Historical Perspectives: An Evening of Story-Telling. Class #5 of "The Ecological History of the Methow Valley" Conservation Course

The 8th annual Methow Conservation Course on the “Ecological History of the Methow Valley” began Monday, January 31st.  Here are highlights from the fifth class held on March 5th.  Notes from the first four classes are below this post.  Mary Kiesau prepared this summary.

In the fifth class in our 2012 Methow Conservation Course, “The Ecological History of the Methow Valley,”

Karen West, co-author of Bound for the Methow, used photographs from the Shafer Museum to show the old-time, land-based ways of life in the valley, including early mining, logging, farming and ranching and raising sheep and cattle. She then introduced several long-time valley residents who each shared their stories about growing up and working here, which meant chores and hard work and whatever else it took to maintain a family and live off the land in our remote rural valley long before the North Cascades Highway opened.  The local historians who spoke were Bob Tonseth, Frankie Waller, Lloyd Remsberg, Vic Stokes, and Carl & Claude Miller.
 

All photos are courtesy of the Shafer Museum for one-time use only and cannot be reproduced without permission from the museum.

Karen started the evening out showing historical images.... 

Up to 100,000 sheep were once driven through the Methow.

Horses brought heavy loads of homesteading people to the Valley over rough and rocky trails

Ice was cut from the rivers in winter to keep milk and food cool in the spring and summer

What we know of as the Gunn Ranch area was once called Land 5 and it grew acres upon acres of corn, potatoes, grains and orchard fruit, all without irrigation, in the early 1900s.

a herd of cows passes by the old Winthrop high school, where Winthrop Fitness is now

It was hard to exist without horses.  They did everything, including haul large timber like in these two photos.

A large sawmill used to be on the south end of Patterson Lake (Bristlecone Pond in Pine Forest was once part of the mill's operation)

The Alder Mine just outside of Twisp.

Bob Tonseth spoke about the early days of mining in the Valley.  As early as the 1860s, people were traveling through the Okanogan region looking for gold.  The "Glory Hole" or Eureka lode that Alex Barron found in 1895 in the Harts Pass area set off a local mining craze that lasted for some mines well into the 1940s and 1950s, and involved mining for gold, silver, zinc, tungsten and many other metals.  Alder Mine, for instance, was discovered in 1896 but its hey day of activity was from 1939-1953.  But mostly, mining was a very fast boom and bust period for the Methow and the Cascades with some "towns" like Ruby and Barron being abandoned so fast that bars were still stocked with liquor and ore was left in buckets.  Bob noted that one reason people came and left so quickly was that people found gold here without digging very far - it was right on the surface.  In most other places, like Colorado, gold was deeper down, so when folks saw it on the surface they figured there would be a lot more further down and so they came here in droves, but they quickly realized there was not more gold the further they dug.

Frankie Waller spoke next about growing up here with a sheep ranching family.  Like today, their sheep were sheared in March and April, but unlike today, they had thousands of sheep.  The family's job was to find food for the sheep, so they had to constantly be moved all over the region, including as far as Entiat, Orondo and Wenatchee where they were herded (herding sheep is also called driving) up and down the Columbia River.  In the Methow, Frankie said they would move the sheep on a circuit throughout the Pasayten.  Around the 4th of July, the family would load all the sheep into big trucks and take them to Robinson Creek.  From there they would "drive" (herd) them into the mountains.  There were other "sheepmen" there but everyone had unspoken territories.  Some folks would go up the Twisp River drainage too.  In the fall, lambs were sold and sent to Chicago by train.  Ewes were sent to a winter range in southern WA.  Frankie said her Dad sold all his sheep when Grand Coulee Dam was opened because the government wouldn't lease land anymore.

Sacks of potatoes in a shed

Lloyd Remsberg moved to Carlton in 1939 and spoke about being a potato farmer.  Lloyd was also a logger for many years.  Lloyd said potatoes grew well here, but even better they kept for a long time because they weren't sitting in hot, dry soil here as long as they were in other parts of WA (they didn't cook in the soil).  So, lots of people started growing taters here.  Lloyd particularly liked "Netted Gem" potatoes.  Early on, with horses, it would take him weeks to cultivate his fields, but once he got a tractor he could do it in 2 weeks.  He would start harvesting them after frost, usually in the second week of October, at 22 tons at a time.  It would take 2-3 weeks to collect them all!  He would store them (and carry them by hand) in 100 lb sacks (because 50 lbs sacks took too long), then put what didn't sell right away in underground cellars.  He had a cellar in Twin Lakes that held 500 tons! 
 

Vic Stokes was born and raised in the Methow, same as his father.  He is a 4th generation cattleman in the Valley, still living on family land on Beaver Creek.  Vic said that early homesteaders crossed cattle for dual purposes - milk and meat.  They would milk shorthorns!  This was common in those days (and is actually coming back into practice for some small family farms across the country).  Vic noted that everyone had forest grazing permits, even people with just 10 or 15 head of cattle, and that the allotments were real close to were people lived.  People began switching more and more to beef cattle (Vic didn't say why but others have said that an increasing lack of rain/moisture made it hard to raise milk cows.  There was a lot of water in the hills for the first 30 years or so that white people lived in the Methow but by 1915 a drought had hit and stayed with the Valley for many years; and then there was more moisture again, and then there was less again.)  If you raised cattle, you raised horses, and hay, and you usually had as many or more horses than cattle up until WWI.  Most families had sheep, hogs, chickens and large gardens too.  People raised or bartered for all the food that they needed.

Horses had to haul their own hay of course!

A good, reliable horse was as good as gold.

Brothers Claude & Carl Miller, from a homesteading family who over the years owned and worked large parcels of land all over various parts of the Valley, spoke last.  Claude owns the largest herd of saddle horses in the State of Washington, saying "thank god for horse crazy girls - they've kept me in business all my life!"  (Claude supplies horses to girl scout camps around the west as well as packers and other businesses).  Claude was a packer himself for 35 years, and he helped build the Pacific Crest Trail for many years.  Claude said horses here used to be small.  They've progressively gotten bigger over the years.  The winter of 1915-1916 was particularly hard and people were feeding their horses willows to survive.  Claude also said that horse racing and rodeos used to be really common in the Valley - there were several different rodeo grounds spread throughout the Methow.

A young orchard in the early 1900s

Wheat as tall as a horses head, grown without irrigation water!

Carl Miller talked about agriculture and how it changed with the changing climate.  There was a wet spring with a big flood in 1894 and for nearly 20 years after that there was a lot of water in the hills.  Homesteaders thought they would be able to "dryland farm" (grow crops without irrigation), and they did for many years, including Carl and Claude's grandparents who built "the Rose Miller Place" in the Rendezvous.  Guy Waring, the founding father of Winthrop, thought he could grow apples in the Gunn Ranch area (Land 5) without irrigation, but he went broke trying as the 19teens became drier and drier.  Still, many ranches and orchards hung on - some got irrigation and some did not - and by the mid 1900s there were some big wet winters and some spring floods (the flood of 1948 is the one everyone still talks about) that put water into the underground reservoirs again.  Apples made big money when they did well.  For many years, people again grew alfalfa and wheat in the uplands, like Balky Hill, without irrigation.  Carl said there's no way we could do that now.  "You need to get at least 12-15 inches of rain to grow grain.  Some years, we got as little as seven inches."

The Rose Miller Place in the Rendezvous was Carl & Claude Miller's grandparents house.

 Thanks for following along with our 2012 Conservation Course on the Ecological History of the Methow Valley!