Verne Adams, recorded March 8, 1977:

I want to say a little about old Coulee City. I moved in there in 1912. We moved off of our old homestead west of Coulee City. Coulee City hasn't anything doing up there now, but in 1912-24 there was a lot doing, all horses and all wheat haulers, two livery barns, about 50 businesses at that time, now about five. So that's the difference.

Coulee is the end of the railroad and the train used to come in at 7 o'clock at night. The entertainment we had was to go see the train come in at 7 o'clock at night and then it went to Adrian and came back at 7 o'clock the next morning and on back to Spokane.

The train was a big deal, everyone got down on the platform and watched the passengers come and go. Everybody traveled by train then.

At that time we had two doctors, a dentist, an undertaker, plus three attorneys; Guy Walters, Nat Washington and Dan Evans. Now Nat Washington was the father of our representative Nat Washington. That's where he got his start.

We had one drug store run by Charlie Neihart. His son still runs that drug store. Of course, there were no lights in town. Old gas lanterns were what we used for lights, and then I think there were five or six street lights that the marshal went around every night and lit. I think they were carbide lights.

In 1915 C. J. Weller came in there with a light plant. He was an electrician and he installed the first street lights we had there.

He had an oil burning engine that he started every night about dark and it chugged away until the stars went down I guess, and then they shut off the lights.

We had four grocery stores, but I'll say this before I go any farther, those people in Coulee City were the finest guys in the world. I was kind a nosey kid and I really got acquainted with all of them, too.

There were two hotels with a restaurant in each one, and a lodging house, too. Bill Adair had a restaurant without a hotel. He was a character I'll tell you. I can remember his menu yet, and everything he'd have to say, "I say, huh what..." before he could say anything.

"Roast Beef, roast pork, wieners and horseradish and I say, huh what, a little soup to start with."

Oh, he was a character. He opened that thing at about 4 o'clock in the morning, and I think I was there every time he opened it. Then he went off at about 2 o'clock and he went someplace and got good and drunk for the rest of the afternoon, but he was always ready to start the next morning. He just dropped over dead right behind that counter when he was about 70 years old. He lasted quite a while at that.
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There were three pool halls, cleaning and pressing, and a harness shop and shoe repair, and two barber shops with two men in each shop. Since Gordon has mentioned barber business, Wade Purcell was a special friend of mine and I thought he was the grandest person and if I'd just go and be a barber I could be just like him. But I couldn't. But I did pass the barber's examination and had a license as long as I could afford to keep it up.

Herschel Wanling ran the butcher shop and the slaughterhouse. I had a lot of experiences with him, too. I could tell you a lot of things about him, but one in particular; he and I were down there digging some postholes for a hog pen or something and we went back after lunch and there was a groundhog in the hole. He was a bald headed man, and he said, "We'll have some fun with this groundhog I'll tell you."

So he sent me back to the slaughterhouse to get a gunny sack, and I went and got this sack and he was an awful man to swear, too. I'll say that, but anyway, we started up town with that groundhog in that gunny sack and he was just going to have the most fun. He was going to turn it loose in somebody's pool hall or store or somewhere.

And we just got going good and the groundhog just ate his way out of that gunny sack and down through his legs and if you ever heard a guy cuss and swear, he sure did. So we missed out on that. But there were some awful characters there and all real good guys.

There was a man's clothing store, the man also sold cars later on. We had three warehouses; E. Alwell, Jerry Dodd and Harry Mathis. This man, Alwell, he got to bucking the board of trade and made a million dollars I guess and he went out north of Coulee City, right out there in the rocks, and he put up the finest dairy barn in the world, at that time I know it was.

He had 100 cows milking out there and he was going great guns, but the bottom fell out of his stock market and he left just like that, too. So I don't remember what became of him. He really had things going.
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The wheat was hauled in there by horses and teams from the Del Rio country and the Grand Coulee country for forty miles. So you can imagine how many horses were tied around there when they just came in one day and went back the next, staying all night. That's where the business came from. It wasn't from Coulee people. But there would be 1,000 horses tied around there at the feed racks at times.

Clyde Gilbert ran a livery barn. I wondered how many people would know what a livery barn was, but in looking around here I think most eyery body does. He had teams for hire and he was a special friend of mine, too, and we got along real good.

I was just a kid and broke most of his colts to ride for him. I don't mean I was a bronco rider, but we didn't let them buck in those days. He'd snub them and I'd ride them. We'd go out through the rocks aways.

At that time they were developing a big ranch down the Coulee by Lincoln Stock Farms and he said, "You'd just as well haul these men down."

There would be three or four men come in on the train at night to go down there to work and so he'd give me an old team, Bill and Barney , and a three-seated hack. I'd go down and have dinner with them and then come back at night. They would always be a man or two quitting and they'd come back . So that was quite a deal. Every night he'd give me a dollar. So I was making more money than any kid in town. But, Clyde Gilbert was really some fellow.

Adolph Young had a feed barn. He didn't have any horses for hire. So he thought he'd sell little whiskey on the side. So he got to bootlegging around there. People would go over there and get it, he wouldn't peddle it, but when people went over there he'd have it hidden in the mangers or somewhere.

One day a couple of Federals came in and asked him, "Aren't you afraid you'll get caught?"

He was an old German. He said, "Oh, no, I will never get caught. I'm too slick for 'em." So that ended his bootlegging days and I don't know what became of him from there on.

We had two shoe repair shops and three pool halls, and they all had a little gambling game going in them and two barber shops with two men in each one were busy all the time. So in those days there was really something going on. It is about all closed up there now.

The Standard Oil came in in 1915, delivering gas and oil with a team of horses. Dr. Gregg built a big dance hall and we used to have dances every Friday night and smokers and wrestling matches and an orchestra from Spokane and we really had a ball around there.

We had an auctioneer, W . L. Fox. Some of you people might have remembered him. Two garages later; John Tucker and a man by the name of Bill Gilley. I remember that John Tucker in his garage had the first radio I ever heard. Everytime there was anything doing, everybody filled that garage up to hear what was going on over that radio. That was quite a long while ago, too.

Down in the lake bottom where Banks Lake is now, there was a homesteader on every 160 acres. That's where the people, came from. Also up on the hill there were people all over the country, where now one farmer will have 40 homesteads up there.
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