, but Rufus had two sons who were quite interesting to say the least.  I wrote about them some time ago, but there have been so many new readers since then I give it another shot.

            Preston Anderson, or "Press" as he was more often called, was born in 1872.  He homesteaded a farm just across the Weiser River west of Council sometime before 1900, and lived there until his death in 1924.  His home was in the approximate location of Bob and Bonnie Wininger's house today.

            To say the least, Press was a little odd.  He wore his hair long, and claimed at times to be Jesus Christ.  He put crosses of tape on his windows to keep the devil out of his house, and he always left the last little patch of hay in the center of a hay field uncut because he thought "the devil was in there."  

            Press placed this ad in the Council paper in 1901:

 

        MENTAL SCIENTIST

         P. G. Anderson     Council, Idaho   

 Cures all diseases by Mental or Magnetic Healing

   Cures as easily performed at a distance as if present.  Charges Reasonable.

 

            When a judge in Weiser determined that Press was insane in 1907, it was only one of several times that Press was sent to the state asylum at Blackfoot.  The Weiser Signal reported: 

"Anderson's hallucination is that he is revising the Bible, and hypnotism, claiming that he would soon publish a Bible according to his own ideas."  "He is a man of perhaps thirty years and is noticed by almost everybody on account of his long and unkempt hair." 

            Cases like Anderson's were not rare in those days.  About this time, newspapers in this area contained a story almost every week about someone going violently insane.  In 1910 the Weiser newspaper said, "Dr. J.H. Kellogg, professor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons says everybody will be insane 250 years from now if insanity increases at its present rate . . . ."  "Dr. Kellogg declared that insanity has increased 100 per cent in the last 100 years until there are now 34,000 lunatics and idiots to every million people in the world."

            The widespread mental problems may have been due to the use of substances that were not known to be toxic at the time.  Lead is a primary example, as it was the principal ingredient in paint.  Even worse, tin cans, from which some people in isolated locations sometimes ate much of their food, were sealed with a solder that had an extremely high lead content.  Also, popular patent medicines of that day often contained cocaine or other easily-misused ingredients.

            Mental illness was a factor in at least one other member of Press's family.  His younger brother, James, also had episodes of insanity.  In the spring of 1899, Press and a neighbor, Joe Lane, were keeping an eye on James during one of his psychotic episodes.  He kept them both awake for two consecutive days and nights.  Late on the third day, James went to another neighbor, a Mr. Jackson.  Explaining that Joe and his brother were exhausted, James asked Jackson to come sit with him that night.  Immediately after leaving the Jackson place, James walked a short distance to Hornet Creek.  There, he removed his coat and hat, tied his hands together in front of him and jumped into the creek.  He was later found there, dead.

            Rumors about James's death immediately flew fast and furious.  Several of them wound up in the Salubria paper.  The paper reported that Anderson had gone salmon fishing, and his family was alarmed when he didn't return.  The next morning, a search party was said to have found him dead on the banks of Hornet Creek with his hands securely tied behind him.  It looked as if it could have bee murder. 

            An inquest was held, and James Anderson's death was ruled a suicide.

            Evidently Press's most serious mental problems were intermittent.  His neighbors considered him to be "a hard working man, and a good friend to those he liked".

 He ran a blacksmith shop in Council during the 1890s, and also helped harvest grain in the area with his threshing machine.

            Charles and Catherine Lappin lived on Press's place in a house that belonged to Anderson when they arrived in the valley in 1904.  Their oldest son, Fred, was born here.  The next year, the Lappins bought a ranch about 3 miles north of Council, in the foothills to the east of the highway.   The road to their ranch acquired the name "Lappin Lane" by which it is still known.

            In spite of  his mental problems, Press Anderson met with a more peaceful end than his brother had.  In the fall of 1924, he was found dead in his house.  It was not known exactly what day he had died.  He was 52 years old.

 

12-24-97           Some time back I wrote about the Peck family who lived mile or two past the Upper Dale school.  They lived in the big white house just past where the pavement now ends, about ten miles up the Council - Cuprum road.  Since that time I have run across an interesting story about two of the Peck's sons.  On October 9, 1887 the two boys, ages about 12 and 16, were hunting in the head waters of Hornet Creek.  They came across a bear cub and killed it.  Farther on, they saw a large, male, cinnamon-colored, black bear.  They shot and missed, and the bear began to charge them.  The older boy stood his ground and shot, breaking the bear's hind leg.  The bear continued to charge, and the boy clubbed the him over the head with his rifle.  The bear bit the boy's arm and leg before the younger brother ran up and shot the bear in the head, killing it.  Evidently the older boy's injuries weren't serious.  The boys packed the smaller bear home, then returned with a wagon for the big one. 

            The story appeared in the Weiser newspaper, and was submitted by James Smith of Hornet Creek.  No comment was made by the paper about the boys shooting a bear cub.  People in those days had a different sense of their relationship to wildlife than most of us do now.  Nature was still very much an obstacle to overcome - an adversary to be subdued.  I remember reading a story in an old Council newspaper (I don't recall from what date) about a local man who shot a very unusual bird just to see what it was.

            I have also written about the Wilkie family, but have a little new information.  Frederick C. Wilkie, his wife Sarah, and their four sons, first settled on Hornet Creek at "Dale" in 1882.  Their home was at the point where the Council - Cuprum road leaves Hornet Creek, near the old Hornet Guard station. 

            Susanne Newby of Santa Anna, California is the granddaughter of Arthur Wilkie, and she sent me a copy of their family history.  For the most part, I'm going to quote what she wrote in 1973.  Here it is:

            It was after my mother died that he gave it to me. He had been playing Solitaire when he got up and slowly walked into the bedroom and returned with the old crumpled box.  He was a tall, straight man in his seventies.  He had often been compared to Abe Lincoln, not only in his appearance and quiet manner, but also because of his interest in the law and politics.

            "I was just your age, eleven years old," he said, When my mother, Sarah, died."

            He took from the old box a tiny, long white dress with the smallest embroidered stitches I had ever seen.

            "This won't mean much to you now, " he said, "but someday you will understand the importance of it.  My mother made this dress for me when I was born.  It's a christening gown and we brought it across the plains in a covered wagon in 1876.  Your great-grandmother sewed each of these stitches by the light of a kerosene lamp many years ago."

            My grandfather, Art Wilkie, was born in Syracuse, New York on May 20, 1873, exactly one hundred and ten years ago.  The little dress is gray with age now and my grandfather has been gone for many years, but I want to put down what I know of him, the hardships he faced and his accomplishments.

            When Art was three years old, his mother gathered together their belongings and her three small sons, Frederick, Arthur and Richard, for the trip to Wyoming where her husband, Fred, had gone a year or so earlier.  Fred had settle in Egbert, near Cheyenne, and was working as a stockman on a ranch.  The cattle business had spread throughout the West after the Civil War and many men left their homes and families to find work.  The stockman's life was hard and lonely and often meant long periods away on cattle drives but when Fred was settled, he sent for his family.

            More next week.

            My thanks to Mrs. John Panike for sending me a note about Deb Shaw.  I had asked if someone could tell me when he died.  She said he was born 10-14-05 and died 10-12-66.  Deb was her uncle.

            There is a project that the museum is going to undertake that you may be able to help with.  We are going to put together a collection of family information relating to the early Council area.  Part of the project will be putting the local census records on computer.  This will be a big job.  Another part will be entering information into a genealogy data base to track how people are related.  If you have a home computer and would like to work on some aspect of this project from you home, let me know.

            We are still looking for fruit industry related items for an upcoming museum exhibit.  You are certainly welcome to help with that project.  One thing we need is accounts from people about what their experiences with the orchards here.  This could be in written form, or on tape recording, etc.  If you would like to help with this, by recording your memories, or by recording someone else's, this would be very valuable to your community.  This applies to any other local history subject.  Every time an older person dies we lose a piece of our past.  There aren't enough people preserving their stories.  If you have time and interest in this, please do it.  If you need help, advice or a tape recorder to work with, please let me know.

            One more thing.  We need a good vacuum cleaner for the museum.  We have a really old one, but if anyone has one to donate that is in good shape, especially one that has a carpet head, please let me know.

 

1-1-98  

Before I continue with the Wilkie story, I forgot to include some information I received some time ago about the Peck family.  Shirley Dahlin, a relative of the Pecks, stopped by the visitor's center over a year ago.   Thanks to the host there, Kenny Schwartz, she sent some photos of the Pecks and some family information.

            Andrew Peck married Jullette Sopher or (Gilmer).  They came west behind Gen. Custer, and helped bury the dead at Little Big Horn.  They first settled in Carson City, Nevada.

            Children:

            Rena Agusta Peck married John R. Crawford

                        born 4-11-1887 at Carson City, Nevada

                        died 2-23-1962 at San Francisco        

                        buried: Carter's Cemetery, Tuolumne, CA

                        Rena and John had 5 children: Elsie, Ellen, Leslie, Chester & Arleen

 

            Cora - born in eastern US, married Robert Nelson, had two children: Leona & Clarence

            Frank - never married

            Hattie - married Bud White, had three boys

            Fred - born in Kansas, married Cora __, no children

            Blanche - married Jack (?) Johnson, had one daughter

 

            Since there were only two boys, the ones in last week's story about the bears had to be Frank and Fred.

            I'm continuing with the story of the Wilkie family, written by Susanne Newby.  If you remember last week, Frederick Wilkie's wife and sons were about to come west to join him in Wyoming:

            To three small boys, the trip West was probably a great adventure but it must have been difficult for their mother, Sarah, with three small sons.  Frederick was six, Arthur was three and Richard was one.  Traveling by wagon meant only the bare necessities could go, so they carefully packed food, clothing, bedding, perhaps a few farm implements and household utensils and tucked away, among their things, was the tiny christening dress.

            After outfitting, in the spring of 1876, the wagons left.  [This was the same year the Moser's came west to the Council Valley, and the summer of the Custer defeat at the Little Big Horn.]  They organized into wagon trains for it was foolhardy for a single wagon to attempt the westward journey.  The wagon trains often took months to reach their destinations and were often beset with hardships and danger.  Travel was hot and dusty and monotonous and many overpacked and wagons broke down and the trails west became littered with belongings cast away to lighten loads.  Indians seldom menaced large, well-guarded trains but small groups of wagons where in constant danger.  Hunger and thirst dogged the travelers and disease was common.  A good day's travel was about fifteen mile, often less.  After several months, the family reached Wyoming.

            Egbert was a small town, hot and dusty.  Hogs and cows had the run of the street.  The family lived on "muddy creek" and their fourth son, Ralph, was born there in 1878.  Life was hard in Wyoming, and few families became permanent residents.  When the Oregon Shortline Railroad started in Granger, Wyoming and continued into Idaho, it promised new work and a better life.

            Fred and Sarah and their four sons virtually followed the path of the Oregon Trail, as the railroad did, and moved on to Soda Springs, Idaho.  Their fifth son, Craig, was born there in 1883.  As the railroad progressed northward, Fred and his two oldest sons, Fred and Art, age thirteen and eleven, got work on the railroad operating a scraper with their own team.  They traveled north to Boise and then over to Weiser River where timber was plentiful and there was an abundance of water and rich productive soil. The family moved on until they found a spot called Hornet Creek, near Council, and settled there.

            Hornet Creek flowed through a lush , narrow valley and had a length of about fifteen miles.  It was named because of the prevalence of this stringing pest, the nests of which were seen hanging from the limbs of trees all along the valley.  They selected a spot which is now "at the fork of the road" at the end of that valley where Hornet creek crosses the road.  Huge tress still stand that shaded and cooled the family on  hot summer days a hundred years ago.

            More next week.

 

1-8-98  

Continuing with the story of the Wilkie family written by Susanne Newby:

            "There was lots of work to be done now that the decision had been made to settle in this remote area.  Fred and his sons had land to clear, logs to cut, barns, fences and a house to build.  Ditches had to be constructed for irrigation and a root cellar dug and gardens and orchards planted.  The log house was chinked together between the logs with split pieces of timber and plastered with mud on both inside and out.  There was a growth of cottonwood timber and trees on the mountainside so logs where plentiful.  A fireplace was built for cooking and warmth."

            "Fred had been injured while serving in the Civil War and had various health problems  so much of the responsibility fell on Sarah and her children."

            At this point I to insert something about the Civil War.  I have to wonder what it was like for a Union officer to come to a place like the Council area where so many of the settlers were from the South.  I have never read or heard of any conflict between the Wilkies and their neighbors, but it would be interesting to know what people were thinking in those days.

            In Susanne's collection of family papers there is a letter from Frederick Wilkie that he wrote while he was in the war.  It is from Strasberg, Virginia and dated October 14, 1864.  He mentions fighting at Harpers Ferry, Harrisburg and Fisher's Hill.  Then he tells of the battle in which he was wounded:

            "Yesterday, we were very much surprised when three shells from rebel guns bursted within a few feet of our tent where we were quietly encamped.  Our division was sent out to fight the enemy.  It was a the hottest fight I have been in . . . a perfect rain of shells and bullets.  We lost a great many and were encamped two full weeks.  Our battalion, myself in command, and the 34th Mississippi were the only regiments which fell back in order.  Our Brig. Commander was severely wounded and taken prisoner.  I was struck in the side with a piece of shell and lost my breath so that I expected to fall every moment and be taken prisoner, but fortunately came in safe.  Many of our officers narrowly escaped.  One of my best friends, a lieutenant in the 34th Mississippi was killed by a shell very near me."

            Susanne continues, "Fred had been injured while serving in the Civil War and had various health problems, so much of the responsibility fell on Sarah and her children.  Chores for a woman, in those days, included cooking, washing and ironing,  gardening, canning, carrying water, making and mending clothes, making quilts and bedding and baking breads and biscuits.  She had no electricity and no indoor plumbing.  The nearest market was a trip to Weiser, a trip made once or twice a year, spring and falls, to buy and sell as needed.  The trip took six days, two days each way and a two-day rest in Weiser.  The nearest doctor was eighty miles away."

            "That Spring, in March of 1884, Sarah Wilkie died.  She was thirty-four.  Her family buried her on a sloping hillside not far from their house.  The site they picked was surrounded by aspen, cottonwood and tall pine and would, in years to come, become the graveyard for other family members."  [This grave site is above the Council - Cuprum road, just north of where the Upper Dale road rejoins that road.  More on it later.]

            "Those years must have been difficult for five 'motherless' boys.  At the time of Sarah's death. her children where; Fred, thirteen: Art, eleven; Richard, nine; Ralph, six; and Craig, one."

            "By 1887, education in Idaho had become compulsory so the boys were required to attend school between the ages of eight and eighteen or until the completion of eighth grade.  For the Wilkie boys, school meant a three mile walk or, in winter when the snow covered fences,  three miles on skis or snowshoes.  [To the Upper Dale school.]    The children sat at crude desks, built by hand, and slate and slate pencils were used instead of paper and pencils.  Heat was provided by a potbellied stove in the corner.  Those near it roasted while those farther away were cold.  In winter, there was always the odor of wet woolen caps and coats and mittens drying after the trip to school."

             More next week.

            Have you seen the museum?!  The addition is pretty much done.  All we need are some finishing touches and we'll be ready to start building exhibits.  Anyone is welcome to drop by and see the progress.  We are usually there on Tuesdays from 10:00 to around 4:00.  Please remember, we are going to need volunteers to host the museum this summer.

 

1-15-98

Continuing with the story of the Wilkie family written by Susanne Newby:

            Art loved to play baseball and was the catcher for the local team.  He got plenty of exercise, not only in the long walk to and from school each day, but in the countless chores that awaited him after school.  Art was a good hunter and fisherman and had no trouble getting deer meat, salmon and trout.  Later a store in Council shortened the trip to market but few 'store bought' items were necessary."

            The first store in the Council Valley was established in 1888 by a Weiser man named John Peters.  It was located about a mile north of present-day Council, somewhere near the Kesler Cemetery and Chet Madson's place.     

            "There were hardships for the early settlers but there were rewards as well living in this valley.  The solitude and beauty were awe-inspiring.  Council mountain towered 8,000 feet above sealevel and northward the peaks of the Seven Devils towered in the distance.  Southward lay the great open sagebrush plains."

            "The small town of Council was growing slowly and was incorporated in 1903.  [Actually it grew very quickly.]  The Congregational Church was built, a new school added and the railroad came.  The mining boom caused the streets to be crowded with covered wagons and freight wagons.  Men carried guns strapped to their shoulders. [?]  It was a wide-open town with six saloons and as many brothels.  Art saw the effects of alcohol on the miners and never drank or smoked or allowed liquor in his home."

            Art finished the eighth grade and went on to learn the printer's trade in Boise.  He worked as a printer for four years.  When Art was twenty-five he and his brother, Richard, opened a sawmill in Wilkie Canyon.  It was on the creek a few miles from the homestead.  Together they built the sheds and buildings necessary to house the huge saws and equipment.  Government land was granted to them north of Hornet Creek and they cut the timber and transported the logs to the sawmill."

            The coming of the railroad, in 1901, brought about the founding of Fruitvale by Art and Richard.  It was an incorporated townsite and shares were sold and issued in the name of Fruitvale Development Company Ltd.  Wagon loads of logs were carried from the sawmill for shipment on the railroad.  In 1907, a traction engine replaced the teams of mules that hauled the wagons to Fruitvale.  At Fruitvale, a 'planer shed' was constructed where the cut lumber was smoothed and planed into finished lumber before being sent on, by rail, to Payette.  Art entered into a partnership with a man in Payette to sell the lumber.  By the, he was engaged in every aspect of the lumbering business from the actual cutting of the timber, sawing of the logs, transporting them to Fruitvale and then on to Payette where the finished lumber was sold."

            "Art's older brother, Fred, was the first of the Wilkie boys to marry.  In 1892, Fred married Sallie Bach and she moved into the log house which, at that time, housed twelve people. Fred, senior, had remarried after Sarah's death, a young woman by the name of Fannie Fletcher.  Fannie, at the age of eighteen, became the stepmother of five boys who were not much younger than she was.  Fred and Fannie had three children: Olive born in 1887; Edward born in 1889; and Warren born in 1891.  Fannie and Fred divorced in 1896 and in the 1900 census, Sallie was the only woman in the Wilkie household that now held fourteen people."

            On June 1, 1902, Art, a tall, dark-haired young man of twenty-nine, married Lillian Estelle Whiffin. Lillian was from Council  She was born on September 19, 1875 in Keokuk, Iowa.  Lillian's parents were Minnie Whiffin Zink and the late Dr. William Cowan Whiffin.  Art and Lillian were married by a Justice of the Peace in Cuprum [J.R. Sears], a little town north of Hornet Creek.  Their first child, Waldo, was born in 1903 and their family continued to grow.  The christening dress, made by Sarah Wilkie, was taken out for each child to wear and then folded carefully away."

            More next week.

 

1-22-98

            Art and Lillian Wilkie had six children: Waldo (born 1903), Warren (b. 1904), Audrey (b. 1908), Fred (b. 1908),  a stillborn daughter in 1913, and Arthur Jr. (b. 1915).

            "In 1905, Art and Lillian built a white-frame house near the family homestead.  It was a one-story, two-bedroom house 'modern' house although it was still lit by kerosene lamps and had not plumbing.  Lumber was plentiful from the nearby sawmill and fences were built as rattlesnakes were a threat to the children.  A garden and apple orchard were planted and the root cellar still marks the spot where the house stood although the house has long since disappeared."

            "The little graveyard on the sloping hillside where Sarah had been buried grew.  Frederick C. Wilkie was buried in 1907, two of Art and Lillian's children and three of Fred and Sallie's children were buried there.  A family friend or cousin, Libbie Rose, was buried there about 1910."

            "The Fruitvale Development Company was doing well and the family moved to Fruitvale to be nearer the company and closer to the school for the children.  The Wilkies even attempted to change the county seat to Fruitvale but that was unsuccessful.  They lived in a large two-story boarding house where boarders and travelers rented rooms." [This is now the house of Jim and Pam Joslin.]    "Besides the lumber business, Fruitvale had a store, a school and a blacksmith's shop." 

            "Art was well-thought of in the community, honest in all his dealings and hard-working.  Art had put his money into the lumber yard in Payette and signed a contract with his partner there, that in case of default, Art was to receive two hundred acres of good, prime ground.  The partner failed to pay his debts and Art was left with the two hundred acres.  The family went down to Payette to look at the property only to discover that it was two hundred acres of worthless alkaline soil.  Art had been duped by his partner and his lumbering business was ruined.  He had trusted his partner and accepted, sight unseen, the land.  He found that the law was more binding than a man's word.  The case went to court and Art lost.  It was then he decided that if the law could get you into that kind of a mess, he had better find out more about it."

            "Art did some logging that summer of 1909 and began studying law during the winter.  For years he studied by correspondence courses and, on April 21, 1913, with very high grades, he passed the bar at the State Capital Building in Boise.  He was forty years old."

            "His brother, Fred, was a civil engineer and was overseeing the Marysville Canal System in Ashton, a town [in southern Idaho] five hundred miles away.  He wrote to Art and suggested that he take up his practice of law in Ashton in Fremont county.  The population of Ashton was over five hundred and the town was the center of the grain growing district."

            "Art had lived in Council Valley for thirty years since his family had homesteaded there and built that first log house but the lumbering business was behind him and the family agreed to move to Ashton."

            I should mention here that Fred Wilkie Jr., the one who invited Art to come to Ashton, was the architect who designed the old IOOF building in Council.

            About the time that Art moved to Ashton, about 1912, all of the other Wilkie family also moved away.  Rich found his way to Idaho Falls, Idaho where he practiced law until his death in 1925 at the age of forty-nine.   Art began what seems like a whole new life in Ashton, and later at Idaho Falls, practicing law. 

            "Art bought a four-door Model T Ford in 1916 and the family made trips back to Council every summer.  The trip back 'home' was an exciting event and the Model T flew along the dusty roads at the rate of five miles per hour.  They stopped along the way to 'cool off' with the water from the water bag and, at the steepest points, everyone would get out and puff along behind.  If the car actually stopped, they all hurried for rocks to keep the car from rolling backwards a few feet.  What a thrill when they finally reached the top and coasted down.  Choke cherries grew along the road and if they grew out far enough, could be plucked as the car 'sped' by.  Sometimes Art lowered the top and the children could ride 'right out in the open.'  When they reached Council, picnics and camping trips were planned.  All the relatives would gather and go fishing and hunting.  Art had spent a lot of time in the wilds as a young man and taught his children many outdoors skills.  The women would gather huckleberries and make huckleberry pies.  Art always spent a day cleaning and fixing up the [Wilkie] graveyard at Hornet Creek.  He loved those hills where he and his brothers lived and raised themselves, motherless, and where he had first made his home.  When it was time to return to Ashton, they piled in the car and amidst waving and crying 'sped' away."

            Art and Lillian moved to California in 1946.  He died there in 1949, and Lillian died in 1952.

            "If I close my eyes I can see them.  Art, playing Solitaire, and Lillian playing the piano and singing, in her quavering voice, 'and I'll cling to that old rugged cross and exchange it someday for a  crown'."

            "But most of all I remember the day my grandfather brought out the box with the small white christening gown.  As I run my fingers over the tiny stitches I marvel at the places that little dress has been.  It came across the plains, tucked away in that covered wagon a hundred and ten years ago.  It found its way to a cupboard shelf in that first log house at Hornet Creek and later, with each move, to other houses and other places, to Ashton and Idaho Falls and California.  His words come back to me.  'Someday you will understand,' he said.  I understand."

            That's the end of Suzanne Newby's writing about the Wilkie family.  Next week I'll start on a very moving story written by Art and Lillian Wilkie's daughter, Audrey, about the annual visits to Council that were mentioned above.

 

1-29-98  For the past few weeks I've been quoting the writings of Susanne Newby about the Wilkie family.  This week I'll start on something that Susanne's mother, Audrey Wilkie Dolphin, wrote.

            Audrey was the only daughter of Arthur and Lillian Wilkie and spent the first six years of her life on Hornet Creek where she was born in 1907.  The family moved to Ashton, Idaho, but as Susanne mentioned, they would come back to Council to visit.  Audrey titled this piece, "Two Pictures":

            "O.O. McIntyre said it was a fact that people shunned spots and places that were precious in their memories.  I know it is true.  I think of him when I think of my grandmother, for he thought so often and so fondly of his grandmother."

            "Once a year, during every year of our childhood, Mother and Dad, my three brothers and I went to see Grandmother.  Grandmother lived in a proverbial Peaceful Valley [Council], anyway that was my name for it.  I know there is no place in the world that is as restful and quiet and lovely or is just perfect because of the memories associated with it."

            "My first six years of life were spent in this valley, near Grandmother.  When we moved five hundred miles away we made annual pilgrimages back to see her.  Several trips were made by train.  I remember our first car, a Model T.  I remember in connection with the car the narrow roads, steep hills, how when we commenced climbing the hill which led into Peaceful Valley  Dad stepped into 'low' and we sped along at the rate of five miles per hour.  Ever so often one of us kids worriedly asked Dad whether we would make it or not.  Reassured we settle back to praise our wonderful car.  I remember how we stopped to 'cool off' with water from the water bag and how at the steepest points everyone would get out and puff along behind and when it actually stopped how we all scurried for rocks, for we were frantic when she rolled back a few feet.  It is hard to explain the ecstasy of finally reaching the top and coasting down."

            "Dad, how far do you think she'll coast?"

            "Four miles!"

            "Gosh!"

            Another forty or fifty miles up and down, crossing several times a small river, I remember always imploring Dad to stop the car and let me pick the wild flowers.  We all wanted to get the choke cherries that grew abundantly by the road, and it is true, that if they grew out far enough, we could pluck a few as we 'sped' by.  Sometimes we coerced Dad to put the top down so we could be right out in the open.  Oh, the feeling that came with the lowering of the top.  It buoyed us up almost to the bursting point, the sensation will never be recaptured!"

            "On one of our trips I remember a rain storm coming up suddenly, and Dad and the boys fastening on the curtains, leather with ising glass windows, foldup affairs and the darndest things to get on."

            "Well, these journeys with their interesting happenings make other stories, personal and sentimental.  I started to tell you about Grandmother.  She lived in a tiny town, more important to us than any city."

            [The grandmother Audrey talks about was Lillian's mother, Minnie Zink.  Her house was where Dennis and Bea Maggard live in Council, on the northeast corner of Railroad St. and Central Ave.- just southeast of the old RR crossing on the road to Hornet Creek.  The house was Council's first "hospital".  The first phone line in town ran between her house and Dr. Frank Brown's.]

            "Her house was white and big, we thought, and great trees and a board walk surrounded it.  There was a well and a windmill and a cellar outdoors, a regular building with an attic, whose floor was covered with sawdust and an attic filled with treasures." 

            "There was an outdoor toilet, scrubbed and well-supplied with reading material.  There was a wood shed near by, just like the Specialist suggests but this was long before he suggested it.  Grandmother had another house on the grounds where Aunt Lena, Uncle D. and my cousins, V, M, B and B lived.  This was fine having them right there."

            "Grandmother's yard was so shady it was never carpeted in green velvet as the poets say, but there were grass and flowers of every kind, here and there, hit and miss, but Grandmother knew about each one and cared for them all, tenderly, going the rounds with her watering pot."

            "There was a hammock too, for us kids to fight and scramble over particularly after meals.  There was everything, even mystery, for all along the yard at the back was a high board fence and we weren't to go near or over it.  There was a big ditch back there."

            "Just across the street ran the railroad, where we saw 'the Galloping Goose' once a day and often played on the high platform of the warehouse there."

 

2-5-98

            Continuing with Audrey Wilkie Dolphin's writing:

            "It seems that when we went to Grandmother's it was sort of a reunion.  As I said, Aunt Lena lived there and also in the same town tow of the dearest uncles any niece or nephew ever had, Uncle L [Lee Zink] and Uncle Vollie [Zink]."

            "I always slept in Aunt Hazel's room.  She was a trained nurse and sometimes was there.  When she was, I seemed to have even more fun.  She used to get out boxes of girlhood scraps, bits of ribbon and cloth for doll clothes.  She showed us pictures there were little letters we had written her, one she laughed so over was one of my first when I signed what I considered proper 'your loving granddaughter.'  I  always thought niece and nephew a bit hard for children to grasp."

            "Another thing that sweeps me with nostalgia is the feeling I remember of awakening in one of Grandmother's high white beds, a strange yet sweetly familiar setting.  The sun was peeping in the window and tree branches we could climb out on and slide down to breakfast.  I don't think I ever did that but I thought of it."

            "Grandmother was always up first.  She lighted the fire in the kitchen and put the water on to boil.  Other than that it seems that Mother and Dad and the aunts and uncles did the cooking and carrying of water and wood, but she only relinquished the duties by force."

            "Grandmother was a church worker and a church goer and a Christian in the true sense, but when we had these reunions we had every day planned and if Sunday was one of these days Grandmother 'skipped' church."

            "One day we went to Hornet Creek in the hills and saw the house where I was born.  Because it had a sort of little steeple I had remembered it as a castle.  Imagine my shock in later years to find it a small house and quite plain."

            "Dad used to have a sawmill up there on Hornet Creek and it was in those hills where he and his brothers lived and raised themselves, motherless.  You see Grandmother is my mother's mother and although Dad's face always shines and he is cheery, I wonder how he felt when he went back up there.  He always spent one day cleaning and fixing up the graves of his father and mother, a brother and a son and daughter were buried under the pines, right there in God's country."

            "Another day we went to Payette Lakes.  There must have been twenty or thirty of us.  We took up a collection and hired a launch to take us around the lake. . . such happiness and fun!  People who own yachts could never know what we experienced on that three hour journey."

            "Another day we took buckets and containers and went huckleberrying, another time fishing and hunting sage hens.  Grandmother never missed a day, always there, happily smiling and examining and picking some new flower or plant.  she could hike as far as anyone, never complaining or wearing out.  Mother used to say she could outwalk her."

            "When these glorious days were over and we all had to go home, Grandmother stood out in her front yard and under a great oak tree and waved us cheerily off.  She smiled with shining eyes but never did I see her cry.  Mother sniffled as obscurely as possible and was filled up I know.  I always bawled outright.  Good-byes are one of the worst things about life.  The relatives and Grandma always accepted my uncontrolled emotion as part of me and were stronger for my weakness.  Their amusement helped out the situation, I guess."

            "The World War came during my childhood.  I could have been too young to be impressed exept for the fact that two of my uncles had to go."

            "The memories of the experience of the war made a mark, like a scar on my mind, a horrid ugly scar.  My two pet uncles went overseas and Grandmother put a Mother's Service Flag in her window and bravely prayed and knitted and wrote to her sons.  They returned and there was another glorious reunion."

            Continued next week.

            Believe it or not, the museum is moving into cyberspace.  By the time you read this our web page should be up and running.  Jim Peart was kind enough to do the technical work.  We have put in access to my newspaper notes, a short history of Adams County, a short file of notes on historical area people, and four years worth of History Corner columns except for about six months worth that were lost to a computer virus.  The newspaper notes alone took several years, so there are already thousands of hours of work literally at the fingertips of the public now.  In time, we hope to have access available for local genealogical information, cemetery listings, plus birth, marriage and death records, census records, the museum's photo data base and more.  We also hope to have all this on our computer at the museum so you will be able to access it there too.  This project is in its infancy, but the possibilities are exciting.  The address for our web site is "www.cyberhighway.net/~jcpeart".  Those of you who visit are welcome to comment on how we can improve the site or what we should add.

 

2-12-98

            Continuing with Audrey Wilkie Dolphin's writing:

            "Childhood had passed but we went again the year I entered college.  We did all the same old splendid things. I then helped more with the cooking and dishwashing and was one of the women.  But I still had a grand time."

            "The next and last time I went to see Grandmother I took my husband.  We drove to Hornet Creek and I showed where I was born.  We picked choke cherries and I made jelly at Grandmother's.  She thought that was pretty good for a bride.  She gave me an old fashioned pieced quilt and two of her oldest old hankies and an old dish or two."

            "Grandmother died on Christmas Eve, 1932, when my baby was six months old.  Her children were all there but not her grandchildren.  I didn't go for the funeral, another gesture of absolute weakness.  All I could think of was I never could go back to Peaceful Valley again."

            "Grandmother has always been close to me, even since her death and I believe I still think of her more often than most anyone I have ever known."

            "Five years after she was gone [1937], my husband asked me to go with him up north to see county superintendents to whom he was selling school supplies.  He said we would leave the children with his mother and have a few days together.  My son was five and my daughter, two and a half, and it was the first time I had left them.  I left them cheerily, for once in my life I said good-bye that way, although I thought of them with little tuggings I knew they were safe and happy and were giving their grandmother a good time as well as a lively one.  We reached the "mountain of my childhood," the one that takes you into Peaceful Valley and we soared over it at fifty per as if it weren't there at all and even before we started the downward stretch I was choking up and spilling over."

            "My husband patted me and said, 'Forget Skip and Sue.  They're all right.'  I tried to grin but secretly kept dabbling and weeping.  I never stopped.  It was spring and I saw the blue corn flowers, the blossoms, the syringas, the sun flowers, wild onion blossoms, blue bells and shooting stars through the rain of my misty eyes.  I cried and thought of the rain curtains on the old Model T and I told my husband funny things about my early days and our trips to Grandmother's.  I especially tried to think of the humorous happenings as I laughed and cried at the same time.  Just before we reached Grandmother's town [Council] we came to the cemetery and Lambert asked me if I wanted to stop."

            "I said, 'Oh, no' and kept my eyes straight ahead as we went by.  But ahead were the living things which were worse than the things that were really dead.  Instead of going straight to find Uncle Vollie, who was the only relative now living there, I went with Lambert to the courthouse where I intended to sit in the car and hold a little court for myself.  He parked in the yard back of the building and I looked neither to the right nor to the left but straight ahead into my compact.  I worked diligently for on my poor, red, swollen face.  Then I quickly pulled from a pocket in the car my favorite screen book which I had purchased for just this moment."

            "In such surroundings with memories pounding down upon me from every side even the movie stars in person could not have turned the feelings I had.  I struggled to pull myself together and went into the office of the county recorder, remembering I had never had a birth certificate and wondering if I had been recorded anywhere besides he family Bible.  I went into the office making an attempt to be personable and asked them about my birth certificate.  The two women behind the counter knew my family and me as a child and of course they had known my grandmother.  The dam broke again and the only thing that saved the whole office was a great big substantial desk blotter.  As I sobbed audibly, they consoled me something like this: 'Yes, Grandmother Zink was a fine woman and everybody loved her, but she lived her life, dear, and when one lives to be as old as she was and lived a useful and joyous life every minute she breathed, there should be no unhappiness.' "

            They didn't just quite understand so I dried up my tears and thanked them.  My birth was recorded at the capitol or somewhere.  I told them the next time I came back I would be careful not to emote so much.  I bravely, laughingly retreated."

            "We went to see my uncle and his family.  He had built a house in back and across the ditch from Grandmother's mysterious ditch.  I would have gone miles around rather than go near that house of Grandmother's but there was no other way.  I resolved not to cry and I didn't.  I scarcely looked at the house but it reached right out at me."

            "I know my aunt and uncle must have thought that marriage and motherhood had aged me or that I was in the last stages of something but I controlled everything and joked

 jovially with dear, jovial, joking Uncle Vollie."

            "Needless to say the tears started again as soon as we got away.  If I were an interesting enough case, I'd still like a psychologist to analyze me and tell me how in the name of heaven I controlled myself for that one short ordeal or interlude."

            "By evening we reached the lakes where we had picnicked so many times.  I refused to stay.  When we got out of the valley away from familiar scenes, the tears subsided.  I was a wreck but aspirin and sleep cured me.  Memories had put me through the greatest ordeal I have so far experienced."

            "The next spring we went again.  It was the same as before, tears and heart hurt almost beyond bearing.  We stopped this time to put some cut flowers on Grandmother's grave.  Mother had asked me to.  It was the day after Memorial Day.  I put some wild flowers there, too, from me.  On in the little town I grabbed my uncle's hand and burst into sobs,  which he understood, absolutely and completely."

            "Last spring we went again.  The children were with us this time.  I told them about things. . . ."

            Audrey Wilkie Dolphin died just a few years after this, in 1946.  She was only thirty-nine. 

            I hope you have enjoyed Audrey's memories.  I found them very touching.  It's so sad that people and places that hold so many memories can fade into oblivion.  Even the memories themselves die when we lose those who have them, unless they are written down.  I've said it so often that you may be tired of it, but the places we live our lives are like stages where "performances" take place.  The corner where Minnie Zink's house stood is now totally different, except for the big trees that still give shade, and I think the ditch may still be there.  That corner is now making new memories.  So continues the cycle of life . . . and history.

 

2-19-98

            I got a nice letter and some pictures from Afton Logue Fanger.  She went to the old grade school here, and now lives in Lyle, Washington.  Her mother, Vava Logue, gets the Record and passes them on to Afton.  My writing about the old school brought back some memories, and she was kind enough to write them down for us:

            "I went to Council grade school 4th thru 8th grades in 1945-50. Yes, we actually had fire drills down the old fire escapes.  On the last day of school, when we had games and picnic all day, we got to slide down these a lot.  That was when they were covered.  I know because I went home one of those times with the seat wore out of my jeans."

            "We had Christmas programs on the tiny stage in the upstairs auditorium, and the back part was the library with a long counter and walls lined with books.  The lunch room had an enclosed walkway from the main building.  It was there, waiting in line one day, that my girlfriends informed me there was no Santa Claus, but I didn't believe them for one minute!"

            "Seems it was in this walkway that the "lucky" kids got to beat the chalk out of the erasers after school.  Actually there was a little machine with a handle that turned.  And then there was Annie Over that we played over the lunchroom."

            "Miss Trumbo came to the school every so often to tell us stories and I'm sure our favorite was the poem of Little Orphan Annie.  I can still see her cute little mouth all shaped up into an 'ooooo' sound when she came to the part 'and the goblins will get you if you don't watch out!'.  She was minister at the Congregational Church close to the school.  Such a cute lady."

            "A board sidewalk went past the church right on up to a big rock on the edge of the school grounds.  The bus kids got to come on the school ground as soon as they got there, but the town kids had to wait at the rock 'till the big old bell in the belfry rang."

            "Us Hornet Creek kids didn't have a school bus, usually a farmer was paid to drive us in their own car.  One year Mrs. Frank George drove, another time Mick Blakely drove.  I believe he later married Naomi Mason."

            "We were all a pretty good bunch of kids in school, don't know if the rumor that Mrs. Eva Walstrand had a garden hose in her office that she beat bad kids with had anything to do with that."

            "Lydia Newman came to teach in Council on our sixth grade year and moved up with us to the 7th and then to 8th, so we were the blessed class that had her 3 years . . . a great teacher.  For 8th grade graduation, Mrs. Newman would take a hit song of the day and change the words for us . . . such as the song 'Pawn Shop On a Corner in Pittsburgh, Pa.'  It became 'a school house on a corner in Council, Idaho'."

            "The last day of school our 8th grade year we got to take brothers and sisters who would be starting school the next year.  I brought my brother, Davie Logue, and Jim Camp brought Johnnie.  He, Ray Shepherd and others tried to get these little boys to fight.  These Little guys at that time wouldn't have squashed a spider, let alone fight."

            "The 4th grade room of Effie Kite had a world globe that hung from the ceiling on a pulley.  It fascinated us.  Each room had a 'cloak room' for coats and overshoes, and of course for naughty kids to sit sometimes.  There were two big wide-open staircases going up on each end of the big hallway we entered from the front door.  No way would we ever thought of running in that hall!"

            "Besides the teachers mentioned we had Betty Draper and Beth Hulin who I'm sure were fresh out of teacher's college, and we loved them.  There was Mrs. Harvey and Chrissie Joyce too.  A teacher from New Meadows, Mrs. Campbell, and also Mrs. Sundh. [Mildred Sundh was later Mrs. Fisk and then Mrs. Wilmarth.]  I never had a man teacher, but there was a neat old gentleman from Mesa, Mr. Burton, who was janitor.  He gave my brother an old black dog one time.  Bud gave him a pretty original name also, 'Old Blackie'."

            "Out on the Art Thorpe ranch where we lived there was this funny kind of sickness us kids would get.  We never found a name for it, but it would instantly get better as soon as the 'school bus' was out of sight.  I was the 1st kid in Council to get Scarlet Fever in the 5th grade."

            "A lot of country school kids came into town in 7th and 8th grade from the schools at Middle Fork, Fruitvale and Mill Creek.  Seems Upper Dale kids waited until 9th."

            "It would sure be fun to walk into that old school again.  Bet it was not as big as we thought it to be.  I'm sending a couple pictures of the school and some kids.  The photo shows the fire escape to be open, but it was covered at one time. It was lined with linoleum.  Some kids were scared to death to come down it."

            "If you don't feel any of this is up to repeating, that's fine.  Just stick it in a drawer and 100 years from now it might be interest someone as they fly into Council on their space ship from another planet to another.  But they will never really know how neat it was growing up in Council, Idaho!  And one of the neatest is getting to visit with many of those same old friends some 40 years later!"

            Ruth Husted also gave me a clipping from a newspaper from Northwestern Washington.  It reads, "Mamie Dessiah Duncan, a life-long Whatcom County resident, died Tuesday, Jan. 27, 1998.  She was 94.  She was born May 23, 1903, to Wiley and Gretta Wisdom Duncan in Council, Idaho." 

            Does anybody have any more information about her?  I know there were some Wisdoms living here way back when, but I don't know much about them.

            We are busily working on new exhibits at the museum.  Just as we knew it would, our bank account is down to its normal pittance after all the grand figures that poured in and out of it during our big expansion project.  In other words, we need any monetary help you can give.  There are the things we have to do, like finish making exhibits and paint the outside of the building this spring.  And then there those projects we would like to do, which are only limited by finances.  If you have enjoyed this column for the past four years, and if the history of our community and its people are important to you, please consider helping us with a donation.  Remember that Idaho has a 50% tax credit for such donations up to a total of $100.  That means you get half your money back!  Donations can be made to Council Valley Museum, Box 252, Council, ID 83612.

 

2-26-98

            When Afton Logue Fanger sent her letter awhile back, she included a clipping from the Idaho Statesman of May 12, 1963.  The article was written by Joy Beckman, who use to live in Council.  The last I heard, Joy lives in Weiser now.  Her article was a very interesting history of our library, and I thought you might like to read it.  At the time she wrote this, the library shared space with the museum in the same building where the museum is now.  Here is Joy's article:

            "Library Week is every week, or so it seems to Mrs. Ruth Winkler, librarian at the Council Valley Free Library.  On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoon it's a sure bet that she's the most popular adult in town in the eyes of the youngsters as they stream up the hill to 'trade books' and view the treasure trove of old relics which are on display in glass cases in the library."

            "The centennial year seems to have spurred many adults as well as children because the library, which has been open nine hours each week, will soon begin opening at 1 p.m. instead of 2 p.m."

            "Mrs. Winkler is currently working on an inventory of the nearly 5,000 books and 65 new ones have been ordered since the first of the year.  Between 800 and 900 books are checked out each month."

            "While the library is now a well ordered, restful place to go, such was not always the story.  Back in 1926 the Worthwhile Club decided Council needed a library and this group of dedicated ladies set out to see that it got one.  Books were collected from hither, thither and yon."

            "They continued to collect books and began their first library on a shelf in the Legion Hall.  This arrangement lasted about a year and then they advanced to the Odd Fellows Hall which, although it seemed like a step upward at the time, almost proved to be their undoing."

            They nearly froze to death.  They had the use of the building for free, but they had to furnish their own heat. Coal was bought by the sack and their funds just wouldn't stretch far enough to cover much of this luxury.:

            "Finally a friend, Jim Kesler, came to the rescue and they moved books and baggage into his jewelry store where they stayed until he retired.  It can be assumed that this was a sad day for the women as he also furnished the heat."

            "From there it was moved to the [Congregational] church annex and all the while it was growing.  Then, much of the relief of the Worthwhile Club members, it was moved to the old school house and the teachers took over.  After a period of time it went back to the church annex - in packing boxes where it remained until 1949 when the city hall was erected and it finally 'came home to stay.' "

            "The club loaned money to the building fund to help with the new building.  Then began the job of furnishing the large room and as before, the members pitched in and did the job."

            "The women had long since given up serving as volunteer librarians and had been paying one of their members to act in this capacity."

            "Now that they had a permanent home, everyone went to work cataloging the books and putting things to order.  Mrs. Hugh Addington became the first librarian in the new building to be followed by Mrs. Frank Hulin.  When Mrs. Ralph Finn took over around 1952 they were diligently trying to get tax support for their project.  Mrs. Finn stayed for nearly 10 years."

            "Finally, in 1955 their work paid off and Council became the first place in Idaho to create a library district to be supported by tax funds."

            "The members of the Worthwhile Club still take a very active interest in the library and only last year donated a bookcase and $100 toward the purchase of Idaho books.  They also collected an additional $50 from other organizations for the same project.  currently they are preparing to join the state-wide movement to encourage school children to read books about Idaho and the West."

            Just to bring you up to date, the current library was set up in October of 1978.  It was made from about four pre-fabricated Boise - Cascade units.

 

3-5-98

            The engineers' report has come in on the structural survey of the courthouse done by Atwood-Hinzman-Jones.  This was a preliminary examination to evaluate the building for obvious defects and find any problems that might need more intensive investigation.  I've tried to translate the main points of the report into English, and have put any direct quotes within quotation marks.

            First the engineers noted that the job was more challenging because the building had undergone cosmetic repairs that concealed some of its structural defects.  The courthouse is a two-story structure over a partial basement.  It was built in 1915.  Walls are unreinforced brick, 12 inches thick.

            One of the biggest problems in the building is the separation of the floors and the roof  from the outside walls.  "Existing wall anchorages by inspection are insufficient.  It is evident that the existing anchorage assemblies are not effective due to the various floor to wall separations throughout the structure.  This issue is quite evident and quite serious.  These separations appear to be up to 3/4" in some areas."  The roof is fastened to the walls with 3/4" bolts every five feet, and the floors are fastened to the walls with 1/4" steel straps every five feet.  Anchoring the walls and roof to the walls would be the biggest expense in bringing the courthouse up to code.

            Another, associated, expense would be installing "tension chords" in the floor and roof diaphragms.  These are structural elements which help the floor or roof keep from pushing out on the walls when weight is put on them.  "The structure as a whole appears to have no significant deficiencies regarding shear wall and floor/roof diaphragm shear capacity.  The primary concern is the ability of the floor and roof diaphragms to transfer lateral forces to the shear wall panels as previously mentioned."

            It's interesting to note that some of the ceilings in the courthouse are made of concrete, which of course makes them very heavy.

            About the wood-truss roof, the report says:  "Water penetration is evident in many areas.  Daylight can be seen from the attic area through some portions of the roof deck.  Otherwise the trusses seem to be in good shape.  A major concern regarding the truss-to-wall attachment occurs in the courtroom area."  Some areas of the courtroom walls show signs of stress cracks due to outward pressure from the roof.  "This condition should be investigated more accurately for a corresponding repair process.  This issue is a primary area of concern regarding the integrity of the structure and will worsen with time."

            There are cracks in most of the lintels above the windows just below the roof.  Many of these cracks go clear through the brick walls.  "These structural elements are obviously over-stressed and need repair."  Repairs of this problem usually entail installing angle iron and plate assemblies bolted to the walls around the windows.

            The floors are not level.  This might not be serious, but it's impossible to tell without taking things apart to see how well the floors are fastened to the walls.  "This should also be properly uncovered and examined for a complete structural investigation."

            There are a number of cracks in the brick walls, "primarily at the corners and along the roof and floor lines."  "Some cracks, however, also appear in the mid span of the wall."  Most of them are probably due to the building having settled over time.  This should be investigated to make sure that's all they are.  If they are typical stress cracks caused by settling, they "can usually be repaired with minimal effort and cost."

            The basement leaks.  During some times of the year, water runs from the jail bunk bed area to the boiler room and into a floor drain.  This problem is usually fixed by excavating along the outside of a basement wall, sealing the wall, and installing gravel and drain tile.  This may not be so simple because the "ground" under and around the courthouse is generally solid rock.

            "A typical concern with older structures such as this one is the accumulation of plaster layers on the ceiling which can become too heavy for the corresponding attachments.  Some of the ceilings in this structure show stress cracks.  This is either due to sagging floor joists, or internal stresses in the built-up ceiling assembly.  This issue should be investigated to determine the severity of the ceiling cracks."

            Some pipes and ducts are not braced well enough, but this should be fairly inexpensive to remedy.

            The three primary concerns are: 1- How well the roof and floors are attached to the outside walls.  2- The roof truss condition over the courtroom which applies outward thrust at the bearing points.   3- Water penetration into the basement.

            A change in how the building is used, such as if it would ever be used as a library, storage for heavy objects, etc. could change the code requirements a great deal.  For example, a library would put a lot of weight on the floors from all the books.  Obviously this would make stronger floors necessary than for routine office use.  For this reason, the cost of bringing the building up to code depends on what level of code is required, determined by the use of the building.

            We haven't received a bill for this inspection yet, but it was estimated at $800 to $1,000.  (The cost is being paid by the Idaho Heritage Trust.)  That seems like a lot for just walking through a building, taking a few pictures and typing a report.  The biggest headache is that to really know the condition of the courthouse, "destructive testing" would have to be done.   In other words the floors or walls would have to be taken apart in places to actually see the critical elements, and, in some cases, apply stress to them to test their integrity.  Bottom line: very expensive.  One engineer I talked to estimated the cost of "destructive testing" to really evaluate the nature and cost of bringing the building up to code, at $5,000 to $10,000.

            The electrical and plumbing conditions of the courthouse were not addressed by these engineers, as their job (and field of expertise) was only to evaluate the structural integrity.  I've read that the building "cannot be rewired".  That's a new one to me.  I thought any building could be rewired.  It has already been rewired extensively if the conduit running everywhere means anything.  It seems to me the building is repairable.  The only question is how much money it would cost and how much anyone is willing to spend.

            The commissioners seem to have given up on preserving the old courthouse as a public building because of the expense of bringing it up to code for public use.  There has even been talk of tearing it down.  Most of us hope this is not a serious alternative, at least not yet.  That old monument has been a landmark in Council for longer than most of us can remember, and its absence would leave a hole in the heart of this community.  But, if the cost is just too high, it may be that the only realistic route is to sell the building to a private party with a stipulation that the outside appearance cannot be altered.

            A number of people have told me that the old courthouse would make a great museum.  Yes, it sure would.  I just don't see how the financial hurdle of such a project could ever be cleared.  Look at what a money pit the New Meadows depot has become.  Plus, we have already invested five or six years of work and money into our present location.  Many people have given so much to get us to where we are; I can't see starting over unless some kind of trade could be made without losing what we've gained.  Besides, the museum and its building belongs to the City of Council, not the county.  If you have any ideas about all this, now is the time to step forward.

            I would like to thank Jim and Laura Camp for a donation to the museum in memory of Carlos and Ella Weed.  They were truly Landmarks.  I would also like to thank Jay Thorp for his donation.  Jay is a former Council boy who lives in Boise now.  As I mentioned before, donations could not come at a better time because we're taking on the big job of building exhibits in our new section. 

 

3-12-98

            For years I have noticed something on maps of the area that has made me curious.  They show an old railroad grade between the Meadows Valley and Long Valley.  Just a couple years ago I heard there was actually a railroad there and that it had something to do with logging, but nobody I talked to knew much about it.  Now there is a book out that tells exactly what that rail line was for and when it was built.

            The book is "Lonesome Whistle - Shay Logging in Central Idaho" by Duane L. Petersen.  Duane is a life-long resident of Cascade, and the book was printed so recently that the ink is practically still wet.

            For most of the book, Duane covers the locations of, and stories about, "Shay" logging in Long Valley.  I had heard the term "Shay" before a few times, but didn't know what it meant.  Shay was a name brand of steam locomotives that were used for logging, and the name was generally applied to any engine used to pull log trains.  Shay engines were smaller and lighter than most locomotives, and had a lower center of gravity for negotiating tracks that were not always well built or horizontally level.  They could also handle steeper grades.

            So why would anyone go to all the work of building a railroad into an area just to log it?  I'm so used to the way things are done now that I have to stop and think about how things were before we had all the heavy equipment we have today.  Shay logging started in Long Valley about 1918, a time when automobiles and trucks were still in their infancy.  We've all seen pictures of the spindly little wheels and gutless little engines those early vehicles had.  There were heavier trucks designed for bigger jobs, but they were pretty inadequate.  Besides, this was an era when people did big jobs with steam power.  It's amazing when you realize the Panama Canal was dug with steam-powered excavators, locomotives and human muscle.

            One thing I hadn't thought about was how you would operate a steam engine when the temperature gets as cold as it does in Long Valley.  Basically you had a big metal container full of water, so what did you do with it when you're not using it?  They either had to laboriously drain al the water from the tank and every pipe every night, or a fire had to be maintained in the firebox 24 hours a day.  It was more practical to do the latter. 

            Even when logging trucks came along, there was no such thing as antifreeze.  What's more, the old trucks had water-cooled brakes which meant a water tank and lines full of water.  When not in use, vehicles had to be drained, run continuously or put in a heated building in below freezing temperatures.  Most people just put their cars up on blocks and drained them for the winter, and went back to horse-power.  Ah, the good old days!

            In his book, Duane goes into the stories behind the old towns of Cabarton and McGregor, plus other locations and the people who lived and worked there.

            By 1939 most of easily accessible areas at Long Valley had been logged, and Gordon McGregor and the Boise Payette Lumber Co. moved their Long Valley logging operations to New Meadows.  Big buildings and machinery were moved by rail on tracks built for that purpose.  The line went through Sunflower Flat, by Fish Lake, and down into Meadows Valley from the southeast.  The track was never used for anything else and was soon taken out.

            The above mentioned outfits built a Shay line that joined the P&IN railroad at Rubicon and was used to log the Mud Creek area between 1940 and 1946. 

            At the same time Boise Payette was moving into the Meadows area (1939), they moved into the Council area.  Andy Anderson was one of the Long Valley loggers that came here with them.  That's the year construction was started on the mill here.  It started operations in 1940.  The arrival of these logging companies in New Meadows and Council brought population and economic booms to both towns.   

            World War II interrupted logging to some extent.  After the war the timber industry here really came into its stride.  To me, one of the most fascinating parts of Duane's book is his accounts of how logging equipment changed over the years.   I've just skimmed the surface of his interesting book.  If you are interested in buying a copy, I don't know what he's charging, but you can order one from him at: D&D Books, P.O. Box 458, Cascade, ID 83611.  Phone: (208) 382-4532.

 

3-19-98

            This week I'm trying to catch up on some odds and ends. 

            Delmar Hallett was kind enough to send me some information about the beginnings of the Council airport quite some time ago, but I haven't found time or opportunity to put it in this column until now: 

            "The town of Council acquired the property where the airport is located in 1947 or 1948.  The original layout and field engineering was done by the late Ellis B. Snow and myself with advice and consultation from Chet Moulton, Director of Aeronautics for the State of Idaho, and Al Witter of the Federal Aviation Administration.  The completed plan was submitted and approved by these officials and served as the basis for a grant of federal funds to complete the work consisting of grading and gravel surfacing a runway and taxi strip.  The blacktop surface of the runway and other improvements were done at a later date, and I am not familiar with the details of that part of the development."

            "I distinctly recall helping set the blue top grade stakes for final grading.  I believe Hugh Addington built the first hanger on the property to house his plane."

            I received a couple of interesting letters concerning Dr. Gerber back when we were putting her office together at the museum.  Roy Gould told of some of his childhood memories of her:

            "I asked my dad [Clarence Gould] why he thought she did not use deadening.  He told me that he thought it was because Dr. Gerber believed that a man should be able to withstand a little pain.  He told me that one summer while Dr. Gerber's husband was working alone at their gold mine that he had fallen and broken his leg.  After a week or so of lying in his cabin in pain, he had shot himself.  Two or three days later someone arrived at the cabin and found him dead.  My dad said that Dr. Gerber thought that if her husband had just endured a little more pain that he would have made it.  I have often thought of the story my dad told me and wondered if it was true.  Whether it was true or not, this story has helped me several times when I was not feeling well."

            I'm not sure about the enduring pain aspect of the story, but I've heard similar versions of now Dr. Gerber's husband died.  I've heard he went up to the mine, which was in an isolated area north of McCall somewhere, very early in the season before other miners went into that vicinity.  When he broke his leg, he probably didn't figure anyone would come along very soon.

            Afton Logue Fanger also sent some of her memories of Dr. Gerber:

            "Right after arriving on Hornet Creek [1945] my mom went looking for a dentist, with no encouragement from us kids of course.  Her office we found was up the steep stairs over the drugstore on the corner."  [Now the Heartland Inn.]

            "When we got to the doorway at the bottom of the stairs we found a lady in old grubby clothes, surely the janitor, sweeping the stairs very energetically.  Mom asked where the dentist's office was, and she said, 'Follow me'."  So up the stairs we went, into a room.  This lady disappeared into another room and came out wearing a white dentist shirt, and this is how we met Dr. Gerber."

            "In Payette many years before that, about 1923, my mom's little brother had practically kicked her office apart when my grandmother took him there.  Many years after all this, I took my two little boys, Norman and Kenny to her for their first dental visit.  They had fonder memories: she polished and gave each of them a dime."

            Thanks everybody for your contributions.  If others out there have memories or good stories about this area's past, and I know you do, everybody enjoys reading them, so send 'em to me.  (Box 252, Council, ID 83612)

            I don't remember if I mentioned before that I'm helping Don Dopf write a book on the history of the P&IN railroad.  One question I have is about the old railroad stop at Vista.  The location is near where Cottonwood Creek meets Highway 95.  To be more precise, I believe it was just north of Renwick's driveway on the west side of the tracks.  What little I know about it is that this is where Mesa Orchards used to load fruit before the tramway was built in 1920.  Was there a loading platform there? There must have been.  I'm assuming the siding was used to load lumber from the sawmills up Cottonwood Creek.  Can anybody tell me for sure, and was it used for other things?  I'd appreciate any information about this, or any other stops along the P&IN.

            I got a call last week about an interesting alternative for use of the old courthouse building after the new one is built.  Several schools in Oregon are participating in a program involving foreign exchange students, kids from abusive homes or ones who need to get away bad influences in urban areas.  The schools provide housing for these students, in some cases using existing buildings as dormitories.  In one case the dormitory was a restored railroad depot.  The dormitories have an adult couple live there and supervise the kids.  I'm told the program is so successful that there are waiting lists at some schools.  If anyone is interested in more information, they can contact these participating Oregon schools: Harper (541-358-2473), Crane (541- 493-2641), Condon (541-384-2581), Mitchell (541-462-3311), or Paisley (541-943-3111).

 

3-26-98

            Awhile back I was writing about stories along the route up Hornet Creek to the Seven Devils.  I don't think I wrote about the bridge just outside Council as you start that excursion.

            The place where the Council - Cuprum road crosses the Weiser River seems to be the original location of the first bridge accessing Hornet Creek from Council.  Before a bridge was built here, the earliest residents here sometimes crossed the river in a small boat.

            I should mention that the Council area, in the very earliest days of settlement, was referred to as "Hornet", "Hornet Creek" or "Hornet Valley" because this was the place where Hornet Creek entered the main Weiser River.  This is no different from the way we still refer to Middle Fork, East Fork, etc.  The Fruitvale area was simply called "West Fork" at first.

            It isn't clear when the first bridge was built here, but in1886 a new one was constructed.  In May, the County Commissioners made a trip to Council to inspect a site for it.  When they arrived, there was a sizable crowd of local citizens gathered to discuss the new bridge, and anything else that came up, on what seemed to be an excuse for a social gathering.  The commissioners decided to put the new bridge at the same site of the old one.  This bridge didn't last long.  One of the reasons was a severe ice jam and resulting flood, in 1891.  Lewis Winkler replaced the bridge in 1894.  

            Another source of wear to the bridge was the fact that spring runoff sometimes piled a large accumulation of drift wood and debris against the bridge supports.  Once when this happened it was feared that the bridge would be swept away.  Someone came up with the idea of breaking up the debris with dynamite.  This plan was carried out, and it was very successful in removing the debris.  It also removed a big section of the bridge!        

            By 1906, the bridge was in such bad shape that freighters hauling ore from mines in the Seven Devils were not allowed to cross it with their heavy loads.  They had to ford the river.

            Two years later, in 1908, a steel bridge was installed here at a cost of $6,000 - a small fortune in those days.  It was one of the few steel bridges in this part of Idaho at the time, and the community was very proud of it.

            From 1901 to 1905, Steve Richardson had a sawmill just north east of the bridge.  Richardson was an entrepreneur who rode the wave of business opportunities that the railroad made as it was built up the Weiser River valleys.   He and his son had run a sawmill and a store at Cambridge.  They moved their store and mill to Council when the rail road arrived.  The store stood on the south east corner of Moser and Main, where the Pomona Hotel was later built.

            The coming of the railroad caused an unprecedented building boom in Council, causing a demand for lumber.  The very first lumber hauled on the new P&IN railroad was from Richardson's mill.  All the towns along the Weiser River were also experiencing rapid growth, and Richardson could have sold twice the 25,000 board feet of lumber a day that he was able to saw.  

            Adel Parke wrote about Richardson in her book, "Memoirs of an Old Timer": "Steve Richardson was quite an eccentric.  His favorite expression was "Bull-rye" (and some more, unfit for print),  which preceded his every statement.  Sawdust from his mill he persistently dumped into the river, and was arrested and fined frequently for the deed.  John [Routson (Adel's father)] repeatedly admonished him to build a pit for the waste, but Steve always said, 'Bull-rye, Johnnie, it's cheaper to dump it in the river!'  So there it went."

            Another story associated with this spot involves one of Council's most colorful early characters, Bill Camp.  Bill was a big, powerful man with unique, and sometimes intimidating, sense of humor.  At some time, Camp was floating logs down the river here to a  sawmill, possibly Richardson's.  As Bill approached the bridge with the logs, he spied a minister inflicting a baptismal service on a group of local citizens at the edge of the river.  Bill jumped off the logs, grabbed the preacher and unceremoniously "baptized" him by dunking him under the water.

            Telling of the incident in later years, Bill's son, Barney Camp, said, "Dad, he picked the preacher up by the seat of the pants and the back of the neck, and throwed him out in the water that way, and I guess he just went down like and old dead-head log.  When he came up he'd liked to have splashed the creek dry.  Dad swum under the bridge, and some of 'em throwed rocks at him, and some of 'em throwed bouquets."

            In 1905 Richardson moved his mill to Mill creek and sawed railroad ties for the new extension of the tracks to New Meadows.  By 1910 he had followed the tracks to  Price Valley.  Again, he established a sawmill and a store.  The post office in his store was dubbed "Tamarack", and the location is still known by that name.  Richardson donated the land on which the Tamarack school was built in 1911.

 

4-2-98

            We are busily putting together an exhibit about the fruit industry in the Council area at the museum.  If you have any pictures, artifacts, or other memorabilia of the local fruit industry, we would be very interested in borrowing them.  I'd also be interested in your memories of fruit growing in this area.  If you care to write any of them down and send them to me, I'd appreciate it.

            I recently re-read the article that Clyde Rush wrote about Mesa for the Weiser Signal in 1965.  In it he mentions having a map of the original plat of Mesa.  Does anyone know how to get in touch with any members of the Rush family so I could ask them if this plat is still around?  It would be very valuable to have a copy of it in our museum.  If anyone knows of any other maps of Mesa, please contact me.

            Connie Mocaby and I did a little bit of interviewing lately, getting info about Mesa and the Orchard District.  That's something I wish I had more time to do.  It's also something I wish more people would get involved with.  It's as simple as sitting down with an older person and having a tape recorder running.  Video cameras add another dimension to it if you care to do that.  A lot of people have them now.  I've been using mine to record the voices during interviews because it's so handy and the tapes are longer than any audio tape.  It also comes in handy if a picture is being talked about.  I hope some of you will think about doing this.  Every year we lose priceless memories because nobody recorded them.

            Speaking of losing priceless memories.  Vennes Kite sent a donation to the museum in memory of a number local Landmarks that we have lost in the past year: Harriet Rogers, Hazel Harrington, Stub Yantis, Mildred Hancock, Ella and Carlos Weed, and Bob Cardiff.  Our thanks go to Vennes for the donation.

            And on the same subject, I have heard that Carl Marble died recently.  His mother, Katie Marble was a local legend as a school teacher.

            When Katie was a young girl in Missouri, her father didn't believe girls needed an education, and certainly thought it was nonsense when Katie was determined to become a teacher.  In spite of the opposition of her father, Katie worked at odd jobs, and paid her own way through high school.  After that, her father softened his attitude, and paid Katie's tuition to teacher's college. 

            At her first teaching job in 1907, Katie was paid $25 per month during a nine month term.

Her first teaching job in Idaho was at Lower Dale when she came to visit relatives in1913, at the age of 24.  Lower Dale was a one-room school that was about 6 miles up Hornet Creek from Council. 

            Katie later told a newspaper reporter of her experiences there: "My brother told me that he would help me if I would take up a homestead and his children could stay with me.  I filed on a homestead the other side of Hornet Creek.  It was eight miles from Council.  Experience is a dear school, but fools will learn no other way.  I learned a plenty.  I hired my land broke but I put my crop in.  I had to have ten acres in crops the first year.  I planted ten acres of corn and beans with a hand job planter.  Second year, I cultivated and planted twenty acres of corn and beans.  I cultivated the crops with a hoe.  The third year, there were 40 acres to work.  Betwix and between I worked for one neighbor then another doing this and that, keeping the wolf from the doors.  I had to walk eight miles to Council for my groceries."

            Apparently, Katie did no teaching during this time, but began again in 1916, at the school that had just been built the previous year on Pleasant Ridge, west of Fruitvale.  After proving up on her homestead, and a short teaching jaunt in Missouri, Katie came back to Idaho and married Guy Marble in 1918.  They lived on his homestead on Pleasant Ridge, and Katie stopped teaching for a few years.

            Beginning in 1923, Katie taught at Wildhorse, then Middle Fork (1924-25), Fruitvale (1926 - 27), Upper Dale (1928 - 29),  Pleasant Ridge (1931), Upper Dale (1932),  Middle Fork (1933 -1935), Indian Valley (1936 - 40), Crooked River (1941 - 42), Fruitvale (1943 - 53), North Crane Creek (1954 - 57).  At the age of 68, while doing janitorial work at the North Crane Creek school, Katie fell and broke her back.  This ended her 45 year career as a teacher.

            It's easy to see why, at one time, almost everyone living in the Council area had once had Katie Marble as their teacher.   During her career, she taught her brothers, one sister, cousins, nephews, nieces, school mates, and her own  grandsons.  At Fruitvale, she taught the grandson of a student she had taught years before.  Katie Marble, a true Landmark if there ever was one, died in 1963, at the age of 74.

            I've heard from a few people about the photo I ran a couple weeks ago.  One person thought it might be the Rush Creek power plant near Cambridge that supplies the first electricity to Council in 1915.  That sounded good to me, then someone else said it might be the old power plant at Cascade near where the dam is now.  That sounds even better because the rocks in the photo sure look like the ones there.  I'm going to follow up on that.  If anyone has any more information, please let me know.

 

4-9-98

            A couple friends of mine stopped by the museum last Tuesday:  Larry Kingsbury is the Payette National Forest Archaeologist, and Steve Stoddard is a musician, archaeologist and curator for the Central Idaho Cultural Center Museum in McCall.  They were on their way to do a cultural survey at the place where the Wildhorse Road leaves the Council - Cuprum road.  This is in preparation for the rerouting and paving of the road from Council to Cuprum.  The plan is that the road will go more straight there instead of making the hair-pin curve like it does now just past there.  Anytime something like this is planned on government land, a survey is done to assess the historical information that might be lost if the project is done without such a study.

            This seemingly nondescript spot has seen a lot.  At different times, it was the location of  a prehistoric campground, a cow camp, a homestead, a school and a lumber camp.

            I don't know much about the particulars, but this site shows signs of definite use by people about 4,000 years ago.  Larry and Steve were taking buckets of dirt back to McCall to wash it through screens to find tool flakes, etc.  They normally would have sifted it through screens on site, but the "dirt" was more like wet clay.

            In the late 1800's, as many as 400 head of cattle ranged the Seven Devils area.  They were allowed to roam the mountains with little herding, but were encouraged to stay in certain areas by placing salt there.

            One of the cattlemen who summered stock here during that time, was John McGlinchy. The McGlinchy family maintained a camp here which included a cabin that stood just to the north east of the current cattle guard.  A pile of stones from the old chimney was still in evidence fairly recently.

            The McGlinchy family homesteaded the land in Meadows Valley in 1889 on which Zim's hot springs is located.  They moved to Payette in 1903, and sold the hot springs the following year.  

            Byron D. and Nancy Davis bought this land from McGlinchy in 1890.  Byron had been a scout for many emigrant wagon trains coming west, and later drove freight wagons between Umatilla Landing and Boise City.  After they were married, the Davises came west in the same wagon train as the Groseclose family in 1876.  Byron's older brother, Tom Davis, came to Boise City in 1864, and planted the first orchard and some of the first shade trees.  When he later gave his orchard to the city for a park, he asked that it be named after his wife, Julia.  That's how Julia Davis Park came to be.

            The Davises built a big, two-story log house here on a stone foundation.  A  daughter that was stillborn is buried on the bench east of the road junction.   For a while, this location was known as "Old Davis" because it was the old Davis place.  I highly recommend the book that a descendant of the Davises, Cary Davis George, wrote entitled, "Listen, the Pine Trees Are Singing".  She is very sentimental about this place, and tells several stories about the people who lived here.

            Steve and Larry brought the museum some cuttings from the yellow roses that are still growing at the old Davis homestead.  They are a particular strain of roses that pioneers commonly planted, and are very hardy.  What a perfect way to start our landscaping project at the museum!  If anyone is interested in helping with this landscaping work, please let me or one of the other museum people know.  We will be needing plants and help. 

            While I'm thinking of it, we plan to face the cement ramp outside with local basalt rock.  We could definitely use some help getting rock as soon as the weather cooperates.

            A school existed near the Davis homestead for a number of years before the Forest Service donated a log building for that purpose in the spring of 1912.  That year, nine students attended the school.  The school continued into the 1920s, but by 1927 the attendance was only four students.  This lack of pupils was probably what led to the closure of the school soon afterward.  A second school operated here in the late 1930s.

            In the fall of 1931, Lee Zink, who had the mail contract from Council to Cuprum, bought the school building.  He moved it a short distance and converted it into a half-way stage station for winter use.  Otto Russell lived here for a time, tending the horses that were sometimes used to relay the mail on that part of the stage line.  Even though a truck was used on the mail route by this time, the roads were not well maintained in winter, and horse drawn sleds often had to be used.

            An illustration of just how bad things could get had occurred just two winters before.  Zink's predecessor on this route, Frank George, had set out for Cuprum with his mail truck, but had to abandon it after shoveling through snow drifts for several hours.  He finally borrowed a team and sleigh and continued on.  That team became too tired from wading the deep snow, so he borrowed another one.  With relentless dedication to getting the job done, he wore out five teams of horses by the time he reached Cuprum at midnight.

            By the winter of 1932, Zink used two other men to relay the mail to Cuprum.  Zink took it to Old Davis, Oscar Russell took it to Bear, and Toby Warner carried it on to Cuprum.

            I recently wrote about how the Shay logging outfits came here from Long Valley.  This spot played a major part in the story.  In late 1938, the Boise - Payette Lumber Co. sat up a portable sawmill here.  A small community sprang up in conjunction with the mill, with a cook house, office building, tool shed, gas and oil house and eight portable houses.  The company originally planned to saw logs here, then haul the rough lumber to Council.  From there, it was to be shipped by rail to Emmett for finishing.  Instead, they built a mill at Council.

            A small dam, which is still in evidence, was built to form a log pond, but there wasn't a  adequate amount of water to consistently serve that purpose very well.  The plan was abandoned, and the company decided to build a sawmill at Council.  Before the portable mill was taken down, the timbers for the framework of the Council sawmill were sawed here. 

            In late 1939, Andy Anderson, a logging contractor for the Boise - Payette Company, arrived in the area, and set up his headquarters here.  Soon, another school was started here for the children of his logging crew.  Katie Marble was probably the first teacher.  School was conducted in a  half of  this portable building, and the teacher lived in the other half.

            After only a few years, the logging operation moved on.  A number of the houses were moved to Council and set up west of the railroad tracks.  Some of the present houses are remodeled versions of these previously portable homes.

 

4-16-98

            People who have researched history or genealogy know that finding a piece of missing information can be rewarding beyond anything money can buy.  This past week I found a photograph. 

            It was in a photo album that has been within a few miles of me most of my life, but I didn't know it.  It was in an album full of pictures associated with Mesa Orchards that were taken from about 1909 to 1912.  It belonged to Juda P. Gray who was in on the ground floor of Mesa.  Gray was postmaster and ran the store until about 1919.  I understand he gave the album to Florence Brown who gave it to Thurn and Phyllis Woods.  I had seen most of the photos before, but the Woodses were kind enough to let me copy the ones the museum didn't have. 

            Just about all the photos have some kind of caption written on them.  The last photo in the book was captioned "A Valley North of Mesa".  I assumed it was on the Middle Fork somewhere as there were a number of shots of that area.  As I looked at the photo to orient myself as to where along the Middle Fork it might be, I couldn't match any of the landmarks.  I soon noticed a similarity between one of the hills in the background and a hill just north of my house.  I immediately dismissed this crazy idea.  I continued to scrutinized the hills for something matching someplace just north of Mesa.  Suddenly it was as if the picture yelled at me, "THIS IS NEAR FRUITVALE!".  I just about fell over.  I was instantly overwhelmed that I was looking back almost 90 years at a landscape very familiar and yet so different. 

            As I looked at this photo, things fell into place, just where they should be.  There was old Bill Glenn's cabin, up the creek east of the new house that his sons, Ike and Herbie built later.  There was Art Wilkie's Fruitvale Hotel, standing out boldly because no trees stood in the way as they do now.  (It is now Jim and Pam Joslin's house.)  There was the old McMahan school, bright white with a bell steeple at the west end. 

            I had known for years that the original road to Fruitvale went around the foothills southeast of the townsite and then entered the "town" going west by the Fruitvale Hotel.  This photo was taken looking northwest from that road, up the hill east of where Dick and Georgiana Parker live now.  The view is the same one my paternal grandparents would have seen when they came to Fruitvale about that time along that road.  There is not a sign of a road in the picture where the paved one now runs up the bottom of the valley.  It wasn't built until about 1920. 

            I've often thought how fantastic it would be to go back in time and walk the streets of Council or Fruitvale when they were in their infancy.  Pictures like this are the next best thing to a time machine.  I haven't had time to study the photo for more treasures, but you can bet I'll be spending some time with it and a magnifying glass.

            Another thing I get a kick out of is hearing stories about familiar people from the past.  I mentioned in this column once that I was named after Dale Donnelly.  He had a store that sat about where the public restrooms are in Council.  Our unofficial "project inspector" at the museum, Paul Phillips, told Jim Camp and I a story the other day that illustrates how times have changed, but men and women haven't.  Back in the 1920s, the first few radios started showing up in this area.  Very few stations could be received in Council at first.  Around that time, Charlie Roper came into Donnelly's feed store and proudly exclaimed, "I turned on the radio last night and got Denver, Colorado!"   Donnelly replied, "I turned on the radio last night and got hell!"

 

4-23-98

            I recently learned that the old house that used to stand near Don Horton's place on North Hornet used to belong to Clarke Harrington.  Harrington was the first postmaster at this general location which became known as "Dale".  Apparently, Dale was an inexact area, but generally referred to the area along Hornet Creek starting at the mouth of North Hornet and extending up the valley to the Wilkie place at the mouth of Mill Creek.

            The old road up Hornet Creek used to swing north to cross North Hornet Creek above where currently does.  The old route and bridge abutments are still in evidence.

            Before bridges were common on country roads such as this, crossing even small streams like North Hornet could be a hair raising experience during spring runoff.  In the April of 1913, Bert Rose had to cross North Hornet Creek as he came home from Council.  The Adams County Leader reported his experience:

    "When he drove into the creek the current was so strong that the horses and buggy were carried down stream about 300 feet and it was all he could do to save the horses by cutting the tugs and freeing them."

    "The buggy was wrecked, and besides this, he lost his valuable slide trombone, together with a bill of groceries, hardware, etc., which he was taking out to his ranch."

    "Mr. Rose had a desperate struggle with the furious waters even to save his team, and can count himself fortunate, although the loss falls heavy on him."

 

            Not far up Hornet Creek, and to the south, is a tributary named Lakey Creek.  The families of John and Lewis Lakey settled along this tributary of Hornet Creek in 1881.  Some of the Lakeys operated a sawmill here.  At least by 1893, John Lakey had moved to Salubria.

            Lewis and Pheby Lakey, and their nine children, at first lived in a one-room, dirt floor cabin.  Even if they would have had money to buy clothes, there were no stores any closer than Weiser.  Phoebe made pants for the boys out of seamless sacks.  Unable to buy shoes, they often went barefoot, sometimes even in the winter.

            One source says Pheby died in 1904, but a relative of the family sent me information that says she died in 1905.  (I'll have to check her headstone.)  Lewis Lakey died in 1911.  They are both buried in the Hornet Creek cemetery.  The same family source claims that Lewis planted the first orchard on Hornet Creek.

            Speaking of the Hornet Creek Cemetery, my information says that the earliest marked grave there is that of Charles Adams who was interred here in about 1884.  In the following decades, many Hornet Creek pioneers were buried here.

            In the fall of 1922, Hornet Creek residents formed a corporation to "...legally hold in trust the title to the Hornet Creek cemetery, and to procure and hold title to a road leading to the same, and to transact any business...." concerning the cemetery.    Burial plots here are still being sold.

            When I mentioned the first grave at the Hornet Creek Cemetery, I was careful to say the first "marked" grave.  There seem to be unmarked graves in most of the cemeteries in this area.  They were probably marked with some kind of wooden marker at first, and after they deteriorated they were not replaced.  In the case of the Winkler Cemetery, a grass fire went through it in 1914, burning the fence and a number of markers.

            The museum could use some help from a local metal worker.   The last step in completing the addition is a railing along the outside ramp up to the front door.   McAlvain construction will pay for the materials if we can find someone to build it.  If you can help us with this I need to hear from you in just the next few days.  I need to know as soon as possible so we can get this done.  There isn't much time left.  Please call me at 253-4582.

            I heard from Afton Logue Fanger again.  She says she would like to hear from old friends who live in the Council area, or who used to live here.  Her address is Afton Logue Fanger, PO Box 193, Lyle, WA  98635.

 

4-30-98

            I have some partial news about the mystery photo that I put in this column a few weeks ago - the one that looks like a hydroelectric plant.  I sent the picture to the Long Valley Advocate newspaper, and they printed it with my question as to whether it was the old power plant at Cascade.  I got a call from a woman named Nellie (I didn't catch her last name) who said she thought it was the old plant there.  She told me Jim Murphy who spent part of his childhood living in the house at the power plant.  Evidently she also contacted him because Jim called me last weekend.  He said he didn't recognize the plant in the photo, but that it could be the old one that was there before his family came there about 1935. 

            So, the bottom line is that we don't know for sure, but I'm leaning toward believing it's the old power plant that was there before the dam was put in during the 1940s.  Some of you may know even less than I do about that reservoir, so I'll just throw in my two cents worth.  About all I know is that there was a town called Van Wyck that was where the Cascade Reservoir is now.  The town was there at least as early as 1891.  That's fairly early for Long Valley.  It wasn't settled until after this area was.  I once heard that George Gould went up to Long Valley when he first arrived here in the late 1880s, with the idea of maybe settling there.  He took one look at the tell-tale signs of long, hard winters and made a bee line back here to the Cottonwood Creek.

            In July of 1905, the Weiser Semi-Weekly Signal reported that George Shepard had robbed the saloon at Van Wyck.  S.B. Carter and Bona Whiteley had pursued Shepard on horseback and caught him at Midvale.

            That month the Signal also reported that a telephone line was being built from Lardo (McCall) to Van Wyck and from Meadows to Warren.  In October, the Meadows Eagle said a telephone line was proposed to connect with the independent line from Grangeville to Whitebird.  The paper said,  "With the completion of this line, and the line from here to Van Wyck, direct communication will be established between the north and Boise.  At present the citizens of Grangeville, when they desire to talk with Boise, are obliged to talk all over the states of Washington and Oregon and the expense is so great that the luxury may be enjoyed only the rich."  A similar route was necessary for a journey between those points as well, because there was no road between Meadows Valley and Grangeville.

            The town of Van Wyck was obliterated by the waters of the Cascade Reservoir.  I assume the town probably moved to the present site of Cascade.  The old Van Wyck cemetery is located just a mile or two up the east shore of the reservoir from the dam.

            Another bit of Long Valley trivia about Lardo and McCall.  In the earliest days, people simply referred to that area as "Payette Lakes."  Lardo was the next name used, referring to the little settlement just on the west side of the outlet of the main lake, where Lardo's restaurant is now.  About the time the Union Pacific finished its Idaho Northern branch up the Payette River to the lake in 1914, the terminus of the line (on the east side of the river) was called "Lakeport".  It seems to be about then that the town  started being referred to as McCall.

            The completion of the Idaho Northern was a blow to the Pacific and Idaho Northern line up the Weiser River.  The P&IN had received a great deal of business from Long Valley, especially tourist travel to Payette Lakes.  This loss of business to the IN line was partially to blame for the P&IN going into receivership the next year (1915).  The P&IN eventually came out of its financial troubles, but it was touch and go.

            "Receivership" is a term you don't hear or read anymore.  I had to look it up in a dictionary.  Basically it's about the same thing as bankruptcy.  A "receiver" was appointed to manage the affairs of and entity that went into receivership until it could get back on its feet, be reorganized, or sold.

            I'd like to thank York Excavation for donating a yard of sand to the museum.  We're going to be putting a rock face on the new cement work out front, and the sand will be used for mortar.  We won't be getting that done before we open because the brains of the operation (Wallace Atkinson) won't be able to ramrod the project until a little later.

            We will be holding our "Grand Opening" on Saturday, May 23 at 10:00 AM.  That's the first day of Memorial Day weekend which is the day we have chosen to open every year.  We are working on a plan to acquire an employee or two again this year.  If we do, it will be through the Dept. of Health & Welfare's program enabling people to work to earn their check.  This would sure be helpful to us.  We love those of you who generously donate time to host the museum, but you can imagine what a hassle it is to round up enough people and schedule everyone.  We still may have to do that, but I have my fingers crossed for the employee route.

            At any rate, I hope everyone will make a point to visit the museum this summer.  Our fruit industry exhibit is really going to be a good one.  Plus, Evea Harrington Powers's exhibit is a great addition.  We may be even less "finished" than we were last spring when we opened, but you will find the changes interesting and entertaining.

 

5-7-98

            Many of us who have spent time in the mountains have run across metal signs indicating a stock driveway.  Often they have been inscribed (by scratching through the painted layer) with the signatures or comments of passing hunters or sheep herders.  If the inscription is dated, it's interesting to see how many years ago it was written.

            Almost every major divide or long ridge top around here was at one time used as a route over which to move sheep.  Stock driveways have been used for cattle as well, but not nearly to the extent that they have been used for sheep. Stock driveways are not used as much these days, partly because there just aren't as many sheep as there once were in the region.  In 1905, Idaho Magazine said that 200,000 sheep spent the summer in the general Council area. Idaho was fourth in the nation in wool production 

            A second reason stock driveways have fallen into relative disuse is that sheep are most often hauled to grazing areas in trucks anymore.

            I just have to interject a story here to illustrate the difference between sheep and cattle, and why you can't herd cattle like you can sheep.  A few years ago a few of us were moving cattle up to where they were supposed to be along the West Fork of the Weiser.  I started up the road alone, driving more than half a dozen cows with calves, while Dean Harrington went back to bring up the horse trailer.  One by one, a cow would take off into the brush with her calf.  If I spent a few seconds too long getting them back, I would lose some of the others.  I was riding the best cowhorse I'd ever ridden, and had a good dog too, but nothing short of a corral on wheels would have kept them together.  By the time I'd gone a mile or two, I had two pairs left.  They took off up Grouse Creek and dived into the brush at a hard run.    When Dean came around the corner with the pickup and trailer, I was sitting there with a very red face, a horse lathered with sweat, and no cattle.  And people wonder why ranchers can't keep cattle in the areas where they're supposed to be on the Forest.

            One of the biggest stock driveways in this area is the Salmon River Stock Driveway.  It enters the Payette National Forest at the southern boundary on Pine Creek west of Cambridge, and follows the top of Cuddy Mountain north.  It continues north along the divide between the Weiser River and Snake River drainages to a spot near the head of rapid river, where it forks.  One branch of the driveway continues north toward the Seven Devils Mountains, and the other leads down the ridge between Lost Creek and the head of Boulder Creek.  From there, one of its several branches leads to the Little Salmon River.

            The Salmon River Stock Driveway was mostly used to drive sheep to and from summer range.  It has always been the most used stock driveway on the Payette National Forest, and was probably used to move stock through the mountains before the establishment of the Forest Reserves in 1905.  According to government records, when the Forest Service allotted grazing areas to stockmen, "it became necessary to limit sheep trailing to posted and authorized routes.  Between 1919 and 1923, the center line and side boundaries of the main trunk driveways were posted with metal signs, some of which are still in place."  As many as 80,000 sheep traveled this stock driveway onto this forest in the spring.  This caused serious overgrazing along the routes the sheep were driven.  The people who had grazing rights on the land through which the sheep traveled started to be hurt by this, so the Forest Service had to limit the travel of sheep herds to designated stock driveways.                                                       

            There is considerable evidence that the approximate route of the Salmon River Stock Driveway was a well used Indian trail.  Remains of several camp sites have been found along its course.

            A tragedy that occurred in 1901 happened at or near the Salmon River Stock Driveway in the Crooked River area.  On July 10th, an 18 year old boy named Edwin Bantee was herding sheep there.  When he bent over to tend to a lame sheep, his .45 caliber pistol fell out of its holster and went off.  The bullet hit him in the chest, two inches below his heart.  In spite of this serious injury, Edwin walked about a third of a mile back to his camp where someone found him.  The next morning he was carried to the Wilkie Sawmill.  Without the advantages of modern surgery, there wasn't much that could be done for him.  He died at 9:00 that evening of "loss of blood and shock."

            I'd like to make a request.  Several times I've heard about people in other areas who enjoy this column, but who never lived here, or may have never even been here before.  Of course that pleases me, but I make me curious as to why a column about the history of a small corner of Idaho would appeal to them.  I would really like to hear from somebody out there who even occasionally enjoys reading the History Corner, but never lived here.  I would get a kick out of hearing what you like about it.  My address is box 252, Council, ID 83612.  For you cyber-types, I don't have an E-mail address yet, but you can get a message to me through the museum's web page at: www.cyberhighway.net/~jcpeart.  (Of course, I enjoy hearing from anyone who enjoys my column.)

            Remember, the museum will be opening for our 1998 season on May 23 at 10:00 AM.  Come help us celebrate the opening of the new addition and our new exhibits.

 

5-14-98

            You may have noticed an article in this issue about an award I got from the governor.  To say I was surprised is and understatement.  The words "shocked" and "stunned" are inadequate.  I thought I was at that fancy banquet in Boise because my wife, Anna, was supposed to be there for work-related reasons.  You had to be there to understand what I experienced.  It was a first class dinner in the Grove, Boise's newest (and most expensive?) hotel, and the kind of people and organizations who were getting awards weren't exactly nobodies - people like Bethine Church (Senator Frank Church's widow), Channel 7 TV, and "Idaho Wildlife" magazine. 

            The awards ceremony was accompanied by a professionally produced and narrated slide show projected on two huge screens.  The first clue I had to the fact that I was getting an award was when my picture appeared on the giant screens and my name was announced.  I really had to concentrate to get up, walk up to receive the plaque and shake the governor's hand.  As I write this, the photos haven't yet been released, but I hope I was holding the plaque right-side-up.  I was in a daze.

            Please don't take my writing about this in my column as self-aggrandizement.  I'm doing it to share the experience with all of you who have supported the efforts to preserved this area's past.  Nobody accomplishes much alone.  A debt of gratitude is owed to all of you who have given money, time, artifacts, photographs, information or moral support to me, the museum and what we are trying to do.  I especially have to thank Anna for putting up with all the time I spend on history instead of bringing home my share of the bacon.

            Somebody once said, "What good is history? You can't eat it!"  That's not completely true.  People will pay to see interesting historical things, and the museum and local history attracts attention and dollars to Council.  But that's not why I am involved in historical work.  I do it because I love it.  It doesn't help me make a living - quite the opposite - but it sure is part of what makes life worth living.

            Another reason for telling this here is that maybe it will help motivate people to help or keep helping with local historic efforts.  The whole purpose for this column has been to generate support for those efforts.  The only payment I get is people's appreciation and the help they give.  There is an overwhelming amount of work to do, and always too little time and money. 

            The museum has made some pretty big strides in the past two years, but to keep going, we really need your support.  Even though we have pinched pennies and received generous help to push the addition to completion, we have spent just about all the money we raised.  Any monetary help right now would be very welcome. (Council Valley Museum, Box 252, Council, ID 83612)  For every dollar you give the museum (up to $100 total for any year) the State will take half of your donation off your Idaho taxes.

            The museum will open on May 23 at 10:00 AM.  We will be having a grand opening a little later in the season.  Ya'll come see it!

 

5-21-98

            One of the advantages of not being paid to write this column is that I feel I can wander to the edges of the subject of history in what I write.  This issue's column will be a very personal one for me.  Over the past few months my father has had a series of small strokes.  Within the past week he has reached a state of pretty much being in a coma and has very little time left to live.  By the time you read this, he may already be gone.

            Some time back I explained how I use the term "Landmarks" to refer to people who have been there as we grew up, who served as reference points for our lives.  My father was always the biggest Landmark in my life.

            The reason this has anything to do with history is that Dad was the one who inspired my love of local history.  As I grew up, he constantly told fascinating stories of the people who used to live around this area, and about the experiences of his family.  Let me back up and try to put this all in context.

            First, I don't mean to slight my mother's side of the family in writing about my Dad's side.  Mom's great grand parents settled here earlier (about 1900).  Also, I don't mean to portray my ancestors as being early pioneers here.  Even by 1900 this was not the wild West anymore, but it was sure a lot different than it is now.

            My father's father, Edward Fenner Fiske, was born on a horse ranch in Texas as the oldest of eight children.  He was called by his middle name, Fenner.  He didn't get along very well with his parents, and left home to make his own living when he was in his early teens.  For a time, he worked for ranches in Texas.  One time as a messenger, he rode over 100 miles in one day.  Another time he was working on a big wheat ranch and got malaria.  For many days he lay under a wagon drinking the only known cure at that time: quinine water.

            Once he was on his own, Fenner dropped the "e" at the end of Fiske.  He felt it looked too aristocratic and arrogant.  At some point, Fenner acquired the nick name "Jim".  His friends started calling him that because Jim Fisk was an infamous railroad tycoon at the time who was involved in a national corruption scandal.  Fenner hated his real name, and was glad to get the new title.  He went by Jim Fisk, informally, the rest of his life.

            He made his living as a tinsmith for a while, traveling around the country building standpipes, smoke stacks, etc.  In 1900 he worked his way to Nome on a steamship.  This was during the gold rush there, and he told how men jumped off the ship before it docked.  They ran up and down the black-sand beaches expecting to find gold nuggets lying there.

            After a brief stint as a rancher near Sacramento, California, he wound up at a boarding house in Tillamook, Oregon.  There he met and married my grandmother who was from New York.  In a previous column I wrote about their trip from there to here with the Marks family in 1911.

            My grandparents first lived on the place where Eileen Nelson lives on Orchard Road.  In 1912 they homesteaded on Pleasant Ridge, about three miles west of Fruitvale.  Their land was just east the cattle guard where the Ridge road Ts.  The evidently took over the homestead of a man named Albert Lewis, and lived in the house he had built at the head of the small canyon about a half mile southeast of the present cattle guard.  My Uncle Hub was born there just a few days after the Titanic sank in April 1912.  In December, their oldest child, Jim, died from eating the heads off of some matches.  Dad came along on November 11, 1913, then came Sam, Amy (Glenn) and John.

            There were about twenty other families on the Ridge eventually, which is why the Ridge school was built in 1915.  When Dad was pretty young, he, Hub, Sam and Amy set off to school in subzero weather with fog so thick they couldn't see very far.  They left the road because it was so badly drifted with snow, and they walked cross-country toward the school.  As they walked, they got so cold they could barely talk, and they didn't really know where they were.  Suddenly they heard the school bell ring behind them.  They had walked past it.  In another few minutes, they might have died.  They were literally saved by the bell.

            A few years ago Dad and I were looking around up where he was born.  He told me how they used to play out in the lava rocks, placing rows of stones to mark off rooms in imaginary houses.  It was really a pleasant surprise to both of us to find those rocks laying there, just as they had left them some 70 years ago.

            Most people wonder how in the world people made a living on those rocky, dry homesteads.  Well, they had a hard struggle.  And most of them eventually gave up.  My grandfather worked as a road overseer to make ends meet.

            In 1924, Joe Glenn, who lived in the house I how have, offered to sell Grandpa his place.  Grandpa looked at him as if he were crazy and said he could never afford that.  Joe said they could arrange payments in a way that Grandpa could afford it, and they struck a bargain.

            More next week.

            Don't forget the museum is opening this weekend, Saturday, May 23 at 10:00 AM.  It will be open through Labor Day weekend.  Come in and see what's new.

 

5-28-98 Missing

 

6-4-98

Its been awhile since I've looked around the old diggings at the North Hornet Mines. To get there, you turn north off the Council - Cuprum Road just before Summit Creek, before the old Kramer stage station.

As a teenager, a group of us high school guys went hunting up there. I think I went with Ray and David Lakey, Steve Paradis and my brother, Clint. We explored some of the tunnels, shafts, etc. Somehow one of the guys found the entrance to one tunnel by digging down to it where it had caved in. It was only about three feet in diameter. We crawled back into it as far as it went, about a hundred yards if I remember right. There was one shaft about six feet across. We dropped a rock into it, and it was a few seconds before we heard it hit anything. There was no fence or any kind of barrier around it.

I haven't been able to dig up much information about the North Hornet Mines. From old newspaper references, they were apparently looking for gold. The Adams County Leader, Sept 17, 1926 mentions Charlie Allen as foreman of the Glenn Group of mining claims on North Hornet. You may remember that Charlie Allen was the son of Levi Allen who discovered the first copper mine in the Seven Devils.

In 1927 a large diamond drill was brought in with the hope of finding a really large vein of gold, but in January of 1928 the mine closed because Cooley Butler, who owned the mines, was involved in litigation concerning the Red Ledge Mine on Deep Creek. By January of 1928, Charlie Allen was dismantling and removing the machinery.

In June of 1932, Will Freehafer set up a gold ore

mill at North Hornet. By 1935 Freehafer and his partner, John Freeze, had 15 to 20 men working for them there, building a saw mill and several buildings. This activity was probably brought on by an increase in gold prices. That was the reason the Placer Basin mine was reopened about this time. I've never been able to find out if any gold was ever found at North Hornet, but in October of 1936 the Leader reported that the mine was in financial trouble. Twenty­-eight buildings were being sold for delinquent taxes.

This was not the first time Freehafer and Freeze had teamed up to operate a mine, and John Freeze had been digging around the general area for years. The first reference I find to him in my newspaper notes are from the Council Leader for April 11, 1912. It mentioned that John Freeze had a mine near Summit [also known as Kramer]. At the time, he was "...associated with Messers. Clifton and Spoor". The paper later referred to the mine at his Peck Mountain mine, and said it was a promising gold mine. The mine was still in operation in October of 1913, under the name the "Gold Standard".

The next June, the paper said that John Freeze and Frank Peck discovered a rich gold vein one and a half miles north of Hornet Reservoir. This claim, dubbed "Last Chance" by Peck and Freeze, sold for $30,000 in 1922 and the name was changed to “Cuddy Mine.” That mine produced galena (lead ore) and gold for several years. The last time I was up there, the old icehouse was still standing. I wrote a History Corner about the Cuddy Mine a few years ago. The thing that sticks in my memory about it was the God-awful road to it. If

you've ever been up there, or to Hornet Reservoir, you know what I mean.

Very sincere thanks go to several people for making donations to the museum in memory of my dad, Dick Fisk: Bruce and Mary Fewkes, Harold & Rita Balderson, Jerry Balderson and John & Lenis Balderson - Paul and Nita Phillips - Ethel Gossard - Nita McCullough. Thank you to all of you for your generosity and thoughtfulness. Dad would have appreciated how much it will help the museum.

The museum is open six days a week, Tuesday through Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (1:00 to 4:00 on Sundays)

6-11-98

 

I've been going back to the historic places along the Council - Cuprum road whenever I don't have other things to write about. You . may have heard that the Federal government is planning to spend a big chunk of our tax money on improving and paving that road. To me it seems like a pork barrel project that will radically change the character of the area along the road, but that's beside the point here.

In 1896 Frenchy David was quoted in . an area newspaper as saying the road into the Seven Devils mining district, "is the best mountain road almost in the west; ranches all the way into the mines." This statement would be hard for a modern person to swallow because there were few roads in those days that were anything more than a dirt trail with places that would curl the hair of the best teamster.

The beginning of a modern road from Council to Cuprum came in the 1930s after crawler tractors and other heavy equipment became available. About 1937 or 1938 local CCC crews started reconstruction of the road, beginning at the National Forest boundary on Hornet Creek. In 1940 the project was finished except for "surfacing", as far as Rocky Comfort. It followed close to the original wagon road route except for the section along Dick Ross Creek. Here the new road stayed on the east side of the meadow. The old road is still visible at some places, across the clearing to thewest of the present road. A fence runs just next to it. Somewhere along the old road there is said to be the grave of a man named White. Information on who he was, and the location of the grave, have been lost.

Dick Ross, whose name has been given to the creek named above, had a home about a quarter of a mile past the Kramer stage station. Ross was the City Marshal in Council in 1909, and a pair of brass knuckles that he confiscated from a trouble maker is in the Council Valley Museum. Ross lived at this location near Crooked River at least as early as 1904. A 1900 newspaper mentioned that "the Ross Brothers" were issued a liquor license at Summit. This was at the Kramer stage stop. The location was often called Summit since it was near the summit between the Hornet Creek and Crooked River drainages. I'm not sure if Dick Ross was one of the brothers, but it stands to reason. Jim Ross is mentioned a number of times in Seven Devils history, but I'm not sure if he was Dick's brother.

Not far past Dick Ross's place, John and Sarah Clifton ran "a stopping place on the road to the Devils" with "food for man and beast" according to an 1899 newspaper. They had a saloon and store. That December, the Salubria Citizen reported that the Clifton house burned, and that "Lige Caulk, who was tending bar there, was terribly burned about the hands and face trying to extinguish the flames." The next year Cambridge Citizen for June 1, 1900 said John Clifton was putting in a complete blacksmith shop at his place on Crooked river. The paper quoted Clifton as saying there were between 60 and 100 teams using the road, and he felt a blacksmith shop was a necessity. Later that year the Citizen listed "Clifton & Shell" as receiving a liquor license for their establishment on Crooked River.

According to Marguerite Diffendaffer, many times the Cliftons would hear the bells on the hames of the horses coming from a distance, and would get up in the middle of the night to start a fire in the wood stove and cook for the freighters. Much of their work involved milking cows and making large quantities of butter, cottage cheese, buttermilk. They went to town once or twice a year for food staples, otherwise grew their own food on their 350 acres. Mrs. Diffendaffer says the saloon was across the road. Their home burned twice, first from faulty stove pipe, and a second, much better, prettier one was burned when a spark from the chimney landed on the roof. When John tried to rescue a large sack of sugar from the burning house, it melted, dripping onto his back and burning him badly. A third fire got the saloon across the road. The grinding wheel in his blacksmith shop was powered by a water wheel in Crooked River. The Cliftons eventually moved to California to get away from cold winters.

One thing that makes me curious is that Ms. Diffendaffer mentions a school that was built about a half mile north of the Clifton's house. I've never run across any other information about it. Can anybody out there help me with that?

I would like to thank more people who sent donations to the museum in memory of my father, Dick Fisk: Mary Owens, Gerry & Mary Lou O'Day, Barb & Brian McLaughlin, LaDell & Margaret Merk, Frank & Betty Smith. Your help and thoughtfulness are very much appreciated.

 

June 18, 1998

Lately some of the museum's business has revolved around ^-cemeteries. First, the Hornet Creek Cemetery gave us the iron fencing that used to be around one of the old graves years ago. We are going to use it as part of our outside ramp railing. It is really nice old iron work that would cost a fortune nowadays. We owe a debt of gratitude to the people in charge of the cemetery. This really helps. We were scratching our heads wondering just how to make the railing without spending a lot, and this is just the perfect answer!

There are two projects that a couple of the museum people are working on that are going to be very useful. Kathy Norton is helping with putting the available census records into a computer database. She has the 1880 census done, and available on the'internet. (You can access it through our museum web site: www.cyberhighway. net / -jcp eart.) She also has the 1920 census done, and is double checking it. Eventually all the Idaho census records that are on microfilm will be available via the internet or on disk.

Gayle Dixon is organizing a database with all the names of people buried in Adams County. This is in cooperation with the Idaho Historical Society. There are nine "organized" cemeteries in the county: Bear, Cuprum, Cottonwood, Indian Valley, Kesler, Winkler, IOOF, Meadows and Hornet Creek. From what I can gather, the records of whose grave is where have become a bit scrambled, but Gayle and Don Horton are working on getting things as organized as humanly possible.

One thing that Don told me makes it understandable how the • Hornet Creek cemetery got some graves "misplaced". I guess at some point, the cemetery grounds were plowed, worked down and reseeded in order to get the nice lawn that covers it now. During this process, some grave markers were misplaced or maybe lost. I would assume

that is was during this project that the iron fencing that we were given was removed.

 

 

 

Gayle is recording burials outside of the cemeteries, and she would like any help you readers can render. The following is a list of all the graves that she knows of in Adams County outside of the nine cemeteries. She has dates on most of them, except where noted. If you have any information as to any graves not listed, please contact Gayle at 253- 4765 or E-mail at dxgr@juno.com or write to Box 252 Council, ID 83612. Also, if you can answer the questions we have written with the list, please let her know.

Near Fort Hall Hill: Charles A. Webb - Patrick Arthur Pederson - Ron Myrmel - John Luke Knickerbacker - Martha Denny Crouch.

Middle Fork: Joseph Arbuckle - Arbuckle - Marguritte Arbuckle

Hornet Creek: Harry R. Black - Ralph Black

No Business Canyon, Wildhorse: Grant Blew - Brown (baby)

Wildhorse: Willard F. Smith - Charles E. Rogers - Richard H. Rogers - Frank Whitcraft - Lloyd Hemenger. Hemenger's grave was reportedly disturbed by flood waters, but we don't know if the remains were reinterred near the original location or even where that location is or was.

Fruitvale: Burt (baby boy, son of Wm. Burt - when? where is the grave?)

Goodrich: Orvel John Button - Riggs (baby) - Smith (baby) I understand

that these graves may be in the middle of a field now, and the exact location has been lost?

Near Lost Valley: Tom Cleggette

Crooked River: Davis (baby), White (first name and exact location unknown)

Big Bar on Snake River: John Eckles - Archibald Richie (anybody know the date he died? I think it's on his marker.)

Bear: Pete Galligar

Pollock Mt. : Unidentified Indian

Indian Valley: Lay (baby girl, daughter of John Lay) The grave is said to be on the family's ranch in Indian Valley, but no location is listed. Does anybody know where it is?

Glendale: Richard Olsen

Mesa: Moore child or children - we need names and dates

I thought that Jim Summer's grave on Cuddy Mountain would go on this list, but it is just south of the Adams County line in Washington County, believe it or not.

Hey! I have an E-mail address now. If you would like to drop me a line, I'm at dalefisk@juno.com.

Thank yous go to Bob & Ilene Whiteman, and Roger & Marcy Combs for donations to the museum in memory of my dad, Dick Fisk. Frank & Betty Smith sent a donation in memory of Dad and in memory of Irene Draper. Your help and thoughtfulness are really appreciated.

 

 

June 25, 1998 Missing

 

 

 

7-2-98  

In the photo albums that Harold Smith loaned the museum, some of the pic­tures are identified and some aren't. The pictures shown here are identified, hopefully correctly. The first is identified as Amos Warner. I've been told some of the family may not know about this picture. The best one l;Heidi Bigler Cole was able to find of him for her book, "A Wild Cowboy", was very blurred, reportedly in an attempt to obscure the fact that he smoked a pipe.

The other photo here shows a group of students at the Bear school on the last day of school: April 25, 1913. On the back of the photos is written the name "Mary Gaarden". I'm not sure if she is in the picture or if that means it was her photo. The man in the pic­ture must be the teacher, W.H. Grant, who is listed as the teacher in 1912 and 1913.

Mary Gaarden had been one of ten students who graduated from the eighth grade at the Bear school in 1912. The other graduates were: Joel Mackey, Ruth Mackey, Clyde Mackey, Arthur Robertson, Dopha Barton, Edith Shelton, Bergie Robertson, Vivian Robertson and Lottie Smith. That was the largest group of eighth grade graduate's anywhere in Adams County. County-wide there were 56 eighth grade graduates that year. In July of 1914, the Council Leader said that Pete Gaarden's daughter, Mary, taught in Adams Coun­ty. "last year and it is claimed she was the young­est teacher in Idaho."

In 1915 Mary attended classes at the State normal school at Albion, Idaho. Don't ask me why schools for teachers were (are?) called "normal" schools.

Mary's father, Pete Gaar­den was a miner in the area. An immigrant from Denmark (like his neighbor, stage line owner, Pete Kramer) Gaarden came to the U.S. in 1882 to mine in Missouri and Colorado. He came Sil­ver City, Idaho in 1890, then to Bear in 1895 at the age of 35. One of his princi­pal claims seems to have been in Deep Creek, and there is (or was) a trail down that drainage named after him. Pete Gaarden was road overseer in the Bear district in 1927. The next year (1928), the family's home in Beat burned down, and the next year (1929) Gaarden died on April 6 at the age of 69 years plus one day. He left behind a wife and three daughters. He is buried in the Bear Cemetery.

The girl at the lower right of the photo, with only part of her face showing, looks like Lois Smith. She had very long, beautiful hair, which was put up in this photo.

In J.D. Neale's 1912 report, he said:

"This is one of the districts which are found up among the pines, has daily mail service, telephones, much rich farming land, good roads, maintains a full term of school, pays well for the service of the teacher; has a splendid literary organization, uses the school house as a community Center where social gatherings, and church services are held, has the loyal support of the entire population of the district, and is planning for a Rural High school building and full High School privileges for all grammar school graduates."

"The teacher organized a High School where a splen­did year of High School work was accomplished. The trustees work well together, the patrons take a great interest and the pupils cheerfully travel a number of miles in some cases, to be present each day."

I'd like to thank John & Colleen Spalding and Vern and Vi Ward for donations to the Museum in Dad's memory. It really is appreci­ated.

"Teacher's salary—$70.00 (per month for 8 mos.] Mr. Grant has been employed to teach the com­ing term at $90.00 per month." "Trustees... Arthur V. Robertson, Thomas Mackey, David Milne. Aver­age attendance ... 14."

Remember the Museum's Grand Opening on the 4th at 10:00. I'll be giving his­torical tours of downtown every hour, on the hour, from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The Museum's regular hours are Tues - Sat. 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m, and Sun­days 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. We're still looking for a good vacuum cleaner that someone could donate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7-9-98

To say the least, the 4th of July was a success for the Museum. I've never seen so many people in that place! According to the guest book, 228 people came in on the 4th and 34 the next day. We received tons of compli­ments on what a nice museum we have. The his­toric tours weren't in big demand, but the people who went enjoyed them. If you are interested in the tour brochure, you can get them at the Museum. They have a map and photos, so you can take a self-guided tour. We were giving the brochures away during the weekend of the 4th, but we will be charging a dollar each from now on to cover our printing costs.

Our Grand Opening "ceremony" was very short and to the point. I'm not too big on ceremonies, but I wanted to mark the occasion in some way. I got so busy putting the new railing up on the outside ramp and getting the tour brochure done that I didn't have the energy to plan anything very organized. Mostly what we did was cut a ribbon. We used the big wooden scis­sors (about 3 feet long) that were used in a ceremony to open the new highway over Mesa Hill in 1975.

If you haven't seen our new railing outside the Museum, it really looks great. The old, ornamental-iron grave fencing is just perfect for our museum railing. You should have seen it before Roy Mocaby and I started working on it. Six of the sec­tions had been made into a rock jack at the corner of the Hornet Creek Cemetery property years ago. They had been formed into a tri­angle and filled with rocks. They were sitting in the middle of a jungle of that brush, and thorn brush a couple inches thick had grown up through them. After about an hour of chainsaw work and lifting rocks out, I got them out and hauled them to Roy's shop. He spent about eight hours just dismantling, straighten­ing and repairing the six "posts". Some of the sections had moss and lichen grow­ing all over them. It all had to be sandblasted. At the moment, the railing still has some places that need to be hammered into shape, and we're going to paint it black, but it looks good. Roy brought his cutting torch and portable welder down on the 2nd and we worked the whole day putting it up. I'll tell you what, Roy is a good welder! When we got done, we talked about how much that railing would have cost if we had to buy it new and have it installed - that is if we could find mate­rial like that nowadays. It surely would have to have been in the thousands.

I need to thank Doug McAIvain for the material for the hand rail we put along the old railing. Doug and Serena have been very good to the Museum. Next time you see them, tell them you appreci­ate it.

Another person that needs to be thanked for a repair at the Museum is Rich Klein. He put cane in the seat of the old wheel chair. Thanks Rich, it really looks good! Another contribution to the Museum was made by Anna Kamerdula. She gave us the blueprints from when the Fruitvale school was built in1928.

The children of early resi­dents of Fruitvale had to walk all the way the to White school, three miles north of Council, on the northeast corner of present-day high­way 95 and Lappin Lane. About the time that the Fruitvale townsite was established in 1909, Fruit­vale built its own school on land donated by Isaac and Lucy McMahan. This was about a half mile south west of Fruitvale. The "McMahan" school, as it was called, was very up to date, being a frame structure set on a cement foundation. It meas­ured 24 X 36 feet. By 1911 there were 40 pupils enrolled.

During school hours, a barn was provided at the McMahan school in which to keep and feed the horses that students rode to school from more distant points. The school board provided the hay. The teachers also sometimes rode horses to school.

The McMahan school house was in use up until the end of 1928, when a new school was built just up the hill, east of the Fruitvale store. For the next year the old school building was regularly used for dances until it was auctioned off to Lester McMahan for $80. About three years later the old building fell in under the weight of heavy snow and rain. Lester said he had planned to tear down "the old shack" anyway. When Isaac and Lucy McMahan moved back to Fruitvale from Portland in 1934, their sons built a little house for them to live in on the old school's foundation.

Classes started in the new Fruitvale school after Christmas vacation ended in January of 1929. One not­able luxury came to the school in 1945 when a new well was drilled. The water was pumped with an electric pump since Fruitvale now had electricity. Up until this time, water had been carried to the school from the store.

When area schools began .to consolidate in the late 1950s, the Fruitvale school was closed, and children from the area were bused to Council. Marvin and Lillian Imler converted the school into a home which is still in part-time use at this writing.

The older photo shown here is the one of Fruitvale I wrote about a few weeks

ago. I think it was taken about 1910 - 1912 or so. It was taken looking northwest at Fruitvale from the old, pre-1920 road to Fruitvale that ran east of Dick Park­er's house, along the hill­side. You can still see the old road from the Fruitvale-­Glendale road. The Parker's house is just to the left of the area shown in this pho­to. Unfortunately the build­ings in the picture are so small they are hard to see, especially printed in a newspaper. Building # 1 is the McMahan school; #2 is a small, log building that is still standing in exactly the same place today. Just to the left of it is Bill Glenn's house. Its hard to see. There is a big barn today where the hay stacks are in the pbnoto, to the left of the glenn house; #3 is where Jim & Pam Joslin live now. It was a hotel run by Art Wilkie at the time.

          Just above #4 there is a light strip running left to right and curving up as it goes to the right. That’s the railroad. Vern & Teresa Ludwig’s house now sits just above the #4 in that dark­colored field.

The newer photo is taken from the same place this spring. The numbers corre­spond to the same places and buildings. The white building just under #5 in the present-day photo is the school built in 1928. You might notice there are more trees now, both on the hills and in the valley. On the hills, that's because there were more fires in the old days.

I'd like to thank Jim and Laura Camp for their dona­tion to the Museum in mem­ory of my dad.

 

July 16, 1998

Well, that was a mistake. Last week's attempt to put in those photos of Fruitvale' didn't work too well. You really could see the build­ings and numbers in the original photos, but by the time they got printed it was another story.

The reason I've been put­ting in more pictures lately is because I bought a scan­ner and printer for my com­puter. Neither one of them were expensive, but they do a pretty good job. For the newspaper, I just scan in the photos (and number anything that needs it), save it on a floppy disk and give the disk to the gang at the paper, along with my col­umn (which is also on disk). I'll be putting in more pic­tures. Hopefully they will look better as I learn what works.

When I gave the historical tours of downtown over the 4th, I learned something interesting. I was asked about whether there was ever actually a bowling alley in Council, and the people on the tour had the story. In the 1940s there was a three-lane alley set up in the vacant lot now occupied by the Longbranch Saloon between Marvin's Cafe (now the Seven Devils Cafe) and the drug store (now Bear Country Books). It was an outdoor affair with no roof over it. Alvin Shaw used to set up the pins when he was a young man. He said the balls were not much bigger than a soft ball and had no finger holes. This set-up was later moved to the building now occupied by the west end of Shavers (then the Merit Store). I've been told the building was built as a bowling alley, but I'm not sure about that. Can anybody fill me in on that?

The place was called the "Sugar Bowl" and was run by Bob Dagger and Tom McCord and their wives. They also sold hamburgers, etc. This location was taken over by Idaho First National Bank' in 1951. (The bank was at that location until the present bank was built in 1971.) When the bank moved in, the Leader said they were moving into the "Merit Store annex", so ^.maybe the store had the building built?

On Saturday, I got a fantas­tic phone call. Beth Van Hoesen called from McCall

to tell me she was up there from San Francisco and that she had a video version of her parent's home movie footage taken between 1928 and the early 1930s. I drove up to meet her and Phil Soulen's daughter, Teresa, at Shore Lodge. (Phil Soulen and Beth Van Hoesen are first cousins.) To refresh your memory, Beth's par­ents were Enderse and Freda Van Hoesen who helped operate Mesa Orchards until the mid 1930s. I got to take the video home and copy it for the Museum.

When I got the video home and looked at it, I wasn't disappointed. Scenes shown: the dam at Lost Lake before and after it was raised - the dam being raised, using horse teams and fresnoes - an old cabin at the edge of the lake (could it be one of the Ryan brother's homestead cabins?) - a pan of the Mesa Orchards at their peak (really amazing!) - the Mesa tram being loaded and in operation - people picking fruit (the trees are barely tall enough to need a lad­der) - a team and wagon picking up boxes of apples and pears in the orchards - an early crawler tractor pulling a ripper between the "rows of trees - old. Fordson tractors and horse teams pulling plows and disks between the trees - the nice homes that once stood in a row at Mesa, with immacu­late yards and landscaping.

The smelter smokestack at Landore with a pan of the framework of the smelter beside it as well as what was left at Landore at the time - Mr. and Mrs. Stephans in front of their "Stephan's Hotel" in Cuprum (late 1920s, later bought by Darlands).

What price can you put on such a wonderful gift? It's like someone giving you a magical keyhole through which to see a glimpse of another world - the world that once existed right here where we live.

I'd like to thank Bonnie Wininger for a donation to the Museum in memory of my dad, Dick Fisk. It is very much appreciated.

 

 

 

 

July 23, 1998

            A few weeks ago I wrote about the Crooked River area and the school there. Let's go on up the road.

            W.S. Rooker, a former business man and Wild Horse rancher , built a mill at what was referred to as Crooked River in 1926. It was actually on Dick Ross Creek, a branch of Crooked River. It was not far to the west of the where the Council - Cuprum road is today, and may have been quite close to the old road. Rooker's logging crews and mill workers lived in tents until the mill was running and could provide lumber. Then "lumber jack shacks" were built all over the flat. The mill employed more than 30 men until it burned down in the fall of 1935. I mentioned some time ago that this is where my maternal grandmother, Mae Baker, met my grandfather, Russell Merk. She was cooking there, and he was doing carpentry work.

            The summer before Rooker's mill burned, a notorious accident happened here. Frank Fanning, who was about 75 years old, was working underneath the mill, probably cleaning out sawdust and pieces of slab wood that had accumulated under the saw. Not realizing he was so near the whirling circular saw above him, he stood up right underneath it. Blood and hair sprayed the air as the saw cut through Frank's skull and into his brain cavity. Miraculously, he was not killed. In fact the next week Dr. Thurston announced that, aside from having a metal plate where part of his skull used to be, Fanning would be "normal again after a few weeks." Frank lived another 22 years, dying in a Weiser nursing home in 1957.

            Lafferty Campground is hard to miss along the Council - Cuprum road. It's a pretty nice

campground, with toilets and drinking water facilities, and camping spots with fire pits. It fills to the brim during deer, elk and turkey hunting seasons. The Campground is named after J. B. Lafferty, the first Forest Supervisor (Ranger) of what is now the Payette National Forest. Lafferty was appointed to the newly created Weiser National Forest in the spring of 1906. His salary was $1,000 per year.

            When Lafferty set up his office in Weiser in 1906, he had no employees, and was in charge of an area that was huge, even by modern standards. He said: "During the field season the average ranger put in something like eight hours twice a day." "Trips that can now be made in an hour or two then took several days of hard riding on horseback. When a supervisor left his office, he never knew just when he might return. It was this uncertainty that was responsible for the custom adopted in some offices of kissing the clerk every time one left the office."

            Lafferty would often travel the expanse of his district on a bicycle. Shortly after his appointment in 1906, the Weiser Signal reported that he ". . .made the 75 mile trip from Pine to Boise between early in the morning and noon on his bicycle.

            In Ivan Doig's book English Creek, which chronicles the fictional story a Forest Service family in western Montana in the 1930s, the main character, Jick McGaskill has this to say about men such asLafferty:

            "In any Forest Service family such as ours, lore of setting up the national forests, of the boundary examiners who established them onto the maps of America as public preserves, was almost holy writ. I could remember time upon time of hearing my father and the other Forest Service men of his age mention those original rangers and supervisors, the ones who were sent out in the first years of the century with not much more than the legal description of a million or so acres and orders to transform them into a national forest." "... the tales of them still circulated, refreshed by the comments of the younger rangers wondering how they'd managed to do all they had. Famous, famous guys. Sort of combinations of Old Testament prophets and mountain men, rolled into one."

            J.B. Lafferty served as Forest Supervisor until 1920. After being in private business for several years, he became a CCC camp superintendent in 1933. During the period from 1941 to about 1950, he worked intermittently as a seasonal Forest Service employee. Lyle J. Watts, who succeeded Lafferty as Supervisor of the Weiser Forest, later became chief of the Forest Service in Washington, D.C.

            I understand that Lafferty's son, George, is about 80 years old and lives in Boise. Maybe we can get a photo or two from him.

            In 1944 and 1947, the location of the present campground was used as a camp site by the Forest Service timber sale crew while the Boise-Payette Lumber Company was logging in the area. Forester Dave Arrivee persuaded the Company not to cut the trees at this camp area. Lafferty was staying at this camp during this time.

            The Adams County Leader for Aug 20, 1948 reported that there was some work being done on this campground. It was fenced and two additional fireplaces were built. The paper said, "The old buildings maintained by the brush camp eventually, will be removed ..." and reported that Gordon McGregor consented to leave the big pine trees when he logged here so long as the place was to be a public camp grounds.

            Lafferty and his good friend, Ellis Snow, were very interested in preserving the site as a campground, and they urged local organizations to buy the land for that purpose. Later that year the Council X Club, the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, and the Weiser Kiwanis Club pooled their resources, and purchased 15 acres here for $150. These organizations did some development, and installed tables and a toilet. Ellis Snow persuaded them to name the camp after Mr. Lafferty. The paper said, "Since the park has been improved, it has been a busy place most every week...."

            In 1966 the land was donated to the Payette National Forest, and a new campground was finished by the next year. On August 6, 1967, dedication ceremonies were held here.

            I would like to thank the Quilt Show Committee for a very generous donation to the Museum. We really appreciate their continued support!

            I would also like to thank Amy Glenn for her donation to the Museum in memory of Amine Nichols.  Another big thank you goes to Roger and Pete Swanstrom and Barbara (Swanstrom) Samulski for a very generous donation. You may recall that their mother, Lillian Swanstrom died not long ago. Roger wrote, "Recently my brother, sister and I learned that a small office account our father had at the Council bank at the time of his death in 1976 was overlooked; eventually it ended up with the Unclaimed Property Division of the Idaho State Tax Commission. Because our mother died before we learned of the account, we were entitled to make a claim for it. However, the three of us decided that the appropriate use of this "windfall" should be for some community purpose at Council. We thought the money should go to the Council Museum because of the dedicated effort of people like you who are determined ton have an outstanding museum."

 

 

History Corner 30 July 1998

            This week I'll try to catch up on items donated to the museum lately. I should have been doing this all along, and haven't, so I may forget to thank people here that I should. I hope they will forgive me.

            The most recent donation was made by Betty Thomason. She had two bowling balls and one pin from the bowling alley I wrote about a couple weeks ago. The pin is about ten inches tall and looks kind of fat, with a small bottom end. The balls are black, about five inches in diameter, and are Brunswick brand. I would guess they are probably collectors items. I wanted to get them on display at the Museum, but didn't have a good, safe place to put them, plus I didn't have time to make a sign the day I was working there. Until we get them on exhibit, they are in the "office". Ask whoever is hosting the Museum to show them to you if you would like to see them. Betty also donated an old cash register that was in the Shabby Shop when she moved in there, and an adding machine that Sy Winkler used in the old Merit Store.

            Another exciting donation was from Shirley Glemser who brought in a blueprint / map of the water system at Mesa Orchards. It shows all the irrigation pipes, their sizes and where they ran. It's amazing how extensive that system was! This is another item we don't have out yet, but plan to as soon as possible.

            Helen Lortz donated a medical bag full of old veterinary equipment that was in one of the buildings at Starkey when they bought the place. I have never heard of a vet who was associated with Starkey. I have to wonder if Dr. Brown did some work on animals, as there may not have been a veterinarian in this area. If anyone has a clue about this, please let me know.

            Nancy Thompson donated an old map of Idaho. We don't know exactly how old yet. Speaking of maps, Barry McDaniels donated the big railroad map that's on the Museum wall over the ramp.

            Lavonna Rudger gave us a unique, old mortar and pestle set that came from a yard sale at Dr. Gerber's. Jess Hulit brought us a box full of old sheet music and song books from way back. I haven't had time to look through them, so I can't tell you about the treasures that may be in that box.

            Dave Yost gave us a whole bunch of "picking cards" for lack of a better name, from Mesa Orchards. They were the cards that were punched with the number of baskets or boxes of apples someone picked.

            I would like to thank all the people who have donated or loaned things to the Museum. It's this kind of generosity that makes our little museum grow and improve so that we can all be proud of it.  I would also like to thank Mary Owens for money donated in memory of Ivan Moser. It seems appropriate to remember those we've lost by contributing to an effort to preserve the memories of our community.

            I know there are people who donated or loaned things, and I've neglected to thank them. It's not because your help was not appreciated. There is always too much to do and too little time.

            On the subject of donations, people sometimes wonder why the item they donated hasn't been put on display. First, because of limited space, time and money, everything the Museum has can not be exhibited at once. We have some very interesting items that are in storage right now, but it's not because the item isn't valued. It takes a lot of time and work to display things. It's not easy figuring out what story is most important to tell, and what items are available to illustrate that story. As the Museum fills up, any new items put on exhibit will push another item into storage, so we'll have to decide what gets put away. Then there's planning a way to display items in the available space, designing an enclosure and building it, researching and writing labels, etc. All this is done by a very few volunteers with very limited time. If you would like to help with this, you are more than welcome.

            A fair question is, "What's the use of having artifacts if you don't display them?" First the item is, hopefully, safer in a museum where they can be properly stored. Second, the item is in a place where people can come to study the item and get information. One of the basic functions of a museum is to educate. Almost anything in your museum is available for you to examine and study as long as it is done without harming it. Third, any item we have will probably be exhibited at some point. We plan to change exhibits from time to time so that you have something new and interesting to see.

            One thing I hate to do is turn down items that someone wants to donate. Sometimes the item doesn't help say anything about our history, but most often we just don't have anyplace to put it. We have a very limited amount of storage and exhibit space, especially for larger things. We have told the City that if the city shop moves to the old Boise Cascade shop we could sure use some of the bottom floor of the museum / shop building. We're keeping our fingers crossed on that.

 

6 August 1998

            A while back I mentioned the place that some people called "Old Davis", where the road to Wildhorse leaves the Council - Cuprum road. "Wildhorse" refers to the area along the Wildhorse River. The Wildhorse is formed by the conjunction of Lick Creek, Bear Creek and Crooked River. It runs south, almost the opposite direction of Crooked River, just over the ridge to the east. Wildhorse enters the Snake River just below Brownlee Dam. The road from the Council - Cuprum Road goes down the Wildhorse a long way, but you can't drive on through to the Snake River. The one thing Wildhorse is most known for is rattlesnakes. If you spend much time there, it's not a question of whether you see them, but how many.

            Before many people had settled in this area, John McMullough pastured his horses in this canyon. Because of the steep, irregular terrain, the horses could not always be rounded up when needed. Due to the low elevation, the winters here were relatively mild, and the horses were able to roam the canyon year around, and the ones that escaped capture for very long became very wild. That's the origin of the name "Wildhorse". Historian, Frank Harris, said, "These animals ran there for several years until they were killed off by prospectors who didn't want their saddle and pack animals to acquire bad habits by association."

            There is a limited amount of farm ground in Widlhorse Canyon, which attracted a few early homesteaders. Legend has it that, before a road was built into this inaccessible canyon, the first settlers had to let their wagons down over steep drop-offs by means of ropes.

            A post office was established here in 1907. It consisted mostly of a box kept by whomever was Postmaster. The box had pigeon holes for the mail, and a lid with a padlock. The office was discontinued in 1952.  At its peak, in the 1930s, Wildhorse Canyon was home to seventeen families. A school existed here before 1912, but a new and larger building was constructed about that year. It had six students at that time. It closed in 1946.

            An unexplained alteration of the climate in Wildhorse Canyon seems to have taken place since the old days. There is more snow and colder temperatures in the last few decades. One theory as to why this occurred says that since the dams on the Snake were built in the late 1950s and early 1960s, they seem to have effected the winter climate in the canyon, perhaps by changing the temperature of the air currents from the Snake River canyon.

            I'd like to thank Margaret and LaDell Merk for donating an old miner's lantern and a black powder, post-splitting wedge to the Museum. I've only seen one or two of these wedges, but they are pretty interesting. They were used to split logs for posts, and I suppose sometime wood. The hollow metal wedge was filled with black powder and driven into the end grain of the log (maybe not in that order?). The wedge had a hole in the side for a fuse. I'm not sure if a cap was needed. The force of the blast was forced down into the log, splitting it. If anyone can fill in some of my knowledge about these wedges, give me a call would you?

            I'm hoping that someone can identify the sawmills in the two pictures here. They were taken in about the 1930s or '40s I think, by a Forest Service employee. The one in the closer view may have been somewhere in the Bear or Cuprum area. The other one is a total mystery. I'm hoping they turn out well enough when printed in the paper that you can make them out.

            If you have any info on these photos or can add to what I know about black powder splitting wedges, please contact me at 253-4582 or Box 252 Council, or dalefisk@juno.com.

 

8-13-98

Started story of Nez Perce War. Edgar Hall brings word to Council Valley.

 

History Corner 20 August 1998

            Before I return to the Nez Perce War story, I need to catch up on some things from previous columns.

            First, I'm told the sawmill in the lower photo that I put in a couple weeks ago looks like the Turnipseed mill that once was up Mill Creek quite a ways. I only heard from one person. If anyone else has information, please let me know.

            Lynn Pearson filled me in on black powder wedges like the one the Merks donated to the Museum. Lynn helped a man use one when he was just a youngster. They used one to split logs before cutting them to length on a buzz saw. The logs were not more than about a foot in diameter, were about five feet long, and were generally not split more than once to make two halves. The logs were split lying horizontally on the ground. The wedge was "filled" with black powder (Lynn wasn't in charge of this and didn't know how much the man used), then it was driven into the log at least two inches or so. No blasting cap was required, so about four inches of fuse was shoved into the hole in the side of the wedge. The fuse was lit, and when the charge went off the wedge flew twenty feet or so and hit the ground pretty hard. You didn't want to be standing in its path. The log generally popped open the full length, and required no further work to separate the halves.

            The string of violent events that led to the Nez Perce War had begun in the spring of 1877. The government had finally decided it was ready to back its repeated orders for the Wallowa band of Nez Perces to report to the reservation. The Indians submitted and moved in the direction of the reservation, but disaster ensued. While the main group of Nez Perce was camped near the town of Mount Idaho, near present-day Grangeville, some resentful young warriors left the main group, and settled old scores by killing white settlers along the Salmon River. The first murder happened not far north of the present town of Riggins. Things snowballed until 14 whites were dead and the situation was completely out of control.

            When Edgar Hall arrived at Indian Valley on the morning of June 18th with news of the initial massacre, his father, Solon Hall, immediately wrote a letter for Edgar to take to Milton Kelly and the Governor. This was the same day Kelly arrived at Salubria, 12 miles away. It would appear that, when he wrote this letter, Solon had no knowledge of Kelly's arrival with guns:

 

Indian Valley, June 18, 1877

Hon. Milton Kelly

 

Dear Sir:

            The Indians have broken out on Salmon river and have killed fourteen men. We are looking for trouble here every minute. If you can assist us in getting something to protect ourselves with you will do us a great favor. We send a petition to the Governor for arms and ammunition; and if we can get them, please send them to Crystal Springs by stage or some other same conveyance. If the Governor asks security send word and I will be responsible. Please go with my son to the Governor. Edgar (the expressman) got to Warrens Saturday night, and started back the same night and came here in 24 hours from Warrens - getting in two days ahead of time. The Postmaster at Washington (Warrens) advised him to get back as soon as possible, as he feared that the Indians would cut him (Edgar) off the trail. My son, the bearer, will give you all the particulars as nearly as I could. Please do for us all that you can, and oblige.

 

Yours, &c.,

Solon Hall"

 

Continued next week.

 

History Corner 27 August 1998

            Continuing with the story of the Nez Perce War.

            After his arrival at Salubria, Milton Kelly wrote this letter:

            "Salubria, June 20th

            I reached here the next night after leaving Boise City, with guns and ammunition all right. Twelve men came up with me from the Lower Weiser and from Mann's Creek. No one had heard of the Indian outbreak. The news created great excitement here and all along the road. I was only twenty-six hours to this place, 110 miles from Boise City. The families on this, the west side of the Middle Weiser Valley, gathered in here to Abernathy's place, Salubria last night; and the men brought all the arms they had - which were not many - and remained here, keeping a guard out all night. The arms I brought were badly needed - especially the ammunition. A company of twenty-five men will be organized here to-day [sic] under Captain John Sailing, and scour around the outskirts of this and Indian Valleys to-day, hoping that Major Collins and command will be here to-night. The families on the east side of this valley, and those in Indian Valley, got together at Wilkins' place."

            Major Collins was the commander at Fort Boise. "Wilkins' place" should have read "Wilkerson's", although the Indian Valley gathering point was actually at William Munday's house. The settlers from Indian Valley and Council (about ninety men, and fifty women and children) had first gathered at Solon Hall's house. That night (June 19), guards were posted in case of attack. One of the group later recalled, "They put out guards, but forgot to give the first lot out any cartridges, and they stood guard for about four hours with empty guns, and were so rattled (I guess that is the right name for it) they did not think anything about it until when the relief came they asked for the cartridges."

            The next morning it was decided there was too much brush near Solon Hall's house, and the settlers moved to William Munday's place. Munday was the Postmaster at Indian Valley, and the post office was undoubtedly in his home.

            That day, June 20, would prove to be an eventful day. After writing his letter that morning, Milton Kelly accompanied twenty armed, mounted men to Indian Valley under the leadership of John Sailing and William Allison. Meanwhile, the first few families moving from the gathering place at Solon Hall's had reached William Monday's farm. As they were settling in, someone looked down the valley toward Salubria and saw armed riders coming. Adrenaline pumped through every vein as the men grabbed their guns and ran to the fence in front of Munday's house. One of the group recalled, "We were sure they were Indians. We supposed they had passed through the hills and taken Salubria and a band of them were coming up there to take us too, and no one knew how many there were behind."

            Milton Kelly and the volunteers from Salubria who were coming to aid the settlers had no idea they were causing such panic as they rode up the valley. The new guns they carried flashed in the sunlight and made them look very formidable to the people huddled near Munday's house. Id Hitt remembered the incident clearly. She said, "The women and children ran in to the house, all but I. I caught up my little cousin, and hid behind a bush with the intention when firing began I would run to the trees along the stream and follow down it, which I believe yet would have saved us."

            One of the settlers named Alex later wrote:

            The house where we were was at the upper end of a lane leading from the road, and another house, Billy McCullough's, was at the lower end of the land, close to the road, so this handful of men determined to meet them at the foot of the lane and keep as many as possible from coming up to the house. The nine - no, only eight, as there was one coward among them; he wouldn't go. Mrs. Mc. said to him 'Why don't you go?' 'I ain't any gun.' 'Take the ax that's good for one.' But no, he wouldn't go but got in the house among the women, worse frightened than any of them. The eight crept down through the tall rye grass. As they were going, Tom Price said, 'Boys, every feller pick his man; that __ on the big brown horse is mine,' and they did. Each on had his man picked, and the only thing that saved them was that something got wrong with one of the saddles and they all stopped while the rider fixed it. They happened to be just on the other side of the house, so our men couldn't see them, and they thought they were preparing for a rush. But fortunately for them, when they started up again they saw two men coming down the road from Mr. Hall's and rode on up to meet them instead of going up the lane. When they saw the eight men with guns come out into the road it was their turn to be frightened, as they saw how near they had some of them come to being shot.

            Ida Hitt said from where she was hiding she heard William Munday shout, "You better throw up your hands, you damn sons of bitches!" Fortunately the settlers recognized their neighbors before it was too late.  William Allison later remarked that he was sure he would have been killed if he had turned up the lane. He was the man on big brown horse that Tom Price had picked out to shoot, and Price was apparently known as an expert marksman.

            To be continued next week.

            The Museum will be open through Labor Day weekend, and then close for the season. If you haven't come in to see it, you had better do it soon. Of course we will be open by appointment, and on most Tuesdays.

 

History Corner 3 September 1998

            Continuing with the story of the Nez Perce War. Alex, the "Old Timer" recalled what happened after the close call with the riders from Salubria:

            "Well, by night everybody in Council and Indian valleys were camped there - some two or three hundred, all told. A little fun was had, in spite of our fears, by the young folks getting a suit of women's clothing for the coward, who brought his bed and made it down among the women and children, but it did not hurt his feelings. He was a married man, too but his family were east and were spared the shame of seeing him display his cowardice. They made a corral of the wagons around the house and guards were stationed this time with plenty of ammunition."

            About the situation at Indian Valley, Milton Kelly later wrote:

            The first object was to learn the feeling and condition of the Weiser Indians - about seventy in number, under Eagle Eye. Solon Hall and other citizens in this valley had already anticipated this movement and runners had been sent out, and the Indians were in camp at their regular camping ground, next to Hall's place and promised peace and friendship with the white people and that the men should remain in camp until the trouble was over. Several straggling Indians from the Malheur and Fort Hall agencies were seen, who had permits from the agencies to travel and hunt, but went into the Weiser band and promised to be peaceable and remain in camp."

            Late in the day on the 20th, George Riebold arrived from Warren with an urgent letter for the Governor. The letter was dated June 18, and started off with elegant penmanship, but by the end it had degenerated into more hastily-scribbled script. It went into detail, listing every person killed by the Indians. On the fourth page there was reference to the town of Mount Idaho: "It is greatly feared that the entire Settlement has been annihilated . . . ."

            The letter ended with a plea for help:

            They have not made any raid upon us as yet, but we expect it hourly. We are fortifying ourselves as best we can, but we are comparatively helpless - there not being sufficient arms and ammunition here to enable us to stand much of a siege. It is nearly certain that they will attack us, as several Indians have been seen skulking around in the mountains near us. The messenger, Mr. George Riebold, who carries to you this communication can tell you more particularly our situation and needs. The object of this communication is that you immediately dispatch to us aid.

Very Respectfully Yours,

Jas. W. Poe

 

            Although it was not mentioned in the letter, Riebold had received word that an even worse disaster had happened involving the Nez Perce. While Edgar Hall was starting his desperate ride from Warrens to Indian Valley on June 17th, cavalry troops had clashed with the Indians on the rolling hills just north of the present town of Whitebird. The soldiers were brutally defeated.

            Riebold got this news from a messenger from Slate Creek. The settlers there were huddled in terror inside a stone cellar that can still be seen today if you drive through one of the little back streets of the little community there.

            To be continued next week.

            This is it folks. The Museum will be open trough Monday, September 7, and then we will close except by appointment or when we are there working.

 

History Corner 10 September 1998

            Last week I threw in a picture of Edgar Hall without a caption reminding you that he was the mail carrier who brought the first news of the Nez Perce War to this area. He continued to appear in this story from time to time. Roy Gould sent me some info that his uncle, John Gould, gave him, including the fact that George Moser admired Edgar Hall enough to name his son, Edgar Moser, after him. Fort Hall Hill is also named after the Hall family. They had a cabin there where they would spend the night, if necessary, along the mail route.

            I'll continue now with the story:

            Upon reading Poe's letter, Milton Kelly wrote his own letter to send on to Boise with Riebold. He scribbled the letter in pencil on four sheets of plain paper measuring six inches wide by almost nineteen inches long. His penmanship was so poor that parts of the letter were unreadable:

 

Indian Valley

Governor Brayman

June 20th 7'oclock PM

 

            George Riebolt has just arrived from Warrens with a letter which I enclose. He has one to you + He has much later [news] from the messenger from Slate [Creek]. The soldiers had a fight in the White Bird canyon and lost 36 killed. Indians say they lost 13. They have driven all the stock along or near Salmon River on this side of Salmon River, and it is expected they will come this way at any time. 

            There have been several stray Indians here within the last few days, 3 were coralled and 7 passed by ; 2 from Malheur and 1 from Fort Hall - 7 unknown. The local Indians are all here and peaceable with only two out, said to be out hunting. I send you a list of names who want guns. There are 50 women and children here about one half are at Abernathy's in Middle Valley and the rest here at Wm. Munday's. There are about 90 men , but only 50 guns. I send you a list of names who want guns here and must have them and we must have 100 citizens who can come armed. The people here would feed them. Every kind of business is suspended in all of the valleys. We want help in time, shall we get it? Show this to Curtis + Joe Perrault. [Two unintelligible sentences here] Also

send arms and all the ammunition that can be spared for north Idaho and we will send them through from here. Hall's boy will be the carrier of this and Riebolt will be with him. I got here 26 hours from the time I started. Send 25 more guns and 2000 rounds of ammunition by stage. Let the men get a team at Weiser and come to the Middle Weiser valley, the same way I did. In great haste, Milton Kelly

            On the back of the last page Kelly penciled, "Those Indians are blood thirsty. They are getting all the supplies and liquor they want and will jump on fresh horses and come here in 36 hours after they leave Salmon [River] if they come this way."

            Some of the early information that spread about the conflict was untrue or exaggerated. Although it was initially reported in the letter that 36 soldiers had been killed at Whitebird, there were actually 34 killed and four wounded. No Indians were killed until later.

            Among the 27 men Kelly listed as having guns were Zaddock Loveless, Wm Lovelace [Loveless], George Moser, Robert White, James Harrington, and Wm R [Ryal] Harrington. Most of these were listed as living at "Hornet". Other men were listed who would soon settle in the Council area, or would play a roll in its future: Thomas Price, Rufus Anderson, Calvin White, Andy Kesler and Andy Bacon.

            Also among those gathered at Munday's house was the family of Alex and Martha Kesler, and Alex's brother, Andrew (listed as Andy Kesler). They had arrived in the Salubria Valley about a year earlier, and would soon move on to the Council Valley.

            To be continued.

            A personal side note: This has been an interesting week for me. Last Wednesday I killed a six-point bull elk with my bow. The next day Anna, Blaine and I left for New Mexico to meet an eight-year old girl we are going to adopt.

 

History Corner 17 September 1998

            About the same time that George Riebold and Edgar Hall got to Boise with their pleas for help, other letters were arriving at the governor's office. The following are short excerpts:

            From Salubria, June 19th: "There are lots of women and children and they are scared to death . . . "

            From Lower Payette, June 19th: "Our citizens in this section are in a bad fix to defend themselves . . . we are liable to be attacked at any time, & we most earnestly request you to forward them [guns] by return stage." "The Weiser Indians are on Hornet Creek, fishing."

            No date or exact location: "We the Citizens of Ada County, Weeser [sic] and Hornet Vallies [sic] do request that immediate assistance be furnished us in the way of arms and ammunition. Our last mail brings us the intelligence that the Indians have murdered 14 of the citizens on Salmon R. and have made threats against this portion of our country & we know not what hour they will be upon us."

            The reason that citizens so readily asked the Territorial Governor for guns was a policy that had been set in place four years earlier (1873). The Governor had requisitioned ". . . 500 breech-loading Springfield rifled muskets, and also 25,000 round of metallic cartridges, . . . ." from the U.S. Ordinance Department. These guns were to be furnished to citizens of Idaho Territory that were in "exposed localities" and used for "the public defense". Requests to the Governor for arms were required to be signed by ". . . at least five good and responsible citizens . . . ."

            By June 21st, news of the defeat at Whitebird had reached Boise, and the Statesman's headline read, "TWO THOUSAND INDIANS IN ARMS! - Troops defeated with heavy loss". The article that followed said, "The country is wild with alarm. The Indians are massacring men, women and children in Camas prairie, and the settlers are fleeing in all directions for safety." Backing off from the sensational headline, the paper stated that the bands of Joseph and White Bird had only about 200 members, but if other bands and tribes joined in there could be as many as 2,000 hostiles.

            The fear of this kind of "general uprising" inspired communities from the Wallowa Valley in Oregon to Boise and beyond to become armed and ready to meet an Indian attack. Volunteer militias formed everywhere. In almost every issue of the Statesman, editor Kelly angrily blasted the army, and General Howard specifically, for undermanning forts throughout the Northwest. Kelly said there were only eight men available for duty at Fort Boise.

            Milton Kelly went back to Boise on June 23, but sent his right hand man, Joe Perrault (mentioned in Kelly's letter of the 20th) to Indian Valley to act as the paper's correspondent.

            Also on the 23rd, Eagle Eye's band began a trek toward the more remote Payette River country. The Statesman reported it had seen a, ". . . a letter from Mr. Wilkerson, Cal White and other prominent citizens of Indian valley, saying that Eagle Eye's band was perfectly peaceable and would remain so and were afraid to stay where they were for fear if the Nez Perces came this way they would do violence or some kind of mischief to them for not fighting the whites. They asked to move their camp over to the Payette, 50 miles away, where they would be out of danger. Wilkerson and others have assented to this and wrote the letter so that they might not be molested by the settlers. The Indians started on Saturday and camped on Willow or Crain's creek on Sunday . . . ."

            To be continued.

 

History Corner 24 September 1998

            In spite of a total lack of hostile native actions anywhere near them, the fortified settlers in southwestern Idaho during the Nez Perce War convinced themselves that every bush and tree

concealed a murderous savage. Military units and groups of armed volunteers, including a crew

composed of men from the Indian Valley / Salubria area, scoured the countryside.

            Ida Hitt told a story of such a "scouting party" in her autobiographical manuscript. It occurred shortly after the scare they got from Galloway's volunteers:

            After the excitement died down, the older scouts decided to go out scouting. Over on Grey's Creek, 2 miles away, was a trail thru from the eastern part of the State, where one could ride close to the mountain without striking a settlement. It was always used by Indians visiting from one tribe to another. When the men were ready to start we girls, there were 3 of us, told them if they brought in an Indian we would give them strawberries & cream for dinner. Strawberries were a rare treat as very few were grown any place in the state. But one of the girls' fathers was a gardener; he had sent for strawberry plants and replanted from shoots until he had a fine patch. It was only one-half mile from where we were gathered. With the scouts with us we felt there was a little danger, besides two young scouts with guns went with us.

            When the scouting party returned, consisting of John Sailing, A.F. Hitt [Ida's fiancee at the time], Tom Brassfield and I forgot the other names. They brought their Indian. Looking thru a spy glass they discovered in the distance a lone horseman. He had a small white flag on the end of a staff in front of him. The men selected Grey's Creek to conceal themselves; there were bushes on each side, so two on each side of the creek crouched in the bushes with their guns drawn. When the Indian was in the creek they stepped out. The Indian threw up his hands but showed no surprise. So proudly the men marched in. The Indian had a small bundle in front of him, which he untied and held when they told him to get off his horse. When Mr. Sailing took it from him and unwrapped it, he held up a most gorgeous headdress. On the front of the head piece it had a pair of goat horns fastened securely; the rest of it was covered with weasel tails. One man six feet tall put it on, and it touched the ground.

            Tom Hailey [Healey] (the squaw man) said he [the Indian] was the war chief of the Bannock Indians. When the Bannocks went on the war path the next spring he wore it. The Indian claimed he was going into the mountains to bring in his father who was on a fishing trip with a few others, but why the headdress, a new rifle and a belt of cartridges? This part of the story of the Nez Perce war is not in the histories, but undoubtedly by arrangement with the Nez Perce he was to collect the fishing band and join the war party, and they would have come right thru Indian Valley, been joined by Eagle Eye's band, who were located not much more than 2 miles from us in the canyon. What a slaughter of men, women & children there would have been; all prevented by 4 scouts bringing him in. This is unwritten history, but true. Well the scouts had their strawberries and cream, as did the rest of the crowd."

            While Ida's assessment of the situation was inaccurate, her account certainly illustrates the feelings of the time.

            Continued next week.

            In case you've notice a lack of activity at the Museum, end-of-the-summer busy-ness has kept some of the regular volunteers (including me) from coming in. We'll start up again soon. I also mean to thank the volunteers who helped host the Museum over the summer, but right now I'm about a month behind so it will have to wait.

 

History Corner 1 October 1998

            Milton Kelly wrote another letter to the governor on June 23rd:

            Gov. Brayman:

            On receipt of the news of the outbreak of the non-treaty Nez Perce Indians in North Idaho, and the probability the Indians would make for Weiser Settlements in southern Idaho . . . [I] proceeded to Indian Valley. [I] Found the people, some ten families gathered in at Wm. Munday's house in great consternation over the news. My first object was to learn the character of the Weiser Indians in this valley; about 75 in number under Eagle Eye, about half bucks. They was scattered some but were soon brought in, and professed peace. They had heard the news from North Idaho but promised to a man to remain in camp and keep peace with the whites. [They] would send some of their squaws out to dig roots, but bucks would remain in camp. Found several scatterings of Indians, some from Fort Hall, two from Malheur Agency with permit from Indian Agent to travel and hunt. One bunch of seven bucks had gone through the valley the day before I arrived. Their destination, North Idaho, they were all well armed with from 40 - 50 rounds of ammunition. Eagle Eye's band is pretty well armed. My opinion is that these Indians will remain peaceable unless the hostiles come over, with a few that may go [to] the fighting ground . . . "

            Two days later (June 25th) Captain Orlando Robbins arrived on the "upper Weiser" and dispatched this letter from Indian Valley:

            "To His Excellency M. Brayman, Governor of Idaho

            Sir;

            I respectfully report the following. Arrived here this afternoon with my command: 26 men besides the [?] transport wagon. I ascertain from reliable sources that there are hostile Indians this side of the mountains. No hostile act has as yet been committed. I think this section is closely watched by Indians. The friendly Indians have all left the Weiser. The people of this section are much alarmed. Women and children have left this valley - a fort for protection of families is being built on the Upper Weiser . . . [signed] O. Robbins, Capt. Co. A."

            Another letter from Captain Robbins reported that he found the "... settlers in [a] fearful state of alarm, constructing [a] stockade & fortifications - all farms deserted & laid waste to loose stock (of which there is a great many)."

            As Robbins mentioned, many of the women and children left the Salubria and Indian Valley areas. They went to a fort that was built near Weiser or traveled on to Boise.

            According to Alex "The Old Timer", some of the settlers holed up at Munday's place became frightened and started for the Weiser area at eleven o'clock one night. He said, "Their going stampeded the valleys on down, and at daylight the next morning they commenced coming and all day a steady string of vehicles of all descriptions passed along the road and night found them all camped at Woodson Jeffrey's. But there was not sufficient grass and water for their teams, so in a day or two they commenced going back, and each valley built them a fort of their own."

            The settlers who gathered at William Munday's farm in Indian Valley stayed there for several days, before deciding to build a fort closer to Salubria.

            Ida Hitt described how the fort came about: ". . . they [the settlers at Munday's] decided to go down to the upper part of Salubria Valley and build a fort. The settlers from Council and Hornet Creek were all there. At that time there was no settlers in Meadows Valley. The men selected a dry piece of land belonging to Wilkerson Bro. It was close to a hill where they built a rifle pit. The fort was built of upright posts, with a thickness of 3 ft. with loop holes to shoot from. Then a heavy gate was put up with two strong bars to lock it. The men from Weiser helped with the building."

            Alex the "Old Timer" said,  Indian Valley built a stockade around the school house and all summer we stayed there most of the time, and everyone in that time eating their allotted peck of dirt. The crops were harvested after a fashion, most of the men going to the fields by day and returning to the fort at night.

            We had a laughable scare one night in the Indian valley fort. Cal White lived close by and the dogs got after an old sow of his and ran her inside the stockade. Nearly everyone was asleep, or trying to, and the way she leaped over beds, grunting like all possessed, was enough to strike terror into us fora few minutes. 

            Continued next week.

 

History Corner 10 October 1998

 Pieces of the story of the upper Weiser valleys in the weeks following the initial events of the Nez Perce War are found in Statesman articles from that time period:

 

June 26, 1877:

            Milton Kelly reports, "The fact that several days had passed and no confirmation of the report that the Indians were headed for the Weiser gave a better opportunity to organize and get more guns and ammunition to defend themselves." "Mr. Thomas Galloway left the Lower Weiser the next day after we did. He reports that they have organized two companies, one at Lower Weiser and one at Upper Weiser and Indian valley of about seventy men in both companies and he is asking for arms and ammunition from the Governor to arm seventeen men in his company, he being the captain of the company at Lower Weiser." "Crops of all kinds on the Weiser are remarkably good. Never saw better grain in any country. It is to be hoped that serious troubles will be averted and they will have the opportunity of gathering in a bountiful harvest."

            June 28, 1877:

            "Three men from Indian Valley were out all night and saw many fresh Indian tracks. Anderson and Riebold started for Warrens with the mail on the evening of the 25th and would travel all night. After they got over the summit of the mountain Riebold would take it on foot as it would be the safest way to travel. Tom Clay and party expected from Warrens to meet Riebold at Indian valley had not arrived or been heard from. Riebold will return with men for the arms sent to Indian valley for Warrens. Andy Bacon, who lives on the main Weiser the farthest up of anybody, came in from Goose creek and Salmon meadows over the summit of the mountain between Little Salmon and the Weiser the 25th, says he saw Indians all over the country between Goose creek and the Weiser valleys, one and two together as scouts, but no large bodies."

            "Many of the families who came out to the lower valley [Weiser] have gone back. They have fortified at Wilkerson's place and keep out scouts all the time to give the alarm of danger. The people say they might as well die as lose all they have and they will take chances and defend their property to the last."

            "Some suppose that the war will soon be put to an end - that it will be merely local - but my own impression is that it is more likely to prove a general outbreak."

            June 30, 1877:

            ". . . Capt. Robbins . . . says that the Nez Perce scouts are watching his command on the Weiser and that they evidently have a line of signals and sentinels extending from the Weiser to their camp on the Salmon River. Their main object in this is most probably to guard against the approach of troops from this side . . . ."

            Rumors that Indians burned Cuddy's mill are false.

            Some immigrants between Boise and Kelton, Utah are turning back because of fear of Indian attack.

            A Captain Bendire, who arrived on the Weiser and camped at Mann Creek with 45 men had hurried there because he had heard that 60 men had been killed by Indians on the Weiser. He had been ordered to Boise, but upon hearing this rumor, he came to the Weiser.

 

July 3, 1877:

            Page 3- "Lieut. John S. Gray, of Company 'A' Idaho Volunteers, came into town [Boise] Sunday evening. He reports everything quiet on the Weiser and at Indian Valley. The women and children are carefully guarded at the Stockade Forts, and most of the farmers are busy tending to their crops. Scouts are kept out all the time, so that there is no danger of a surprise."

            "The Weiser Indians - Several of the Indians recently encamped near Indian Valley on the Upper Weiser are now encamped near this city. [Boise] Their professed business is to beg for flour and other provisions to take with them to the Great Camas Prairie. They met with poor success as the citizens here are unwilling to make Boise City a depot for gratuitous supplies to vagabond Indians, whom the Government and humanitarians of the East believe to be upon Reservations under the civilizing and Christianizing teachings of exemplary Agents and devoted Missionaries."

            Governor Brayman ordered Robbins' Co. "A" back to Boise on July 2nd because the presence of U.S. troops "makes his stay no longer necessary. He will bring back the arms intrusted to him for delivery, unless in his careful discretion he thinks proper to supply responsible and reliable resident citizens who have pressing need of them - taking receipts." signed, Governor Brayman.

 

July 5, 1877:

            Editor Kelly thinks returning the guns from the upper country is a mistake because no one knows where the hostile Indians will go next.

            The conclusion of the Nez Perce War story next week.

            There was some interesting activity at the museum this past week. Thanks to someone required to do community service, the outside ramp railing got painted.

            Houston Fruge (pronounced "froo-zay") from Louisiana, and his daughter, Evelyn, came through Council on Saturday. You may remember I mentioned Houston some time ago as having been in the CCC camp at Middle Fork in 1940. They looked through the Museum and then came out to my house for a short visit. Houston played his Cajun accordion for us.

Houston reports that the plaque along the Middle Fork Road, commemorating the death of his

fellow CCC worker while building the road, is missing. He doesn't know if the rock it was mounted on has fallen apart and the plaque is in the rubble somewhere, or if someone has intentionally removed it. If anyone out there has any information about this, please contact me. If the plaque is to be moved, the Museum would like to have custody of it to make sure it isn't lost.

            Other visitors to Council in search of historical roots were Dan and Jo Palmer, from Maryland. Dan's father manned the Council Mountain lookout in 1918. Kevin Gray took Dan on a hike up to the site of the lookout, and then took him through the Museum.

            A couple of memorial donations came in this week. Vennes Kite sent a donation in memory of Dick Fisk, Margarit Gibbs and Zoa Hutchison. John and Lillian Ballard sent a donation in memory of Florence and Orley Hart. Thank you all very much for your kindness.

 

History Corner 15 October 1998

            Since I hadn't been into the Museum for awhile, I got behind on checking the donations there. I found a couple of checks that had been there since early September, and I apologize for being late in thanking some people for donations. Frank and Betty Smith made a donation in memory of Don Poulson. Jon and Janice Jones made a donation in memory of Florence Hart. Thank you all for your thoughtfulness and generosity.

            Continuing with Statesman newspaper reports on the Nez Perce War: July 7, 1877:

            Page one headline: "JOSEPH'S BAND MOVED CAMP - WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN" "Capt. Robbins, chief of scouts, yesterday sent Oglesby with a message to Bendire to have Tom Price, one of the scouts, report at this place as soon as possible." [As previously noted, Tom Price was the man after whom Price Valley was named.]

 

July 10, 1877:

            Fighting on the Clearwater River near Mount Idaho. Soldiers coming through Boise, up the Weiser River to "Camp Bendire" and on north.

 

July 21, 1877:

            Nez Perce fleeing on Lolo Trail - Gen. Howard in pursuit

July 26, 1877:

            Three companies of infantry that have been camped at Indian Valley under the command of Major Egbert were ordered to Mount Idaho.  Major Collins and soldiers from Fort Boise arrived at Indian Valley and ". . . soon made things lively about the residence of Mr. Calvin White." Collins's company of infantry were ordered to stay at Indian Valley. "This will give the settlers confidence and allow them to harvest their grain. The exposed condition in which the departure of the troops would have left them would have prevented any work from being done as all the men would be required to remain on guard to avoid surprise."

 

July 31, 1877:

            Editor says everyone thought the Nez Perce would hole up in the mountains in the Salmon and Snake River area, and if run out, they would come down the Weiser River. No one dreamed they would retrace to the Camas Prairie.

            Letter from Statesman corespondent, Joe Perrault: "Indian Valley, July 29 - Fort Collins in this valley is now completed. It is made of logs, with bastions, etc., against which earthen breastworks have been thrown up. Major Collins has also had a good well dug inside the fort. Two large arbors have Been erected in front of the fort; one for Major Collins and Lieut. Riley, the other for the soldiers of the company. Under these arbors they have pitched their tents . . . " We (Perrault & co.) "...stopped a moment to examine Fort Growler in the Upper Weiser valley, and called at the residence of Mr. Wilkinson [sic], on whose farm Fort Growler stands."

            Major Collins sent two men to guard Cuddy's Mill.

 

Aug 4, 1877:

            "Besides Fort Collins in Indian Valley there were constructed during the Indian excitement Fort Growler in Upper Weiser valley, Fort Jefferies in Lower Weiser valley [near Weiser] and Fort Devens in Payette valley. These posts should be allowed to stand as historical souvenirs of the present Indian War." (It's a little confusing to me just how many forts there were at Indian Valley and

Salubria. It sounds like there may have been two separate forts. The term "upper Weiser" is

confusing as it was used in general for anyplace between Midvale and Council.)

Aug 7, 1877:

            "Hornet Valley" [Council] residents who left for Indian Valley fort would be safe to go home and harvest crops. "Hornet valley is about twelve miles in the mountains, nearly north of Indian Valley and is one of the most beautiful places in Idaho."

            By this time, it was known that the Nez Perce were being hounded by Federal troops in Montana, and it sank in that Weiser River settlers were not in danger from local natives. After things calmed down, the Council settlers went back home. The Moser family was concerned about their garden, but it had apparently done well in their absence. The little cabbage plants that George had shaded with boards had not only survived unattended, but had grown big enough to push over the boards.

 

At some point that year, after the Indian scare had subsided, the Kesler family moved from Indian Valley to the Council Valley. They settled on land that was just northeast of the Loveless homestead and the Council trees. The Kesler Cemetery is on what was the original homestead.

 Well, that's the end of my account of the Nez Perce War as experienced by the people who lived in this area. I hope you enjoyed it.

 

I'm just now catching up on thanking the people who helped at the Museum this past season. Special

thanks go to several ladies who came in every week for a three hour shift: Bobbie Darland, June

Ryals, Marie Bailey, Norah York and Margaret Merk. I can't say enough how much I apprecieated

that. I really dislike calling people to ask for favors, and counting on them on a regular basis helped

me get through the summer.

 

Other nice people who helped at the Museum: Kris Carr Mary Owens, Frank and Betty Smith, Bob Miller, Judy Huter, Mary Sterner, Jim and Laura Camp, Alma Fisk, June and Clarke Childers, June Davis, Vera Hutman, Jan Hill, Judy Mahon, Gamaliel Masters, Patty Gross, Marian Feil, Kitty Ingrahm, Resa Yantis, Cindy Jordan, Elenor Riggin, June Derie and Lavona Rudger. Several students helped and got credit for community service at the same time: Stacey Laine, Shelly Wiskirken, Heather Lacy, Andrea Harrington and Livia Peart. This is a very easy way for students to earn community service credit. I hope more take advantage of it next season.

 

History Corner 22 October 1998

            Harold Smith sent me a quote: "All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious." - Anatole France, French author and critic (1844-1924). That must be why people always seem to prefer a wild story over the truth so often.

 

That brings me to a manuscript I just received from Roger Swanstrom. It contains some pretty biased information relative to what I've been writing about the Nez Perce War. I'm not going to copy the whole thing here (it's 10 1/2 type-written legal-size pages long), but I'm going to relate the story to you with some interpretation.

 

First a little background. Many of you have read accounts of how Mrs. Charles Campbell's

grandmother, Elizabeth Osborn - Clay, lost her first husband in the opening hours of the Nez Perce War. The manuscript is an account of Elizabeth's life, including the Indian attacks and her days as "The Mother of Meadows Valley".

 

Roger Swanstrom had this to say about it: "Principally, it is the story of Elizabeth Klein who married William Osborn. After he was killed by Indians in 1877, she married Thomas Clay in 1879. One of the Osborn children, Caroline became Mrs. Charles Campbell. Of this marriage, Albert, Loyal, Rollie and Caroline were born."

 

"It is my recollection that another child of the Osborns who survived the Indian attacks was Annie, and that Annie grew up and married a Krigbaum; that Annie lived a long time at Meadows and was one of the people who related the early history of the Osborn/Clay families to Betty Campbell, the daughter of Loyal and Mary Campbell. Betty wrote this history as a class project while she was attending the University of Idaho. Betty died at an early age and about 1957 Mrs. Campbell gave a copy of Betty's history to my wife, Yvonne, who typed several copies of the history for Mrs. Campbell."

 

Elizabeth Klein was born in Germany in 1845. Her childhood was somewhat unhappy because she

was raised by a stepmother who treated her poorly. This may be why, when she was 18 years old, she took an opportunity to go to America. In 1863 she and her sixteen-year-old sister, Anna, put everything they could pack into a flour sack and sailed to Boston. Even though Anna was very homesick, Elizabeth persuaded her to continue around Cape Horn to San Francisco where their married sister, Mary, lived.

 

After about a year, Mary and her husband moved back to Germany. Soon after this, "the two sisters decided to leave San Francisco and go to Portland, Oregon, then by boat they traveled up the Columbia river, and finally in a very small boat they followed the Snake River until they landed at Lewiston, Idaho in 1865. Here they stayed one year. The town of Lewiston, Idaho, at this time was the important town of Idaho, as it's being located on the Snake River afforded transportation of all mining supplies to be sent from Portland, Oregon, and then packed out to the various mining camps of Florence, Pierce, Warrens, and Orofino."

 

The standard route to reach the Idaho gold fields was the one the sisters took. Most of the traffic to Idaho in the earliest days came from the west coast. You have to remember that at the time, there was no railroad across the U.S. (It came in 1869.) The alternatives for reaching Idaho were: 1- Follow the Oregon Trail, or a similar route, cross country, or 2- take a ship to Portland then book passage on smaller boats to Lewiston.

 

At this time (1865) Idaho was in its infancy. When Idaho Territory was created on Mar 3, 1863 it looked nothing like the present map of the state. It included what is now Montana, Wyoming, and parts of North and South Dakota and Nebraska.

 

Lewiston was probably the biggest town, and was considered so much closer to civilization than any other community that it was chosen as the territorial capitol. The Territory had four counties, ten mining towns, and an estimated white population of 20,000.

Three quarters of those people inhabited the Boise Basin area, in the mountains northeast of Boise. For that reason the capitol of the Territory was soon changed to a new town that was born just that year: Boise City. No one lived along the Weiser River north of Weiser until about 1868.

 

I'll continue with this story next week

 

I would like to thank Jerry and Mary Lou O'Day for a donation to the Museum in memory of Cindy Jordan's mother, Gladys Karlburg. Your thoughtfulness is very much appreciated.

 

 

History Corner 10-29-1998

 

Continuing with the story of Elizabeth Osborn - Clay.

 

In the summer of 1866, the two sisters, Anna and Elizabeth, left Lewiston and traveled to the mining boom town of Warrens, north of present-day McCall.

 

"This trip had to be taken on horseback. Neither of the girls had ever ridden horseback, but that was not considered as anything out of the ordinary. So they were each given a horse that had been equipped with a bridle and a side-saddle. For the most part the horses followed the guide, so all that was required of the girls was to be able to sit in the saddle. this, however, became difficult after hours and hours of travel. They related that they never knew so many sore spots could develop from sitting. When helped from the horses the first nigh they were unable to stand. However, by morning they had rested sufficiently to continue the trip."

 

"Women in those days were the one thing all miners would take time to visit with. There was a group of men working somewhere on the trail when the party was announced to be coming. The men, [were] all anxious to see the two young girls, so they purposely felled a tree across the trail, thus the party was held up until the tree was cut out of the trail, and from accounts, the sawing progressed rather slowly. Here it was that Elizabeth first met the man she later married."

 

"They arrived in the mining camp of Warrens in the fall of 1866. Gold had been discovered in Warrens in 1862 and by 1863 the population had increased to fifteen hundred, and the population four years later was not less than twelve hundred. The discovery of quartz in 1868 brought in a few more men."

 

James Warren found gold at what became known as "Warren's Diggings" or "Warren's Camp"

about 23 miles southeast of Florence in July of 1862.. The town established here was referred to as "Warrens" for many years, and later simply as "Warren".

 

The mention of the discovery of deposits of quartz gold is interesting. Placer gold is found in nuggets or dust, and is sometimes called "free" gold because it wasn't bound into other rock. It could be separated from other minerals with very few tools.

 

Gold found in quartz rock was harder to separate, and took expensive milling equipment. The placer deposits were always grabbed up first, and the quartz was undertaken by those with more money and / or patience to invest.

 

"As the placer diggings began to show signs of exhaustion they were turned over to the Chinamen, several hundred of whom found employment for a number of years."

 

"These Chinamen for the most part were good people, as a matter of fact it was very necessary thatthey obey the rules of the white miners or there were no Chinamen."

 

"Elizabeth often told about, if a Chinaman got a leg or and arm broken or cut off, in just a day or so he would be no more. When they would ask about the crippled one, always the reply, 'The devil got him'. So she said one never saw a crippled Chinaman."

 

One has to wonder about that last paragraph.

 

"On October 23, 1868, Elizabeth Klein was married to William Osborn, at the mining camp of

Warrens, Idaho. Four children were born to this union, two girls, and two boys. They remained in the camp until the spring of 1874."

 

"At this time the gold had become somewhat exhausted so they decided to move to the Big Salmon about four miles up the river from Whitebird. They had still at this time only pack trails through the mountains, so the family had to be transported the 100 miles on horseback."

 

"The oldest boy, Willie, was able to ride on the horse behind his father. Elizabeth, the mother, packed the baby "Annie: on her lap, and the two others, Caroline and Edward were put in boxes - these were placed in alforkses [sic] and lashed one on either side of the horse."

 

"This was a very trying experience as the trails were tough and very narrow. There was always the fear that the horse might stumble and fall, or see some wild animal and become frightened, if so the children certainly would have been doomed to death. However, the trip was completed in safety."

 

"They arrived on the Big Salmon River some time in the summer of 1874. Here Mr. Osborn, his

brother-in-law, Mr. Mason, and others mined the bars along the river. While the gold was not so plentiful as it had been in some of the rich mining towns, they were always able to pan out a good living."

 

"Here they lived, worked, and were happy for three years. Mr. Osborn being 20 years older than Mrs. Osborn, was father as well as husband. Always on Saturday nights after supper he would have the mother get a paper and read aloud to him while he bathed the children and got them ready for bed."

 

"At this time Elizabeth's dream had seemed to come true, she had found a kind and devoted

husband, and they were the parents of four healthy, happy children. With the responsibility of motherhood, grew the desire to talk, read, and write the American language. She worked hard evenings by the light of a tallow candle to accomplish these things. However, like always in her life, she never let anything discourage her, and soon she was able to read the newspapers quite understandingly by herself."

 

Continued next week.

 

History Corner 11- 5 -1998

 

Continuing with he story of Elizabeth Obsorn - Clay.

 

"There were other families along the River at this time, so life was quite complete and happy, until the spring of 1877, when the Nez Perce Indian trouble began to be heard of. Elizabeth often begged to move away. Mr. Osborn would always comfort her by telling her there was no danger because he was friendly with the Indians and they liked him. She still seemed to be a great deal uneasy and begged him often to go."

 

For several years, the U.S. government had wanted the Wallowa Band of the Nez Perce tribe to move to a reservation in northern Idaho. Because of a shortage of money and manpower, the orders to move had not been enforced. In the spring of 1877 the army gave the band 30 days to move onto the reservation. The Wallowa valley that is mention in the manuscript is in eastern Oregon, where the towns of Enterprise and Joseph are located now.

 

"There seemed to be a great deal of resentment among the Indians, because the whites had settled in the Wallo Wallo [Wallowa] Valley and the Government wanted to put the Indians on a reservation. They could not think of giving up this grand country of theirs and so after determining not to give up without at least a last stand, Chief Joseph who was Chief of all the Nez Perce tribe, decided to take from the whites what they thought rightfully belonged to them." Joseph was not Chief of all the NezPerce, but one of several chiefs in the Wallowa band. Some of the chiefs wanted to fight for their home, but Joseph is said to have talked them out of it. An agreement was reached among the chiefs to surrender peacefully to the reservation.

 

At this point, it should be remembered that the Nez Perce had never been at war with whites. They had established a record of cooperation that would be hard to improve. Lewis and Clark noted that the Nez Perce were about the most intelligent and amiable natives they encountered on their journey. This view was confirmed many times over the years, in spite of the abuses heaped upon them.

"There were four distinct bands of non-treaty Indians: Joseph's who made their home in the Wallowa and Jinnaha [Imnaha] Valleys; White Bird's or the Salmon River Indians; Looking Glasses' whose home was on the Middle Fork of the Clearwater; and a small band under Toohulhulsote, the "Dreamer"; who remained on the Snake River most of the year. Of the friendly Chiefs who were in the country close to Camas Prairie we may mention Kooskoos, Nela, Captain Jon, Eagle-of-the-Light and Black Tail."

 

Actually there were five non-treaty bands, the Wallowa band plus those led by Whitebird, Red Echo, Looking Glass and Too-hool-hool-zote.

 

"For years the Indians and the whites on Camas prairie had been friendly with each other. They had traded together, herded stock together, and been very neighborly. So it was very hard for the settlers to believe that any great danger might come from all this talk about the Indians going on the War Path."

 

The following should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

"Sometime in April 1877, a friendly Indian on the Salmon River came to the house of Charles Cone of the Salmon and told him that the Indians surely were going to fight; that they would never go on the reservation; and the Indians expected to settle some old scores, naming a number of intended victims. This friendly Indian warned the settlers of what was coming, but few believed the Indians were in earnest. The Cones, Woods and Joshua Fockler, organized for protection and for one night stood guard."

 

Much of the rest of what the writer says about the conflict from here on is questionable. As I've pointed out before in Ida Hitt's writing, people in those days were prone to relate events in a melodramatic way that highlighted the villainy of the Indian and the role of settlers as blameless victims.

 

"On Camas prairie the Indians were slowly gathering all through the month of May and preparing for the conflict. From time to time they warned their white friends that trouble was coming and that they did not intend to go on the reservations. The red-skins visited Grangeville and Mt. Idaho in large numbers and purchased all the ammunition, and guns they could get, saying that they wanted them when they got on the reservation. They gathered their hundreds of ponies, bought cattle or traded for them, bought and by other means accumulated all the supplies they could get, and in many other ways prepared for the coming conflict. Nearly all of the settlers supposed they were preparing for going on the reservation."

 

"One of the largest Indian camps at the time was at the mouth of Rock Creek eight miles west of Grangeville. The smaller canyon derives its name from its rocky appearance. It cuts a furrow hundreds of feet deep and is four miles long, forming an excellent place for the Indians purpose. Here they herded their stock, killed their beef, dried the meat, stored their supplies in a wonderful cave, and prepared to take a last stand for the country they loved."

"At the head of South Fork of this canyon were two beautiful lakes. Around these lakes the Indians erected their teepees. During the early days of June the non-treaty's with the exception of Looking-Glass's band, assembled in larger numbers than ever at this delightful camping ground, holding councils and drills during the day time and dances at night. Regular picket lines were set up which told the Indians of any whites approaching. Here they argued for and against war, a good many were not in favor of such a step as war. Afterwards it was learned that the Indians were about equally divided on the question of going to war, or peacefully going on the reservation."

 

Regardless of how much of this is true, in the meantime the Wallowa band was making an arduous journey across rugged mountains and the swollen Snake River to get to the reservation.

Continued next week.

 

History Corner 11-12-1998

 

Last week a lot was said about the plotting of the Nez Perce to go to war. From the settler's point of view, the Indians were only savages with no legal rights. As I said, the Nez Perce had a clean record up until this time, as far as offenses against whites. The same could not be said for the other side. If I remember the story right, one of the members of the Wallowa band was shot and killed by a settler for the "crime" of riding his horse across a corner of a settler's garden. A close relative of this Nez Perce man was one of the Wallowas being forced off his homeland. Multiply this by many times and you can start to see the kind of resentment that was brewing among the Nez Perce.

 

I think it's probably hard for most of us to understand the emotional trauma it caused the Nez Perce to be driven out of their home. Many people today move from place to place with little attachment to any one location. The Nez Perce had inhabited the Wallowa Valley for  thousands of years. Their parents and their parent's parents were buried there. I guess the closest I could come to an equivalent situation would be one of having all your children taken away. That's how broken-hearted and angry the Nez Perce were.

 

As I start to quote from the manuscript again, Elizabeth Osborn - Clay. Elizabeth, her husband,William Osborn and their children are living along the Salmon River north of resent-day Riggins. It's the spring of 1877. I have not verified the details given here. They may or may not be true. Some of them certainly are not. I quote all this because it illustrates the point of view of the settlers at that time.

 

"Hon. Frank A. Fern says that word was sent to the commander at Fort Lapwai nearly ten days before the outbreak. Notifying that officer of the alarming condition of affairs on the prairie and theSalmon River."

 

"On the 13th of June, Mr. Fern says Tuconllacasena, a brother of Looking-Glass, notified Admiral Chapman and M.H. Rice that the Indians were just about ready to go on the war path and that they better be on their guard."

 

"General Howard was notified of the condition and asked to send aid. He replied that two

companies of cavalry were being sent, and told the mesenger to "Cheer the people". If these Generals had known Indian habits and would have taken advice from settlers, a great many lives might have been saved."

 

"On this same day, the 13th of June, a number of Indians came down from the prairie to the Manual ranch on Whitebird Crook, where they used Mr. Manual's grindstone to sharpen their knives, and other edged weapons. They acted very friendly and nothing was thought of the incident. Further up the river, three young Indians stopped at the Cone house. They asked for read for themselves, and bullets for their guns. The Indians were given the bread, and would have been given the bullets except that Charlie Cone was short of ammunition so they did not get the bullets. They explained that they're out on a hunting trip, so nothing was thought of it. After talking a while with the Cones the Indians mounted their ponies and rode on up the river. That night, the 14th of June, they camped in the brush near the home of Dick Divine."

 

"Dick Divine was an old English sailor living alone on his ranch on the Salmon six miles above John Day Creek. He had always been friendly with the Indians, but he did posses a new improved rifle, and it was well known to be one of the first guns in the country. There Indians wished very much to obtain this gun, which must have been the cause of them killing Mr. Divine."

 

The first murders took place just a few miles north of Riggins. You can more or less see the places from the highway.

 

"After scouring the rifle, and once having started the gruesome job of killing, they took the trail back down the Salmon. Arriving at the Elfers ranch at the mouth of the John Day creek, this was the morning of the 14th of June, Mr. Elfers, Robert Bland, and Harry Beckrage were killed by them. On this fatal morning Beckrage and Bland went up to the bench land above the house to get the horses. The men were putting up hay at the time."

 

"Mr. Elfers had remained at the house to finish some chores. He had just come into the house when two of the Indians came to the house apparently looking for him. They talked a bit to Mrs. Elfers then left. Mrs. Elfers supposed they had left the place entirely. When Mr. Elfers finished his chores he started up the hill to the field, and his wife stood and watched him until he was out of sight. This was the last time she saw him alive. The Indians shot him immediately after he reached the bench field. They had already killed Beckrage and Bland. Mrs. Elfers did not hear the shots, as the noise of the guns must have been drowned by the noise of the creek, but a Frenchman living a little farther

down John Day Creek, saw the smoke of the guns and became suspicious that something was

wrong. He at once went and told some of the other miners."

 

"An invalid named Whitefield, who had been out hunting had returned and discovered the bodies of Elfers, Bland, and Beckrage. He notified Norman Gould and his hired men at the saw mill, then they got their guns and went with him to the scene of the murder. Mrs. Elfers did not know anything had happened until she saw the men bringing the three dead bodies to the house. The Indians had exchanged their ponies for three of Mr. Elfers horses. The horses stolen were very fine animals, one of them was a trained race horse. They also took Mr. Elfers rifle. The Indians at once left the Elfers place as they had seen Whitefield out hunting and knew he was armed, they feared he might return and make trouble."

Continued next week.

 

History Corner 11-19-1998

 

Continuing with the story of Elizabeth Osborn - Clay and the initial murders of the Nez Perce War.

"From here they [the three Nez Perce warriors] went on down the river avoiding the Cone house by leaving the trial. A mile and a half below the Cone Ranch, Charley Cone, Sr. was at his placer mine. When the redskins saw him they rushed down on him in a threatening manner and asked him if he knew the horses they were riding. Cone had, of course, recognized the horses at once but also knew something was wrong; he thought quickly and said he did not know the horses. The Indians told him to go home and stay there; that they were very mad and would fight."

 

"These three Indians knew that Harry Mason and Mr. Osborn were well-armed and that Mr.

Osborn was an experienced Indian fighter, so they avoided any trouble at the Mason ranch. Near the mouth of the Whitebird creek, they met Samuel Benedict, who was out looking after stock, and shot him, the bullet taking affect in his legs. Although seriously injured he managed to crawl home, he gave his wife all his valuable papers and what gold dust they had and begged her to go out and hide in the woods. This she would not do as she would rather stay and care for her wounded husband though it might mean death for her. Mr. Benedict had had some trouble with some Indians shortly before this, so it was that reason for killing him."

 

"After shooting Mr. Benedict the three Indians turned their horses up Whitebird creek and during the afternoon rejoined their fellows at the head of Rocky Canyon. When they arrived they told all the other Indians what they had done and said, "Now you have to fight", and seemed to be very happy over the deeds they had done. this was the deciding factor; the feeling was so strong that they decided they would never let the three young Indians be arrested and now that the terrible job had been started, the Indians that night voted to commence general hostilities. [I don't think this is true, but several more men decided to join in the hostilities.] Here those same three Indians secured about fifteen other grease-painted followers, under the leadership of Mox Mox (Yellow Bull) and immediately returned to Salmon River."

 

"During this time, James Baker and Pat Price had become aware of the shooting of Mr. Benedict, and had warned the Manuel family of their danger. They decided to flee for safety at once. Mrs. Manuel and her baby were placed on one horse, Mr. Manuel and his seven year old daughter, Maggie, mounted another and Mr. Baker rode a third horse. Mrs. Manuel's father, George Popham, and Pat Price stayed in the brush near the house to see if any Indians returned. The family decided to go to a rock cellar on the Baker place, hardly had they started, however before Mox Mox and his warriors were upon them. Mr. Manuel and Maggie  were wounded and fell from their horse, Mrs. Manuel and her baby were thrown from their horse, and Baker fell mortally wounded from arrows. Manuel was only wounded but thought dead by the Indians, finally he escaped to the settlement after wondering in the brush and weeds for thirteen days, while Maggie was later found by Pat Price and carried to the Fort and Mt. Idaho."

 

"The Indians carried Mrs. Manuel and the baby back to the house and forced her to give up the ammunition that they had. After this the Indians took the trail down the creek, passing the Osborns and Masons and William George, but this party kept in the brush and the Indians appeared to be afraid to go in after them. In the exchange of shots George was wounded in the thumb. That night they decided it would be best for him to try to make his way to the Fort at Mt. Idaho, this he succeeded in doing and gave the first authentic news of the Salmon river murders."

 

"At the mouth of Whitebird creek, the Indians found Mr. Benedict, who they had previously

wounded and thought dead. This time they made sure they killed him. Another man by the name of Bacon was also killed at this place. The Indians said afterward that they offered Bacon his life if he would come out and let them have Benedict, but this he refused to do, so both men were killed. From here they went down the River to H.C. Brown's store. This family had seen them coming and escaped in a boat to the other side of the river. Later they were picked up near Cottonwood and taken to Mount Idaho."

 

"At Brown's store the Indians took all the ammunition and goods found, besides drinking freely of the liquor that was in the saloon. After getting good and drunk they were more fit than ever for the terrible crimes that were committed."

 

"On the morning of the 15th the Indians started back for the Mason place. During the previous night the Masons and Oborns had decided to return to their homes. They went to the Mason ranch where they hid in a gulch near the house. Here they remained for some time, but they had no food, so finally the children became so hungry and cried for food that the party was forced to do something for them. They decided they would go to the Osborn home, get something to eat and provisions to take with them, and then escape by taking a boat they had, and try to drift down the Salmon to Lewiston. While they were at the house getting the provisions ready the Indians attacked them. The Indians did not like Mr. Mason

and offered to let the rest go if they would deliver Mason to them. Of course the

whites refused to do this, so the Indians attacked the little party. Osborn, Chodoza, and Mason were killed. Mr. and Mrs.. Osborn were kneeling by a window, he trying to shoot the Indians as they crept up, finally a bullet pierced his heart. The only thing he was able to say was, "My God, why did I ever bring you here:' the children were all hid under the bed. After the men were all killed, Chief Mox Mox who knew Mrs. Osborn, told her, and the other women, Mrs. Mason, and Mrs. Walsh to take the children and go to Slate Creek where the white settlers had hurriedly fixed up a temporary stockade. He said they would not meet any Indians. The women dragged the men's bodies out into the yard and covered them with blankets, laying heavy rocks along the edges of the blankets, to keep the wind from blowing them off."

 

"Here our once happy Elizabeth was forced to leave her loyal and devoted husband and father. They made their way to safety and remained at Slate Creek for three months. Here many times they were short on provisions, and always the fear of being attacked by the Indians. She said she never could have stood those awful days, only for the fact that she knew that now all depended on her to make a living for the four children who were aged three, five, seven and nine. When they arrived at the Fort she nor the children had any clothes except the ones they had on. There was a small store at Slate Creek, so the women who were in the fort got together and made some clothing for she and the children, they also provided her with enough bedding that they might be comfortable."

 

What remains of the stone cellar where the settlers fortified themselves is still standing at Slate Creek.

 

11-26-98 Continuation of Elizabeth Osborn/Clay story

 

12-3-98

Last week I neglected to comment on Maggie Bow­man's eye-witness account of the murder of her mother by a man she thought was Chief Joseph. It seems very unlikely. in fact nearly impossible that his man was Joseph. During this time Joseph was leading a group of men who had gone back toward the Snake River to slaughter some cattle. When he arrived back at the main camp and heard the news of the murders, he was appalled. He had always advised against violence. Even after the outbreak of war, he consistently coun­seled his people harm only those who attacked them.

Continuing with our story, Mrs. Osborn has moved back to Warren.

 

12-10-98 More Elizabeth Osborn/Clay story

12-17-98 Last of Elizabeth Osborn/Clay story

 

12-24-98

June Shaw Wirthlin called me this week from Califor­nia and filled me in on some odds and ends about Deb Shaw. She said she came back to Council a few years ago and found so many of the places that held fond memories for her had changed. The Post Office had moved, the drug store "wasn't the drug store any­more". the high school had been replaced by a new one. the old grade school was gone without a trace, the Merit Store had a new name and look. the bank had moved. . . . All these changes have happened since 1960. Needless to say, many of the people she knew here then are gone. I want to take you back to a time in Council long before that... to a time when the town looked completely dif­ferent . . . a time earlier than the memory of almost anyone alive today.

This particular journey into the past started for me when my sister. Elaine Whitney. told me she had a couple things the Museum might be interested in. She bought the drug store building from the Pearsons. and was going through things they had left in the store. When I went  there to see what she had, [she led me out the back door and up a cleverly con­trived elevator into the stor­age building on the alley. My mind filled with what I knew about that building. It was built in 1909 as a bank. Since then it has served as a series of retail stores of one kind or anoth­er. So much of Council's history is wrapped up in that one strip of buildings on the north side of Illinois Avenue (what most of us think of as Main Street).

For someone who likes old stuff, this storage building full of old stuff looked really interesting. On a table were two big "books". One was about a foot and a half square and five inches thick. The other was a little less thick, but taller. Origi­nally they had contained cloth samples and illrrstrations of the suits available from the companies whose names were on the covers. One cover said, "Crack-a­Jack Brand Tailoring". The other said, "Selig Brothers - San Francisco's leading Wholesale Tailors - Spring & Summer, 1920". Bothbooks were covered with a thick layer of dust and grit.

I opened the first book, and found each of the stiff, card­board pages plastered with about a hundred prescrip­tion forms. They were arranged like a card file. each 4" X 5" form overlap-. ping the other with just the edge of the next one show­ing. Some of first ones I saw were printed with the pre­scribing doctor's name: "Frank E. Brown - Physician & Surgeon". The earliest ones were dated 1903. 1 started drifting back in time.

In 1903 the main road through this area came north into Council and turned cast around the town square as it does now. At Galena Street it turned north again. On the corner where the road turned north, there was a small, false- fronted building belonging to Dr. Frank Brown. It sat where the old drug store building is now. Currently Bear Country Books and the Heartland Inn.

Dr. Brown grew up in Salem, Oregon and gradu­ated from Willamette Uni­versity with his M.D. in

1900. He practiced briefly in Jefferson and Portland. Oregon before coming to Council with his wife. Ida, in 1901. He owned a ranch about a half mile west of town. but lived just north of his office on Galena Street.

It is sometimes confusing when talking about Dr.

Brown because there were two of them around this general area at the same time. Dr. William Brown was at Salubria and the towns in the Seven Devils mining district until he came here in 1916 to replace Dr. Frank Brown.

Dr. Frank Brown and the railroad arrived in Council at about the same time. The town was at the peak of its wild days, with five or six saloons and several small brothels. In wet weather the streets were knee deep with mud. In warm weather. the air was heavy with the smell of the horse manure that lay piled along the streets and around the livery stables.

Earl Wayland Bowman arrived in town about that same year. I love what he wrote about what Council was like then: "Dirty? My gracious! There were pigs wallowing along the streets, beer kegs piled out by the half dozen saloons, trash and litter everywhere and dogs. Dogs! Suffering saints. I never dreamed there could be so many in a place so small!"

There were two fatal shoot­ings  in Council the year Dr. Brown arrived.

I'll have more about Council drug stores and these old books of prescriptions next week. In the meantime, I hope you all have a really great Christmas!

 

12-31-98

First a note on the cross­word puzzle from last week. I got all but a few of the words down in the left bot­tom corner. I even had to look up some of the histori­cal ones based on my writ­ing. The one about being able to take a bath in the Council Drug store in 1904 was a little off. Actually it was J.H. Mohler's barber shop that offered baths that year.

The earliest prescription forms in the books that were in the old drug store building are dated 1903, and have printed along the left edge, "Take This To the Council Drug Company - Council, Idaho". The first reference I can find to this drug store is in 1902 when it burned down, along with several other businesses on the north side of Illinois Ave.. It was evidently rebuilt on the same spot within weeks. The last reference I find to it is in 1908. Ironi­cally, this drug store prob­ably stood very near the spot I was standing, reading these books filled with pre­scriptions. The building also housed the Post Office and telephone office. H.M.Jorgens was the druggist and Postmaster. Soon after this, maybe around 1910 or so, E.E. Ransopher had a .drug store in the Overland Hotel build­ ing which stood where the Ace is today. Some of the prescriptions forms from 1912 in the old books have "Ransopher Drug Store" printed on them. In 1912 Ransopher's brother in law,' a dentist named C.P. Gillespie, came to Council. He bought the, lot where the Winklers had their black­smith shop, on the north­east corner of Moser and Main. He built a two-story structure there that housed his dentist office upstairs and a drug store on the first floor.

A 1912 drug store ad in the Council Leader said, "Rexall will please all". I'm not sure how far back the Rexall name goes. You should stop in at Elaine's store and see the old Rexall banner she has up.

In 1912, Joe Lorton bought out the stock and fixtures of the Ransopher store. He operated a drug store here in Council, but I'm not sure if it was in the same buil­ding. In 1914 Lorton bought his brother's store in Cam­bridge and ran it, as well as the one in Council. By about 1920 he had sold the Council store and only ran the one in Cambridge. His son continued the operation until recently.

In 1913, Dr. Frank Brown replaced the little frame building on the northwest corner of Galena St: and Illi­nois Ave. with the big brick building that is there today. His offices were upstairs and a drug store was down­stairs. It must have been L.E. Griffith who ran it at first, or at least soon after that. In 1920 Griffith's brother in-law, Alva Alcorn came to Council and bought the drug store business. In 1929 he also bought the building from Dr. Brown. Charlie Winkler married Alcorn's daughter, Esther, and became the pharmacist at the store. When Alva Alcorn died in 1944 he took over the entire operation. His drug store became a Landmark for several gener­ations of people here.

The names on many of the prescriptions written in 1903 read like a Who's Who of Council at the time: Mrs. L.S. Cool, Mrs. Charles Barbour, Lydia Draper, S.F. Richardson, L. Shaw, Hattie Houston, Mrs. William Clark, Mr. Krigbaum, Win Hartley, Mrs. Jno. Hancock, Chas. Criss, Geo.. Mitchell, Mrs. Lakey, Wm. Keithley, Mrs. S. Wood, Robert Har­rington. Mrs. Robert Harrington, Mr. G.W. Robert­son, Ethel Woods, Mr. E. Manning, Mrs. Kesler, and Mrs. Jno. Lakey. Often the prescription was written for "baby" so and so. One was for "Baby Whiteley".

The symbols on the pre­scriptions are Greek to anyone but a pharmacist, but sometimes the ingredi­ents or instructions are leg­ible. Digitalis is mentioned. One mentioned "morph. sulph." followed by the instructions, "If 2 powders do not induce sleep, a tablet". Another says "For toothache - Cocaine hydocl." plus some other ingredi­ents. A very typical instruc­tion from Dr. Brown was "Take 4 - one each half hour, the last at bedtime. Take a good dose of salts in the morning." By salts he meant Epsom salt. Many of these prescriptions seem to be for bowel and stomach problems. One prescription for "Baby West" was for cocoa butter suppositories.

Two of the prescriptions were written by a Dr. J.T. Walls of Portland in July of 1903. Evidently they were filled here.

The main bunch of pre­scriptions in the first book are from 1912 through 1914. Some of the names during that time are: Blaine Woods, Mrs. Jno. Woods. Mrs. Sam Criss, Lem Haines, Mrs. Thomas Mackey. Mrs. Soren Hanson, Mrs. C.A. Phillips, Lela Kesler. Mr. W. -Mills, Mrs. E.C. Draper, E. Oling. Alice Lappin, W. Freehafer, Mrs. A. Campbell. Clyde Stewart. "Uncle Bob", Nim Duree, Mrs. Harpham. Mrs. I.S. Carter. Mrs. C.F.Kiser, E.D. Shaw, J.P. Gray. Mrs. A.[August] Kampeter. Mrs. A. Kampeter's baby (dated 1914), Philip H. Ware. Fred Brooks, Mrs. Lester McMahan, Mr. Walston of Fruit­vale, Robert Young, Mrs. ' Robert Young.^,, Mr. Rush of Mesa, Louis Harp, Geo.. Pfann, Rev. Biggs, W.R. Brown, Annie Gould. Hubert Woods, Ed Hart of Mesa, Sam Whiteley's baby, L.J. Rainwater. Robert Barbour (he of course often supplied his own medication), F.1^:. Fife, Jess Shaw, R.H. Mulvihill of Mesa, Mrs. E. Hinkle, H. Camp, Pete Roberston, Cecil Woods. Mary Cool, Willard McDowell, V.V. Zink, M.M. Monteith. Clyde E. Walston, M. Oling. Geo.. Winkler.

Some of the prescriptions had instructions to "mix with feed twice daily". etc. I thought this was odd until I looked at who the prescrib­ing doctor was. Mixed in with the other prescriptions are ones from Dr. W.E. Fuller who was a local veterinarian. The "patients" are listed: A.H. Huntely stock. Dale Donnelly's horse. J.J. Jones horse. C. Weed's cow, John Kesler's horse. Hancock & Koontz horse, Ellis Hartely's cow. etc. One must have been for Dr. Fuller's horse, as it is written for "My own horse".

Other prescribing doctors during this time were Dr. D.L. Martin. Dr. H.T. Low. The price of the drug(s) is written in the upper corner of the form. It is almost never over a dollar.

The second of the two books covers 1916 -17, and has more names familiar to long time residents. Almost all of these prescriptions are written on forms printed with "J.I. Lorton. Druggist - Council. Idaho" and are from Dr. R.T. Whiteman or Dr. W.M. Brown. There are a few from Dr. C.E. Schmitz of Cambridge.

Stuck between the pages is a form labeled "Order Form for Opium, Etc." dated 8-17-16 and signed by Dr. R.T. Whiteman. Another loose sheet has a recipe for scours medication written by Dr. Fuller in 1915: 1 oz. prepared chalk, 1/2 oz. powdered calechu. 2 drachms powdered ginger, 1/2 drachms powdered opi­um, 1/2 pint peppermint water. It was for W. Emery's calf.

 

1-7-99

I'm going to backtrack to the Elizabeth Osborn - Clay series for this column. I got a nice letter and some information that l thought you would find interesting. I love it when people send me information. There is so much of it to collect and preserve. and it really helps when people contribute what they know or send pictures the Museum doesn't have, etc..

Ralph is a former Council boy who lives in Coronado, California now. He sent along an excerpt from a book on Idaho history. It's about what Maggie Bowman said about Chief Joseph supposedly killing her mother in the opening days of the Nez Perce War.

The following was excerpted from the book "The River of No Return", Revised Edition, by Robert G. Bailey in published 1947. This portion was written in 1933 and also published in the first edition of the book.

A most baffling mystery of the Salmon River fights between the Indians and the whites has to do with the supposed murder and cremation o/' Mrs. John J. Manual and her small son. In a history of North Idaho a statement is attributed to Mrs. Maggie Bowman, who at the time of the Salmon River tragedies was seven years v/ age, in which she claims to have been an eye witness to the murder of Mrs. Manual and her child. Mrs. Bowman was a daughter of Mrs. Manual. In this statement Mrs. Bowman claims to have seen Chief Joseph deliberately drive a knife into her mother's breast while she was nursing the child. She says the same day the house was set on fire and Mrs. Manual and the child cremated; that subsequently the charred

remains and her mother's earrings were recovered from the ruins of the house. James Conley, a resident of Lewiston, who saw much service in the Nez Perce war, informs the writer that he went to the scene of the Manual home, together with several other men, and that they carefully raked over the ashes without finding any trace of human bones. This was before the ashes had been disturbed. Harry Cone informed me that when Yellow Bull (Mox Mox), who was in command of the Salmon River contingent of Chief Joseph's Indians, encamped near his home at Slate Creek, subsequent to the Salmon River murders. he (Yellow Bull boasted that he had Mrs. Manual with him in his camp. Shortly after this Yellow Bull and his band departed to join Chief Joseph and Mr. Cone was unable to verify the story of Yellow Bull or what actually became of Mrs. Manual. C.T. Stranahan informs me that an Indian of Yellow Bull's command told him under a pledge of secrecy, that Mrs. Manual was not cremated in her dwelling. At this writing it is 56 years since the Manual mystery, and there is little likelihood of its ever being solved .

The story as told me by Mr. Stranahan was substantially as follows: "It was generally reported that Chief Joseph killed Mrs. Manual. This is absolutely untrue. I have it from two of Joseph's band that not only did Joseph take no part in the killing, but actually defended Mrs. Manual. He stayed for some time by her side and made his men leave her alone.

"Twenty-three years after the war was over, I cornered Yellow Bull on this subject. He said Mrs. Manual was burned in her house. I told him he was lying: that I knew different, and that I knew that he knew what became of her. After bantering words a while, he said, 'If you and We-sol-li-iet (my interpreter) will solemnly swear and promise never to reveal during my lifetime, what I tell you, I will tell you the truth.' We made solemn promise and convinced him that we would obey his request. The interpreter died many years ago and Yellow Bull died July 20, 1919. Therefore I am at liberty to make Mrs. Manual's fate known to the public for the first time. as I have it.

"Yellow Bull said that Mrs. Manual was taken a captive and was kept in custody of one certain Indian until they • had Just crossed the divide into Montana. over the Lolo Trail. when one night her custodian and another Indian had a f fight over her. The next morning she was missing. He said she was killed and dragged into the brush. He could not tell me whether she was properly buried or not. He refused. if he knew, to tell me who murdered her, saying, 'I want to live a while yet.' 1 assumed, that the murderer was still alive and that Yellow Bull did not dare to reveal his name. "According to Yellow Bull's statement, and I believe it to be true, Mrs. Manual was kept captive for over a month. Judging from the experience of other captives. Mrs. Manual was never given any chance whatever to escape. While riding, their feet were tied together under the horse, and at night they were securely bound."

In 1934 Mrs. Bowman (nee Maggie Manual) came from her home in Butte. Montana, to visit her daughter, whose husband is publishing a newspaper in Pomeroy. Washington. I made a special trip to Pomeroy to interview Mrs. Bowman. She was very explicit and clear in her detailed story of the murder of her mother. In her mind there was no question but that Chief Joseph was the murderer. Mrs. Bowman went intimately into the details of the Salmon River tragedy as she remembered them. That her mother was murdered by Chief Joseph she was certain. She saw the murder committed and afterwards friends went to the ruins of the burned home and rescued from the skull of Mrs. Manual an earring whichMrs. Bowman later had made into a breast pin and which she still retains. This illustrates how frustrating it can be to find the truth about what happened in the past.

People          are     strange creatures.

I would like to thank some people who sent end-of-­the-year donations to the Museum and took advantage of Idaho's generous tax credit. Hannes and Deborah Kury, Phil Soulen, and Joe and Cindy Jordan have our sincere gratitude for their help.

 

1-14-99

This week I'm going to share with you a piece of writing by an old-time area resident. I wish more people who saw the early days would have written down their memories.

The following was given to me a long time ago by Galen York. It was written by his uncle, Sherman York. I put it away, planning to put it in III v Column ,someday. and recently ran across it again.

The Weiser River country and surrounding territory offers a good opportunity for a good history writer of pioneer life. Many events of importance have token place since I came here. I,  with my parents and five brothers, landed here in the summer of 1880 and I have resided here ever since. While I can­not be considered a real pioneer, still I would hardly be classed as a Johnny-­come-lately. In fact the real pioneers are almost all gone, and are spoken of as residents of the past. There are a few still here who were here when I came, such as some^, of the Win­klers, the Anderson boys, Jeff and Fred, Tom Buhl and J.L. Starr.

It was in July 1880 that C.R. (Calvin) White in Boise City when we were on our way to western Washington from Kansas. I told my parents of the beautiful Meadows Valley, so ourselves and horses being worn out, we went with him from there to get us a home.

[Calvin White is considered the father of Meadows Valley. His was the first fam­ily in the valley, and he established the first store and post office. He, with some help from the Winkers and a few others, hacked out the first wagon trail (described below) between Council and the Meadows Valley.]

We of course went thru the Salubria Valley, which at that time was covered with a dense growth of sagebrush. From where the town of Salubria stood, in an easterly direction it didn't look good to us, as we were sickened with the look of sage brush, and it all looked alike to us. We traveled thru Indian Valley on the day Mrs. Cal Underwood was buried: a woman who had committed suicide,

as some of the old timers will remember.

After passing thru Council Valley there was no beaten road from there on, and at times someone had to go ahead of the wagons and view out the road. When got to what is known as Fort Hall Hill, White played a funny little joke on us kids that I have never forgotten. It came about this way. There was a large pitch pine stump standing by the road with lots of pitch standing out all Over it and quite soft. We had never seen pine pitch before, so White pointed it out to us

said,   Boys, there is the place for you to get your gum, and it's good too." So

we of course ran to the stump and proceeded to help ourselves. We all filled our mouths with the white, soft pitch, and say but if you have never tasted the stuff then you cannot appreciate this joke as well as one who has. Oh, such a bitter taste in our mouths, and I think it remained in my mouth for three days after.

When we got to the top of Fort Hall Hill, we   went       down a rocky hill to the river and forded it. Yes, forded it endways. We had to cross it 37 times between there and Price Valley, and as there had never been a rock taken out of any of the fords, you can imagine how it was: lots of rocks as large as a kitchen range that we had to pass over. So you see it was some rough going.

We finally arrived in Meadows Valley on the 29th day of July, pretty well worn out and I wish to state that my mother and Mrs. Smith who had come with us were the first white women to live in Meadows Valley, except Mrs. C.R. White.

Shortly after that, Clays moved in and Mrs. R. [?] G. Steward. Charles and William Campbell came the same fall, also R.H. Martin. Well do I remember the win­ter of '80 and '81. At one time there was five feet of snow on the level, but very little effort was made to keep the roads open.

John Steward who now lives on Crane Creek was born there that winter. There were no roads broke to their place, and as there was no doctor there then, it depended on my mother and Mrs. White to go on snowshoes   --- of a mile to take care of them and as my mother had never been on snowshoes before, it sure was some undertaking for her. But with true western spirit she made it fine.

 

 

 

 

 

1-21-99

 

This month marks the beginning of the sixth year of the History Corner. I'm going to try something a lit­tle different. Within the past year the Museum has cata­loged almost 500 new pho­tographs. We didn't actually acquire all of them within the past year; we're playing catch-up on getting some of them cataloged. The point is the Museum is building quite a nice collection of historical photos: over 1500 so far. Some of them we know a lot about, some of them we know very little. I've always planned to include more photos in this column, and this week I have some that I would like more information about.

The first two photos are more idle curiosity than anything. They show "the Club House" near McCall. The information I got with it says it was 1.5 miles from McCall. Just a short dis­tance from the Club House, the road forked to Warren, New Meadows and Sylvian Beach, going three direc­tions. If someone can tell me what it was, where it and about its demise. I’ll put it in next week's column.

The next photo is of a white house that stood in the east end of Council. A number of you will probably recognize it. Somebody call me and fill me in. [This turned out to be the old hospital.]

The last photo is of Andy Anderson's logging trucks lined up in front of his shop on June 14, 1942. The trucks are numbered 1 through 6 on the radiator grill. I've been told these old trucks had ten-foot ­wide bunks and water­-cooled brakes. The tanks above the cabs held the water for the brakes. Can somebody tell me where his shop was?

Contact me at 253-4582 or Box Council, 83612 or dalefisk@juno.com.

I would like to thank several people for donations to the Museum in memory of Betty Smith's mother, Ethel Stewart: Bessie Smith, Dixie Thomas, Ralph & Mary Stephens, Margaret Koester and Jim Poole.

 

 

 

1-28-99

This week I want to share a picture with you that is kind of special. It's not the kind of picture that has anything very obviously special about it. It's just a bunch of people posing for the camera. They aren't dressed in any special way, and there is nothing show­ing that is out of the ordi­nary. It's the stories that lie behind what is shown that makes it special.

This photo was taken at Landore after the mining boom had peaked - about 1909 or later. Landore was about five miles north of Cuprum, and was the big­gest town in the Seven Dev­ils Mining District. The photo came from Winifred Lindsay who grew up in Cuprum, Decorah and Landore. Winifred's father. Dr. William Brown, ran the store shown behind the people in the photo. The information on the back of the photo says the store was deserted by this time, and was used for dances. The dances would start at 8:00 p.m. or earlier, and con­tinue all night with a mid­night supper. This picture was taken after such a dance.

As far as I know, all these people are dead now. I guess some of the youngest ones could be alive, but they would be very old. All of them lived in the area between Bear and Landore, and were part of a social group. The note on the back of the photo says, "A few of the auld bunch."

Number one is John Thompson. On March 22, 1916, he was appointed Postmaster at Landore. It was Thompson who was responsible for the destruc­tion of the buildings shown in this picture and of all of the other buildings on the south side of the main street where the Post Office was located. He was in the habit of reading in bed by candle light. On one occa­sion he fell asleep while reading, and the candle set the building on fire. Fortu­nately all of the structures that burned, except the Post Office building, were empty. The cancellation stamp and a few other essential Post Office items were saved from the flames, and Thompson carried them in his pocket from then on. Thompson was Postmaster until the office closed June 6, 1920. By that time Lan­dore was practically a ghost town.

Number two is Bill Smith. Number three is hard to read on the original notes, but it looks like "Tonglice" Robertson. It must be Pug. (Did you know his real name was Isaac?) Number lour is Joe Kramer, son of Pete and Martha Kramer. More on them in a minute. One of the two guys marked X is someone named McCall. Number six is Gus Lapke. I don't know any­thing about Gus except that he is in a lot of the photos taken around Landore. He was undoubtedly an old prospector who probably knew every mine and miner in the Seven Devils district.

Number seven is Elizabeth David. Everyone called her "Lizzie." Her father, Arthur David was one of the earli­est prospectors to come into the Seven Devils. Every­body called him "Frenchy" because he was a French Canadian. Lizzie's mother became mentally ill shortly after Lizzie was born. She was sent oft to the asylum zit Blackfoot, and I've never read another word about what became of her after that. Lizzie grew up living in Catholic boarding schools. or with friends and neighbors in the Council - Lan­dore area, and sometimes with her father. Frenchy killed himself in 1922. After that, Lizzie was known to be in California. I wish I knew what happened to her. It would be interesting to know if she married and had children, etc.

Number eight is Pete Kramer and his wife, Martha, is number nine. In almost every photo I've ever seen of Pete he is wearing a hat and a tie. He ran the stage line between Council and all the towns in the mining district. She ran the hotel-stage stop at "Kramer," also known as "Summit" as it was at the summit bet­ween the Crooked River and Hornet Creek drainages. Pete and Martha were divorced in 1920. "Two years later Pete sold out and moved to Hillsboro, Oregon. In 1923, Martha married number 11, Sam Stephans. They moved to Council and ran the Pomona Hotel for awhile. I don't know what happened to Sam, but in 1946 Martha married Walter Wright. They ran the "Wayside Cabin Camp" that was later replaced by the Starlight Motel. Martha died Novem­ber 15, 1954 somewhere in Idaho, but I don't know where. Anybody out there know? Her granddaughter is trying to find out.

Number ten is Ed "Dirty Shirt" Brown. I don't know anything about him. [According to the census of 1910 Edgar Brown was living in Cuprum with a Walter J. Smith. He was born in July, 1870 in England.  He died when he fell from a barn where he was putting hay and broke his neck in 1917. He was employed by Joe Warner on his ranch on Bear Creek at the time.]

Number 12 is Rose Groseclose Robertson. She was the matriarch of the Robert­son family at Bear. As a girl, she lived at Cotton­wood, and the small post office that existed there for a short time was named "Rose” after her. Her oldest brother was killed by Indi­ans in the Long Valley Mas­sacre in 1878. Number 13 is her third son, Arthur "Tuff" Robertson (1894­-1977). Numbers 14 & 15 are simply identified as ''Robertson kids." I would assume they are Tuff's since they are right in front of him.

Number 16 is Mrs. Pete Gaarden. Her husband was an old-time miner. There is a trail in Deep Creek named after him. Their daughter,Mary, was a school teacher.

Number 17 is another of Rose's sons. Austin "Bud" Robertson (1891-1964). Number 18 is his oldest brother, Hershel (1889­1941).

Number 19 is Mrs. Frank Lauzon. I don't know anything about her, but her husband was the wildest storyteller in the country. Number 20 is Orson Smith. If I'm not mistaken he was Harold "Ol' Shep" Smith's father. I would really like to have more information on the Smith family and how they are related to the Robertsons and Warners. Somebody send me a family tree Would you?

This is just skimming the surface of all the stories behind the faces of this group of friends. This photo represents an era, a way of life and a community all of which are gone forever.

Two more donations arrived this week in mem­ory of Ethel Stewart. I would Two more donations arrived this week in memory of Ethel Stewart. I would like to thank Virgil and Karen Pettigrew and John and Colleen for for their generosity.

Now for what I've learned about last week's photos. Nobody told me where Andy Anderson's shop or the white house was, but I hope someone will. Thanks to Phil Soulen. who gave me Warren Brown's phone number, I got some info on the big Club House at McCall. That building is still standing. It's not far north of Lardo's along the Warren Wagon road. up the hill on the west side. You can see it from the main road if you stop and look in the right place. Warren Brown told me his father, Carl Brown, sawed the lumber that was used to build the Club House about the time War­ren was born —1912. This was shortly after Carl bought into the sawmill on the lake and it became the Hoff & Brown Lumber Com­pany. Carl hauled the lum­ber to the construction site with a wagon pulled by four big horses. He was never paid for it; Warren didn't know why.

The Club House was a fancy hotel, and owned land down to the lake. Warren seemed to remember a man named Cunnington from Nampa being associated with the hotel in its early days. He didn’t have any info on how successful it was or when it closed. It is owned now by a group of ministers who use it as a retreat.

 

 

2-4 –99

As we go through life, we usually notice the events and things that stand out-­those that especially affect us emotionally, financially, or that change our lives. We take pictures of special occasions and special things. Too often it's not until something, or someone, is gone that we realize we didn't stop to appreciate them. It's a shame that, too often, ordi­nary things become extraor­dinary only after we lose them.

All this came to the fore­front of my mind, partly because last week's photo was so ordinary--at least on the surface. It stuck me again this week as I was cataloging Museum photos. For years, the Museum has had a collection of over 400 snapshots taken by Gene Camp during the late 1960s and early '70s; I just now got caught up enough to start entering them into our database. (By the way, with the addition of Gene's pic­tures, we now have over 2,300 photographs in our collection.)

The photos Gene took are­-or at least were--very ordi­nary. They are mostly of people in our community-­just ordinary people, sitting in ordinary houses, or on the street. They are not dressed up, or at a special occasion. They're not doing anything monumental. In spite of this, as I looked through them I was filled with emotion. Many of the familiar faces were ones I hadn't seen in a long time-­some of them because they halve moved away, but many because they are dead. When I saw some of the people, I had to say, "How young they look!"

In a nutshell--things change. People change. Towns change. The ordi­nary becomes extraordi­nary. Mostly, that's all a museum is: a collection of things that, in their time, were ordinary. But because they are not ordinary now, we value them as special.

The photos with my col­umn this week are from Gene Camp's collection, and are classic examples of ordinary people, places or things that have become special in my memory. The Fruitvale store was a daily fixture in my childhood. Every school day morning, my brothers, my sister, and I would walk about a half-mile to the old store to catch the bus. Sterling and Alma McGinley ran the store (starting in 1946), and when it was cold outside, they kindly tolerated all us noisy kids tracking in snow to stand by the wood stove. After about 1964 their daughter, Anna, and her husband, Henry Kamerdula ran the store.

After school, if we were rich, we could buy a Hershey bar for a nickel--or a dime for the big bar. if we were really loaded. I remember the pile of Levi jeans; the price--$4.00. The store closed sometime in the 1970s, but I don't know just what year. If anyone has that info, I'd really like to know.

You readers out there have been great to contribute photos and information to me and the Museum; yet I know there are more great things out there that need to be collected and preserved for our community. My plea to you is this: stop and think about the photos that you have. Do they show something or someone that was familiar to the people of this community but is gone now? These are the kind of photographs that the Museum would like to have or make copies of. If you can donate them, (let them to me any way you can. My address is Box 252, Coun­cil, ID, 83612. If you don't want to part with them. I can come to your house and copy a photo in no time flat. without even taking it out of an album. Or if you live far away, they have wonderful laser photocopiers now that can copy a photo without losing quality.

Now for the thank yous. Several people sent donations to the Museum in memory of Ethel Stewart: Paul & Vita Phillips. June Daniels. Eileen Free. and Evelyn Lester. Thank you all for your generosity and for remembering a fine lady.

This week I about fell over when I opened a letter from back east. It contained a donation to the Museum-­$1500! The check is from a company out of Boise and Concord. MA. but the actual source of the money wants to remain anonymous. So, whoever you are: THANK YOU.

 

 

2-11-99

More pictures. These, like a couple I've put in previ­ous columns. came from Bob Hagar. He gave us a bunch of really great photos when he and his wife, Christy, were here this past summer.

The one of a narrow can­yon with trees and a few buildings in it is a mystery to me. On the back is writ­ten, "Lamont ranch on Shin­gle Creek." I probably should know where Shingle Creek is, but I don't. If anyone out there can tell me where this is, please let me know.

The next photo shows the "Council Lumber Company." Somebody tell me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the same mill that later operated as the "Council Box & Lumber Company."

The Council Lumber Com­pany was apparently the first sawmill actually at Council. instead of out in the surrounding area. The first actual reference to the company by name, appears in the July 24. 1914 Coun­cil Leader. but there are indications that this mill may have been operating as early as 1909. The mill mentioned in the Council Leader. Nov 26, 1909, tells of "the Council planing mill" with two planers and an edger. It was finishing lumber supplied by a saw­mill on Hornet Creek. Since this sounds exactly like the planer the Wilkies were operating at Fruitvale at the time, it could be that the paper wasn't specific enough about the location, and was really talking about Fruitvale.

At any rate, the Council Lumber Company (mentioned in 1914 and shown in the photo) went bankrupt in 1925. 1 sus­pect that it was this mill that Matt Spencer revived when he started the Coun­cil Box and Lumber Com­

pany in 1935. It apparently was a sawmill with a planer. It was located a couple hundred yards northwest of where the road leaving Council to Hornet Creek crossed the railroad tracks. Pieces of cement foundation from this mill are still sitting in June Ryals' back yard.

In 1936, S.S. Bounds bought the mill from Spenc­er. That fall, the mill burned to the ;round. The following year Bounds sold his lumber business to N. X. Hanson. Hanson, along with his partners, Carl Swanstrom, Matt Spencer, and Charles Jackson, rebuilt the mill and hired 25 men to run it. But, almost as if the mill were cursed, it burned down again not long after it was built in 1938. Undeterred, the men immediately started from scratch, one more time. By that fall they had sawed  300,000 board feet of lumber, bought that much more standing tim­ber, and were building log­ging roads.

This was the dawn of the modern logging age. Crawler tractors were becoming available to build logging roads. Also, chainsaws were starting to revo­lutionize timber harvest. The next year (1939) things really swung into high gear when the Boise-Payette Lumber Company came to town. Andy Anderson was their right-hand man here.

I've received conflicting information about the loca­tion of Anderson's shop that was in the photo from a few weeks ago. Some people said he never had a shop in Council, only in New Mead­ows, near the railroad depot. Several other people told me his shop was near the "new" Boise Cascade shop (now owned by the City of Council) east of where the mill stood. Anderson did operate out of New Meadows until he came to Council in 1939. He had a logging camp at "Old Davis" at first. If someone can give me con­clusive evidence about his shop location, I’d like to nail it down for posterity.

I'd like to thank Bert and Tina Warner for a donation to the Museum in memory of Ethel Stewart. It is very much appreciated.

I'd also like to sadly acknowledge the passing of a good friend of the Museum. Nita Phillips. Paul and Nita have been very good to the Museum over the years, both with moral and monetary support. We will miss her.

 

2-18-99

More pictures from Bob Hagar. These are very inter­esting photos, and it's too bad we don't have more information about them. I know nothing about the mill at Shingle Flat. Did it actu­ally make shingles, or was it a regular sawmill? The close-up photo of the mill here shows several freshly-­sawed timbers about 8 inches square lying at the lower left, and some boards lying at the lower right. Any information about this mill or where the name Shingle Flat came from would be appreciated.

By the way, the photo last week at Shingle Creek can't have been taken at the Shingle Creek that runs from the Shingle Flat area down to East Fork. The country in that photo is too open. It looks to me like the Snake River area west of here.

I need to make a correc­tion concerning the writing of Sherman York that I put in this column a few weeks ago. Sherman was Galen's grandfather, not his uncle. He and his wife, Georgia, lived near the Adams / Washington County line. Sherman died in 1945.

Galen gave me another lit­tle piece of history the other day. He had a few docu­ments dated 1903 concerning the construction of what must have been the first wagon road up the Payette River. A couple of the papers are bids on building the road. I'm not sure how it all fits together. but one amount mentioned is $485 per mile. Another place, $700 per mile is men­tioned. In what appears to be the final contract, the amount is "$500 per lineal mile for each mile of the first seven miles of said road, beginning at Smith's Ferry and continuing south along the west side of Payette River, and 8650 per mile for the remainder of the road to be built."

A price of $1.00 per cubic yard was agreed on for removing all rock that could to only be removed with dynamite. Total length of the road was to be about 18 miles to the mouth of the North Fork of the Payette River. The contractor was J.J. MacDonald of Nampa, working for The Payette Improvement & Boom Com­pany.

The most interesting part to me was that the road was to be "seven feet wide, turn­outs to be constructed at distances of not more than half a mile apart." Nowa­days people call the high­way there a goat trail, but imagine what people in those days would think of it.

The date on the contract was September 14. 1903, and the road was supposed to be finished by December 31. A letter from MacDonald dated November 24 explained his difficulty:

“Owing to a very heavy snow storm on the 9th and continuing for several days, I had to remove my outfit to your headquarters camp for

 this year. It was impossible for me to get men to stay on the road to work any long- er. I did everything possible to rush the work to comple­tion this year. according to my contract with you. I hired teams at Boise and shipped all the men I could get to go, at my own expense but even then could not get sufficient to finish the work. I completed about eight miles of the road from Smith's Ferry down the river. With an -early spring I ought not to have any trouble in finish­ing the road in plenty of time for next summers travel."

I have one more request. I have a list of men who died in World War Two that I got from 1945 newspapers. I would like

to make an accurate list of all those from Adams County that died in that war. Here are the names I have: Elwin Craddock. Donald Ham. Walter Shearer. Fred John­son, Melvin Bacus, Merrill Bethel, James Johnstone, William Kirby, Donald Fuller, Vern Martin, Jack Marshall. Rex Wilson, Walter Schroff, Lee Garcia.

 

2-25-04

John Dobroth called me and told me about the Shin­gle Creek photo. He says the Shingle Creek in the photo comes into Rapid River from the north just below the fish hatchery. The photo also seems to be looking north. John also informed me that his father, Herman Dobroth was a co-­owner of the Tamarack mill with Jerry McCatron back in the 1940s. I didn't know that when I wrote about the mill some time back.

I still haven't had anyone identify the white house in the photo from a few weeks ago. It looked familiar to several people, but they couldn't place it. Someone mentioned it looks like the old hospital or some build­ing associated with it, but it's not quite right to be it.

Bob Hagar keeps in touch by e-mail, and commented on the old Council Lumber Company photo. He and his brother, Ted, seem to remember the owner of the mill being a man named Morrison. The only Morrison in my files who had a sawmill was Frank Morri­son who had a sawmill on Mill Creek in 1914--the same year as the Council Lumber Co. mill is men­tioned in the paper. Bob or Ted also thought maybe their father, Albert Hagar, may have had an interest in the mill or maybe just worked there at one time.

Ted, Bob. and their sister, Lily May, grew up in a house that stood where the Coleman Apartments are now. Their father, Albert "Bert" Hagar, was well ­known and well liked around Council.

He was an avid sportsman, and from what I gather, an especially avid fisherman. Several of the scenes in Dr. Thurston's home movies show Bert along on fishing expe­ditions to remote mountain lakes. And old newspapers mention his other fishing trips. The Museum has a martin trap that Bert set--­along with a chunk of the tree that eventually grew out around the trap.

I think I mentioned that Bert Hagar is remembered for operating the Council Creamery. The creamery was built about 1915. Carl Weed was on the board of directors. It stood just oil the west side of the railroad tracks, south of the road to Hornet Creek. The Young family, who lives at that location now, told me they have found miscellaneous bottles, etc. from the creamery on that lot.

In the summer of 1919 the creamery closed briefly because of financial prob­lems. Evidently local farm­ers encouraged it to open again so they could have a market for their milk and cream. By the spring of 1920 the Council Creamery started making ice cream. I don't know how long they did that, but they announced the intention to continue making it every other day for about 8 months out of the year. The Adams County Leader, Feb. 24, 1922, mentioned that W.W. Adair, who had been managing the Council Creamery, had left for Por­tland, and that Bert Hagar would be temporarily run­ning it. That issue also said that auto drivers must now buy a license and have "the receipt pasted on the windshield."

Nothing significant is mentioned in the Leader about the creamery until 1929 when it said during low cattle prices "a few years back," some cattle­men went into the dairy business, getting "a weekly pay check from their cream." In the same vein, the paper mentioned a year later, "Sixty-five gallons of cream were shipped from Fruitvale station in the past two days."

Bert Hagar's "temporary" job as manager of the creamery in 1922 turned out to be more than that. In 1939 the Leader announced that Bert was resigning from the creamery after 17 years of service.

Six years later (November 1945), Bert went out duck hunting and didn't come in

that 'evening. Many in the community organized a search party and scoured the riverbanks of the Weiser River. I believe it was sometime that night that they found Bert where he had somehow drowned in the river. The way my dad talked about it, the whole community was hit pretty hard by this because Bert was so well liked by everyone.

I'd like to thank Clarence and Marie McFadden for a donation to the Museum in memory of Ethel Stewart. Your kindness and gener­osity is appreciated.

 

 

3-4-99

            In looking through my files I ran across something someone gave me several years ago. It was written in 1902 by William James--an employee of Arthur Huntley. Huntley owned a ranch south of Cuprum where the road from Council tees into the Kleinschmidt Grade. Some time back I told the story of how Huntley got rich after grubstaking the men who discovered gold at Thunder Mountain. In 1902, there was a gold rich to Thunder Mountain which left the Seven Devils mining district in a serious slump. The following is an account of one day on the Huntley ranch. James' reference in a couple places to a "camp starting up" I think refers to a town in the mining district getting back on its feet. Since Cuprum was the closest, it may be the town in question.

 

A.O. Huntley Ranche, Ida.

one day on the farm

June 20th, 1902

 

Arise 4:30 a.m. Build fire, wrangle horses, milk 3 cows. Breakfast 6:15 start Rider out. Haul load

wood. Hoe in garden. Business begins 9:30 Mr. Rosebury [or Rosebery] called, tells his troubles in

five minutes, sympathize with him, goes away feeling better. Keep hoeing. 11 O'clock Mr. Sprague

called, big proposition, want to buy hay and grain to start livery stable in Cuprum. Try to discourage

him, but no go. Finally consent to let him have 500 lb. hay. Agree to work it out. O.K. Goes away

happy.

 

11:30 Sam Morse called. (Keep hoeing) Wants to borrow wagon, tells his troubles in short time, let

him have wagon + he leaves in good spirits.

12:05 (Dinner) 1:20 Still hoeing. Mr. Flynn called. Tells about camp starting up + finally gets to

business want to buy potatoes, offers 20 ct per hundred for small ones and wants to buy good ones

on an old account of A.O.H. [Huntley] which occurred two or three years ago in a case like this: A.

agrees to furnish a man on road. B. hires a man for him + pays him. B. goes to A. for money, A. sends him to C. for money. C. would not pay + did not have the money, + now he comes to one for potatoes after 3 years. Well (I keep hoeing) + take the case under advisement + finally conclude to

let him have 3 sacks of potatoes at 1.50 per cwt for cash only + could not agree on price of small ones. He leaves under a cloud but will be back after potatoes tomorrow. (keep hoeing)

5:20 P.M. Mr. Daggetz called said camp was starting up, sure made us both feel good, he left

stepping high. 6 0'clock supper 6:40 P.M. Sam Morse came after wagon + buys wagon + buys two

bits worth of hay. goes again. 7 - o'clock Arthur Brown called wanted to borrow the carriage to go to Council after his mother or mother in law. I drew the line there. Would not loan the carriage for fear some one would come after the house next. Don't know how he felt, but he went away slowly

 

7:30 take horses out + hobble them 8 - PM milk cows + take care of saddle horse 9:15 arrive in the

house + take a look at the folks + go to bed at 9:25

 

W. James

For this long day's work, James was probably paid the going rate in those days: $1.00

 

I would like to thank Mary Owens for a donation in memory of Nita Phillips. The family and the Museum appreciate your thoughtfulness.

 

3-11-99

            This week I pulled out the Museum’s Adams County Leader newspapers from 1920. I thought I would just lift a few items.

            January 2 issue: “The Cool – Donnelly Co. has had a crew of men at work putting up ice taken from the Weiser river. The ice is something like twenty inches in thickness and says Mr. Donnelly, unusually cold.”

            Fred Cool and Dale Donnelly ran a feed store that sat about where the public rest rooms are now–-south of the town square park.

            One the same page is a list of stray animals. The list almost fills a whole column from the top to the bottom. The heading on these always read, “Estray Notices.” One item reads: “Estray—Long yearling; red with red-white face; overslant in one ear and underslant in other; branded ‘50’ with half circle beneath on left ribs. W.V. Emery. ”If my poor memory

Serves me, that brand sounds like Steve Shumway’s brand today.

            January 9 issue: “Those who attended the dance given at the People’s Theater on New Year’s night by the American Legion seem to be unanimous in the opinion that the event was one of the most enjoyable of the kind ever held here. There were 130 tickets sold and we are told that there were, spectators included, approximately 300 people in the hall. In short, the party came close to being an all-community affair.”

            The theater didn’t have a slanted floor at this time, and dances were common there.

            On the same page, there is a large ad for Ford automobiles that could be purchased at the Addington Auto Company in Council. Bud and Hugh Addington ran the dealership in what in now the Ace Saloon. Bud built the building in 1916 after the Overland Hotel, which stood there before, burned in the big fire of 1915. The ad said the demand for cars far exceeded the supply, so customers needed to order as soon as possible to get on a first-come, first-served list. One thing I find interesting in the ad is this: “If you by a Ford car now, don’t think you have to ‘store’ it. It is no longer popular to ‘lay-up’ your car for the winter. Buy a Ford car now and use it now.”

            Antifreeze had not been invented when early cars came along. People always put their cars into storage for the winter—draining the cooling system and putting them up on blocks to relieve weight from the tires. If the ad is accurate, antifreeze must have come into sue about this time. I doubt anyone around here kept a car going in winter because the roads around here weren’t routinely cleared of snow until about the 1940s.

            The January 16 issue listed the students graduating from Council High School: “Ben Dillon, Dorsey Donnelly, Lester Gould, Olive Hallet, Lila Moore, Crystal Weed, Daisy Hancock, Rhoma Hancock, Harry Fuller, Ethel Downs, Grace Fuller, Claud Ham, Martin McCall, Mable Poynor, Opal Selby, Thelma Lampkin.”

            In the “Intermediate Room,” Mildred Winkler, Clarence Hallet and Georgia Kesler” are listed, among others. May and Lester Marks are listed as in “First Primary.”  May’s last name was later Harrington. Mildred Winkler will be visiting Council this summer—great lady.

            The January 23rd issue announced that Bernard Eastman of Payette would be at the courthouse to talk about the National Evergreen Highway Association. Mr. Eastman was going to talk about the “plans and purposes of the great highway of which the state road through Adams County will become a part. To those who may not be familiar with the Evergreen Highway, it may be stated that the plan now well under way, contemplates the linking and routing of the many state and federal roads, constructed or in contemplation, that will go in forming a continuous all-year highway across the United States.”

            “Judging from the amount of travel on similar roads already perfected, it is apparent that the number of tourist and other cars that will pass through this county when the route is well established will be almost beyond the comprehension of those who have not given the matter consideration.”

            The next issue summarized Eastman’s talk. In part, he said the average tourist car contains four people, and that they each spend an average of four dollars per day on gas, oil, repairs, food, clothing, etc. The paper continued, “He also said that after careful calculations based upon the records of highways of less national importance, it is predicted that 5,000 cars—20,000 people—will pass over the route and through Council next season in case the road work now contracted beyond New Meadows is completed to the point where the highway there will be passable next July.”

            Idaho’s section of this highway became known as the North-South Highway, and later as Highway 95. Work done at that time included the old Mesa Hill route that switchbacked down to Middle Fork, and the rerouting of the road north out of Council to its present location instead of on Galena Street. It also included the switchbacks at Whitebird and Lewiston hills. The Leader said, “One of Mr. Eastman’s purposes her was to urge that Council provide a suitable camping ground for tourists. . . “ This was pre-motel days. I know of three tourist camps that were in Council. The first was installed in 1922, about where the old football field is, between the grade school and the high school. It was basically a grassy area where people could camp, and had a kitchen and “waiting room” The next two existed at the same time, during the 1930s. The “Wayside” tourist camp was on the corner where the Starlite Motel is now. It had eight cabins, a store, bathrooms with showers, a service station, and a laundry room. The old store / gas station is still there on the corner. We have a set of “then & now” pictures of that location on display in the Museum, showing what it looked like in the 1930s.

            The “Shady Rest” tourist camp was where Crosby’s place is, on the west side of the highway, just north of Fist Avenue. It had cabins, a laundry room, showers, and a store. I think some of the old buildings are still there.

 

3-18-99

            This column featured a map of early Fruitvale and info on the stores over the years. All of it is in Landmarks

 

3-25-99

            A continuation of last week.

4-1-99

            This week I went back to the 1920 Adams County Leader newspapers for some tidbits.

            In 1920 the area was still very nervous about influenza. In the previous year or two the flu had killed several people her, and nearly killed many others. The January 23 issue told of the quarantine of the homes of frank Hubbard and Randall Knight. It also reported five cases of the flue on Westfork in the Ed Levander household. Levander lived on the place Harvey and Hazel Harrington later had for years.

            The papers for that period contained advertisements for the following: B.J. Dillon—Attorney and Counselor at Law; L.L. Burtenshaw—lawyer; Dr. W.E. Fuller, Breeder, New Zealand Rabbits—“Not a hobby, but a business” [He was also the local veterinarian]; Dr. W.M. Brown, physician and surgeon—office adjoining the bank building [The bank was where Buckshot Mary’s is now (until recently the drug store) and Brown’s office is now Elite Repeats]; Dr. Vadney, physician and surgeon—office in rear of the Valley Drug Store—phone 52-W; Dr. Carter, dentist—Addington building; James A. Stinson, Attorney at Law; James Kesler, jeweler—watch repair a specialty.

            You may have noticed a few old silos around Fruitvale. They were built when they became popular about 1920. The February 13 issue had an article containing testimonials by local farmer who had built and used them: A.R. McClure, George W. Phipps, G.T. Hamill, Ernest McMahan, John McGinley. The last two gentlemen lived at Fruitvale, and some of their silos are still standing. My dad told me he helped build one of them, and described how someone would walk around inside the silo to pack down the contents as it was filled.

            Fur prices were amazing that year. An extra large, number one quality coyote pelt brought $35.00. I guess that’s about what they are bringing today, but in 1920 a dollar went MANY times farther. A small, number two coyote pelt brought $5.00.

            You’ve all seen the picture of a man reading a newspaper that is painted on the side of the Library. The painting was copied from a photo of Steve Robertson who lived near Bear. The February 13 issue reported his death at the age of 86 at the home of Robert Young.

            The paper said, “Uncle Steve” is “said to have spent approximately forty years in what is now Adams County. His wife died during the summer of 1877 and their three children died within a period of two years from that time. The deceased will be remembered as a representative of a care-free type of the early pioneer, the active years of whose life had been spent in the great outdoors at a time when in this part of the country there was no limit to elbow room—at a time when not game laws prevented him from bringing down a deer and the native trout sought not the protection of fish warden. In the lore of the wilds he was rich; of worldly possessions he had little or none. His old friends tell us that they had never known him to do an act of intentional unkindness—and much is embodied in such tribute. May his soul rest in peace.”

            Robertson was to be buried in the Kesler Cemetery.

            The February 20 issue announced that H.H. Cossit [former County coroner and local carpenter] had just opened a “tire vulcanizing shop.” Vollie Zink had joined him as partner. They used this “vulcanizing” process to retread tires. The paper said it “is said to be the first machine of the kind brought to the northwest.” That issue also announced the birth of a baby boy to Mr. and Mrs. John R. Manning on February 17. That was a busy day: Mrs. Perry Warnock of Hornet Creek also had a baby girl that day, and Earl Dodge married Ruby Button at Goodrich. A few days later (Feb. 23) Mrs. William Hahn had a baby boy.

            The Museum is still looking for old phone books, old farming and ranching artifacts, and photos of the schools at Indian Valley, Orchard, Bacon Creek, Grays Creek, Poverty Flat, Johnson Creek, Round Valley, Alpine, Hillsdale, Granger, Salmon River and Lick Creek. I’ve noticed a couple old school buildings still standing at Indian Valley. I don’t know anything about them, but I’d like to. If anyone cares to fill me in, please do. A photo of the old building(s) as they are now would be nice to have as well, if we can get some history to go with them.

            I have a question. Seems like I heard the old steam locomotives used to take on water at the spring across the river from the house that sits about a mile south of Starkey. Going back from now as near as my foggy memory can do it, some of the people who have lived at that location: Drew Ford, Denny Swaer (late 1970s thru mid ‘80s), Gorelys 91960s), Armstrongs (1930s). If anyone knows about trains taking on water here, please give me a call.

 

4-8-99

            In the March 5, 1920 issue of the Adams County Leader: John Roberts Forbis and Grace Audry Branstetter were married Feb. 25 – both of New Meadows. J.B. Lafferty resigned as Superintendent of the Weiser Forest. His successor was Lyle F. Watts. “A dozen or more” small pox cases were reported at Goodrich.

            March 26 issue: Boy born to Mrs. W.E. Baker Mar. 19 (Wayne?).

            The spring of 1920 sounds like it was a little like this year, only it must have warmed up in march enough for the peach trees to blossom. The April 9 Leader reported that six inches of snow fell in the Orchard district on April 1. The weather had been cold enough that everyone was afraid all the area’s peach trees would not produce. In the same issue it was reported that divorces were granted to Martha Kramer from Pete Kramer and Hazel Childers from Claude Childers.

            The April 9 issue also contained the following: “The Addington Auto Company yesterday received a carload of Fordson tractors, and Mr. Addington has been giving demonstrations of the pulling power of the machine. Attached to a road drag, it lugged everything that got in its way, and it was the general opinion of those who watched the demonstration that the tractor is competent to do a marathon race with a bunch of gang plows.”

            April 16 issue: Mrs. Sam Woods (Margaret) died April 5. Born 12-1-51. married Samuel Woods in 1867. Came to Indian Valley 1882.

            May 28, 1920 issue: “We are in receipt of a card announcing the birth of an eight-pound boy to Dr. and Mrs. R.T. Whiteman of Cambridge on Sunday, May 23. The newcomer’s name is Robert William and we’ll bet a biscuit that he looks just like his dad, even to the little bald spot on his thought dome.” I haven’t seen Bob lately. Does he still have his father’s “thought dome”?

            June 18 issue: Harrison Camp died June 12. Born 1838. Came west in 1858 as an employee in the transportation service of the Government and worked as a government teamster “during the period when the whites were establishing supremacy over the Indians.” (Is that politically correct or what?) Married Elizabeth Jane Fife in 1869 in Kansas. Came west again with three children in 1882. Lived a year in eastern Oregon, then came to Council in July of 1883. Homesteaded two miles north of town. (That’s how Camp Creek got its name. ) His wife died in 1913.

            Same issue: Boxing champion, Jack Dempsey acquitted of charges of conspiracy to evade military draft.

            June 25 issue: Girl born to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Denny on June 23. John H. Shaw of Middlefork married Miss Essie Ball of Cottonwood on June 22. “Born two weeks ago to Frank Del Barr and wife, a daughter; and to Clarence LaFay and wife, a son.”

            There’s a social event that was often announced in newspapers of those days, and I don’t quite know what they were: chautauquas. The one held in June of 1920 lasted five days in Council. It had evidently been an annual event, and plans were to continue on that schedule. It seems to have involved musical entertainment provided by a touring group.

            The paper said, “Our past two chautauquas were given under contracts signed with the West Coast concern. Several months ago a contract was signed with the Ellison-White Chautauquas for next year and it is expected that by this arrangement there will be improvement in talent, as compared with the quite satisfactory offerings of this year, the latter company being an institution of national reputation.”

            If someone out there can tell me about chautauquas, please do. My dictionary says they were “lyceum and amusement” productions. I had to look up lyceum—that’s another frequently used term way back when: an association providing public lectures, concerts, and entertainments.” Were they held outdoors?--in tents?—in the theater?

            My mother and my aunt Amy tell me the spring I asked about last week (about a mile below Starkey) was used to water steam locomotives. The spring fed a railroad water tank and also supplied water to the house across the river. Another family who lived there was the Elkins family who preceded the Armstrongs.

 

4-15-99

            A couple of people contacted me about chautauquas. Henrietta Nelson called to say she had been to one as a girl near Flat willow, Montana. She said it was held inside a building that resembled a high school gymnasium. She remembered the musical parts of the program, and said there were other things besides music, but didn’t have a clear memory of what those things were. I would guess that reciting lengthy poems were part of the program, as this was popular at “literaries” around here. People would recite poems or other writings. Speeches, then called “oratories” were very common at any social gathering early in this century. Before radio came along (and before TV of course) any live entertainment was highly valued and well-attended.

            This is illustrated by excerpts from George Gould’s diary from 1920. (The death of Harry Camp reported in the paper is also mentioned. Plus he spelled Chautauqua differently.)

            Saturday, June 12, 1920: “Harry Camp died today.” Sunday, June 13, 1920: “The folks went to the Chataugua. This was the first day of the program.” Monday, June 14, 1920: “We went to Harry Camp’s funeral and afterward to the Chataugua. We went to the Chataugua tonight. I drove the car by lamp light for the first time. Don’t like it.” Tuesday, June 15, 1920: “I went to the Chataugua with the folks tonight.”  Wednesday, June 16, 1920: “Went to Chataugua in afternoon & evening.” Thursday, June 17, 1920:”We all went to the Chataugua tonight but John. It was the last night.”

            Evidently the Goulds liked the program. I’d like to thank Roy Gould for emailing me the above excerpts. George Gould kept a daily diary for years. George’s comment about driving at night for the first time is interesting. Cars were just becoming more common about this time, but few people were used to them.

            I need some information for the medical exhibit at the Museum if anyone can help me. The main subject I need information on is Dr. Edwards. Mostly I’d like to know when he came to Council. Any other information would be welcome, such as when he served in the State Legislature, etc. I talked to his son, Mark, and he said his dad died in 1972. He’s keeping his eye out for an obituary that he knows he has—somewhere. In the meantime, I know there was a lengthy article in the Record or the Leader a few years ago. Wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t cut it out and save it for some reason. I would really like to have a copy of it if anyone out there can send me one. I’m sure it has a lot of information that we could use for the Museum exhibit—probably even the information on Dr. Edwards.

            I got a letter from jay Thorp some time back. He responded to my mention of the Adams County men who died in WWII. Jay was drafted in 1944 and remembers most of the men who were killed. He said he remembers a bronze plaque that hung in the Ace Saloon for a few years. I guess it had the names of the men on it? Does anyone know about this—maybe where it is now?

            While I’m asking for things, I'll say that in a week or two you’re gonna see a pretty darned good History
Corner. I’ve been given two photos—each the same train wreck near Fruitvale in 1933. The most recent one came with an eyewitness account that will curl your hair. I’m just waiting for permission to put it in the paper. Meanwhile, I'll plug a project that I’m working on with Don Dopf. We’re putting together a book on the history of the P&IN Railroad. I'll tell you more about it later. For now, if anyone has a photograph of the Midvale depot, we could sure use one. Any other P&IN photos would be most welcome to—especially wrecks, facilities and unusual events.

 

4-22-99

            This one was about the train wreck just above Fruitvale. It is all contained in the P&IN book.

            April Kampeter gave me an obit for Dr. Edwards. Noted that I’m still looking for a photo of the Midvale RR depot.

            The council area and the Museum lost a good friend last week. Paul Phillips followed his wife into eternal rest. We’ll miss his “inspections” at the Museum on work days.

 

4-29-99

            Continuation of last week.

            I’d like to thank Cherly Ballard Gratton asnd family for a donation to the museum in memory of Florence and Orley Hart.

 

 

History Corner 5-6-99

            This week it's back to the newspapers from 1920.

            The July 2 issue reported that William R. McClure married Marie C. Freehafer. The bride was the daughter of A.L. Freehafer. This couple would later have a son named James that would become

Idaho's U.S. Senator for many years. The McClures lived west of the bridge as you go out of town

toward Hornet Creek.

 

In 1921 Will McClure became Adams County's prosecuting attorney. Two years later (1923) a

Salubria native and former University of Idaho classmate of McClure's came to Council and joined

McClure's law office. The new-comer was Carl Swanstom, and he had been appointed deputy

prosecuting attorney for the County.

 

The next year, McClure resign as prosecuting attorney and moved his family to Payette, and

Swanstrom took over the prosecutor's office. Carl and Lillian Swanstrom were cornerstones of this

community for many many years. Carl was a slender man who literally stood head and shoulders

above his fellow citizens. I don't know exactly how tall he was, but he sure wasn't hard to pick out in

a crowd.

 

Also in the July 2 issue--Births: to Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Fouste, June 29, a boy--to Mr. and Mrs.

Wm. H. Shaw of Cottonwood, June 29, a girl.

 

July 9 issue--Fred Hancock died July 7. He was born in 1893 at Council.

 

William E. Berry died July 3. Buried at Indian Valley Cemetery.

 

"Gus Sears, carpenter in chief for the P&IN railroad, has completed the building of a neat pavilion at

Starkey Hot Springs. The structure is a hundred feet long and fifteen feet wide and is intended for the

accommodation of excursionists." This "pavilion" is visible in the right background of the Starkey

photo.

 

Remember a few weeks ago, in George Gould's diary, he said he drove his car for the first time at

night. This week his car was hit by a train at a railroad crossing. Luckily, he wasn't in the vehicle

when it was hit.

 

Heavy rain--three cars had to be abandoned between Council and Midvale because of the mud.

 

Ad for cattle auction to be held July 15 at the George Shaw farm on Middle Fork by Henry

Heimsoth and Roy Shaw. The auctioneer was to be W.H. Welty. [Must be Bill Welty?]

 

July 16 issue--Died, infant son of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Ducher of Tamarack. Buried in Meadows

cemetery. Born, boy to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Finn of Fruitvale, July 15. [I wonder if this should have read "James" Finn?]

 

Gus Vadney has purchased the Whiteley shoe and harness business. "Under present conditions shoe

repairing has developed into a high art."

 

The Museum will be opening in about three weeks. Come in and see what's new.

 

Caption for photo:

This composite photo of Starkey was taken during the 1920s. The "pavilion" built in 1920 is visible on the right in the background. It appears to be a open-sided shelter with long rows of seats--apparently for people to wait for the train. If anyone knows more about this, I'd appreciate hearing from you. It was in 1920 that Leonard Griffith and Dr. William Brown bought Starkey. In 1928 it was taken over by Robert and Winifred Lindsay (Brown's daughter and son in law). The Lindsays made Starkey into the place most of us are familiar with.

 

5-13-99 Missing

 

May 20, 1999

Back the 1920 newspapers.

July 23: Seining--using any kind of net or trap--for salmon is illegal. "Salmon may be speared, or

caught on snag hooks that are not less than six inches in length."

 

July 30: Elizabeth David returned from Boise to spend the rest of the summer with her father at Bear.

Clarence Hoffman married Opal Selby on July 25.

 

"One day last week B.B. Houston and Sam Warren found parts of a human skeleton while on a

prospecting trip into the Council mountain country. The find was made at a point about four miles

from the top of the east side of the mountain and about 200 yards from the White Licks. Only a

scattering of bones were located. Mr. Houston brought a jaw bone, including the teeth, to town with

him. From the decomposed condition of the bones it would be impossible to more than guess in

regard to the length of time that may have lapsed since the mortal of which it was a part went to his

long rest. The worn condition of the teeth indicated that they were of a person well along in years."

 

"On Monday evening the American Legion of Adams county held a smoker at Council at which the

service men of the county were well represented. A chief purpose of the meeting was to lay plans for

obtaining funds for the construction of a suitable county Legion building at Council. The boys have

obtained an option on a suitable lot where conditions are such that, in their judgment, a commodious

building could be erected at a cost not to exceed $4500." A "smoker" was a boxing match where a

number of opponents were paired up to compete. The building discussed was built three years later,

and became the Legion Hall.

 

Advertisement: "Mary Hoover, Piano Teacher--Advanced methods in all grades of piano instruction.

$1 per lesson. Phone 44 R-4;, Council.

 

Clarence Hersey and Miss Evelyn Barbour, both of Middle Fork, were married on Monday, July 26

by Judge Weed.

 

August 13: Mrs. Eva Leslie, teacher at the "little log school house among the tall pines by Crooked

river" came down on the auto stage and on home to Nampa. The Indian Creek school, teacher is

Miss Gladys Sutton of Cambridge. The school is "on the very eyebrow of the beetling cliff above the

Snake river." I'm not sure what school this Indian Creek school was. It almost sounds like the Red

Ledge school, but it wasn't established until 1927, and wasn't on Indian Creek.

 

County commissioners are S.N. York (Chairman), J.H. McGinley and William Branstetter. County

clerk is Matilda Moser.

 

Adams County Teachers:

Orchard--Mrs. Lucy J. Spahr

New Meadows--Principal, Mrs. Clara A. Diggles; assistant, Miss Lena Svendsen

Middle District--Miss Pearl Mitchell

Meadows--Principal, Miss Gladys Pollard; assistant, Mrs. Frances Abshire

Little Salmon--Miss Florence Lewis

Tamarack--Edith Karr

Alpine--Miss Alice Higgins

 

Council--Miss Grace Gray; Miss Esella Ingram; Miss Mary Zink

 

Sept 3: "Council's new school building is nearing completion." This must mean the big addition to the

brick school that stood about where Economy Roofing is now.

 

"Mrs. Otto Brauer has leased the Addington rooming house." Mrs. Addington was running it. This was the hotel over the Ace.

 

I talked to my cousin, Maxine Nichols, about the 1957 phone book. She worked in the phone office

at that time, as an operator. An operator was required 24 hours a day. This ended in 1959 when a

dial system was installed. After that, the nearest operator was in Payette. You may have noticed the numbers in the old book had an "R" or a "J" toward the end followed by a one digit number (R4, R2,

J2, J3, etc.). Maxine told me the letter indicated the direction a certain switch on the switchboard needed to be thrown (to either R or J) and the number following the letter was the number of rings for the party on that line.

 

 

History Corner 5-20-99

Back the 1920 newspapers.

July 23: Seining--using any kind of net or trap--for salmon is illegal. "Salmon may be speared, or

caught on snag hooks that are not less than six inches in length."

 

July 30: Elizabeth David returned from Boise to spend the rest of the summer with her father at Bear.

Clarence Hoffman married Opal Selby on July 25.

 

"One day last week B.B. Houston and Sam Warren found parts of a human skeleton while on a

prospecting trip into the Council mountain country. The find was made at a point about four miles

from the top of the east side of the mountain and about 200 yards from the White Licks. Only a

scattering of bones were located. Mr. Houston brought a jaw bone, including the teeth, to town with

him. From the decomposed condition of the bones it would be impossible to more than guess in

regard to the length of time that may have lapsed since the mortal of which it was a part went to his

long rest. The worn condition of the teeth indicated that they were of a person well along in years."

 

"On Monday evening the American Legion of Adams county held a smoker at Council at which the

service men of the county were well represented. A chief purpose of the meeting was to lay plans for

obtaining funds for the construction of a suitable county Legion building at Council. The boys have

obtained an option on a suitable lot where conditions are such that, in their judgment, a commodious

building could be erected at a cost not to exceed $4500." A "smoker" was a boxing match where a

number of opponents were paired up to compete. The building discussed was built three years later,

and became the Legion Hall.

 

Advertisement: "Mary Hoover, Piano Teacher--Advanced methods in all grades of piano instruction.

$1 per lesson. Phone 44 R-4;, Council.

 

Clarence Hersey and Miss Evelyn Barbour, both of Middle Fork, were married on Monday, July 26

by Judge Weed.

 

August 13: Mrs. Eva Leslie, teacher at the "little log school house among the tall pines by Crooked

river" came down on the auto stage and on home to Nampa. The Indian Creek school, teacher is

Miss Gladys Sutton of Cambridge. The school is "on the very eyebrow of the beetling cliff above the

Snake river." I'm not sure what school this Indian Creek school was. It almost sounds like the Red

Ledge school, but it wasn't established until 1927, and wasn't on Indian Creek.

 

County commissioners are S.N. York (Chairman), J.H. McGinley and William Branstetter. County

clerk is Matilda Moser.

 

Adams County Teachers:

Orchard--Mrs. Lucy J. Spahr

New Meadows--Principal, Mrs. Clara A. Diggles; assistant, Miss Lena Svendsen

Middle District--Miss Pearl Mitchell

Meadows--Principal, Miss Gladys Pollard; assistant, Mrs. Frances Abshire

Little Salmon--Miss Florence Lewis

Tamarack--Edith Karr

Alpine--Miss Alice Higgins

 

Council--Miss Grace Gray; Miss Esella Ingram; Miss Mary Zink

 

Sept 3: "Council's new school building is nearing completion." This must mean the big addition to the

brick school that stood about where Economy Roofing is now.

 

"Mrs. Otto Brauer has leased the Addington rooming house." Mrs. Addington was running it. This was the hotel over the Ace.

 

I talked to my cousin, Maxine Nichols, about the 1957 phone book. She worked in the phone office

at that time, as an operator. An operator was required 24 hours a day. This ended in 1959 when a

dial system was installed. After that, the nearest operator was in Payette. You may have noticed the numbers in the old book had an "R" or a "J" toward the end followed by a one digit number (R4, R2,

J2, J3, etc.). Maxine told me the letter indicated the direction a certain switch on the switchboard needed to be thrown (to either R or J) and the number following the letter was the number of rings for the party on that line.

 

History Corner 5-27-99

            Before I get to the stuff you read this column for, I need to ask for your help. As you may know, we depend on volunteers to host the Museum all summer while it's open. Last year we had several fine ladies who came in for a three-hour shift once a week. That really helped tremendously. The rest of the week I found volunteers by making phone calls and asking people to fill a shift. With the help of those people who graciously gave there time, we got through the season.

 

This year, some of the ladies who did a weekly shift last summer will not be able to repeat their

generosity. Now spending my evenings calling people and asking them for their time is not one of my

favorite activities. Being a typical male, I hate to even ask for directions; you can imagine how hard it

is for me to call a bunch of people and ask them for favors. If you could volunteer some time at the Museum, and if you would call me and let me know what you are willing to do, it would sure make

life easier for me.

 

The "job" of hosting the Museum (being a "docent" in Museum lingo) does not take any experience.

About all it entails is being there to make sure someone doesn't walk away with anything. Each day, one person does a three-hour morning shift (10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.) and another person does a

three-hour afternoon shift (1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.). Our season starts Memorial Day weekend (May

29 this year) and ends Labor Day Weekend (Sept. 5). We are open Tuesday through Sunday,

except there is no morning shift on Sundays. We're closed on Mondays. The morning person for that day picks up the key at the Sheriff's office and opens the Museum, and the afternoon person locks

up and returns the key.

 

There are a number of high school students who could get credit for public service time by

volunteering at the Museum. This helps with scholarships, etc. Talk about an easy way to get this on

your record and make you look good! Parents, take notice. Your child may not read this column or

realize what an easy way this is to benefit their future.

 

If you are willing to help (especially if you can do a once-a-week shift, even for a few weeks) please call me. If I can play on your sympathy or guilt (by telling you how many hours I spend on the Museum and writing this column that you enjoy so much, all without pay) I might even do that if it will persuade you. If you might try one shift just to see what it's like, that would be great. We'll take as much or as little help as you feel you can spare. If you want to do a shift with a friend, that's fine too. My number: is 253-4582. Please call.

 

Now back to the Adams County Leader issues from 1920. August 20 issue:

 

"There will be a meeting of the stock-holders of the Eastfork Ditch Company held at Council on

Saturday afternoon at two o'clock for the purpose of voting on a proposition to increase the capitol

stock of that corporation to $60,000 to provide for the constructing a reservoir at Squaw Flat."

 

"Postmaster Winkler has asked that we call public attention to the fact that there is an electric light,

with switch located just inside the door, available at the postoffice for those who wish to get mail at

night and that it is desirable that such light be used in preference to the striking of matches. It is quite

usual for patrons to scatter paper upon the postoffice floor, and in the evening when there is no office

help on duty the throwing of matches or cigarettes upon the floor is particularly dangerous."

 

Edward McCallum, of Baker, and Miss Alice Higgins, of Council were married at Baker, August

14.

 

Meadows: Clyde Merritt died Aug 7 in Boise hospital

 

Indian Valley: old timer, Than Herington died at his home at Brain, Oregon on August 13 -- age 69.

 

Aug 27 issue:

 

Appearing at the People's Theater, something other than the usual movie fare: "Crist & Costa's

'Dancing Kewpie Dolls,' a musical revue with plenty of graceful and beautiful girls, will appear on

Sat., Sept. 4. Saturday, Sept. 11--A company of genuine Portuguese Hawaiians in their enchanting

musical production: 'In the Garden of Aloha.' Prices for these big double shows will be: adults 75

cents; children, 25 cents, including war tax."

 

"On Monday night, Sept 6, the American Legion will give a Labor Day dance at the People's

Theater. Music will be furnished by the Musical Martins orchestra and supper will be served at the

Palm Cafe."

 

"Last Saturday afternoon local marksmen were furnished entertainment when a grouse perched upon

the roof of the Pomona hotel. After the shooting had attracted our attention we counted eight shots

that were fired at the feathered beauty. When it had grown tired of vainly waiting to be killed it flew

into a tree west of the hotel and Mrs. E.W. Fisher amputated its head with a twenty-two caliber rifle

bullet. Being short of cartridges, she turned the trick the first shot." [Can you imagine what a stir that

would cause nowadays? I wonder where all the bullets landed.]

 

Sept. 3, 1999 issue:

 

"Council's new school building is nearing completion...." I think this refers to a big addition being put

on the existing school.

 

Sept. 10 issue:

 

Arthur H. Nunnallee, of Cambridge, died at the hospital at Wiser on Tuesday and will be buried at the Cambridge Cemetery

 

Luther Palmer died at the home of his son, Charles Palmer, at the age of 72. He was visiting from out of town.

 

It was announced that the Indian Valley Fair would be held Sept. 23 thru 25. In those days, the annual County Fair was held at Indian Valley. The program: "sports, including racing and bucking

contests. No entrance fee will be charged in any class." Prizes would be awarded for many classes

of cattle, including: biggest and best herd, best cow, best heifer, best milk cow (awards for many

different breeds). There would also be prizes for hogs and poultry.

 

Bud Addington demonstrated one of his Ford tractors at the McGinley ranch. In those days, very few local people used tractors; they relied on horses. The editor remarked, "In ground to dry to be successfully worked with horse power the tractor pulled a double disc plow, set to ten-inch depth, at

the prescribed rate of two and three-quarters miles an hour without faltering. As far as we

understand, the machine would probably have kept on going as long as supplied with gas and oil."

 

James G. Button of Goodrich died at the Dodge sawmill near Council on Thursday of last week of appendicitis. Formerly ran a sawmill at Goodrich and was sawyer of late at the Dodge mill. Age 52.

 

 

Caption for photo:

The bucking contest at the 1920 Indian Valley Fair. The judge's stand is in the background. There

appears to be no fence, and don't that ground look hard!

 

History Corner 6-3-99 (98?)

            By 1920, cars had become fairly common, even in the Council area. Not everyone had one by any means, but many people could afford a Model T Ford. The September 24, 1920 issue of the Adams County Leader said:

            "According to Chicago manufacturers of buggies, the horse and buggy, in which our parents took much pride, has become so obsolete that buggies are now being manufactured only on special order. An official of one big manufacturing firms says that he has received but two orders for buggies in the past two years. He also stated that his firm makes them only on special order and that the prices run up to $2,000."

 

On the front page of the same issue, the Ford Motor Company announced it would reduce prices back to pre-war levels. "The announced price reductions range from fourteen per cent on motor trucks to thirty-one percent on small automobiles."

 

This issue also reported that "27 of the 43 standard articles going into the American family market basket decreased in price between July 15 and August 15."

 

J.H. McGinley will be selling 14 Jersey and 2 Holstein Milch Cows at an auction at the Ham Livery Barn in Council on October 2nd.

 

Oct. 2 issue:

 

"A dance is announced to be held at Mesa this Friday night. the price of tickets will be $1.00

including war tax." The dance was probably held in the hall over the machine shop. Also advertised,

Van Hoesen 7 Seymour were selling Bartlett pears for seven cents per pound at Mesa.

 

"Because of continuous rain but few if any people from Council attended the Indian Valley fair last

week. Like others of the neighborhood, we had decided to take in the county show but we were

unable to borrow either a sail or a set of fins." The ground looks pretty dry in last week's History

Corner photo. I wonder if we have the correct year on it.

 

"Excellent pears a 5c a pound, at Fel dhausen's orchard, on Mill Creek, 3 1/2 miles north of town."

I've never heard that name.

 

"REWARD--My saddle horse broke out of corral at Council on Sunday night and I will pay $10 for

information as to its whereabouts; it is a bald-faced bay gelding. John M. Den Boer, Council." Must

have been a good horse to pay that kind of money.

 

"The Tamarack school board has made the progressive move of purchasing a teacher's cottage, a

neat bungalow at a most convenient distance from the schoolhouse, and expect to furnish it as fast as

they are able. This is only the second teacherage in Adams county, the first being built last summer

over at Indian Creek district which proved the means of attracting a teacher of good qualifications

earlier than had been possible before some years."

 

"The High school now has an enrollment of 50; the grades, 125."

 

"It seems almost unnecessary to mention the great improvement this year in Council school building,

its enlargement, beautification, and complete re-construction. . . ." The improvement is "a sightly

addition to the Southeastern corner of the town, and a fitting neighbor to our beautiful courthouse.

The spacious hall and broad stairways are in pleasing contrast to the old narrow, dark passages, and

the large door and windows in the east side of the building add, not only to the harmonious lighting of

the structure, but the former makes it safe from the charge of being a 'fire trap, and gives every

thoughtful parent gratification."

 

Come in to the Museum and see the nice display Gayle Dixon has put together about schools in

Adams County. She has collected all the photos of the schools that she could find, and put the

opening and closing dates with them. Some of the dates are unknown, especially closing dates on

some. If you know about when the following schools closed, would you please give Gayle or me a

call? Gayle's number is 253-4765 and mine is 253-4582. The schools we need closing years for are:

Alpine, Cottonwood, Grays Creek, Lower Dale, Orchard, Hillsdale (by C. Ben Ross Reservoir),

Little Salmon (near or at Pinehurst), Richland (at Indian Valley), Tamarack, and the White School.

 

As I write this, we have weekly volunteers to host the Museum on Tuesdays (both shifts),

Wednesday afternoons, Thursday (both shifts), and Friday mornings. (My eternal thanks goes to

those wonderful people.) That leaves Wednesday mornings, Friday afternoons and the weekends.

Weekends will probably be difficult or impossible to find someone to host on a weekly basis, but I'd

love to hear from anyone who could do even one shift. Also there will be times when the weekly

people won't be able to work their shift, so we need volunteers in waiting.

 

June 10, 1998 (99?) missing

 

History Corner 6-17-99

            I would like to thank the generous people who have volunteered to do one shift a week at the Museum: Norah York, Margaret Merk, Jan Hill, Bobbie Matthews, June Davis, Vera Hutman, Chelsea McLaughlin, and Lin Gray. Their help makes things go so much more smoothly! When you see these fine folks, tell them how much you appreciate what they are doing. By the way, some of

these people can't do every week all summer, so we will need replacements from time to time. Also,

we always need hosts for wekends.

 

All the items this week come from the Adams County Leader, October 15, 1920:

 

The American Legion bought the corner lot just west of the Pomona Hotel. It was owned by Mrs. Hancock of New Meadows. The purchase was made as a first step looking to the Legion's

ownership of a building suited to its needs and which will serve as a memorial to those Adams

county boys who gave their lives in the service. The Legion members have, aside from paying for the

lot, provided $313 to cover the cost of the new concrete walk now being constructed in front of it.

 

Lieutenant-Governor Moore, candidate for re-election on the Republican ticket, and Hon. Will H.

Gibson will speak at a political rally in the People's Theater Friday evening. On Saturday evening the

theater will feature Harry Carey in "Bullet Proof" and Harold Lloyd in "Just Neighbors." The following Tuesday, Lila Lee will appear in "Such a Little Pirate," and a two-reel comedy, "Kitchen Lady," will also be shown. On Thursday: "A Woman of Pleasure," a spectacular melodrama of

British South Africa, starring Blanche Sweet. Also a two-reel Jiggs comedy. Prices for admission are 35 cents and 15 cents.

 

Robert M. Harris died at Indian Valley, Oct. 7. Amanda Cox died at Indian Valley Oct. 9. Both of these deaths were from cancer. The two-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Young died of ptomaine poisoning at Indian Valley.

 

"Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Imler have gone deer hunting."

 

The annual Council Creamery stockholder's meeting was held Saturday afternoon. "In the absence of Chairman Phipps...W.T. Lamkin served in that capacity. Manager [James] Showers submitted his

annual report which showed that the business is in a progressive condition. In truth, the progress

made is particularly encouraging. Since Mr. Showers took over the work and ice cream equipment

has been installed and paid for, likewise a septic tank....

 

Dr. William Brown and Leonard Griffith purchased Starkey Hot Springs from Reinhold

Kleinschmidt. "For years the development of Starkey had been retarded because of the disinclination

of its owner to make further investment in improvements. With the near completion of the state

highway the time is now ripe to put the place in such condition that it may be fully enjoyed not only by the people of the county, but the traveling public well. Our readers will join us in wishing the new

owners the best of success."

 

At Fruitvale: "Isaac McMahan, Isaac Glenn and Floyd Finn have been out this week looking after cattle."

 

"FOR SALE--Span of work horses, weight 3,000; harness included, $150. Frank Luzon."

 

"M.W. [Moses] Addington, who went to Missouri about a year ago, is visiting in Council as a guest

of his son, S.G. [Bud]. He owns a farm in Missouri, but tells us that he expects to sell and return to

this neck o' the woods." Just in case I don't get around to it, I'll flash forward to the Adams County Leader for Aug 26, 1921: Moses Addington was killed in a gunfight in Missouri. He killed one man

in the fight, and another that Addington shot in the incident may well die soon. Age 68. Came to Council in 1888 and lived here until he moved to Missouri about 4 years ago. He is survived by sons Moses Jr., John, and S.G. "Bud."

 

History Corner 6-24-99

            I found it! Off and on for the past couple years I've been trying to locate the site of the Long Valley Massacre at Cascade. On the 15th I happened to be up there, and I went looking again.

 

You probably remember the story of the Massacre. It filled my column for a few weeks in the spring

of 1995. Indians stole some horses at Indian Valley. Four local men pursued them, and were

ambushed by the Indians near present-day Cascade. Three of the men were killed; the fourth was

seriously wounded but survived.

 

To get to the site, turn west off Highway 55 on the outskirts of Cascade, just on the south side of the

bridge across the Payette River. The road you turn onto is named "Lake Way." Follow Lake Way about .65 miles. It will pass by the dam and curve to the right until it is almost going north. You will

come to an intersection where one gravel road goes left to a campground, and another road turns right. Turn right and go exactly 1/4 mile (.25). The total distance by road from the highway is .9 mile.

On the left side of the road a big granite rock has "GRAVES" spray-painted on it. About 150 feet up the hill (north) is the site. The inscription carved into the rock is so vague now that only a few letters can be made out. The bronze plaque down to the right of the inscription looks good as new. There is also a flag pole on top of the rock, above the carved inscription.

 

Since I wrote about this dramatic event four long years ago, and since there have been a number of new subscribers to the Record since then, and since we now have more photos of the massacre site and the people involved, I'm going to retell it.

 

Not long ago, I wrote about the Nez Perce War of 1877 and how it affected the first Council area settlers. The next summer, the Bannock War broke out. It involved some of the same key players from the previous war--the principal one being William Monday, the one-time Indian Valley Postmaster. I have been spelling his name as "Munday" because many of the early newspapers did so. Obviously the modern spelling of "Monday" has become standard, plus the inscription on the rock at the massacre site has the spelling as "Monday", so I will try to use that spelling consistently.

 

Even though the Bannock War had reached its climax and the Idaho countryside was relatively calm, the August 22, 1878 issue of the Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman, was filled with accounts of various military units in pursuit of hostile Indians all over the West. Almost as a side note, there was a brief

remark among the news items from outlying areas. It said mail carrier, Solan Hall, reported that Indians had stolen three horses from William Monday at Indian Valley on the 17th.

 

About a day and a half after the routine news of William Monday's stolen horses was printed, the

quiet slumber of the troops at the Boise Barracks was disrupted about midnight by Edgar Hall, who

was exhausted from an all night ride. He said that a doctor was badly needed. Three Indian Valley men had been killed by Indians, and a fourth victim was lying seriously wounded at Calvin White's

cabin at Salmon Meadows.

 

In those days the valley at New Meadows was known as Salmon Meadows. Calvin White was the

patriarch of the first and only family living there. They had only moved to the location, later to be known as the town of "Meadows," that summer. Just before that, they had lived at Indian Valley. To be continued next week.

 

Caption for photo of man: William Monday was a central figure in the panic at Indian Valley during the Nez Perce War of 1877. The one-time postmaster was a respected leader in that community.

Caption for photo of woman: Mrs. William Monday became a widow in the summer of 1878 as a

result of one of the most dramatic events in area history.

 

History Corner 7-1-99

 

The story of the Long Valley Massacre has been retold and distorted until the truth about some parts of the tragedy may never be known. There was only one eye witness who survived the massacre,

and he left no first hand account.

 

It is known that on Saturday, August 17, 1878, Indians stole some horses from farmers in Indian

Valley. Stories of the number of animals that were taken range wildly from three horses to sixty. Whatever the number, William Monday seems to have been the principal victim of the crime.

 

One account of a possible contributing factor in the thievery concerns an incident that reportedly

occurred earlier that summer. About 70 Indians under Eagle Eye's leadership were said to have been

camped at Indian Valley. Tom Healey (also spelled Healy or Hailey) had an Indian wife, and the Indians were "holding pow-wows" in the evenings on a hill near the Healey house. Healey told them, "If you don't stop that, the whites will kill every last one of you." So they stopped, but "kept plotting

against the whites." Because of this, a grudge was supposedly initiated against Healey and/or whites in general.

 

Another, unlikely story says that Monday had often cut down trees on land that Eagle Eye's band claimed. When the Indians complained, Monday is said to have sworn at them.

 

More than one account says that Monday was working for Solon Hall at the time the horses were

stolen, harvesting hay or grain. Monday reportedly left his team tied to a wagon for the night, and they were gone the next morning. Ellis Snow's version sounds the most plausible: Monday owned a

reaper drawn by four horses, and was cutting Hall's grain; the horses were stolen after they had been turned loose to graze for the night.

 

Monday was said to have been friends with certain Indians, and may have hired them to help on his farm. It's doubtful that the horses were stolen because of some personal grudge against Monday.

The Indians were probably among the many fragments of hostile bands that were wandering the

Northwest at the time, and they simply took advantage of an opportunity to engage in a

time-honored Native American sport: stealing horses from an enemy.

 

On the next day after the horses were stolen, Solon and Edgar Hall, and Jake Groseclose followed the tracks left by the Indians for about ten miles into the mountains to the east, then turned back. The

next day, Monday the 19th, Jake Groseclose again took up the trail, accompanied by William

Monday, Sylvester "Three Fingered" Smith, and Tom Healey.

 

Of these four men, probably the most colorful character was Sylvester "Three-Fingered" Smith. He

was a tall, slender man who received his nickname after an accident. Visiting with a friend, Smith had

one foot on the bottom rail of a fence; his hands were folded together, resting over the business end

of his muzzle-loading shotgun. His foot slipped off the rail, his knee hit the hammer of the gun, and it went off. When the smoke cleared, one finger on each of Smith's hands was gone, leaving only three

to a hand. One imaginative myth of how he lost his fingers says that they were shot off in a gun fight

in Silver City.

 

Born in Virginia in 1829, Sylvester S. Smith had come to Idaho at the dawn of the gold rush in 1861. He staked a placer claim at Florence which turned out to be one of the richest in the area.

Depending on which source one believes, the claim was said to have yielded either three hundred or

three thousand dollars per day at its peak. His claim was located near what is now named "Smith Gulch". Along with two partners, Smith also ran a store at Florence. When gold was discovered at Warrens, Smith and his mercantile partners were some of the first to set up camp there.

 

Smith had evidently married a girl from Oregon while living in that state. It has been said that his wife

was an Indian woman. The Smith's first child, the first of four sons, was born in Oregon in 1866.

Their second boy, Warren, was born in 1868 in the town after which he was named. Warren Smith was said to be the first white child born at Warren.

 

By 1872 the Smith family had settled on a homestead along the South Fork of the Salmon River at

the mouth of Elk Creek. Their third son, Henry, was born here. A fourth son, Robert, was born to

the couple about 1876. During the Nez Perce War of 1877, Three Fingered Smith was involved in bringing guns to the Warren area so that the citizens there could be better armed. The next year

found him living at Indian Valley. By this time, he was 49 years old.

 

To be continued next week.

 

Photo for this week is of Three Fingered Smith. Sorry it's so poor, but it's the only one I know to exist. Caption: Three Fingered Smith with one of his sons. This is the only photo of Smith that I

know of. Too bad it isn't more clear, especially by the time you see it in the newspaper. In the

original, you can see that the ring finger of his left (to your right) hand is missing. It's hard to tell, but it

looks to me like the pointing finger of his right hand is missing past the first joint from the palm.

 

History Corner 7-8-99

 

The story of the Long Valley Massacre, continued from last week.

 

As the four Indian Valley men set out after the horse thieves, they asked their neighbor, John

Anderson, to go along with them. Anderson had some experience with Indians, having been a

military scout at some time in the past. He felt could not go with the expedition because his wife was

over eight months pregnant, but he offered the men some words of advice. He warned that the

Indians had a two day head start on them, and could not be overtaken if they really wanted to get

away. He cautioned them that if the Indians left an obvious trail it meant that they were a large

enough war party to overpower any pursuers, and would probably ambush them. Mrs. Anderson

recalled Smith making some sarcastic remark about her husband's advice as they rode away,

implying he didn't respect it.

 

The four men apparently made camp somewhere along the route, and continued the next day,

Tuesday the 20th. They followed what indeed was an obvious trail made by shod horses over the

divide into Long Valley, about 30 miles south of Payette Lake. This was just north of the present

town of Cascade and a very short distance northeast of the present dam. At the time, the vicinity

was referred to as the "Falls of the Payette River."

 

About noon they followed the tracks up a small, boulder-studded ridge that ran through the valley.

Suddenly a lead slug slammed into Monday's chest. The Indians had waited in ambush, just as

Anderson had said they might.

 

There are several versions of the ambush. One account of the attack says that an Indian called

Monday by name just before the first shot was fired, and that this shot killed Monday instantly.

 

The following is Edgar Hall's account of what happened after Monday was shot, as printed in the

Statesman. The story Hall heard was second-hand, as he had not been in contact with Smith before

he rode to Boise for help. The printed story was fourth hand, and undoubtedly flawed:

 

At this moment Healy and Groseclose dismounted, when the latter was shot in the breast, and

turning to Smith said, "they have got me." Healy then got behind a rock and asked Smith to stay with

him.

 

Smith however, being a man of experience in such matters, saw that they were completely

outnumbered and at the mercy of the Indians, and not having dismounted from his mule, turned to

flee, when he was fired upon by the Indians and shot through the thigh. The next shot took his mule

from under him, and being on foot and running for his life, he was again hit by a shot, which broke his

arm.

 

Smith says that after leaving Healy, who was completely surrounded by the Indians, he heard about

a dozen shots, and after a short interval, another shot was fired, which makes it certain that poor

Healy met his sad fate at the hand of the red fiends.

 

Aaron F. Parker wrote the only known version of the ambush told by anyone who spoke directly

with Three Fingered Smith. Parker was one of the first people to interview Smith, speaking to him

the day after the massacre.

 

According to Parker, Monday and his companions approached the ambush site riding single file.

Monday, being in the lead, was the first to be shot, his horse being killed under him. He was

wounded, but started firing after reaching the ground. The others, except Smith, rode quickly

forward and dismounted. Parker said that Three Fingers knew from experience that it was better to

stay mounted under Indian attack.

 

As Healey led his horse toward Monday, the animal was struck by a bullet. While distracted by the

now panicked horse Healey was hit and fell mortally wounded, not far from Monday who was still

firing wildly. (Evidence found at the scene later actually seemed to indicate that Monday was shot in

the heart and died instantly.)

 

Parker said that no Indians were ever visible during this melee. Groseclose was the next to fall,

screaming as he fell, "They have got me, Smith!"

 

To be continued next week.

 

 

7-15-99 Missing

 

History Corner 7-22-99

 

The story of the Long Valley Massacre, continued from last week.

 

At 8:00 AM on Friday, August 23rd, Edgar Hall started his ride to Boise for a doctor. When he

reached the present site of Weiser, he encountered Company E, First regiment of Idaho volunteers

under the command of Thomas Galloway. Four members of the volunteer militia, Aaron F. Parker,

John ("Jack") Smith (Monday's brother-in-law), Steve Durbin, and Ike McKinney set out to try to

"recapture the stolen stock for the benefit of the widows, and with the further hopes in mind of

capturing or otherwise deposing of the murderers."

 

Parker related the experiences of the four volunteers from this point. The account is in the third

person, even though he wrote it himself:

 

"Their equipment consisted of horse and saddle; a .50 caliber Springfield rifle; a very limited supply

of cartridges; extra saddle blanket; one-half sack of "self-rising" flour; and a few coffee berries and a

pinch of tea to chew on and prevent headaches for those who were accustomed to the use of these

beverages in peace time."

 

"In those primitive days all civilian volunteers furnished their own other equipment for light marching

order at their own cost. Under such conditions most of the Indian wars of the Pacific northwest have

been fought; the volunteer companies being always in the field before troops arrived."

 

The four men traveled throughout the night without stopping, and covered the 90 miles to Calvin

White's in 22 hours. Here they rested and interviewed Three Fingered Smith as to the location and

details of the ambush. This would have been August 24, four days since Smith was wounded, and he

must have been suffering terribly.

 

Early the next morning the four set out for the ambush site. None of the men were familiar with that

part of the country, but finally reached what they thought was the approximate place just before

dark. Parker continues:

 

"Here they built a camp fire, mixed a batch of "self-rising," toasted on willow twigs, and after a

smoke and going through the motions of spreading their blankets, they silently stole away and

back-tracked to another camp two miles up the trail they had followed, in the hope of deceiving the

Indians if any were around in search of victims. Here they camped for the night, each taking turns of

vigilant watchful waiting until daylight when they returned to the scene of the killings, and

reconnoitered the topography of the region and inspected the bodies, which lay in positions as

outlined by 'Three Fingers'."

 

"The scene of the massacre and the details connected therewith will remain forever as clear-cut

picture never to be effaced from the mind and memory."

 

"Imagine for yourself a trail lying at the base of a timber-clad mountain, with huge slabs of bare

granite standing perpendicularly from which twisted scrub pines and mountain mahogany had grown

from the fissures. Beneath the trail the land sloped gently to the broad open valley through which the

river sang, with no protection save a few wash boulders protruding a few inches above the soil...."

 

This last sentence seems odd to me. There are boulders sticking up above the soil considerably more

than a few inches all over that hillside; in fact there are "huge slabs of bare granite" all the way down

the hill. It looks to me as if the men would have had abundant cover.

 

To be continued next week

 

If anyone has tried to call me during the first part of July, I was out of town.

 

I have a question that I hope someone out there will research for me. Betty Smith donated a

commemorative plate from the Congregational church and I'm trying to find out when it was issued.

At the time, Rev. John Brook was the pastor. Can somebody enlighten me on this so we can add the

plate and information to our church exhibit?

 

Just as an interesting note, someone asked if we had the rug that Mrs. Trumbo had couples stand on

when she married them. No, we don't, and I had never heard the story. Apparently she usually had

couples stand on a particular rug that was put together with weaving that had no end point in some

way, so it kind of symbolized a marriage without end.

 

History Corner 7-29-99

 

The story of the Long Valley Massacre, continued from previous weeks.

 

For reasons unknown, Captain Drum had not yet arrived at the site, even though his unit was much

closer and knew about the attack at least a day earlier than the volunteers. Parker's group found 14

empty cartridges scattered around the bodies of the victims; their cartridge belts lay empty beside

them. The rifles contained only empty shells. This evidently was all the ammunition the men had with

them, as it seemed to Parker and the others that the Indians had not disturbed the bodies at all to

steal anything. It appeared that the Indians had left in a hurry immediately after being unable to find

Smith.

 

Parker continues:

 

"They scouted around and soon discovered and followed the broad trail up the mountain in the soil

of the hillside."

 

"Anticipating that troops would soon be here and bury the dead, they maintained the pursuit for two

days and nights, selecting well protected spots for camps and keeping vigilant lookouts for possible

attacks. Approaching the summit, the soil of the hillsides gave way to bare granite; the tracks

became less recognizable, and a summer thunder storm accompanied by hail and torrential rain

wiped out the last vestige of the trail, eliminating all hope of again picking up the hoof prints. The

pursuers concluded to abandon the chase and return from whence they came."

 

"On the evening of the fifth day, they again reached the battlefield and found that the bodies had been

buried where they fell, and as a landmark to perpetuate their memory, the troop had inscribed upon

one of the slabs behind which the enemy had laid concealed, the names of the victims and the date of

the event under crossed rifles. Here they camped for the night in peace, and after raking the still

warm ashes of the troopers' camp fires, they found bacon rinds which, after washing, [were] chewed

to satisfy their hunger."

 

The carving that the soldiers inscribed on the rock read, "MONDAY, HEALY AND

GROSECLOSE -- KILLED AUG 20, 1878"

 

The next morning the four volunteers met two soldiers from Captain Drum's company who were

scouting the area south of the troop's main encampment at Payette Lake. Parker and his companions

camped that night with the main military group on the lake, then went on to Calvin White's cabin at

Meadows. There they found that Dr. McKay had left to return to Boise the day before, leaving the

assurance that his patient was recovering so well that he "could not be killed with an axe." The four

volunteers returned to Weiser.

 

It was Drum's unit who had buried Monday, Healy and Gloseclose, and inscribed the memorial on

the rock. Captain Drum reported that the bodies of the slain men were about sixty yards from the

spot where they had been killed. He said:

 

"The bodies had been thrown together in a pile by the Indians, but had not been scalped or

mutilated. At the moment of attack Monday had been shot dead by a bullet through the heart and

had fallen from his horse, leaving his gun hanging to the horn of the saddle. The gun was found where

it had been dropped by Monday's horse when he ran from the scene. Groseclose was fatally shot

soon after dismounting and his horse fell into the hands of the Indians, but being a vicious and

refractory animal the horse escaped from them and was afterwards found running in the hills some

distance from the scene of the murder and was with difficulty caught and brought in. Tom Healy

made a fight with the Indians, from behind the rocks where he first took up a position, as three

empty cartridges were found at that spot."

 

Parker reported that at least some of the horses had been killed, saying, "The carcasses of the

horses were far apart in the valley."

 

To be continued next week.

 

I still haven't heard from anyone about when Reverend John Brooke was the pastor at the

Congregational church.

 

This has been such a busy summer for the Museum Board that we haven't had any time to landscape

the area south of the Museum. It needs to have some dirt hauled in, grass and flowers planted, etc. If

anyone is interested in ramroding such a project, please let me know. Of course most of will have to

be done next year. It might be a good job for an Eagle Scout project.

 

Caption for photos.

For the closer one: The inscription on the rocks at the massacre site was probably traced with chalk

for this 1929 photo. I'll write about the plaque below it later.

Farther photo: This photo may have been taken in 1929 also. It is from the same angle, but farther

away from the rock with the inscription. This is looking approximately north. Notice the flag flying on

a pole that is planted on top of the rocks; it's kind of hidden in the little pine tree on the sky line.

 

History Corner 8-5-99

 

The story of the Long Valley Massacre, continued from previous weeks.

 

Three Fingered Smith is reported to have said that there were at least 75 Indians in the group that

ambushed his group, but Drum found sign of only fifteen, at the most, and maybe as few as five.

 

Drum's unit followed the Indians' trail at least eight miles past the ambush site. At "Pearsall's Diggins,"

they found the bodies of two prospectors who had evidently been killed by the same Indians on the

day after the Monday ambush . One man was a Mr. Wilheim from Idaho City. No description was

given as to how or where his body was found, but the Statesman printed a grizzly description of the

second victim, Daniel Crooks of Mount Idaho:

 

"Crooks was found some distance from the spot where the two were first attacked, lying in the grass

on his back. The grass was beaten down all around him, as if a violent struggle had taken place. He

had been shot through the body, and the last shot, which seemed to have been given where he was

found, was in the head at close range, tearing completely off the frontal part of the skull and brain.

He still held a rope in his hand and was probably running to get his horse. . . ."

 

On the same day that Monday's party had started in pursuit of the Indians (Aug 19th), another group

of men had left Indian Valley to return to their mining site at "Copeland's Diggings," which was

somewhere in the general direction the Indians had gone. The four men were, James Crews, S.F.

Smith, Perry Clark (the man who named Council Valley) and Hornet Creek pioneer Henry Childs.

Drum became concerned that these men may also have been killed by the Indians, so he went to

Copeland's Diggings to check on them. There is no indication that the miners had any trouble.

 

Many years later, Bill Winkler said that Three Fingered Smith knew the identities of at least four of

the Indians involved in the Long Valley Massacre. They were supposed to have been Eagle Eye,

War Jack(Shoshoni), Chuck (Lemhi Shoshoni), and Booyer (Blackfoot). Winkler said that after

spending "some years" in Wyoming Smith traveled about the country, locating and killing Chuck and

Booyer. Apparently he couldn't locate War Jack or Eagle Eye.

 

This is a good story, but there is no evidence to back it up. All during the investigation there was no

indication that anyone involved had a clue as to the identities of the Indians. The only recorded guess

was made by General Howard at Walla Walla. He believed they were hostile Nez Perce from White

Bird's band who had returned from Canada. One would think that if Smith knew who had murdered

three of his neighbors he would have immediately informed Captain Drum and anyone else who

could bring them to justice. Aaron Parker met with Smith again only five years after the massacre

(1883) and interviewed him a second time. Again, Smith evidently said nothing about the identities of

the Indians or about his having wreaked revenge on them. If he had, Parker would certainly have

included this in his account.

 

It is no surprise that Eagle Eye, the primary leader of the Weiser band of Shoshoni, was a prime

suspect. He was usually blamed for every real or imagined native depredation that occurred within a

week's ride. Ironically, there were eye witness reports (which turned out to be false) that Eagle Eye

had been killed in a battle with the Umatillas a month before this massacre.

 

Old time Indian fighter, Ewing Craig "Pinky" Baird, who was an independent Indian scout during this

time and was later a Council resident, boasted that he had personally shot and killed Eagle Eye

sometime after the Monday massacre. A member of Baird's family had been killed by Indians, and

he held a life-long grudge against all members of that race. He is said to have assassinated a number

of Indians in the Council area. Baird claimed that he had shot Eagle Eye in the back while the chief

was getting a drink from a stream. Either Baird coldly executed an Indian that he thought was Eagle

Eye, or he was a bald-faced liar. Eagle Eye died of natural causes years later. Regardless of whether

or not Baird actually believed he had killed Eagle Eye, he went so far as to give Bill or Charley

Winkler a pair of moccasins that he claimed Eagle Eye was wearing at the time he killed the chief.

These moccasins are now in the Council Valley Museum.

 

Top be continued next week.

 

The Museum will be open through Labor Day Weekend (Sept 5).

 

Caption for this week's photos.

Photo of older couple and younger man standing behind them:

"Jacob and Elizabeth Groseclose (seated), the parents of Jake Groseclose who was killed in the

Long Valley Massacre. Standing behind the parents is Austin, Jake's brother. The Groseclose family

moved to Cottonwood Creek, just south of Council shortly after the massacre, then moved on to

Lick Creek, near Bear, about 1881."

 

Photo of ladies:

"The daughters of Jacob and Elizabeth Groseclose (sisters of Jake Groseclose). You want proof that

everybody in the Council area is related? Here it is. Please correct me if I get any of this tangled web

wrong, and tell me what I can add to it:

1-Lydia. Her second husband was Wm Brauer. Their daughter, Dora, married Lewis Lakey. Their

son, Otto Lakey, and his wife, Dorothy, had six children. Nancy and Dennis still live in Council.

Otto's sister, Mildred, married George Fuller. Their granddaughter, is Judy Mahon.

Now I'm gonna stretch things a little: Dora-Braur-Lakey's father in law, Lewis Lakey Senior, had a

son, Jacob who married Lottie Montgomery, the sister of Mrs. Robert Harrington (Lilly).

2- Sarah Frances She married John Cliffton. Their children were Dan, Manila, and Percy. Manila

married Victor Oling. Their daughter, Ruth, married Arnold Emery. Their daughter, Ann, married

Darrell Brown.

Another daughter of Manila and Victor Oling was Louise, who married Lawrence "Toots" Rogers.

Manila-Cliffton-Oling later married Norbert Arterburn.

3-Charlotte, also called Lottie. She married one of the Linders from Indian Valley. In one version of

the massacre story, James Linder is said to have been in the volunteer group that helped bury the

victims of the massacre.

4- Rose. She married Arthur Robertson and had eight children. Their son, Isaac "Pug" Robertson

was the father of Marlene Lively. After Pug died, his wife, Nellie, married Lew Roberts.

 

History Corner 8-12-99

 

This is the last installment of story of the Long Valley Massacre of August, 1878.

 

After the massacre, Three Fingered Smith eventually recovered from his wounds, but his health was

never the same. He continued to live at Indian Valley for a year or two. In 1879, he ran for election

to the position of constable, but lost by one vote.

 

By 1883 Smith was back living on the Salmon River where Aaron Parker met with him and

reviewed the events of the massacre. Smith never lost the gold fever that had lured him to Idaho. In

1889 he made a significant gold discovery in a remote area somewhere near the Middle Fork of the

Salmon River.

 

In the winter of 1889 - 1890, the Smith's youngest son, fourteen-year-old Bobby, volunteered for

the hazardous job of carrying mail into a remote location for a man who couldn't make the trip.

Bobby was not seen again until his body was found the following May.

 

Three Fingered Smith died April 28, 1892 at his Elk Creek ranch at the age of 63. His coffin was

made from sluice boxes, as the ailing miner had requested the day before he died. He was wrapped

in a buffalo robe, placed in the coffin, and buried on his ranch. In spite of the wealth he had gained at

Florence, Smith died very poor. This, his friends said, was mostly a result of his generosity, "which

he did not practice alone when he made lots of money, but to the last days of his life." Several

geographic features in the Salmon River area are named after this pioneer: Smith Mt., Smith Knob,

Smith Gulch, and Smith Saddle.

 

In the book, "Sheepeater Indian Campaign" Johnny Carrey said Smith's wife, Juanita and their son,

Bobby are also buried on the family's Elk Creek ranch. Carrey said, "Henry died in a Boise hospital,

Warren passed away at the Hacket Ranch, Sam died in an accident in Garden Valley."

 

Sam Smith was married to Anna Jeanot, sister of Pete Jeanot who was Janet Fleming's father.

(Fleming's upholstery is on Hwy 95 just north of Council.) Janet told me that Sam and Anna had two

daughters and three sons. One of the sons, Abner, was tortured to death by the Japanese in a WWII

prison camp.

 

Johnny Carrey continues, "After the Smith family was gone from the ranch, Jimmy Taylor lived there"

until 1917. Brad and Margaret Carrey owned it for a year after that, then it was bought by a power

company and a power plant was installed by a dredge company in Warren. "When the mines shut

down, that was the end of the ranch. It now belongs to an outfitter and guide business."

 

On August 21, 1929, fifty-one years after the Long Valley Massacre, a memorial service was held at

the grave site near Cascade by an organization called the Sons of Idaho. A number of relatives of

Jake Groseclose who were living during the time of the massacre attended the service. A bronze

plaque honoring the dead men was mounted on a rock at the site.

 

Well, that's it for this story. I hope you've enjoyed it.

 

Next time you drive by the Museum, take a look at the new sign on the front.

 

Captions for photos.

The one with 3 men:

"I don't know the significance of these men shown here at the placement of the plaque at the

massacre site by The Sons of Idaho on the 50th Anniversary of the massacre, August 21, 1929.

They are, left to right: Byron Defenbach, Jim Wickersham, Phil Stalker.

 

Photo of boy, woman, man, two women:

"Another picture taken at the 50th Anniversary ceremony. Standing, left to right are relatives of Jake

Groseclose who's remains lie under the ground near this location: Sarah Frances (Groseclose)

Clifton, Austin or Isaac Groseclose, Rose Groseclose Robertson, Charlotte Groseclose Linder.

Does anyone know who Isaac Groseclose was?"

 

Photo of stump:

"For some reason, the actual grave site of the men, about 150 feet south of the engraved rocks and

plaque, is not marked anymore. Geneva Barry said this stump was one of the original grave markers,

and that a cross was carved into it by James Linder. The cross is not visible in this photo, but is in a

photo on file at the historical library in Boise.

 

History Corner 8-19-99

First, in reference to last weeks list of descendants of Jacob and Elizabeth Groseclose, I forgot to

include Jeanie Boehm. Rose Groseclose and Arthur Robertson had a daughter, Vivian. Vivian

married Bill Boyles. Their daughter, Velna, married Jack Aldrich. Their daughter, Jeanie, married

Larry Boehm.

            I also realized Isaac Groseclose was another son of Jacob and Elizabeth.

            A very late thank you goes to Nancy Lane for some really nice cards she made and donated to our        Museum as items to sell. The covers feature interesting old photos from the Museum collection. You may have seen some of her cards for sale around here. They are first rate. The ones at the Museum would be great to send to friends and relatives who live out of the area.

 

I would like to thank Bob Whiteman for a donation to the Museum in memory of Lyle Harrington.

 

Thanks to Bill Daniels I found out the approximate period that John Brooke was the pastor to the

Congregational church. I left the note at the Museum, but I think it said late 1950s and early '60s.

 

Since I don't have anything earth-shaking to write about this week, I'm going to go back to perusing

the local newspapers for 1920.

 

October 22 issue:

 

Ralph E. Houston died at Boise on Oct. 16. The cause was blood poison brought on by "defective

teeth." Services were held in the Cottonwood school house, and burial followed in the Cottonwood

cemetery. Age 31.

 

Ben Dillon spoke at the Republican rally at the People's Theater last Friday evening. Will H. Gibson

"discussed the national political situation, giving particular attention to the League of Nations and the

tariff question."

 

Candidates for State Senate are J.F. Lowe and David W. Van Hoesen. Candidates for State

Representative are Morgan P. Gifford and L.A. Thompson. Commissioner candidates--1st Dist.:

S.N. York and James Hancock--2nd Dist.: F.G. Robinson and J.H. McGinley-- 3rd Dist.: Jonathan

McMahan and A.R. Krigbaum. For Adams County prosecuting attorney: Luther L. Burtenshaw and

Benjamin J. Dillon. For County Sheriff: Robert Young and Vollie Zink. For County Treasurer: Alice

C. McMahan and George A. Winkler. For Probate Judge, Fred H. Michaelson is running

unopposed, as is Oriana M. Hubbard for County Superintendent of schools. For Assessor: Wm.

Branstetter and Wm. Woodland.

 

George Washington Phipps or Cottonwood won numerous awards at the State Fair for his Jersey

cattle. His three year old cow took first place for butterfat production, in that age group, edging out a

wide field of competitors. He took second in butterfat production in the two year old division.

 

William G. Koontz died at Walla Walla on Monday. He was 60 years old. Survivors mentioned are

a brother, Gene, and a son, Oscar.

 

There will be a Halloween dance at the People's Theater Oct 29.

 

"Elsewhere in this issue is a notice of dissolution of partnership of Messers. Weed and Winkler of the

Council Grocery Co., Mr. Winkler having withdrawn from the firm. His successor will be Charles

Weed, who is a brother to Carl and Fred Weed, and who has been in Council during the week. The

gentleman recently returned from China where he has for something like twenty years been the active

head of one of the modern colleges of that land, he having taken up the work at the close of the

Spanish-American war. We understand that it is not his intention to remain in Council."

 

History Corner 8-26-99

            Last weekend a few friends and I backpacked into the old mining communities of Iron

Springs andRankin Mill in the Seven Devils. I plan to write a column on that trip when the  pictures come back,  but until then I'm returning to the Leader newspapers from 1920.

 

October 29 issue:

 

The American Legion is collecting donations with which to build "a memorial in honor of the boys

from this county who lost their lives in the war. Instead of erecting a mere monument of cold stone it

is planned to build a suitable American Legion building. Since the erection of such buildings has

become quite general throughout the United States and their purpose fully known, there is no

apparent necessity for discussion as to the good sense of the plan. The boys have contributed heavily

out of their own purses, and it strikes us that every person who has a spare dollar can well afford to

give something--and if all give in fair proportion to their means the problem will be solved without

difficulty. Personally, we would dislike to walk past a soldier memorial in this county and feel that we

had not contributed at least some small part of its construction." Come on, folks, let's 'kick through.'

"

 

At the People's Theater October 30: Harry Carey in "Human Stuff." On November 2: Douglas

Fairbanks in "Arizona." There will be a "big dance" after the show.

 

A Mesa Orchards employee was seriously injured while driving a team under the tramway. The

cable hit his head, opening a three-inch gash.

 

Cool and Donnelly (located just east of where Norm's is now, south of the town square park) just

got in a shipment of extra large double strength sacks for oats, wheat or potatoes.

 

Lampkin's store (where Norm's is now) is selling lady's and men's shoes priced from $8.00 to

12.75. Men's sweaters are $2.00 and up. Flannel shirts for $2.50, $3.75 and $5.00.

 

Adams County Light & Power Co. is selling electric fans at cost.

 

November 5 issue:

 

"On Friday evening, Nov. 5, the Orchard Community is expected to meet at the school house for the

purpose of organizing a literary society."

 

Orchard District: "W.H. Hoover finished picking apples last week Wednesday and is now

completing the packing of the same. Messrs. McClymonds, Missman, Hill and Annia have all

finished the picking and are also busy sorting and packing."

 

"The American Legion requests that we announce that it will give a dance and basket supper at the

People's Theater on the evening of Armistice day, Nov.. 11. Everybody invited."

 

November 12 issue, on front page: "There are many persons who predict that gasoline-driven

automobiles will become obsolete when the newly-devised Baker steam car is produced in quantities

equal to public demand. Specimens of the chief working parts of the car were on exhibition at the

Addington garage during part of the week and attracted much attention. The mechanism of the car

presents a completely new plan of auto locomotion, and upon inspection the method appears so

sound and free from technical and delicate parts that one wonders why some genius did not think of

it long ago. The engine is placed in the rear of the car. The boiler, a coil affair, occupies the place

given to the driving apparatus of a gas car. Twenty-seven gallons of water is carried and, it is stated,

this quantity is sufficient for 700 miles of travel. After the water has been converted into steam and

served its power-making purpose it is returned to the tank through a condenser and is thus used over

and over again. Any low-grade fuel oil is used and it is claimed that a gallon of crude oil, hard cider

or such, will drive the car twenty to thirty miles. the engine furnishes up to 400 horse power and, it is

said, is capable of driving the car at a rate of 200 miles an hour--if any person should be fool enough

to want to ride that fast. It can also be driven at a snail's pace. All in all, the 'wagon' looks like a sure

winner and the members of the Addington Auto Co., who are agents both for the machine and stock

in the manufacturing company, predict that it is destined to put benzene buggies in general in the

second-class division."

 

History Corner 9-2-99

 

Adams County Leader, November 12, 1920:

 

"Notice is hereby given that there will be teachers' examinations for all grades at the court house,

Council, on Nov. 18, 19 and 20."

 

At the People's Theater November 22: a return engagement of Shubert's Jazz Orchestra Dance and

Show. Dance tickets are $1.50. Spectators and children - 10 cents. Two movies will follow.

 

"Bring your cream to us. We pay 50c for butterfat. --Council Creamery." (I notice there is a new

house going in right where the creamery was. I'll bet they dug up some creamery artifacts when they

dug down for the footings.)

 

"We are rather tardily informed that a baby girl was born to Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Grossen two

weeks ago last Sunday."

 

"The infant son of Mr. and Mrs. D. F. Richey died last Thursday after several months of illness. The

little one had been ailing all summer at Weiser but parents hoped that the change to mountain air

would prove beneficial. Mr. Richey is teacher at the Glendale school."

 

Mr. and Mrs. W.C. Whiteley have moved to Seattle. "Mr. Whiteley is suffering from a severe eye

affliction which has caused partial blindness. . . ." They are leaving permanently. (Whiteley and his

sons were well-known business men in Council. They established one of the first stores here. Their

first store was about where Council Auto is now, southwest of the town square. Their second,

larger, store was where Norm's is, south of the square. It later became the Lampkin store,

mentioned in a previous issue. Whiteley Avenue is named after these Whiteleys.)

 

Calvin W. Johnston, aged 69, died at the home of his brother, Morris Johnston at Upper Dale, on

Nov. 9." He was buried at Hornet Creek Cemetery.

 

Ed Austin sold his ranch on Middle fork to John Shaw. Shaw will have and auction to dispose of his

dairy cattle and household items.

 

November 19 issue:

 

"The federal government has ruled that persons who purchase hops and malt and, using the kitchen

stove as a brewery, therefrom create a lifelike and kickful imitation of old-fashioned 'suds,' will

hereafter invite trouble as violations of the federal prohibition laws. In fact, the new ruling as

particularly definite in regard to the sale of malts to other than bakers; and as for hops--well, as we

gather the facts, it appears that if some person should drink out of a spring that has a grasshopper in

it he but invites disaster." (This is so typical of the tongue-in-cheek humor editors used in those

days.)

 

Reverend Iverson will preach at a meeting for men only on Sunday afternoon. "No boy under fifteen

years will be admitted."

 

"Harry Ludwig and family and Mrs. Clyde Stewart and children have recently visited their mother,

Mrs. Wm. Bevins at Payette."

 

"Tom and William Lindsay, said to be residents of Homestead, Oregon, were arrested here on

Saturday evening, as they drove up to the Addington garage, (now the Ace) on a charge of 'unlawful

transportation and possession of liquor.' Mr. Lindsay was taken to Weiser on Tuesday by Sheriff

Young, accompanied by Prosecutor Burtenshaw, and was sentenced to pay a fine of $50 and serve

thirty days in jail." The men had two quart bottles of moonshine in their car, and it was overheard

that they paid $28 a quart for it. (That was a lot of money in those days.)

 

The election results include those elected Justice of the Peace in the various precincts. In the Indian

Valley precinct, John York lost to R.L. Gilbert, 51 votes to only 4 votes. Mesa precinct: A.J.

Spaulding, 9 votes -- H.L. Brooks 6 votes. Goodrich: J.W. Stoneman, 14 -- E.L. Tubbs, 2.

Council: W.E. Fuller (the veterinarian), 2 -- Gus Vadney, 5. Fruitvale: Pete Robertson, 2 -- Herbert

Glenn, 5. Wildhorse: Arthur Campbell, 1 -- Frank Fanning, 1. (What overwhelming support from

the voters, huh? They each had one friend I guess. Frank would become famous in 1935 by being

one of the few people to survive having his head sawed into by the main saw at a sawmill.) Bear:

A.V. Robertson, 1 -- W.T. Robertson, 3. Summit: W.R. Haines, 4 -- Pete Kramer, 1. (Not only

couldn't old Pete get elected that year, but his wife left him too.)

 

Constables elected: Mesa - H.E. Mills; Goodrich - E.L. Tubbs; Council - Fred Shultz; Fruitvale -

Pete Robertson; Tamarack - Pete Filley; New Meadows - O.L. Lutz; Meadows - Bill Steckman;

Cuprum - Bill Smith; Wildhorse - W.S. Rucker; Bear - Orson Smith; Summit - Victor Oling; Indian

Valley - W.J. Anderson. (I wonder how busy the constable was in some of these little wide spots in

the road.)

 

 

History Corner 9-9-99

            Recently I mentioned that a few of us hiked into Rankin Mill. I thought I would do a few columns about the hike and the history of that area.

            The road to Black Lake was open unusually late this year, but by the time we went up (August 21) it had been open for a couple weeks at least. We made a quick stop at Placer Basin, then drove up to Smith Mountain Lookout. If you want to give your flat-land friends and relatives a thrill, drive right up to the lookout sometime. The road is about as wide as your tire tracks, and the down-hill side is about a thousand feet of real estate that is about as steep as it gets without swallows building nests on it. Turning around at the top gave my heart a little exercise. You know second it takes to get your foot off the brake and onto the gas pedal as you let out the clutch? It seems like a long time when you're poised like a bobsled at the top of the run and all you can see is sky on three sides.

            On up past Smith Mountain, the road suddenly drops into Deep Creek at a spot known as "High Dive". It's not too disconcerting nowadays, but it makes the trip more interesting. Before it was improved, it was one of those spots where all you could see was sky in front of the hood for a second,and didn't know for sure just how far you were going to drop or how sharp the turn that immediately follows the drop would be.

 The road to Black Lake is notoriously bad; It always has been. As you drive it, you think how

difficult it must have been to build this road with horses and hand labor in 1900. Even in modern times with giant crawler tractors with ripper teeth, this kind of construction, across steep mountains and through almost solid rock in many places, is a challenge. Except for minimal maintenance, not much has been done to improve this road since the time it was first constructed.

 

Most of the stories of the nail-biting trips over the Black Lake road have faded into obscurity, but

one or two have been preserved. The Adams County Leader reported this tale in 1930:

 

"Alta Ingram made a trip with his six-wheel truck to Black Lake in the Seven Devils district this

week for Griffith of Starkey and Van Hoesen of Mesa. He went to bring out some big pipe and

other heavy material [from the old mill]."

 

"There are high, narrow grades, steep and rocky and the turns are so short the truck has to double

back to get around. On one of the highest, steepest, rocky grades the big truck got stuck with its

monster load and the rear was so heavy the front would not stay on the ground at critical times but

insisted on rearing up and swinging toward the down hill side. Alta was inside with the doors of the

cab locked by big shafting loaded on the sides. It was a hair-raising situation, but somehow he came

out of it. Mrs. Ingram walked over that part of the way. Griffith and Van Hoesen carried boulders to

throw behind the wheels when the truck would stop. They did that to help the brakes keep the truck

from making a hasty retreat down the grade. Alta says it was all quite interesting."

 

About a mile from Black lake, a side road turns north and down the hill. Black Lake creek has

decided it likes the road bed here more than its original course for a short distance, so now it feels

like you're driving down a river on that road. This road only goes about 200 yards before it ends at

another branch of the creek. It was here, between the two branches of Black Lake Creek that

Salzer - Ford Company built their gold processing mill in 1901. The mill draped down the side of a

sheer rock face just above where the road now ends.

 

A mile-long tramway was built to carry gold ore to the mill from the "Summit" mine, high above the

lake. The community of "Black Lake" had a post office and store and a few year 'round residents.

The operations faced numerous obstacles, which led to the abandonment of the property here about

1914. In some unexplained way, the Ford's and Salzer's Idaho Gold Coin Mining and Milling

Company ceased to exist. As a result, there was no legal owner willing to take responsibility for all

the equipment at the lake. It was simply left in place, as if it would resume production on a moments

notice.

 

It has been estimated that a total of only about about $125,000 in gold was taken out of the mines at

Black Lake by the Salzer and Ford partnership. This would have done little more than pay for just

one of the mills they built. (The first one burned down.) Winifred Lindsay, on the other hand, said

that the company ended without debt.

 

By 1919, geologists, Livingston and Laney noted that most of the supplies and equipment at Black

Lake had already "been stolen or wantonly destroyed."

 

My father, Dick Fisk, remembers seeing the mill in the 1930s. He said there were hundreds of feet

of new rope, cable and eight-inch pipe still there. There were scores of tin cans full of food, but with

the labels rotted off, stacked in store rooms. People from all around the area (like Griffith and Van

Hoesen) came in and helped themselves to what they could haul out. During World War II, the mill

was burned to salvage much needed scrap iron for the war effort.

 

Continued next week.

Caption for photo of Black Lake Mill:

The Black Lake mill. The cliff on which it was built looks very big here, but it is only about 30 feet

high. The tramway ended at the upper end of the complex where the ore was dumped. The ore was

processed as it moved down through the mill. The mill was very typical of the design used in those

days, including the use of large wooden vats containing cyanide to leach the gold out of the ore.

 

History Corner 9-16-99

 

Aside from me, the people along on our hike were Hannes Kury, Michael Richardson, my son

Blaine, and my nephew Nathan Lacy. We reached the end of the road, below the old Black Lake

mill site at about 11:00 AM and started hiking.

 

This was the first time I'd every gone on an actual backpacking trip. I've always had horses to do the

dirty work. I still have a couple horses, but wanted to see if backpacking was simpler. It is, in some

ways, but it's hard work.

 

The trail, which was originally a road, slants gently down to the east for a few hundred yards, but

quickly begins a long climb as it twists around the long, convoluted point of a ridge and heads north.

About three miles later, the trail reaches a saddle overlooking a large basin formed by Paradise

Creek, a tributary of Rapid River that runs east.

 

We stood the ridgetop in awe of the view for a few minutes. South of us, Smith mountain stood out

against the sky, as it does from almost any viewpoint. To the west, the upper end of the Paradise

Creek basin is formed by a dramatic row of solid rock mountains pushed up from the depths of the

earth about 5.3 to 1.6 million years ago. "Right after" that (give or take only a few million years),

during a period up until about 10,000 years ago, the climate here became wetter and cooler. There

were about four ice ages in this period, in which glaciers scooped out most of Idaho's mountain

lakes. At least 25 lakes in the Seven Devils area were formed by glaciers.

 

We pushed on, down a steep set of switchbacks that wound through the effects of a fire that came

through here about 1994. The entire basin is filled with dead trees--standing like black and white

ghosts--symbols of death and destruction against the green regeneration of life at their feet. As one

peers through the depths of this forest of mostly stark white sticks, it's almost like looking through a

picket fence--or rows of gravestones--on a green lawn. Before the fire, it would have been difficult

to make out the terrain, but now every crease and hump of the basin lays bare to examination.

 

The trail levels out when it reaches the meadows at Paradise Flat. A sign there says its 4.7 miles to

the Black Lake road. It took us three hours to hike it.

 

In 1932 a man named Phiffer built a cabin and barn on Paradise Flat and supposedly planted a small

orchard. He stayed here while prospecting in the area, and planned to file for ownership of the

property, but never did. Later the Forest service used the Phiffer cabin and barn as an administration

site. When we were there, no sign of a cabin was left, and I couldn't see any fruit trees. It's hard to

imagine growing fruit up there. [this is wrong, the homestead was at the mouth of Pardise Creek, far down in elevation.]

 

We turned up the creek to the west and tried to follow what was left of a road to the site of Iron

Springs. One of the first signs that we had reached the place was an ore car sitting on a small flat,

with no tailings pile or mine tunnel within sight. A few tool remnants, broken bottle parts and

miscellaneous junk lay scattered here and there as we kept looking.

 

We finally found the flat where the town of Iron Springs was located. There are no standing buildings

remaining there, but you can tell where some of them were. I had a drawing made by someone for

the Forest Service, but it didn't seem to correspond to what we found very well.

 

In 1902 an Ohio man named D.C. Nevin garnered financial support from investors, created the "Iron

Springs Company Limited," and began to develop the area along Paradise Creek.

 

According to several sources the operators of the mining company were little more than Eastern

swindlers who only mined the pockets of their investors. The Iron Springs Company started

developing their claims and establishing a town site named "Iron Springs" in the summer of 1903,

under the management of Charles F. Macey. First a large sawmill and planer were brought in to

make lumber for buildings. By that fall, quite a community was forming. It had a store, hotel, seven

homes, and a number of other structures housing mining machinery. The store probably contained

the Iron Springs post office, which was established on September 10.

 

Transportation bedeviled all of the Seven Devils mining camps, but Iron Springs was even more

remote than most. By November the road from Council was snowed in, and people at Rankin mill

(more on that location later) were having supplies brought in by pack trains from Grangeville. Macey

had a survey made for a road down Rapid River that would connect with the road between

Meadows and Pollock. His reasoning was that the route would be relatively clear of snow all the

way to Grangeville in the winter. A few miles of road along Rapid River already existed, and

additional construction was started in 1904, but the road was never completed.

 

More on Iron Springs, etc. next week.

 

The Museum is now closed for the season, except by appointment. I haven't had time to thank all the

volunteers who gave so generously of their time over the summer, but I will. It would have been

impossible to keep the Museum open without them.

 

History Corner 9-23-99

 

The "camp" at Iron Springs was strung out along Paradise Creek for about a mile and a quarter, with

the mill at the upper end and Paradise Flat at the lower. Paradise Flat was more or less separate

from the town of Iron Springs proper, with a distance of about a quarter mile between the two.

There were less than a half-dozen buildings at Paradise Flat, and it was rumored to have been the

red light district of Iron Springs. One has to take that with a big grain of salt, first because people

tend to highlight brothels whether they actually existed or not. Second, the Seven Devils Mining

District in general was not a very rowdy place. Maybe because the place was so isolated and the

season was so incredibly short, the men seemed to be pretty serious about getting the work done.

The one exception to this sober industriousness the District may have been consumption of alcohol,

but apparently not in Iron Springs.

 

Liquor was outlawed within Iron Springs, and no work was allowed on Sundays unless there was an

emergency or an accident. Reverend J. Edie Stewart (who some say was a crook) pastored the

local church. The town had no official cemetery, but there is at least one grave on a small knoll

overlooking Paradise Flat. Although a few old timers once knew the location of the grave, there is no

record as to exactly where it is, or who is buried there.

 

In the early spring of 1904 a water-powered generator was installed in Paradise Creek that supplied

electricity to the community of Iron Springs. A mine employee said that, "At night, with all three

sections of the camp strung out for a mile and lit up, it made a pretty sight back in the heart of this

isolated mountain place." We found a few wire insulators and part of what looked like a light switch

in the remains of one or two of the buildings.

 

By 1904 the town had a telephone or two, probably with long distance service as far as Council.

Along the trail between the Black Lake road and Iron Springs we saw one or two insulators still

fastened to the trees where the phone wire had been hung. Actually they were not insulators but the

threaded, wooden bases that ceramic or glass insulators would have screwed onto.

 

At the end of 1904 the Iron Springs Consolidated Mining Co. LTD was formed. The company

included The Iron Springs Co. Limited, The Pactolian Mining Co. Limited, The Holbrook Mining

Co. Limited, a controlling interest in the Iron Mountain Mining and Reduction Co. Limited and

numerous other properties located on Rapid River and Bear Creek. The corporation also owned oil

and gas fields in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wyoming.

 

The next year (1905), the company bought the claims of Hugh Kern (also spelled Curren). Kern

was said to have been the first prospector to investigate the Rapid River area. His claims were south

of Iron Springs, near Curren Mountain, which is named after him. One story says that Kern sparked

the first interest the Rapid River area. He is said to have packed a fifty pound candle box full of gold

ore to the Cornucopia mine in Oregon to have it milled. Just that one box yielded $2,500.

 

The Iron Springs Company also bought the Rankin mill properties, to the north, in 1905. In the fall of

that year, a fifty ton capacity cyanide mill, similar to the one at Black Lake, was brought to Iron

Springs. It was installed above the town at the "Iron Chief", the company's principle mine.

 

More next week.

 

I would like to thank Ralph & Mary Stephens and Signa & John Hutchison for donations to the

Museum in memory of Lyle Harrington. The Hutchisons also made a donation in memory of Ruth

Cole. Thank you very much. It sure seems like an fitting way to remember people who are so much

a part of local history.

 

I'm still getting things tied up from this year's Museum season. I need to get thank you letters out to

our volunteers who did such a great job. We had a total of 643 visitors, as near as I can tell by the

guest book. We had 10 days when nobody came in. Overall, the average was 7.2 visitors per day.

On the 3rd of July we had 38 visitors and 88 people toured the place on the 4th.

 

If anyone has an industrious steak this fall, the Museum needs basalt rocks (lava rocks) to face the

cement ramp outside. They should be small enough to lift by hand, and about six to ten inches thick.

If they have lichen or moss growing on them, that's wonderful--that's what we want on them

eventually. If you are inclined, you can leave them down by the old Museum door someplace. Or, if

you have rocks that would work well, I'd appreciate a call as to their location and availability. This is

going to be a big job. I don't know when we'll get to it. Of course any volunteer muscle and / or

brain power would be very appreciated when the time comes.

 

Caption for photos:

These photos were taken at Iron Springs from about the same place--one about 1900 and the other

just over a month ago during our hike. The mountains in the background are the only things that

haven't changed. Both are looking west. We looked for a long time, trying to find the rock in the

foreground of the old photo. It seemed like it would be a simple job, but we couldn't find it.

All that remains of the buildings are a few boards and scattered debris.

 

History Corner 9-30-99

 

J. Barton Webb came to work at Iron Springs in 1905. Years later, when interviewed by an Idaho

Statesman reporter, Webb had this to say about Iron Springs:

 

"Typical of many towns in those days it was laid out in three sections which ran uphill. The first

contained a large general store and post office. There were also a few houses close by this main

building."

 

"On the next level, and quite high up, was the assay office, saw mill, and a large barn. Here also was

the hotel, a two story structure which had a lobby and dining room which would seat about 60 or 70

people, and the kitchen which housed two huge wood ranges. Adjacent to the hotel was a large

storehouse."

 

"The higher level of the town was where the mine was located. A large two-story building housed the

hoist for the 3,000 foot shaft, and of course the engine and the boiler. Electricity was generated here

for the whole camp and mine. At one side stood the blacksmith and tool shop."

 

"[That summer of 1905] it was necessary to shovel 10 feet of the snow out of the pass that led to

Iron Springs via Black Lake. The job was necessary as six stagecoaches carrying stockholders from

the East had to get to the mine by the Fourth of July. The holiday was celebrated by substituting

dynamite, supplied by the company, for the firecrackers."

 

"Mail was delivered twice a week to Iron Springs and daily except Sundays elsewhere. Meat for the

mining camp was supplied by the Rhodes Cattle Company who operated a slaughter house west of

Pollock."

 

The twice a week mail service Webb mentioned was provided by Pete Kramer's stage line. Pollock

at that time was the principle town in the area of the Salmon and Little Salmon Rivers, and was much

bigger than Riggins. Before a road was built to Black Lake, Pollock was the main supply point for

Iron Springs, Rankin Mill, Black Lake, and Wine Camp. Around 1900, and for many years

afterwards, Pollock was located at its original site at the mouth of Rapid River, north of the present

site of Pollock.

 

I mentioned Wine Camp because it was listed with the information about Pollock being its supply

point, but I don't know anything about the place. If anyone out there can fill me in, I would really

appreciate it.

 

It's interesting to note that to reach Iron Springs, Webb traveled by team and wagon "up Rapid

River to the end of the road some 15 miles west of Pollock." From here, it was a long day's walk to

Iron Springs. When he arrived on May 2nd, there was two feet of snow on the ground.

 

According to one source, in addition to the establishments already mentioned, there was also a livery

stable and a saloon at Iron Springs. At its peak, there were about thirty homes. Because of the

heavy snow in that area, many of the houses had covered walkways leading to the outhouses and

woodsheds.

 

The town was established enough by 1906 to have a Justice of the Peace and a constable. But

behind the scenes, the Iron Springs Mining Company had gone bankrupt. Over the next year, the

community went down hill rapidly, and by 1908 the camp was deserted.

 

Because the Iron Springs company was linked to so many of the operations in the Seven Devils,

their failure deeply effected both the economy and the general mood of the entire area very

negatively.

 

There was a Forest Service Ranger Station at Iron Springs as early as 1912. In 1932 a man named

Phiffer built a cabin and barn on Paradise Flat and planted a small orchard. He stayed here while

prospecting in the area, and planned to file for ownership of the property, but never did. Later the

Forest service used the Phiffer cabin and barn as an administration site.

 

We didn't notice any sign of fruit trees at Paradise Flat. I can't imagine them growing at that

elevation.

[WRONG!!! The Ranger Station as at the MOUTH of Pardise Creek—much lower in elevation!]

 

Continued next week.

 

Caption for photo:

The mill at Iron Springs. We didn't find its location on our hike. There aren't many clues in the photo

to indicate just where it sat. To the right of the left building is a huge pile of firewood.

Like many of the mines in the Seven Devils district, the Iron Springs mining operation lost money for

virtually everyone involved with it. Whether it was simply an elaborate scam, as many claimed, is not

clear; but in its several years of operation it is said that not one shipment of ore ever left Iron Springs.

 

History Corner 10-7-99

 

After looking around Iron Springs and Paradise Flat, our group debated whether we had the energy

to go on to Rankin Mill that day. We decided it might be too far, but we would go at least part way.

 

The trail out of Pardise Flat to the north is not very plain and we immediately lost track of it. I found

a place where someone long ago had laid down small logs to form a "corduroy road" over a wet

spot, but there was no trail in evidence there. After we floundered up a steep hill through acres of

down timber, Nathan finally climbed way up the hill and found the trail. We had probably crossed it

but hadn't recognized it. It certainly had no resemblance to a road. I assume the trail doesn't follow the

old road on that hillside.

 

We hiked about a mile before we found a semi-bare ridge with water nearby. We spent the night

there. The next morning we got started about 8:00 AM, leaving our backpacks at camp. It felt like

our feet had springs without that extra weight.

 

Only about a half mile or so from camp, we climbed over a small ridge and out of the burned area.

Suddenly everything was green. Nathan commented, "Maybe now we'll start seeing some game." He

had hardly finished speaking when I looked down into a basin about a hundred yards away and saw

a seven point bull elk looking at us. He didn't stick around long, but seconds later we saw other elk

going through the trees, and heard them calling to each other. In a small meadow ahead of us, again

about 100 yards away, several spike bulls and a "rag horn" or two paraded out into the open and

stared at us intently--torn between fear and curiousity. One had been in a wallow, and was covered

with mud from head to toe. They stood and looked at us for a minute or two, and then disappeared

into the timber. We saw a total of seven elk--all bulls. This was only about a week before the rut

was due to start and bow season would open, so those guys probably didn't hang around together

much longer.

 

About a mile from camp we came to Holbrook Saddle. A sign there said Rankin Mill was 4 miles

away. It was all downhill, but the trail had not been maintained in years. There was down timber

everywhere, like a giant game of "pick-up sticks." It was exhausting work.

 

The trail simply follows the West Fork of Rapid River, almost in a straight line down to the

Northwest until the creek connects with the larger river. At several places along the way we found

telephone line lying on the ground beside the trail. At one point, it was still fastened to a standing tree

where it had been attached almost 100 years ago.

 

At about 11:00 AM, and about 3 hours from camp, the trail crossed the creek and suddenly we were

at "Rand," a community associated with Rankin Mill. Here we found the half-rotted remains of four

or five cabins and two log out-houses. On down the trail a quarter mile or so was the old Rankin

Mill site, which had an abundance of interesting things to see.

 

The story of Rankin Mill parallels that of Iron Springs. Both camps were being developed at about

the same time, and eventually had the same owners.

 

Not long after the Ford brothers built the road to Black Lake in 1900, H.D. Rankin appeared on the

scene. Rankin, a chemist from Pittsburg, Pennsilvania, had invented a machine that could make nitric

acid by combining the molecules of air and water by means of an electrical charge. Nitric acid was

used in a leeching process to extract gold from gold bearing ore, and Rankin's main objective would

seem not to have been to make his fortune by merely mining gold. He was an ambitious business

man, and the principle stockholder in the Rankin Chemical Reduction Company based in Chicago,

which reportedly had assetts worth about $10 million. If he could find a place to prove that his nitric

acid making device would be a practical part of gold mining operations, he could revolutionize the

industry. Then, as became a familiar theme in the Seven Devils, he could find his pot of gold in the

pockets of investors in his company stock rather than in the ground.

 

Rankin agreed to buy several mines on the West Fork of Rapid River, about 6 miles north of Iron

Springs, from the Potter brothers, Tom, George, and Jim; and Jim Ross. The Star, Jackley and

Champion mines were the principle claims. When the Iron Springs Compnay built a road into its

claims in 1902 Rankin built a road from his holdings to connect with it.

 

Rankin's operation in the Seven Devils was called the Rankin General Milling Company. At a cost of

$50,000, he built an ore mill, a nitric acid "factory" and a hydroelectric plant to power them and

provide lighting. Rankin was evidently in such a hurry to get his operation going that he had some of

the equipment brought into this remote location in the dead of winter. The Cambridge newspaper for

Jan 9, 1903 reported that the Rankin Mill machinery had made it as far as Black Lake. The paper

said the job had taken fifty horses to get it through snow up to fifty feet deep.

 

Continued next week.

 

History Corner 10-14-99

 

Before I get back to the story of Rankin Mill, I got some more info on Iron Springs. Bob Davis tells

me there were some buildings left there before the fire went through there in the early '90s. What

must have been the house of the man who tried to homestead at Paradise Flat stood a couple

hundred yards east of where the trail hits the flat. The roof was caved in, but some of the walls were

more or less upright.

 

Bob said a mine shaft is a quarter mile or more on up the creek from the flat where the buildings

were at Iron Springs. It's all caved in, but still forms quite a crater. This is probably where the

buildings with all the wood stacked next to them were located. There is what remains of a tunnel

farther up the basin, and a big tailings pile. The tunnel is not open, and water runs out of where the

opening was. The water is rust-colored because of its high iron content, and has formed terraces

where iron deposits from the water have built up.

 

Now back to Rankin Mill.

 

About a quarter mile up stream from Rankin's mill, a small community sprang up where about 55

Rankin employees lived. The little town was named "Rand", evidently after a man by that name. A

post office under that name was established in the fall of 1903. Ruth Lake (about 2 miles south of

Rankin Mill) was named after Mr. Rand's daughter, Ruth Rand, who was the first child born in the

town. A Forest Service sign once identified the site as "Old Town", but it was not known by that

name during its active existence. Not much is known about the town, except that it also had a hotel

and a blacksmith shop. The community received its mail by way of Pollock, and supplies often came

by pack train from Grangeville.

 

The first cabin ruins we came to were at the old site of Rand. Like most old log structures, they were

rotting from the bottom up, from the dampness of the ground. One thing that I'd never seen before

that these cabins had was stone chimneys. At least part of the chimneys were stone. In one cabin the

old stove pipe still stuck through the wall into the pile of stones on the outside of the log wall. There

were at least two small, log structures that someone from the Forest Service identified as outhouses.

 

In September of 1903, area newspapers reported, "These facts have been made evident by a short

test run made at the Rankin mill on Rapid river Monday evening, when, in the absence of a lot of

necessary machinery, 50 pounds of nitric acid, the main reducing agent, sufficient to reduce 2 1/2

tons of ore, was manufactured from the air we breathe, in one hour and fifteen minutes, and the fact

was also demonstrated that ore can be reduced at a cost of less than two mills per pound. The

success of the Rankin process will make it possible for every mine of any value to be worked at a

profit. The mine owner can do the work himself if necessary and will not need more than a week's

grub stake to start in with."

 

The following January, the Weiser Signal claimed that Rankin had produced 500 pounds of Nitric acid in only thirty minutes.

 

As so often was the case in the Seven Devils, much of the acclaim about the success of Rankin's

process was exaggeration or outright falsehood. Much of the hyperbole was no doubt supplied to

the newspapers by Rankin himself. For one thing, the equipment needed was not simple or cheap. Just the ditch and flume to bring water power to the machinery at Rankin's mill was over a mile long and must have cost more than "a week's grub stake."

 

Only a month after the Signal's fantastic claims about how much nitric acid Rankin was producing, it reported that the power the electric plant could generate was insufficient to run all of his equipment. Rankin had enough power for his acid factory and lighting, but not enough for the ore mill. This, however, may have only been what Rankin told the paper in trying to save face and the faith of investors in his invention.

 

It is probable that Rankin didn't have enough voltage to make nitric acid all along. Nitric acid

(HNO/3) is composed of hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen makes up 11.1% of water, and is easily combined with oxygen, which composes 21% of earth's atmosphere. Nitrogen, on the other hand, is much harder to extract from the air. Even though it makes up 78% of our atmosphere, it takes a very powerful surge of electricity, such as a lightening bolt, to link together the oxygen and nitrogen as Rankin claimed to have done.

 

If anyone out there knows more about if or how nitrogen can be manmade, or if anyone has contrary information, please let me know!

 

My sincere thanks to Lyle and Barbara Sall for a nice truck load of top soil for the space south of

the Museum! We really needed it. I hope we can get some landscaping done there by next summer.

Now we need someone to spread the dirt out with a tractor.

 

History Corner 10-21-99

 

The problems with his nitric acid mill were not the only clouds in H.D. Rankin's sky. He still hadn't

paid for the claims he had taken over. By early 1904, the Potter brothers were tired of waiting to be

paid. They locked up the Star mine which was only about 150 yards above the mill, stood at the

mine entrance with rifles, and would not let Rankin's employees remove any ore. (In the Feb 6, 1904

issue of the Weiser Signal, Jim Potter said this story was false.) The confrontation wound up in court,

and the Potters and their partner, Jim Ross, won the case. Apparently this was too much for Rankin.

In the summer of 1904, the post office closed and everything was abandoned where it sat. It is said

that Rankin walked out of Rapid River with nothing but the clothes on his back. But Rankin was not

totally defeated. It was later reported that he had a large nitric acid making plant in Joliet, Illinois, and

was planning one at Salt Lake City.

 

In 1905, the Iron Springs Company bought out the Rankin Mill properties. The ore mill was

converted into a more traditional cyanide plant.

 

When the Iron Springs company went under, the Rankin camp was again abandoned. The wagon

road to Rankin Mill soon deteriorated, as there was no reason to maintain it. Because the area was

so remote the buildings and equipment at Rankin's diggings were left mostly undisturbed. As late as

the early 1950s several of the buildings were still standing.

 

In researching Rankin Mill, I had read in a paper written in 1984, that an or car still sat on the rails

running out of the Star mine. I envisioned something quite different than what we found. There was

an ore car, and there were rails coming out of a collapsed tunnel, but the car was lying on its side

and brush was growing up through everything so thickly that it was hard to see much.

 

Let me try to describe the Rankin mill area as it is today. First, the trail (old road) comes down a

narrow, densely forested canyon. Just after the trail crosses from the east side of the creek to the

west side, there is a flat, still densely wooded, where the remains of the community of Rand can be

found. There is an opening in the trees at the north edge of Rand, and a trail branches off to the

southwest, up another branch of Rapid River. This trail was once a wagon road to a mining claim.

The trial tops out near Carbonate Hill, south of Horse Heaven.

 

The trail continuing down Rapid River goes north through thick trees and brush, with the creek down

a steep drop to the right and a hill rising up on the left. About a quarter mile past Rand, what must be

the Star mine tunnel (along with the ore car) sits right at the edge of the trail on the left side. The

tracks once went right across the trail to a tailings pile that slopes down to the creek.

 

About 150 yards past the tunnel, we came to a flat that must have been man-made. This was the site

of Rankin's Mill. From the old photo, you can see that the flat used to be open. Now it is covered

with small fir trees. The first artifact we came to was the remains of an old wagon. The front wheels,

the tongue and some of the frame were fairly intact. Next came two flattened buildings, side by side.

I don't know what they were for. It seems remarkable that so much is left of them after almost 100

years. Lying about this area were pipes--about three inches in diameter-- running here and there. I

saw at least one shutoff valve, and a couple sections of pipe made of thick rubberized canvas.

 

Just a stone's throw past the first two buildings are the remains of the mill itself. The same source in

which I read about the ore car said that the site of the blacksmith shop, remains of the hearth and the

metal frame of the bellows were still in evidence. Remains of the blacksmith shop are there, but if I

hadn't had a sketch of the layout of the camp I wouldn't have known what it was. I didn't see any

bellows frame or anything I was sure was a hearth. Up the hill in the superintendent's quarters there

was a wood cook stove. One wall of this building was still more or less upright.

 

What's left of the mill is, like all the other buildings, just a flat pile of boards. The pile is lying up and

down a steep hillside and covers and area about 30 yards square. There are a number of interesting

items among the ruins. There are a couple of iron machines that I couldn't identify, various pipes and

hoses, and the neck of a very large, green, glass jug.

 

Sitting in a row, from one side of the mill to the other are the remains of the cyanide tanks that were

used to leach gold out of the ore. All that is left of the wooden tanks are piles of round bands that

overlap at their threaded ends where they go through a device where nuts were tightened to constrict

them around the tanks. They were not unlike a barrel with the metal bands to hold the side boards

together. This is the same way the siphons in the Mesa flume were constructed. The tanks at

Rankin's mill were about ten feet across and topped with a lid of wooden lattice for some reason.

 

Just above the mill are several iron pipes about three inches in diameter, several lengths of ore car

rail, and some cable. All of these had never been used and were lying in piles as if someone had

meant to install them soon.

 

On the hillside above the mill is an ore crib that seems to sit in a collapsed tunnel entrance. I'm not

sure about the story there.

 

You have to be there to appreciate the remoteness of Rankin Mill. It seems incongruous to see this

amount of heavy machinery and so many buildings here. It's remoteness is the very reason there is so

much left there; it was simply too remote to be worthwhile for anyone to haul things out.

 

After we looked around the place and took pictures it was time to face reality; we were a long way

from home. At 11:22 we hit the trail. I think it was something like 1600 vertical feet back up to

Holbrook Saddle, then back down to our camp for a quick lunch, and on down to Paradise Flat. I'm

not sure what all the elevations are now, but it's enough to say that we were climbing or descending

more than a thousand feet each time we hiked from one drainage to the next. The abrupt climb out of

Paradise Flat was a killer. By this time our out-of-shape muscles were tired and our feet were sore.

It always seems farther back to the pickup than it was going in.

 

We reached the pickup at about 6:30. It felt soooo good to sit down in those padded, reclining

seats. Two hours later we were home, with "hot and cold running electricity" as a friend of mine once

called it.

 

That's the end of the account of our adventure. I hope you enjoyed it.

 

Captions for photos:

#1-- Looking north at the view one would have seen arriving at Rankin Mill in the early 1900s. This is the little flat I mentioned. The old wagon frame is sitting right in front of where the camera must have been to take this picture. The flat is now overgrown with small fir tress, except for where the buildings lie. There are two buildings here, although it's hard to make them out; one is directly beyond the other. They were about the same size and shape and stood side by side. The mill can be seen in the background on the left.

#2-- Rankin's mill. Again, looking north. Like other mills of its day, ore was dumped into the upper part and was processed as it came down from one level to another.

#3--This machine, measuring about four feet across, lies in the middle of the mill ruins. It looks like some kind of grinder, with flywheels on both sides. It must have been a job hauling it in here with a wagon over horrible roads.

 

10-28-99

Caption for map: I had a request to include a map of the area I've been writing about in the last

few columns, so here it is. For those of you who aren't familiar with the area, Cuprum, at the

lower left, is about 50 miles (by road) northwest of Council. One doesn't need to go through

Cuprum to get to Black Lake; it's shorter through the community of Bear, down to the right of

Cuprum and off the map.

 

History Corner

            Imagine growing up hearing stories about the small Idaho town where your father was

raised. Imagine that 40 years later you get a chance to visit that town and you find a street

named after your father, another street with your last name, other streets named after close

relatives, an organized effort to preserve a building associated with your family, and the house

where your father grew up being saved as a historic landmark. That's exactly what happened to

someone I met recently.

            On October 5 I got a call from Morris Krigbaum in New Meadows. He said that

Harold Heigho, Edgar Heigho's grandson, was in town. The Historical Society up there was

having a brunch with him at the old Heigho mansion that morning, and the invitation was

extended to me so I went up ton see if I could glean a few scraps of history.

            Edgar M. Heigho (pronounced Hi-ho) was the best known and liked of any official of

the Pacific and Idaho Northern Railroad which ran between Weiser and New Meadows.

Heigho was born in Essex, England in 1867, and he came to the U.S. as a seven year old boy in

1874. According to his grandson, Harold, the name Heigho originally comes from Italy. He said

three Heigho brothers left England at the same time. Edgar and George came to the US and the

other brother went to Australia. Harold didn't know what precipitated their simultaneous

departure from England.

            By age 11 Edgar was supporting himself as an office boy at the Detroit Free Press. He

got his first railroad job at age 15, and later worked as a surveyor. According to Harold,

sometime in the late 1800s Edgar fought in the Indian Wars in Arizona. He was also involved in

labor union riots in Chicago and was shot in the leg--a wound which bothered him the rest of his

life. 

            At some point Edgar married Nora Gwin, and they homesteaded in Jackson Hole,

Wyoming.  The winters there were too severe, and they eventually gave up the homestead. To

make ends meet, they didn't slaughter any of their cattle for their own use, but ate wild game

instead. After that, Edgar wouldn't allow wild game on his table because they had had to live on

it during such hard times.

            Edgar began working for the Oregon Short Line Railroad in Salt Lake City in 1899. The

Heigho's first child, a son named Cedric, was born there in 1901.  Edgar was employed by the

P.& I.N. at Weiser in 1903 as the company's auditor, but so impressed his superiors that he

became Vice President and General Manager the next year. In 1904 twin daughters, Katherine

and Virginia, were born to the Heighos. Edgar resigned from the P&IN in 1909, but was asked

to come back to the company as president in 1910.

            Heigho became well known throughout Idaho because of his activities in Republican

politics. He was appointed to the staff of Governor Gooding, and became a colonel in the Idaho

National Guard while on the staff of Governor Brady in 1909. From then on he was known as

"Colonel" Heigho.

            Heigho named several P.& I.N. locomotives after the female members of his family, and

had their names painted on the sides of the tenders. Engine 102 was dubbed "Virginia", 103 was

"Katherine", 104 was "Nora", and 105 was named "Margaret" after his aunt.

            Colonel Heigho was involved in many aspects of life in this area. He was also president

of the Central Idaho Telegraph and Telephone Company, vice-president and director of the

Weiser National Bank, director of the Meadows Valley Bank, and was involved with the

Washington County Land and Development Company.

            Heigho left his most indelible legacy as president of the Coeur d'Or Development

Company which owned and developed the New Meadows townsite. He was very instrumental

in designing the layout of the town, especially in the placement and design of its principle brick

buildings. Several  streets bear the names of Heigho family members: Nora, Cedric, Virginia and

Katherine.

            A 53-room, brick hotel called the "Hotel Heigho" cost $56,000 to build in 1911. It was

a landmark in New Meadows, described as one of the finest hotels in Idaho, until it burned

down in 1929. I'm told it was located just south of where the highways intersect now in New

Meadows, and it faced west toward the depot. Heigho's luxurious former home in the northeast

part of town, also built in 1911, is now the "Heartland Inn." It sits on the east side of Highway

95, just north of the above-mentioned intersection.

            Harold had never been to New Meadows before, and didn't really know what would be

left of the legacy of his grandparents. He stopped at the information center at the 45th parallel

and was pleasantly surprised to see information about he "historic Heigho mansion" in New

Meadows. He checked into the Inn, and word spread that he was in town. Before he knew it, a

brunch was scheduled for the next morning, featuring him as the guest of honor. Half a dozen

members of the Adams County Historical Society, whose chief project is restoration of the old

railroad depot in New Meadows, attended. Harold was overwhelmed with how well-known his

family's story was, the street names, the depot, etc.

            I'll continue with this story next week. In the meantime, I'd like to remind you that Don

Dopf and I are writing a book about the history of the P&IN railroad and would appreciate any

photos or good stories you might have about this line.

 

 

All of 11--  - 99 Missing

 

History Corner 12-2-99

            Rita Blevins sent me more information about charges brought against Edgar Heigho when a woman died after witnessing a fight between Heigho and another man.

 The information is from the records of the Idaho Supreme Court, Volume 18, pages 566 - 577. The date given is October 1, 1910. The following is a quote from the record as to the events leading to a charge of manslaughter against Colonel Heigho.

 

"The facts disclosed by the evidence are in substance as follows: On the 4th day of August, 1910, at Weiser, Washington County, the petitioner, Edward M. Heigho, hearing that one J.W. Barton had made remarks derogatory to the petitioner's character, called one of his employees, Frank Miller, and requested him to accompany petitioner to the residence of Barton. Heigho and Miller went to Barton's residence about 7:00 o'clock in the evening, ascended the front porch, and Heigho rang  he doorbell. Mr. Sylvia Reigleman, the mother-in-law of Barton, was living at the Barton residence, and was in a bedroom at the front of the house, and immediately off from adjoining the reception room or hallway, at the time the doorbell rang, Barton responded to the call, and, as he passed through the front room and was about to open the front door, Mrs. Reigleman, who was then near him, exclaimed, "he has a gun." Barton stepped out of the door and found Heigho standing on the front porch with a gun, commonly called a revolver or pistol, hanging in a holster or scabbard which was strapped about his body. Miller stood by the side of Heigho. Heigho asked Barton some questions as to the statements Barton had been making about him, and upon Barton asserting that he had not told anything that was not true or not common talk in the town, Heigho struck him in the face with his fist, and Barton staggered back, and fell into the wire netting on the screendoor. Barton did not rise for a few seconds, and in the meanwhile his wife came and assisted him to arise. Heigho and Miller backed off the porch and stood in front of the doorway. Barton advanced on Heigho and struck him a couple of blows, whereupon they clinched, and the wife interfered and separated them, and ordered Heigho and Miller off the premises. Mrs. Reigleman was at this time at the door crying, and had been heard to say a time or two, "He will kill you," or "He has a gun." Barton and wife immediately mounted the porch where Mrs. Reigleman was on her knees, resting against and over

the banister, apparently unable to rise. She remarked to Barton that she was dying, and again

repeated something about "him having a gun." She began spitting a bloody froth and rattling in the chest. A physician was called, and was unable to give her any relief, and she died inside of about 30 minutes from the time of the appearance of Heigho on the front porch. The physician who attended her made a post-mortem examination, and testified that she had an aneurysm of the ascending aorta, and this had ruptured into the superior vena cava and caused her death. He said that the excitement was one of three principal caused that will produce such a result. Heigho was therefore arrested and the charge of manslaughter in causing the death of Mrs. Reigleman by terror and fright while he was engaged in the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to a felony."

 

In a letter to me, Rita said, "The Barton mentioned was my cousin, John Wesley "Wes" Barton who started his banking career in Weiser, going on to become State Bank Examiner, and later as the president of a bank in Minneapolis, MN. The Barton home was on West Court Street here, and is in the Register of Historical Homes."

 

Rita also explained that there were two banks in Weiser at that time. One was the Weiser National Bank, where Heigho served on the board of directors. The other was the First National Bank, where Ed Barton (another of Rita's cousins) was president and where Wes Barton worked. Rita says, "Whether there was rivalry that caused the fight I do not know, and sadly there is no way I can find the answer as all concerned are gone, and there are no younger ones who know."

With excerpts from the Supreme Court record, and some help from Judge Peart (which included a photocopy of the ten-page account of the hearing) I was able to sort out the basic legalities of the case. First, the process of getting the case before the Supreme Court was not a long drawn out one, like some cases that take years to make it to that level.

The prosecuting attorneys--.L. Richards, Prosecuting Attorney, (evidently for Washington County), and B.S. Varian, and Hawley, Pucket and Hawley for the State--applied for a Writ of Habeas Corpus from the Idaho Supreme Court. This, in essence, asked that the Court find that there was sufficient legal grounds to prosecute Heigho for manslaughter.

Part of the evidence considered was the law defining manslaughter. Part of the definition under Idaho law reads, ". . . a prosecution for manslaughter may be had where death of a human being has been caused or accomplished through fright, fear, terror, or nervous shock produced by the accused while in the commission of an unlawful act, even though the accused made no hostile demonstration and directed no overt act at the person of the deceased. It would seem that in some instances force or violence may be applied to the mind or nervous system as effectually as to the body."

Heigho was represented by Harris (probably Frank Harris of Weiser) and Smith and N.M. Ruick. Their basic argument was that Heigho was not committing an "unlawful act" when the death occurred, and therefore could not be prosecuted for manslaughter.

Several precedent-setting cases were quoted, but none fit the exact circumstances of the Heigho case. The Court decided that it would not issue an opinion on the case and ruled that a jury should determine whether or not Heigho could be legally tried for manslaughter. Heigho was remanded to the custody of the Washington County sheriff.

Exactly what happened after that I don't know. Records of a trial might be found in Washington County records. In any case, it doesn't seem that Heigho was convicted of any serious crime. It would have been front page news in all the local newspapers, and I've never seen anything about it. Also, Heigho continued as the President and general manager of the P&IN Railroad.

 

History Corner 12-9-99

            After a few weeks of finding other interesting things to write about, I'm returning to the old Adams County Leaders. Before I get started on the last of the 1920 issues, I'm happy to report that Shirley Rogers has given the Museum all the old back issues of the Leader that she had in the office. They are all (or nearly all) on microfilm, so there wasn't any danger of losing the whole legacy, but we're so glad to have the privilege of preserving them. The unfortunate reality of old newspapers is that newspapers were (and still are) printed on an inexpensive paper that has a fair amount of acid in it, so it eats itself up over time. There is no practical way to keep old newspapers intact forever.

The other day, I was sorting through the Leaders from the 1980s. That was just yesterday, and yet even in that short time, so much has changed for some of us. The sawmill was providing rumblings, clanging, banging and shrill whistles as a background to life in Council. Added to this was the low rumble of a diesel engine idling on the tracks, or occasionally its air horn piercing the air. The Pomona Hotel was not what it used to be, but even as a feed store, this unique historic building continued to be a source of local pride. Our children were younger, our parents were younger—we were all younger. Friends and relatives were with us that are with us no more. For the most part, we took all these things for granted. The book of life turns a single page, and the way things were becomes only a fond memory.

 

I left off at the November 19, 1920 issue of the Leader.

 

"A second dray line has been established in Council, with Earl Fuller as proprietor." I'm not

absolutely sure, but Earl Fuller might be W.E. Fuller who was the local veterinarian, appointed

deputy state veterinarian in this area in 1915. In 1919 Fuller was deputy sheriff, and resigned as

justice of the peace and county brand inspector because state law wouldn't allow him to hold those positions and serve as deputy sheriff at the same time.

 

"On Tuesday evening Messers. Bert Hagar and Clyde Rush returned from a successful deer hunting

trip."

"After having spent a few days in Council, Mr. and Mrs. John McGinley have returned to Boise

where they will remain during the winter."

"Because of improvement in the butter market the Council Creamery has increased the price for

butterfat to fifty-four cents."

Some of you will appreciate the significance of this little note in the "Short Notes of the Week"

column: "Mr. and Mrs. Alcorn arrived here this week from Montana and have become permanent

residents of Council, Mr. Alcorn having purchased the Council Pharmacy from his brother-in-law, L.

Griffith." For a short time, Mr. Griffith was partners with Dr. Wm. Brown in owning Starkey Hot

Springs. His brother-in-law, Alva Alcorn bought Griffith's the drug store--the brick building still

prominent today on the corner of Illinois Avenue and Galena Street. Charles Winkler married

Alcorn's daughter, Esther, and became the pharmacist at the store for many years. When Alva

Alcorn died in 1944, Charlie took over the entire operation. Charlie and his drug store became a

Landmarks for several generations of people here. The old drug store (which was in business until

about 1970) now houses Bear Country Books and the Hearland Inn. Charles Winkler, of course,

was very influential in preserving the collection that has now become the Council Valley Museum.

 

"Mr. and Mrs. J.E. Mickleson and family moved to Nyssa last week Monday, where they have

winter quarters. They and others connected with the Deseret Sheep Co. began moving the flocks

several weeks ago. Aaron Anderson, Chas. Poynor and Roy Shaw are helping them through." I've

heard people talk about the Deseret Ranch near Council. I suppose the old Deseret Cabin at the

head of East Fork had something to do with that outfit.

 

November 26 issue:

 

"The infant of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Jackson died and was buried Thursday in the Indian Valley

cemetery."

"The Gray's Creek school started again this Monday morning, after a five-weeks vacation on

account of smallpox."

"Dr. I.S. Carter and Miss Mary Hoover were married at Shoshone, Idaho, on Nov. 18."

Will Hanson and Frank Peck have bought the livery and dray business of C.L. Ham and Sons.

Fred Cool is the county chairman of the Red Cross.

 

"We are asked to state that the Council Valley Club will give a smoker [boxing matches] at the

I.O.O.F. Hall next Monday evening, to which all men of the community are invited. It is expected

that at least one out -of-town speaker will be present. Refreshments will be served and it is hoped

that the gathering, which will be of a community get-together character, will be particularly pleasant."

 

Have you seen the big Mesa apple box label on the Museum yet? It really adds to the appearance of

the building! A great big thank you goes to Larry Russell and all the kids who helped with it. I

understand that Economy Roofing donated some part of the materials used for it too, so thanks Ken

and Marion!

 

History Corner 12-16-99

 

Adams County Leader, December 3, 1920

Indian Valley. "The cook- and bunkhouses belonging to Alvin Anderson at his saw-mill was

destroyed by fire Saturday evening. They had left the mill about three o'clock in the afternoon to

return to their home four miles away, and at six the fire was discovered, but too late to save anything.

Five beds and all the kitchen equipment was destroyed."

 

"Last year the coyote's hide was worth up to twenty dollars, and he was therefore a much desired

animal. Today that hide, if particularly large and of good quality, will bring six or seven dollars. Extra

large beaver skins sold last year by the state at up to fifty dollars are said to be now worth but ten or

twelve." I wonder how much those dollar amounts would be in today's money.

 

"Speaking of mud; we have all the qualifications for a spring break-up. the roads have neither top

nor bottom." You have to remember that roads were not paved or cleared of snow in those days.

Some County roads had a gravel surface, but many did not. In the spring, there was a difficult period

when people had to choose between vehicles with runners or those with wheels. Neither worked

very well sometimes. Having "neither top nor bottom" is a perfect description of a road too muddy to

support a vehicle on its surface, and with goo so deep it seems to have no bottom.

 

"Mrs. Oreana M. Hubbard, county superintendent, has been making official visitation of the

[Meadows] Valley's schools. Her itinerary included district No. 83 in the Little Salmon canyon

where Adams and Idaho counties border." Have you seen the nice exhibit that Gayle Dixon made at

the Museum? It shows the location of every Adams County school that existed that we know of.

 

New Meadows news: "The newly organized lodges, Modern Woodmen of America and Royal

Neighbors staged a very successful dance and auction box supper Thanksgiving evening. Each

organization realized a nice sum for its treasury department." This is such a typical news item of that

time and earlier. Social organizations were very popular; there must have been a dozen of them in

this area. Before TV, or even radio, people socialized more, and in a more organized way.

 

Births: To Mr. and Mrs. Floy [Floyd?] Shaw, Tamarack, a girl, born Nov. 18. To Mr. and Mrs.

Ora Bush, Council, a boy, born Nov. 29.

 

December 10 issue:

 

"Effective last Saturday, Boise, Nampa, Caldwell and practically the entire Boise valley adopted

mountain time. The move was made in defiance of a recent ruling of the Interstate Commerce

Commission and means that the clocks have been turned ahead one hour from Pacific, or standard

time. It will be recalled that this change was adopted in Council some time ago, but did not meet with

the general favor of our farmers. Whether this district will fall in line with the plan adopted by the

state's capital city remains to be determined."

 

The Surgeon General released final statistics on casualties of WWI. "A total of 34,249 U.S. soldiers

were killed, and 224,089 wounded. "The proportion of killed to wounded is about the same as in

the civil war although mortality from gunshot wounds in the world war was only 8.26 per cent as

compared with 13.6 per cent in the civil war. The report said this indicated that improved surgical

and sanitary methods in the recent war had saved the lives of 5.34 per cent of all American soldiers

wounded." "Of every 1000 men sent to France 110 were admitted to hospital as the result of battle

casualties. Nearly seven men out of every 1000 died as the result of wounds." A total of 13,696 men

died from wounds. Most of the remaining casualties were from disease, including the deadly influenza

epidemic that killed millions around the world. About 70% of the wounded were returned to duty. A

horrifying percentage of men--4400 soldiers--lost one or more extremities. 11% of the wounded lost

both legs at the thigh, 1% lost both legs at the knee, 9% lost both legs below the knee, and 1% lost

both feet. If I remember right, the First World War was the first time Americans began to realize war

was not as romantic as they had always tried to pretend.

 

Indian Valley: Curt Smith committed suicide by shooting himself on Sunday afternoon.

Mark Winkler Jr. married Lillian Williams.

John W. Hoover married Ida B. Cox on Dec. 6 at Weiser.

Bona Whiteley got his arm broken in two places near the shoulder as a result of a kick from a horse.

"Mr. Whiteley went into the barn Saturday evening and was reaching for something on the wall when

a pet horse reached for him."

 

"Call for bids--Up to and including Dec. 27, 1921, I will receive open bids for putting up 100 tons

of ice, more or less, in the creamery icehouse. James L. Showers, Manager, Council Creamery." I

wonder what 100 tons of ice looks like in one pile.

 

Time is running out if you want to get a tax write-off by donating to the Museum. Send them to the

Council Valley Museum, Box 252, Council, ID 83612. We'll send you a receipt.

 

 

History Corner 12- 23-99

            This will be another unique departure from the normal column because I'm going to write about a personal recollection from not that long ago.

            Many of you readers have milked cows before, and many of you haven't. I would guess that most of you don't do it anymore, if you ever did, but milking cows by hand (not with a machine) was a very common job "in the old days." I thought I would write an account of my experiences with milking because there are undoubtedly universal constants to the chore, no matter when or where it was done.

            When I was a kid, we had two cows for awhile, but most of the time we only had one. The job of milking had to be done every morning and every night, seven days a week, 365 days a year, except for a brief respite just before a cow calved ("freshened") each year or so. (You probably only got that break if you only had one cow.) The chore of milking often fell to one of us kids, usually my older brother, Clint, or me. It was a job I disliked in the summer, and hated in winter.

            During warm weather the routine could go pretty smoothly. The first job was to find the cow, usually in a nearby pasture. Some cows we had would come to the barn when called. A cow's bag gets uncomfortably full and needs to be emptied by milking time, so they are usually cooperative in coming to the barn, or are even waiting there for you.

            The barn that we had was an old, small house that we dragged down from where the pond is along the Ridge Road. I helped build the stanchions: vertical boards with a latch that held the cow's head so she couldn't go anywhere while being milked. After locking the cow into the stanchion, we always gave her a gallon bucket full of ground barley. This was partly to supplement her diet, and partly to keep her mind off of being milked.

            The next job was cleaning the barn floor. Most times there was either already some manure on the floor or the cow deposited some as she came in. Sometimes it seemed like she intentionally waited until she came in the door to relieve herself of great quantities of green ooze. In the winter, the cow sometimes stayed inside the barn all night, so by morning it was an incredible mess. The cleaning process consisted of "shoveling" out the manure with a manure fork, which is a six or eight-tined pitchfork. We always kept a layer of straw on the floor, so we just scooped under the manure, picked it up with the straw under it, and pitched it into a pile outside. After that part of the job was completed, a new layer of fresh straw was spread on the floor. Sometimes--especially at night--after the fresh straw was put down, the barn had such a cozy feel it almost seemed like it would make a comfortable place to sleep.

            We always put some warm water in the milk bucket before we went out to milk. At the barn there was a gallon coffee can and a rag sitting on a shelf. We poured the water into it and used the rag to wash off the cows faucets and bag. Sometimes this washing was quick and easy, but in winter it could be miserable. In cold weather the cow often stayed in the barn and snuggled down onto a nice warm pile of manure for the night. Obviously the result was a horrible mess. Even after the best cleaning effort, if the mess was on your side of the cow's back leg, it was right in your face the whole time you were milking.

            Another source of unpleasantness was the cow's tail. It could be loaded with all manner of filth--primarily manure--and it could instantly strike anything within three feet without notice. I usually tied her tail or stuck it inside the hobbles so she couldn't hit me with it. Once when I neglected to do this, she hit me square in my open mouth with a tail coated with manure. I think I kept spitting for about an hour.

            Next to the cow's tail, and an even worse problem, was her hind feet. If her faucets were tender or if she was just in a cantankerous mood, she would kick at the bucket. This was the reason we put hobbles on her hind feet if there was any indication the cow was going to kick. Sometimes a cow planted a dirty hoof right down into the bucket and the milk. That meant a trip back to the house to wash the bucket and start over.

            Once I started milking, the worst part of the job was over. The first tinny sounds of the streams of milk hitting the bottom of the bucket slowly changed to a muffled "frumm frumm frumm" as the milk got deeper, and a layer of foam formed on the surface. Fairly often a little speck of dirt, grass, etc. would fall onto the foam as I was milking. That was no problem, as it could easily be scooped off of the foam with a finger.

            While I was milking, if the cow suddenly humped up in the middle and stuck out her tail, I knew she was about to urinate. The only thing to do was to grab the bucket and get as far away as possible. If you can imagine a fire hose turned full blast onto a wooden floor, you get an approximate picture.

            Given the unsanitary conditions, it seems fortunate we didn't get sick, considering all the raw milk we drank. Maybe we built up resistance to the germs in it.

            One of the perks of milking cows was that a firm grip was developed by the hours of squeezing. Some cows are easy to get milk out of, and others could be real work. Some had faucets so short that you could only get a grip with two or three fingers. Todd Nelson had an old Holstein cow named "Boss" that I used to milk for him whenever I couldn't get out of it. She had great big faucets, but it took all the strength I had to get milk squeezed out of them.

            There were always cats hanging around the milk barn. They would wait impatiently as I milked. The second I finished and started to stand up, you would have thought I suddenly became the best friend those cats ever had in their lives as they would start meowing and begging for milk. We usually had an old frying pan by the door that we poured a pint or so of milk into it for them. Sometimes I would squirt milk at the cats while I was milking. Some of them got good at catching it, and would stand there and gulp it down as the stream shot into their mouths.

            If the cow had a young calf, it was usually kept away from her so it wouldn't drink too much milk. To feed the calf its allotment of milk, we put that milk in a "calf bucket" which had a nipple coming out of the side for the calf to suck. If you look up "eager" in the dictionary, there is a picture of a calf coming to a bucket of milk. They will run over, or through, anything between them and it, and then gulp that milk down like it is their last breath of air. They never get enough, and will follow a just-emptied bucket to the ends of the earth.

            After feeding the cats and the calf their share of the milk, I would unlock the cow from the stanchion and take the milk to the house. There was usually about 1 1/2 to two gallons of milk. We poured it though a strainer--usually a dishcloth, but in later days a paper milk filter--into gallon jars. The jars were immediately put into a refrigerator. As it cooled, the cream would rise to the top and form a layer about 1 1/2" or more thick. Some cows have a higher percentage of cream in their milk than others. We always removed the cream with a ladle before using the milk. We made butter from the cream in a glass, gallon butter churn. It was us kids' job to turn the crank until butter formed. Itseemed like it took forever. In more recent years I used a blender.

            I hope this gave you fond memories, or gave you an insight into an old-fashioned "art," or both.

            Have a great Christmas everyone!

 

History Corner 12-30-99

Adams County Leader, Dec. 17, 1920:

Guert Gilmer, age 48, died at his home on Hornet Creek, Dec. 13 of mouth cancer. He left a wife

and seven children.

Notice to creditors of W.G. Koontz, deceased. Dated Nov. 27

Boy born to Mr. and Mrs. Lester Milligan of Tamarack on Dec. 10

J.F. Hollenbeck, "formerly an old-time resident of these parts," died at Pollock on Dec. 5

 

Adams County Leader, Fri Dec 24, 1920:

Big front page story. "One of the most unfortunate disasters within the history of the county occurred

last Saturday night when the Mesa packing plant and storage house was destroyed by fire which

resulted in the death of Charles P. Seymour, of the firm of Van Hoesen & Seymour, proprietors of

the big orchard property."

 

"The fire was discovered as it broke through the roof of the warehouse soon after nine o'clock. Mr.

Seymour, accompanied by R.A. Mulvihill, the latter an employee of the firm, was seen to enter the

building. It is now known that the purpose of the men was to put in operation a fire extinguisher.

When they failed to return, their fellows, protected with wet sacks over their heads, formed a chain

and entered the rapidly-burning structure. When about twenty feet from the door they stumbled upon

the prostrate form of Mr. Mulvihill and dragged him to safety. He had followed a pipe line that had

led to the door, but had succumbed before he could reach safety. Although nearly unconscious, he

mentioned the name, 'Seymour,' thus making known that the latter was in the building. Further efforts

to save the unfortunate man were of no avail."

 

"When the walls gave way Mr. Seymour's charred remains fell free from the building and rested just

outside. It is believed that after an unsuccessful effort to put the fire extinguisher in operation he

attempted to escape through another door than that through which he had entered but, being

overcome by the smoke and flames, stumbled across a fruit conveyor from which he did not arise."

 

Seymour was 48 years old. He came to Mesa two years ago with Van Hoesens. "The warehouse

and packing plant was one of the most modern in the west and contained upwards of fifty carloads

of apples."

 

The J.H. McGinleys moved out to their Fruitvale ranch.

Girl born to Mr. and Mrs. John R. Teems of Middlefork, on Dec. 20.

"Dr. and Mrs. Carter returned to Council last week and have taken up quarters over the Lampkin

store to which place the Doctor has also moved his dental office."

"Orchard school closed temporarily on Tuesday morning on account of the illness of their teacher,

Mrs. Spahr."

 

Adams County Leader, Dec 31, 1920:

S.G. Addington has recently been advertising Baker Steamer autos and promoting the company's

stock. The cars and trucks run on any oil type fuel, which is cheaper than gas. Water is condensed

after becoming steam, and reused. Said to be fewer moving parts than a gas engine, and last longer

with fewer repairs. 20 to 30 miles per gallon... they will be the wave of the future.

 

Happy new year everybody!!

6 January 2000 History Corner

 

Adams County Leader, January 7, 1921: John Kootlas, a Greek section foreman for the P&IN, was

found guilty of robbery. It all started last summer: "Fannie Montgomery, who lives at Tamarck, went

to Goodrich to obtain a sewing machine left in the possession of Mr. Kootlas; also a watch

belonging to her daughter; that with a revolver she forced Kootlas to sign an order for the watch

which, he claimed, had been sent to a jeweler for repairs; that in the evening she started to walk to

Council; that Kootlas waylaid her and, striking her upon the head with a club, took the paper he had

signed and some two hundred dollars in bills; that, after she was able to walk, Mrs. Montgomery

came on to Council and the matter was reported to the sheriff."

 

"On Friday morning Deputy Sheriff Fuller, accompanied by a revenue officer, started on a

sight-seeing trip into the hills south of Indian Valley." This was because someone had reported an

illegal moonshine still there. "They arrested Edward Ridenour at his home about seven miles south of

Indian Valley. Dr. Fuller informs us that on his place they found two sixty-gallon barrels of

'moonshine' mash, many containers and enough other equipment to, in his opinion, established

conviction. We are told that Mr. Ridenour explained to the officers that his reason for having the

mash available was that he intended to feed it to a pig; and that when the officers asked to see the

pig he admitted that he owned no such property, but contemplated purchasing one. Ridenour is

stated to be a single man about thirty-five years of age."

 

"At a farm about a mile from the Ridenour place the officers arrested J.W. Isley, after they had

located equipment somewhat similar to that found in Ridenour's possession. We are told that Mr.

Isley frankly admitted making the 'moonshine,' but claimed that he was doing so merely to satisfy his

personal thirst. He is about thirty-five and unmarried." "On Saturday Deputy Fuller arrested Ray

McKinzie at Weiser on a charge of making and selling 'moonshine.' McKenzie has confessed to

having distributed liquor at the time of the Christmas dance held at Council. It is said that on

Christmas night McKinzie sold a number of pint bottles of kill-me-quick at five dollars each."

 

"One of our county officers informs us that up to this time the outgoing county administration has

brought about prosecution and conviction of thirteen cases of illicit manufacture of sale of liquor.

Eight of these cases were turned over to the federal government and five were state cases. Since it is

being repeatedly demonstrated that the 'boot-legger' inevitably comes to grief, it would seem that a

person who tries to beat the 'moonshine' game is as foolish as he is criminal."

 

The following story from Indian Valley should make us all appreciate modern cars and highways:

"Mr. Pratt went to Cambridge Wednesday to meet his son and daughter-in-law, Lawrence and

bride, who were returning from Joseph, Ore., where they had recently been married. As they were

returning home and attempting to cross Gray's Creek at Alpine the water ran into the sleighbox and

washed out the trunks, suitcases, etc., and a lot of supplies. Mrs. Pratt narrowly escaped with her

life. Fortunately, after the water had subsided they found everything, although somewhat damaged."

Actually, by this time, a number of local people owned cars, but wheeled vehicles of any kind were

not used in winter. In winter, cars were put into storage, jacked up on blocks and their radiators

drained.

 

Indian Valley: "Thomas Andrews, son of Mr. and Mrs. Alvin Andrews, and Mrs. Pauline Higgins, of

Rush Creek, were married in Council on Tuesday." [I wonder if that should have read "Miss" Pauline

Higgins.] Showing at the People's Theater on Jan. 11: Wm. S. Hart in "The Breed of Men."

 

"Dr. Brown reports the birth of a girl to Mr. and Mrs. Herschell Robertson of Bear, on January.

Mrs. Robertson and baby are at the Cossitt home in Council." Actually I changed the spelling of the

name in this quote. The paper printed, "Robinson" instead of "Robertson." It also left out the date,

just as I quoted.

 

 

History Corner 1-13-00

Adams County Leader, January 14, 1921

            The Kootlas case (see last week) will be appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court. He was sentenced to a term of five to twenty years in the State Penitentiary. "Because the Supreme court is far behind with its work it is not improbable that Mr. Kootlas will be a guest of the county for a considerable time."

            New County Commissioners were sworn in: Sherman York, Jonathan McMahan, and Mr. Robinson. [Robertson?] "Every single person whose net income for 1920 was $1,000 and every

married person whose net income was $2,000 or more is required to file a [tax] return under oath

with the collector of internal revenue for the district in which he lives on or before March 15, 1921."

At this time, Federal income tax was a pretty new thing. I think it started in about 1914.

 

Indian Valley: "Mrs. Thomas Murphy passed away at eight o'clock Sunday morning, after many

months of suffering from cancer of the stomach, . . ." She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Elisha

Woods.

"On January 8th relatives from Council and Fruitvale gathered at the home of Mr. and Ms. William

T. Harp, at Fruitvale, the occasion being their fiftieth wedding anniversary. The visit was a complete

surprise, for Mrs. Harp was busy making soap and Mr. Harp was hauling hay. William T. Harp and

Millie Jane Hall were married Jan. 8, 1871 near Berryville, Carrol County, Arkansas by James

Harp, the groom's father. They crossed the plains by mule team in 1880, arriving in Indian Valley on

July 3rd, 1880. Settled in Council in 1892, and have made this Valley their home ever since. Mr.

Harp who is now 73 and Mrs. Harp 72. . . ."

 

"Ten days ago there was no local ice suitable for harvest, but since the late imitation of a cold snap

the ice on Leek's pond is ten or more inches thick. Chester Selby, Lee Zink and Clarence Hoffman

have the contract for putting up ice for the Council Meat Market, and are busy on the job." For

those of you who may not know, Leek's pond is just southeast of town. It was formed when the

railroad grade was built across that little swale. Can anyone tell me where the name Leek came

from. Did someone by that name own the land there?

 

Adams County Leader, January 21, 1921:

 

Indian Valley--"Miss Margaret Leichliter and Mr. Al. Van Sant were married on January 8 at the

home of the bride's aunt, Ms. Clyde Patrick, at Seattle."

 

Preliminary report on agriculture in Adams County, given out by the Director of the Census: 484

farms, of which 479 are operated by white farmers and five by colored farmers. In 1919, some

8,540 acres were planted to wheat (99,781 bushels); 1.207 acres in oats (25,047 bushels); 315

acres in barley (4,577 bushels); 21,561 acres in hay (26,179 tons). No figures were given on fruit.

 

At the People's Theater on Jan. 25--John Barrymore in "A Test of Honor."

 

Advertisement on back page for the Adams County Light & Power Co.--"While there has been no

market reduction in electrical appliances, we will give twenty per cent discount on all appliances and

fixtures purchased during the months of January and February. This is your opportunity to save

money if you intend buying at some future date." The power company had a generator on Rush

Creek near Cambridge, and had supplied Council with electricity since 1915. As you can see, they

also sold electrical appliances.

 

The Museum recently acquired some photos of a dance that was held at the Legion Hall in the early

1940s. I understand dances were held there a lot during the summers during that time. We would

like to identify some of the people in them. The pictures are at the library, so come in a take a look.

If you recognize anyone, write it on the back of the photo.

 

1-20-00 Missing

 

History Corner 1-27-00

            Some time ago, Florence Brown gave me a letter that was sent to her in 1991 from Mary Allison. I put it in my "to do" pile and it has been there ever since. It has some interesting information in it about the founding of Mesa Orchards that I thought you might enjoy. Mary's father, J.J. Allison, along with George Weise and Oberlin M. Carter (often referred to as "Captain Carter"), organized the Weiser Valley Land & Water Company which purchased several thousand acres from the homesteaders and started the Mesa Orchards.

            My father, John J. Allison was superintendent of schools in Boise 1896 - 1898. He then went back to Chicago, attended the University of Chicago for a year and was principal of a night school near Hull House that year. From 1899 to 1907 he was superintendent of the Juliet schools. With a group of Juliet men he was interested in a rubber and cattle plantation near Tierra Blanca, Mexico. He and my mother went there after their marriage in 1903. That is where he got the name "Mesa." He had liked the West and bought some land at Darby, Montana planning to start an orchard. In 1907 he resigned his school position and went out to Darby. My mother and I (born in 1905) followed. However the sagebrush tick was bad there, the serum had not yet been found in the Hamilton lab, so when he had a chance to sell the land he did so quickly. We got to Spokane by Christmas 1907. I remember being on a little steamer crossing Lake Coeur d'Alene.

            My parents then went to Payette or Weiser, I do not know which, for a short time then to Council. The ranch Father had there was four miles from Council, but I do not know what direction. In town my parents knew a Mr. and Mrs. Stover. He was pastor of the church but I believe made a living buying and selling horses. Someone has told me that he belonged to a local family. We saw the Stovers again in Salem, Oregon where Mr. Stover had one of the outlying churches--Congregational perhaps. This was about 1928. While in Council I had whooping cough. My father got it too and we

were taken to Dr. Brown. I also ran and put my hands on the living room stove to keep from falling,

burning them badly. Again I was taken to Dr. Brown in the wagon as I don't think we had a buggy. I had my third birthday at that ranch and remember the cake and a thimble mother put in it very well.

            That fall of 1908 Mother was in great pain so my parents went back to Joliet. Mother was very ill, went to specialists in Chicago and had a difficult operation. She was given what was then a new kind of anesthetic and was nearly paralized by it. Worse because she was pregnant. In the spring of 1909 we went back to Idaho but bought a house in Boise. My father went back and forth to Council on

the P&IN train. By this time the Mesa seems to have been started.

 

I do not know whether is was in 1908 while my parents were on the Council ranch or early in 1909

that the reservoir site for the Mesa was located and decided on by my father. This is what I have

been hoping to find out from some source or other. I know that A. L. Freehafer, who was an

attorney in Council went with him looking. Once they left their team and wagon and went farther into the forest. They got lost and could not find the team and wagon. Some way they got a fire started and took turns sleeping and keeping it going overnight as they were not dressed to keep warm at night. Mr. Freehafer was a State Senator at that time. Apparently he went along as a friend or possibly helped get possession of the land and water rights.

            Sometime after August 1910 one of my father's cousins came rushing out from Chicago and began paying the expenses of people to come from there to buy shares in the orchards. At the expense of the orchards, no less! Mother never quite saw how he got into it but he was a rascal and very clever. He had graduated at West Point as an engineer and had been sent to versee the deepening of the Savannah, Georgia harbor. He did not obey the specifications from the U.S. Congress and had to serve at Leavenworth prison.

            He should never have had an appointment to West Point anyway. In those days the cadets were mounted. One day his commanding officer said to him, "Carter (his name was Oberlin Carter) rein up you horse." His reply was, "I can't, Sir. My little finger is off at the first joint." He should never have gotten past the physical examination at the beginning. Among the people Oberlin brought out from Chicago was his brother, Stanton who was a successful dentist there. After Oberlin got all his money away from him Stanton opened a dentist's office in Council.

            When I was in first grade, Stanton and Minnie stayed with us a while in Boise while Minnie went to a doctor. Not too long after that Minnie died and we learned later that it was cancer. Sometime later Stanton married a young woman there in Council whose name I think was Mary Hoover. They had a son who as he grew up was quite well-known as a young pianist. Do you know what became of him?

            Matters at the Mesa became too complicated so my father sold out. With him went several of the civil engineers as W.A. Alexander (later he and my half-sister Marguerite), Z.N. Vaughn, a Macy family and so on. I do not know what year--1911 possibly.

Anyway, we moved to Caldwell in February 1913.       Sincerely, Mary C. Allison

 

History Corner 2-3-00

            Most of my column this week will be a letter I received from Chuck Wolfkiel in Horseshoe Bend.

He is one of those people who has a dream and is working hard to bring it to reality. It is more or

less and open letter to everyone in the Central Idaho area:

 

I'd like to update you on happenings with the Scenic Payette River Historical Society (SPRHS). Our

first tasks are to expand membership, raise funds and begin to restore the NP 1st class railroad

passenger car recently acquired from Givens Hot Springs. Ultimately we want to build and operated

a living heritage museum.

 

To attract new members and to get donations to fund our projects, the SPRHS has gathered

together some of our Long Time Residents to share remembrances of historical events and of their

everyday lives in Boise County, way back when. The first story telling and sharing of our heritage

sessions will be held at the Horseshoe Bend High School - music room, at 2 PM on Sunday

February 20, 2000. There is no charge for admission, but a freewill offering will be accepted.

 

Our story tellers (historians) will share their memories of different events in their lives here in Boise

County, relating to several of the following topics:

Native Americans in the area

Trappers and Miners

Early Trails and Roads

Pioneers and Early Settlers

Early Homesteads and Ranches

The coming of the Railroad

Logging and Mining in the area

Schools & Post Offices

Holidays and pastimes

The Payette River, then and now

and much more.

 

Since all of these events couldn't begin to be covered at one session, we will have story telling

sessions every other month. Our program plan is to have an hour of story telling, followed by

refreshments (homemade pies, cakes, cookies, coffee and punch, etc.) and then a time for others to

ask questions and/or to reminisce.

 

We had three (of our many to draw from) story tellers at our committee planning meeting tonight so

they could get a feel of what was planned and expected. Well they got started telling of events as

examples, and we ended up with a full fledged story telling session at our committee meeting.

Needless to say we were mesmerized with their impromptu recollections, so we know others will

find it worth their time and effort to attend.

 

I hope you can find time in your schedule to plan a trip to take in our first program, and I don't think

you'll be disappointed for your time spent here. As I have mentioned to Dale Fisk, we share a lot of

common heritage with the areas of Cambridge, Indian Valley, Council, New Meadows, and other

places, of the miners, the pioneer families, the railroaders, the loggers, the sheepmen and cattlemen.

 

I'd like to see us build on each others successes. My ultimate dream is to someday to see the PIN

railroad rebuilt from Weiser to Rubicon, and the INP railroad rebuilt from Cascade to McCall, with

a link built between the two and tourist passenger train service operating around the loop. I believe

this can become a reality if we can develop our respective areas to capitalize on the current and

future boom in tourism and on the revival of railroad nostalgia, which is coming on strong.

Thanks, Chuck Wolfkiel, SPRHS

 

Speaking of historical railroads, Don Dopf and I have fired up the boilers again on our book about

the P&IN, and we could use some input. First, I'm working on a chapter about wrecks on the line.

Janet Fleming told me about a time when her step father, engineer Ted Babb, was running a train that

derailed and went off into the river sometime before 1945. Ted's hair turned white almost overnight

because of this wreck. It was right after this that Charlie Weston became Ted's fireman and Frank Nichols became the conductor.

 

Does anyone know where or when this wreck happened? Any information would be appreciated. In talking to some former UP employees in Nampa, they told me about a wreck that resulted in Ted Babb being suspended for 7 months. This was supposed to be one that happened below the old Bodmer place past Glendale. Does anybody know about this one? Could it be the same one?

 

Also, I haven't run across any history about Pine Ridge. Can anyone tell me when or how it got started? The only info I have is that the road to Lost Lake originally left the highway at Tamarack. Oh! I have to add one more thing. Last week Dave Feil donated a 1922 dentist's setup to the

Museum! It's a stand with most of the hoses and fittings for water, suction and air; and the infamous cable-operated DRILL. Actually the last section of the drill mechanism was missing, but I found a piece in Dr. Gerber's stuff that fit like a glove and completed all but one missing part that would link

it to her chuck that holds the burrs. Some of you, like me, remember that old, slow drill and how it would vibrate your whole head as she ground away without anything to deaden the pain. Ahh, fond memories of childhood.

 

I would like to thank Bob Whiteman for a donation to the Museum in memory of Stella Moritz.

Thanks for your continuing support and thoughtfulness, Bob.

 

I have received only one call about the unidentified people in the photos in the January 20 issue.

Photo A has been identified as Frank "Knobby" Bower. He lived at Council and Bear, and had a

sawmill on Bear Creek around 1949 or '50. He was identified by his daughter, Shirley Pecora.

 

History Corner 2-10-00

            Last week I asked about a train wreck that occurred before 1945, involving engineer, Ted Babb. No sooner had I sent the column off to the paper than I found a reference to that wreck. My thanks to Janet Fleming for the initial information and getting me started in the right direction. Ted Babb was her step father.

            The wreck was quite a bit earlier than 1945, so most people around today wouldn't have a personal memory of it: It was 7:25 on Monday morning, February 6, 1922. Engineer Ted Babb was at the throttle of the P&IN's Steam Locomotive No. 104. Fireman Jerry Benson was relaxing behind him, looking out the left window. They had just passed the mouth of Crane Creek and were approaching milepost 13.

            Engine 104 weighed 78 tons when it was empty, but it had just left Weiser fully loaded with 4000 gallons (16 tons) of water and 9 tons of coal. All 103 tons of engine and tender were pushing a pilot snow plow and pulling several cars at about 25 to 30 miles per hour.

 Up ahead on the track lay a dense mass of snow, ice and rocks that had slid off the steep, rocky hillside on the left. The frozen mound was about 50 feet long and five feet deep at its center. The left rail was deeply buried, but the right was hardly covered. The icy Weiser River wound its way south just below the tracks to the right.

            Ted Babb saw the slide when he was about 100 yards from it. No rocks or ice were visible under the deceptive covering of loose snow. He remarked to Benson that he thought the plow would push it aside without any problems, and increased the speed a small amount. The plow dived into the mass and started through it. About half way into the slide, Babb felt something that must have shot a

rush of fear through his veins. The massive engine lifted up off the rails and slipped toward the river!

Babb threw both brake switches as he yelled to Benson to jump.

 

Conductor A.L. Wiley felt his caboose jerk, jumped up, and looked out the window. From the

steam in the air up by the engine he thought maybe a hose had broken. Any break in the line on theWestinghouse air brake system would automatically engage the brakes on all the cars. Then  he saw the locomotive lying in the river.

            After the engine's wheels left the track, it had continued to roll along the ties beside the rails until it was completely through the snow slide. A second or two later, all 103 tons of the locomotive started a slow roll into the river. Babb slipped from his seat at the left side of the cab and fell to the floor under the fire box door and the flame shield. Stuck in this position, Babb was not thrown about and escaped injury as the engine rolled over.

            The air brakes had stopped all the cars before they could follow the engine into the river. Only the baggage car derailed when it hit the demolished track, but it tore loose from the engine and remained on the road bed. Conductor Wiley and several passengers ran forward to help Babb crawl out and pull Benson's limp body from the cab.

            Benson was put on a stretcher and carried to the baggage car. Efforts were made to revive him, but he never showed any signs of life. It was later revealed that his chest had been crushed. The 37 year

old fireman left a wife and four children.

 

Engine 104 was pulled from the river by an Oregon Short Line wrecker brought up from Nampa. The locomotive was only superficially damaged; the smoke stack, running boards, and other surface parts that stuck out were either badly bent, broken or torn off.

            Ted Babb's hair turned white almost overnight after this wreck. Sometime after this, Charlie Weston became Babb's fireman and Frank Nichols became conductor.

 Don Dopf and I are looking for more railroad stories for our book on the history of the P&IN, so if you have any give us a call.

 

 

History Corner 2-17-00

 

For now, I'm going back to the 1921 Adams County Leader. January 28 issue:

 

Frank G. Whitney, age 72, died last Sunday morning at the home of his nephew, Roy E. Cameron,

who lives south of Council.

 

"These are good days for logging. Louis Hayter has employed Alva Ingram to help him deliver logs

to Morrison's sawmill. Andy Gerulf has 'Slim' Fry helping him deliver logs to the same place. Oliver

Anderson has for some time been, and still is, delivering a fine lot of logs to Olaw Pierson's mill

where the latter will convert them into lumber as soon as the spring season opens. The heavy and

continuous rains played havoc with many of the canyon roads this winter causing extra work and

much inconvenience."

 

"Louis Prout is sawing logs into stovewood lengths, with his Ottaw saw, for Mr. McClure." First,

what in the world is an "Ottaw" saw? Next, the McClure mentioned would be William McClure,

former US Senator, Jim McClure's father.

 

"Wm. Camp is sawing wood on the Hoover homestead, using his Wade saw. Harry Lakey is helping

at the same place." So what is a "Wade" saw? Editors made tongue-in-cheek jokes pretty often in

those days, so maybe these saw references are such?

 

Indian Valley: "Mr. and Mrs. Earl Byers have a bouncing baby boy at their home, born January 20;

weight eight and three-quarters pounds."

 

Indian Valley: Married December 20, 1920: Fred Tennoll and Ellen Carlton.

 

"Married--at Cambridge on Saturday, January 22, Mr. Jess Green and Mrs. Jessie Griner Ensley."

 

"A pleasant evening was spent at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Canaan on Wednesday evening of last

week when a party was given in honor of Mr. Canaan's sixty-sixth birthday. Nearly 100 guests were

present and the evening was spent at social games and dancing. Refreshments were served and it

was not until the early hours of the morning that the 'Hornet Creek Orchestra' planed 'Home Sweet

Home.' "

 

Notice from the Council Village Board, A.L. Hagar, Clerk: "Patrons of the local water system are

notified that the reserve water in the local reservoir has been depleted to the danger point and that

extra care must be used to prevent wastage in order that there shall be sufficient reserve water in

case of fire. Presumably the storage supply has been reduced during the cold weather as a result of

faucets being left open to prevent freezing of pipes. In the public interest it has become necessary

that this must be done with extreme care against wastage, if it is done at all. Unless this notice serves

its purpose it will be necessary that the meters, which have been dispensed with during winter, be put

into action as a matter of public safety."

 

Feb. 4 issue:

 

"As the outcome of a disturbance at the Middlefork schoolhouse on Friday night a goodly number of

the residents of that district were in Council on Monday and Tuesday, in attendance upon a trial in

the Probate court. The defendant was Henry Teem, a young farmer of the Middlefork

neighborhood, who was charged with assault with a deadly weapon."

 

"The offense being a felony, which carries a penitentiary sentence, the trial was in the nature of a

preliminary hearing. From listening to the evidence we gathered that on Friday night there was some

argument at the school-house and that John Shaw was struck upon the head in such a manner that he

was knocked to the ground and remained unconscious for a considerable time. Examination by Dr.

Brown, as related on the witness stand, showed two wounds upon the head, one of which was

severe and the other slight. Witnesses testified that they saw Henry Teem reach into his pocket and

then strike a downward blow. Since Mr. Shaw is the taller man and, according to testimony, was

standing erect at the time he was struck, it is obvious that the chief wound could not have been

created by a blow from the naked fist. On the other hand, none of the witnesses gave testimony

indicating the character of the weapon, if any, that was used. The fact that a bob-sled was standing

near where Mr. Shaw fell was entered as an element in the case and may or may not have had

foundation in fact." Teem plead guilty and was fined $100.

 

Albert Furguson, of Goodrich, died on Tuesday of last week at the home of a sister, Mrs. Hopper,

at Portland. He was buried there.

 

To be continued.

 

The Museum received a letter from Italy last week. For some reason it was written in French--and

French is Greek to me. So, if there is anyone out there who would volunteer to translate this letter, I

would appreciate it. I can send and receive attachments in my e-mail now, so if that's a possibility,

my address is .

 

History Corner 2-24-00

            The item in the newspaper should have been inconspicuously tucked in among other news items from Cambridge. But it wasn't. It was headline news at the top of the front page of the Weiser American for January 26, 1922.

            It should have read something like this: "Harriet Tuttle was the guest of honor at a party celebrating her 14th birthday Sunday evening at the home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Tuttle. A good time was had by all."

            It almost turned out that way. In fact there was just such a party. In attendance were Harriet, her father, Charles (age 60); her brothers, Edward (28), Bryan (26), and Randall (20); and her sister, Hazel (26). Also present were a cousin, Neva Tuttle, and a friend, Miss Bessie Clare.

            It would have been a small, barely noticed bit in the social news, except for one thing: by the time the newspaper came out on Thursday, all but three of the guests at the party were dead.

There was a killer at the dinner party--an uninvited "guest." The killer's name was "botulinus," a

spore-forming bacteria that had survived the canning process in the green beans that the group ate for dinner. The only survivors were the picky eaters who didn't eat their vegetables: brother Russell and cousin Neva apparently didn't even tasted them. Besse Clare only took a tiny bite.

            After the family started showing signs of illness, the two Cambridge doctors, Whiteman and Wilkerson, were called. They stayed with the family constantly, but by late Monday the first victim, Hazel, who was a Cambridge school teacher, died.

            When it was realized how serious the cases were, Dr. Conant was called in from Weiser. They sent telegrams to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, asking for information. Nothing they tried seemed to do any good. Bryan and Edward died within two hours of each other on Wednesday afternoon. The father, Charles, died on Wednesday night. Randall died early Thursday morning. 

            It wasn't noted when Harriet died. Ironically, it was Harriet who had canned the beans.

The paper said, "Every known means of relief was tried but without avail unless it may be that the protective measures saved the two who are yet alive and seemingly unaffected."

The paper continued: "The Tuttles were all well known in Cambridge and had quite a part in the community life and the little town is plunged in grief over the tragedy."

            "The poisoning which caused these deaths is the same as that which developed in a number of cases in canned ripe olives a couple of years ago and which caused several deaths and widespread concern over the country.

            Thousands of cans of olives were destroyed and many people refrained from eating the pack of that year. While the effects of the fungus poisoning may be slow to act, the progress is rapid after the first symptoms are noted and unless relief is immediate the results are fatal, and even the most prompt relief is often ineffectual."

            Last week's questions about the saws were answered by Tom Mahon and Dick Parker. The Wade company (the same one that makes irrigation equipment now) was a major manufacturer of drag saws. Ottawa was another name brand associated with drag saws. So, some people called a drag saw a Wade or Ottawa saw. Thanks Tom and Dick. (I haven't heard from Harry.)

            I would like to thank Bob Whiteman for a donation to the Museum in memory of Arnold Emery. I would also like to thank Pat Bethel for a donation.

 

History Corner 3-1-00

            Just after I submitted my column to the paper last week I got some more information from Sandra

and Norman Hansen (I thank you very much!) about Ottawa saws. The saws were made by the

Ottawa Manufacturing Company of Ottowa, Kansas. Why the name of the company and the name

of the town are spelled differently I don't know.

 

The company made small engines, ranging from a twin cylinder 7 horsepower to one with 2

horsepower. The 7 horsepower was made for stationary use. Their main product seems to have

been "log saws," including what are commonly known as "drag saws." Dick Parker said they used to

be called "tree climbers" too. I'll bet they were called other names when they wouldn't start.

 

I guess I should begin by relating my minuscule knowledge of drag saws. A drag saw was made up

of a small gas or kerosene engine (huge by today's chainsaw standards) mounted on a wood frame.

The wood frame consisted (at least mostly) of two, light, horizontal beams which had handles on one

end and were mounted on two metal wheels at the other. The engine ran a wheel with a pitman-type

arrangement that pushed and pulled a saw blade that extended parallel to the handles. The saw blade

looked just like a one-man cross-cut saw. I believe the handle end of the wood beams had "dogs"

that were driven into a log to hold the saw in place while the saw reciprocated back and forth,

sawing the log in two.

 

The Ottawa Company made log saws for a longer time than any other company. It isn't clear when

they started manufacturing them, but certainly by 1919. I don't know when they quit. Their drag

saws came in 2, 4, and 5 horsepower models. Each model was very similar except for their size and

weight. The 4 horse power model had a maximum speed of 350 saw strokes per minute, and

retailed for $112.50.

 

Ottawa saws could used to fall trees by using a tree felling attachment. The attachment-- which had

its own saw blade, or maybe used the one off the drag saw--was clamped to the tree, and was

powered by a shaft from the side of the drag saw. The instruction manual recommended that wedges

be used behind the blade to keep the blade from pinching. When the cut was almost completed, the

blade was removed and felling was finished by using wedges. They must have made the undercut

with and ax or crosscut saw.

 

The company also made a device with a 20 inch circular saw mounted on a wood frame and wheels

very similar to the drag saw setup. Logs were placed on a table beneath the blade which was pulled

down through the log. Given the size of the saw blade and the fact that logs had to be lifted up onto

the table, log size was limited to about 6 to 8 inches in diameter, but they were much faster than a

drag saw.

 

They also made a larger versions of the circular saw setup, mounted on four wheels and designed to

be pulled by horses. The company said these saws were capable of sawing 40 to 75 cords of wood

per 10-hour day, depending on the condition of the blade and the type of wood being cut. Wouldn't

you love to have that job.

 

I got a call Saturday night from Fred Thompson, an old Council area boy, who now lives in Bishop,

California. He said his family had a drag saw with a metal frame instead of wood. He seemed

unfamiliar with drag saws with wheels under them; evidently at least some didn't have them. Their

saw ran on a gas and oil mixture and was water cooled. A water jacket went around the cylinders

and there was a water tank that got hot enough to start steaming. He said when the steam started

coming up was when the saw ran the best. Fred also told me that Mongomery Ward sold drag

saws. He reminded me that, on the Thurston video that the Museum sells, there is footage of Dr.

Thurston and other Council men cutting firewood with a drag saw. I would like to thank John and

Colleen Spauling for a generous donation to the Museum in memory of Arnold Emery and Thelma

Friend.

 

I have a couple of questions. First, in 1943 the Boise Payette Lumber Company was getting ready

to build a railroad spur, for Shay logging, up Beaver Creek from the P&IN line at Woodland. Does

anyone know if the line was actually built? If so, how far did it run? There seem to be remains of an

old grade along the creek in places. The bonus questions are: 1) if the spur was built, when was it

taken out?-- and 2) when was the present road built?

 

Next, sometime after 1940 a railroad employee (brakeman) was killed on the spur that ran up to the

highway just north of the sawmill. All I know is he was knocked under the  engine by a log that hit

the stirrup he was standing on. Charlie "Tubby" Fuller was the engineer. I would like any information,

especially what the man's name was and when this happened.

 

Phone: 253-4582 e-mail: dalefisk@juno.com

 

 

History Corner 3-9-00

            First, the caption in one of the photos last week should have told you that it was of a tree-falling

attachment for an Ottawa drag saw, not that it was a "tree climber."

 

This week I grabbed a couple of photos from the Museum's collection that struck me as interesting.

One is of the first Mormon church in the Council area. It was built at Fruitvale.

 

Beginning just after 1930, members of the Fruitvale branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of

Latter-day Saints held services in private homes for a year or two. In 1932 Elder J.L. Sandidge

began holding services in the Legion Hall in Council. In 1934 construction of a log church was

started just south of Jonathan Avenue in Fruitvale (2263 Jonathan Ave). It was wired for electricity,

as Fruitvale was expected to be connected to a power line before long. The building formally

opened on Sept. 11, 1937.

 

Cyril Burt sent this photo and wrote down some of the details of the building process. He said in

1934 church members went up in the mountains to cut logs for a meeting house. Stephen Bounds

volunteered to haul the logs. His son, Al Bounds drove the truck bringing the logs to the building site

in Fruitvale. Mary Burt Hulse donated the land to build it on.

 

Involved in the construction were: Mary (May) Hulse, Stephen Bounds, Al Bounds, Clarence Ivie

(the branch president), Charles Burt, Bill Burt, Fred Burt, Harold Burt, Eugene Burt, Cyril Burt (who

was too young to be much help), Parley Feek, Nels Hanson, Lamont Hanson, and others.

 

Clarence Ivie was hired by the L.D.S. Church to oversee the project. They laid up the logs and put

the roof on in the fall of 1934, and were able to work inside during the winter months. The project

was completed and the building dedicated in 1935.

 

After the current LDS church in Council was built in the 1960s, the old log building was used for a

garage and storage. Pete and Chris Friend converted the old church into a home in the 1970s. They

tore down the building about 1992.

 

You may recognize one of the other photos as the Fruitvale store. This is the way I remember it

looking as I grew up, except across the false front was printed, "Fruitvale Mercantile." As near as I

can tell, the original part of the building was built in 1912 by O.C. Selman. It went through a series of

owners and / or managers: Albert Robertson, Henry Reams, Jim Ward, Everett Ryals, Oliver

Robertson, Ernest McMahan, and Robert and Josephine Caseman.

 

Josephine Caseman's brother, Sterling McGinley, and his wife, Alma, took over the store in 1946,

and ran it until they retired in 1964. All of the other small stores in Council's outlying areas (Mesa,

Cuprum, etc.) had closed by then. The Fruitvale store was the last holdout; the last vestige of a

bygone era. The McGinley's daughter Anna Kamerdula and her husband, Henry, kept the store

running until it closed in the 1970s. The post office continued to operate with Anna as postmaster

until she retired on December 27, 1996.

 

The other photo is of the Council Sale Yard, established by "Col. Bill Welty" in 1947. The Adams

County Leader said, "He will hold his first sale in the Union Pacific stock yards and if it appears to

be profitable and there is sufficient cattle offered, he will secure ground and erect a sales yard."

Welty started holding auctions every Monday that year and continued until, well I would guess the

late 1960s.(?)

 

In August of 1947, 150 cattle, 30 sheep, 20 hogs were sold here. The top beef price: $23.80 per

hundred for a steer of Jim Fisk's (my grandfather).

 

This building is still standing.

 

Doesn't ANYBODY know if a Shay railroad line was ever built up Beaver Creek?

 

 

History Corner 3-16-00

            I would like to thank Bob Whiteman for a donation to the Museum in memory of Mildred "Jimi" Wilmarth. Bob says that most of the time he knew her best she was married to Art Sundh. Jimi is best remembered in Council as the grade school principal. She was married to my Uncle Hub during that time (1962-1970) and lived in the house I live in now.

            This week I'm featuring some memories written by Alvin Shaw about the community at Mesa from about 1929 to 1939 or '40. The rest of the column is from him, and I thank him for his contribution. Any comments I may have are added inside brackets:

 

I have a short story about Mesa, Idaho also known as Mesa Orchards.

 

I was born in LaGrande, Oregon but my parents moved back to the Council Valley and settled in

the Mesa Orchards. The Mesa company had its own little town; there was a grocery store, some

dry goods, post office and the company offices in the same building.

 

Across the highway (highway 95) were three bigger homes that housed the owners and manager.

Next door to these houses and down the lane aways was Clyde rush's house. Clyde was one of the

bosses and he owned a 40 acres tract by his home. I do no know if he bought it from the Mesa Co.

or not. They had two children: Bob was the boy and I think the girl was Mary. [I don't know how

many daughters he had, but one is Louise Van Houten who lives in Morgan Hill, California.]

 

A long time has passed and I apologize if the girl's name is wrong. Also, in the big homes one of the

families was the Daggetts. They had four children: Nancy, Vernon, Bob and Lynda Mae.

 

Across the highway on the corner lived the Gentry family: Sam & Reba and children, Ruth & Paul.

One down the road from the Rushes around the corner and up the hill lived the Happy Evans family.

The children were Evelyn & Max. Next to them lived Perry and Alice Kilborn and children, Ronald,

Yvonne, Vernice and Pearl. Next them lived Albert and Audrey Kilborn and children, Norman and

?.

 

Down across the old pond and through a tract of orchard lived the Franklins. The two children I

remember were John and Agnes. Up the road to the east lived the two Gray families: Charley, Opal

and children, Bob and Glenna. Bill Gray and family. (I do not remember Bill's wife's name and his

children's names.) Across the highway to the east lived the Kecklers: Gus and (wife's name I do not

recall). The children were Louis, Donald and Marie. Then on up the same road farther east lived the

Bill Browns. The children were John, Aleck, Ruth, Bob and I believe Marie.

 

Back into town I will try and remember some families. There was the Bellmore family; children,

Ruth, Jean, and Dolly. The Jacobs family: mother, Cleta, and daughter Lavelle. The Ballard family:

children, Florence, Kenneth, Harold and John. Red Rice family (I don't know if he had any children.)

The Shaw family: John and Lula (my folks)--children: Alvin, Geraldine, Fernecia. The Morris

families, Harlan and Hazel and children. Buhl and wife and children--I don't recall their names. Now

I will try and name some of the single men that lived and work

 

ed there. First I had two uncles, Ted and Chet Shaw, then there was Harold and Cecil Houston; the

McFaddens, Floyd, Clarence, Raymond and Royal and their dad. "Soup" Bentley, Clarence, Dillon,

Marvin "Ching" Kilborn, Arnold Shaw. There were quite few more but I don't recall their names off

hand (sorry).

 

My dad, John, walked the flume at times and checked for leaks. He packed a roll of cotton rope

soaked in creosote that he pushed in leaks to stop them. Then he would go back to irrigating the

orchards until harvest then he worked in the cellars and packing house. My mother and most of the

ladies worked in the packing house. The street that ran north and south behind the office and store

had eight bungalows on it. The street that ran east and west along the office and store had the

cookhouse and bunkhouse and some single family houses on it for about two blocks to a street that

ran north and south. This street had no name but was called "Tim Can Alley."

 

I always said the further up this street you went the tougher they got, and I lived in the last house. I

was the skinniest and smallest kid in town.

 

Down under the hill from Johnny Denboars house sat the company horse barns where they kept the

horses in corrals. They used these horses to pull wagons and slips to get the fruit to roads where the

fruit was loaded on open cab Model T Ford trucks and hauled to the large cellars where the fruit

was stored and eventually processed for shipment to markets.

 

I know I left out a lot of people. I'm sorry, but time and memory has got to me. Across the highway

from the store were three big dirt and timbered cellars where they stored the fruit. Behind the cellars

was a packing house where they packed the fruit and got it ready to ship to the markets. Behind the

packing house sat an apple drying house. I believe they shipped out dried ap0ples some too.

 

They had a big cable tram that ran from the packing house to the railroad where they had a storage

and shipping building. When I was about seven or eight years old, two of my uncles and some other

men put me in one of the gondolas, between the baskets of apples, at the packing house and off to

the railroad siding I went. Was not bad going down, but coming back to the packing house the

gondola was empty. Quite a ride for a young boy. I could not have fallen out as I had such a grip on

the strapping on the floor of the gondola. The railroad came out of the canyon up from Goodrich and

Cambridge and met the highway again.

 

I forgot about the two most important buildings in town. The school (where I got my left leg broken

sleigh riding down the hill behind the school) that sat across the highway (95) from the store and the

theater that was upstairs over the company shop. This room also served as a dance hall on Saturday

nights sometimes if they had music.

 

I forgot to mention one other thing. How they irrigated this orchard. The built a large flume made out

of wood. They got some of the wood from a sawmill set up down on the middle fork of the Weiser

river. They built Lost Lake reservoir to hold water so they cold let water out to add to the Weiser

River when they took water out of the Middle Fork of the Weiser River to run into the flume that ran

to the Mesa Orchards. They built a small diversion dam to divert the water. You can still see some

traces of the dam and the flume that ran along the south side of the canyon n the Middle Fork.

 

History Corners for 3-23-00 missing

            3-23-00  This column contained photos of a dance at the Legion Hall, August 1947, which are not available here.

 

History Corner  3-30-00

Adams County Leader, June 17, 1921--

     Roy Bethel was arrested Sunday by Deputy Game Warden Boor, and fined $25 for

fishing without a license. "From the statement of Mr. Bethel we gather that, while he had

violated the law, he had taken no fish. Instead, he had but baited his hook and cast it into the

water when he caught the  game warden."

     "Everett Ryals, of Fruitvale, who recently underwent amputation of a leg, was in

Council on the first of the week. For some time there was little hope that his life could be saved,

but he now seems to be well on the road to recovery."

     "Soren Hanson has purchased a new Overland car from Mr. Twite. Sorren was for

years a stage driver by profession, and the boys tell us that, when operating his new car the first

time, he came to a sharp curve in the road and the car ran off the highway into a pasture while

he yelled: 'Haw, you son-of-a-gun. Don't you know enough to stay in the road?' After trying the

machine for a mile or two he took it back to the garage and ordered that it be fitted with reins

and a set of breeching."

     June 24--

     Some pointers on the fishing laws: "The amount of trout taken in any one day must not

exceed fifteen pounds and one fish. It is also unlawful to have in possession more than thirty

pounds, either fresh salted or dried, at any one time. In computing the number of pounds of

game fish which any person may catch or have in his possession the fish are to be weighed

dressed, with their heads on. If the heads have been removed the limit for any one day's catch

is twelve pounds. It is also unlawful to catch more than fifty trout in any one day or have in

possession more than a hundred at any one time."

     Indian Valley-- Mrs. Margaret McPherson Schafer died in Boise, June 18, age 23.

     New Meadows-- "A marriage license was issued on June 13 to Frank E. Hullett andMarjorie R.

Suter, both of Nampa. Miss Suter was at one time a resident of Meadows."

    Mesa has 1150 acres of apples, 100 acres of peaches and 50 acres of pears. 800acres of this

orchard, plus 2500 acres of alfalfa and grain, are owned by Mr. D.W. Van

Hoesen, whose individual investment here amounts to $650,000. "The tramway is equipped

with its own telephone system, and will handle four packed boxes of apples a minute all day

long."

    "W.T. Haines has moved his harness and shoe shop from the Oddfellow building to the

Whiteley frame building east of the town square."

 Dr. Brown reports the birth of a girl to Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Russell on June 20.

 I would like to thank Bob Whiteman for a donation to the Museum in memory of Neale

Butterfield.

 

History Corner  4-6-00 More quotes from the Leader.

 Adams County Leader, July 1, 1921

 "James R. Wilson, age 88 years, died at the home of his son, S.P. Wilson, at

Tamarack, on June 23 and the funeral was held from the Methodist church in Council on June

25...." His wife, Jane, died on March 14.

 "Mrs. Matilda Snow, a highly respected pioneer lady of the county, died at her home in

Indian Valley on Saturday, June 25, and the funeral was held on the following day, burial being

made in the Indian Valley cemetery." Wife of Bernard Snow.

 "The recent establishment of a daily auto stage route from Weiser to Payette Lake can

but have a detrimental effect upon the passenger business of the P.& I.N. Railway. That the

men who have established the auto route are within their rights goes without saying, but it does

appear that the new industry places our local railroad in an unfortunate condition that may ,

eventually, have material bearing upon the development of the county. The taxes paid by the

railroad company are an important asset to the county, and a considerable part of this tax is

used in building and maintaining the highway that makes it possible for auto stages to compete

with its passenger service. Hence, the railroad must pay its own upkeep and then assist in

providing a road for its competitors." "What we are attempting to do is to call to mind that the

chief reason why freight and passenger rates of our local railroad are unusually high is lack of

patronage."

 The P.& I. N. had been in bad financial shape since its beginning, and the increase in

auto use in the 1920s foreshadowed even harder times ahead. As mentioned, the rates on the

line were usually higher than on other lines. In spite of this, the line seldom operated in the black

until the logging industry boomed here in the 1940s.

 "John Hancock has been appointed as deputy game warden for this county and is on

the job. John has purchased a Ford from the Addington Auto Company, and if business proves

good may put on a trailer with which to bring law violators into camp."

 Advertisement: "Bargains in Electric Ranges. For comfort in warm weather they can't

be beaten. Prices lowered. Adams County Light & Power Co." Power lines had just reached

Council six years before. Many outlying areas would not have power for another 20 years or

more.

 Show and dance at the People's Theater on July 4th--Cecil B. DeMille's "Male and

Female." "This is one of the Famous Players Specials and the biggest and best picture ever

shown in Council.. There will be no advances in prices." "The Idaho Four will furnish music for

the dance and the great picture show."

 An experienced driver says that people should not drive over 20 miles per hour on

unfamiliar roads.

 "On Wednesday Sheriff Zink and Prosecutor Dillon officially visited the northern part of

the county with the result that a nice little still was gathered in at the abode of James Addington,

some two miles from New Meadows.  "

 "The officers had a hunch that Mr. Addington was commercially engaged in the

production of 'mountain dew and a visit to his place verified the suspicion. Wm. Steckman on

guard and then proceeded to search the house. He found a well equipped still that was in

operation at the time. There was something like a barrel of mash in use."

 "Upon returning to New Meadows Sheriff Zink located Addington and placed him

under arrest. A partly-filled quart bottle of 'moonshine' was found in his hip pocket. He was

brought to Council and on Thursday morning entered a plea of guilty to a charge of having

intoxicating liquor in his possession and was held to answer to the District Court. He will be

taken to Weiser where he will receive sentence."

 I would like to thank Bob Whiteman for a donation to the Museum in memory of Frank

Clay.

 

 

History Corners for   4-13-00 and 4-20-2000

 

History Corner   4-13-00

 

I've run across an old map that shows some places that I don't recognize. This map

seems to be from about 1930. The places in question are along the P.& I.N. Railroad between

Weiser and New Meadows. The mileage given is the approximate distance from Weiser: Tri

State--mile 3; Farmdale--mile 7.5; Barton--22; Dixie--mile 37; Southard--81; and Pine--88.5.

 Dixie, just south of Cambridge, is a place I have heard of but don't know much about.

What I would like to know is what was at these places. They may not have been stops. I've

seen one railroad map with "Mill Creek" on it, but I'm pretty sure there was no stop or railroad

facility where the tracks crossed Mill Creek. So, if you have any information about any of these

places, please give me a call.

 The conclusion that I've come to on the Beaver Creek spur that the Boise Payette Co.

was planning to build in the 1940s is that some grade was built, but the tracks were never laid.

 Here's a tongue-in-cheek item I didn't have room for last week from the July 1, 1921

Adams County Leader:

 "Recently a pet bear at Starkey Hot Springs broke away, and since gaining its freedom

is reported to have been seen several times; and, it is said, has attracted other bears to keep it

company. For the benefit of strangers who may not be familiar with bear characteristics we will

mention that at this time of year they are not likely to be vicious. We suggest that if the Starkey

bear meets you in the woods and shows an inclination to play, it might be well to put down the

fish basket and wrestle with it for a few minutes just for fun. Otherwise it may become indignant

and quarrelsome. Recently we spent a night on the Westfork and we noted that there are more

bears than usual at this time of year. At one place we counted twenty-six, if we remember

correctly, and they were so tame that we found it necessary to kick some of 'em out of the trail

in order to travel comfortably. They showed no inclination to be troublesome, however, except

that during the night one old brindle bruin picked up W.E. Fisher and carried him nearly a

quarter of a mile. The noise awakened us and we followed the bear, and after considerable

argument convinced it that "Fish" was not at all fit to eat, anyway. Seemingly the brute

understood us because, after stopping to listen to our discourse, it soon dropped him and went

to nibbling wild onions to take the taste out of its mouth."

 I would like to thank Bob Whiteman for a donation to the Museum in memory of Henry

Brown. Thanks again Bob.

 

4-20-00

Adams County Leader, July 8, 1921:

 Married: Wm. Earl Winks and Miss Gladys Leola Craddock, both of Cambridge, at

Council on July 5.

 Jack Dempsey retained the world championship boxing match on July 2. "The gate

receipts for the big 'show' were $1,600,000 and the battle was witnessed by 90,000 persons some of whom paid up to $5000 for ringside seats. It is figured that Dempsey received

$29,000 per minute for the ten miners required to subdue his opponent, Carpentier."

    Jim Winkler will soon open a grocery store in the Oddfellow Building.

    Neal Poynor is forest ranger at the Iron Springs station above Bear.

 "From a private letter from Sardies, B.C., we learn of the sudden death of James

Lawler on June 28. Mr. Lawler was an old-time resident of Council and at one time owned 160 acres of land in what is now the Council Orchards."

 "James Addington, of Meadows district, who was last week arrested by Sheriff Zink

on a charge of having liquor in his possession illegally, is now in the county bastille under a sixty day sentence with a hundred dollar fine attached."

 "Bring your own baskets and pick your own sour cherries at fifteen cents a gallon a

J.W. Hoover's, 'phone 44 R 5."

 "Miss Winifred Brown returned on the latter part of the week from Montana where she

had been teaching school." She would later become Mrs. Robert Lindsay, and teach school in Council as well as run Starkey Hot Springs.

 "All in all the people of this neighborhood had a satisfactory Fourth. Some went for a quiet day in the wilds; a few from hereabouts went to Cuprum, but the center of activity was Starkey where several hundred disported themselves throughout the day. In the evening there was a feature show at the People's Theater which drew a packed house and was, according to those present, one of the most elaborate productions ever shown here. After the show there was a dance, with the Idaho Four Furnishing music. The evening's chautauqua program,

together with this show and dance, furnished a variety of entertainment satisfactory to the large crown that was in town. At the time we went to roost there were more cars and people in Council than at any time we can recall, and all seemed to be enjoying themselves."

 "Mr. and Mrs. W.H. Anderson, Oliver Anderson and Fred Brown journeyed up West

Fork Sunday evening and spent the Fourth salmon fishing. They caught three large salmon.

From all reports salmon are about as scarce as hen's teeth this year."

Adams County Leader, July 15, 1921:

     Highway construction from the foot of Mesa hill to Council is to begin soon. This would be part of the North-South Highway project. (Now Highway 95.) It was during this time that the old, winding highway off the north side of Mesa Hill was built. Until then, people were still using the route that George Moser had started with a plow in 1878. The remains of his old road can still be seen. It went more straight north than the present highway, and crossed the river a couple hundred yards east of the present bridge. You can still see the hold bridge abutments from the new highway.

 "On Sunday Wm. Steckman, deputy Sheriff at New Meadows, brought Frank Hiatt of

that town to Council on a charge of abandoning his wife and two small children. It appears that when Mrs. Hiatt with her little children, went to New Meadows last week in the hope of persuading her husband to do his part in supporting the family she was given a rather cold reception. Later, the husband turned up missing. Mrs. Hiatt complained to the authorities and

Mr. Steckman located Hiatt some thirty miles from New Meadows and in company with an

other woman with whom he had been associating."

 "Mrs. Hiatt is a young woman of wholesome appearance. She had the look of a kindly,

tired  and worry-worn little mother. Her youngest child was about six months old and the oldest probably six years." ". . . the court being satisfied that another woman was at least temporarily, of more interest to him [Hiatt] than his wife and babies, he was sentenced to ninety days in jail and a fine of $200--the equivalent of about six months in jail--in order that his transient ardor might have an opportunity to cool and in the hope that he may, through time for reflection, develop a better understanding of his duties as a husband and father."

 

 

History Corner   4-27-00

 For years the Museum has had a scrap book full of old ordinances that were

established by the village of Council. It was brought to my attention that its contents might make

an interesting History Corner.

 The first ordinances were passed in 1903, after the town was officially incorporated.

The first Chairman of the Village board of trustees was H.M. Jorgens. The clerk was L.L.

Burtenshaw.

 Ordinance No. 1--Appointing a night watchman, to be paid $25 per month.

 No. 2--Fixed the amount of the bond of the clerk and treasurer.

 No. 3--Regulating the building of flues and chimneys in town, "and to prevent the

extending of iron stovepipes through the roofs of any building or the sides thereof, and to

prescribe the penalty for violation of this ordinance."

 No. 4--Every resident of Council between the ages of 21 and 55 years required to

perform two day's labor upon the roads and streets in town or else or pay $4.00.

 No. 5--Described how ordinances were to be passed and put into effect.

 No. 6--Provided "for the peace and quiet of the Village, to prevent and punish

drunkenness, to prevent loud and unusual noise, . . ."

 No. 7--Prohibited "the depositing of noxious or offensive substances" in town. It

became illegal to "deposit any manure, or other deleterious, decaying noxious or offensive

matter. . . upon any street alley thoroughfare lot or other place" in town.

 No. 8--Prevented the obstruction of streets or alleys.

 No. 9--Outlined how fines were to be collected.

 No. 10--Gave the night watchman or policeman within the village authority to arrest

anyone violating village ordinances.

 No. 12--No firing guns in town.

 No. 13--All sidewalks along Moser and Illinois Avenues shall be seven feet wide and,

"constructed of lumber not less than two inches thick by six inches in width, which the said floor

thereof shall be securely nailed to stringers, the said stringers shall be not less than two inches

thick by eight inches wide, and there shall be at least four such stringers supporting the floor of

said sidewalk." All other sidewalks must be no less than four feet wide and one inch thick with

three 2"X6" stringers. Anyone can build a sidewalk of brick, stone or cement, if it conforms to

the above measurements.

 No. 14--Outlawed vagrants who might loiter around town. A vagrant was anyone

hanging around town for ten days without visible means of support, who doesn't look for a job,

"or shall lie around and sleep in any outbuilding, street, alley . . . or who shall loaf around any

saloon . . . and sleep in the chairs, or upon the tables . . . or shall live around any house of

prostitution . . . ."

 No. 15--No "willfully or maliciously" disturbing church services or other meetings.

 No. 16--No "dance halls, music halls, or other place where women are employed, in or

about the place, or kept in any room, building or other place connected therewith" allowed

within town.

 No. 17--Unlawful to allow pigs to "run at large" in town. Same for horses, cattle, sheep

or other stock--except between November 15 and March 12.  In 1911 this ordinance was

amended to leave out the part about it being OK to let stock run around town from November

to March.

 No. 21--Traveling shows, theatrical troupes and public entertainments where an

admission fee is charged, must have a license.

 No. 22--Door to door salesmen must obtain a license.

 No. 23--Prohibited "certain persons under the age of eighteen years" to be on the

streets past 8:00 PM between November 1 and April 1. The rest of the year they could stay

out until 9:00 PM. All this unless accompanied by a parent or guardian, or doing something

important.

 More next week.

 

History Corner 5-4-00

 More of the early ordinances passed by the Village of Council:

 No. 24--No driving teams, wagons or livestock across sidewalks.

 No. 25--Every business in town must buy a license from the village. This one was

repealed in 1913.

 No. 26-- Granted the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company the right to place

poles, wires, etc. in town.

 No. 27 (passed in1905)--No gambling in town. Especially not faro, monte, stud poker,

roulette, lasquenet, rouget noir, rondo, draw poker, Klondike, twenty-one, or keno. (By 1905,

P.W. Johnson, brother of Seven Devils Johnson, was the chairman of the village board.

Burtenshaw was still the clerk.)

 No. 28 (passed in 1905)--Every dog owner in town must pay a tax. On male dogs it

was $3.00.  On each "female dog, slut or bitch" it was $10.00.

 No. 29 (1906)-- Illegal for anyone under 18 to buy or possess tobacco in any form.

 No. 30 (1906)-- No reckless or careless riding or driving in town.

 No. 31 (1908)--Boys under 18 can't enter "any soft drink or temperance saloon" or

play cards therein, or loiter around such an establishment.

 No. 33 (1909)-- Building permits required to erect structures in town.

 No. 34 (1909)-- All sidewalks to be constructed of cement, brick, stone or

"asphaltum."

 No. 35 (1911)-- Unlawful to "construct any vault used under a water closet or any

place where anything of a decaying nature is thrown. . . . such vault be at least five feet in depth,

two and one-half feet wide and five feet long."

 No. 37-- No domestic fowl to run a large in town.

 No. 38--Requiring licenses for dray and transfer lines operated in town.

 By 1912, J.D. Neale was the village clerk, and A.L. Freehafer was the board

Chairman. By 1915, George M. Winkler was Chairman.

 No. 42 (1915)--Granting the Adams County Light & Power Company the right to

install electrical lines and poles, etc. in town. The rates charged were 15 cents for the first 20

kilowatt hours, 10 cents for the next 20, 9 cents for the 3rd 20 hours, 8 cents for the next 40

kilowatt hours and 6 cents for the next 100 hours. The maximum bill for any month was set at

$1.00. The agreement was to be in effect until 1943. Just days before this ordinance was

signed, most of downtown Council went up in flames. It has always been my understanding that

some law or ordinance was passed after the fire that required new structures in the business

section to be built of brick, stone or cement; but I see no such ordinance is this scrap book.

 No. 43 (1915)--Allowing the issue $20,000 worth of municipal bonds for construction

of a village water system. This was to include fire hydrants and a 200 cubic yard, cement

reservoir.

 Many of the ordinances (44 through 60) were routine, rather boring ones concerning

taxes, regulation and charges for water, etc.

 No. 61 (1919)--No barbed wire fences in town along sidewalks or public streets.

 No. 67 (1920)--The old Whiteley store and the house west of it, known as the Fariello

residence, and the outbuildings associated with that residence, "declared to be a public

nuisance, offensive to the sight and dangerous to the safety and health of the inhabitants of the

said Village of Council, and a menace to the good order and well being of the inhabitants of

said Village." Buildings to be removed and grounds to be cleaned up within 60 days.  [The old

Whiteley store was just west of the town square, about where Council Auto is today. The

Whiteleys had moved to a new store in 1914. The new store stood where Norm's is today,

south of the square. It was a two-story brick building, later (1919) owned and operated by

W.T. Lampkin.]

 No. 70 (1920)--No motor vehicle to be driven in town with the "cutout" open. I guess

I'm too young to know what a "cutout" is. Can anyone tell me? This ordinance also said cars

were to be parked parallel to the street, " and not over 18 inches from the curb, and non shall

be parked closer than six feet apart." I've noticed in some photos from what looks like the

1940s that cars are parked at an angle instead of parallel. When N0. 70 was passed, W.E.

Fuller (veterinarian) was chairman of the Village Board, and A.L. Hagar was the clerk.

 No. 74 (1923)--In order to reduce fire danger and promote health and safety, the

following buildings must be torn down and removed within ten days:

 "The old icehouse on the James Mitchell lot, between the Drugstore and Brown pool

hall, and belonging to James Mitchell; The shack on the east side of lots belonging to Fields &

Fuller, between the livery stable and Council Hardware Co.'s warehouse. The old house

known as the F.E. Brown or Pell house, situated diagonally across the street from the rear end

of the Council Opera house [theater]. The old shack lately occupied by Bert Hoffman, between

the Congregational Church and the old Matt Elliott house. The old building known as the

Gillespie Building, situated nearly opposite of the Pomona Hotel and owned by W.S. Williams."

By this time, Bud Addington was Chairman of the Board.

 The last ordinance in this book is No. 76, passed in 1925, concerning the removal of

many sidewalks, probably wooden, around town that were deemed to be unsafe. Several

pages detail the lot numbers and residents there.

 

History Corner  5-11-00

 I got a couple of calls about "cutouts." I'm surprised that I had never heard of them.

They were an opening in the exhaust pipe that was located before the muffler. I gather that a

cable-type linkage (similar to a choke cable) went from the dash area to a door over the cutout

opening so it could be opened and closed. Opening the cutout decreased the backpressure in

the exhaust system, thereby decreasing the load on the engine and making it run with more

power and efficiency. The drawback was that the effect was also very loud.

 Ted Moritz said he had a Model T pickup with an "exhaust whistle" on the cutout. It

emitted a very loud whistle as the exhaust blew across a set of pipes. As a young man, he used

to open it in town in the middle of the night. Youth is wasted on the young.

 Well, it's about that time of year again. I'll be calling people to ask for help with minding

the Museum. We open on Memorial Day weekend--May 27. Some people get nervous,

thinking they need to sign up for a weekly commitment, but we can really use people who can

do a three-hour shift even very occasionally. The Museum will be open through Labor Day

weekend (Sept. 4). Of course it helps tremendously to have people who can do a weekly shift;

they are real life-savers!

 If you've been following the progress of the stone work on the Museum, we are making

slow but steady progress. My back just about recovers from the past week's efforts when it's

time to start hoisting rocks again. Kathy Norton and Gayle Dixon have become expert mortar

mixers and rock fitters. I don't suppose they're very eager to hire out for other such projects,

but you couldn't ask for harder workers. If you would like to help, or if you would just like to

see the world-class expertise of rank amateur stonemasons in action, stop by. We're trying to

work every Wednesday from about 9:00 AM to about 4:00 PM.

 Because we've been so busy weight-lifting lately, we're behind on a few projects inside

the Museum. We haven't forgotten the WWII photos people have brought in, but we haven't

had time to get them into the photo display either. A lot of people seem to appreciate the

photos of WWII veterans in the display we have. Some wonder why we don't have a photo of

so-and-so. It's because we haven't been given one. We only have what people bring us, so if

you notice we don't have a photo of someone who should be in the display, bring us a photo.

Even though we are slow, we will get it in.

 I got some photos from Lela Garoutte via Eydie at the Signal American newspaper in

Weiser awhile back. I thought I would throw it in here, as it shows the diagonal parking that

prevailed in Council for a short time. I would appreciate hearing from anyone with information

about just when and why this parking arrangement came about.

 The photo seems to be taken during the 1940s, judging from the cars. The white

building at the far left may have been a bowling alley at this time. It became the Idaho First

National Bank in 1951. The bank moved to it's current location in 1971.

 The next building (dark) is the Merit Store (now Shavers). The next, tall white, false-

front building is the Odd Fellows Hall, built in 1905. The small structure next to it was actually a

part of the same building.

 The next building is now Buckshot Mary's, previously the Rexall Drug. It was originally

built as the First Bank of Council and had a steel vault in it that is now in the building next door.

At the time of this photo it may well have housed the "Bank of Adams County," which moved

into it in 1939. Just previous to this, it had been used by the Howell Co. as a furniture display

room.

 The next building is now Elite Repeats. At the time of this photo, at least half of the

building was a bakery, as the sign (probably not readable in this newspaper reproduction) says.

The vault doors from the Adams County Bank was moved to this building and is still there. At

one time, Elaine said she would give these wonderful old doors to the Museum. I never had the

time or know-how to get them out, but if Elaine would still part with them, and if anyone out

there has the time and skill we would love to have those old steel vault doors that still have

"Adams County Bank" painted on them.

 The next building says, "Dean's Variety Store." I've never heard of it.

 The next building was Vern Newcomb's store where he sold electrical appliances, etc.

Vern had his first store in Council in the east part of the Cool & Donnelly store (south of the

town square) in 1931. He moved into the building in this photo in 1936. It was previously Billy

Brown's pool hall, and according to the Leader editor, the building was an "eyesore" before

Newcomb moved in and fixed it up.

 The next building has no sign on it in this photo, and I don't know offhand what it was

at this time. Most of the brick buildings between Buckshot Mary's and Bear Country Books

(old drug store) were built in 1915, after the big fire that burned all of their predecessors. I

assume they were made of local brick. I know at least the Rainwater building (now Sam's TV)

was, as the paper reported the bricks for it were made by Dixon & Faubion, who set up a

brick plant near the Weiser River west of town that year.

 

 

History Corners for  5-18-00, 5-25-00 and 6-1-00

 

History Corner 5-18-00

 Fire has been a factor throughout history. It certainly has played a role in Council's

past. The photo accompanying my column this week is of the fire that destroyed the Pomona

Hotel building in April of 1985. It stood on the southeast corner of Moser and Main, where the

Senior Center is now.   Click here to see a photo of the Pomona fire

 The original idea for the Pomona was that of the Washington County Land and

Development Co., which was established in 1909 for the purpose of developing the Council

Valley. The Company was headed by Earl W. Bowman and C.W. Holmes. These gentlemen,

not by coincident, operated a real estate business in Council. Local people contributed $2500

to the project, which was reported to have cost at total of $20,000.

 The lot where the Pomona was built was originally occupied by Steve Richardson's

store. Richardson was much better known as a sawmill man. By 1908 Fred Cool ran a feed

store there. Cool's lot was purchased for the Hotel site early in 1910, and Cool planned to

move his business to near the railroad. He actually bought a lot about where the public

rest rooms are and built a feed store on it. He later went into partnership with Dale Donnelly

there.

 The Pomona Hotel was a "Mission" style building, which was very unusual for this area.

Construction started in July of 1910. On the first floor, it initially contained a lobby with a

fireplace, a parlor, billiard room, and dining room. It had 19 guest rooms and two bathrooms

on the second floor. The tower at one corner was 44 feet tall.

 The hotel opened in the fall of 1911. Its first operator was a Mr. Becker of North

Dakota, who was said to be an "experienced hotel man." In 1915 the hotel was taken over by

Frank Long, who had just previously run the Hotel Heigho in New Meadows. He planned to

install steam heat and "gasoline lights." Later that year, the Leader mentioned H.R. Struthers as

being a "former proprietor of Hotel Pomona." It also mentioned that meals were available at the

hotel cafe. At various times over the years, rooms in the lower floor of the hotel were leased to

businesses, such as the Carr and Freehafer law office.

 In 1923, rates at the hotel for a single person were 50 cents to $1.00. If the room had

a bathroom, it was $1.25 to $1.50.

 The early 1920s were hard years for the hotel. By 1925 it was taken by the County for

back taxes. It was unoccupied for a while during this period. That summer, there was a fire in

Council that destroyed several homes and businesses near the Pomona. The roof of the hotel

caught fire, but was extinguished.

 In December of 1925 the hotel was opened by "Mr. and Mrs. Fred Shultz who have

been operating the Addington hotel . . . ." The next year, the hotel was leased to Fred Shultz.

Adams County Leader editor, William Lemon, bought the building from the County in 1927 for

$1,500. In 1928 the hotel was closed for renovation. It is said that some of its more ornate

structural features were removed at this time. When the remodeling was done, the name was

changed to the "Council Hotel," and Lemon moved the Leader office into the southwest corner

of the first floor.

 In 1930, Lemon sold the hotel to Mr. and Mrs. S. J. Stephans who had formerly

operated the Cuprum Hotel. Martha Stephans was the former wife of Pete Kramer, the stage

operator. (The Kramers had divorced in 1920.)

 In 1939 the hotel got a new metal roof. I don't have much of the story of the hotel after

this time. I remember the Judd family running it when I was a kid (late 1950s and early 60s). At

the time it burned it was a feed store.

 Eleanor Hoover was in town last weekend. She visited the Museum and enjoyed the

fruit exhibit showing where she used to live and the orchards owned by her father (John

Hoover) and grandfather (Bill).

 The graduates of Council High from 1949 and 1950 are having a reunion this

September in Council. They are trying to locate Dale Bower and Donna Chaney Woods. If

anyone knows how to contact them, please let me know.

 The Museum opens May 27!

 

History Corner 5-25-00

Adams County Leader, July 15, 1921:

 Married: Ira N. Moulton and Miss Faith Lucile Allenbough, both of Weiser, at Council

on July 11.

  "W.H. Hoover received the first carload of apple boxes Friday. Boxes are now

costing 16 1/2 cents as compared with 28 cents last year."

 "Messers. Poynor, Lappin, Anderson, Hamilton and Scholl have been harvesting their

cherries during the past week. The crop is rather light, but prices are satisfactory."

 George W. Phipps has resigned as chairman of the Board of Directors of the Council

Creamery.

 Adams County Leader, July 22, 1921:

 "Charles Warner came up from Weiser a few days ago to take charge of the Palm Cafe

for a week or so while Con Walston enjoys a needed vacation." I've never heard of the Palm

Cafe.

 Married: Robert Zink and Ethel May Fuller, at the home of the brides parents, Mr. and

Mrs. C.C. Fuller, in Council on July 20. The groom is the son of Mrs. Harriet Zink.

 "Lawson Hill is having a hay and horse barn built on the Wymoth orchard ranch. Mr.

Kaufman and Frank Cossitt are assisting with carpenter work." Anybody know where this barn

was or is, and if it's still standing? It must be in the "Orchard district," near where Hill lived.

 Adams County Leader, July 29, 1921:

 The Elmquist & Peterson sawmill on Pole Creek was forced to stop operations

because they couldn't pay their employees. "A crew of from thirty to forty men have been

employed at and about the mill, and many of these workmen were in town on Tuesday,

accompanied by Attorney Donart, of Weiser, to look after their interests. Elmquist and

Peterson have approximately a half million feet of logs near the mill, ready to be made into

lumber, and it is hoped that the matter will soon be adjusted so that they will be enabled to

continue operations."

 "It is expected that the contract for state highway work between Fruitvale and Council

will be let soon. The work will start at Fruitvale and move this way. " This was the "North-

South Highway," which later became Highway 95. At this time, the main road went over Fort

Hall Hill, somewhat as it does now. The new highway would follow the present route of the

Fruitvale-Glendale road. At this time (1921), the road to Fruitvale went along the hillsides east

of the present road, and came into Fruitvale from the east on Rome Beauty Avenue.

 "On the first of the week, while Commissioner Robinson was making a trip to Bear with

his auto truck, a tourist car struck his machine, badly demolishing it. We are indirectly informed

that at the time of the collision Mr. Robinson's truck was standing still, but not having

interviewed him we are uncertain that this statement is correct." I think the editor meant to say

"Robertson," not "Robinson."

 "Wm. Marks on Wednesday commenced grading for the new switch on the P.& I.N.

R.R. which is under construction to benefit the Council Valley Orchards."

 Married: Robert Caseman and Miss Josephine McGinley, at Weiser, on Sunday [July

24th]. "The groom came to this county last year and conducts the farm on Westfork that was

formerly owned by Charles Ham. The bride is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J.H. McGinley of

Fruitvale."

 

History Corner  6-1-00

 This week I dragged out some photos that Cyril Burt sent me.

 Click here to see photos

    Since people are starting to fish for salmon, the first photo shows one of the ways local people used to harvest these fish.

 The first photo shows the Burt brothers of Fruitvale--(left to right) Bill, Claude, Harold  and Fred--in 1925. They are holding the tools of the trade: gigs and the gas lantern. A two-  pound coffee can with one side cut out was put over the two-mantle lantern so that the light

would only reflected in one direction. At night, the boys scared the salmon out of the deeper  holes into the riffles, then speared them with the gigs. This was legal at the time. Why they did this at night, I'm not sure. Cyril said some of their gigs (spears) were converted three-tine pitchforks.

 The Burts were a big part of the population at Fruitvale for awhile. The patriarch and matriarch of the family, Charles and Eunice Burt, came to Fruitvale from Caldwell in 1924. Their children were Fred, William (Bill or Will), Charles, Harry, Claude, Harold, and Mary

(May). May married Arthur Hulse. May and Arthur's daughters were Eunice (Finn) and Edna (Rice). Eunice Burt died at Fruitvale in 1933. Charles (Senior) died at Fruitvale in 1940. Several of the "kids" lived at Fruitvale as adults, along with their families.  Today there isn't a single Burt living at Fruitvale.

Caption of second photo: Some of the Burt boys and their dad. Left to right--Fred, William, Charles Senior, Harry, Claude and Harold. The old railroad section house is in the background. This is where Arthur and May Hulse lived when he ws the Fruitvale section

foreman. Arhtur was killed in a motor car (speeder) accident in 1925.   I have a favor to ask of the merchants in town. As people from out of town stop in your  stores, please ask them if they have visited our Museum.  If they haven't, tell them where it is. It

will give you a chance for friendly interaction with your customers, plus it will be good for them,  good for the Museum and good for the town.

 

 

 

History Corner  6-8-00

 More photos this week. All these were sent to me by Bob Hagar.

 The first is in keeping with last week's fishing photo. It shows (left to right) I.M. Durrell

(editor of the Adams County Leader), L.J. Rainwater (downtown store owner who died of

pneumonia in 1918, and whose son was a Nobel Prize winning physicist), and F.H. Morrison

(who I think ran a sawmill on Mill Creek). They seem to have caught quite a mess of salmon.

the location is unidentified, but there is a railroad track behind them. I'll bet Albert Hagar took

the picture.

 The one of the house is one I would like information about. The caption on the back

says, "The southwest corner of the Miller home." I assume it was in Council. Does anyone

know where it was or is?

 The next photo is of the bridge across the Payette River, just as it comes out of Payette

Lake. Date: Sept. 1, 1918. This location was called "Lardo," long before the town of McCall

was established. The Museum has a photo of a bridge that preceded this one, made of logs.

This one seems to have a steel frame.

 The Museum is open every day but Monday. We have several ladies who are helping

on a weekly basis. We always need people for weekends and fill in. I might be calling you.

 

History Corner   6- 15-00

 I pulled one of my favorite photos out this week. It shows a pack outfit loaded with

provisions for their sheep camps.  The date is approximately 1905. The location is at what is

now the intersection of Moser Avenue and Highway 95 (Michigan St.), looking northeast.

 Starting at the far left, the first building is the Winkler Brothers blacksmith shop. In

1912, a dentist named Dr. Gillespie bought the property and replaced the shop with a drug

store.

 The next building, the big white house, may not have been Mrs. Arrington's boarding

house/hotel yet, but it became such in about 1909. She had left that location by 1925 when a

fire burned this, and several other nearby buildings. The house belonged to James Herron when

it burned. During this fire, the roof of the Pomona Hotel caught fire, but was extinguished.

 The next building--dark, with a false front--is the Lowe and Jones store. James Lowe

owned this store in partnership with John Peters in 1900, then Peters sold his share to James

Jones in 1902. Jim Lowe-a former Weiser principal of schools--was married to Carrie Lowe,

who was a teacher, and then Adams County school superintendent from 1922 to 1942.

 James J. Jones was married to Olive Biggerstaff. They bought the Bill Hartley ranch

(about 4 miles north of Council), and lived there during the time the store was in operation. The

Joneses sold to George Gould, and Lester Gould lived there for many years before selling to

Steve and Elsie Shumway. That's only four owners (five if you count both Goulds) in over a

hundred years.

 The old Lowe and Jones store burned in 1928.  I think it was empty at the time.

 The white building with the false front was the William Fifer jewelry store. It also

housed other businesses in addition to Fifer's. In 1910 part of the building became the Council

State Bank. In 1912, part of it became a barber shop. It was in operation into the 1920s.

 In 1915, James Stinson and P.A. McCallum (attorneys) formed partnership and are

moved into the Fifer building. The paper mentioned that their office would be located where

probate judge and sheriff had been. I think this building burned in the 1928 fire that got the

Lowe and Jones building. At the time, Keckler's barber shop was still in the building.

 Things are going well at the Museum, thanks to our wonderful volunteers!

 

History Corner  6-22-00

 I have Bob Hagar to thank for this week's column. When he was in Minnesota last

year, he drove around with a 91 year old friend named Duane Johnson, looking for old

windmills that Duane had worked on and installed when he was young. They didn't find any still

standing, but Duane provided some information about windmills.

 Judging from photos from about 1910, there used to be a lot of windmills in Council.

The only one Bob remembers in one along the highway in the neighborhood of Cottonwood

Creek and the Mesa railroad siding.

 Here's what Duane had to say:

 

       I will attempt to answer some windmill questions. First I think I may have said  this before, but windmills don't dig wells. In Minnesota we asked that the

       well water be tested before we would set up a windmill. Like any structure

       the foundation must be solid and heavy enough to support the whole

       structure. The first thing is measuring out holes for the 3 or 4 legs. These

       must be very accurate about 6 foot deep and big enough so that a  big rock

       can be pounded into sand and crushed rock. These legs have a heavy cross

       pieces at the bottom. The legs are lowered into holes and  the first section

       of the tower is bolted to each leg  then the first cross piece is bolted

       between each of the legs. The holes are then filled making sure that cross

       pieces are both level and square - this is the big job. After the tower is

completed, the head is installed, the wheel assembled, and then the tail

       vane is installed. There is a brake on the wheel and an in and out shifting

       arm. A wire is then attached to this arm and strung thru rings down one of the

       legs to the ground. Then a wood handle is attached to the wire. When the

       control handle is pulled down the mill is out of gear and wheel and tail

       vane are parallel and swing in line with wind. Sometimes a strong wind  may blow into the end of the blades and force the wheel to turn a bit.

       This of coarse wears on the brake, and in some instances  the wheel may turn.

       When the control handle is released, the wheel and vane are perpendicular

       with wheel directly in the wind, and away it goes.

         The windmill in the photo looks like an Aeromotor (the

       kind we sold) with an enclosed gear box. It looks like it is out of gear. If it were in gear

you  would not see the tale vane or only the edge.

 I remember helping my Dad erect the towers  and pull the complete enclosed gear head

with a jim pole secured to the top of the tower with ropes and chains. There was a pulley arrangement on top of the jim pole.

       A long rope was run thru the pulley and back to the ground and tied to the

       gear head. Dad or I would guide the head as a couple of men from the farm

       would pull the head up the tower.  In the picture you can see the top cover. That cover was        removed and 2 quarts of fine oil, capable of withstanding the cold MN        winters was poured into the crankcase. Each year the old oil was drained and refilled,  that was one of my regular jobs. I got $ 2.50 for the trip to

the farm the oil and refilling.

 The  vane and wheel also needs replacing. The tower and the platform look OK. Too

bad we can't see the pump house and water tank. Sometimes the water tank was built inside the tower or a force pump was used and the water tank was built in a barn haymow.

 

 I would like to thank Mary Stephens of Midvale for a donation to the Museum in

memory of Edna Moritz.

 Come in and see the Museum. It's open every day but Monday.

 

Caption for photo:

"Early farm windmills used flat wooden slats for blades.  In 1888 Aeromotor introduced its

mathematical windmill, which substituted sheet-metal blades for those of wood.  Aeromotor

stamped a broad curve into the metal blade to rap more air.  It did, and in doing so directed the

air to flow over the backside of the following blade.  This cascade effect heightened the

difference in pressure from one side of the blade to the other, improving Aeromotor's

performance over that of its rivals."

 

 

History Corner  6-29-00 thru 11-16-00

This is a long series of columns about a journey made by C.W. Neff and three companions

to the Thunder Mountain gold strike in 1902.

 

History Corner  6-29-00

 I have Gayle Dixon to thank for this week's column. She got me a copy of an account

written by C.W. Neff, about his trip to the gold fields near Thunder Mountain east of McCall.

Here is his story, along with some comments:

 

 "In midwinter 1901-02 there began to appear articles in the papers of Denver, Salt

Lake City, Seattle and other western cities rumoring the discovery of rich new mines in Central

Nevada and Central Idaho. The West has scarcely cooled off from the heat of the Cripple

Creek and Klondike excitements. There were now twenty thousand people in Cripple Creek,

and in the far north were thousands of men searching for new Anvil Creeks and finding them."

 "I knew nothing about prospecting, but I had been working in mines in Custer and

Saguache counties in Colorado, and I had a little stock in one of the good mines in Cripple

Creek and had been up there several times and my home was in Florence where were the mills

that extracted the gold from a thousand tons of Cripple Creek ore every day. Out of some of

these ore trains I had seen certain cars cut and put on the main line and sent on down to the

smelters at Pueblo or Denver and more than once I had seen men I knew riding on these cars

with shotguns on their knees as they sat on piles of ore sacks. This was high grade destined for

treatment at smelters. So these new rumors caught my eye. If I could only be one of the first in

a camp like Cripple Creek!"

 "In January 1901 I went to Colorado Springs and was fortunate enough to be sent to

Huerfano County to lease prospective oil land. When I came back at the end of a month and

went to the Elk's Club whole groups of men were in the rooms arguing the respective merits of

Tonopah [Nevada] and Thunder Mountain [Idaho]."

 "The former, according to all accounts, was one hundred and forty miles from the

nearest outfitting point, and these one hundred and forty miles were desert dust and sand with

no water and without trees. In contrast, Thunder Mountina was fully as remote from outfitting

points, but the trail to it was blockaded for seven months of the year by deep snow and in the

open season there were unbridged rushing streams and intervening high mountains to be

crossed. But along these trails was wild game in abundance with fish in every stream and every

mile an untouched wooded wilderness."

 "I remembered the hunting trip I had taken into the pineries of Northern Minnesota a

few years before and chose Thunder Mountain. Having made my decision, I wrote to my old

friend Jim in Iowa, telling him briefly what I had heard about the new camp, asking him if he

would like to go along. Before I got and answer, the oil company I had been working for sent

me to Boulder County to lease more land. Returning from this brief trip I learned that not only

was Jim going to join me, but he was bringing with him two other friends I knew. The Chicago

and Des Moines and Sioux City and Omaha papers had already done their work and they had

laid plans before even hearing from me.

 By arrangement I come up from Colorado and meet Jim, Frank and Ed in Pocatello

[Idaho]. They were from Iowa. Together we continue to Weiser and take the Pin Road (Pacific

& Idaho Northern) to Council, March thirtieth. The year was 1902."

 At this time, Council was the end of the line on the Pacific and Idaho Northern

Railroad. It was as close to Thunder Mountain as people could get by rail. The depot in

Council stood at the east end of Illinois Avenue, near the old Chevron station. It was a busy

place during the gold rush to Thunder Mountain.

  "Arriving there late in the afternoon we do nothing but make inquiries as to the job

ahead of us. Not many men around. These are mostly old. We find that hundreds, or maybe

thousands, have gone on ahead of us, that a number have already been in and returned but

none of these men are around to give us any information."

 "Some of the old men are talkative if approached properly. They have not been in, but

intend to go in the coming summer. They have been long in Idaho and are used to the

mountains."

 "We divide our duties for the next day. Ed and Jim are horse wise, or so they say, and

to them will fall the job of purchasing four broncs. Not many horses are available we hear, but

hundreds have been brought to Council and sold in the last few weeks. Horses can be taken for

one hundred miles now, but if the snow should soften much they would be useless. Better get in

while the snow is hard and before it begins melting at the bottom."

 "Frank and I will buy the necessary grub and other supplies. Frank is a merchant at

home and I have had three years' experience around mining camps in Colorado."

 Continued next week.

 

7-6-00

Note to Editor:

 The lady who gave us the check from the class of '39 is named Doris Purnel Scheer.

I'm attaching the photo she gave us.   Click Here to see CHS Class of 1939 photo.

 The names, top to bottom, left to right:

 Top row: Lois Shaw, Donna Watson, Richard Kidwell, Fern Poynor, Doris Purnel

 2nd row down: Zoe Thorpe, Audrey Zink, Marie Craddock (now McFadden), Grace

Jenkins, Dorothy Ham

 3rd row down: Dorothy Purnel, Julie Sigler, Howard Jeppson, Winona Mason, Ruth

Perkins.

 Lower left: Norman Selby Lower right: Delmar Hallett

 Not pictured, but in the graduating class: Marie Barber, Wilber Ham, Fern Hoffman,

Hazel Hoffman, Maryann King, Verne Martin, Melvin Snow

 

 Caption for THE OTHER ATTACHED PHOTO:

 The town square in Council on July 4, 1901--looking northeast (Shaver's would be at

the left edge of the photo today.) This is very close to the way Council looked in 1902 when

C.W. Neff and his companions got off the train at the depot (about a quarter mile beyond the

building on the right edge of the photo). The road north out of town (now Galena Street) went

 

to the left between the Haas Brother's store in the background and the last building in the

main row. Somewhere between the open square and the turn north just mentioned is where

the "rodeo" happened with the pack horses.

 

The first thing I would like to do is thank the Council High School class of 1939 for a

generous donation of $300 to the Museum! After their reunion, they had some money left over,

and figured we should have it. Thank you very much!

 Doris Purnel Scheer also left a class photo at the Museum. I will see if I can get it put

up in the High School with the other class pictures. It's such a shame that so many class photos

burned with the old high school in 1964. Bear in mind that the class of '39 didn't graduate from

the "old" high school, but from the "old old" high school that also housed the grade school--the

big brick building, built in 1907, that stood near where Economy Roofing is now.

 

 Now to continue with the odessy of the men bound for Thunder Mountain in 1902.

 

 By nightfall of the thirty-first we are the owners of four horses and have bought saddle

blankets, pack saddles and allfallcases for each animal. There is some discussion as we all look

the horses over as to which particular horse shall belong to Ed, which to Jim, etc. I admit that I

know nothing about horses and that I will be satisfied with the one that is left. One horse cost

thirty-five, two cost thirty and a gentle old mare which stood sleepily by herself in the corral

cost twenty-five dollars. She fell to me. The man in charge of the corral who had heard all of

the talk said quietly to me: "Don't worry, that old mare has already made two round trips to

Warren this winter." I did not get the significance of his remarks.

 We bought enough supplies for thirty days. All the food was packed in cloth bags.

Flour, oatmeal, bacon, hams, beans, rice, sugar, salt, dried prunes and peaches, raisins, coffee,

tea, soap and a small number of cans of condensed milk. We bought a few tin plates, cheap

knives, forks and spoons, a set of nested tin pails, two frying pans, a coffee pot and a

galvanized water bucket. As equipment, we had brought along bedding for two completed

beds, a ten by twelve wall tent, a small sheet-iron stove, an oven and two joints of pipe. For

tools we had a short-handled straight-bladed shovel, three coal miners' picks bought in Omaha,

and a poll axe. Ed, Jim and I each had a heavy rifle.

 The few buildings in the town were ranged at intervals along the west side and north

end of an open field.

 In front of the main general store where we had bought and collected our possessions,

the four horses bought the day before were brought on the morning of the jump off. Not one of

us had ever put a pack on a horse. There were several natives lounging in front of the store to

see what they might see.

 We put our bedding into rolls and roped them. We filled the allfallcases with bags of

grub, tools, cooking utensils, extra shoes and clothing. The shovel, axe, guns and water pail

were left out.

 Each case was filled without regard to its weight. The horses had been tied to the rail

standing quietly enough. They were now led up one at a time, and without a re-cinching, a pair

of cases was hung on, a roll of bedding, tent or other bundle was placed between them, a long

lash rope was wound clumsily around horse and pack, and the end tied where it seemed

convenient. Everything seemed to be moving along smoothly. All the packs on, the rifles were

tied securely on top. The water bucket was a problem and was left to the last. It was finally

turned upside down and tied on Ed's thirty-five dollar horse. There was a final chorus of

'Good-bye and Good luck' from the crowd which suddenly seemed to have been greatly

augmented. Men and women and children appeared from nowhere to see the start of the great

adventure.

 Each man led his own horse. Ed took the lead, setting his face to the north. He felt like

Daniel Boone starting down from the Cumberland Gap.

 As before stated, the open square was like a small field. The road to Meadows led out

from the northeast corner. Ed had made perhaps fifty feet in that direction when something

happened. Maybe he looked around to see how his troop was coming. Maybe he pulled tighter

on the lead rope. At any rate, a change of pace in his horse caused a slight jingle of the water

pail. His bronco leaped to one side as if he had heard a rattlesnake. Ed held on to the rope.

The horse's second move was to stand on his hind feet. The rattle of the water bucket could

now be heard all over the square. Since Ed was still holding on when the horse came down to

four feet again, he had to come in Ed's direction. Ed was no coward and he knew a great deal

about horses. He had broken colts back in Iowa. He intended to shorten his hold on the rope,

and did make a move to that end, but the bronc's head went down between his knees, and Ed

failed to shorten his hold. About this time, the bucket fell off with a tremendous rattle. Since Ed

was still hanging on when the bronc's head came up the first time to look around, he was

looking in Ed's direction. Maybe it wasn't intentional, but it looked as if he intended to get rid of

Ed. At any rate when his head went down the second time, and his back curved up, his aim

was true. A roll of bedding shot from the pack and struck Ed amidships. He lost his hold. A

couple more bucks and the entire pack went under the horse's  belly. It disintegrated by

degrees as the squealing animal ploughed up, battered and fertilized that field.

 Continued next week.

 

7-13-00

 Now this performance, considered by itself, would have not been a disaster. It was

highly entertaining to a few small boys on the outskirts of the field who, at the first buck, had let

out fearsome yells. Ed afterward maintained that he heard a shot, but that might well have been

a suddenly parted cinch. Jim, Frank and I stood petrified with amazement. That is for a few

moments, or until about the time the pack went under Ed's bronc and real work started. Then

the reserves went into action. Jim's horse moved so quickly that its halter rope left his hand

without burning it. Frank was next in line and he had time to tighten his hold, which was too bad

for him. He held on manfully, but he was too light. He lost his feet, and to escape being

dragged, let go the rope. The show did not last long, but it was long enough to scatter the

contents of the three packs widely over the field.

 The old mare? Well, she just stood on three legs and appeared to be asleep. At any

rate, she was resting. Two men now came out to where I as surveying the wreckage. "Might as

well take her pack off until you get ready to start." Without more ado, one man got on each

side of the old mare, loosened the lash rope and removed the packs. "Just drop the rope, she'll

stand." I did so, and sure enough she remained standing in her place, so I turned my attention to

helping gather up the scattered goods. Volunteers appeared to help catch the loose horses, and

everything was brought back to the original starting place.

 The gear was examined and three cinches were found to be broken. These saddles

were taken into a harness shop at the south end of the square, and in a few minutes were

brought back good as new. We then began to clear the ropes, and once more looked

dubiously at the collected packs.

 At this point, two long remembered benefactors stepped out toward the harassed

group. The two men who had unpacked my horse. We never learned the names of these two

men, but they were the truest mentors we were ever to meet in this new state of Idaho. "Well

boys, let us give you the first lesson. watch us and remember what we tell you."

 With that, the horses were led in line and saddled one at a time. Ed held his while the

two men saddled him. He rolled his eyes a little but submitted, probably thinking it was not

worth while to buck with an empty saddle. Then they saddled the others. Next they gave their

attention to the packs. All the cases were repacked with precision and hefted so that each pair

might balance. Tin pans, pots and rattling articles were securely muffled. Even the water bucket,

the cause of the original fracas, was stuffed with a pillow and placed inside one of the cases.

Even the old mare's pack was checked and changed. Then the cases, properly paired, and the

big rolls of bedding, tent, etc., undone and folded into squares, were made into four groups.

One case in each group was set out by itself about six feet from its mate. Ed's horse was led up

and between one case and the balance of that load. One packer took the left side of the horse,

the other the right.

 First, one of them re-tightened the cinch. This he did by placing one foot up against the

side of the animal and heaving with all his strength. He uttered a kind of chant--"Mada two

horse of him"-- and this he seemed to be in fair way to do when he finally snapped the strap

through a loop and drew it tight. In concert then, both men lifted their cases and hung them on

the saddle. A small bundle was placed between. A couple of quilts folded square placed on top

of this. Then one of the men stepped to the horse's quarter and rocked the pack from side to

side to see that it was properly balanced. A canvas tarp was next folded and put on top. Then

with swift motions which the uninitiated could not follow, they put on the diamond hitch. One of

them next took the hackamore rope from Ed's hand and tied it short to the top of the pack. He

notified the world in general to look out for itself, stepped to the read of the horse and struck

him a hard blow on the rump. The horse was game enough and put on a good show for a

couple of minutes, but the pack was now a part of him, and he finally gave up, stood until

caught and was brought back to join the bunch. "Now I don't think he will try it again," said the

old packer.

 "When the pack was on the second horse and ready for the lash rope, the packer said,

"I'll show you the squaw hitch, which is very simple, and I think you will get it right the very first

time." So all the four partners gathered around while he slowly put it on.

 The third horse was led up, the pack put on and tried for balance. A rifle was now

being buried in the bedding of each of the last three packs. When the third horse was ready for

the hitch, the packer turned to him. "You lash this one." Jim took the rope and got it right

without any hesitation. "That's fine. You won't have any more trouble with packing if you're

careful to balance you packs."

 When the old mare's pack was finally on, there remained the shovel and the axe. The

packer stuck these, handles first, through the ropes of her pack saying, "You may need these

along the trail."

 Continued next week.

 I would like to thank Bob Whiteman for a donation to the Museum in memory of

Walter Grossen.

 

        From this point on, some of the actual column that appeared in the Adams County

Record is left out, and only the text of the story is included.

 

 7-20-00

 There was a handshake all round with the two old packers, a genuine thanksgiving

which was never to be forgotten, and we were soon out of the little town and on the road to

great adventure and headed for the fabulous mountain built of gold. The road bore to the

northeast, and we soon passed the last of the scattered ranches in the upper end of the

valley. We had got a late start in spite of the fact that we had got up very early. We were

climbing gradually into higher country, and the road became, in places, a quagmire, and there

was still a lot of snow about.

 [This would have been in the canyon between Fort Hall Hill and Price Valley. At this

time, a shorter road between Council and Long Valley was being built. From the Council

Valley, it went up Mill Creek, then east over the mountains. It is interesting that Neff and his

companions took the older, longer route via Meadows. Even though the shortcut was not a

completed road until September of 1902, it is my impression that many people bound for

Thunder Mountain that year took the shorter route. The reason for the road was not the

"boomers" headed for Thunder mountain, but because there were no good roads up the

Payette River to Long Valley. Freighters hauling supplies to Long Valley had been traveling

all the way around through Council, Meadows and Lardo (McCall), and a shorter route was

much in demand.]

 We saw men with horses camped along the road, and caught up with and passed

men afoot with heavy packs on their backs. We tried to make our way along just outside of

the well-traveled trail, but found this too difficult. Without any packs on our own backs, we

found the going tough. So after seven or eight miles at the most, we stopped for our first

camp along side a clear stream. We had to tie our horses up, for we were afraid that they

might go back in the night. We fed them oats which we had brought. We cut and laid down

some poles in a level spot between two trees which we cleared of snow, and set up our tent

and stove. Our beds were of green boughs laid on the poles, and on them our bedding. It

was dark before we got through with our supper. Frank and I had one bed, Jim and Ed the

other. We were all dog tired, pulling our way through the mud and slush, and slept. At any

rate I did.

 We were all glad to get up early. Our beds had looked comfortable when we had

finished them the night before, but we all had found projecting knots and uncomfortable

sticks under us. Getting breakfast and breaking camp that first morning out on the trail was a

slow, new experience. We found the grub too widely distributed through the packs, so we

remedied this by putting in two cases all that we might need for a few days

 Being cheechakos, we were ignorant of the cardinal tenets of the pack trail. They

start as follows: Get up early. Have the duites divided. The wrangler goes after the horses if

they are loose, and brings them in. The cook starts breakfast. Another will take down the

tent and fold up the bedding. Still another must get dry wood and bring water. So far as

possible before resting, the packs must be made up. After eating, everything must be made

ready to put on the horses as quickly as possible. These can be saddled as soon as brought

in, but must be re-cinched before being loaded.

 The packs on, someone takes a last look around the tent site, the camp fire site, all

the nearby ground and up in the trees. Too many articles are lost, even by the careful. An

early start gives the chance to pick a new camp early in the afternoon. Commercial pack

trains make about fifteen miles per day only. There is no stop for lunch. Lightly packed trains

or those returning without loads may make twenty-five.

 Well, on the morning after our first night we got a late start. The weather was fine

and there was some frost. The going was much the same as it had been, but we were

ascending all the time. At breakfast time, Jim and I had provided a small lunch to be got at

easily at noon time, so we halted at midday near a stream and ate this, although we did not

take off the packs. We had no trouble with the horses on this second day, but men and

horses were very tired when, at about supper time, we dragged our feet wearily across a

snowy flat to the little cluster of buildings known as Meadows. In front of one marked

"Livery Stable" we turned in, and at the door began to remove the loads from the tired

horses. We suddenly bethought ourselves to keep the packs separate. We ordered oats and

hay for the horses, and since we were still within the limits of what we called civilization and

wanted its comforts as long as obtainable, we crossed the street to a building which bore a

sign marked "Meals and Beds."

 

 "Other strangers began to come in pairs and groups, and there was much subdued

talk throughout the evening in the great store-like room which was heated by a big sheet iron

cylinder which would take cord-wood through the top. The weather was not very cold, but

nearly all found it necessary to remove boots and dry out foot-wear. There was much

planning going on and we heard frequent repetition of the names "Smith Creek, Big Creek,

Monumental" and also the magic names "Rainbow and Thunder Mountain." There seemed to

be something mysterious about the latter end of this trail which disappeared into hitherto

unknown fastnesses as it wound up Monumental.

 We were too tired to do more than ,and went to bed early, each resolved to lose no

time in reaching this incomparable Eldorado.

 

 Click here to see photos of Meadows about 1902

 

7-27-00

 There were no laggards in that rush. Long before daylight we were awakened by the

sound of heavy footfalls in the hall and room below. We were stiff and sore, but a little

exercise would straighten out the kinks. Breakfast was already on. We ate, ordered a lunch

put up, and struck across for the stable. Our horses were brought out, saddled and packing

begun. The wild one came first. He was not so rambunctious this morning. Jim put on the

squaw hitch without hesitation. Ed held him while the other three were packed. The stable

men informed us that there would be hay at the lake, but no oats. Before leaving the lake we

should inquire about feed further on. We added two twenty-five pound sacks of oats to two

of the packs and struck out along the well-packed trail which led east. The snow was not

very deep, about two feet, but we were traveling toward a high timbered range which looked

dark green in the distance.

 We had no trouble in the forenoon. The night had been frosty enough to harden the

snow, and travel had been heavy enough to make it reasonably wide for the passage of men

or beasts in single file. Now the trail led through thick forest, big yellow pine and fir. There

was no brush except along the watercourses in the gulches.

 [It's hard  to imagine any hills in this region free of brush. In those days, before forest

fires were supressed, the frequent fires kept brush from proliferating. Indians would

purposely set fires on a regular basis, burning untold thousands of acres each year. Because

of the lack of  brush and other "understory," these fires did little damage to established trees,

and in fact were good for the ecosystem.  This is exactly why the Forest Service has started

doing controled burns--to head back toward the ecosystem that existed before settlement.]

 At noon we ate hastily from the lunch which had been brought along, but did not

unpack our horses. We were anxious to make time.

 Having eaten, we pushed on, and so reached a summit. [This would have been near

the head of Goose Creek, probably south of it.] Beyond was a vast expanse of timbered

country which seemed to be without peaks in the immediate distance, and was but little

lower than the mountain which we were crossing.

 By this time, the sun had softened the snow somewhat. Going down a sunny slope

through some scattering yellow pines, Ed's horse slipped off the trail and began to flounder in

the deep soft snow. He kept at it quite a while and stopped only from exhaustion. We tried

to get him up and on the trail, but he succeeded only in getting further away. At last we took

off his load, and dragging him up on the trail again, repacked him. Thrice again on that hillside

we had horses down, and had to unpack and pack again. Luckily, however, for us, the way

now left the open yellow pines and passed across a creek and into a deep growth of black

pines. Here the snow was firmer, and as the day waned, the air grew colder. We met a few

men afoot coming out. These men were not very talkative. They would tell the distance to the

lake, but upon being asked what they thought of the mines at Thunder Mountain they would

shake their heads and say, "Go on and see," and edge around us and soon disappear for

they were good walkers."

 We reached the lake that evening, but men and horses were very tired. This body of

water was marked on the maps as Payette Lake. On the trail it was always referred to as the

lake or upper or lower lake.

 There was plenty of hay to be had at a high price. About fifty men were camped

about under the trees. A branch trail came in at this point from Long Valley, and there was a

small occupied cabin here and corrals, but travelers had to camp out and eat their own grub.

 We learned that there was hay at Fisher Creek, the next day's stage, but none

beyond that except possibly at Burgdorf's, and the latter place was two stages beyond

Fisher Creek.

 At the lake, Ed and Jim slept together. Frank and I shared the other bed.

 

8-3-00

 Horses were down a good many times in the afternoon on the way to Fisher Creek.

A very hard day. We had learned from observing others that it was wise to take the packs

off the horse for an hour or more at midday. The old mare, however, never got off the trail or

gave any trouble.

 That afternoon we had our first sight of a dog team. Every winter the mail was

carried between the lower end of the lake and Warren by this means. The trail was following

the shoreline. Keeping not far off shore, the five dogs, harnessed in tandem order, came

pulling a long low sled or toboggan. Sacks of mail were lashed upon it, and it had two light

handles set like plow handles extending back. The driver was trotting in the rear. The dogs,

or most of them, kept up a continuous yipping as they ran jauntily along. They actually

seemed to be enjoying the work or to be proud of their job and willing to show off about it.

The men watching from the shore waved their hands more to the dogs than to their driver.

 Just as we arrived at Fisher Creek where there were perhaps fifty men with as many

or more horses a wild yell from our rear stampeded not only our horses, but the whole

camp. Yelling like an Indian and firing a six shooter, a man hazing two loaded big burros

ahead of him charged into camp. Frightened horses crashed into each other trying to get out

of the way, and many not yet unpacked went down in the deep snow. There were many

muttered threats and black looks directed toward the newcomer who,  it was soon

perceived, was a mere boy not over seventeen years old. After the disturbance had subsided

and the work of making camp got under way, this boy approached me and called me by

name. He proved to be from Villa Grove, Colorado. His father had staked him to $150.00

and he had left home to join the rush. On the way in Denver, he had been robbed of all his

money and been delayed until he could get more money from home.

 One of the men in camp told him never to do anything like that again if he valued a

whole skin. He had a disarming smile, however, and from that night on the antics and

vagaries of the Jackass Kid were published far and wide in the Idaho wilderness.

 At Fisher Creek, Jim asked Frank if he would be willing to sleep with Ed. Frank said

certainly, and that arrangement was followed that night.

 The next day was much like its predecessor except that there seemed to be more

men on the trail. Horses went down floundering and ruining the trail. There was one notable

exception. That was the old mare which belonged to me. When one of her front feet failed to

find firm footing, she stopped, shifted her position, tried the snow with her feet and did not

move ahead until she had found solid snow.

 We camped in the snow at Little Lake. Next day was up hill. The going was better in

the mornings, so we got an early start. After hard work with the horses, we got over Secesh

summit which was ascended so gradually that we were scarcely aware of its height, except

for the great depth of snow.

 We had fed the last of our hay at Little Lake so the horses had to be given precious

oats.

 Next day was a comparatively short journey. The going in the snow was as bad as

usual, and we were all tired enough when late in the afternoon we reached Burgdorf's, which

according to all reports on the trail, was a grand stopping place. Old Fred was genial and his

whiskey was said to be good. We took aff the packs and went into the big room which

served as office, bar, and gambling room. He set out glasses and a bottle and gave a

welcoming roar and invitatinal gesture. Ed and I poured ourselves a drink, but this was

something new for Frank and Jim, and they just stood and looked around.

 The drink downed, Ed broached the subject of hay. Old Fred immediately showed

great consternation on his face. "Hay! I have no hay for months. Too many horses, they eat

me out long ago." But we had been warned of this complaint, and after a half hour of denial

and a couple more drinks he agreed t let us have one bale of about eighty pounds for $5.00.

This he swore was from the small store which he had reserved for his own horses. Of course

we did not know that he had no horses and that this performance was repeated several times

a day, and was always polite on Burgdorf's part because he had to sustain his reputation as

the friend of every man who came that way, and in truth he was a friend.

 Now to go back for a moment to the time we camped at Little Lake. Jim, there, had

come to me and said, "Do you want to try sleeping with Ed and let me sleep with Frank?" I

agreed. No sooner had we turned in for the night and settled for a blessed rest on the pine

bough beds than Ed suddenly floundered like one of the broncos in the snow. He threw

himself up in the air to turn over. The covers somehow all went with him, and when he came

down again solidly and went on sleeping, I found that I still had some bed under me, but

none over me. The next day I told Jim and Frank that thereafter the bedding would be

divided into two equal parts. We would give Ed one bed and the three of us sleep in the

other. We agreed since we had, in turn, found that no one could sleep with him.

 

 Click here to see maps of the area the men traveled

 

8-10-00

 To return to Burgdorf's. The horses provided for and our bedding carried to the long

bunk house, which was a wing of the main building, we took a look at the bath house.

Burgdorf's great hot spring was known far and wide. We felt of the water, and it seemed

plenty hot. More travelers had been coming, and there was great stir about the famous

hostelry. Frank and I had just stepped into the big barroom, looking for a place to sit down

until the call for supper came.

 The room was crowded, many ranged along the bar. It was an unusual sight for my

friends, especially for Frank, who was a well-known Sunday school superintendent in his

home town. His eye roamed over the crowd appraisingly. More men came in. a swarthy man

in smoke-grimed mackinaw swung through the room and toward the bar where, with a great

roar, he clapped a heavy hand on the shoulder of a man about to raise a glass. He swung him

around. The man at the bar was crippled and limped a little so that he very nearly fell down.

The swarthy stranger backed a little way, and then let loose the most obscene, profane and

fearfully indecent speech that even that wild room had ever heard. Frank was petrified. He

looked at me and back at his terrible stranger, expecting imminent murder. But it was only a

friendly greeting. The bad man roughed and wooled the cripple around a little, and, side by

side, they moved back to the bar. Frank started out. Outside he said to me with wonder in

his eyes, "Did you ever hear anything like that before?"

 We had a good rest at Burgdorf's, although I admit I was too warm between Frank

and Jim to sleep well, and we were off early for Warren. Not much trouble with the horses

until the snow softened in the afternoon. Comparatively level going. We made Warren early

in the afternoon. This was a very old mining camp, found in the sixties. Both placer and

quarts. Chinese and occasional activity at some quartz mine had maintained the town and

kept the buildings from falling down. It was now enjoying a boom because of the Thunder

Mountain excitement. It was still a post office, and another trail came in from the north from

the Salmon River country, and this added to the stream of Argonauts from the south. We

stopped just long enough to write and mail some letters and pushed on about three miles to

camp for the night.

 Here we were still in heavy timber, as indeed wee had been all the way up to this

time, with the exception of the first few miles out of Council. We passed a group of quartz

mine buildings down in the gulch to the south, and there were no signs of life there, but we

could not well leave the trail because of the still deep snow. Besides, by this time we were

used to making camp in the snow, and it did not take long to cut poles, lay them down on the

snow and pitch the tent on them.

 Next morning after traveling about four miles through the same heavy woods and

descending gradually along a broad ridge, we came suddenly out on to a promontory and

looked down into altogether different scenery, the valley or canyon of the South Fork of the

Salmon River. The valley was steep walled and the opposite mountains which did not seem

far away, were crowned with the same evergreen forest through which we had come. And

trees extended far down the gulches toward the river, but the ribs or ridges were bare. We

could see the river winding for a long distance. It was nearly four thousand feet below us and

it took what seemed like a long time to get down there, for the way was very steep and for

the first time on the trip we became acquainted with switchbacks.

 Half way down we got out of the snow. When we came down farther and to within a

mile of the stream, we could see every boulder in the shallower water. The steam was clear.

Only the deep holes showed no bottom. Depending on their depth, they were either blue or

blue black. The trail came down to a narrow place where a shaky pack bridge spanned the

river.

 

8-17-00

 Our trail led up stream on the other side for a couple of miles, then it rounded a point

and came to the mouth of Elk Creek. Here was a ranch owned by Jack Shaefer, where, as

William Allen White said a couple of months later, "You could buy a bear grass mattress and

a million dollar dream for four bits, and if you found a fly in your coffee you could thank your

lucky stars it wasn't a chipmunk and throw it out." This was also the locale where, in the

early days of Warren, three white men were in camp when a couple of Sheepeater Indians

came down the South Fork with a young and pretty Umatilla squaw whom they had

kidnapped in Council Valley. The three whites proposed to buy her, in fact insisted on it. The

price was a dollar and a half in coin and a bottle of whisky. While the deal was being made,

each of the whites had assumed that his two partners would not want the girl. So after the

deal had been made, and while they were arguing this point, the girl just disappeared.

Discovering at last that she was staying away too long, they took up the trail and in the end

recovered her. Then one man bought the interests of the other two in the girl and they lived

happily all their lives on the South Fork, or close by. The two Sheepeaters were never seen

again in that country.

 We did not even stop at the ranch to talk. We were in a hurry and passed by,

heading up Elk Creek, but after a couple of miles called it a day and stopped to camp. We

had found out at Warren and from men on the trail that from Sheafor's ranch to the Smoke

House up in the head of Elk Creek was seventeen miles. We heard a lot about the Smoke

House. Everybody stopped there over night, for just beyond was a ten thousand foot ridge

to be crossed.

 After leaving camp near Sheafor's, we began to climb slowly but steadily and soon

came again into snow. The fringes of these snow areas, where the depth was lessening

because of the spring thaw, were harder for both man and beast than the deep snow in the

higher country. Horses could find no solid footing and when, tired out after a few hours

traveling, they began to go down often, it was wise to stop for the day and let the cool night

harden the trail. We made seven or eight miles however for the day, camped and looked

around. I got out a small trunk fishing rod and went over to the creek. In the open holes I

managed to get a half dozen small trout, but I was too tired to go far. No birds had been

seen up to this time, but Ed took a rifle and went up on the sunny hillside where there were

occasional bare spots. Deer tracks had been plentiful below on Elk Creek, but after a little

he too came back. He looked at the pan of small trout and then delivered himself of the

opinion that there were more birds and more and bigger fish back in Sac County than there

were in the whole state of Idaho. He was very tired, and the gist of his talk was that we were

all a lot of fools and were on a wild goose chase in a wilderness where there probably were

no geese after all.

 The next day was stormy, with snow falling. We met a few men coming down the

trail. They would invariably step out of the trail to let the horses pass. We, as was our

custom, made effort to interrogate these returning men about the trail ahead, and always got

civil answers to our queries. But when asked had they been in to the big thing, and what did

they think of it, and what it was like, they would wave their hands, urge us to go on and see

for ourselves, edge around the cavalcade and plunge on their way. All were afoot. No

horses, so they heard, had ever gone further than the Smoke House, and very few that far.

 

 Click here to review the maps of the area the men traveled

 

8-24-00

 Two of the cayuses finally gave up entirely. They had plunged and floundered so

many times that it was useless to think of trying to get them up to the Smoke House. The old

mare was

still good. She had not even gone down once. We decided finally to take her on alone. We

cached the three remaining packs along the trail, took off the halters and saddles, and turned

the three exhausted animals around and hazed them for a little distance along the back trail.

Then each man took a bundle of things necessary for the night, bedding and a little grub,

rifles, tools and oats, and near dark with our one pack horse we reached the Smoke House.

 There were ten men already there when we arrived. This smoke house stood

surrounded by good sized black pines on a slope which faced the southwest. It was about

16 X 20 feet and had one door but no windows. It did not lack for ventilation however, for

the ridge poles were widely spaced, and there was an opening between them about two feet

wide and ten feet long. Directly beneath this opening was a crib of logs about four by twelve

feet on the floor. It was filled with earth to a height of twenty inches. Standards at the ends

held a long lodge pole and from this depended the hangers of wood to support kettles, etc.

So it was just a raised camp fire and the smoke was supposed to rise straight up and

disappear through the opening in the roof. Sometimes it did. Oftener it did not, but rolled

around the room. After our supper we bedded down, but I at any rate was conscious all

night long of men cooking, eating and talking.

 The Smoke House was about three miles below the summit of the mountain, or

below the pass through which the trail crossed.

 Next morning we packed the old mare with a little less load than usual, made packs

for ourselves, and began our first real hard work. What we had done up to this time in

packing and walking and repacking the tired horses when they had got off the trail was to be

regarded thereafter as child's play. We had observed the packs of other men who had been

on the trail without horses. Some had light wooden saddles on which the packs were lashed,

and straps hung from the top passed over each shoulder and under the arms. Most men had

made their packs into a roll and drawn the waistband and seat of a pair of overalls up as far

on the roll as it would go. Then the legs of the overalls were carried up the side of the roll

about a foot apart and secured by a short rope to the upper part of the roll, leaving enough

slack to put the arms through. A sack of flour made a nice pack, but a large roll of bedding

was unwieldy, and its swaying added to the difficulty of walking. A roll containing hardware,

if not properly made, would begin very shortly to gouge holes in one's back.

 We made about a mile and a half on the regular trail above the Smoke House with

the old mare, and spent the day getting most of our stuff up to this point. Here, the hard

beaten trail ended, or rather scattered into a dozen trails, for returning men had taken short

cuts, and snowshoes had been used until very recently. We were glad, however, to have the

use of the horse this far, and all the men who observed her marveled at her ability to travel

on snow. Another night at the Smoke House with only light packs to the cache above. We

gave the old mare a good feed of oatmeal, took off her halter and, with audible thanks for

her great services, started her back down the trail. The packsaddles were left in a pile behind

the cabin with other piles of abandoned gear. We shouldered our packs and started on

toward the Big Thing.

 

8-31-00

 Arriving at our cache on the mountain side, we prepared to attack the last steep

pitch, which would measure a mile and a half. Up to this time, I had been wearing a pair of

heavy leather boots. Now I changed to a pair of German socks and new overshoes. My

partners had been wearing footwear of this kind since leaving Council.

 We were all in high spirits, for from all our information, this was the last summit to be

crossed. Ed and Jim took heavy packs, while Frank and I took smaller and lighter ones. My

pack contained our stove, and I carried something in either hand, but I didn not have all

together over fifty pounds.

 We still had some trail left, for men had been passing us on the way up, and the trail

had become icy and slippery in this high altitude. I was the last to leave. The trail led up in zig

zag stretches through stunted trees. At the end of a half mile, I caught up with Ed. I had

observed him for some time, and he was having a hard time. His worn overshoes were slick

on the soles, and he fell often. As I came nearer, I could hear him swear whenever he fell.

Just before I reached him, he fell again and slipped off his pack. He cursed first this particular

part of the state, then the entire Rocky Mountain region, then himself, and finally all the

boobs that had no more sense than to engage in such profitless work. I came up and sat

down, slipping off my pack. I noticed that his shoes were perfectly smooth on the bottom. I

had not been slipping at all, because my shoes were new. He threatened to desert. I hefted

his pack, and it was heavy, at least eighty pounds. I suggested that he re-pack with not over

fifty. He did nothing but rail at the country and everything in it. Then I suggested that I would

try his pack and he could take mine. At this, his face became purple with rage. He didn't

think I could even get it onto my back, and I was not so sure myself. But paying no attention

to him, I got it onto a hump where I could get well below it, stood my rifle where I could

reach it when I got up, and got my arms into the harness. It took all the strength I could

muster, but my feet did not slip, and with the rifle to steady me I started up the trail. I made a

hundred yards or so and picked out another hump on which to ease the pack down. By this

time, he had decided to let me kill myself since I deserved killing, and he went on with my

pack, falling occasionally, but evidently anxious to get to the top. I finally got there myself,

but my work was through for that day. Jim suggested that I stay and get a shelter ready for

the night, and they would go back for another load. Up here the wind was blowing

unceasingly, and it was cold.

 Jim had brought the tent in his pack, and we had the little stove. Nearby I found two

stunted trees just the right distance apart for the tent, had a ridge pole, and by the time the

others got back with a second load, I had the tent and stove set up and plenty of snow-killed

branches from the bases of the surrounding trees.

 We spent only one night on that inhospitable height. I shall always remember the cold

and the wind that blew. So long as we kept the fire up, we were warm. We thought a great

blizzard was upon us because the air was full of the hard, dry, driven snow.

 After breakfast, we made a roll of the tent on the very summit. It was about eighteen

inches in diameter, and perhaps eight feet long. We made it as symmetrical as possible, with

heavy, small articles rolled in bedding. We had peered down the steep east slope, and it was

smooth, with no trees in sight. Our plan was for one man to pull this torpedo-like roll down

this steep slope to the first god timber where we might camp again. Some of us would have

to climb back up for what remained after the first load was taken.

 Ed took the roll. We had shoved it to the comb and kicked the overhang off. There

was a sheer drop of perhaps twenty feet, then a steep white slope as far as we could see.

We plunged down, first Ed without any pack but holding the rope made fast to the big roll.

We shoved it over. It went down straight with Ed wallowing down ahead. The heavy roll

made a fair trail for us.

 The first quarter mile was easy because it was so steep. Then trees appeared on our

right and left, the snow in the air diminished, and we saw that a smooth, broad, white way

led down before us, becoming gradually less steep, and that thickets of fir and spruce lined

the main gulch on our right. When the long roll became too hard for Ed and Jim to drag, we

cut over into the timber and picked out a camp site.

 No one had taken the trouble to tell us ahead of time about this smooth white way

down which we had come, nor did we find out about it until long afterward. It seems that we

had gone over in the wrong place. This was a snow slide path. That was why it was bare of

trees and so smooth. The regular trail kept along the ridge to the right, and went down a ride

on which a line of stunted trees reached almost to the top. On the first of the preceding

February, three greenhorns like ourselves, on their way to Thunder Mountain, had come up

from the Smoke House, broken the overhang with their snowshoe poles, and started down.

[In those days, skis were often called snowshoes, so it isn't clear which is meant here.]

Men following close behind had seen what must have happened.

 This broad, white, treeless path reaching far down the mountain was a trough down

which snow probably slid every winter when conditions were just right and the snow was

disturbed. The men who followed on this day came up the trail, saw where the men ahead

had gone over the comb, and marked the tumbled nature of the snow beneath. They kept

around to the right on top until they reached the point of the ridge on which the scattered

trees still stood, and on which the snow was still undisturbed. Then they went over and

down, looking over the slide from a distance, although there could no longer be any danger

in walking down the slide since it was now almost as hard as ice. When they reached the

lower end where the snow was piled perhaps thirty feet deep over acres of ground, they

found no ski trails coming out. [This leads me to believe the snowshoes mentioned above

were actually skis.] The bodies were not found for a long time.

 But we knew nothing of the tragic accident. More snow had fallen, and in blissful

ignorance, we wallowed through it until we concluded that we had come far enough to camp,

so picked out a good place in a thicket of firs. Here I was left to make camp while the others

went back up the trail after another load. Under the big trees it was possible to see the

ground in a narrow ring around the trunk, and men without tents would get down in this ring

and enlarge it on one side, build a fire to cook, and sit by and eat smoke all night long.

 

 Click here to review maps of the area the men traveled

 

9-7-00

 Our tent was a luxury if not a necessity, and we used it every night. I cut a number of

well-matched straight poles and laid them as a platform between two trees about twenty feet

apart. After the night on the summit, I wanted a restful camp. The walls were fastened down

to the platform. I made a fine bed of deep boughs placed in the back end, and the little stove

was set up in the front end. We could be comfortable even in a bad storm.

 We had not had an especially hard day. In the morning we would all be able to go

back up to the summit and bring down the remainder of our outfit. So we felt cheerful, and

after supper Jim began to sing a hymn. Then Frank, who sang in a choir at home, joined in;

and I, to show what I could do, chipped in. Ed did not sing. We finished the hymn, when out

of the surrounding darkness came a voice, "Go on -- sing some more." So we picked out

"Old Kentucky Home" and another song which we could remember, and sang them. Out of

the darknes>

 

We had not seen any strangers that

day, and thought we were the only ones who had been on the trail that day. The next

morning there were three groups of men breaking camp not far from us in the thick timber.

 We climbed the mountain, up our snowslide trail of the previous day, and brought

down the remainder of our goods, and kept on down the gulch for about five miles. The

grade now was not so steep, so we had to break up the long roll and pack everything on our

backs. We soon came into a used trail, and not far beyond found a Canadian toboggan

standing by the trail. It was a beautiful sled with the manufacturer's brand on it. We decided

to try this. To do this was not stealing. We had for days passed countless skis, snowshoes,

frozen raw bull hides, home made sleds--set up by or lying along the trail. To take these was

all right, for the owners had abandoned them to try some new plan to reduce the effort of

making progress. We had also passed numberless caches of goods which were being moved

ahead in relays just as we were doing. No one among the hundreds or thousands of men

who moved in over this trail ever complained of having had any food stolen. So after a little

debate, we tried the toboggan. It was such a lovely thing that it was irresistible to us. Jim and

Ed undertook to pull it, and Frank and I went back for more. They got it down the canyon

about three miles, and decided on a camp ground. But they decided further to go back up

without it and pack the next load down on their backs.

 That day and the next we saw a good many men, for they were on the well used

trail. An occasional man, or pair of them, were seen going out of the country. These men

were easily distinguishable, for they had very light packs or none at all. They were always in

a hurry and not inclined to talk much, but nearly always wanted tobacco. Since I was the

only one in this party who smoked, I would have soon run out had it not been for the fact

that I never smoked while on the trail. We used the toboggan the next day, and in fact until

we moved ahead for another hitch. But now the trail was descending less, and the snow

becoming shallower. We had all started out to make a new camp site, and after proceeding

about three miles had come up to our old acquaintance, the jackass Kid, whom we had not

seen since leaving Fisher Creek.

 He was standing by one of his burros which was lying down on the trail. He had

been ahead of us all this time. By wrapping lots of burlap around his burros' feet, he had

managed to get the animals over Elk Summit, an almost unbelievable feat, but here he was.

 However, he was in trouble. This burro had decided that death was preferable to

going on as he had been doing in the deep snow and without anything to eat, and the Kid

was just on the point of shooting him in the head when he heard us coming. So he waited

until we came up, and told us his story. Three miles more would see bare ground. He had

got the second burro down there the night before with all his goods, which were scant

enough by this time, and had come back after the second burro. But nothing he had been

able to do could get him up. So to keep him from starving he had decided to shoot him

where he lay.

 Well, our two horse experts, Ed and Jim, who were pulling the toboggan, knew just

what to do. They proposed that the Kid give the burro to us instead of killing him, and since

there were four of us, we ought to be able to figure out some method of getting him down

out of the snow. The Kid agreed to this and left. We got some oatmeal out of the packs to

feed him, and brought water from the creek. Then we tried to get him up, but he wouldn't

move. So we unloaded the toboggan, tied his feet together, and after tremendous effort,

managed to roll him onto it. Then, while Frank and I held up his feet, Jim and Ed undertook

to pull the load. We made about fifty feet in the next half hour. It was an impossible thing to

do. This burro and its mate were unusually large, and their size had been remarked upon by

all the men at Fisher Creek, with the further wise observation that no burro, however big,

was any good in the snow or water.

  So we rolled him off and untied his feet. Then two got him by the head, and the

other two by the tail, and by sheer power we stood him on his feet and held him there and

urged him ahead. Of course he was stiff from lying there in the snow all night, but after we

had literally held him up and walked him ahead a few steps, he perhaps thought of the oats

we had given him and decided that if there was anything he could do for these fellows he had

better live a little while longer and do it. In no time at all he was walking along, led by one

man.

 The rest of us resumed our packs, and in a little more than an hour we had him down

out of the snow.

 

9-14-00

 This was good luck of no mean proportions. The burro was as good as ever the next

morning. the Jackass Kid moved on down the trail. He had started in without very much of

an outfit for the burros to pack. He could put all he owned on the one burro. We did not see

him for ten days. During this time we moved our camp much more easily than heretofore,

thanks to the burro. We came down to the mouth of Smith Creek [named after "Three

Fingered Smith" from the Long Valley Massacre story], which was in flood. We had bare

ground now and the trail went down the left bank of Big Creek.

 We passed Beaver Creek, a good sized tributary from the north and came to Ramey

Creek, which had been named after one of central Idaho's early explorers and trappers.

Here, Him sprained his ankle. At the mouth of Ramey was a good camp ground, much used.

Here we camped for a couple of days, hoping that Jim's ankle would heal, but it was a bad

sprain. Ed wanted to kill a deer, but the rest of us had decided that since that was one of his

great desires that we would discourage him. We did not really need meat because Con

McAuliffe and Dave Jenkins, two Nevada prospectors who had been making about the

same time on the trail, had given us a quarter of venison. So we urged Ed not to kill any deer

unless it had horns. He would climb the hillside to the north, come back after a couple of

hours, and tell of seeing herds of deer, and how he had even sighted at them but not one had

horns. We would tell him that the does were always tame at this time of the year, but that the

bucks were always wary and would be staying up on the high ridges. So Ed killed no deer.

He did not know that at this time of the year no deer wore horns.

 After two days, when it became evident that Jim's ankle would not permit him to

travel, it was decided that Ed, Frank and I should make up light packs with enough grub for

four, or possibly five, days and make a flying trip on up to Thunder Mountain. Like all other

men on the trail, we intended to locate claims in the new Eldorado and to get as close to the

Big Thing as possible. From inquiry, we knew that it was only about thirty miles to the

Dewey Mine. Accordingly, Jim and I, since we had been doing the cooking on the trip,

made up a pack of grub. We had been nearly three weeks on the trail, and were running

short of several articles of food.

 Both Frank and Ed had come to the conclusion that they did not like this kind of life.

Frank, of course had a business to look after in Iowa. He had come more for a lark than for

any other reason. Ed had started in hopes of making a barrel of money, but to him, making

money meant raising a crop of corn or oats and selling it in the fall. He did not know that

there were any other ways of making money. He did not take cheerfully to the task of putting

all he could stand up under on his back and starting out to see how far he could go with it in

a day and then to repeat this every day without apparent end. Therefore Jim and I knew that

after this flying trip, Frank and Ed were quite likely to back-track and leave the whole outfit

with us. Nothing had been used up but grub. We had no way of telling when we would be

able to buy more. Accordingly, the grub sack was made light. It contained flour, rice, coffee,

part of our remaining bacon and some beans, a little salt; not much of these articles and

nothing else. We put in a frying pan and a coffee pot and a can for beans or rice. We carried

on rifle, and axe and a small piece of venison. Lastly, a very scant amount of bedding We got

an early start. From Elk Summit to Ramey Creek we had been coming down the left bank,

first of Smith Creek, and then the left bank of Big Creek and the mail trail into this region still

kept on this side, so we had been told. But this was a summer trail. A little below Ramey, we

had been told of a foot-log across Big Creed which we would have to cross and then for

twelve or fifteen miles would have poor but passable trail. After this there was fine trail for

the remaining distance up Monumental Creek into the immediate locality of the gold mines.

 Click here to review maps of the area the men traveled

 

9-21-00

 Now a special word about pack men as well as pack horses. Certain men may have

reduced the work to scientific perfection in their own cases. I never did. Either my load was

too high or too low, or the straps bound my chest too tight or were too loose. If the load

were too high, I couldn't maintain my balance without constant effort. If too low, it hurt my

hips. The straps which passed over my shoulders and under my arms were never right. I

always had to stop several times in the first hour to make some adjustment. At the end of

two hours, a sort of paralysis set in, and I stumbled along the balance of the day without

being conscious of pain. Pity the poor pack horse which cannot stop to readjust his load nor

tell of the soreness coming in his back. No doubt there were humane men in the horse

packing business, but there surely were many inexperienced ones.

 On this flying trip, we had light loads, but we were expecting to make the Dewey

Mine in one day, so after crossing the foot log, we breezed along at a good gait, but this was

simply an emergency trail and when we started up Monumental Creek, it went up, often to

escape cliffs that stood with its head in the clouds. There were many places that were

positively dangerous. My light pack didn't ride well, but after the saving paralysis set in it

didn't bother me. When we finally crossed to the summer trail we made good time.

 We came at last to the mouth of Mule Creek, and there a sign pointed up this small

stream with the distance given as two miles. Well that wasn't far but we had come a long

way and were tired. However we bucked up and started this climb. It proved to be about

like either approach to Elk Summit. It was about one half rapids and the other half waterfall.

 At the end of a mile we came to a log cabin set by a spring, and two men were

camped before it, just starting their supper. We shucked our packs and sat down to rest and

ask questions. These men were evidently well informed on the locality. They said this cabin

belonged to the Caswell boys who were the discoverers of the Dewey Mine. The cabin was

locked.

 [I've previously related the story of how Arthur Huntley, of Cuprum, grubstaked the

Caswells about $50 to continue their search for gold near Thunder Mountain. In 1901,

Colonel. W.H. Dewey of Nampa (after whom the mine was named) bought the principle

group of the Caswells' claims for $100,000.  It was said that the $100,000 check paid by

Colonel Dewey for the purchase of the property from the Caswell Brothers, was the largest

check issued in Idaho up to that time. News of this sale spread like wild fire, and the

following spring (1902) there was a stampede of fortune seekers to Thunder Mountain.  The

brother's sold another of their claims (to A Pittsburgh steel man named Lovejoy who started

the Sunnyside mine) for $125,000 after the Caswells had already taken out $25,000 in gold

dust.]

 They advised camping here for the night. This seemed advisable, and besides these

two strangers seemed willing to talk, and we might learn more about the country. Heretofore

all the men we had met on the trail going out had danced around, sidestepped us and hurried

on. Here were men who would talk.

 I began to prepare supper. The strangers asked us to share their fire. This we did,

and Frank, who caught on quickly to the fine points of this gold rush life, rustled some more

wood.

 We had bannocks left over from a baking at Ramey Creek. To supplement this, I

boiled some rice and fried some bacon and made coffee. I was saving the venison for the

morrow.

 Ed put in the time asking questions of the strangers and complaining about the

terrible hardships encountered in this wild and possibly worthless country.

 I called that all was ready, took out some rice on my tin plate, put a piece of bread

on it and poured over both some of the bacon grease. Then I poured for myself a tin cup of

coffee. Frank watched me and then followed the same procedure. Ed watched us, then

looked in the pack sack. "Where is the sugar and the milk?" he whined. "Didn't you bring

any?" "We had none to bring" was the answer. "Well, I can't eat rice without milk or sugar

on it--don't like it anyway." One of the strangers said quietly, "You may be eating your boots

before you get out of this country. There is nothing to be bought for love or money around

here. There are supposed to be stores moving in, but they are not here yet." From the tone

of his vice, it was plain to see that he considered Ed out of place on Mule Creek. Ed finally

tried a little and then took some more. It was really very good.

 About the time we finished eating, and before it got dark, two more men came up

the hill. They stopped and asked about the cabin. "Why were we not using it?" Our new

friend who had advised Ed to eat again spoke up. "The cabin is locked; it belongs to the

Caswells." "What difference does that make? I know Ben and Lou Caswell. They're friends

of mine." "I know them too, and evidently they do not want the cabin opened--it looks like a

good chain and padlock. If you break in, a hundred other men may raid the cabin. Anyway,

why do it? Out here is a good place to spend the night." The late comers decided to go on

up the hill and left. Our new friend said, "He lied--he doesn't know the Caswells. If he did,

he would know that they wouldn't want any man to break into a cabin they had locked

unless it were absolutely necessary." There was no necessity tonight.

 

9-28-00

 We were up bright and early the next morning, although we had talked late with our

new-found acquaintances before going to bed. One of these men had been in the district

during the winter, and had staked and bonded a group of claims. He told us that the country

within three or four miles from the Dewey in all directions had been staked solid, but that

recently the Sunnyside Mine, a mile to the east of the Dewey had been sold as well as the

Tiger Mine, which was five miles east of the Sunnyside, and that he believed that the best

chance of finding open ground would be around the Tiger. That a new town also was being

projected on Marble Creek which lay between the Sunnyside and Tiger and that they were

going over there to look around. Click here to review maps of the area the men traveled

 With something which sounded definite and authoritative now to plan upon, we

started up the steep trail toward the Dewey. This proved to be less than a mile, and while the

going was steep, we were soon standing close under the mill which was not running. There

were several men in and about the mill making repairs or, at any rate, busy. These men gave

us scant attention. This was not strange, for if they had stopped to talk and answer the

questions of hundreds of newcomers, there would be no work done.

 We did however get directions as to the trail to Marble Creek which passed up the

hill directly behind the mill. Not far above was the boarding house and several smaller log

buildings. Passing these, we kept straight up the mountain side to the top.

 Here we had a fine view of the country to the east, north and west. Directly west

was Rainbow Mountain, well named because its southern slopes, now in part bare of snow,

were vivid with many shades of red, blue and brown rock, with clear white streaks also. This

mountain was on the opposite side of Monumental Creek and was much higher than where

we stood. To the south of us the view was shut off because Thunder Mountain culminated in

a dome five hundred feet higher than the pass on which we stood. Here we were in quite

thick black pine timber, and the snow was about two feet deep, but we had passed trees

blazed seven or eight feet from the ground and marked as corner and discovery claim posts.

 Wherever we looked was timber except on Rainbow, the last one thousand feet of

which was above 7,500 feet, and even lower on the north slopes.

 We started down the east slope of the mountain and soon came to what must have

been the Sunnyside, for there was a log cabin here that was not altogether new. There was

no one about so we went on down the mountain, which was quite steep, and came at length

to Marble Creek.

 Here was, at this time, a fair sized stream running south, and the trail came right

down upon a log cabin two or three years old. Within one hundred and fifty yards up and

down the creek were the tents and brush camps of perhaps fifty men. Another mountain rose

to the east, and near the top of this was said to be the Tiger Mine.

 We picked out a place to bed down, and set about to get acquainted and collect

information. These men were all willing to talk. This was the end of the converging trails from

Salmon City and Montana, points on the east, and Challis and Mackey and Ketchum and

Hailey, and the world beyond on the south. These men had come by trail about two hundred

miles to reach this Eldorado. There was a little placer pit on the hill above them, but this

belonged to Fred Holcomb who had built the cabin unless he, as had been reported, had

sold this and all the ground between this and the top of Thunder Mountain. The little old man

who lived in the cabin was a partner of Holcomb's. He was referred to as the old man, but

he wasn't over fifty. He was Tom Kerr, and he lived at Challis. He attended to his own

business, which however, led him to point out once in a while the limits of the Holcomb

holdings.

 All the would be Argonauts were willing to talk. Almost without exception they had

already staked claims, and were willing to jump out in the night and stake more if a new

strike should be reported, but no man had any definite information about the gold already

reported found in the country nor in fact whether any ore in place had been found anywhere

except in the Dewey Mine. None of these men had seen any of the latter ore unless perhaps

it was Tom Kerr, and he didn't talk. A fair proportion of the men camped here had their

doubts about the ultimate value of the new camp. They had come from all points of the

compass; Cripple Creek, Leadville, Central City, the Black Hills, Butte and Helena, Mercur

and Park City, De Lamar, Nevada, the Mother Lode of California, Alaska. None of them

had ever seen any gold mines where there was no quartz to be found. But they were here,

and they would stay until the snow went off or until they had nothing to eat in order to see

what it was all about. A pack train was reported to be at the mouth of Marble Creek

twenty-five miles below, but it had been a month on the way from Salmon City, and this last

twenty-five miles was tough. One man said he had been told about a trail up Marble Creek

before he struck it, and that he counted the times he forded it and got above a hundred.

Another man said there were no crossings, that he forded it endwise on the way up, with the

exception of the box canyon where the whole stream went through a cleft six feet wide with

vertical walls two hundred feet high.

 

10-5-00

 We decided to find vacant ground as near to the new Tiger mine as possible. That is

I decided, because I had been around mining camps in Colorado, and my partners were

willing to defer to me as having had some experience, however little. We went to bed then,

and getting up early, Frank and I got up a meager breakfast and made something to take

along. When we woke up and tried to rout out Ed, however, he flatly refused to get up, and

said he didn't want any claims and that we could go along without him. This we did, climbing

the mountain to the east on the upper slopes of which lay the Tiger group. This group we had

been told covered a basalt cap called the Niggerhead,  [I would assume the Forest Service

has since renamed this geographic feature.] so we searched around this lava cap until we

found a stake.

 Corner stakes were marked with arrows indicating six hundred feet in one direction

to another corner of the same end or fifteen hundred feet to a corner of the opposite end.

Adjoining claims would be similarly marked, and the stakes of such claims would be close

by. So we worked to the east and higher up until we reached a summit. Snow still lay in hard

drifts over most of the mountain, and we could see men's tracks in it. There were other

claims staked along a ridge to the northeast, but we could find no more stakes after going

about two miles. We were now on the headwaters of Rush Creek, about which we had been

told, and Frank and I started to locate claims. We had brought along printed location blanks.

These we made out, and we staked the north end of a group of four. The law called for four

corners, on center, on each end, and a discovery somewhere along the line between the

center ends of each claim. That day we set all the north ends, corners and discovery stakes,

purposing to come back the next day, pace off to the south end which would be down in the

gulch somewhere along the creek, and complete the staking.

 Darkness was not far off when we got back to our camp at Marble Creek and Ed

was not in sight. I rummaged around to find our small store of grub and get something for

supper, but could find nothing. We had been cleaned out. The bedding we had brought along

was there, and the cooking utensils, but certainly no grub.

 Frank and I looked up and down the flat, but could see no sign of Ed. Then Tom

Kerr came walking down toward us. "Miss anything?" We said we lacked a partner and

what grub we had left in the morning. He said, "I judge that if you were to lose that fellow

altogether you would be better off. He has been cooking and eating all day, and telling

everybody around here that you have been starving him to death. That he intended  to fill up

for once. I said, "We have been on short rations except for meat and fish for several days."

 "Come up to my cabin and I'll let you have something. I heard today that there is a

pack train twelve miles down the creek and it ought to be here tomorrow night. These last

twelve miles are not as bad as what went before. Then you can pay me back."

 When he laid out the flour, bacon and coffee, he said, "Get rid of that good for

nothing fellow." I told him that I would, for I knew that Ed and Frank were going back

anyway. Frank decided that he would start back the next morning whether Ed showed up or

not. Each of us had brought a blanket or quilt apiece, and we got into our bed, leaving Ed's

quilt alone. Sometime in the night he came in and went to bed. Frank and I got up early and

began breakfast when Ed wok up. Frank told him of his decision to go back out of the

country. Ed said he would go too. I made a couple of extra bannocks, put some bacon

between them and gave them to Frank. Ed did not ask where this grub had come from, but

didn't think they could go to the camp on Ramey Creek in one day. I reminded them that

after they made the first two or three miles to the top of Thunder Mountain that the going

would be all down hill or level and that we had come up loaded and on a strange trail to just

below the Dewey. So they started out. I found out afterward from Jim that they had a full

day's work that day. Frank let Ed, who was surly all the time, set the pace. They went up the

steep mountain to the Sunnyside cabin too fast, and Frank had trouble keeping up, but he

had decided that if Ed could make it, so could he. Night came on while they were still some

miles from the mouth of Monumental, and this was the section where the trail had climbed up

and down to avoid cliffs or river crossings. It was a high water trail. Frank became sure that

he would never make it, but he stumbled on in the hope that Ed would surely give out and

stop, but Ed didn't stop except for brief rests or to find the trail, and whenever Frank caught

up, Ed would start out again. Jim said Ed came in some time in the night, groaning and

muttering and bedded down without taking off his boots. Frank came in a little later. He took

off his boots and rolled in with Jim. Nobody talked. Jim let them sleep late, but his ankle was

still sore, and many campers at this spot had made it necessary to go out a little distance to

get dry wood. So he woke Ed up finally and told him he needed more wood for the stove,

but couldn't get around well on his ankle. Ed just groaned but made no move to get up. This

made Jim see red. Ed got out and rustled the wool. Sore as they were, Frank and Ed started

out the next morning on the long return trail to the railroad. Ed wanted to sell his rifle and

several other possessions. Jim didn't need anything. Advised him to take them with him and

sell them on the trail. Ed left everything except his rifle.

 Frank wrote after he got back to Iowa that he trailed Ed all the way to Council and

that they had very little conversation. Men would stop them as we had stopped other men

earlier on the way in. Frank said he and Ed would edge around such men in the same old

way and advise them to go on and see.

 

10-12-00

 Right after Frank and Ed had left Marble Creek, I went back to Rush Creek to finish

staking my claims. I did this in one day, but was late getting back to camp. Tom Kerr called to

me from the door of his cabin. I went over and he was just getting ready to eat. He asked me

to join him and then after supper, which was a good one, he told me to get my bed and come

up and sleep in the extra bunk in the cabin. I had found a real friend, my first in that new

country.

 The pack train got in the next day. The train and the goods were owned by a Mr.

Hunsaker. He had been over a month coming from Salmon City and the trip had been a hard

one. Some of his goods had been damaged by water and the general baning around, but nearly

everything was usable, and no one quibbled about his prices. Flour was ten dollars per fifty

pound sack. Sugar, bacon, coffee and tobacco as well as all other staples, were

proportionately priced. I bought flour, sugar, coffee and tobacco. I paid back Tom Kerr what I

had borrowed and made up a pack of about thirty pounds, leaving some things in his care. He

was expecting Holcomb back soon, but said someone would always be found at the cabin.

 I got an early start back toward the camp on Ramey Creek. However, I stopped at the

Dewey milll and tried to make friends with the men there, for I was anxious to get some

dependable information about this mine which had drawn, and was still drawing, men from all

corners of the earth. All these men had taken up claims near the Dewey or Sunnyside and were

hopeful about their prospects.

 On my way down Mule and Monumental Creeks I met men struggling in the opposite

direction, always with heavy packs on their backs. I did not waste much time with them for they

were going in the wrong direction to give me any advice.

 I got to Ramey Creek in good time and found that Jim's ankle was much better.

Camped near him were Jenkins and McAuliffe who had been prospecting near by.

 That night the four of us decided to move our camps down to the mouth of

Monumental, staying on the north side of Big Creek. Opposite Monumental I had noticed a

number of men camped as I came along and it seemed a sort of rendezvous. They were

probably waiting for the water to go down before going up Monumental along the summer trail.

Since Jim and I had grub enough for awhile and sixty days from the date of staking to dig the

holes on our claims, we were in no hurry.

 While we were loading our burro the next morning our old friend the Jackass Kid came

up the creek. He was afoot but had no pack. He stood around watching and seemed

undecided about something. He asked where we were going and our plans. We told him. Then

he outlined his circumstances for us. He had no money left, but he was still eating. However, if

he had both his burros once more he could make some money packing some of the outfits at

Monumental Bar up to Thunder Mountain. With one burro he could do almost nothing. We

struck a bargain with him at once. Take this burro load down to the bar and come back with

both burros and move all our stuff down. Also help Jenkins and McAuliffe down. All of us

would help by packing on our backs. This done, the burro would be his again. he was

overjoyed. The agreement was carried out and the boy became the most sought after individual

in that locality and doubtless replenished his purse considerably. We lost track of him soon and never saw him again.

 [I skipped a less interesting section here. Neff was in the area where the "sort of

rendezvous" of other men was when....] Under a big Douglas fir was a pile of peculiar looking gadgets the like of which I had never seen before. They were about ten inches square with two corners slightly rounded. To make these two, three quarter inch pine boards had been nailed together with nails long enough to clinch and on one surface were three holes in triangular pattern cut our mortised in the wood. While I was turning one over, trying to figure out its purpose, a red-bearded young man came up and said they here his. I asked what they were for, and he said "horse snowshoes." He had, he said, come in in January with a pack train, left the shoes there, gone on to Mule Creek, come back here and turned his horses loose down Big Creek below this point. Now he said he had been looking for them and seen no sign of them.

He believed that some man with little knowledge of customs in this country had stolen them and he said a horse thief would stand but little chance in this country if detected. I agreed with him. A little while after, I was talking with another man about the snow shoes and the stolen horses. I pointed out the red-bearded man who had told about them. "That fellow! That is S.H. If anyone stole his horses, he was just taking back what belonged to him. He is the greatest horse

thief in Idaho himself. As for the snowshoes I think they belong to Stonebraker. I know he

came in over the snow."

 [At this point, Neff became very sick for a number of days, and did little but sleep and

stay at his tent, not eating much. He wrote that his medicine kit contained quinine capsules, which he started taking. They didn't seem to help any. Quinine was as common in those days as aspirin is now, and could be found in almost anyone's supply of medications.]

 [During this general time, Neff writes about how he and his companions caught and

speared a number of salmon and steelhead from the steams.]

 

10-19-00

 Men and women too were steaming by now because many from the north were no

coming in over the Dixie trail to swell the crowd from Warren. The Dixie trail came over a very high long ridge called Ramey Ridge about nine miles north of Big Creek. There was an old couple, that is old for that kind of life (they were at least fifty). The wife was stronger than her husband and carried bigger loads. He, in fact, looked like and invalid. She had an indomitable will. They had had horses for the greater part of the distance just as we had, but even so, the presence of this couple on the bar was something to marvel about.

 Not so strange was the appearance one day of the entire personnel of a proposed

dance hall for the new camp. The steely voices and loud apparel of the women both could be

heard most any time above the roaring steam. They complained profanely about their hardships

up to date, the noise of the river, the beds of boughs, the food they had, in fact everything. They

contrasted strikingly with the old lady who had come down the trail with a heavy pack on her

back.

 Men with horses now began to appear. These men were generally experienced. The

had brought small supplies of oats when they left Warren or the Salmon River. When they

struck deep snow, they would be on the trail at three or four in the morning and the horses

would not break through often. If they did, they were unpacked, put on the trail again and

started on. At midmorning, camp was made. They were given some oats and rested until early

next morning when more progress was made. It was hard work for both men and beasts, but it

worked if there was enough frost at night.

 

 [Neff was still weak from his illness when he and Jim decided to move on.]

 Jim and I now moved down the stream about five miles. I had a roll of bedding that

didn't weigh much and I had to rest often. Jim had a heavy pack. While packing along the trail,

all men rested frequently. This was done by stopping at some bank or stone a foot or so in

height or a log lying at the proper height. When the man let himself down the pack rested on this

elevation, its weight was lifted from his shoulders and he could get a good rest without removing

the pack from his back. I was very tired when we reached the bar where Jim proposed to

camp and seeing a log just the right height from the ground I was easing myself down alongside

it when I heard the unmistakable rattle that men and even horses and dogs instinctively know

spells trouble. I threw myself, pack and all as far from that spot as I could. When I got out of

my pack there was a huge rattler under the log at the very spot I had intended to sit down.

After we had picked out a camp site and were settled, Jim hewed out a rough board and we

put it up where the trail crossed the little side stream. We named it Rattlesnake Creek. This trail

went on down Big Creek to the Caswell winter ranch and to the home of Dave Lewis, a

trapper who had guided soldiers into that locality in 1879 and liking the country had afterward

come back and lived there since.

 

 

10-26-00

 Neff and Jim have now been in the Thunder Mountain area for a couple weeks. He

writes of coming across a crude sign near the junction of the west fork of Monumental Creek

and its main stream. The sign announced this to be the site of "Thunder Mountain City." This

was at least seven miles from the Dewey Mine.

 "As we approached the mouth of Mule Creek, our trail took a short cut to meet the

stream above its confluence with Monumental. There were at this time several tents and camps of men just above the mouth of Mule Creek. In fact a town site had already been proposed and platted on paper in Boise, covering the beaver meadows which extended along the steam for a half mile or more. [The town would eventually be named Roosevelt.] We went on up the hill and camped at the Dewey for the night. Next day before starting out, we went to the recorder's office, which was hard by the mill, and got some location blanks from the recorder whose name was Tuttle. We left his office much encouraged and went on over to Marble Creek, which was

now designated Marble City. There was a tent store there now, and another was due at any

moment. We established a camp right near Kerr's house and the next morning started, with our

tools and a lunch for the day, for our claims on Rush Creek. We got something done that day,

and came home tired. We decided to take with us next day a little bedding and grub and stay

over until we had finished our holes."

 "We went back to the Dewey to file our claims and get our bearings. We had joined a

great gold rush, staked some claims, and didn't know what to do next. We had brought back

some samples of the rock showing all over our claims, and so far as we could see it was just like the prevailing surface rocks on the Tiger and about Thunder Mountain itself. I remember also that it was like the rock at the Geyser Mine in Colorado and the rock in the northern half of the Cripple Creek area. But I had seen so quartz like the Colorado quartz, except that down on Rattlesnake Creek."

 "The recorder's office, as I have said, was close to the mill. The office itself was a very small log cabin, but joined to it was a tent on a log frame where Tuttle cooked and slept. I went in, and using his pen and ink, made out duplicates of the notices we had posted on the claims.

When I handed them to Tuttle, who had been posting similar notices in a big book, he looked

them over, added the part he had to fill out and sign, and placed them in a box on a shelf. The charge was $2.00 a piece which I paid him, and I knew that I had just $7.00 left of my own money. He said, "How would you like a job?" I countered, "Doing what?"

 "Working right here for me. I see you write a good hand and that you can write fast. I'll

pay you miner's wages which are $2.50 per day and board, and you can live right here with

me, or $3.50 per day and you camp somewhere near and keep yourself. I need help the worst

way, and have tried two men lately, but they both got drunk and were worse than useless. I'm

already a thousand notices behind." I asked when he wanted me to start. "Right now." You can

sit right in my chair. And there's just one stipulation I'll make. There's a new saloon just around

the reef towards the H.Y. Mine. You must not get drunk, I can do all the drinking that's

necessary in one family myself. Someone has to work here. I'll put you in charge. Se if you can imitate my signature." This I did satisfactorily for our writing was indeed very similar."

 "Now," he went on, "if anyone wants certified copies, and most men do, make them

write them out themselves if they can. If they can't, you can do it and charge them extra for it. Fifty cents for the making out, and fifty cents for the seal which is right there. Sign my name, affix the seal and collect. Don't do anything for nothing. We must collect, for half of this money goes out to the county. When you get hungry, look around and find something to cook and eat.

Take charge. Now I'm going up to see about that new saloon and see if it's running right." With that he departed at a very lively gait.

 Jim said he would look around and find a good place to camp and this he found not

more than a thousand feet away where there was a good spring. I told him I would keep my

bed at the office and eat here, for I wanted to make as good a showing on the books as I

could, for this job was a godsend. Jim said he would go back to Marble City in the morning

and bring back some things we had left there. That night I told Jim that if this job held out, and I could see no reason why it shouldn't, I could keep him grubstaked for the summer, and he

should do the prospecting."

 "Tuttle did not come back until the next day, and when he did, he was feeling greatly

encouraged as I could see, with whiskey. When I showed how many I had copied and how

many new ones I had taken in, he said, "This is the most important office in the camp, and this

camp is going to be a humdinger. I've been in lots of booms in this western country, and even

up to Alaska. I could see it last fall and when Tom Reed told us here at the mine, when the last

pack train came, that any who did not want to stay through the winter or didn't know how to

look after themselves in case something happened, meaning I suppose a shut-down or getting

fired, could go out with this train. I decided to stay, for I was helping build the mill then, and we

were dragging logs off that hillside by hand. Then Harvey Taylor, who was recorder, wanted to

quit and go out, and offered me the job, so I wrote to the county seat and was appointed

deputy. There's no way of stopping a boom like this. It's been advertised all over the world. If

there were no gold here, the boom would last for two years anyway. Many claims have already

been sold and companies formed and soon they'll be in to work. This office gets letters of

inquiry in every mail that Enos Smith brings in." (At this time Enos Smith was packing in mail from Warren and collecting twenty-five cents for each letter.)"

 "In this environment, I too felt full of hope for the future. I had a job and could keep my partner in the field on the lookout for something new. Besides, I was in an office where I could

see nearly every man who came into camp. We were ready to ride the boom. I was living and

working on the very property which was the center of attraction for these thousands who were

on the way or outfitting to come. For the first time in my young life I was on the 'inside.' I was

happy."

 

11-2-00

 The later half of June brought a slightly different class of men to the new camp. Pack

trains were now able to make their way over the high summits, and goods for stores and

saloons came in. Trails were opened from Salmon City, Stanley Basin, Bear Valley and Garden

Valley as well as the Warren and Dixie routes.

 [This is probably why Neff and his friends didn't go over the Mill Creek road to Long

Valley; the road would not have been open that early in the year.]

 In addition to the outfits who were intent on opening business in the new camp, came

individuals, pairs and groups who had been unwilling to undertake the rigors of the snow trails and had waited for the snow to disappear so they could ride horses in. For the most part, these were mining men and prospectors. Some represented capitalists or companies to which claims had been sold the previous winter without the formality of examination.[I plan to tell a little bit of the story of one of these men, Charles Luck, after I finish this story.]

 A new company to work the Sunnyside Mine appeared. Another came in to work the

Fairview Mine on Rainbow Mountain. Pack trains began to reach the Dewey with needed

supplies of all kinds.

 A few days before the first of July, three men came up to the Recorder's Office. One of

them was Newton Hibbs who explained that they represented the new townsite which had just

been laid out on the beaver meadow immediately above the mouth of Mule Creek on

Monumental. Hibbs was a quiet but very persuasive talker, and his mission was to get the

Recorder's office moved down to the new town.  He explained that a regular post office would

be opened there on the first day of July. There were already two stores there feverishly putting

up log buildings to house their goods, and there were saloons too. The Fairview Mine was

putting up additional buildings around their original Taylor cabin.

 [Tuttle didn't want to move because it was too much trouble, but the Hibbs persuaded

him by promising to build a new cabin and tent frame, plus move the office paraphernalia.]

 Hibbs said they were planning a Fourth of July celebration, and on hearing this, Tuttle

said he would be down on the Fourth to pick out a site, or he would send me to act for him.

 On the first day of July snow began to fall, and continued through the second and third

days of the month. There was about six inches of snow at the Dewey on the morning of the

Fourth when I started down the hill. [Neff was going to town to pick out the office site.]

 A muddy trail went up the center of the meadow and roughly indicated the one street of

the new town. I passed a couple of new log buildings, as yet unfinished, on the east side of the street not far from the lower end of the meadow, and one of these from a rude sign was, or would be, a general store. There were probably altogether two dozen tents in sight, distributed along both sides of the street. I kept on to the upper end where Hibbs had said he was camped near the Fairview cabin, and at this cabin found Sam Jones, a colored man, who very obligingly pointed out Hibbs tent.

 [Hibbs and Neff agreed on a site for the recorder's office, and Neff started to get to

know more men.] Within the next few days I met many men, most of them pioneers of the

district who had been in the fall before and were now come back to watch the boom.

 In late June the mill began to run steadily, and while I got used to the noise after a few

days, I was glad to move down to the new town to  escape that continuous, earth-shaking

hammering. [The mill must have used a hammer type mill that pounded the ore into small pieces

with a series of heavy weights.]

 By this time the town had made a considerable start, and new buildings of logs, and

some big tents, had been set up, and the town was full of people all the time, for literally thousands were coming here for mail and to file claims or to get supplies. Our town and post office had been named Roosevelt after our popular president.

 Jim had by this time made the acquaintance of Alfred Skeels, a mining man from

Central City, Colorado. Alfred represented a big broker in Chicago, and had been sent in to

locate claims in the new district. The broker's part was to incorporate a company or companies and sell stock. This seemed to be a common practice, for within the next two years, scores of companies were started in this way, not only in our camp, but in districts sometimes 150 miles distant which were taking advantage of the boom to peddle stock. Unless one read carefully, he might not know from the published literature whether his property was near Thunder Mountain or 100 miles from that place. Thunder Mountain was the magic name, and it was used freely.

 The working mines like the Fairview, the Dewey, in fact all of them worked seven days

per week. I had hired out on the same basis and wages, and I was a little more fortunate than the miners since I did not have to change shifts and so have to work at night any of the time.

 Still I had plenty of time after  work to take in the growing town and get acquainted and

the recorder's office was a very popular place as well as the post office next door. Location

notices were still coming in in quantities, and it was a treat to me to get acquainted with all these new men. Many claims were filed in our office from distant districts like Sulphur Creek and

bear Valley, on the Middle Fork of Salmon, on Big Creek and its branches, Chamberlain Basin

far to the north, and the Pen Basin, Johnson Creek and Profile sections. These locators were from all walks of life. There were now lawyers, doctors, newspaper men, representatives of going mining companies in all the western states, and representatives of companies that were not going.  All however had to pay cash for the filing and the certified copies if these were desired. It became an easy matter for me to distinguish between the professional prospector or mining man and the man who was having his first fling at this business. I had not more than a half dozen applicants who were so lacking in schooling that they were unable to make out papers.

 

 11-9-00

 From the day of our advent into Roosevelt, Tuttle had assumed for himself the position

of "Goodwill Representative" of our business and of the camp as well. The entire conduct and work of the office was left to me. He was always home in the morning, and upon getting up would wash and dress to go down town. Next he would take a drink of whiskey, for he always kept some on hand for something might happen to the saloons, or they wouldn't open up early enough.

 The new town grew rapidly in July. By the middle of July I became apparent to the

sponsors of the two other townsites, Thunder Mountain City and Marble City, that they held

jacks while we held aces. [The other towns lost many businesses and residents to Roosevelt.

Of Thunder City, Neff said the town "disappeared without trace overnight."]

 [At one point, a gramophone (record player) was playing in a saloon in Roosevelt.]

This was perhaps the only musical instrument between Warren on the west and Salmon City to

the east, and it attracted men much as a freshly killed deer hung up in the woods in late summer will attract yellowjackets. [Klondike] Kate was in personal charge of it. She sat on a high stool at one end of the bar and had the air of a faro lookout at his post. As long as drinks were moving over the bar, the machine wailed. The rule seemed to be "No whiskey, no music." Kate was a top notch psychologist although it is doubtful if she had ever heard of those pseudo scientists. She had records of old familiar and time-honored songs, popular songs of the day, and a limited number of parodies of well known songs which a respectable man would not want

to hear unless he were standing in the dark. They must have originated down at the lower end of the worst street in the restricted district of Hell.

 There were plenty of gamblers in the town already, or men who thought they were

gamblers, and in each saloon at night a poker game could be seen in progress. This was

generally of the stud persuasion, for the reason that more suckers would enter the fish trap in an hour than by the game of draw, and consequently the turnover for the house was greater.

 There were no roulette, pool nor billiard tables, for they could not be packed upon

mules very well. Occasionally a 21 or solo game could be seen.

 [Neff met a Boise lawyer, Bill Puckett, who had claims in the area. During their initial

conversation, the man asked Neff if he was from Moscow.] I was puzzled as my mind flew to

Moscow, Russia. Seeing my embarrassment, he said, "I thought maybe you were one of the

boys from our state university." [Kind of puts in context how long the U of I has been around.]

 [A man named DeCamp liked the names Jim and Neff had given their claims, and

wanted to buy them.] That night we agreed to give DeCamp an option on our group of claims

for $20,000. Tuttle affixed his seal to this document, DeCamp put it in his pocket and in a few

days both Jim and I had forgotten about the option.

 Since the Fairview bunkhouse was just across the street from my office, I became very

well acquainted with the crew of that mine during the summer. The mine works were about

1,000 feet higher than the town, and since the slope was exceedingly steep, the trail was a

succession of switchbacks from the town level to the tunnel. The crew seldom numbered over

four men besides the foreman, Alex Urdahl. Three out of the four were "steadies" and had

come over from the Seven Devils district where they had been working for the present manager

of the Fairview, Frank Johnesse. [The Seven Devils Mining District was in a slump during

1902--partly because of the competition for attention from the Thunder Mountain boom.]

Johnesse was a very big man , and had been a successful promoter, had once been State Mine

Inspector, and had had a term in the legislature from this county. He had outside business to

look after, so was not often in Thunder Mountain.

 [Two men, Sittig and Pyle, worked for the Fairview mine. Neff heard a story about

them that occurred when the pair had worked together in a mine near Idaho City. They were

drilling holes in tunnels for blasting. Men usually worked in pairs for this job. The drill was a

long chisel-like rod. (We have one in the Museum on display.)  The drill driven into the rock at

the end of a tunnel, and was turned slightly after each blow. This gradually formed a hole into

which blasting powder or dynamite was placed. Competitions have been held to see who could

drill the fastest. Often, one man would hold the drill while the other man struck it with a "double

jack" sledge hammer. In the following story, both men seem to have been using their own drill

and a smaller "single jack" hammer.]

 Pyle discovered almost immediately that here was a man whom it might be an honor to

beat, and he turned on the heat, trying to wear him [Sittig] down. In a drift [tunnel leading from

the main tunnel] the cut holes, uppers or back holes, half uppers and lifters, form a pattern that

is generally regular, and a line down the center of the face will show an equal number of holes

on each side. Working with might and main, Pyle could not finish on instant before Sittig, and

Sittig's holes always seemed to break perfectly. Pyle suggested after a week that they change

sides. Sittig agreed without even a word, but the result was the same. Pyle was certainly no

quitter. He stayed with it for exactly 30 days, and a record was set that, for two man drifting

with single jacks, is still talked about in Boise Basin. When they met again in a mine in the

Seven Devils, each regarded the other as an equal, all strain vanished and they became good

friends, but there was really no let up in their work.

 The third man, George McBride was always the blacksmith or tool sharpener

whenever he worked for any mine. He had learned the blacksmith's trade when young, and still

young had come out from Indiana to Colorado, and since mines always needed a blacksmiths,

he had caught on at the mines. [The mines in Colorado began to wear out, so he set out for the

northwest.] He came down to the great Snake River and began to hear of Idaho mining camps,

Custer, Rocky Bar and Silver City. The latter seemed to have the call. There were several very

rich mines working there and at nearby DeLamar. So he left the river and went up to Silver

City. He got work at once at the Cumberland and stayed in the camp about two years when

there came news of new, boom camps farther north, in the Seven Devils mountains and at

Buffalo Hump. He saddled up and struck out for the Seven Devils. He worked about the mines

here for a couple of years, most of the time for Johnesse, and it was there that he got

acquainted with Urdahl, Sittig and Pyle. It was natural then, that when Johnesse got started on

the Fairview at Thunder Mountain that they should all move over there together. Besides, this

seemed to be the biggest boom that the northwest had ever had.

 

11-16-00

 The Fairview was the only mine in our new camp near enough to Roosevelt to permit

its workers to live in the town. All the other properties starting up had to build boarding and

bunk houses of their own, and in most instances, they were too far from town for the men to

come down very often.

 [The mines at Black Lake had bunk houses for workers that sat way up on the hill by

the Summit Mine tunnel. My father remembered when they were standing, but all that's left now

are piles of rotting lumber. The Forest Service photo accompanying this column was taken of

an "abandoned hotel at Black Lake" in 1962. I'm wondering if it was part of the bunk houses

up on the hill or if this building was down by the mill and "town." If anyone knows, please

contact me.]

 [Neff writes about the salmon and steelhead men were catching near Thunder

Mountain. They soon had the creeks fished out near the centers of population, and anyone

wanting to catch a fish had to hike some distance to find one. A man he met told Neff about an

interesting experience he had. The man had seen some big fish in a deep pond behind a beaver

dam, but the fish wouldn't bite.]

 When he got back to town and told about these fish, someone suggested that he take a

couple of sticks of powder with him next time he went down there and drop a "straight hook"

very quietly among them. He was told just how to prepare the charge to waterproof it and just

what to do. But the friend neglected to tell him quite all. So when he went down again, soon he

fixed a charge of two sticks, crept out quietly on the dam and found the fish still there. He lit the

fuse and dropped the charge as softly as possible among the fish. They moved about a little and

he kept watching them to see if they would regather in the deep hole. What the friend hadn't

told him was to get away from there after he had dropped the charge. As he leaned over to

watch the fish, all the water in that part of Idaho seemed to blow up in his face and he was

knocked violently backward into the mud and water below the dam. He never knew whether

he had killed any fish or not. He was not hurt at all, but he foreswore all extra-legal means of

taking fish from that time on.

 [People around here used to "fish" with dynamite occasionally. My dad told me about

one method of putting the stick(s) of dynamite in a glass jar, then lighting it and screwing the lid

on. I guess the jar had rocks in it to make it sink. In 1923 Ike Glenn was accused of dynamiting

fish, and the case even went to trial, but the jury found him not guilty.]

 During the summer thousands of men came through our town paying us only a brief visit

and the most of these were simply drawn by the excitement and didn't know what it was all

about. They were not prospectors or mining men of any sort. The mining men were of a

different sort. They were after information and stopped long enough to ask questions, and many

were free enough to volunteer their own sage opinions. About the tenth of September came a

man heading a party of four who stopped at the Fariview over night. It didn't take me long to

find out that the Saturday Evening Post wanted to find out for its readers what this greatest of

modern mining booms looked like and meant, and had sent this man, William Allen White, out

to write us up.

 [Tuttle decided to move on, and assured Neff that the Recorder's job would go to him.

Instead, they found out a woman had been scheming to get the job through political contacts.

She showed up at the office with the proper papers, and so took over the office. Shortly after

this, Neff heard from Mr. DeCamp to whom Neff and Jim had given an option to buy their

claims. DeCamp said he had sold  the claims and wanted Neff and / or Jim to come to Nampa

to sign papers. Jim stayed at Thunder Mountain; Neff and his friend, Skeels, started out at the

end of September.]

 The mail carrier had built, during the summer, a cabin every 16 miles along the route to

Garden Valley, for the use of his carriers. There was supposed to be a little grub in each cabin-

-rice, sugar, coffee and flour. Travelers were put on their good behavior. This was a matter of

accommodation, and no one was supposed to cheat. There might be a chunk of venison

hanging in a sack in these cabins, but better not depend on it. Each cabin contained a small

cook stove. Better take a little grub of your own along as a supplement. When you got to

Peace Valley, the first cabin above Garden Valley, you were supposed to pay 50 cents per

night for the use of cabin and food. There was always a man resident at Peace Valley.

 [These cabins sound similar to the cabins that Solon Hall built at intervals between

Indian Valley and Warren, but I've never heard of them being open to the public like this. Neff

described the cabin where they spent the first night.]

 These cabins were small, about 12' X 16' in size without many conveniences. One

could sit on the bunk or on a stove length cut off a log if there were such a block. There were

no windows. A shelf hung suspended by wire from the ridge pole, and on this was piled the

current supply of grub. Down these wires the kangaroo mice, pack rats and weasels were

afraid to slide, and they were too dumb to know they could jump to the shelf and afterwards to

the floor. A big grub box had been provided, and in that could be found tightly covered tin cans

which might contain food, but holes had already been gnawed through the box and the mail

carriers had already learned they were not invulnerable. There was an axe and, in some cabins,

a one man saw. A transient using the cabin was supposed to leave as much wood in the house,

or just outside, as he found when he came there. Nothing probably was ever stolen. Skeels and

I observed the rules.

 [The pair reached  a place called "Pen Basin" where a man named Berry lived, and

spent the night at his accommodations. This cabin was a a junction where several main trails

met. Here they met a man who illustrates the nature of the men of that time and place, and their

ambition.]

 In spite of the fact that we were at a crosstrails of an immense new territory that night,

only one other guest showed up at Pen Basin. This was Lou Vogan who was planning to run a

trap line through the coming winter, and he was now engaged in building small cabins or shelters

spaced at intervals of about 12 miles. There would be six of these describing a rough circle and

the Pen Basin station would be headquarters. In these shelters he would , in the last days before

the season opened, cache grub and a little bedding.

 Before we started out, Skeels produced a Kodak which I had not know he possessed,

and with this, berry took a picture of Skeels and me with our packs on and ready to travel.

[Don't you wish we had that picture? A camera like this would have been a rarity in those days,

and probably quite expensive. About this point in his account, Neff reveals that he is 25 years

old. I pictured him as being much older.]

 [At Nampa, Neff meets DeCamp's partner, who is quite cold to Neff and tells him that

he and DeCamp can only pay them half of the $20,000 they promised for the claims. Neff is

stunned and leaves without making a deal. He later meets a man at Boise named Richardson

who owns claims at Thunder Mountain, and they strike a deal for Neff to manage and develop

them. Richardson pays for a quantity of supplies, and Neff sets off with the goods in a hired

wagon to return to Thunder Mountain.]

 Our road led out to the northwest from Boise and after three or four miles we struck up

a creek and began to climb the treeless foothills or low mountains that form a divide between

the Boise and Payette Rivers.

 We made Horseshoe Bend on the Payette in the evening after an all day ride through

desert monotony. We set out in good time the next morning and crossed the Payette on a

bridge. There was some bench farming land on the north side but we were soon through this

and into hilly country on the road to Sweet. There was a place called Jerusalem around here

somewhere but we didn't see it. The we got out of the hills and into the farming section for

which Sweet was the center. Sweet was just a store with nothing of interest except a hot spring

in a nearby pasture where miners often came to be cured of rheumatism. This was an

uninteresting semi-desert country, but not far beyond Sweet we began to climb mountains again

and these were timbered enough to make the road less monotonous.

 We wanted to take advantage of all the stopping places which had overnight

accommodations, so we stopped at Sweet and at Ola, which was up much higher in the

mountains to the north. The next day we fore to the northeast, descending but very little and

came to Smith's Ferry on the North Fork of the Payette. Here we were ferried across the river.

Somewhere between Smith's Ferry and Warner's ranch was a place with the high sounding

name of Alpha, but if we passed it I did not know it.

 [The supplies were transferred to pack animals, and packed to the claims near Thunder

Mountain. At this point, Neff's account abruptly ends. I wish we knew what became of him. I

would guess that, like everyone else, he left the Thunder Mountain area when the boom ran

down.]

 The fate of the town of Roosevelt is interesting. In 1909 a land slide came down the

mountain just down stream from the town. The slide completely dammed the creek and backed

up the water until it covered the whole town. By this time, few if any people were still living

there. Today the only thing there is "Roosevelt Lake" shown on maps.

 On the internet I found an item on Thunder Mountain City. This information is listed on

it: "The town was located about three miles down  Monumental Creek from Roosevelt.

Although it  started as a mining camp, nothing developed and  it soon became a way station and

outfitting point on the wagon road into the neighboring mines.  The remains of several log

Buildings can still be seen."

 Speaking of web sites, I have been doing some work on the Museum web site. We

now have Adams County cemetery records there, plus some of the items we have for sale. The

address is <www.ctcweb.net/~jcpeart/history.htm>

 

11-23-00

 This is the last installment of the C.W. Neff story. Neff and his companion, Skeels, are hiking

out to Boise and Nampa.

  The mail carrier had built, during the summer, a cabin every 16 miles along the route to

Garden Valley, for the use of his carriers. There was supposed to be a little grub in each cabin-

-rice, sugar, coffee and flour. Travelers were put on their good behavior. This was a matter of

accommodation, and no one was supposed to cheat. There might be a chunk of venison

hanging in a sack in these cabins, but better not depend on it. Each cabin contained a small

cook stove. Better take a little grub of your own along as a supplement. When you got to

Peace Valley, the first cabin above Garden Valley, you were supposed to pay 50 cents per

night for the use of cabin and food. There was always a man resident at Peace Valley.  [These

cabins sound similar to the cabins that Solon Hall built at intervals between Indian Valley and

Warren, but I've never heard of them being open to the public like this.

 Neff described the cabin where they spent the first night.]  These cabins were small,

about 12' X 16' in size without many conveniences. One could sit on the bunk or on a stove

length cut off a log if there were such a block. There were no windows. A shelf hung suspended

by wire from the ridge pole, and on this was piled the current supply of grub. Down these wires

the kangaroo mice, pack rats and weasels were afraid to slide, and they were too dumb to

know they could jump to the shelf and afterwards to the floor. A big grub box had been

provided, and in that could be found tightly covered tin cans which might contain food, but

holes had already been gnawed through the box and the mail carriers had already learned they

were not invulnerable. There was an axe and, in some cabins, a one man saw. A transient using

the cabin was supposed to leave as much wood in the house, or just outside, as he found when

he came there. Nothing probably was ever stolen. Skeels and I observed the rules.

 [The pair reached  a place called "Pen Basin" where a man named Berry lived, and

spent the night at his accommodations. This cabin was at a junction where several main trails

met. Here they met a man who illustrates the nature of the men of that time and place, and their

ambition.]  In spite of the fact that we were at a crosstrails of an immense new territory that

night, only one other guest showed up at Pen Basin. This was Lou Vogan who was planning to

run a trap line through the coming winter, and he was now engaged in building small cabins or

shelters spaced at intervals of about 12 miles. There would be six of these describing a rough

circle and the Pen Basin station would be headquarters. In these shelters he would , in the last

days before the season opened, cache grub and a little bedding.

  Before we started out, Skeels produced a Kodak which I had not know he

possessed, and with this, berry took a picture of Skeels and me with our packs on and ready to

travel. [Don't you wish we had that picture? A camera like this would have been a rarity in

those days, and probably quite expensive. About this point in his account, Neff reveals that

he is 25 years old. I pictured him as being much older.]  [At Nampa, Neff meets DeCamp's

partner, who is quite cold to Neff and tells him that he and DeCamp can only pay them half of

the $20,000 they promised for the claims.

 Neff is stunned and leaves without making a deal. He later meets a man at Boise named

Richardson who owns claims at Thunder Mountain, and they strike a deal for Neff to manage

and develop them. Richardson pays for a quantity of supplies, and Neff sets off with the goods

in a hired wagon to return to Thunder Mountain.]  Our road led out to the northwest from

Boise and after three or four miles we struck up a creek and began to climb the treeless

foothills or low mountains that form a divide between the Boise and Payette Rivers.

  We made Horseshoe Bend on the Payette in the evening after an all day ride through

desert monotony. We set out in good time the next morning and crossed the Payette on a

bridge. There was some bench farming land on the north side but we were soon through this

and into hilly country on the road to Sweet. There was a place called Jerusalem around here

somewhere but we didn't see it. The we got out of the hills and into the farming section for

which Sweet was the center. Sweet was just a store with nothing of interest except a hot spring

in a nearby pasture where miners often came to be cured of rheumatism. This was an

uninteresting semi-desert country, but not far beyond Sweet we began to climb mountains again

and these were timbered enough to make the road less monotonous.

  We wanted to take advantage of all the stopping places which had overnight

accommodations, so we stopped at Sweet and at Ola, which was up much higher in the

mountains to the north. The next day we fore to the northeast, descending but very little and

came to Smith's Ferry on the North Fork of the Payette. Here we were ferried across the river.

Somewhere between Smith's Ferry and Warner's ranch was a place with the high sounding

name of Alpha, but if we passed it I did not know it.

  [The supplies were transferred to pack animals, and packed to the claims near Thunder

Mountain. At this point, Neff's account abruptly ends.]

  In talking to Steve Stoddard, who obtained the original copy of Neff's account, I got a

little more info on Neff. First, Neff wrote his "autobiography" for his children as a Christmas

present in 1941. Steve doesn't know if he wrote more than what we have or not, but suspects

he did. He has heard that Neff's daughter lives somewhere in California. So we know he

eventually married. And from Neff's old friends who had this section of his autobiography,

Steve learned that Neff continued to live in the Thunder Mountain area at least until the 1960s.

Steve told me that if he gets more of Neff's autobiography, he will let me know. Incidentally, the

Neff Creek near Thunder Mountain IS named after C.W. Neff.  The fate of the town of

Roosevelt is interesting. In 1909 a land slide came down the mountain just down stream from

the town. The slide completely dammed the creek and backed up the water until it covered the

whole town. By this time, few if any people were still living there. Today the only thing there is

"Roosevelt Lake" shown on maps.  On the internet I found an item on Thunder Mountain City.

This information is listed on it: "The town was located about three miles down  Monumental

Creek from Roosevelt. Although it  started as a mining camp, nothing developed and  it soon

became a way station and outfitting point on the wagon road into the neighboring mines.  The

remains of several log Buildings can still be seen."  Speaking of web sites, I have been doing

some work on the Museum web site. We now have Adams County cemetery records there,

plus some of the items we have for sale. The address is

<www.ctcweb.net/~jcpeart/history.htm>

  Also, this exciting news just in: Marguerite Diffendaffer has agreed to let us put the text

of her book "Council Valley--Here They Labored" on our web site. This book is out of print,

and will be a valuable resource for researchers. So... any of you "computerists" out there with a

copy of her book, and who are willing to type and e-mail me sections of her book--please

contact me, and we'll make sure no one duplicates another's work.

 

This is a series of History Corner articles about a trip to Thunder Mountain by Charles Luck in

1902.

 

    11-30-00

 I heard from several people about the photo of "Sheepeater's Monument" pictured in last

week's column. It is a natural formation located on Monumental Creek, and this "monument" is the reason the creek got this name. A main pack trail goes down the creek near this formation, but the nearest road is at least six miles away. It is at least that many miles below the old town of Roosevelt, which of course is now Roosevelt Lake. I'm told there are still a few buildings at the old town site. And the cemetery is located a short distance up Mule Creek.

   The larger top of the monument is more solid rock than the lower part, and stopped

erosion from above, leaving the column under it as the surrounding material wore away. It is the only formation of its kind in that area, although there are a few cliffs. The photo is hard to duplicate today because there are many more trees blocking the view. I understand the same lady who asked me about this also asked Pete Zimowski, and he put some info about it in the Statesman (Outdoor section) that came out on Thanksgiving day.  Concerning the transcribing of Council Valley -- Here They Labored onto our web site, a couple people made me realize we can scan the text and OCR it into a word processing program instead of retyping it all. Any of you out there who have scanners and are willing to help with this, please contact me (dafisk@ctcweb.net) and we'll get each person lined out on a section to scan. Anyone is welcome to contribute new material (on local historical people) that is not in the book. Just email it to me. If you can't do that, send me written info, and I'll get it in.

  So, are you tired of Thunder Mountain stories yet? I'm hoping not because I have

another one. This one was written by Charles W. Luck who was hired to make the journey to

Thunder Mountain to investigate the prospects for investing. His story begins below.

 

 In the fall of 1901, newspapers began printing strange and fascinating accounts of a gold strike in the  almost inaccessible wilds of central Idaho. Thunder Mountain was represented as a weird place where unaccountable, subterranean rumblings were heard from time to time. An Indian legend held that there was an immense cavern in the mountain. Bags of gold, it was asserted, were secretly being brought out. The first claim had been sold for $100,000. An account of the sale with a picture of the check was published in the Idaho Daily Statesman. And it was common news that another claim had sold for $125,000. Thunder Mountain was a large area of rich virgin ground,  unstaked, bounded only by the imagination. "First come, first served!"

  It was my good fortune to be in the midst of this one. I was where I could observe the

symptoms and feel the pulse. It is not an individual disease, this gold fever. Men have it only en

masse. That is why they can have it and be sane in every other respect. Being in it but not of it,

I could watch it spread and feel the increasing heat.  In January 1902 a mining broker in Salt

Lake City engaged me to go in and report on Thunder Mountain for some wealthy clients of his

in the East. They had money to invest but not to throw away. At once I began laying plans and

making arrangements to go as soon as it was possible to get in with pack horses. No data for a

report could be gathered while that mysterious region was covered with ten feet of snow. I

engaged a packer who would also serve as cook, and an assayer with a portable outfit.

  A student of electrical engineering who had come west for his health haunted my office.

He was such  a fine, intelligent fellow that I could hardly refuse him, although he was physically

unfit to go. For some months he had been living on Mellins Food, Horlicks Malted Milk, and

other pap for infants and invalids. He was nervous and couldn't sleep. What could I do with

such a man in my party? It required hardy, vigorous men for such a trip. He, however, urged so

persistently and appealingly that at last I told him to buy himself a horse, a sleeping bag and

strong, warm clothing. I warned him that I could not turn back if he gave out, but would have to

leave him at the nearest cabin whence he would have to make his way back to civilization as best he

could on his own horse. I was to pay him no wages but would provide him tent room

and grub of the standard variety, strong meat for men--no Nestles Food for Infants.  As spring

approached the lower valleys, the impatient crowd started.

     All winter it had been gathering numbers and enthusiasm. In April they brought out the

bodies of three men who had been caught in a snowslide on Elk Creek Summit. The effect of

that was to make room for three more adventurers who were ready in line to take their places.

 

12-7-00

 After I had already sent in my column last week, I heard from Ervin Bobo about the

Sheepeater's Monument. He packed for the Forest Service for many years and went by the

monument a number of times. He said it looked like it could fall over any minute; the material

looked very crumbly. He said it is 70 feet tall and six feet in diameter. (Zimo says 20 feet at the

base.)

      Now for more of Charles Luck's account of his trip to Thunder Mountain. We left

off last time after he had arrived in Council. He now tells how locals sold horses to the Thunder

Mountain "Argonauts."

  As pack horses were an essential part of every outfit, every available horse was

bought and then the boys scoured the hill for cayuses. Theyb drove them into corrals, wild eyed

and with kinks in their tails. They roped and threw them, put on a breaking bridle, slipped the

blinder over their eyes, cinched on a pack saddle and sacks of sand and let them buck. After

two or three days of this, they sold them to the Argonauts from the East for trustworthy pack

horses. And the Easterners bought greedily. They knew a horse when they saw one. It was an

animal with four legs, one on each corner.

  A party of young fellows from Pittsburgh camped next to me. Such an outfit!  A  silk

tent,  collapsible  table, chairs and cots, the finest of woolen blankets, aluminum ware galore--it

was rare  and expensive--and toggery! Such wonderful clothing for sportsmen I had never seen

before; the softest of leather, plush lined. Their guns of all kinds were just as wonderful. They

were sportsmen all right. Anybody could see that at a glance. They were prepared to meet all

the thrilling adventures they had found so truthfully described in those popular yellow covered

histories of the Wild West. They bought a bunch of those well broken cayuses. A cowboy

taught them to saddle and pack and throw the diamond hitch. I sat in my tent door and watched

them the day they started. They had no idea of apportioning arranging and balancing their

packs. From early morning until  afternoon they worked with a will if not with intelligence. They

put on each horse anything that happened to come to hand, and they piled things on as long as

they could make them stick. Then came the diamond hitch. There were varieties of it that no

packer in the mountains had ever seen.

  I couldn't help pitying the last fellow. Of course he had to take all that was left. He

piled it bravely on. The wonder is that the cayuse stood for it. At last he got it to stick and

threw over the hook of the last rope, caught the rope in the hook and stood wondering what to

do. He had forgotten the combination. He didn't dare to leave the horse to inquire lest the horse

also leave him. So he threw the end over and pulled it tight, then over and over again, winding it

around the pack and the horse like thread on a spool. While in camp the boys had bought

everything that they had forgotten before. These things were done up in store packages with

white cotton twine. As they wouldn't stay in the pack, he tied them on at convenient places, like

presents on a Christmas tree. Off he started leading the cayuse. It was a novel sight.     After a

while I followed to see how he was making it. A mile or so up the road I overtook him. One by

one the bundles had dropped off and he had picked them up and was carrying them in his arms.

As his hands were engaged, he had tied the halter rope around his waist. It was a perilous

position; if the cayuse started, it would drag him to death. For a moment my conscience smote

me. Ought I not to warn him of his danger? Then I reasoned that a fellow like that would

probably be killed anyhow; and if it happened near a railroad, it would be easier to send his

body to his friends.

     Several days more I sat and watched the crazy crowd stream by. My horses were on good

pasture and we could live off the town and not deplete our supplies. Men were rushing to the

snow barrier in the high mountains where they were feverishly digging trails through the snow

and building pack bridges over swollen streams while they ate their supplies and their horses

starved. Many a horse was barely kept alive on rolled oats, and many fell by the way.

Knowing the country and the conditions, I could time my movements to reach the high passes

as soon as the sappers and miners had cleared the way. Most of them had come from cities in

the East. Their white collars and stiff hats betrayed them. They wanted experience of the wild

life; so it was only fair to stand aside and let them go to it.

     In due time I moved my outfit up to Payette Lake, forty miles farther on the road to

the golden heart of Idaho. It was five thousand feet above sea level and within sight of Secesh

Summit where the trail was almost cut through the six or eight feet of melting snow banks.    To

be continued next week.

 

12-14-00

 Continuing with the story of Charles Luck.

On the way to the lake we came overnight at the village of Meadows. This little town had about one

hundred fifty inhabitants and seven saloons. That evening among the passengers on the stage from

Council was a young fellow from New York, a Harvard graduate and son of a millionaire. He had

impartially patronized  all  the  saloons  and had stretched out on the hotel sofa to sleep it off.   Some

shameless fellows who hadn't a bit of respect for a gentleman of learning and wealth wound a lariat

around him and the sofa. Then they placed the sofa in front of the big fireplace. They threw in an

armful of crumpled newspapers  and  shouted "fire!" Awaking and seeing the great blaze near him,

he made a desperate effort to escape, tipped  the  lounge  over and crawled out into the street on his

hands and knees with the lounge on his back. All the village was there to see the performance.

The artificial entertainment of the "movies" had not yet been invented. We enjoyed the real thing!

     Our start from the Lake was late the first day; for, even with experienced help, it takes

considerable time to get a packtrain strung out. We had five horses all heavily loaded. The most

surefooted carried my instruments, bed and personal equipment. The others carried tent, sheet iron

stove, cooking utensils, tools, provisions, beds and personal effects. So many things are

indispensable  on such a trip that the packs have to be culled and culled again until every

unnecessary thing is left behind and every necessary thing is remembered and in its place.

     It had rained the night before, and the day was so damp and cheerless that we decided not to

camp the first night but to stay at Fisher station, an old stopping place on the Warren route about   

miles above the head of the lake.

     A mile from station we heard wild shouting and pistol shots on the road back of us. Judging by

the rate at which the sounds were approaching, we knew that it was a gang of mounted men who

had tanked up at the Meadows--that was the last filling station until they got to Warren--and who

were riding hard. If they rode among us, we knew that our horses, fat and fresh from the bunch

grass, would stampede and scatter our packs, so we drew aside into the undergrowth out of sight

and let the howling mob pass. They went by on the run, swinging in their saddles and shooting their

guns.

     When we reached the station, they had already unsaddled, and our horses drifted in among

theirs. I untied the lash rope on the left side of my horse and went around to the right side to loosen

it. Up came the leader of the gang, a big, double fisted fellow, coat off, vest open, face flushed. As

he pulled a bottle of whiskey out of his hip pocket, I noticed that his pistol was not in the holster that

hung loosely at his belt. He had Probably laid it down with his coat when he unsaddled. Holding the

bottle over my horse's neck as he approached from the other side he said, "Hello stranger, have a

drink?" "No, thank you," I replied pleasantly. At that his face flushed darker. "You won't drink with

me'" asked he in an angry tone. "No," replied I in a quiet, friendly voice. "I won't drink with you. But

you needn't be offended. You offer it in a friendly spirit and  I   refuse it in the same. I wouldn't drink

with the governor or the president or the king of England. I don't drink and that's all there is about it."

"Come on boys," he shouted. "Here's a feller that won't drink. Let's make him dance."

    Now I was never much of a dancer and I had no notion of learning any new steps and high kicks

in my heavy, hobnailed shoes. I said nothing but kept an eye on him. His hand went back to the

empty holster. A perplexed frown came on his face. Venting his wrath in imprecations, he turned and

went into the cabin where his companions had already entered.

    As we piled our packs under the shake roof of the little shed, I said to the boys quietly, "It looks

as if we were going to have a happy, homelike time with that gang tonight. They won't bother you.

That big leader has it in for me. He's just drunk enough to do something wild and foolish. You go in

first. Sit around anywhere. Be quiet and good natured. If you act afraid, they'll think that they have

you bluffed. No matter what happens to me, you keep still and keep away. I'11  call  you  if I  need

your  help.  Then get busy and get busy fast."

    I sauntered in after the boys. On entering the door a quick glance showed me the whole situation.

The cabin was one room about twenty by twenty-four feet. A lean-to shed was the kitchen. The

beds were upstairs under the low roof. Along one side of the cabin ran a long board table with

benches. Along the other side were benches and stools occupied by the trail crowd. On my right

near the door was the heating stove. Just back of it against the wall was a bench on which sat the

dancing master. Beside the stove, nails were driven in the logs to hang clothes on.

     I passed along the side of the stove, then turned and crossed in front of it to the wall. With proper

deliberation, I took off my wet hunting coat and hung it on a nail. Nobody was talking; everybody

was watching me. Then I unbuckled the belt of my Colt's Automatic .38, removed it, rebuckled it

and hung it beside my coat with my right hand. I let my hand slide down the belt until it rested on the

butt of the pistol. Tuning my head, I looked square at the big one and talked to him with my eyes.

"You didn't know that I was armed. You came near a dancing party with yourself as sole performer.

But I treated you square. Now I expect you to treat me the same way. Otherwise get your gun, I'm

ready."

    Eight feet from him I stood as still as a statue, looking him straight in the eye until his eyes

dropped. At once I walked away and went to talking pleasantly with the others. Presently the

landlady  called  supper.  Afterwards  we smoked our pipes and went to bed. The next morning,

sober, the big one came up and shook hands with me. I have Since eaten many a meal in his cabin

but we have never mentioned the dancing party.

     To be continued.

 

 Has anyone heard of the "Bacon Hill Lookout"? Could it have been near Mesa? Let me know if you

have any information.

     Also, I got a letter from someone looking for information on Claude and Elsie Taylor who lived in Council. He did some mining near Thunder Mt. in the 1930s, and died sometime after 1961. She had a drinking problem and was admitted to the Council hospital several times. Please contact me if you have information on them.

 

12-21-00

     I asked for information on the "Bacon Hill Lookout" last week. Ervin Bobo, Clarke Childers and Kenny Mink gave me the benefit of their sharp memories. Here's the scoop. In the summer of 1942, either the State or the grazing association in the Goodrich area decided the risk of fire was great enough that a "smoke chaser" should be positioned where he could put out any fires that started. Gordon Ader, a young man just out of high school, was given the job. A tent on a wooden frame was placed on a hilltop about half to three-quarters of a mile northwest of the present County landfill.

For those of you who may be familiar with that location, its north of land John Gould owned for many years. There's an old homestead site with a pond just south of that hilltop; at least the pond was there until the subdivision boys came along with their bulldozers.

    There was also and old log corral there. Kenny said there was a phone line that went through

where the "lookout"  was at that time, so Ader probably had a phone to report fires.

     Clarke e-mailed me to add: " I remember it real well as it was in service when I was Fire

Dispatcher at Council in the later 1940's.  It was just a  high knob on the south side of the old

Goodrich road. The old road turned off just this side of the current landfill about 1/4 mile and went west towards Goodrich and hit the current Goodrich road again just this side of the river bridge. The smoke station was about 3/4 of a mile from the current road, and there was a kind of make shift road up to top of knob. The forest Service never put a building there--just kind of  a camp—and manned it when there was a lightning storm or some other need in fire protection. We had some trouble keeping help up there because there was lots of rattle snakes."

     Ervin loaned his horses and saddles for the project, and Ader started his vigil on July 1. About

two months later, money ran out to fund the endeavor. Ader was let go, and the "Bacon Hill

Lookout" fizzled into the shadows of history.

     Now back to the story of Charles Luck on his way to Thunder Mountain.

    Leaving the station, we began to encounter slush and mud. Frequently our horses splashed across the little streams that came roaring down the sides of the canyon. As the sappers and miners ahead had provided foot logs, we crossed dry shod. One of these was the size of a telephone pole and about twenty feet long. It lay so close to the rushing water that the spray kept it wet. But the hobnails in our shoes held us from slipping, and we crossed, all but our tenderfoot student. He hesitated and looked wistfully  at  us  on  the  farther  bank.  At school he had learned many things that didn't help him at all on that springy pole over the rushing water. However, as there was no other way, he tackled it. Out a few steps he lost his balance, stooped down quickly, put his hands on the pole, spread his legs and went down astride the pole. Then he cooned across with his legs dangling in the icy water. We called a halt while he emptied the water out of his shoes, wrung out his clothes and dressed. That night, beside the Upper Lake, we dried out before a roaring camp fire and were lulled to sleep by the distant sound of streams rushing down from the lofty, snow clad mountains that surrounded us.

     The next day we crossed Secesh Summit, a low pass across the Secesh Range, 6400 feet above sea level. All day we wallowed along the trail that had been tramped and shoveled through the snow by the eager multitude ahead. The snow banks on either hand were often as high as the packs. At one point a pack animal just ahead of us mired down. There was no detour possible. The whole procession had to wait while the poor thing was unpacked, pulled out of the mudhole and repacked.

In the meantime I climbed up where I could see the trail a half mile or so in either direction. It

showed an unbroken line of pack animals and men. Thousands were making the journey to the

rainbow's end to find the pot of gold.

    That night we reached the Burgdorf Hot Springs. This was an old stopping place on the road to

Warren. Freighters and prospectors and trappers had long made this their rendezvous. In the boom days of Warren a prospector had built his cabin here beside a hot spring that gushed copiously from the mountain side. By chance, the present proprietor passed that way and  acquired the claimant's right. This was thirty years before the Thunder Mountain boom. Some say that he got it for a song and some say that he didn't even sing but was lucky enough to hold four aces. At all events it fell into thrifty hands.

     Nature had placed this valuable spring where the lay of the land brought together the trail from the north, from Florence across the Salmon river; and the trail from the south where the great valley of the Snake river with its Oregon trail led to the base of supplies. From the spring it was a day's journey to Warren. Neither the comfortable, rambling hotel, part of logs and part of lumber, nor the delightful baths in the swimming pool could stay the feverish throng. We had to go. There would be time enough after we got our gold. The nuggets were waiting for us to knock them off the outcroppings. From the spring to Warren we followed a wagon track where thousands and thousands of gold hunters had passed in the 1860s. One sometimes wonders whether gold fever lingers in certain localities like a contagious disease in an old house.

 

            Warren was once more a busy place. It had two general stores, a meat shop, a post office, two saloons, a hotel and a few cabins. Most of the buildings were of logs and showed their age. Although the town had a fresh lease on life, it bore the depressing marks of a  worked-out mining camp. Along the stream for miles above and below the town, from foothill to foothill, the narrow valley was  othing but a mass of barren sand and gravel with interminable ridges of boulders. To get the little, shining specks of gold, the earth had been ripped and torn up and left barren and unsightly.

     A few miles beyond Warren we left the wagon road. It seemed to be the last thread that

connected us to the great, busy world of men. Before us lay the wilderness. At our feet stretched a yawning chasm, the canyon of the South Fork of the Salmon river. For many miles north and south of us the towering mountains had been cleft asunder. And there, four thousand feet below us, flowed a stream carrying the volume of a river on the slope of a mountain creek. Here we all tightened cinches and lash ropes, lest the packs slide over the horse's heads. Then down we walked and slid until our legs ached. Downhill travel is more tiresome and dangerous than uphill. It lames the muscles and chafes the feet. It is better to climb any time.

     To be continued.

 

12-28-00

 

    Continuing with the story of Charles Luck, on his way to Thunder Mountain in 1902.

    That evening at our camp on high bar near the river but out of sight of it, we heard the low

rumblings of thunder. But the day had been clear and the narrow strip of sky over our heads was

blue. At first we guessed that there must be a thunderstorm over the mountains out of sight. The

rumbling, however, continued until drowned in sleep. When the trail approached the river next

morning, we found that the thunder wasproduced by great boulders borne along by the terrific force

of the stream until they dropped off into holes with a dull crash that  reverberated along the canyon

walls.

     We crossed the raging torrent on a pole bridge thrown across between two jutting ledges where

the crowding walls of the canyon narrowed the stream to forty or fifty feet, a third of its usual width.

We were glad to camp where our horses could get something to eat. They had been living on

snowballs and pine grass for several days.

     Before us was Peg's Flat. From way back on the trail we had heard tell of that. Smooth and

grassy it lay on the mountain side half a mile long and reaching back a half mile, rising at an angle of

perhaps 25 degrees. It was so steep that animals could graze on it only by following the trails that

terraced the entire area. It was a flat on edge. To catch a horse grazing within plain sight on the

bunch grass at the upper edge, one had to climb about as high as a quarter of the way to the summit

of Mt. Washington.

     Now our way lay up Elk Creek. In seventeen miles from the river, we had to climb 5,700 feet to

Elk Creek Summit, a saddle 8,735 feet above sea level. The trail was often steep, narrow and

dangerous. At one place we saw the carcass of a horse that had evidently made a misstep and had

rolled down the mountain side and lodged in the brush on the bank of the creek.  Beside it lay the

body of a bull terrier. We later learned that the horse was a well bred city animal; heavily loaded, it

had stumbled and gone down.  The dog was his inseparable companion. The owner, unable to coax

the dog away, had led him with a rope for a day's journey. That night the dog took the back trail and

died beside his pal.

     Several miles farther up we encountered a risky bit of trail that ran for two hundred feet across

the face of a cliff. From the towering cliffs above to the foaming creek below stretched this surface

as smooth and hard as if the mountain side were covered with a great slab of concrete. It was so

steep that nothing could stand on it. Across this a narrow furrow had been picked and blasted for a

trail. About halfway, a low rib of rock ran down across the trail and for some reason, or more likely

without a reason, had not been blasted out. The horses had to step over this. In doing so, my horse

caught one front foot in the crevice of the rock. Instantly I sensed the impending loss of horse and

pack; for if he lived to get to the creek, he would be swept away. Nothing but a trout could live in

such a torrent.  I got out of the way and gave him room and time to figure it out for himself. With

wonderful sagacity he put his head down and examined the situation carefully. Then he moved his

hind feet up to the ridge. Suddenly he reared back on his haunches, thus pulling his foot out in the

same line in which he had put it in, the only way in which he could get it out without injury. Bounding

lightly over the obstruction he landed with all four feet safely on the trail. That was a case of horse

sense on the part of both of us.

     That night we camped at the Smoke House in the edge of the rapidly melting snow. It was a

roughly built log cabin with a rude fireplace without a chimney. For windows and a doorway there

were holes in the walls which could be closed with a gunny sack, a bit of canvas or old blanket. It

had been hastily built by the advance guard who had braved the winter storms and, after building this

had fought their way over the summit about three miles beyond. The trail that was dug during the day

was often blown full again in the night and the work had to begin again.

    Just over the summit was where the three men from Weiser, mentioned earlier, had been caught in

a snow slide in December. When we crossed the next day, the trail had worn down in the snow so

far as to disclose, embedded in the ice, a piece of rope, the corner of a quilt and the edge of a sack

of flour that had belonged to their pack; marking for these men the end of their struggle for gold.

    To be continued.

 

1-4-01

   Continuing with the story of Charles Luck on his way to Thunder Mountain.

     We had now crossed the divide between the South and the Middle Forks of the Salmon River

and were on the down-hill pull. The rugged heart of Idaho is typical of life. If you are not going up,

you are going down. The trail cut in the deep snow to get down had thawed and settled until it was

almost impassable. The snow, however, was still so deep that it was impossible to find another way

around the down timber and the long stretches of slide rock. There was the carcass of a horse that

had caught his leg in a crevice among the rocks and had to be killed.  Another had slipped and fallen

against a snag and knocked out an eye. One of our horses got a front foot caught in the roots of a

tree. It could not be extracted. A struggle would have caused a broken leg. But the horse stood still

while we got an axe and cut the root.

    That day was the hardest yet; for we had to keep plodding on through slush and mud, splashing

through  swollen streams and climbing over down timber until we got down far enough to find grass

for the horses. Then we made camp.

     Our invalid helped unpack and hobble the horses, cut wood for the cook, ate more bacon and

beans, hot biscuits and black coffee than was good for two men, slipped into his sleeping bag and

slept like a healthy child for ten hours. This strenuous life in the open is the medicine for nervous

disorders. Now we were out of the snow. The endless line of expectant adventurers, always in sight

ahead and behind, made the way certain. We followed down Smith Creek to Big Creek thence on

down to Monumental Creek. There were occasionally little flats where the going was grassy and

pleasant. Often we crossed rocky talus under majestic cliff sand stretches of slide rock that flowed

down almost as it seemed from the sky, filling narrow clefts in the rock ribs of the  mountains.

     Down Crooked Creek came a trail from the north. Here we met the stream of prospectors who

had set out from Stites and Grangeville and had followed the old routes laid out by the prospectors

of '81, when they discovered the Salmon River placers. These latest descendants of the pioneers fell

not one whit behind their forefathers in calm and confident contempt for dangers and hardships. They

crossed the raging torrent of the wicked, treacherous river and climbed the great mountain mass that

flanked it on the south. Over the snow fields on the high ridges and slopes of the mountain they

moved slowly; rugged, hardy, determined men. Food, clothing, tools, all their belongings were in

packs on their backs or on sleds. Others had bundles done up in green cow hides which they

dragged on the snow, always taking care to have the line of friction with the grain of the hair. That

seems a small matter, the matter of hair, until you try it.

     The next night we camped among forty tents on a little flat opposite the mouth of Monumental

Creek. Big Creek flows east; Monumental Creek, north. Up the latter ran the old Indian trapper trail

to the land of our dreams, the goal of our struggles, the consummation of our fortunes, Thunder

Mountain.

   Alas! the creek was in high flood. It was evident that the trail was intended for use only in time of

low water. It threaded its way up the deep, narrow gorge continually crossing and re-crossing the

stream to follow the little flats. Sometimes the mountain walls crowded together until there was

scarcely room for the stream between the towering cliffs. In such places the trail was forced to take

to the bed of the creek. But now no man and no horse could keep his feet in that mad torrent. It is

doubtful whether he could touch bottom. So a new trail had to be cut to eliminate the twenty

crossings.

    While this work was in progress, the gold seekers camped at the mouth of the creek. They built a

pack bridge across Big Creek to a narrow flat at the mouth of Monumental. Two trees, a foot and a

half to  two  feet  in  diameter, were thrown across and hauled in place by many strong anti willing

hands. Small trees from six to ten inches in diameter, were cut in lengths of five feet and split in two.

The slabs were laid with the flat side up and the round side notched into stringers. When the horses

crossed, it teetered and swayed. But green wood does not break easily, however much it may spring

and bend. And who cared for the tumult of the rushing torrent that swept in dizzy swirls and eddies

within three feet of the bridge? This was the trail to gold!

     The report that the trail was nearly ready reached camp the day of our arrival. To make sure, I

left the packtrain in camp and proceeded on foot. Beyond the bridge the trail followed a narrow flat

bounded on one side by Monumental Creek and on the other by a vertical wall of rock that

gradually approached the creek. As it did so, the flat rose until it was twelve or fifteen feet above the

water, so that the trail was on a narrow shelf overhanging the creek. There it made an abrupt turn at

right angles and ascended a chute between rock walls which was so steep that I crawled up it on all

fours. Thirty or forty feet of this led to the top of the bluff where the going was better. Men were

digging and blasting a trail around this dangerous place.

     The ends of the new trail had been brought up and down until only about twenty feet of smooth,

steep rock remained to be blasted away. As I stood watching the work, a French-Canadian

prospector suddenly appeared on the top of the rock. Beside him stood his little burro with his head

cocked on one side and his great ears pointed forward. He carried such a bulky pack that little of

him showed but head, tail and legs. Presently came the inquiry, "Is ze trail fini?" Then he deliberately

slid down the rock and the burro followed with as little concern as if that were a regular part of the

day's programme.

    To be continued next week.

     I would like to thank Shirley Wing for a very nice donation to the Museum. We really appreciate

it.

     The book that Don Dopf and I are writing about the history of the P&IN is going to the printer,

and it should be done in a week or two. The price will be about $20.  Watch this column and ads in

the Record for more information.

 

1-11-01

The continuing story of Charles Luck on his journey to Thunder Mountain.

     Early next day the camp was alive and stirring. The trail was open; the rush was on. Before noon

the last tent was on its way to the land of gold. Nothing was left to mark the site of the tent city but

the ubiquitous tin cans.

 This creek up which we were traveling drained the west side of Thunder Mountain. On account of

the curious pinnacle and spires and grotesque shapes left by the erosion of the rocky walls, it was

called Monumental Creek. It flowed in a great gash in the mountains that gave a water grade, pretty

steep in places, to the land of promise.

     The little flat where we camped was the best, almost the only, available safe townsite in this

region. It comprised a few acres of jumbled up rocks and ground, the debris that had washed out of

a side canyon where a brook emptied into Monumental Creek. Here we found men who had set out

from Weiser in February and had struggled through the winter storms to reach the goal only two

weeks ahead of us. And there were others who had passed on weeks in advance of us at Council

and had arrived but the day before. This was the end of the trail.

     The camp grew as by magic. Every little smooth piece of ground among the rocks had a tent on

it. Near the center was a large tent, about twenty by thirty feet. That was the saloon. The bar was

made of roughly hewn poles supported on posts. A few glasses and several kegs of red eye and

boxes of cigars and tobacco constituted the stock in trade. Men sat around on blocks sawed from

logs and played cards on tables improvised from scraps of boards that had come in boxes. At night

especially, the place was filled with a motley crowd and tobacco smoke, prospectors, tin horn

gamblers, adventurers of all kinds. A woman ran this chute to the inferno. Now and then we were

awakened by a shot or two in the night. We simply flattened out as close to the ground as we could

and hoped that the rash fellow would shoot high.

     As soon as permanent camp was made, everybody hastened to see the Dewey mine and its five

stamp mill. No one without a permit was allowed to enter those enchanted precincts. The crowd

stood on the adjacent mountainside and gazed in silent awe and wonder. From the mine an elevated

tramway carried the ore cars to the crusher on the top floor of the mill. With several others I slippeddown and got a pan of fine ore that had apparently dropped from the cars. At all events it was underthe tramway and that was enough to satisfy men who wanted to be satisfied. And it panned gold, a nice string of colors.

     While the eager crowd scattered out to stake claims for miles around, I retired to a good view

point and sat down to meditate. Here was a good chance for a man to use his head, if it was yet on

his shoulders. Nearly everybody seemed to have lost his on the trail. Up high on the mountain side,

there was no place for extensive placers. Yet it was placer gold that first called attention to this

camp. Some hunters, prospecting about, had found a piece of peculiar ground. It seemed like a hard

clay formation that weathered and slaked on the surface. Then the hard stuff had to slake through

another year before it could be washed again. That couldn't be real placer ground. There was no

gravel, no evidence that a river or any stream larger than a rivulet had ever flowed here. Moreover,

the surface indications showed that this mountain was of volcanic origin.

      And there was another curious thing. The mountain side was covered with lodge pole pines.

These trees grow very tall and straight with only a tuft of foliage at the top and are seldom more than

eight to twelve inches in diameter. They always stand vertical.

    Now, just below the mine and mill was a patch of ground comprising several acres on which the

pines stood in a crazy fashion. In places the tops interlaced or crossed one another; in other places,

they leaned apart.  The strange conditions seemed to occur in alternating rows that reached clear

across the patch. On examination I found a wrinkled  surface with long,  parallel waves. The trees

near the crests of the waves leaned apart. Those in the troughs leaned together, the trees still

maintaining a position nearly perpendicular to the surface on which they had grown. It was evident

that there had been a landslide in recent times. The trees appeared to be about sixty years old. When

the slide reached the bottom of the little draw where Mule Creek ran past the mill, the lower edge

could go no farther and the weight above had crumpled the surface.

 

 Following this clue up the mountainside, within half a mile I found where the slide had broken loose.

It was perfectly plain; a small volcanic nipple, or vent, had broken loose and slid down, carrying the

surrounding surface with it. The gold in the placer and the Dewey mine came from  that.

    As soon as it was mined to the parting seam on which it had slid, the mine would be gone. If all

the gold there could have been recovered, it would not have paid half the transportation charges of

the crowd that had followed the gold trail to Thunder Mountain.

    The last Charles Luck episode next week.

 

Caption for photo:

 The Dewey Stamp Mill.  Set up in the manner common to mills of its type and era, ore entered the

mill from the chute high above. It would then go through a hammer mill to pound it into small pieces.

One of these buildings undoubtedly contained a large wooden vat or two in which the ore was

soaked in a cyanide and water solution to leach out the gold. After the acid solution was no longer

needed, it went down the creek. That's why C.W. Neff said they had to hike a ways to find fish.

 

1-18-01

 

    This is the last installment of the Charles Luck story:

 

 Now that the purpose of the trip had been accomplished I could return to Weiser and make myreport to the men  who hired me. Returning over the trail was somewhat uneventful, and yet it was atthe Burgdorf Hot Springs that I ran into the one person who had really made a strike. I stopped at the hot springs because after roughing it for weeks, a civilized man likes to sleep under a roof, take a hot bath and eat a few square meals with his feet under the table. The adventurers, the prospectors,promoters, packers, reporters who spend their time in such a place were always eager for news and something new. This time they really had something unusual to talk about.

     Fred [Burgdorf], the proprietor, wanted to find a parson to marry him. He was an old bachelor who had lived there in the wilderness for thirty years, nearly four hundred miles from the nearestrailway station. No wonder he had lived in single blessedness and peace. But a woman had

appeared on the scene. For two weeks the bride and the marriage license had been waiting. Nowgreat was the rejoicing. A minister had just arrived. [Though Mr. Luck did not admit it in hismemoirs, his family later believed that he was the minister.]. His appearance was a little strange as he

wore high boots with hobnails and a gray sweater with a broad red band around body and arm. Thebride judiciously let it be known that she hoped he wouldn't wear that at the wedding.    

To clothe the minister appropriately, all the guests went to digging up their finery. One furnished a

vest; another, a cut-away coat made for a smaller man. By standing straight, the minister managed tokeep from splitting it down the back. Someone discovered  an ancient necktie. The groom had ablack broad cloth suit, and the bride a beautiful and becoming silk dress. William Allen White

thumped chords on the piano. It wasn't just like the wedding march from Lohengrin, but it served the same purpose and few knew the difference. The parson knew his part, although he didn't look it. The cook set out a wedding supper hard to beat and few have ever been enjoyed more.

            And who do you suppose was the bride? The woman whom I had seen in Council. She had fearlessly set out on the trail to seek her fortune. With the instincts of a true prospector and with a prescience far beyond that of the male of the species, she knew pay dirt; she recognized gold when

she found it. Why go all the weary miles to Thunder Mountain? In true mining fashion, she made a discovery, set her stakes, did the location work to hold her claim and got a legal patent on it.

             Luck's story ends here, but there is some personal information about the man. Charles Luck was born in Ohio in 1857, graduated from Harvard University, and became a minister. After studying in Europe and spending three years in Guatemala, he pastored churches in New England; Pocatello,

Idaho; and Ogden, Utah.  In 1898 he served as the first regular pastor of the Weiser Congregational Church. Shortly after 1900, he engaged in civil and mining engineering, a vocation which he followed until 1942 when his eye-sight failed him. He was county surveyor for Washington County for many

years. In 1902 or 1903 he acquired a beautiful parcel of land extending into Payette Lake from the east. This area, known as Luck's Point, now contains many fine summer homes. He died in 1945 at age eighty-eight, and is buried in the Hillcrest Cemetery in Weiser.

 

Caption for photo attached as <luck.jpg>:   Charles Luck at his home in Lardo (McCall) in 1922.

 

1-25-01

Some time ago I wrote. a little about the Burt family at Fruitvale. Those of you who were around here more than 30 years ago probably remember that there used to be a number of Burts liv­ing at Fruitvale. Now there are none. Last fall, Cyril Burt gave me a copy of a book he had written entiled, "Ethel" about his moth­er, Ethel Burt. Part of her story encompasses enough local history that I thought it fitting to share it with you.

You may remember that back in June I wrote a little about the Burts. Charles and Eunice Burt came to Fruitvale from Caldwell in 1924. They, had six sons: Charles, Harry, William (Will), Fred, Harold, Claude, and one daughter: May Hulse. Harold married a Fruitvale girl, Violet McMahan (Raleigh's daugh­ter) in 1926. Claude also married a neighbor girl, Alice Clark in 1927.

The story of the Burt fam­ily is somewhat mixed in with the history of the rail­road. In my column back in April of 1999, I wrote about the train wreck at Fruitvale that Harold and Charley Burt were in. May Burt Hulse's husband, Arthur Hulse, was the Fruitvale section foreman in 1925 when he was killed in a motor car (speeder) wreck. He was the father of Edna Rice and Eunice Finn. The story of both of these wrecks will be in the His­tory of the P&IN book that should be ready for sale in a couple weeks. As fate would have it, now that the book is already being printed I found more on the Hulse's fatal wreck in Cyril's book.

 

First, to set up the story, I need to fill in a little back­ground from the perspec­tive of Cyril's book. As near as I can tell, the story of at New Meadows when Will worked for the railroad in the early 1920s. Next, they gave W.W. Propst a Model T as a down payment on his shoe shop in Council and moved to a house in town.

Cyril tells the story of Arthur's death: Ethel and her three children were in Fruitvale visiting with Aunt May Hulse and her hus­band, Art. She needed to get back to their place in Council. Will was working in the shoe shop and would be home soon. Art had to tow a motor car he had been using back to Coun­cil, so Ethel asked him if she and her children could ride on one of the motor cars. There was plenty of room for them to ride but it was against the rules set by the Pacific and Idaho Northern Railroad Compa­ny.

Aunt May said. "Oh Art, let them ride that little bit, it won't hurt a thing." Having had experience in bending the rules a little when he worked for the Union Pacific Railroad Company in Teton Basin, he was reluctant to take that risk again. He and some of his crew had taken a motor car down the track from Driggs to go fishing on the Teton River and the road-master came along. A couple of days later Art received his time check. Having a Ger­ man name people hated, because of World War I, caused more of a problem than a harmless little fish­ing trip on the Teton River. However, that was in 1918 and now, seven years later, he was not about to take that chance again. He told Ethel she had better ride the "Gallopin-Goose."

Art checked the train schedule and decided to head toward Council, driv­ing his motor car and tow­ing the one he had bor­rowed while they repaired

his. Ethel and her children went down to the depot to catch the Gallopin-Goose for the six-mile ride to Council. Art was put-put putting along on his gas powered motor car when one of the front wheels came off. Someone at the repair shop had neglected to key the wheel on, caus­ing the accident. When the dust settled, both motor cars had jumped the track and Arthur Pierce Hulse was dead. He left a wife, who was expecting a baby, and three daughters, Eunice, Esther and Edna.

It was November 4, 1925. As the Gallopin-Goose went clicking along the track between Fruitvale and Council, Ethel and her three children were enjoy­ing the ride. Suddenly the engineer slammed on the brakes and stopped. A few minutes later the conductor came back and told Ethel about the motor cars being derailed and the section foreman was hurt! Ethel knew the section foreman was her brother-in-law and the tears streamed down her cheeks. She realized how close she had come to being on those motor cars with her family. As a result of the accident Art Hulse died and May lost the baby she was expecting.

According to her, the little girl was born dead, with a mark on her head in the same place as the mark on her father's head, caused by the wreck. Dr. Higgs said he had never seen anything like it!

Actually, Art Hulse lived until he arrived at the Weiser hospital, but died before any attempt could be made to save him.

I'll have another story involving the Burts and a fatal accident next week.

 

2-1-01

This week I'm once again quoting from Cyril Burt's book "Ethel" about his moth­er, Ethel Burt and her hus­band, Will.

Gene [Eugene] was Ethel's first child, a handsome lit­tle boy who made life worthwhile for this young couple. One day when he was just learning to talk, he fell and hurt himself. Cry­ing, he came running to his dad who said, "Be tough son," and Gene said, "I be tough Daddy." From then on, whenever he got hurt he would always say, "I be tough Daddy."

Gene and his cousin, Cleon, (who we called Buster) had a job working for Clarence Ivie about a mile north of Fruitvale. They were digging a place in the hillside, along the road in front Clarence's house, so he could have a "dugout" garage for his Model T Ford. [This was December of 1934. Gene was 13 years old at the time.]

Al [Alvin] Bounds, a hand­some young man from Council, about twenty-one years of age, was dating Clarence's daughter. He came out of the house car­rying a shotgun and wear­ing a pistol in a shoulder holster. He put the shotgun in his Model A Ford and walked over to where Gene and Buster were working. Gene said, "What are you doing with that hog-leg? I'll bet you a a dollar you can't hit that tomato can over there." Al said, "I'll bet you don't have a dollar." When Gene showed him that he had a dollar in his purse, Al pulled a 22-Colt semiau­tomatic pistol from the hol­ster, pointed it at Gene and said, "I'll take that money." He pulled the trigger and shot Gene, with the bullet clipping his right forearm, entering his right side, and out his back near the back­ bone!

[Cyril said Al apparently thought the chamber was empty.] Gene felt a sharp pain near his backbone where the bullet came out and saw blood on his arm! He was still standing, but had dropped the purse from his hand. Al said, "Did it hit your body?" Gene assured him that it had. Cleon stood speechless, not believing what he had just witnessed. The thought came to Gene's mind that he might not be home for Christmas. Al put Gene in his Ford sedan headed for Council, seven miles away. Halfway to Council they saw some pheasants along the road. Al wanted to stop and shoot the pheasants, but Gene told him to get going.

They found Dr. Thurston, and he told A] to carry Gene upstairs to his office, over the drug store, then go get Ethel! Upon examination, Dr. Thurston knew the seri­ousness of Gene's condition and started making calls to get him into the hospital at Ontario, Oregon. Gene felt embarrassed when Dr. Thurston called the county officials to arrange for the bill at the hospital to be paid. He knew that Ethel and Will could not handle the hospital costs. It had been a little over a year since Will had given the doctor alfalfa seed to pay for him delivering Frances.

Will was working at New Meadows and could not be located. When Ethel arrived, the doctor put her and Gene in his Lincoln Zephyr automobile, wrapped blankets around them and headed for Ontario. Doctor Thurston was a fast driver in an emergency but the fog on the Mesa Hill slowed him down considerably. It was bitter cold and the fog stuck to the windshield, making it necessary to roll the window down and stick his head out, risking a frostbitten face.

As they were approaching the Arch Clark place, just a few miles northeast of Cam­bridge, the Lincoln Zephyr konked out, so Doctor Thurston ran into Arch's place and used the tele­phone to call for his back­up car, another Lincoln Zephyr. Arch asked the doctor how the boy was doing and the doctor quietly replied, "I don't think he will live until we reach the hospital!". As they trans­ferred Gene and Ethel into the backup car, the blood on the blankets indicated the seriousness of the sit­uation.

[The Adams County Leader for Dec. 14, 1934 said the bullet "passed through the lung, the liver and one kidney."]

After consultation at the Ontario hospital, the doc­tors decided not to operate, thinking Gene's condition was too critical to withstand surgery. They decided a few days of intensive care might be better, so Doctor , Thurston headed back to Council and Ethel stayed alone with Gene. It was not the first time this wonderful mother had stood alone in a crisis.

When Will came home from New Meadows Satur­day night (December 8, 1934) he found his kids were scattered around the community, his wife not home and his oldest son in the hospital in Ontario, near death's door. After borrowing a few dollars from his sister, May, to buy gasoline, Claude, Harold, Will and his son, Cyril, climbed into his 1927 Reo Speedwagon and headed for Ontario.

The fog stuck to the wind­shield of that old Reo panel wagon, making it impossi­ble to see the road. Will took a sack of Bull Durham tobacco and rubbed it on the glass windshield, which seemed to help but he still had to roll down the window to see the road. There was not a heater or defroster in the car. Every­one was almost frozen when they arrived at the hospital in Ontario. Ethel and Will put in a tough night at the hospital, wondering what would become of their old­est son. The Elders came and administered to Gene and made arrangements for Ethel to stay at a church member's house, near the hospital. Scott B. Brown, brother of President Hugh B. Brown was one of the Elders.

As Will prepared to go back home the next day, Ethel said, "I want Cyril to stay here with Gene so that he will always remember him," Cyril stayed in Ontario with his mother and Gene. Some fifty-seven years later, in telling the story to the author, Gene said, "I never remember being awake in the hospital when Mom was not by my side." The nurses put a cot in the private room and this wonderful mother's con­stant vigilance was typical of the kind of person she was.

Christmas Eve (1934) the hospital staff was having a tree lighting party in the hall near Gene's room. The nurses rolled Gene's bed over by the door so he could see the tree lights. Ethel and Cyril were there as the nurses gave each of the patients a small gift and sang Christmas carols. Next morning, Christmas day, they discovered that Gene was hemorrhaging inside and had to have emergency surgery. Doctor Thurston was notified, and he headed for Ontario after calling the Fruitvale store and telling them to get in touch with Will!

Will had just sat down at the table with his kids to have Christmas dinner with Fred and Irene's family, when word came that Gene was in critical condition and had to undergo emergency-surgery. He ran over to his father's place to clean up. As he was shaving, he looked into a mirror on the wall and saw Al Bounds, speeding in his Model A Ford, pulling kids on sleighs behind his car. Will, with tears in his eyes, said, "I guess he is trying to kill someone else's son!"

Will arrived at the hospital just as they were getting ready to wheel Gene into the operating room. As they passed Ethel and Will, Gene looked at his father and said, 'I'll be tough Dad!" Alvin S. Thurston, one of the finest surgeons to ever handle a scalpel, operated on Gene, taking out half of one kidney. As Will watched, it looked to him like they would cut Gene in two, as the incision went from the middle of his stomach to his backbone. They closed the incision with two stitches. Will thought Gene had died and they would not bother sew­ing him back up, but the Doctor told him he did it so it would drain. Prayers were being answered on that eventful day.

[After about six weeks in the hospital. Gene stayed in Council with Claude and Alice Burt (his aunt and "uncle). Like many in the Council area, the Burt fam­ily considered Dr. Thurston to be a virtual miracle worker.] Cyril wrote, "The ability of this master sur­geon and a devoted and loving mother caused Gene

to completely recover from the shooting."

Cyril continued the story: "On two occasions Carl Swanstrom, the County Attorney, came to see Will,

trying each time to convince him that Al Bounds should be arrested, or at least held accountable, for the dam­ ages he had caused. Will ages he had caused. Will said, 'To put another man's son in prison will not make my son any better.' "

 

2-8-01

This week's batch of pho­tos comes to you courtesy of Arlene Waggoner Bossi (CHS class of 1948) via my history correspondent in Missouri, Bob Hagar.

These pictures show what has not been an uncommon occurrence on the corner where Highway 95 turns onto Illinois Avenue in Council at the east end of town: an overturned truck. As near as the people who were here at the time can pin it down, this happened around Christmas time in 1950. The truck was haul­ing salmon. I'm not sure how it came about, but a number of Council people feasted on some good sal­mon meat as a result of this situation.

The only other information I have about the wreck was a question posed by Bob Hagar: "Who was it that placed a slab of fish on the under seat heater of the coach's (McCord's?) new Buick?"

And while I'm quoting Bob, he sent some memo­ries that tie into last week's mention of Dr. Thurston. Both Dr. Thurston and Dr. Gerber had offices upstairs in the old drug store build­ing on the northwest corner of Galena and Illinois. It's now a bed and breakfast with Bear Country Books downstairs.

Bob wrote: "I remember Doc Gerber's office, that's now the B & B where we've stayed several times over the past 10 years. The old steps up to the office still creak just like they did back then. I remember the time she broke off a drill in one of my teeth and then had to drill most of the tooth away to get the broken drill out."

"I also remember when my dog. Lou, misjudged while jumping over a barb wire fence and tore a big gash in

her belly. I carried her up the steps with tears in my eyes, past the folks in Doc Thurston's waiting room. He told me to bring her right on in, and he stitched her up while the people continued to wait. And of course there was no charge. Wonder how the HMOs would handle that today?"

We now have Marguerite Diffendaffer's book, "Council Valley Here They Labored," on our Museum web site. BIG thank you's go to Troy Schwartz and Roy Gould who, between the two of them, scanned the entire book and e-mailed it to me. I have also added other family names to the existing information, and will be adding more. If you have corrections to the original book, or if you have addi­tional information ,that would be good to have available to the public (such as info about more families that should be included), please e-mail it to me at' dafisk@ctcweb.net or mail it to me at Box 252, Council.

 

5 photos:

1—Looking north. The main Wayside building is in the background. This building is still there, just south of the Starlite Motel.

2—Looking southeast. The big billboard signs must have been designed to be read as drivers approached the turn from the north. Do you suppose the driver of this truck was reading the billboard instead of watching the road?

3—Looking southwest. One of the buildings in the background (probably the closest one) was originally the parsonage of the Methodist Church. It was torn down a few years ago.

4—Quite a crowd has gathered by this time. This is looking north and a little east again. The Wayside building is just showing in the left background. Looks like it was still a gas station from the looks of it. (?)

5—Arlene Waggoner in the cab. Her father, Ervin Waggoner, was probably Adams County Sheriff at this time. He was a jack-of-all-trades who was, at various times, janitor at the high school, owner of the shoe shop, and manager of the Golden Rule Store.

 

2-15-01

It's done! The book Don Dopf and I have written about the P&IN Railroad is rolling off the press and ready for sale. Just in case you've missed my mention of this book over the past year or two, the book con­sists of:

1--The History of the Pacific & Idaho Northern Railroad that ran from Weiser to New Meadows-­from construction to destruction

2--A mile by mile listing of facilities and points of interest along the line. (This will be handy for trail hikers) .... Comprehensive details on every locomotive that ever ran on the line (Don's a train nut) and a history of various types of equipment, including the story of the "Galloping Goose"

3--Accounts of the various products that were shipped on the line

4--Great stories of wrecks that occurred over the years

5--Stories of people who built, worked on, or ran the rail line

6- Over 130 photographs, some of which have never been published before.

The price will be $19.95 (plus 5% sales tax if you live in Idaho = $20.95 total.) Getting the book by mail will cost $4.00 more for shipping and handling = $24.95 for Idaho residents, $23.95 if you're out of state. $4.00 more for ship­ping and handling = $24.95. Writer's Press, a digital, on-demand printer in Boise, is printing the book. If you would like the book mailed to you, the fas­test way to order is to call them at 1-800-574-1715 or Fax 208- 327-3477, or email <publish@writerspress.com >. They take all major credit cards. You can also send a check to Writer's Press, 2309 Mt. View Dr., #220, Boise, ID 83706.

The book will be available in Council exclusively at Buckshot Mary's--hopefully starting on February 20th (Tuesday).

This week I'm starting on the subject of grain har­vesting in this area, plus a little about the subject in general--especially in the days of horse-powered machines. Kenny Mink was kind enough to loan me a magazine article on the subject, as well as letting me copy a few of his family photos for the Museum.

Farming in the Council area was, and is, different from farming in areas where the fields can be really large. So some of what I'll cover applies more to tech­niques used in other areas, but are still interesting.

A number of farming inno­vations have come from the Midwest or . the Palouse area, where fields are sometimes measured in sections or parts of sections instead of by the acre. In  order to work these huge areas, farmers were always looking for better ways to get the job done. (Unless otherwise noted, the quotations here are from "Persimmon Hill" magazine, which is a publication of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center.)

"One of those better ways was the gang plow, pulled by multiple hitches of horses and mules. The wheat farmer in the North­west became a skilled teamster, using six, eight, or even more horses for plowing, harrowing and seeding." These "big hitch­es" were usually only used on the big acreages, and were not popular in many regions, including this area.

"Farming with horses and mules was vastly different from the techniques used in today's mechanized agricul­ture. The day started at 4 a.m. with feeding and grooming of the work ani­mals in their stalls." I've heard many a story from my parents of how people put in what seemed like half a day's work before break­fast.

"Following breakfast, they were harnessed. If a large team was being prepared, several men would each take responsibility for half a dozen animals." "Collar pads covered with striped pillow ticking went over the withers of each animal, serving the same purpose as a saddle pad. Collar pads helped protect the draft animal from pinching and assured a snug fit. Every horse and mule had his very own collar, and there was no trading around. Hard use shaped each collar to a custom fit, and a swap could gall the unfortunate animal that had to wear it."

"Working horses and mules differed from the saddle animal, with steep, straight shoulders that made them rough gaited. Those steep shoulders allowed the collar to fit firmly in place for good

pulling power. A horse with a sloping shoulder would put excessive pres­sure on the points of his shoulders, causing galls and damaging his gaits if used hard."

"Size varied according to use. A medium-sized horse or mule, not weighing over 1,400 pounds, was pre­ferred for multiple hitches, since that size of animal could work closely with another. Smaller stock did light work, like pulling a buggy or harrow. Larger drafters were used for con­ventional pair hitches or heavy work, such as plow­ing or logging. Too large a horse was clumsy and diffi­cult to control; he was designed for pulling freight wagons on the farm roads."

I've" always found it inter­-esting that almost all the horses in old photographs taken around here the horses in harness are not big draft horses. They look about the size of an ordi­nary saddle horse, and they were never fat.

 

2-22-01

            I’m continuing with the subject of horse power, and quoting from "Persimmon Hill" magazine.

 

            Plowing teams varied in numbers from six, able to plow about four acres daily with a two-bottom plow, to sixteen, capable of taking a four-bottom plow through eighteen aces a day. At least one farmer drove a team of thirty, in three ranks often, from the back of a saddle horse that followed the plow.

            At seeding time, six horses could cover twenty-five acres with a ten-foot drill, compared to about twenty for the four-horse team with an eight-foot drill. A four-section harrow smoothed things up afterward with six horses, going over about thirty-five acres daily.

            The larger the implement, the more horses or mules needed to pull it. A large implement also meant that the job got done faster--all-important when every day counted. Since horses needed periodic rests, this cut down on the amount of work done--not like the tractor that ran around the clock if drivers and spare parts were available.

            Farming operations that had more than twenty head generally used mules, which were steadier and more skillful at climbing and descending hills without going sideways or losing speed. Intelligent mules wouldn't overwork themselves and stood heat better than horses. The mule also wouldn't overeat or drink too much water at once, making him easier to take care of. However, he understood what quitting time meant and would take a rest if he felt like it.

As an example of the cleverness of mules, my father recalled taking a pair out with the harrow one spring. The first trips around the field went just fine. After a couple hours, their ten-year-old driver began getting a little weary and just a little careless. Suddenly the mules bolted as one, galloping toward a deep ditch that bordered the field, not heeding the reins or voice of the youngster. The team leaped the ditch, dropping the harrow neatly into the muck and wedging it against both banks like a bridge. They stopped and rested for nearly an hour while the harrow was freed, then consented to work for another few hours. Then it was the same story all over again. Whenever they wanted a rest, they headed for the ditch.

Some horses were that smart, but not as clever as the mule in evading work. A forceful teamster could work a horse to death, or cause it to go down with heat exhaustion. Other drivers prided themselves on never galling an animal and never making one ill.

While horses and mules turned the earth in the nineteenth century inventors were busily solving the problem of steam and gas power for general use. Steam engines were first built to provide belt-driven power for threshers and other small machines, but they required a team of work animals to move from place to place. Even though steam locomotives moved goods and people from one end of the country to the other, mechanics still hadn't figured out how to move a steam engine half a mile down the road. When the self-propelled steamers came out, their primary use was plowing and threshing. From the 1870s to the 1920s, monster engines weighing as much as twenty tons performed those specialized chores on American farms before becoming obsolete.

But the work teams still did the everyday chores and the seeding, harrowing, and all the other things that had to be done between plowing and harvesting. There was no such thing as firing up the Ajax or the Peerless to run out and pick up a load of hay or clean the barnyard. They were slow, complicated, expensive, and had the uncertain tendency to explode occasionally.

Those behemoths were also unsuited to the hilly wheat country. The gasoline tractor for all-around use wouldn't be perfected until the advent of the Farmall in 1924, and the track-type crawler tractors didn't leave their marks on the hills until the late 1920s. Another problem had to be solved before tractors became practical—the development of the sealed bearing. Dust and dirt ground delicate parts to pieces.

            To be continued next week.

 

 

Remember to get your copy of “The P&IN—The Story of the Pacific & Idaho Northern Railway” by calling Writer’s Press at 1-800-574-1715. For those wishing to save the shipping and handling, the book can be purchased over the counter in Council at Buckshot Mary’s, in Cambridge at The News-Reporter office, and in Weiser at Healthy Solutions on the corner of Highway 95 and 7th Street (the former Forest Service Complex).

 

Caption for photo:

The Wilkie family ran this steam tractor, then called a “steam traction engine” starting in about 1907. They used it primarily for powering their sawmills. Similar machines were used to power threshers in this area at least as early as the 1920s. The Case engine in the park at Council is said to have been owned by the Wilkies and used to plow on the Ridge.

            Another reason inventors worked hard to come up with a gasoline-powered tractor was that it took at least two men to operate a steam tractor—one to watch the controls and one to haul fuel and water.

            This is one of my favorite pictures because it was taken about 200 yards from my house, along the Ridge Road, looking southwest. Those are Joe Glenn’s hay stacks in the background. Joe sold out to my grandfather in 1924.

 

 

3-1-01

Continuing with my series on horse power.

            At noon the implements were usually left in the field, and the horses where

 unhitched and driven back to the barn for water and feed. In the evening, the horses were

often unhitched and allowed to return home on their own.

            Once again, all quotes are from Persimmon Hill magazine.

 

            Farmers in the wheat country did things a little differently. Some fields were too remote from the main farmstead for convenient travel back and forth. Heavy teams wore themselves out traveling most of the day to get to work. That problem was solved by building outlying barns and corrals especially for the work stock. They, in effect, lived on the job while the farmhands commuted by wagon or car. Sometimes a tiny house was thrown together for the workers to live in.

            The big event of the year was harvest, a complex project that produced a show as fascinating as any circus. The combined harvester, or combine, was introduced in the 1880s to the Pacfic Northwest and big teams were essential to handle their great weight. This required a whole new set of tricks in handling, as it was necessary to make sure that every animal in the huge teams did his fair share. Thomas Keith, in The Horse Interlude, commented, "A thirty-two-horse team will not provide eight times the power of a four-horse team if only a portion of the horses in the big team are working as they should."

[As nearly as I can tell, combines pulled by horses were a rarity in Adams County. However, we have one photograph of one that was taken at Indian Valley.]

            At first a "dead" hitch was used by some, in which every animal was directly hitched to the harvester. Aptly named, the dead hitch used up horses and mules at a rapid rate, with the energetic doing all the work and the lazy just following

 along.

            The Shenandoah hitch, also known as the cloverleaf or the Schandoney, after its inventor, made big teams practical. Every animal, usually a mule in the Northwest, bore the same load, but it was possible to re-rig things to ease up the work for one mule. The key was a metal "cloverleaf" that worked as an equalizer, and them was one for every six-horse group within the hitch. Sizes of teams varied according to whether the combine itself was ground-powered or carried an auxiliary engine. Steam initially provided the power, but the smaller gas engine soon took its place. A ground- powered combine averaged thirty-three head-- five teams of six animals plus three leaders. A forty-four horse outfit would have five teams standing eight horses wide, with four leaders. The numbers varied according to terrain, combine, and the driver's preference.

 

3-08-01

            This is the last in my series on horse power.

If you are interested, there is a wonderful museum in Walla Walla that has life-sized teams of horses and mules hitched to combines, etc. illustrating how the huge teams were used to harvet grain in that area.

            The rest of this is lifted from Persimmon Hill magazine.

 

Getting one of these big outfits ready to go to work was at least a four-man job. The driver, sack sewer, sack jig (who filled the sacks of grain) and the header tender all worked to get the team harnessed and assembled by 6 a.m. In addition, a mechanic might ride along with the rest of the crew atop the combine, all working like mad.

The three leaders had to be intelligent and well mannered; mare mules were preferred, as they responded best to oral commands. The driver only had direct lines to them, and had a box of rocks on his perch to attract their attention if needed. Many a teamster made good use of a box of rocks for reforming the lazy. Some drivers also had lines to the first six-horse team, just behind the leaders, so that they could use nine horses to turn the combine.

            Driving a herd like this was quite a project. Animals could balk, run away, get tangled up, and raise hell the first day or so. A saddle horse was tied to the rear of the combine for emergency trips to town and in situations where a spare hand was needed to keep the team untangled and working.

Driving a group this size was made more complicated by the gullies and dips that marred the smooth hills. The leaders could be topping out on the far side of the ravine, the body of the team plodding through the bottom, and the combine itself just starting down the slope. This strained the harness and frazzled the driver, who had to keep everyone under control. Canny mules and horses learned to rush uphill, letting their co-workers in the team carry the heaviest load.

 Turning was another major project. In The Horse