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THEY REMEMBER '36 WHEN RIVER FROZE AT GRAND COULEE DAM
GRAND COULEE DAM -- Thursday was a day for reminiscing in Grand Coulee. Its Chamber of Commerce celebrated its 49th Birthday at a two-hour luncheon featuring a colorful cake, stimulating punch and short accounts of the early days by people who were here the year the organization was formed - 1936.
Here in brief, is what they recalled:
ELMER RAUCH, hardware man: In 1936 there were 40 groceries in the area . . . during the idle time between major contracts, times were so tough that taxi dancers rolled their own with "Bull Durham." In 1936 there were seven places on B Street that had live music every night.
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ROD HARTMAN, former theatre operator now in the motel business: In the cold of winter families made good use of the restrooms upon leaving the "Roosevelt" so they wouldn't have to go to their frigid outhouses upon returning home. In 1939 the Grand Coulee basketball team won the Stat championship even though it didn't have a gym and had to practice in a Delano roller skating rink.
HU BLONK of Wenatchee, former cub reporter here: The population of Grand Coulee in 1936 was 5,000 (now it is 1,500); employment was 5,330 (it rose later to 8,800). That winter the Columbia River was frozen over for a month at the dam site. Late that year it was completely diverted out of its channel to allow building the midstream base, and the Columbia River highway bridge was opened. Also in 1936 the world famous ice dam was built to hold back a mud slide on the Okanogan side of the river. In 1936 the City Council sought to oust the State Patrol, which was the policing agency in Grand Coulee, making numerous liquor raids. There were 55 prostitutes in town, by actual count. Twenty eight men had been killed in construction by the end of 1936 (the figure finally rose to 77 by 1941.
IDA BARTELS, early day land promoter: The articles of incorporation for the Grand Coulee Commercial Club were filed on march 29, 1936. J. C. McCune was the first president, a Mr. Holcomb, Vice President. The first objective was to obtain a school. Mrs. Bartels is the only charter member still in Grand Coulee.
DOROTHY HOLBERT, former school teacher: In predam days she kept a razor and a pint of whiskey in the classroom so if any child was struck by a rattlesnake, she could cut into the wound and pour the liquor over it to prevent the spread of the poison. She never saw a rattlesnake.
JACK HILSON, weekly publisher: The "Grand Coulee Booster" was the first daily newspaper printed in the area. Publisher was Bob Ross. It was mimeographed at first.
BOB LUDOLPH, county commissioner and early day grocer: In 1941 the freight railroad from Coulee City to the dam site brought in a passenger car containing soldiers who were to man antiaircraft guns around Grand Coulee Dam. Two Grand Coulee Commercial Clubs, one on B Street, feuded for some years, then eventually joined to become the present Chamber of Commerce.
HAYDEN McKEE, Delrio rancher: Prior to construction he used to drive cattle to Almira but the animals were skittish about going down the graveled road. They'd never experienced gravel before.
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VERN CANTERBURY, former rancher and retired reclamation employee: In pre-dam years motorists trying to make it up the Wilbur grade had to place planks in front of the auto wheels, gradually moving them up higher and higher. They were then returned to the bottom of the hill so the next car driver could use them.
Hu Blonk
Wenatchee Daily World
Special Writer
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CATTLE STEALING, SOCIALS SPICED DELANO'S HISTORY
GRAND COULEE -- A lot of frustrated homesteaders, sometimes visited by thieves escaping from lawmen who would not venture forth into the upper Coulee, lived in the area from Grand Coulee Dam to Steamboat Rock in the early days.
So says Jess Canady, who resided in what is now called the Delano area on his father's homestead. He expressed disgust at stories being told that few people ever lived here during the early days.
He recalled the days of cattle stealing, socials at the schoolhouse or in private homes, moonshining "all over the country," homes built from logs caught in the Columbia River, community rodeos at someone's corral, cattle crossing on the frozen-over river, and the big wheat threshing crews.
"There were a lot of families here," said the 70 year old Canady, talking about the 1905 to 1919-20 period. Drought finally drove nearly all of them out. When construction on the dam began in about 1933 there were only six families left -- the Nobles, Partees, Charles Osborne, Oscar Osborne, Dan Lael and Jess Evans.
Canady's father homesteaded here in 1905, coming from Kansas vie the palouse. The homestead shack still stands as part of a larger house. He remained with his wife and children - Les, Naomi and Jess, until about 1919 when he moved to Nespelem and later to Almira. The family, working with Stringfellow and Halloran, real estate men from the coast, subdivided the property when construction began down at the river. The town was named Delano after the middle name of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
A lot of early day houses were built from lumber on the Columbia, sawed up from logs floating in the stream, Canady said. The mill, run by a man named Huebler ran until about 1912.
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The Partees, whose property became the town site of Grand Coulee where B Street developed in the 30's lived in the Canady root cellar until they could build a home of their own. They, like other homesteaders, attempted to raise grain and cattle, and some just worked out. A big apple orchard run by Frank Davis existed where Crescent Bay is now located. It was irrigated from big springs there. Canady remembers hauling apples over a dirt road in the Grand Coulee to Coulee City.
"It would take us all day to get to Coulee City," he said. "We'd stay overnight and then come back the next day."
Canady, who has a keen memory, also recalled the first road being built from Grand Coulee to the river below about 1910. His father and Sherm Scott did the work, using an old steam shovel to run a jackhammer. The road was used to haul wood and stuff from the river he said.
There was no town in the early days, no store. A key structure for the scattered farmers was the schoolhouse that sat where the North Dam is now situated.
Thirty-one kids went there, Canady recounted. It served too, as a dance hall (from dark till daylight) and a place for pie and other social gatherings such as taffy pulls. There was another school near Steamboat Rock, and one near Coulee City. The nearest high schools were at Almira and Coulee City.
Other recreation consisted of "Celebrations" at someone's corral, with bucking horses and steers, swimming and ice skating in Buckley Lake (where the Nort Dam now sits).
Canady recalled a "lot of gunfighting across the coulee." Early Grand Coulee never had any shootouts of the O. K. Corral type, but a number of men of questionable honesty rode through here bent for Wallace Canyon along the present road to Bridgeport where they'd hide out.
Lawmen chasing the culprits from Almira or Wilbur would never come "beyond the coulee wall," said Canady. The thieves, some of them bank robbers, were plenty tough and dangerous.
"You didn't want to stick your head out or they'd hit you," Canady said. "They were good shots is what I mean." He recalled, also, a Bectel Wallace being killed taking "slick-eared (stolen) cattle" to Spokane. He lived in the robbers roost up in the canyon named after him.
Another man was killed in one of three saloons in Govan (near Almira) after he had boasted that he could lay his hands on the man who killed Mr. Lewis and his wife. He escaped to the upper Grand Coulee, knowing law enforcement never came that far.
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The area's religion consisted of self generated revival in the schoolhouse now and then.
Canady's memory is keen enough for him to remember the exact location of all the homesteads. He listed the owners as fallows: Canady, Partee, earl Thompson, Oscar Osborne, Charles Osborne, Hans Lange, Frank Davis, Mark Noble, Herb Buelen, Sherm Scott, Emmett "Turkey" Martin, Ernest Martin, Jess Evans, Buckley, ed Goodman, Cy Buckley, Lincoln Stock Farm, a man named Scheibner, Carl McKinley, Cliff Stearman, Alfred Freese, and Carp Dyer.
These, and others in the area, got their groceries once a year, either at Almira or Coulee City. The load consisted of two or three sacks of sugar, several barrels of flour, salt, pepper and coffee. The rest of each family's food for the year was raised on individual homesteads.
Canady moved back to his "dad's place" from Almira in the fall of 1932 to work as a powder man for the contractor building the road to the dam from Almira (where the Bureau of Reclamation had its first office). In later years he was a house mover and trucker.
Grand Coulee is home for him so he doesn't want anyone "at the dam" giving any incorrect history of the area.
Editor's Note: Neither Mr. Canady nor the writer, Hu Blonk, could check the accuracy of the spelling of some of the names in this story.
By: Hu Blonk
Wenatchee Daily World
November 25, 1974
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NAMING THE DELANO DISTRICT
Welthy M. Buchholz
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