Alfred Twining recorded July 30, 1975

Joe Stubblefield, you could tell him anything the next day when he was about half sober, and he'd believe it. So they told him one day, "The sheriff is looking for you, Joe."

Joe said, "What for?"

"He says you killed Walker Willis."

"How did I do that?"

"You and him got into a fight and you hit him so hard you broke his neck."

"My God, I knew I hit him awful hard, but I didn't think I killed him."

Walker Willis had a reputation of being a pretty good man, which he was. He told me one time that the only man he ever was afraid of was his dad.

Cal Gordon got Walker pretty well "loaded up" with liquor one night and Gordon blacked his eye or something and he started noising around that he had licked Walker Willis. So after Walter Willis sobered up he said he would find out about that.

Cal never met Walter Willis until a long time afterwards. So Cal Gordon happened to be in Aldrich's garage down in Coulee City and Walker came in and Aldrich told me Walker hit Gordon so hard you could hear the blow clear across the street. So Cal Gordon got the licking of his life right there. Cal Gordon was a sheep man or sheep herder or something.

Frank McCann came to Coulee City in 1902 and Albert W. DeVolt came from Bridgeport. Frank McCann came from Waterville country. They bought the stock of groceries and hardware from George McDonald and started the firm of DeVolt and McCann, and De Volt later sold out to Jimmy Smith, after Smith sold some of the park (this reference to the park is the land we know now as Sun Lakes State Park) to Gilly. And then it was Smith and McCann for a long time.

Then Jimmy Smith wanted to get out, so he sold his interest to his brother, Billy Smith. So Bill and McCann were partners for a long time. Finally Bill got out and McCann was alone for a while. After McCann died, Mrs. McCann operated the store for a number of years after that and then closed it out, I guess.

Arbuckle was in the stock business around Bridgeport. He had a homestead up there. His family was born up there. There was Wilbur, Leslie, Ona, Lula, Alene and Orville, six children in all. Alene married Paul Glessing, and Lula married Dr. Yount.

Leslie, I heard, went to Wyoming. He was kind of a cowboy and died in Wyoming. Orville died in San Francisco. Orville had lived out southeast of town here, running cattle. He worked for John R. Lewis and Dan Paul for a number of years after he come to this country. He originally came from Scotland and he was a cowboy for a long time and later started a saloon across the street from Harry Hutton's place up the street a little ways.

When Harry Tracy came through here in 1902 he stopped down in front of our place for a few minutes. We had a Russian wolfhound bitch dog and she had a batch of pups out of a greyhound dog that Tom Kirkland had.

Tom's dog used to come down to our place visiting. So she had five pups and they were about two-thirds grown when Tracy stopped there that whole bunch started out from the house barking and making so much racket Tracy kept on going.

So I didn't see him, but he came up through town and hesitated again in front of Hutton's Saloon. They were just getting ready to lock up and just getting ready to go out the door. I don't know what he had in mind, but just about that time three or four men came out of Arbuckle's Saloon across the street and they started across toward Hutton's saloon.

When Tracy saw them he just kept on going. So that's the last I ever saw him. Dave Rice claimed he saw him out on the east side someplace between here and Creston. Albert DeVolt, by the way, was part of the posse that was supposed to have caught him.

Fred Watson, a grain buyer here, and his wife was a sister to A.R. Lillengren, and her brother, he was one of the boys. So Watson, DeVolt and Lillengren were three of the posse I knew.

I guess when Tracy got to this wheat farm up there above Creston one of the boys sneaked away from the farm someway and notified the authorities, so they got out.

He wasn't supposed to get away and talk to anybody. I read a book on Tracy one time and it seems as though Al Merrill, his brother-in-law, and he both broke out of the Oregon penitentiary at the same time and after they traveled together up the coast they got suspicious of one another. Al thought Tracy was going to get him and Tracy thought Al was going to get him.

So they decided to stand back to back and walk 10 paces and turn on nine and shoot. So it seems Tracy didn't trust his brother-in-law, so he turned on nine and shot him. So that was the last of him.

He happened to stop out here at Dave Fowler's to water his horses sometime in the night and of course, Dave's well was down the draw from the house, and Tracy wanted some water, so Dave said, "The well is down the draw and you'll have to pump the water yourself." So Tracy went down and pumped the water and watered the horses and came back and told Dave who he was and Dave said, "God, man, if you'd told me that I'd have pumped the water for you."
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One day we seen a team sitting out there in front, ?a four-horse team, in the rain. I went in and told my dad and he went out and it was old Dave Baird, passed clear out on the front seat of the wagon, all slumped over. So he told us kids to unhitch the horses and put them in the barn.

Somehow or another dad got Dave off the wagon and led him over to the barn and laid him down on some straw and he spent the whole night there. The next morn?ing he woke up, hitched the horses up and went home. He was hauling wheat 30 or 40 miles.

St. Andrews used to be kind of a way-station be?tween Buckingham and Leahy and even Bridgeport. The farmers used to race one another. The farmers across Moses Coulee always tried to get in ahead of the other long-haulers from up on the hill. Some?times there would be a line-up. Sometimes they'd have to wait two or three hours to get unloaded. The string of teams would be half-mile or a mile long or more.

George McDonald when he used to buck wheat when he got his warehouse full, he'd stack the wheat 20 or 30 feet high with a pulley and a horse on the end of the rope and a pair of tongs one sack at a time.

They hauled wheat all fall and into the winter by bobsled. A lot of times they'd have snow on top of the hill and mud down in the Coulee. They'd have somebody bring a wagon and leave it on top of the hill and transfer the wheat off the sled onto the wagon and go on and bring the wagon back. It didn't make any difference whose wagon it was, if there was a wagon there they'd take it.

One time Lester Hawden told me about Jimmy Leahy. He had to come to town to get a wagon. He left the load of hogs on the sled, took the leaders off and came to town to get a wagon. About the time he left the hogs, Lester Hayden was nearby and he was mad at Jimmy and he wanted to get even with him someway or another. He was going home and he left his wagon and hooked onto the sled with the hogs on it and went home. That was his way of getting even with Jimmy.

Jimmy Leahy married a daughter of Ed Halderman. He was an oldtimer here, too. Some of the grand kids used to come to school here. I remember some of the Halderman kids, there was Carrie Halderman and some boys.
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Speaking about Fourth of July the homesteaders used to come in along about 1901, 1902 and 1903 ?an immigrant train would come in almost every day from Spokane and then the homesteaders would decorate with flags and bunting and every?thing else and the whole family would be loaded on the wagon coming in for the celebration.

And they had firecrackers all over town, trash and papers and things strung all over. Hogs and cattle and sheep and chickens and everything running loose around town and they could have had a fire, but didn't seem to ever have one. One kid one time slipped up behind me and lit a firecracker and dropped it down my shirt collar. I turned around and he was gone and I don't know who he was.

The difference in location, between the town of Coulee City and McIntee, was very little. McIntee was right up by the springs. I remember seeing his cabin, but it was burned down later. But it was sitting, ?you have been to the rodeo grounds I suppose, and the cabin set south and a little bit east of the grand stand.

The railroad built on into Adrian in 1903 and 1904. There was quite a boom. There were seven saloons in Coulee City at that time. They started to build toward Waterville from Coulee City. Water?ville thought they'd be on a railroad at that time. Several grades were built up the hill, but they were never completed. They never completed that rail?road, but finally the Great Northern built down along Crab Creek to Wilson Creek.

Dan Paul used to sell beef to my brother-in-law, Billy Smith. He was head cowboy and used to drive cattle from Coulee City to the Cascades where they had the Great Northern camp. He'd sell the cattle and bring the money back by horseback, all in gold, mostly.

Tom Cook used to work for Dan Paul. Dan Paul was quite a character. He never drank very much, but when he did he was gone for a week or two. He told me one time, "I got in a poker game in Spokane. I kept losing and losing and losing. So darn it, I thought I'd just buy a pot. So I made $800. And they called me and beat me."

Colonel Box came in about 1906, 1907 or 1908. He homesteaded up on top of the hill on the, road to Mold. His daughter, Alzina, was one of my first girl friends. She finally lived in Ephrata. She was married to Roy Craig.
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John R. Lewis claims the distinction of raising the first grain in Douglas County which was about 1883, I think it was. He planted ten acres. He had to go to Davenport to get his seed wheat. I don't know how he cut it, probably with a scythe. How he stacked it, I don't know, but he built a stack anyhow.

Old timers tell me he built a fence, around it and when he wanted to thresh it he would throw a little hay out between the stack and the fence and run the horses over it to tramp the grain out. He claims that was the first wheat raised in Douglas County.

Waterville was quite a town in them days, too, being the county seat.

In 1888 George Roberts got married, he had originally come from Wild Rose, Wisconsin. He had two brothers, Ralph and Johnny.

Bob had the dray line in Coulee City that my dad bought later, and George opened a store in McIntee. That was the first business. His wife only lived a year. She died a year after they were married. Her name was Miss Esther Elias and she married Mr. George Roberts.

So George Roberts later took in his brother -in-law, Thomas Parry, as a partner. Thomas Parry was married to George's sister, Elizabeth. So they stayed in that business until the railroad came to town.

Another business at McIntee was operated by Levi Salmon, another Welshman. He was a black smith and had a son, Arthur. He put up a blacksmith shop and a mercantile store, and the son, Arthur, run the store and Mr. Salmon run the blacksmith shop.

When the Town of Coulee City was established he quit the store and moved the blacksmith shop to Coulee City. Then my dad had the saloon in Coulee City and another fellow, I don't know his name now, had a hotel and livery barn at McIntee.

They operated them things until 1890. By the way, George Roberts was the first postmaster and McIntee was the first post office. He continued to be the postmaster until they moved to town in about 1895.

George Roberts moved to Hartline and sold his share of the business to Thomas Parry, so they operated the store and Thomas Parry continued as postmaster until about 1912, then his son-in-law became post master. No, I guess, Parry was out in about 1910.

Brimble came in about 1912 and then Edison got the post office after Wilson was elected in 1912. Tony Richardson came in there about early 1880s or 1890s and first started in the horse business. He bought a bunch of Indian Cayuses and started in the horse business. He branded his horse with a Dipper. A dipper is a small cup-like thing with a handle that we used to drink water out of a bucket. Some of the younger people probably never used a dipper, but when we went to school we had nothing but a bucket of water and a dipper for drinking water. We all drank out of the same dipper. Any water left went back in the bucket. So that used to be quite a thing.

We all went to Coulee City schools and my dad tried to save all the money he could. When he wanted a little help downtown in the coal and wood and dray business, he would come over to school and take Tom or I out to help him. Consequently, that kinda interfered with our education quite a bit. We'd get behind in class and couldn't catch up. His intentions were good, so there was nothing we could do about it. At about the age of 16 I was taken out of school and put to work and then at 19 my dad took me down to Los Angeles and I attended a business college there for about six or eight months and then I came back here and went to work when he passed away.

I married Miss Elsie Boone. She was a native of this country, too, because she was born and raised up till about six years old north and east of Hartline and Almira.

She was the youngest daughter of Frank and Jennie Boone. They came into this country in the early days and settled in Dayton first, and then in Waitsburg. And then homesteaded between Hartline and Almira on the north side and then when he sold out in 1900 my wife was about six years old, they moved to Greenwood, British Columbia.

He worked in the mines there and then he went on west to Fairview to another mine there. Her dad, being a carpenter, he was usually a carpenter in the mine and he also took a claim up in Canada. So she grew up in Fairview, British Columbia.

A kind of funny incident happened. There was a family by the name of Kerns who lived here in Coulee City and the mother was a very heavy woman. I remember my mother making a remark one day that Mrs. Kerns was going to bust one of these days, so just being a small kid I thought that was going to be quite a mess. But these Kerns sold the restaurant, or got rid of it someway.

They were Irish and he was quite a drinking man. They moved up to some land in the same town in British Columbia that the Boones were in. So my wife went to school in Canada with the Kerns boys, there was Johnny, Eddy, and Billy. So she went to school with them up there and I went to school with them down here. So about 1947 or 1948, I guess it was, a man came to the door looking for Twinings. My wife went to the door and she said, "Why, Billy Kerns!" And, Billy Kerns looked up and said, "Well, who are you?" When Billy Kerns left I never did see him again.

After he grew up he was a salesman for some machinery outfit in Vancouver, B.C. But, talking about the Boones, my wife's people were direct descend ants of Daniel Boone's brother. They originally came from England and there were six children in the Boone family.
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Billy Smith from Hartline was raised up there and went to the first school in Hartline and was one of the first students. C. C. Ladd was the first teacher. Fanny Gilbert and some of her sisters were first students there, too.

Billy Smith was the head cowboy for Dan Paul. Paul had a contract to furnish beef to the Great Northern Railway when they built over the Cascades. He used to have the job of driving the cattle. They had no way to transport them only on foot, so they walked them over there to the camp. They swam them across the river down around Vantage somewhere and Billy Smith was the head cowboy and in charge of the crew. He told me he had to take the cattle over there, sell them and collect the money and carry it back to Dan Paul on horse back.

Another little story about Dan Paul; Cory Gilbert, another old timer here, son of Riley Gilbert, one of the first settlers on the hill here, was a boy in his teens, I guess about 14, 15 or 16. His dad had made arrangements with Dan Paul to borrow $200 to buy a team of horses.

He sent Cory down to Dan Paul to get the money one day and Cory found Dan Paul out in his meadow irrigating, about half a mile from his cabin, so he told Dan his dad had sent me down to get $200.

"Well," Dan said, "Go over to the cabin over there and you'll see a cigar box up on the shelf behind the stove. There is money in there, so take the $200 out of there."

Cory said his eyes bugged out when he saw the box because he said there must have been $1,000 in the box. So he counted out the money and took it to his dad There old Dan had the money in his cabin while he was out irrigating, door unlocked. Nobody locked their doors those days, never thought about it.

I guess Dan Paul was originally from Ireland and I don't know what happened to him, but he got into the stock business in Missoula, Montana and also operated a pretty good sized butcher shop in Missoula, before he came here in about 1890. I have been told he drove several hundred head of cattle from Missoula to Coulee City at one time, grazed them along the way, took biggest part of the summer to get them here.

Then came 1889 and 1890 and 1891 which were pretty hard winters on stockmen and they lost hundred of head of cattle and horses. Billy Smith said he was working for Dan Paul at that time. Dan asked him to get up at midnight nearly every night and get the cattle up, kick them up, so they wouldn't lie down and freeze. He said many a night he spent out there punching the cattle and waking them up, making them get up and move around.
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Incidentally, Billy Smith was married to the oldest daughter in the Boone family, Clarai, she was the oldest daughter and my wife was the youngest. They are all gone now, but when we were married there were six children and the parents still alive. They are all gone now. My wife was the last one born and the last one to go.

But we had a good life together, I guess, shouldn't kick about it. We lived together for 54 years. She had arthritis and she suffered a lot the last 15 or 20 years. I guess there is not a cure for that rheumatoid arthritis. It has been quite lone?some getting along without her after living together that long.

Well, I might as well start in on the Young brothers now there was Adolph, Phillip, Jake, Louie and Billy. They were raised up around Hartline, too. Phillip was in business in Hartline, lumber, coal and wood, and Louie and Jake homesteaded what in now Sun Lakes Park.

Jake homesteaded the part next to the east end of Blue Lake and Louie took his claim farther east up by Deep Lake, around what they used to call Spring Creek. In about 1902 they sold out to Jimmie Smith, brother of Billy Smith.

Jimmy Smith lived there for a number of years and he finally sold to R. M. Gilly. It seemed that Harry Hutton had a loan to Gilly on the place and finally took the land over and I think then the State took it from Harry Hutton. Then there was a fellow by the name of Bill Geer took a place up above Louie Young's place and he put out quite an orchard and later Roy Carpenter bought it and after Roy died there is not any orchard there any more.

When the railroad first came in here, to Coulee City in July 1890, there were several buildings, The Grand Hotel was built, a 20-room hotel, and furnished in 30 days. Of course, at that time they could get lumber over the railroad I guess.

Then Harry Hutton came into town. He started a confectionery store and had that for a year or two and he sold that and started a saloon, lumber and paint business. He sold lumber, varnishes and paints and all kinds of building materials. Also had a saloon with barbershop on the west side of the saloon built on a lean-to and Fred Rider was the barber at that time.

We had no electricity, but gasoline lamps had just come into town. The gas was run into hollow wire from a tank in the back of the building and they would pump air into the tank and force the gas into the lamps.

This Fred Rider was maybe drinking a little bit and he went back to pump up the gas one night. This was in July of about 1903. He was pumping away there and I guess he lit a cigarette or a match or some thing and the gas caught fire and the whole Block 6 burned out that day. People had no fire fighting equipment except a bucket brigade, that didn't run much water.

The bank building on the, opposite corner came pretty nearly catching fire but they finally got it put out and storekeepers brought all the salt they had in their warehouses and threw salt all over the buildings to keep them from burning.

So the next morning Harry Hutton had a hired man and one old horse and wagon start hauling the stuff out. They cleaned up all the burned beer kegs and equipment and anything that wasn't burned. Harry got on the train and went to Spokane and bought all new equipment and in less than a month or two he was back in the saloon business.

About that time, about a year or so later, he shipped in two barrels of whisky from Kentucky, called "Green River Whiskey," which held 500 gallons a piece that would make them weigh over two tons.

My dad was on the dray wagon, so he, had a job of hauling them up to the saloon. So he rolled them out of the box car onto the wagon and they went clear through the wagon and down onto the ground. So they rolled the first barrel up the sidewalk. The sidewalks were built out of 2 by 6s and they cracked all the boards in the sidewalk clear from the depot to the saloon. So the next barrel they rolled off the depot platform and up the middle of the street.

Finally they got them both anchored in the saloon. I don't know how long those barrels lasted, but Hutton put spigots in them and they used to sell it out for 25 cents for half a pint. They must have lasted quite a while, 1,000 gallons of whiskey! They advertised Green Whiskey on draft.

When my father bought that butcher shop he had a place about five or six miles east of town that had a meadow with a spring on it and he used to raise hay out there. He traded that piece of land, I don't know how he got the title straight on it because that was after my mother died and she didn't leave a will, but he must have got the title straight some way or another, so Jim McKinnon bought it. He traded my dad 35 head of cattle for that ranch.

And speaking of the Garlands, Grover and some of the older boys used to have to go to the mountains with their dad with the sheep every spring. Of course, they'd have to quit school before school was out and they'd not get back until fall after the next term started.

Bert was a stage driver and they used to run the stage. A fellow by the name of Hazen run the first stage between here and Waterville. He had a harness shop and his place of business was on the same lot where the Blue Top Tavern is now. He run the first harness shop and stage line and then Jim Cunningham come in from around Waterville or Farmer.

He had a homestead around Badger Mountain to start with and then he settled another preemption or something around Farmer. Then he come down just north of my father's place in the Coulee and started a ranch down there. I don't know how he got title to that, probably took it as a timber culture.

They had three different ways of taking property in them days. Jim lived down there until after his kids got to be school age or more and he started in horses, he had several head of horses and he got the livery barn in Coulee City and the stage line to Waterville.

Bert Garland and Alfred Greenough were two drivers I remember best. They got to handle a whip so good they could almost pick flies off a horse's ears and pretty nearly every day they had one or two wild horses in their team when they started out. I remember seeing Bert one day, in them days they had no gravel roads and the roads in the Coulee would be muddy and snow on the hilt and the chuck holes would be a foot or two deep and then they'd freeze and it would be just like driving over a bunch of scab rocks.

So Bert was coming down the road there one day in the stage on a dead run pretty near, bouncing all over them rough pieces of mud. The wind was blowing and his hat started to blow off his head. I was standing there watching him, and I bet his hat wasn't six inches from his head until his whip was back here and he spun around on two wheels. I thought he was going to tip over, but he didn't. He stepped down where the had stopped and got off and held onto the lines and got his hat and away he went again. That's the last I seen him on that day.

Alfred Greenough wasn't a very big man, but he was awful wiry and as strong as an ox, I guess, because they were threshing out by Leahy one time they didn't have no buck to buck the wheat away from the threshing machine. The, outfit was on his place, so Alfred said he'd buck them away and they looked at him and being kind of a small guy they didn't think he could do it.

They didn't think he'd last but an hour or two. Most of them bucked them five high, but in place, of five high, he bucked them seven high. And he bucked away from that machine all day long and never bothered him a bit. Sure surprised the crew.

I think he just died in Okanogan a few years ago. He married a woman by the name of Olive Bumgardner. She was working for Jim Cunningham when he was driving the stage and that was the way they got acquainted, I guess.
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Jap Garland said, "Ben Hutcheson learned me how to ride. The first bucking horse I ever got on I grabbed the horn. Ben came along with his quirt and he came down on my hand and he pretty near broke it, but, I never grabbed a horn after that."

He was a rider and a good one.

And I guess you have heard about the Hutcheson boys, Ben and Bill. They used to live down in the Lind country and Connell and them places. They were big fellows, almost seven feet tall.

Well, Alfred Pierpoint, I think he come from Indiana or someplace there, and he was the captain of a wagon train that come across the plains somewhere in the early 1880s and he landed over at Waterville first. He took a homestead over close to Badger Mountain and he lived there for a few years. I think he was one of the first sheriffs of Douglas County.
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Along about 1898 Alfred Pierpoint married Stella Gard who was raised down there. They were old timers around Waterville and she had a brother named Arthur Gard and they located up there at Baird.

Pierpoint had a place about 10 miles west of Coulee City, had a pretty good ranch there. Their kids were born there. There were Alfred, Gladys, Dick and Babe and Billy Sunday. He died in a fire at the ranch back in 1920 or 1921.

Al Pierpoint was quite a politician and wherever there was a family in trouble or in need of anything he would start out with his hat passing it around to take up a collection in no time to help them out. He was a pretty good old fellow.

Alfred Pierpoint, his oldest son, carried the mail into Sage Brush Flats for a number of years and then they discontinued the Baird Post Office and they made a run from Coulee City down that route.

The Baird Post Office was established by James Baird, he was a Scotchman. There were two brothers, James and David Baird. Jim Baird had the post office and a quarter of land homesteaded there. He operated a little grocery store and the post office together. Later he transferred the post office to Nat Davis.

I think Nat Davis run it as long as it existed. Of course the post office kept going a long time and Mrs. Pierpoint, that's old Al's wife, was post mistress out there for a number of years until they discontinued it and the Coulee City Post Office was still operating after they moved the town.

I think George Roberts stayed postmaster until about 1895 and he sold out to Thomas Parry and Tom got the post mastership until he transferred it to his son in-law, Hughey Brimble. He married Esther Parry.

After he lost the post office they moved out and went to Montana. Later they separated. They couldn't get along together or something and I heard that Hughey died up there in Butte, Montana. Esther is still living as far as I know. I think she just moved from Almira to Cashmere, to live with the daughter, Ruth, this last year.
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His dad had made arrangements with Dan Paul to borrow $200 to buy a team of horses.

He sent Cory down to Dan Paul to get the money one day and Cory found Dan Paul out in his meadow irrigating, about half a mile from his cabin, so he told Dan his dad had sent me down to get $200.

"Well," Dan said, "Go over to the cabin over there and you'll see a cigar box up on the shelf behind the stove. There is money in there, so take the $200 out of there."

Cory said his eyes bugged out when he saw the box because he said there must have been $1,000 in the box. So he counted out the money and took it to his dad There old Dan had the money in his cabin while he was out irrigating, door unlocked. Nobody locked their doors those days, never thought about it.

I guess Dan Paul was originally from Ireland and I don't know what happened to him, but he got into the stock business in Missoula, Montana and also operated a pretty good sized butcher shop in Missoula, before he came here in about 1890. I have been told he drove several hundred head of cattle from Missoula to Coulee City at one time, grazed them along the way, took biggest part of the summer to get them here.

Then came 1889 and 1890 and 1891 which were pretty hard winters on stockmen and they lost hundred of head of cattle and horses. Billy Smith said he was working for Dan Paul at that time. Dan asked him to get up at midnight nearly every night and get the cattle up, kick them up, so they wouldn't lie down and freeze. He said many a night he spent out there punching the cattle and waking them up, making them get up and move around.
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Along about 1907 and 1908 there was quite a political battle in Douglas and Grant Counties. A lot of people on the east side of the county wanted it divided and those on the west didn't want it, so E.C. Davis was the main instigator to help in getting the county divided. He was a brother of Nat Davis who ran the post office at Baird, and also a brother of Dave Davis who was the husband of Tressa Gilbert, who were old timers in this county. But they finally got it separated.

My brother, Tom, was a commissioner after they got the county divided about 1912 or 1913. I think he had quite a bit to do with the building of the courthouse in Ephrata.

There was a lot of opposition to the building of Vantage Bridge, but they, with the help of my brother, finally went ahead and built it. Then Uncle Sam wanted my brother to come work for him, so he went and helped whip the Kaiser.

In 1906, Ed Olwell purchased the two trestles that were built west of the Coulee City depot that contained a lot of heavy timber. A lot of logs in there were 12 by 12 and 30 or 40 feet long, without a knot in them. He sold some of them for timber and sawed the rest of them up and brought them in and sold them for firewood. F.J. Wick was one of the men, who helped dismantle the trestles about 1906.

I remember walking across those bridges a lot of times when I was a kid. They were originally built with the intention of going on over the hill, but somehow they never made it. Seems as though when the crossing of the Grand Coulee was laid out there was only a space of a couple of miles that could be a crossing place. That's what they called McIntee's Crossing, because that was the easiest place they could get across from the Columbia River to Soap Lake.

Ed Olwell made a lot of money in 1916. There was a heavy crop and bluestem wheat was worth 15 to 20 cents more than hybrid wheat, both white wheat.

He had the first elevator in Coulee City, so he would buy this hybrid wheat at the low price and he was allowed, I think, a 20 percent mix as long as it was white wheat. So he mixed this hybrid in with the bluestem and sold it at bluestem price for hybrid wheat and that way he made considerable amount of money.

He bought a ranch from Jim Cunningham about two miles north of Coulee City and built a lot of large barns and milking sheds and made a regular dairy farm out of it and peddled milk in Coulee City for a long time. He had some well-bred cattle, but when the government took it over a fellow by the name of, oh, I can't think of his name, Kalm or something like that, bought the house and moved it to town and insured it and then burned it. At least they thought he burned it, maybe he didn't, I don't know. He had the credit for it.

Along about 1895 or 1896 we had a celebration at Fourth of July at Coulee City. My dad had put up a lot of ice and milked a few cows and had some cream. My mother made up a few gallons of ice cream. We had no commercial ice cream in those days. She put up a little ice cream stand and sold ice cream and lemonade.

Old Chief Moses happened to be in town that day and I remember him. He was all dressed up in his furs and feathers and had his big headpiece on with feathers clear down to the ground behind him. He was quite dressed up in his chief outfit and of course the Chief is never supposed to pay for anything, so he ate about all of mother's ice cream up and never paid a nickel for it.

She didn't have anything but porcelain dishes and after people ate she washed them and served some more, so the old Chief brought his dish back and said, "More, More, More." So he came back a dozen times or more and ate all of mother's ice cream and didn't pay her anything. I remember him, he was a well built man, must have weighed over 200 pounds, tall and broad shouldered, a nice looking man.
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Then I heard a story about a greenhorn stage driver that was scared to death. I guess Moses had a camp up there somewhere and quite a bunch of Indians there. So this fellow started across the Coulee with the stage and about 50 Indians came up toward him on horseback and he started whipping his horses and he got out of there right quick. He thought sure as heck he was going to get scalped. He told me about it when I saw him about 20 years ago in Ellensburg.

"Oh, them Indians was mean," he said.

He said he went back the next day and told Jim Cunningham about it, but Jim said, "They are alright. They are good friendly Indians."

Jim and his wife got along good with the Indians. So Jim said, "You just take a pint of whisky with you tomorrow and when the Indians come just hold that bottle up, you'll be alright."

He took a pint of whiskey and the Indians came up, grabbed the whiskey and away they went, tickled to death. He was sure scared the first day.

Then I'd better tell you a story about Soap Lake. I don't know if everybody has heard this story or not, but I got it straight from the lion's mouth. Wendell Pate and his dad brought a bunch of sheep in about 1881 or 1882 from Oregon and they developed a disease, I think they called it the scab.

They were losing their wool, and that was one of the main profits to the sheep man; so they got to Soap Lake. Wendell Pate was the oldest son, and I talked to him about 25 years ago in Wenatchee. He must he dead by now, but he told me when he came to Soap Lake there was no lake there, just a spring, and they tasted the water and knew it was mineral water, so they built some vats, I don't know where they got the lumber, and chutes and heated the water, he said and put the sheep through and eventually got rid of the scab.

Wendell told me that. He went to school here when I first started to school, but he was probably 20 to 21 years old when I was about 6, so he was about 15 years older than I was.

He had a mouth harp and used to play it at noon out on the porch. That was the first music I ever heard and I thought that was pretty good.

He had a brother, Mike and another brother, Minor. Minor settled up in the Okanogan Valley someplace between Brewster and Omak or Winthrop. I went past his place way back in the 20s. Someone said that was Minor's place. Frank Pate, the younger brother used to pal around with me quite a bit, because we were the same age. Annie Pate, the daughter, I don't know what became of her. They lived here in town for a number of years while the kids went to school.

In the early days 1891 or 1892 or 1893 Harry Hutton had sold his confectionery business and started a saloon, and it seems they had a poker game there every night. An old Chinaman had come to town and built himself a laundry back of Hutton's saloon, so when he had his day's work done, I guess, he'd go to the saloon and sit down and watch the poker game, until 1 or 2 in the morning. So one night, Tom Parry told me this himself, a bunch of the boys got together and went back to the Chinaman's house, and he had a coal oil lamp. They poured the coal oil out of it and filled it up with water. When the Chinaman came in he couldn't light his lamp.

Then they put a tick tack or something on the window to make a lot of noise and scared the Chinaman. He grabbed a six shooter and ran out and shot four or five times up in the air.

After that they ran and sent the Marshal in, I think Jim Hansen was the Marshall, to arrest the Chinaman.

And he said, "Did you kill Hutton?"

"No, no Huttton my friend," said the chinaman.

"Well, Hutton is dead," they said. "We'll show you."

They had Hutton stretched out on some sawhorses and some boards in the saloon with ketchup and flour and stuff all over his face to make him look like a corpse and scared hell out of the Chinaman. So they took him down and put him in jail and scared him some more. After while they came down and turned him out and told him what the joke was.
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... So the train was standing there with a whole trainload of horses headed for Kansas City or St. Louis, I don't know which.

So he, Tony Richardson, got out of the horse business and started in the cattle business, but while he was in the horse business he lived here in Coulee City. I remember two of his kids, I think one was Dee Richardson and the other was Annie. He had a brother, Paul. I thought it was Paul that built the Greenfront Livery Barn, but I think I found out later it was Tony, Tony and Company. They built what they used to call the Greenfront Livery Barn that sits on the lot where the Gregg building used to stand. Then the Gregg building was demolished this year.

The first telephone line from Coulee City to Waterville was built in 1901 or 1902. The telephone poles were shipped into Coulee City. Jim Cunningham had the contract for hauling them. They put a big, long reach in the wagon and put about three or five telephone poles and four horses on the wagon. They strung poles all the way from Coulee City to Waterville that way.

Only two wires were on the poles at that time. Jim Terry used to live with Roy Carpenter down here in the Park and he had a place of his own for awhile. Roy left the place, I think, to Jim and he worked on that telephone line. They camped under some trees on the corner of my dad's place down there along the creek. I rem ember us kids would go down there almost every afternoon and the cook would give us a piece of cake. And, boy, that tasted good, first time I ever tasted any layer cake. My mother, being an "Old Country" woman she never baked layer cake at all. So that was quite a treat.

Charlie Sprague used to run a bunch of horses.

His brand was an outhouse, I guess, that isn't what we used to call it. George took a homestead down around Castle Lake and the way the draw runs down there from Dan Paul's place, he went along side of a cliff with a wheelbarrow and shovel and made a road down into Castle Lake. Some of that road is still there yet. He built it all with a shovel and wheelbarrow. George used always to call his brother, Charles. Charles was quite a guy, a pretty good man in a way. One of his words or saying was "and that's a cinch."

And speaking about the Garlands and Jap, Jap was the black sheep of the family, I guess. I remember hearing one time he was drinking quite a bit and he went up to his dad and said, "Dad, give me five dollars."

His Dad said, "I'll give you five dollars if you'll get to hell out of my sight and I don't want to ever see you again."
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