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WESLEY RINKER
I was about 8 years old when my parents, the Washington Rinkers, moved here on the Stubblefield place in 1904. The land had not yet been surveyed, and I recall my dad and others marking off their claims with a walking plow and a team. After the surveys were made, there were many changes in land lines.
At first schooling was quite a problem, but my folks solved it with me by sending me to winter sessions at Broadaxe where we had relatives in the spring and fall to the log school on the Brazel place down near the river.
Far more horses than cattle were raised in here then. A good work horse sold for about $200. Alex Trefry had one of the largest band of horses. He had a Hamiltonian stud which sired some saddle stock though he, like everyone else, raised mostly work horses. We kept the small ones for saddle horses. My dad and Charlie Trefry had a purebred Shire stallion. In those days, it was a problem to get the horses big enough for draft use as so many of them originally came from Indian stock.
Most of the early settlers here cut their grain by heading it. Then huge straw-burning threshing machines came to thresh the wheat and charged so much a bushel. I worked for the Steve Brothers threshing outfit one year as "water buck". It was my job to drive a wagon hauling all the water needed for the crew, stock, cookhouse, and for the steam engine. Though they also farmed, the Steve Brothers ran one of the largest threshing crews. Their separator machine was a "36 Pride of Washington". The crew of 26 workers needed to operate this were nicknamed as follows: roustabout, fireman, engineer, separator tender, flunky, two or three sack sewers, sack jog, four hoe downs (who raked in the headed wheat), three forkers, three
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derrick drivers, an oiler, strawbuck, separator jerker, two water bucks, and two cooks who fed the crew from the portable cook shack. Other threshing outfits here were: Alec Derby and Johnnie Humphrey (their places are now part of Ben Starkel's), the Thoren Brothers, and Ed Crowfoot in the Rex area.
In 1918 my dad bought the first combine to be used in our neighborhood, and I drove it out from Mansfield. It was a Deering Harvester, ground powered, had a nine foot cut, and we pulled it with 12 to 16 head of horses.
I've ridden many miles horseback in my life. With my brothers we often moved horses from the Broadaxe country home, and caught up many broncs that ran out below the breaks. The wildest ride of all was the when we three took over on the reservation.
Roy, Sam, and I got up very early one morning and rode to the Kartar area to bring home a bunch of unbroken horses Sam had corralled there. It was snowing and exceedingly slippery. Roy, on the fastest saddle horse, took off down towards the Columbia with the unbroken band expected to follow him. But when we turned that bunch loose, they, not accustomed to running together, took off in several directions as fast as they could go and keep their footing. Sam, the buckaroo of the family, cast all discretion aside, and with all the speed his horse could muster, dashed recklessly after them. I lined out too, and we chased the bunch together down the mountain and over rocky draws until we finally reached the boulder area at Rod Hopkins Ferry. Here, in spite of everything we did, those horses refused to go on that ferry. The horses were all hot and mad and we feared they would not survive if they got into the cold water. We brought the animals time and again toward the ferry, but they would not go on, but jumped into the stream where they'd swim out a ways, mill around, try to pile up, and struggle wildly around only to return to the same shore. Finally, one horse in the lead, almost at midstream, sighted the opposite shore and began to swim across. The other horses all followed and they all swam across, stopping in the water immediately upon touching ground to rest before climbing to the bank. We crossed on the ferry and eventually got all the horses safely home. A ride like that now would kill our present day saddle stock.
Wesley Rinker
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IDA SHAFFER
My mother came from Colton in a wagon train and took out her homestead in the 1800s. Her homestead lies near the old Sanderson post office. I took mine out near my mother's when I arrived in 1904.
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I remember my mother telling me about some of our "prosperous" neighbors. They had one egg for breakfast and divided it between them.
The Battle Creek school was so named because of a fight over something in the election between two men held at the schoolhouse. The people thought that would be a good name for the school and so it was called "Battle Creek".
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EMMETT SHAFFER
Emmett Shaffer came to Spring Canyon with his folks, the Minor Shaffers, from Colfax in 1886. He was five years old. During the years Emmett was growing up with his four brothers and one sister: Joe, Loren, Hiram, Dean, and Genevieve (Mrs. Wetzel of Almira). His father built up an extensive cattle and grain business. All the boys were noted for raising, roping, and breaking horses.
Mrs. Dayma Evans says, "I remember when my mother and I would return from a trip out to Wilbur, with the horses and hack, that mother would always stop and have the Shaffer boys, Emmett and Dean, help care for the team, especially if the horses were the least bit frisky".
I took out the last homestead available in 1915. It lay out next to the coulee wall over in the Barker Canyon area.
At one time, when I was a young boy, I was riding a horse through some brush and managed to get a sliver in my foot. In those days people didn't wear shoes everyday. The sliver went in quite deep and it was such an old piece of wood that it kept breaking off. They took me to the neighbor and he took his razor (long blade kind), split open my foot, and removed the sliver. I was well in a few days.
Winnie Sanderson
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MRS. REBECCA CANADY
Mr. and Mrs. William Canady selected a good spring and good soil for their homestead in 1905. It was sheltered by the east wall of the coulee where Delano is now located. Logs for the cabin were hauled by horses from Brakefield Sawmill on the river. This house burned so a frame building was erected. It is still standing, now occupied by the Frank VanHemert family. The Canady children, Jess and Naomi, were born here and after they moved to Almira, Lester, Dorothy and Fay joined them.
One of Mrs. Canady's early memories is of a horse runaway in which Lester, a small boy, fell in dust so deep that he was completely covered. No
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serious injury. At one time a rabid coyote bit their pet dogs, both of which had to be killed. Wheat crops yielded forty bushels to the acre. A family orchard flourished.
When construction started on Grand Coulee Dam, Canadys returned to develop the townsite of Delano. This name was chosen in a contest in which Andy Seresun won. The prize was a town lot. As the town grew, new homemakers built a Community Hall. Donations and public parties and dances paid for its furniture. At one time, Mrs. Canady handled the water department for a hundred families. There was a population of 700. In 1939 there were enough children for a school. This was held in the Community hall halfway up the hill from the highway. Their granddaughter, now Mrs. Genevieve Bjorson, attended her first school here in 1938.
Main business section of Delano was along the highway. Familiar names are: Key Wend Court, developed by Ruth Karr McKee; the cabins of Miss Ellen Adams; Doc's Tavern; and stores of R. Jarvis, Bailey and Holcomb.
In 1953 the Ridge Riders bought ten acres for their clubhouse and riding grounds. It is a unique setting among rock formations. Every year the Western Festival draws thousands of visitors who enjoy the scenery as well as the exhibition of fine riding.
Mrs. Canady, now living with her daughter Dorothy Tolonen near Almira, often visits her early home and fondly recalls happy memories of her life fifty years earlier.
Dayma Evans
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GARNET (TAYLOR) RINKER
My parents, Charlie and Anna Taylor, came to the Delrio country in July 1903 and settled on a homestead on the land near the Microwave Station which Pat McCabe now farms. Dad broke out some land for farming, but also worked out a lot usually as a separator jerker for a threshing outfit. For this work he used his own 8 head of horses. Later on, Dad also sewed sacks.
My brother Ernie and I first went to school on the Boone Thompson place (south of Highway 10B which Art Lewis now pastures). I recall the school house was a little old shack. I am certain that L. L. Sellers, who later became Douglas County Superintendent of Schools, was my first teacher. Other sodbuster's children attending there included Ernest and Nellie Hunt, Stanley, Clara, and George Dorsey, and possibly the Spragues.
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We had a three-month session in the fall and again in the spring. I next attended a closer school held in an empty two-story house on the Sawyer place close to MacIntosh Lake (a small pot hole belonging to Sam Rinker now and a well known goose hunting lake). Mrs. Carrie Frye Wyborney was my teacher there. Mrs. Wyborney lived in this area and also taught my husband, Wesley, at another school, and years later taught my daughter Thelma (Rinker) Pendell. About 1910 a brand new school building, known as MacIntosh, was built on the south side of MacIntosh Lake and I changed schools again. This little white school house was later moved to its present location near the "Ford Cutoff" county road leading onto the state highway.
The Fourth of July celebration at Leahy was our main event of the year. Picnics with pink lemonade and homemade ice cream, baseball games, foot and horse races, and firecrackers attracted everyone for miles around.
In those early times we were lucky if we got to to to town once a year.
Garnet (Taylor) Rinker
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MRS. GEORGE TREFRY
I, Katrina (Kryger) Trefry, was born near Correctionville, Iowa and came to Bridgeport, Washington in March 1902. I remember riding in a buggy with my aunt as she delivered mail from Bridgeport to Mansfield which was then called Buckingham. In 1905 George Trefry and I were married and we came to this ranch where we lived in a two-room log cabin. I filed on a homestead in February 1904 on the bluff area west of our present home built a one room house on it and lived there for fourteen months and commuted on it. After this acreage became ours, we moved my homestead cabin and joined it to our log house so we then had plenty of room. In 1915 and 1916 we built our present home and moved into it in February 1917 where we have lived ever since. We have had five children - Homer, now in Wenatchee; Ruth who passed away in 1918, Iva, now Mrs. Singuefield in Tacoma, Elmer and Cecil of Delrio. We have six grandchildren and four great grandchildren.
I shall never forget the terrific hail storm in 1920 which completely wrecked our crops. it hit us as we were driving in our hack not far from the Delrio store. Huge hailstones blackened my eye; my arm became black and blue as it was held up to shield our baby (Cecil); the horses tried to stampede, but we made it through the intense hail, thunder, and lightening to the store. There I pushed hail stones heaped more than a foot high aside and went in to find most all the store window glass and part of the counter glass shattered. It was a terrifying experience.
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We have seen times change from washing on the board, making most clothes by hand, from coal oil lamps and wood stoves, from carrying water from the spring to water and electricity and water in the house. We have had a happy life and life is what you make it. Be thankful for life and friends!
Mrs. George Trefry
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MRS. CHARLIE TREFRY
(From a Letter)
Here is some information on pioneer life of this area:
The Trefry family came to Douglas County about 1889. They first settled on what was the Atwood place at that time. Charlie Trefry was about 18 years old. He bought the improvements on a squatters claim, then some time later this land was surveyed and he filed on it as a homestead. That was near the Columbia River a few miles below the Condon or Wild Goose Bill Ferry. Mr. Condon got this name by shooting some tame geese - which he mistook for wild geese. But he paid the owner for these - so the story goes. As a young man Charlie did work some for Mr. Condon. Charlie also raised a few horses at that time, but later improved them so he had a good herd of grade Shires. He also raised cattle. We were married December 8, 1897 at St. John and came to live a short while in the Grand Coulee near Steamboat Rock. We lived next on the river place where Charlie broke out the homestead land, (part of Weber place now) and later built a small lumber house where we lived until 1912. Charlie worked out much of the time.
John I victor was our nearest neighbor at first, about two and one-half miles away. Herb Buck and Guy Murphy were also neighbors of some distance. Then later, the John Webers came and the open land near Delrio began to settle up.
In 1912 Charlie and I bought some State University land west of Delrio. Charlie broke out this for wheat land and fenced it and later we moved there, farming and raising horses and cattle until 1937. (This place became the George Berry place and it is now owned by Sam Rinker.) At first we went to the Leahy Post Office for our mail. People took turns about going for mail, bringing it for the neighbors and themselves. We drove to Wilbur, Coulee City, or Bridgeport for provisions twice a year. In the early days we had dances wherever there was enough room. Basket suppers were customary and a collection was taken up for the fiddler. Everyone enjoyed a good time. Then later when schools were established they had programs and Christmas trees the same as now. There was little reading done as there was not much to read. We usually popped corn or made taffy of an evening. Women folks knitted and pieced quilts, sewed carpet rags and braided rugs. People usually stocked up on a few drugs and were very thankful if they only kept well, for the winter snows were usually 4 feet deep and it was 50 miles to a doctor.
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The settlers then all set out orchards and berries any place that had water. They raised lots of garden, canned fruit and vegetables, backed butter in jars of salt brine for winter use, made sauerkraut, raised their own pork and beef, cured the meat and canned the surplus. We had chickens and preserved eggs by packing them in barrels in salt-lime brine. Some made their own soap for laundry purpose and made vinegar to use for pickling.
Mrs. Lillian Trefry.
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