________________________
________________________
144
MORE ON WILD GOOSE BILL AND BARTON PARKS
Interesting facts relating to Wild Goose Bill and Barton Parks, whom he killed, are told by the late Charles E. Myers in the 34th chapter of his book, "Memoirs of a Hunter".
Mr. Myers was the father of Richard M. (Dick) Myers, Coulee Dam sportsman. He was a pioneer of the Davenport area. At the time of the shooting, Mr. Myers was postmaster at Lorene, about 45 miles away.
He tells how he received a blunt telegram the morning of January 25, 1895. It read, "Barton Parks was shot and killed today. Notify his mother."
The Park's home was two and a half miles east of Lorene. It was bitter cold and a deep snow didn't help matters. Myers' hired man was using his team to haul wheat to Davenport, so he had to use the hired man's "outlaw" pony.
After a difficult ride on the unbroken horse, he arrived a Parks' cabin. He found his mother sitting in a rocking chair, knitting socks.
He handed her the telegram and told her to send Barton's older brother Charlie to him as soon as Charlie arrived home. He was helping a neighbor cut wood.
Charlie arrived at 4 p.m. The roads had drifted badly but they took the bodies to Wilbur in a bob sled. "The bodies were frozen stiff as logs", he wrote. "I helped carry them to the G. A. R. Hall, where we placed them side by side on rough boards supported by saw horses."
When Wild Goose Bill's legal agent in Wilbur removed Bill's coat, he found the will he had previously written in the pocket. It read, "If I am killed before returning home, I shall die with my boots on, and I want to be buried in the sand pit below the ferry."
Young Parks was buried in the Davenport Cemetery.
Elsa Sandler
________________________
145
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For all material submitted by Helen Rinker
A History of Central Washington, compiled and edited by Lindley M. Hull
1953 Yearbook - Washington State Association of County Commissioners and Engineers
Early Schools of Washington Territory, by Angie Burt Bowden
An Illustrated History of the Big Bend Country, Western Historical Publishing Company, 1904
The Wilbur Register
The Star, Grand Coulee, Washington
Assisting Mrs. Rinker were Gene Thoren, Mrs. George Trefry, and all those who submitted interviews.
________________________
146
DEATH STARED MANY TIMES AT THIS MAN WHO WENT THROUGH WHIRLPOOL
JAY SELLERS TRIP THROUGH BOX CANYON
The Spokane Daily Chronicle, June 13, 1913
The tale of how John J. Sellers, rancher of the Delrio area, shot Box Canyon of the Columbia River where no craft but the big steamers pass, during the high water of last year, and came out of the boiling turmoil of the two mile rapids alive, has been interesting friends of Attorney R. L. Campbell, with whom Mr. Sellers is staying on a visit to Spokane this week.
An unassuming countryman, who is on his way home from a course of study at Pullman College, Mr. Sellers' narrative has something of the grip and thrill of a Kipling adventure story, with its unadorned description of a miraculous escape after fearful struggle.
"We have some booms out on the river a mile or two above the entrance to the canyon," Sellers explains, "In which we catch driftwood, saw it up, and sell it for fuel."
I had some men hired to help me during the high water in catching the logs, but they didn't show up, and i was out in a boat towing the timbers to shore myself, when the boom broke. I started down the river in the boat after it, just a little before sundown, and had hardly got underway when a big boil broke up, three or four feet high, in the water behind.
It didn't look very big, and though a whirlpool usually makes a hole in the water after the boil subsides, I thought it would be a little one and shoved my boat across it. The first thing I knew the bow and stern of the skiff were hanging in the walls of a circular hole going down seven or eight feet below the surface, and a second later the boat swamped and I went under.
A few seconds later I was thrown to the surface, in the current shooting me downstream, and the first thing i saw was a big moose of a log, 60 feet long, which I managed to grab and get on top of. A drift of poles came downstream with the log and I got one in each hand, straddled the big log and started on my way, holding up with one of these on each side of me.
In no time at all the rush of the current brought me to the whirlpool at the head of the canyon, where the water revolves at a dizzy speed in a circle 200 yards wide, slanting down toward the hole in the center. The big log whirled in the sides of the chute for a couple of revolutions, and was then jerked down and away from me. The small logs I had underarm stretched apart, and i was thrown out of the edge of the whirl with just one, hanging to it with all the strength that I had.
________________________
147
From that time on, it was one quick succession of whirls, with white water all around me, and a straight shoot for the next mile.
I don't remember much about it. I was underneath the surface half the time, almost senseless from the swift circling and hanging on only by instinct. At the bottom of the box the current threw me into an eddy and there some fellows who were fishing from a boat dragged me out just before I lost my last strength. I was all to pieces from the strain and the chill of that fearfully cold water, hardly able to tell them what had happened.
The box canyon has numbered its regular victims since the earliest pioneers reached the country. It has been shot successfully with canoes in low water by adventurous people once or twice, but the last attempt resulted in the death of a father and son who tried it. Once before, a Norwegian lumberjack, "birling" a couple of immense logs chained by a boom fastener, got through alive. Steamboats in later hears have navigated the channel regularly in low water, by special methods.
Helen Rinker
________________________
148
FROM SQUAW CREEK TO STRAHL CANYON
I was born in a farmhouse about two miles down Strahl Canyon in 1897, but at that time it was called Squaw Creek because about a quarter mile further down the creek, two men, Parson and Norris, who had developed quite a nice ranch, lived with their Indian wives. Some orchard had been planted and a meadow had been cleared of brush and willow trees. Later Billy Whitmore, who also had an Indian wife, acquired this place. He developed it a little more.
There is a story that during the time Parson and Norris lived there, three men came across Condon Ferry from the mining country in Okanogan County with sacks of gold bars. They became sick with small pox there at the ranch and two of them died. The other one buried the bars down in the willows by the creek. There was a spring there that had no bottom and was always fenced so tightly that nothing could get in near it. The story goes that the gold bars were buried inside the fence. (They have been searched for but so far no trace of hidden treasure has ever been found.) The third man left, intending to come back for them but somehow he never returned.
In about 1895 or 1896, my uncle Ed Strahl bought Billy Whitmore out. Whitmore went across the river and settled at the foot of Whitmore mountain which was named for him.
It must have been about 1900 that my father Arthur L. Strahl bought out my uncle and thus became the owner of one of the oldest ranches in that area.
though i was only about three and a half years old at the time we moved, I can still remember many things about my first home. I remember I was frightened and fascinated by Old China John who came walking through the country several times a year buying and selling anything. He carried his wares in a gunny sack flung over his shoulder. He talked funny and looked funny. He wore the old China queue, braid of hair hanging from the top of his head down his back. The last trip that I can remember him, just before we moved down to my uncle's homestead, we bought a goose from him. It seems like we had that goose for years. It turned out to be a gander - and we had named it Blossom! Old China John had been connected some way with the Chinamen who had panned gold over in China Creek in the 80s.
I also remember a character who was called "Walkin' Johnson", because he always walked and led his old buckskin horse, Pete. He raised horses somewhere in or near Grand Coulee. I remember the old gnarled tree that was our favorite play place and i remember the bobcat with the big yellow eyes that sat on the old dug-out cellar and snarled at me.
Very young I learned to recognize the warning rattle of the poisonous rattlesnake. The canyon was full of them and still is.
________________________
149
I remember how the howls of coyotes would echo in the night from rim to rim, and how the cold chills would run up my spine. The coyotes are mostly gone now and I am sorry for i learned to love their weird cries.
I remember my father taking me piggy-back out in the night to show me the huge hoot owls that sat in the trees by the house. They frightened me more than the poisonous snakes or prowling bob cats but seeing them and talking about them drove all the fear away. The owls are still in the canyon. Most any night you can hear their "who-o-o who-who". These are my first remembrances of Strahl Canyon.
The frame house that I had been born in was moved down and attached to the big log room that my father and uncle had built with logs they had snaked out of the Columbia River. The old log kitchen, which had been used by the squaw men was still used. The dirt floor was packed so hard it was like asphalt. The ceiling was of cheese cloth stretched under the little round poles to keep the straw and sod from coming down. As soon as the frame house was usable the old kitchen was torn down for firewood.
This ranch house had been, and still remained, the stopping place for freighters from Spokane, across the Condon Ferry to the Okanogan Country. The cattlemen also stopped overnight when moving cattle from the south half of the Colville Reservation to market or to winter feeding grounds near Steamboat Rock.
The coming of the cattle was always a thrill, especially to my brother Arthur and me. We could hear the bawling of the moving herd, mingled with the urging yells of the cowboys, long before we could see anything. We always climbed to the roof of the house and waited. First we would see the long dust cloud rising from the hundreds of hoofs pouncing along the old dusty road and, "There they come!" one of us would shout - and there they would be! The first of a long line, sometimes a mile long, bawling, pushing, fighting, but always moving forward like a slow river, the width of a lane or wider. The cowboys on each side of the line urging them on and more cowboys at the rear urging and with all the urging there was no hurry - just a slow steady stream of bawling - always the bawling! I can hear it yet!
We would sit spellbound until the last critter was corralled, then we'd scramble down and run to meet the cowboys, hoping to get a ride to the barn, and we usually did.
In those drives there were always several hundred head of cattle and in the last big drive there was 1500 head. There were cattle belonging to Ed Schrock, being moved from the Duley Lake country on the reservation. They were crossed, about 25 head at a time, on the Condon Ferry. Bert Duffey was a young cowboy on that drive and can tell some hair raising stories. There were always five to ten cowboys on these drives. Not
________________________
150
the "shoot 'um up" kind but fellows who had lived in the saddle from daylight 'till dark most of their lives. These names will be remembered by many old timers: Cub Shaffer, John Drew, Jim Wiley, Dennis Coldwell, Page White, Ben Gary, the Duffey brothers, Archie, Bill and Bert, Verge Vance, Jim Armbruster, Rollie Bernard and Ed Schrock - the grand old cattle man of all time!
Getting back to the early settlers on Squaw Creek. I remember the Repass place. It was where Coon Creek comes down from the Rex Hill, and is now the ranch home of the Roy Rankins. The next place down was Tom martins which was the place my father first homesteaded, then the Strahl Ranch and about three quarters of a mile farther down was the O'Flarity place which was also one of the first in that area. It was sold to George Harper in 1906 and was the scene of the tragic fire in about 1951 that took the lives of Byron and Mildred Harper and their young son George. The place now belongs to Wesley Rinker.
In the winter of 1906 and 1907, Roy Harper, who now lives in Electric City, held school in his father's house for his three younger brothers Frank, Levi, and Byron, and my brother Arthur. It was in the spring of 1907 that my brother was killed by falling over the cliff near the Strahl home. The Harper boys were of great assistance at that time - Roy riding to the river to find my father, and Frank riding to Wilbur for the doctor . . . and the others helping in every way possible.
The next ranch, about a quarter of a mile on down the creek, was homesteaded by Arthur Peterson who developed an irrigation project and started a fine orchard. He also had a country store and all the ranchers, who were gradually settling up the country, came for miles to trade. After Peterson sold the place the other owners let the orchard die out and the irrigation project went to pieces. It is now back to its original state - grass. Wesley Rinker bought it for pasture.
Al Vasser homesteaded at Meadow Springs, about one and a half miles down the creek from Peterson's. In about 1920 there was a school at Meadow Springs. This school had been moved up from the Alameda Flats. Later the same building was moved up by the Peterson place and school was held there for several years. Children came from both the Rex and Delrio country and from the canyon. By this time Squaw Creek was being called "The Canyon".
The last homestead down the creek was filed on by the Jose brothers, Bob and Harry, in 1902. They also planted an orchard and took water from the Meadow Springs to irrigate. The place was sold to Lawson Dewey and then to Ehlers who runs cattle there now. The orchard and irrigation project have long disappeared. Squaw Creek meandered on down through the Sand Hills to flow into the Columbia River at the Natural Watering Place, where at one time George B. Cooley had a store and had the trade of the well populated Alameda Flats.
________________________
151
The old orchard on the Strahl place was the only one for many years and people came from as far as St. Andrews and out toward the Mansfield country to get the fruit. Some brought their camp outfits and stayed several days, picking and canning their fruit right out in our yard. There were Bells, the Dorseys, the Loves, and many more. This fruit picking time was next in importance to the coming of the cattle in my childhood.
Of the seven homes once along the creek only three remain. Roy Rankin's beautiful summer home, where the once called "Coon Creek" ran into "Squaw Creek".
The Ehlem cattle ranch was at the foot of the canyon where it broadens out to become a part of the Alameda Flats. And the Strahl ranch that my father and uncle homesteaded in about 1895, which was willed to me by my father in 1934 and is now rented to Bert Duffey.
The coming of the farmer, automobiles, good roads, schools, and civilization in general changed the way of life in the canyon and somewhere along the line Squaw Creek became Strahl Canyon.
To many of you from the Grand Coulee Dam area, Strahl Canyon is known only as a hunter's realm, but to me it is a place of memory - the unraveling of the events of a life for over half a century: childhood joys - romances - marriages - precious babies - dire tragedies and deaths. It is my wish that when my work is finished I'll once again be riding down the canyon, home!
Dorothy Strahl Holbert
Mrs. Holbert still lives in the area. She is a loved teacher in the Grand Coulee School System, an expert horsewoman and an active member of the Grand Coulee Ridge Riders Club.
Elsa Sandler
________________________
________________________
This concludes the April, 1958 portion of From Pioneers to Power.
________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment