Wednesday, February 15, 2012

BIG BEND p. 586: DOUGLAS COUNTY DESCRIPTIVE, pt. 1

________________________



________________________

586


CHAPTER IV.

DESCRIPTIVE.

      Douglas is exclusively an agricultural— it might be said — a wheat county.  Geographically it is located nearly in the center of the state of Washington.  The greater portion of it consists of high, rolling prairie, 2,800 feet above the sea level.  With the exception of the Columbia Guide Meridian which forms its eastern boundary between Lincoln and Adams counties, it is circumscribed by the Columbia river on the north, west and extreme southern portions.  It lies in the "bight" of the Big Bend, Okanogan county being on the north, Chelan and Kittitas on the west, and Yakima county on the south.  Its agricultural industries embrace general farming and stock', raising.  The soil, a volcanic ash, is pronounced by ex- perts the most fertile and durable soil known to geologists.  Like many portions of California Douglas county possesses two distinct climates; first, that of a high, rolling plateau, which is temperate and adapted to all agricultural pursuits, with abundance of moisture for the growth and maturity of crops.  No irrigation is required.  It is but recently that a gentleman from Illinois observed with marked astonishment, "This is the first country I ever

________________________

587

heard of where one could raise a full crop of wheat without a drop of rain." This has been done in Douglas county, but the fact by no means implies that it is a rainless climate.  Far from it.  Hot winds, such as sweep the corn plains of Nebraska, Kansas and portions of Iowa never occur.  The summers are not so warm nor the winters so cold as in the same latitude in the Mississippi valley.  Four months is the average length of the winters, which are accompanied by very little extreme' cold weather, the mercury seldom dropping below zero, usually registering only a few degrees below freezing.  In the climate of the plateau small fruits, currents, raspberries, gooseberries and strawberries, and hardy varieties of large fruit, apples, pears, prunes, apricots and cherries are grown, likewise a great variety of "garden truck."

      Quite different is the climate of the Columbia valley, which forms a semi-circle more than half way around Douglas county.  This is a semitropical climate.  The soil is light and sandy, producing the finest of all varieties of fruit, with irrigation, and immense crops of alfalfa hay.  All conditions considered the climate of the Columbia valley is, probably, unexcelled in the world.  Among the numerous varieties of fruit grown on the Columbia river are peaches, prunes, pears, plums, apricots, and all kinds of figs can be cultivated.  Nearly all varieties of farm products are successfully grown in this country in large quantities.  Potatoes and other root crops are brought to perfection and with but little work, comparatively.  The seed of potatoes is plowed in and the crop plowed out, with, perhaps, one harrowing during the season.  So far potato bugs and other insects detrimental to crops have not made their appearance.

      The following extract is from a paper read by Mr. A. L. Rogers before the State Immigration Convention held at Seattle, January 13, 1896:
      Topographically and geologically considered Douglas county is a region of much interest.  The northern part is a high, rolling plateau of fertile prairie land, broken here and there by canyons of greater or less size, the approaches of which are often covered with scattering timber, convenient to the settlers on the adjoining prairie.  Many springs of the purest water abound in these localities, and the rough land in the immediate vicinities affords excellent pasturage for numerous bands of cattle and horses.  If the walls of these canyons are perpendicular, as frequently happens, they are called coulees.
      The southern half of the county differs much from the portion described above. Considerably lower in altitude it has a warmer climate, the soil is a sandy loam and possesses many of the characteristics of the bench lands of the Columbia, so prolific in fruit growing.  There can be no doubt that with proper irrigation facilities for the southern part of the county it will become one of the greatest fruit producing regions in the world.  To date nothing has been done in this direction, and the country is utilized as a great winter range for horses and cattle.
      Writing September 22, 1903, the editor of the Lincoln County Times said:
      A Times representative recently had occasion to make a trip into Douglas county, beyond Coulee City, where the stream of new settlers has been pouring for the last two years.  A remarkable and rapid transformation is being wrought in that magnificent farming country, extending from Grand Coulee to the Columbia river on the north and west.  Hundreds of new settlers have located there in the last eighteen months—many of them during the past six months.  Those who have not had occasion to travel over the country mentioned have little idea of its extent and productiveness or its prospective value.  The government land has been exhausted, and the work of converting the prairie into wheat fields is in progress on almost every quarter section.
________________________

588

Here and there may be found old settlers who have lived there three, eight, ten or twelve years, who have well improved farms and who are in comfortable circumstances, but the majority of settlers are new comers who have little or no means, but who are getting their places in shape to become profitable.  The land in most places lies better than it does here in Lincoln county, and when well improved will be fertile and inviting as well as a very attractive wheat section.  There are two reasons why that country is not already under as high a state of cultivation as any other part of eastern Washington: One is its comparative isolation, and the other is the dreary aspect that confronts the traveler when he drops off the train at Coulee City and looks at the sand, sage brush and rocks over which the road winds before reaching the top of the hill, three or four miles beyond, where the good lands again appear.
      The prospect of early railroad building has filled the country up with settlers, however, and when connected by rail with the markets of the world it will be a delightful country in which to live.  It broad slopes fall away gently and even, and away to the west rise the snow capped peaks of the Cascades, and below lie the forest clad foothills, sloping downward.  Nearer, and to the southwest Badger Mountain, with its scattered woods, appears in view, and the steep cliffs near Chelan, and also the chain of timbered hills beyond the Columbia, to the north, add interest and charm to the scene.  A large city will spring up somewhere between these two Coulees with the building of the first road across the country, in the near future.  The country from Grand Coulee to the Columbia river includes a great many townships of fertile land that will quickly be reduced to a high state of cultivation, and we venture the assertion that one or two large towns will spring up within a year after the survey for a railroad has been definitely located.
      The Walla Walla country had its boom days; later the Palouse had its turn; then Lincoln county had its boom with the building of the Central Washington railroad, but the last, and perhaps the biggest boom of them all will occur in Douglas county when the first railroad builds across from Coulee City to the river, which will, doubtless, be inside of two years.  One, if not two roads, will build across, and Douglas county, one of the best of the great agricultural counties of eastern Washington, will fill up with settlers; owing to its isolation it will be the objective point of a great army of home seekers who will overrun it the moment railroad building begins.
      As has been noted, Douglas county is an extensive open prairie country with a gently rolling surface, almost every acre of which is susceptible of a high state of cultivation.  A most peculiar feature of this favored county is the two great Coulees, Grand and Moses.  They are vast gorges extending north and south.  Evidently at one period, aeons ago, they were beds of majestic rivers, possibly one of them being the old basin of the Columbia.  The altitude of this region is about 2,800 feet, or 2,200 feet above the valley of the Columbia river.  Compared with Grand, Moses Coulee is an infant.  Still, it stretches for many miles and can be crossed only at a few points, and presents rugged outlines only a small degree less striking than those so conspicuous in Grand Coulee.  The word Coulee is taken from the French, Couler, meaning to flow.  It was with this thought in mind that the name was, evidently, applied to these stupendous gorges.  Concerning these Coulees the report of the Washington Geological Survey says:
      In some parts of the Columbia plain, notably within the Big Bend of the Columbia river, the country is much cut up by old river courses, now wholly abandoned by streams, and known locally as Coulees.  Of these Moses and Grand Coulees are good types.  The Coulees are often 500 or 600 feet in depth, with precipitous walls, and represent the course of streams which have now sought other channels, or which have

________________________

589

withered away because of a decrease in the amount of rainfall.  Each Coulee now has within it usually a chain of small alkali lakes.
      The Grand Coulee is justly entitled to the name.  When one stands in the center of this great fissure and gazes on the towering walls, from 1,000 to 1,500 feet high, and notes the different strata of each, he can distinctly see that at one time they were joined.  Although the great depression extending from the Columbia river in the northeastern part of Douglas county to the Columbia river in the southwestern part of the county is frequently mentioned as Grand Coulee, still it is also stated that Grand Coulee proper commences at Coulee City and runs in a northeasterly direction to the Columbia river, the river running through the gorge 400 feet below the bottom of the Coulee. While the Coulee in itself is a whole panorama of natural wonders, it has its special features, one being Steamboat Rock.  This gigantic basaltic mass stands in the center of the Coulee and in area covers about 600 acres.  Here the earth, when cooling, created two great fissures, instead of one, and left a formation that would strike a nautical eye with its resemblance to great steamboats.  West of Steamboat Rock is a canyon leading from the plateau above, known as Hall's.  Here would be a study for a Humboldt or a Darwin.  On one side of the canyon is the cinder like basalt; on the other a wall of the purest white granite. How this beautiful deposit of the purest of granite passed unscathed when within less than 100 yards its surroundings were a seething mass is a problem worthy of the attention of our greatest naturalists.

      Blue Lake Coulee, a continuance of Grand Coulee, to the southwest, is worthy of a visit by any one who wishes a treat in gazing on a wild, weird piece of scenery, accentuated by some lakes of unknown depth.  Blue Lake Coulee is another depression of over 400 feet below the Grand Coulee, and is surrounded by a basaltic rock formation, torn and rent into fantastic shapes.  The lakes are three in number and extend from Coulee City to within two miles of the Great Northern railroad.  The most clever word painter will fail to do justice to these surroundings.  They must be seen to he appreciated.

      Writing of the Grand Coulee of Washington, Harry Jefferson Brown says:
      The Grand Coulee is a huge crack in the earth, and it is safe to say that it's the biggest thing of its kind in nature.  It starts at the Columbia river where Lincoln, Douglas and Okanogan counties join, and runs in a double curve entirely through the length of Douglas county to the Columbia again, at the head of Priest Rapids.  And Douglas, you will remember, is about the biggest county in Washington.  One hundred miles is an estimate well within the limit of the length of this freak of nature.  The walls average twelve hundred feet high in the north half, from Coulee City to the Columbia.  These, at least, are the figures given by those who live there.  They look to be all of that height.  It is claimed, too, that the lower half of the Grand Coulee is not so deep or wide.  This sketch concerns the upper, or north half, only, for this alone has the writer seen.  But it was enough.
      Whatever desire for the grand in nature one may have is here amply filled.  No one could walk between these towering walls or peer down from their dizzy heights without feeling something of awe for the greatness that made them.  In its way the Grand Coulee is more wonderful and awe inspiring than mountain or cavern.  Chiefly, perhaps, because of its mysterious origin. Mankind is afraid of the unknown and unexplainable.  You approach a mountain by degrees.  You see it afar off and you approach it generally all too slow.  You are prepared for the sight, and you anticipate.  And lucky for you if you are not disappointed in size and grandeur, of cliff and canyon by that very anticipation.  Witness, Niagara.  So with a great cave.  You know somewhat of it

________________________

590

before you enter.  You have already an idea of the nature and scenery of a cavern.  Some of the things you see are the expected.  And then again it unfolds itself to view only by degrees.  You see but the part illuminated by your candle—pardon me—electric light.  But you meet the Coulee under quite different circumstances.  It is evening and you are on the prairie among the bunch grass and sage brush.  Perhaps you are peering about for a jackrabbit or the wily coyote.  You saunter along, noting the rolling of the plains and marking a few low ridges of basaltic rock here and there, and guessing, perhaps, at their distances in the deceptive atmosphere.  You ascend a gently sloping 'rise' whose top has cut the horizon, shutting out the view beyond.  As you near the top of the 'rise' you observe a low line of cliff like rocks ahead, that may be a mile away and may be ten, and that unaccountably grows taller as you walk, increasing in size so rapidly that you suspect the effects of a mirage.  This suspicion brings with it a sense of relief, which, however, is very short- lived, for there at your feet is the edge of the Coulee wall, the beginning of a sheer drop of a quarter of a mile.
      Another step or two and you would be over.  So suddenly have you come upon the precipice that you have no time for fear. You are only startled.  If your nerves are good they will steady themselves presently and you may advance, putting your foot part way over the very edge and stopping, look down.  However, I don't think you will do this.  You will be too busy wondering how it all happened.  Where had this immense canyon been hiding that you did not see it sooner?  You didn't even suspect its existence.  So intent were you watching the opposite wall that you supposed was a low line of cliffs of uncertain distance that you looked clear across the chasm and did not distinguish 'empty space and nothingness' from the surrounding prairie. And the shadows of evening helped in the deceiving.  While you are figuring all this out you have made another startling discovery.  The bottom of this huge crack in the earth is inhabited.  Away down—down so far that homesteads look like squares on a chess board—and houses, not shacks, mind you, and 'ten-by-ten-shanties,' but homes, two stories with attic, look like toy blocks, you discover another world; a whole community underground. They are as completely cut off, so far as you can see, from the upper earth as Symme's Hole was supposed to be in the famous Symme's theory of the concentric circle formation of the earth.  Double teams hauling wheat in trail wagon trains look like beetles crawling along earth-worn tracks. Individuals you can scarcely discern. What seems but a small potato patch proves to be a large orchard when examined with the glass.
      You note the opposite wall. It does not seem far away if you forget for a moment what you have seen below.  Naturally you pick up a stone and essay to throw it—well, perhaps not entirely across, but at least some distance out, enough to give an intelligent idea of how far away the other side of the Coulee is.  You throw your best and out goes the stone.  Now you are going to be surprised some more.  That stone, seemingly contrary to all the laws of nature, comes back to you in a graceful curve and passes whizzing apparently under your feet into what must, as you suppose, be a hollowed part of the wall.  Instinctively you lean forward to see what becomes of the stone and to learn why it acted so queerly—and you are brought suddenly face to face with the fact that you are leaning over 1,200 feet of empty space.  It does not take long for a realization of this to soak into you.  You remember then how soon that stone began to whiz.  You have looked the precipice in the eye and it was not hollow but sheer.  You know then that those laws and forces of nature are immutable and .that it was your own malinterpretation of appearances that made things look so queer.  And when you have sat down at a safe distance

________________________

591

from the brink to do a little pondering, from away across the Coulee you catch a faint echo of the fall of the stone you threw. That wall was all of three miles away and you were foolish enough to attempt to measure the Coulee with a little of man's strength exerted on a small stone hurled across ———.  But you laugh at the matter and dismiss the feeling of smallness that has crept over you, supplying its place with a gratifying sense of discovery.  Here was something new — and found by yourself.  By accident, 'tis true, but none the less your very own discovery.
      Therefore there is a desire to know more, to look farther, to go down there into the bowels of the earth and learn what manner of people there make their homes.  So follow along the brink and look for a place of descent.  Here is an old trail worn deep with much travel, though now it is unused.  Speculation as to why this disuse is set at rest very soon when a barbed wire fence is found to cross at right angles and corner on the very edge of the wall, large stones being used to fix the posts upright.  Those who know will tell you that this is the old Indian trail, and has been used for time out of mind by the red men in his journeys north and south.  Now it is hopelessly cut up from all practical use by the advent of the homesteader and his ever present and necessary barbed wire fence.  The Bell trail is the only means of descent in 40 miles on the west side, or from Coulee City to the Columbia.  That is, the only practicable means.  You can jump off at any point you please, but your respected remains would not be worth the picking up.  There are other ways of getting down, it is said, but the men of the plains who ride a cayuse once and then call it a 'plumb broke boss,' be it ever such a bucker, are apt to take the same liberal view of what is a safe trail down the Coulee wall.  The Bell trail is so called from Frank Bell's ranch, one of the oldest and best on the west wall.  You can not see much of this descent at any one time.  A steep incline 18 inches or so wide starts at the edge of the wall, and disappears down around some jagged, jutting rocks a few feet below.  This much is all you will ever see of the trail.  And perhaps 'tis well that this is so—well for the nerves and your reputation as a man of courage.  If you are this, and a little foolhardy besides, you will venture down.  But you will be prudent and humane enough to leave your horse should you be riding, staked above on the prairie.
      The descent is a series of slides, of wild scrambles to reach the nearest mass of ragged rock below; a clambering around abutments, and a pressing flat to the face of the wall, with one fearful, fleeting glimpse of the world below, looking now down farther than ever. You should by this time be enjoying the scenery above, below and around about.  The pleasure of this comes later, when you have time to recall it, but just now every faculty is put to other and, may hap, better use in making the descent safely.  At no time do you feel secure.  Every foot of the way is attended with a slip, a slide or an arresting lurch against one of the numerous rocks that line the trail.  And yet pack-horses, with the jump of the bunch grass in them still, are led up and down here, even in the night and winter time at that.  You must know that this allusion to bunch grass is made advisedly.  There are men who have lived among it all their lives who will tell you that bunch grass has the unaccountable quality of imparting 'jump' to the horse that grazes it.  Put. they will say, the good, staid, old reliable carriage horse on a summer's grazing of bunch grass and the owner won't know it again.  Neither will he want to renew acquaintance.  For the bunch grass has put the jump in him.  Only those westerners say 'buck' when they want to express it.  And this is not to be explained, though it may serve to throw some light on the formation of western character.
      Howbeit, cattle are also driven up and down on occasions. To be sure, there are stories of some of the animals slipping and rolling

________________________

592

to their death. The wonder is, not that some were killed, but that any made the trip in safety.  Two-thirds of the way down the Bell trail there is an amphitheatre like formation of the wall that has remarkable acoustic qualities.  The echo here is fine.  A little experimenting will find the foci of sound.  The fine effects to be obtained are well worth the trouble, the fatigue and the danger of the trip.
________________________



________________________

No comments:

Post a Comment