Astorian Fur Trade Party Led by Robert Stuart at American Falls [otd 09/05]

On September 5, 1812, fur trader Robert Stuart wrote in his journal, “The whole body of the stream is here scarcely 60 feet wide, but immediately above expands to the breadth of half a mile, with little or no current and the banks sufficiently covered with Willows to afford a plentiful supply of food for the incredible numbers of furred animals who inhabit its borders.”

American Falls before dam construction. Library of Congress.

Stuart's note referred to the Snake River as it constricted into the cascades at Idaho's American Falls. Stuart and the six men with him camped about three miles above the Falls. The band worked for the Pacific Fur Company, an affiliate of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company (AFC) [blog, July 17]. The men carried dispatches from Astoria, the company’s base at the mouth of the Columbia River.

Stuart had traveled to Astoria by sea and had never seen (the future) Idaho before this trip. However, Ramsey Crooks and at least two of the other men with Stuart had explored it during the earlier Wilson Price Hunt east-to-west crossing [blog, October 5 and others]. The men’s misfortunes began less than a week after they re-entered Idaho in mid-August: An Indian guide, who had seemed trustworthy, stole their best horse and disappeared.

After that, other problems plagued them: oppressive summer heat, mosquitos and other insect pests, lack of reliable water sources, and a rugged countryside almost devoid of trails. A fifty-mile stretch between today’s Bruneau and Buhl was particularly bad. It’s now known as the Bruneau Desert, with one feature called Deadman Flat. On one day, after eighteen grueling miles, they stumbled upon “a small patch of grass.” (This might have been near Tuana Springs, 4-5 miles southwest of today’s Bliss.) Looking ahead, they saw nothing but arid, rocky ground, so they decided to stop and let their horses rest and feed.

Stuart and Crooks are credited with the earliest descriptions of much of what became the Oregon Trail. Pioneers trudging the Trail at mid-century would endure the same conditions, but they at least had a marked track to follow.

The returning Astorians found the area above American Falls more agreeable. Stuart wrote: “The country passed since yesterday morning has improved greatly – the sage, and its detestable relations, gradually decrease, and the soil, though parched, produces provender in abundance.”

Robert Stuart, by unknown artist.
Robert Stuart House Museum.

They next trekked up the course of the Portneuf River, and then crossed a regional divide to Soda Springs. Along the Idaho-Wyoming border, disaster struck: A band of Crow Indians ran off all their horses. Forced to walk, they could not escape the mountains before heavy snows caught them. They spent the winter in a crude camp on the North Platte River about twenty-five miles upstream from Scotts Bluff.

Several months later, they built canoes and floated down the river. The Astorians reached an outlying trading post in mid-April, 1813, and learned “the disagreeable news of a war between America & Great Britain.”

The War of 1812 ruined Astor’s venture in the Far West, but not his overall fur trade empire. Stuart went on to become an influential leader in the AFC. When the company established a major post on Mackinac Island, in northern Michigan, Stuart was placed in charge.

After that post closed in 1835, Stuart moved to Detroit. He played a prominent role in the development of Michigan, before his death in 1848.
                                                                                                                                     

References: [B&W]

O. C. Comstock, “Sketch of the Life of Hon. Robert Stuart,” Report of the Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, Vol. III, Robert Smith Printing Co., Lansing (1881 issue, reprinted 1903).

Robert Stuart, Kenneth A. Spaulding (ed.), On The Oregon Trail: Robert Stuart’s Journey of Discovery, University of Oklahoma Press (1953).

Stuart House Museum, Mackinac Island, Michigan.

Dentist, Rancher, Banker and Oakley Mayor John Lowe [otd 09/04]

Mayor Lowe. H. T. French photo.

Dentist and Oakley Mayor John O. Lowe was born September 4, 1877 in Willard, Utah, 10-12 miles north of Ogden. Soon, the family moved to Cassia County, Idaho. In fact, John missed by just a few months being eligible as a south Idaho “Oldtimer” when they formed an association forty years later. You had to be (Idaho Statesman, October 3, 1921) among the “residents of this Territory prior to January 1, 1880.”

John went to school in Cassia County and graduated from Albion Normal School in 1897. He then began teaching in the area.

However, after only a year, he enlisted with the First Idaho Regiment (National Guard) for service in the Spanish-American War. Corporal Lowe participated in all the engagements experienced by the First Idaho in the Philippines. There, the troops saw combat action against Filipino revolutionaries in a number of battles and skirmishes from February through April, 1899. The regiment, and John, mustered out in the fall of that year.

In 1901, Lowe entered medical school in Chicago, but illness – an aftermath of his service in the tropics – forced him to withdraw. After a year to recuperate, he enrolled at Northwestern University and graduated with a doctorate in dental surgery in 1906.

He returned to Oakley to set up a practice. John missed the June meeting of the Idaho Dental Board, but was in Boise for the December session. At that time, the Idaho Statesman (Dec 27, 1906) interviewed him about matters generally in the Oakley area. The paper reported, “The high price of sheep this fall and winter, coupled with the high price for hay, he says, has induced many of the sheep men around Oakley to dispose of their herds.”

Lowe’s credentials were approved and his practiced thrived. Still, his reply to the Statesman signaled his interest in more than just dentistry. Over time, he accumulated property in various Cassia County locations, including some prime ranch acreage near Burley. Platted in 1905 and incorporated in 1909 [blog, July 19], Burley would soon become the largest town in the county.

The Lowe family took an active interest in politics, and John O. was no exception. He became mayor of Oakley in 1909. In that position, he directed “infrastructure” improvements in the village, encouraged local business development, and presided over a major agricultural fair. By 1914, Lowe held a Director’s position for the Farmers Commercial Savings Bank in Oakley (his father was a major investor in the bank).

In 1918, the county seat for Cassia County moved to Burley, by far the fastest-growing town in the county. John O. moved his family into Burley within a year or so. He still retained his many business interests in and around Oakley.

First National Bank of Burley, ca 1919. J. H. Hawley photo.

Besides his Oakley banking interests, Lowe was a minor official for the First National Bank of Burley. At that time, Idaho prohibited the creation of branch banks (as did 17 other states). That encouraged the formation of too many small, under-capitalized independent units. Thus, in 1921 and 1922, Burley joined the nation in a long run of bank failures and consolidations. Although Dr. Lowe apparently did not suffer too much financially, he cut his banking involvement after about 1922.

Lowe retired from active dental practice in the 1930s and passed away in December 1939.
                                                                                                                                     

References: [Blue], [French], [Hawley]

Marcus Nadler, Jules Irwin Bogen, The Banking Crisis: the End of an Epoch, reprint edition, Arno Press, Inc., New York (1980)

Emigrant Elizabeth Porter on the Oregon Trail [otd 09/03]

On Saturday, September 3, 1864, Oregon-bound pioneer Elizabeth (Lee) Porter wrote in her diary, “Morning: 12 head of cattle gone, found 5 head. Hunted all day for the rest but found no cattle. Beautiful valley here and lots of ranches. We are four miles below the city.”

Boise City, established little more than a year earlier, was already a thriving community of over sixteen hundred residents. It was, in fact, by far the largest town they had seen since leaving the vicinity of Omaha. The family – Elizabeth, husband Andrew, and five children – had left their previous home in Iowa in late April.

“Emigrants Crossing the Plains,” Henry Bryan Hall engraving.
Library of Congress.

Porter does not say how many wagons were in the train they were with, but it was apparently rather small. They crossed the Continental Divide in late July, and followed the Lander Cutoff into Idaho in early August. They had better luck than many in southeast Idaho. Shortly after the train crossed the (future) border, she commented, “Good camp here. Plenty of grass.”

After fording the Snake River, the pioneers followed Goodale’s Cut-off (more accurately, the Jeffers-Goodale Cut-off) northwest across the “desert” to the Three Buttes. Porter wrote, “Traveled until midnight over rough roads and lots of sage brush. Roads very bad. Rocks all the way.”

The train then skirted the north side of the lava wastes we now call Craters of the Moon. She said, “Came 15 miles today over the roughest road we have had, very rocky.” Worn down by the ordeal, they chose to lay over for the afternoon. The next day they camped on the Little Wood River near today’s Carey. From there, the train turned west and traversed the southern Camas Prairie. On August 27th, Elizabeth said, “Came two miles and stopped on Little Camas Prairie.”

They reached the plains southeast of Boise City by crossing the final band of high ground, which Porter declared to be “worse than the mountains.” They did find, “Ranches all along here. Vegetables for sale.”

Two years before, when Tim Goodale guided a large emigrant train along the route, only Indians occupied this region. That had changed dramatically when prospectors found gold in the nearby mountains in late 1862 [blog, Oct 7].

After a hard twenty miles with “no grass or water for cattle,” the Porters dropped into the Boise Valley and camped along the river about three miles above the city. Elizabeth said, “No grass of any account here, looks like civilization.” The next day they crossed the river and passed through Boise City. That evening they camped where Porter recorded her observations for September 3rd.

By that time, Boise City’s newspaper, the Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman was a bit over five weeks old [blog July 26]. Had the emigrants purchased a copy, the main front page article would have reported on the start of the Republican (Union) Party convention at “Packer John’s Ranch.” The conventioneers had to select a candidate for Territorial Delegate to Congress, along with men to run for other offices.

The emigrant party laid over all of Sunday and until noon the following day. The family entered Oregon on September 8, and reached their destination about 10 miles northeast of Corvallis on September 20, 1864. A year later, they claimed a heavily forested tract west of Corvallis. There, Elizabeth became the first teacher for the county school while her husband logged and split fence rails. She died in July 1898.                          
                                                                                                                                     

References: [B&W]

"Census of 1864,” Reference Series No. 130, Idaho State Historical Society.

“Goodale’s Cut-off,”  Reference Series No. 51, Idaho State Historical Society.

John Hailey, History of Idaho, Syms-York Company, Boise, Idaho (1910).

Elizabeth Lee Porter, “Iowa to Oregon, 1864,” Covered Wagon Women, Vol. 5, Kenneth L. Homes, David C. Duniway (eds.),  A Bison Book, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln (1997).

Mining Investor and Twin Falls Area Developer Harry Hollister [otd 09/02]

Harry Hollister. H. T. French photo.

Central Idaho developer Harry L. Hollister was born September 2, 1859  in Rockton, Illinois, about seventy miles northwest of Chicago. He showed an early talent for banking, real estate investing, and progressive business development.

By 1900, he had substantial holdings in the Chicago area, the Dakotas, and in Michigan. After about 1900, Hollister located his company headquarters in Chicago.

In 1898-1900, Hollister began investing in mining properties in the Wood River area and further north in central Idaho. Soon, he owned interests in possibly a half dozen mines. He claimed regional water rights for hydropower development to support the mining, but engineers calculated that these were inadequate.

During this period, Ira B. Perrine [blog, May 7] appeared in Chicago to promote the Twin Falls Land and Water Company. The company was trying to build Milner Dam to feed a considerable irrigation project. Perrine also had a long-standing interest in promoting hydropower projects.

Within a few months, Hollister and Perrine teamed up on a project to generate electricity at Shoshone Falls [blog, August 15]. They had ambitious plans to provide power to Hollister’s Wood River properties, the town of Shoshone, the hoped-for town of Twin Falls, and even mines in northern Nevada.

Rather than trying to build a diversion dam, they proposed to bore a tunnel through the native rock to deliver water to a generator plant at the river level below the falls. Work began in 1901, but lack of funds and adverse litigation hampered progress.

While Perrine monitored construction and promoted the project regionally, Hollister tapped his contacts in Chicago for additional investors. He also apparently handled much of the legal battle. Owners of the Shoshone Falls Hotel provided the only serious opposition to the power project. They claimed that the water diversion and plant structure would ruin the Falls as a tourist attraction, and therefore cripple their business.

Fortunately, settlers in the surrounding communities backed the hydropower project enthusiastically. Of course, the opponents were willing to be bought out. A jury eventually decided their initial demand was extravagant and substantially reduced what they received. With the litigation behind them, workers forged ahead. The main obstacle was the bedrock, which turned out to be far harder than expected. Twin Falls received its first power from the plant in August 1907.

Hollister spent much time in Idaho during his years of promotion and construction, but never moved his home here. Still, his part in developing the region is well recognized. In 1914, Hiram T. French wrote, “It is impossible to separate much of the work done by Messrs. Hollister and Perrine in the Twin Falls country.”

Later, reports suggested that Hollister had obtained title to around 2,500 acres of irrigated land by fraudulent means (Idaho Statesman, Boise, March 19, 1918). However, there seems to have been no follow-up, and authorities did not file any charges. In any case, Harry’s contribution to local development is recognized in the naming of the town of Hollister, located about 15 miles south of Twin Falls.

City of Hollister, ca 1912. Twin Falls Public Library.

Around 1910, Hollister’s company had expanded into land development in California, setting up a branch office in Los Angeles.

Some time after about 1921, Harry and his wife moved there to live. By 1930, he was retired. After his wife died sometime in the Thirties, Harry lived with his son-in-law in Beverly Hills. He passed away in September 1944.
                                                                                                                                     

References: [French], [Hawley]

Jim Gentry, In the Middle and On the Edge: The Twin Falls Region of Idaho, College of Southern Idaho (2003).

Tarzan Creator, and Idaho Cowboy, Edgar Rice Burroughs [otd 09/01]

Edgar Rice Burroughs,
successful writer.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan and many imaginative worlds, was born September 1, 1875 in Chicago. Edgar tried many jobs, in many places, before taking up the writing career that made him world famous. He spent several of his most impressionable years as a young man in Idaho.

The Idaho connection began in 1891. An influenza epidemic in Chicago led his parents to ship young Edgar off to Idaho. There, brothers George and Harry were partners in a cattle ranch.

The brothers had met Lew Sweetser at Yale University. In 1890, the three founded a cattle company, purchasing – for the sum of one dollar – land from the Sweetser Bros. & Pierce Cattle Company. Lew’s father, Andrew, and his brother were among the earliest stockmen in this part of Idaho, establishing a ranch in 1866.

Idaho had just “graduated” from Territory to State when Edgar came, and was still wild and wooly: Citizens worried about Indian unrest, “colorful” characters – including known killers and bandits – frequented saloons and bunkhouses, revolvers were common equipment and sometimes used … people lived hard, dangerous lives.

ERB, cowboy. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

ERB [*] loved it all. He rode the wildest broncs, listened to the yarns of the colorful misfits, and punched cattle on the open (but sometimes disputed) range.

It was too good to last, however, and Edgar found himself back in school, the Michigan Military Academy. After graduating in 1895, he worked briefly as an instructor at the Academy, but gave that up for Army service in Arizona. Discharged for health reasons in 1897, he worked again for his brothers in Idaho. He also tried his hand at business, running a stationery store in Pocatello for a time. Profits were meager to nonexistent, however, so he returned to Chicago in 1899.

After getting married and working for his father for a time, ERB brought his new wife to Idaho in 1903. His brothers had decided that dredging for gold fit their interests better than ranching. ERB worked with them for a while, but overhead costs eventually doomed that enterprise.

They tried again on the river near Parma. A likable fellow with a hearty sense of humor, Burroughs did manage to “succeed” in politics there: Running for town trustee, he went to voters one-on-one and asked each to please make sure he got at least their one vote. He later wrote that, “enough of them tried to save me from embarrassment to cause my election.”

Still, this mining venture also ended in failure and Edgar and his wife moved back to Chicago. A succession of dead-end jobs followed until, in 1911, ERB sold his first story. Thus emboldened, he plunged deeper into writing. His second sale, Tarzan of the Apes, proved wildly popular and the rest … as they say … is history.

There is little doubt that ERB’s years in Idaho, and the West in general, made a deep impression on the young man. The colorful characters he met became models for the heros, and villains, that filled the action-laced pages of his prodigious string of stories. Although he died in 1950, a huge fan base keeps his name alive and many of his most popular titles are still in print.

[*] Fan web sites and magazines often use this shorthand.

Thanks to Bill Hillman (see comment):
      More ERB Idaho connection.
      ERB Magazine (online).
      Edgar Rice Burroughs site.
                                                                                                                                    

References: [Brit]

Richard J. Beck, Famous Idahoans, Williams Printing, (© Richard J. Beck, 1989).

Edgar Rice Burroughs: Official Biography, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

John Taliaferro, Tarzan Forever: the Life of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Creator of Tarzan, Scribner, New York(1999).

Ray Hunt: Legendary Trainer of Horses (and Riders) [otd 08/31]

Tribute photo. Richard Beal’s Blog.

Renowned horse trainer Ray Hunt was born August 31, 1929 in Paul, Idaho (about 4 miles north of Burley). A few years later, the family moved to Mountain Home. A child of the Great Depression, Ray knew the hard, grinding farm labor of that era. His father also raised work horses, which he hired out to farms and ranches in the area. Ray learned to ride bareback and dreamed of becoming a cowboy.

He got his chance the spring when he was twenty years old. The famous TS Ranch in northern Nevada basically “gave him a tryout,” and he landed a job there despite his lack of experience. Another hand warned him that the hard work had just begun. Ray worried until he discovered it was “not the kind of [hard] work I was used to.” He then learned the job from the ground up. Along the way, his interest turned to training horses for all-around range and corral work.

Movies and TV shows notwithstanding, normal training need not require brutally “breaking” the animals. The methods Ray learned – traditional on the ranges of Nevada, southern Idaho, and southeast Oregon – involve a staged approach. The trainer introduces a young horse to successively more coercive tack, and expects more complex behavior. Still, the overall aim was to subdue the subject, and more “strenuous” methods might be applied for particularly recalcitrant stock.

With a growing family of his own, Ray moved to California and began training colts, shoeing horses, and doing “day work” for ranchers who knew he was a top hand. In late 1960 or early 1961, he met Tom Dorrance, whose ability to train “difficult” horses was well known in ranching circles. Dorrance practiced a form of “natural” training that traced back to nineteenth century England. The hit movie The Horse Whisperer featured a simplified-for-Hollywood version of such gentler methods.

Ray started with a special affinity with horses, yet even he took awhile to adapt. He could handle – stay on – a rough horse better than most, but this was different. The rider had to sense, understand, and accept the horse’s needs and desires. Eventually, he evolved a soft approach to, as he put it, “make the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy.”

Owners began bringing “impossible” horses to him. Soon he had so much problem-horse business, he couldn’t keep up with his regular work. Also, he found that he could “fix” a horse, but the problems sometimes returned once they were out of his hands. That led him to the conclusion that a lasting answer might require him to fix the riders too – to get them to understand and respect the horse’s point of view.

Around 1971, the volume of work – and the need to train both horse and rider – led Ray into the full-time training clinic business. After that, for almost forty years, Hunt ran clinics, wrote books, and offered videos to show riders and owners how to get the most out of their horses … without overt coercion or punishment.

Ray remained active until near the time of his death in March 2009. By then, he received more requests for clinics than there were hours in a day, and had to turn many down. Conventional recognition came his way – Top Hand Award, Western Horseman of the Year in 2005, etc. – but Hunt’s true legacies are the modern trainers who now practice natural training methods and the many riders he influenced personally.
                                                                                                                                    

References: Linda Boston Franke, “Ray Hunt: A Legend in His Own Time,” Ranch & Country Magazine (2009).

“Ray Hunt, 1929-2009,” Western Horseman (January 2005). [Retitled and reprinted after his death in 2009.]

Ray Hunt: Master of Communication.

Ray Hunt, Millie Hunt, Roy Hunt, Think Harmony with Horses, Pioneer Publishing Company (June 1995).

Idaho Cattle Baron and Nevada Governor John Sparks [otd 08/30]

Idaho-Nevada cattleman and later Nevada Governor John Sparks was born August 30, 1843 in Winston County, Mississippi, 60-80 miles northeast of Jackson. The Sparks family became moderately wealthy by developing raw land into successful farm-ranch operations, selling at a good profit, and then moving on to a new location. In the late 1850s, they established a ranch in Texas. John thus grew to manhood in the early Texas ranch/cowboy culture.

Early cattle drive. Library of Congress.

He reportedly served as a Texas Ranger on patrols against Comanche Indians during the Civil War. After the war, Sparks worked cattle on several big drives. In 1872, he served as trail boss on a drive that delivered a herd to where the Utah-Nevada border meets southern Idaho.

John and his brothers then moved a large herd into Wyoming. A develop-sell-move strategy worked well for awhile, but played out toward the end of the decade as the amount of undeveloped land in Wyoming dwindled. Thus, in 1881, John and his brother Tom brought another herd from Texas into Idaho to stock range near American Falls.

Tom stayed on to run a ranch there for around forty years while John formed a partnership with established cattleman John Tinnin. They put together a spread that straddled the Idaho-Nevada border. By 1886, Sparks-Tinnin range stretched from the Snake River, centered around today’s Twin Falls, south into the mountains of northern Nevada. On perhaps 3,000 square miles of land, they, according to the Albion Times, ran “in the neighborhood of 100,000 head of cattle.”

The herd count may have been somewhat of an exaggeration, but no one could really say. On the open range, it was virtually impossible to get anything like an exact number. It’s also important to note that the size of the range used, approaching 2 million acres, was vastly in excess of what the company actually owned. They only bothered to hold title to the small portions that had reliable water supplies.

During the warmer months of the year, most of the stock grazed in Idaho. Then cowboys pushed them south for the cold months of winter. Thus, Sparks lived at one of his Idaho ranch headquarters for the good weather, but built a family home in Nevada, near the main railroad line.

Governor Sparks.
Nevada Historical Society.

Over the next few years, Sparks expanded his acreage and also invested in other holdings. These saved his business when the severe winter of 1889-1890 devastated the company’s herds. In a reorganization that followed, Sparks bought out his original partner – saving Tinnin from having to declare bankruptcy. He then acquired a new partner, long-time cattleman Jasper Harrell. Thereafter, the ranch operated as the Sparks-Harrell company

During the 1890s, the range became more and more crowded. This heightened friction between neighboring outfits, whether cattle or sheep. Then, in 1896, a cowboy shot two sheepherders who had encroached onto what Sparks-Harrell considered its range [blog, February 4 and others].

Although Sparks soon learned who had done the shooting, he remained silent to protect against retaliation by sheepmen. He also paid liberally for the defense of “Diamondfield” Jack Davis, the man falsely accused of the killings. Eventually, Davis was freed, while the actual shooter made a successful self-defense plea (also financed by Sparks-Harrell).

In 1902, Sparks was elected Governor of Nevada. He was re-elected in 1906, but did not complete the second term, passing away in 1908.
                                                                                                                                     

References: Byron DeLos Lusk, Golden Cattle Kingdoms of Idaho, Master’s thesis, Utah State University, Logan (1978).

J. Orin Oliphant, On the Cattle Ranges of the Oregon Country, University of Washington Press, Seattle (1968).

“John Sparks,” Sunset Magazine, 1903.

Alexander Toponce, Reminiscences of Alexander Toponce, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman (1971).

James A. Young, B. Abbott Sparks, Cattle in the Cold Desert, University of Nevada Press, Reno (2002).