Freighter, Stockman, and Legislator William Allison [otd 08/22]

W. B. Allison. H.T. French photo.

Salubria stockman and Idaho legislator William B. Allison was born August 22, 1845 in Glasgow, Ohio, about 60 miles south of Akron. The family moved twice before coming to Idaho: to Illinois in 1854, and Iowa the following year.

In 1863, the Allison’s settled in the Boise Valley, where William’s father Alexander took up a homestead. He apparently also filed a homestead through one of his sons because the Illustrated History said his farm encompassed 320 acres. That same year, William B. found work as a freighter, helping to drive a wagon train from Omaha to Salt Lake City. For the next five years, he freighted in Idaho, and three more times drove trains into the Rockies from the Omaha supply depots.

In 1868, William claimed a homestead in the Salubria Valley. In November of that year, he also got married. The following year, Alexander moved the rest of the Allison family to a spot about a mile north of where the son had settled. For over twenty years, William and his growing family lived in a log home while raising top-grade Hereford cattle, Berkshire hogs, blooded horses, and sturdy mules. Then, in 1891, he replaced the old structure with a larger, more modern dwelling.

The core of his acreage would soon become a part of the village of Salubria. However, after the railroad reached the Salubria Valley in 1899-1900, Cambridge Station quickly grew into a town.

By the end of the century, William owned over five hundred acres of excellent farm and ranch land. His farmland furnished produce for local consumption, and he also raised grain to improve the diet of his stock. His holdings would eventually expand to over eight hundred acres.

He took a strong interest in politics and in 1879 was persuaded to serve a term in the Territorial legislature. While there, he introduced the bill that split Washington County from Ada County. (Weiser became the new county seat.) He did not again venture into elective office until 1893, when he served a term in the State House of Representatives. Three years after that, he was elected Assessor for Washington County.

For years Allison was a staunch Republican. However, like many farm-country people he took up the Silver Republican cause in 1896. The Idaho Statesman reported (August 16, 1896) on the county-level convention, which selected Allison as a delegate to the state Republican convention. The article said, “The convention, by a vote of 20 to 2, passed a resolution indorsing [sic] the course of the state Republican party in supporting the cause of silver regardless of party lines. … The delegates selected are all strong silver men.”

He returned to his first adherence when the Silver Republican party folded.

Cambridge Station. Cambridge Commercial Club.

Salubria was still considered a viable town when Allison passed away in 1914. However, by then Cambridge had drawn much of the important business away. In fact, the only Salubria Valley newspaper had moved to Cambridge right after the Station opened.

Allison had been very active with the Masons, so his funeral service was held in the Cambridge Masonic Hall. The railroad ran a special train from the main junction at Weiser so Lodge members could attend the funeral. The service was declared to be “the largest ever seen in Cambridge.”
                                                                                                                                     

References: [Blue], [French], [Illust-State]

“W. B. Allison Passes Away,” The Midvale Reporter (October 8, 1914).

Dr. Edward E. Maxey and Research on Spotted Fever [otd 08/21]

Dr. Maxey. H. T. French photo.

Prominent Boise physician Edward E. Maxey, M.D, was born August 21, 1867, in Irvington, Illinois, about sixty miles east of St. Louis, Missouri. His father, also a physician, served in the Civil War and then moved the family to Caldwell, Idaho in 1887.

In 1891, Edward graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago, and followed up with post-graduate work.

After his studies, he returned to Caldwell to join his father’s practice. For some reason, he then tried to open an office in Walla Walla, Washington, but gave that up after just a couple of months. He then returned to Caldwell and opened his own practice. While there, he acted as a Resident Surgeon for the Oregon Short Line Railroad. He also served as Coroner for the city of Caldwell. When the legislature split Canyon County off from Ada County in 1892, Maxey was appointed as the first county Coroner. He then ran for and was elected to the position.

Dr. Maxey moved to Boise in 1902, but was apparently associated with the Canyon County Coroner’s position for several years after that. He wrote and signed the post mortem report for Albert K. Steunenberg [blog, Sept 11] after Albert's death in 1907.

Wanting to keep up with the latest techniques, Maxey took a number of “sabbaticals” from his practice for additional study. Thus, in 1904, he spent six months taking medical courses in New York and then at Johns Hopkins University. (Earlier, he spent six weeks in Chicago for the same purpose.) Then, in 1908, he went overseas to Vienna, Berlin, and London to further his medical education. He returned to Boise early in 1910 and opened a practice as an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist.

Dr. Maxey was a Charter Member of the Idaho State Medical Society, serving several terms as its Secretary and a term as President in 1901. He was also a member of the American Medical Association, several organizations related to his specialty, and acted as Surgeon General for the Idaho National Guard. During World War I, he served as a major in the U. S. Army. Then in his fifties, Dr. Maxey supervised a base hospital in Wyoming.

Along with his general and then specialist practice, Dr. Maxey took an active interest in medical research. He was one of several physicians in the Boise Valley who began the systematic study of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever [blog, March 30]. Collectively, these Idaho doctors gave the first clinical description of the disease, and provided some idea of how it spreads – the “vectors.”

Maxey’s Spotted Fever Map. Reproduced in Hammersten.

In the summer of 1899, Maxey presented a paper on the disease at a medical conference in Oregon. A few months later, the manuscript of that presentation became the first paper about the disease to be published in a medical journal.

Nine years later, he presented a paper at a Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever Symposium sponsored by the Idaho Medical Association. During the intervening years, research had suggested ticks as a primary vector for the infection. Maxey collected a considerable body of data from all across Idaho. He found that around 92 percent of the reported cases affected people who lived “an outdoor life.” In 1913, Maxie wrote a chapter on the disease for a well-known medical reference book.

Dr. Maxey moved his practice to Aberdeen, Washington, on Grays Harbor, in 1925. He had a heart attack and died in his office there at the end of August 1934.
                                                                                                                                     

References: [French], [Illust-State]

“[Dr. E. E. Maxey News],” Idaho Statesman, Boise; Tribune, Caldwell, Idaho (July 1892 – September 1934).

James F. Hammarsten, “The Contributions of Idaho Physicians to Knowledge of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever,” Transactions of the American Clinical and Climatological Association, Vol. 94 (1983).

Ed. E. Maxey and (unreadable), Post Mortem Findings at Examination of A. K. Steunenberg, hand-written report, Caldwell, Idaho (March 18, 1907).

Marshall W. Wood, “Spotted fever as reported from Idaho,” Report of the Surgeon General, U. S. Army, 1896, Government Printing Office (1896).

Wildfire -- "The Big Burn" -- Ravages North Idaho [otd 08/20]

On August 20, 1910, serious forest fires in and around Northern Idaho “blew up” into arguably the worst wildfire in U. S. history. More than anything else, weather conspired to set the stage for this catastrophe, starting as winter rolled into spring. April brought record temperatures to the Bitterroot Range along the Idaho-Montana border.

May … June … July … barely any rainfall and unprecedented heat turned the great forests into gigantic tinderboxes. By early August, scores of fires burned in the Coeur d’Alene National Forest and across the border in western Montana. Lacking manpower, despite the recruitment of thousands of new firefighters, the Forest Service asked for, and received, help from the Army.

High winds leveled some trees before they could burn.
Library of Congress.

Depending upon your definition of what constitutes a separate fire, the area still had two to three thousand blazes burning by August 17-19. Yet, after weeks of brutal effort, officials felt they were finally turning the corner.

All that changed on the 20th when an eruption of hurricane-force winds roared in from the west. Within minutes after the blast hit, sparks turned into flames, thickets of smoldering brush became boiling infernos, and burning trees virtually exploded. Crown fires roared up hillsides and over ridges in seconds, it seemed.

Within no more than hours, all those separate fires in northern Idaho and western Montana became one monstrous conflagration – “the Big Burn.” Walls of flame engulfed vast expanses of forest that had hardly been touched before.

Firefighters armed only with hand tools – shovels, axes, hoes, crosscut saws, and perhaps a few buckets – could do little to affect their own fate. Fickle wind shifts killed blocks of men by the dozen, by the score, or horrifically alone. Sometimes men desperately fighting the inevitable won: a providential blast turned the flames aside and spared them. Men threw themselves into the streams; better to drown than be burned alive.

Where there was no fire, ash and black smoke created a surreal landscape and darkened the sky. Reportedly, smoke blocked the sun a hundred miles into Canada, in Denver, and even as far east as New York state.

Wildfire devastation in Wallace. Library of Congress.

Finally, after perhaps 36 hours of aptly-named Hell, the wind relented and light rain began to fall. Residents of Wallace could hardly believe their luck; relief came in time to save all but a third of their town. A number of other villages weren’t so fortunate.

By most accounts, 85 people died in the flames: seven “civilians” and 78 firefighters. No one even tried to count the toll levied on the animals living in the forest. Over three million acres of forest burned, an area almost the size of Connecticut. Thousands upon thousands of tree that escaped the flames died from the intense heat and loss of foliage. Loggers salvaged perhaps ten percent as lumber, the rest was slowly cleared and burned.

A full discussion of the Big Burn and its aftermath is beyond the scope of this article. But it has been persuasively argued that the Big Burn saved the U. S. Forest Service. Created just five years before [blog, February 1], many saw the Service as a “useless” expense, with “no practical use.” But now, newspaper were filled with accounts of heroic crews fighting, and sometimes dying, to quell the inferno. Supporters leveraged that publicity to expand the Service and promote its fire-fighting mission.

However, to this day, experts are still debating how to best manage fires in our national forests and other public lands.
                                                                                                                                     

References: Timothy Egan, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America, Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt, New York (2009).

John Galvin, “The Big Burn: Idaho and Montana, August 1910,” Popular Mechanics (July 30, 2007).

Javi Zubizarreta, “August 20: The Day the Fires Burned,” Outdoor Idaho, Idaho Public Television (2010).

Philo Farnsworth, Inventor of the First Practical Television Camera [otd 08/19]

Inventor and television pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth was born August 19, 1906 in Beaver County, Utah. The family moved to a farm near Rigby, Idaho during World War I. There, Philo set off on the path that would earn him the designation as “the father of television.”

Farnsworth accomplished much in his lifetime, despite seemingly endless fights in patent court. (In his lifetime, he was granted around 165 patents.) The whole story is beyond the scope of this article (but is readily available). Here, I will focus on a few interesting points.

A stack of popular science magazines in the attic of their new home helped Philo learn more about electricity and electro-mechanical devices. Primitive “tele-vision” – distant transmission/viewing of images – was one of the fascinating topics of the day.

Farnsworth, right,
with his former high school teacher.
Philo T. Farnsworth Archives.

By the time he entered Rigby High School, Philo had already exhibited a firm grasp of practical physics, especially electrical phenomena. As the story goes, he devised a better way to record images for transmission while plowing a field in regular back-and-forth rows (lines). However, the complete account involves rather more than that simple idea.

His science teacher at Rigby High School, Justin Tolman, soon recognized the young man’s aptitude and encouraged his pursuit of knowledge. It was he who first learned of Philo’s new approach.

Back then, typical television “cameras” employed a mechanically rotating disk to focus snippets of an image onto a photocell, which converts photons (light) into flowing electrons … electricity. Without going into all the physics, the electrical response shows how bright the light is. The electrical signal is then transmitted through some distance to a display system. Since Philo’s innovation involved the recorder, not the display, we’ll simply take the viewer as a given.

By the time Philo was ready to reduce his ideas to practice, around 1926, mechanical television systems had been demonstrated in this country and in England. But mechanical cameras are bulky and require a high degree of precision in their manufacture. In operation, they tend to be noisy, and dust, wear, or mechanical malfunctions hopelessly cripple the synchronization between recorder and display.

Farnsworth’s conceptual sketch. Philo T. Farnsworth Archives.

Farnsworth’s accomplishment was to devise a way to electronically record the picture. His innovation combined several crucial features. Instead of directing snippets of light onto a small photocell, the camera captured the entire picture on a plate coated with photosensitive material. He placed this photosensor inside a vacuum-sealed cylinder, so the electrons generated flew off (were emitted) into empty space.

Philo's device then focused the electrons emitted from a small region – we now call it a pixel – onto an electrode that measured the electrical signal. A simple controller selected pixels one after another to form a line of dots crossing the photosensor horizontally. As in the plowed-field analogy, a series of parallel dot-lines growing from top to bottom covered the entire screen.

Because the device operated electromagnetically – no moving parts at all – the entire picture could be recorded many times each second … and practical “electronic” television was born. In 1927, Farnsworth filed for a patent on his device, and then demonstrated it publicly for the first time.

Ideas similar to Farnsworth’s design had been considered by others, but he was the one who put all the pieces together, and made it work. He passed away in March 1971. Today, the city of Rigby bills itself as the “birthplace of television,” and sponsors the Farnsworth TV & Pioneer Museum.
                                                                                                                                     

References: [Brit]

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

Donald G. Godfrey, Philo T. Farnsworth: the Father of Television, University of Utah Press (2001).

Desert Land (Carey) Act Signed to Encourage Irrigation in the West [otd 08/18]

On August 18, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed the Desert Land Act of 1894, better known as the Carey Act. Sponsored by Wyoming Senator Joseph M. Carey, the Act was meant to improve the success rate for the settlement of the public lands. The law specifically addressed the millions upon millions of acres in the western states that required irrigation for productive farming – the so-called “arid lands.”

Joseph M. Carey.
Wyoming State Archives.

Individuals and irrigation cooperatives had already exploited most of the land that could be watered with smaller systems of canals and impoundments. Many larger projects funded by farmer cooperatives or hopeful investment firms had failed, and discouraged further risk-taking on that scale.

The Act authorized the Federal Land Office to transfer up to a million acres of arid public lands to individual states that established approved reclamation programs. States would cover expenses by charging fees and selling the land at nominal prices, with the real incentive being the expected increase in tax revenue.

Acceptable state programs would be able to certify acreage as meeting the requirements of the Act, inspect and approve irrigation projects executed by private investment firms, and oversee the ultimate transfer of properly-irrigated 160-acre plots to individual settlers.

Development companies proposed, designed, and built suitable irrigation projects. They profited by selling water to the settlers, at rates determined in negotiations with the state reclamation office. The development company did not “own” the land itself – technically. However, these firms could place liens on the land and the associated water rights to protect their capital investments … so the effect was basically the same.

Settlers usually paid a flat entry fee ($1 in Idaho) and an almost trivial cost per acre. Owners had to then dig a feeder ditch to connect with the nearest main canal. Once water became available, they followed a schedule for bringing a set minimum of their holdings into cultivation. In three years, if they met all criteria – including construction of a “habitable dwelling” on the property – they received title to the land.

Of course, developers seldom waited out the years it might take before cumulative water sales covered their large initial investments. Once settlers held much of the land, an operating canal company or joint water district bought the system and the collective water rights from the developer.

Milner Dam, 1905. One of the first Carey Act projects in Idaho.
Library of Congress.

The Idaho legislature quickly established the position of State Engineer and tried to assemble the administrative infrastructure to support Carey Act projects. A few years passed before the state refined the process, but then interest picked up substantially. Thus, in the first ten years after passage of the Act, Idaho developers started just 10 or 11 projects. Then, in 1905-1907, they added 14 new ones.

The emergence of so many new projects led Congress to add another million acres to Idaho’s allotment in May 1908. Two days after that authorization, they added yet another millions acres, while also increasing Wyoming’s allotment by a million.

With that much land available, development exploded: In 1908 through 1910, developers initiated forty new Carey Act project in Idaho. No other state approaches Idaho in the exploitation of the Carey Act and later related legislation. By one reckoning, 60% of all U.S. acreage irrigated by Carey Act projects is in Idaho.
                                                                                                                                     

References: [French], [Hawley]

“Canals & Irrigation,” Digital Atlas of Idaho, Idaho State University.

The Cary Act in Idaho, Idaho State Historical Society (2004).

“Carey Act of of August 18, 1894 (28 Stat. 422),” Code of Federal Regulations, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. (2012).

Mountain Man, Explorer, and Survivor John Colter [otd 08/17]

On August 17, 1806, discharged Army Private John Colter headed up the Missouri River with his two new partners, Forest Hancock and Joseph Dickson. Captains Lewis and Clark had released him early from his enlistment because the Corps of Discovery no longer needed him. Clark wrote, “We were disposed to be of Service to any one of our party who had performed their duty as well as Colter had done.”

In particular, Colter was considered one of the best, if not the best hunter in the entire Corps. He also showed a knack for exploring wild country and then quickly relocating the main party. During the Expedition’s long winter at Fort Clatsop on the Oregon coast, Colter ranged further and further afield in search of elk to feed the men.

Early Three Forks sketch. Montana Historical Society.

Hancock and Dickson had met the Expedition a few days earlier. During the trip downriver to the Mandan Indians villages, located about 40  miles northwest of today's Bismarck, North Dakota, they persuaded Colter to join them. Colter and his two partners ascended the Missouri to Three Forks, Montana.

They trapped there for awhile, but then the partnership dissolved. Colter started east and, in the spring of 1807, encountered a Missouri Fur Company (MFC) flotilla headed upriver. The ex-soldier agreed to join them. They built a trading post, called Fort Raymond, 55-60 miles northeast of present-day Billings, Montana.

Several other members of the Corps had also hired on with the MFC. They perhaps told the company president, Manuel Lisa, about Colter’s pathfinder skills. Lisa sent Colter to locate more prime beaver country. Although winter approached, Colter set off in late 1807, headed south and west.

Historians have recreated his general route from later verbal reports. He apparently skirted the highest mountains at first, perhaps as far south as north-central Wyoming. He then turned west from roughly today’s Dubois, over the Continental Divide, and on to Jackson Lake.

Teton Valley – view of the three Tetons from the west.

Confronted with the Tetons, Colter may well have sought directions from local tribesman, as did the Wilson Price Hunt party some four years later. He crossed Teton Pass into what we know as Idaho’s Teton Basin. Turning north and then east, Colter traversed parts of today’s Yellowstone Park before returning to the Fort in early spring.

Skeptics greeted his descriptions of wild thermal features with the rather derisive sobriquet “Colter’s Hell.” It is now generally accepted that, while Colter may have observed some activity in the Park area, his accounts probably referred to a thermal basin near today’s Cody, Wyoming.

Colter continued to explore and, in 1809, he experienced the event for which he is surely most famous: Colter’s Run. Captured by Blackfeet, with his companion slaughtered on the spot, the Indians stripped him naked for some “fun,” figuring they could easily run him down. Incredibly, he not only escaped, he killed the most persistent of his pursuers.

Another close call the following year convinced Colter his luck was running out, and he left the Rockies. While in St. Louis, he visited with William Clark, who recorded many of Colter’s observations. Clark used the notes to produce a regional map that was considered the best available for at least a half century. Honored today as the first “Mountain Man,” Colter died two or three years later.
                                                                                                                                     

References: Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, Simon & Shuster, New York (1996).

Burton Harris, John Colter: His Years in the Rockies, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln (1993).

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Gary E. Moulton (ed.), The Definitive Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln (2002).

Merrill J. Mattes, Colter’s Hell & Jackson’s Hole, Yellowstone Library and Museum Association and the Grand Teton Natural History Association in cooperation with the National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior (1976).

Captain Relf Bledsoe: Indian Fighter, Businessman, Prospector, Mine Manager ... and More [otd 08/16]

Capt. Beldsoe. Oregon Historical Society

Indian fighter, business leader, and public servant Relf Bledsoe was born August 16, 1832 in Henderson County, Kentucky. That small county is located along the Ohio River, about a hundred miles west and a bit south of Louisville.

The family resettled first to Missouri and then Texas. In 1850, Bledsoe moved to California. He apparently had a knack for mining management, because by the age of twenty-two, he had attained a position as a mine Superintendent in southern Oregon.

Financial trouble for the company ended his employment, but he quickly found himself involved in the 1853 Rogue River War. Courageous almost to a fault, Bledsoe proved to be a superb Indian fighter, quickly rising to the rank of Captain in the Second Oregon (Volunteer) Infantry.

He reportedly participated in twenty close-action Indian fights, but never sustained any wounds. His adversaries were probably convinced that he had such “big medicine,” their bullets could not touch him. After the war, he served several years as an Indian Agent, but finally settled on raising cattle.

Bledsoe certainly knew who made money in a gold rush. When prospectors discovered gold in Idaho, he opened or partnered in mercantile stores in Elk City and then Florence. In 1862, he served on the joint Council for Idaho and Nez Perce counties. By then, Bledsoe was known as a man of steel nerves, and not to be trifled with. A fellow pioneer told of how Relf had calmly made notorious gunman George Ives “back water” outside his store in Florence. (Some months later, Ives was hanged by vigilantes for cold-blooded murder.)

Then a band of prospectors discovered gold in the Boise Basin. Indians killed one of the discoverers, George Grimes, and small troops of volunteers set out to quell the unrest. Bledsoe assumed a leadership role and enhanced his reputation as an Indian fighter.

Relf judged the mass of prospectors pouring into the Basin and traveled to the Territorial capital in Olympia. There, he lobbied successfully for the creation of Boise County, with Idaho City (then called West Bannock) as county seat. That was in January 1863; less than two months later, Congress established Idaho Territory, with a capital at Lewiston.

Placerville, ca 1884. History of Idaho Territory.

Bledsoe also helped found the town of Placerville. In addition to his mercantile interests, he continued to develop mining properties: He is credited with bringing the major lodes around Atlanta into production in 1876-1877. Relf also played a significant role in establishing toll roads into the mines, which allowed heavy mill equipment to be brought in. 

Bledsoe served in a variety of city and county offices, including some time as a probate judge. In the late 1880s, supporters urged the President to make Relf the Territorial Governor, but the appointment went elsewhere.

The Illustrated History, published in 1899, said “When the present shall have become the past, his name will be revered as one of the founders of the state of Idaho, and as one of the heroes who carried civilization into the wild districts of this great region.”

In 1907, excitement about the assassination of former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg convulsed Idaho. Then-Governor Frank Gooding received a flood of death threats, presumably because he pushed the prosecution of the suspected conspirators. As one of his bodyguards, Gooding selected (in the words of author Anthony Lukas), “Relf Bledsoe, a legendary seventy-five-year-old gunfighter and former probate judge.”

Bledsoe passed away three years later.
                                                                                                                                     

References: [Illust-State]

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

J. Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town … ,” Simon & Shuster, New York (1998).

Merle W. Wells, Gold Camps & Silver Cities, Bulletin 22, Idaho Department of Lands, Bureau of Mines and Geology, Moscow, Idaho (1983).

First Documented Visit to, and Sketch of, (Renamed) Shoshone Falls [otd 08/15]

On August 15, 1849, a guide led two men from a column of U. S. Army Mounted Rifles to see a great waterfall on the Snake river, three to four miles northeast of today’s Twin Falls, Idaho. They later told their commander that the huge falls compared favorably to Niagara Falls. (The falls are, in fact, about 45 feet higher than Niagara, although not as wide.)

Shoshone Falls, ca. 1868. Library of Congress.

At that time, the feature was known as “Canadian Falls,” a name picked by early trappers or perhaps a priest. Lieutenant Andrew Lindsay and his civilian companion, George Gibbs, decided to call the spot Shoshone Falls, after the Indian tribe that inhabited the region.

Trained in law at Harvard, Gibbs was also a published author and talented artist. He had joined the Army column at Fort Leavenworth, before it embarked on its march to Oregon. During their visit to the Falls, Gibbs drew what is generally believed to be the first recorded image of the feature.

Congress authorized the Regiment of Mounted Rifles in 1846. Although originally intended as a mobile force to protect growing traffic on the Oregon Trail, the Army sent the regiment to fight in the Mexican-American War. The troops served with distinction in Mexico, then returned to their original mission. After the visit to Shoshone Falls, the regiment continued across Idaho and arrived at Oregon City in early October.

Their commander on the expedition was Brevet Colonel William W. Loring. Born in North Carolina in 1815, Loring had seen militia action in Texas and Florida. He joined the Mounted Rifles for the Mexican War, where he lost his left arm to a cannon shot, and was promoted to Major and then to (Brevet) Colonel. He saw further service after the Oregon trek, but resigned to become a general in the Confederate Army. After the Civil War, he spent ten years serving with the Egyptian Army. Loring returned to the U. S. in 1879 and died in 1886.

Not much happened at the Falls for over a quarter century. Exhausted emigrants had no time for a long, dry trek over rough country, no matter how spectacular the attraction.

Then, in 1875, newcomer Charles Walgamott visited the falls. A native of Iowa, Walgamott had arrived at the Rock Creek stage station less than a month earlier. When he learned that no one had claimed the land around Shoshone Falls, Charlie took a “squatter’s right” to a plot on the south side.

He ran a tourist sideline from Rock Creek until 1882, when crews for the Oregon Short Line graded a railway bed through the growing town of Shoshone. Walgamott realized that his squatter’s right “was on the wrong side of the river.”

Charlie recruited a partner and secured a proper claim on the north side. They cut a stage road to the Falls from the railway station in Shoshone and built a hut on the bluff near the Falls. Business was slow at first, but finally picked up. Then, Charlie said, “In 1883 we sold our holdings to a syndicate of capitalists.”

Falls, recent. Idaho Tourism photo.

Today, the city of Twin Falls maintains tourist facilities on the south side of the canyon overlooking Shoshone Falls. Even during irrigation season, with minimum flows, the Falls are a sight worth seeing.
                                                                                                                                     

References: Jim Gentry, In the Middle and On the Edge, College of Southern Idaho (2003).

Captain Charles Morton, “The Third Regiment of Cavalry,” The Army of the United States, U.S. Army Center of Military History (2002).

Raymond W. Settle, The March of the Mounted Riflemen, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln (1989).

Charles S. Walgamott, Six Decades Back, The Caxton Press, Caldwell, Idaho (1936).

Snake River Steamboat Annie Faxon Explodes, Killing Eight [otd 08/14]

On the morning of August 14, 1893, the Snake River steamer Annie Faxon exploded, killing eight people and injuring eleven.

Steamer Annie Faxon. Washington State University archives.

Steamboats plied the waters of the Columbia River on a regular basis after about 1850. The most active stretch lay below the Cascade Rapids, about forty miles upstream from Portland. With the 1860 discovery of gold in Idaho, steamship companies found it profitable to extend their routes up the Snake.

That soon led to the founding of Lewiston, Idaho (then in Washington Territory), which became the major upstream terminus for shipping. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company added the Annie Faxon to its fleet in 1877. At 165 feet in length, the Annie was a mid-sized steamer for the period. Over the next two decades, she carried freight and passengers on the Snake, and sometimes ascended the Clearwater during high water.

By the early 1890s, the Annie and other members of the fleet had daily, except Sunday, scheduled runs to where the railroad crossed the Snake, about 80 miles downstream from Lewiston. (Not for another five years would the town have direct train service.)

On that fateful Monday, the Annie left Lewiston for her regular morning run to the railway junction. Captain Harry Baughman commanded the steamer. She made a brief stop at a small town about 35 miles down the river. Transfers complete, she continued downstream. All told, the Annie carried a couple dozen passengers and crew.

About 12 miles further along, a man flagged the boat from the south shore. Although accounts are unclear, Captain Baughman probably stopped the engines; it would have been difficult to hear over their pounding and the frothy splash of the stern wheel.

The farmer said he had a load of fruit ready for the steamer. Business was always welcome, so the Captain steered toward the shoreline, the paddlewheel churning to cut across the river’s current. Carefully judging the distance, Baughman rang for the engines to stop. Before the engine room could respond, apparently, the ship’s boiler exploded.

The blast of released steam blew many passengers and crewmen overboard, where they struggled to swim ashore or clung to wreckage until they could be rescued. Almost miraculously, Baughman was unhurt … but flying debris killed another man near him in the pilothouse. Some of the boat’s superstructure was flung into the water and the rest collapsed into the hull.

Annie Faxon after the explosion.
Washington State University archives.

The blast pattern confused inspectors at first as to the cause of the disaster. Newspapers reported (e.g., Morning Olympian, Olympia, Washington, August 29, 1893) that they had “advance[d] the theory that the explosion was caused by a dynamite bomb.” That was perhaps because the assistant engineer asserted that the boiler pressure was about 12% below the allowed rating. That was apparently normal when the boat was going downstream with the current.

However, according to reports, doubts had been raised earlier about the condition of the boiler, which had been running in another ship before it was installed in the Annie. Yet the flaws were not considered serious enough to order it out of service immediately. It was understood that the unit would be replaced at the end of the main transport season.

That came too late for the nineteen injured and dead. Several lawsuits were filed against the OSNC, but they resulted in just small out-of-court settlements. The owners salvaged only the hull of the Annie Faxon; it was used as the substructure of a new steamer.
                                                                                                                                     

References: [Defen], [Hawley], [Illust-North]

Phil Dougherty, “The Steamer Annie Faxon Explodes on the Snake River,” Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, Seattle (April 09, 2006).

Darcy Williamson, River Tales of Idaho, The Caxton Printers, Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho (1997).

Butch Cassidy and Two Gang Members Rob Montpelier Bank [otd 08/13]

On Thursday, August 13, 1896, Montpelier, Idaho sweltered under a blistering afternoon sun. Three riders walked their horses along a street, trailing a pack mare behind them. Had the local jeweler seen them, he might have recognized the three men he’d hired to gather hay on his ranch near the Wyoming border. His wife, who handled the spread while her husband ran his shop, considered them good workers.

Montpelier, ca. 1910.
Source uncertain: Wyoming Tales & Trails.

Founded by Mormon colonists in 1864, Montpelier grew only modestly until the Oregon Short Line railroad built a station there in 1884. The OSL soon added a repair facility and the town became the main supply hub for homesteads and ranches for miles and miles around. It also became a major shipping point for livestock and wool. By 1896, Montpelier had numerous stores, and the only bank in Bear Lake County.

The three riders stopped first at a general store. The storekeeper thought the three might be sheepherders. Finished, the strangers remounted and walked their horses east along the street. The time was after 3:00 p.m. when they stopped in front of the bank and dismounted. Two men standing on the board sidewalk glanced at them, didn’t recognize the riders, and resumed their conversation.

They paid sudden attention when two of the men, now masked with bandanas, accosted them with drawn revolvers. Terse commands urged them inside, where they found three bank employees and several customers. The robbers ordered everyone except the Assistant Cashier to line up facing the wall.

The blond, stocky leader held them at gunpoint while the taller bandit stuffed all the bank’s cash money into a large sack. After raiding the vault, the man tossed loose silver coins into the bag, then dumped a stack of gold coins into a cloth bank bag. Finished, he carried the loot outside and loaded the bags onto his horse and the pack mare.

The blond robber waited inside until his partner completed the loading. He warned them not to make a fuss for at least ten minutes, then strolled out to mount up himself. The bandits turned their horses toward the edge of town.

The Cashier hurried to tell the deputy sheriff as soon as the hoofbeats subsided. However, the deputy was mostly a process server and owned neither gun nor horse. Still, willing to try, he grabbed a “penny-farthing” – a bicycle with giant front wheel and tiny rear – and gave chase. He soon gave up, but did find that the crooks had galloped east, towards the Wyoming border.

Butch Cassidy. Utah Historical Society.

The bandits had planned well. They apparently used the haying job as a cover while they traced the best escape route and located a spot to hide a quick change of horses. Fortunately, the third bandit, who held the horses ready, had not worn a mask. Outside on the street, that might have attracted unwanted attention. The Assistant Cashier got a good look at him.

That man turned out to be Bob Meeks, a member of Butch Cassidy’s notorious “Wild Bunch.” He was the only one caught and convicted for the robbery. The blond leader was surely Butch himself

For some reason, there seems to be no authoritative answer as to how much the bandits got away with. Reports vary widely, from as little as $5 thousand, to around $16 thousand, to over $50 thousand. A figure of about $7 thousand is most generally accepted. Whatever the amount, none of the money was ever recovered.
                                                                                 

References: [Brit], [Illust-State]

Richard M. Patterson, Butch Cassidy: A Biography, University of Nebraska Press (1998).

J. Patrick Wilde, Treasured Tidbits of Time, © J. P. Wilde, Montpelier, Idaho (1977).

Actress Marjorie Reynolds: From Silent Films to Made-For-TV (otd 08/12)

Long-time movie and TV star Marjorie (Goodspeed) Reynolds was born August 12, 1917 in Buhl, Idaho. Her parents were Harry W. and Grace Goodspeed, both from Maine. Her father received his M.D. degree from the Medical School of Maine (Bowdoin College) in 1897. Dr. Goodspeed practiced in Maine, New York City, and Chicago before settling in Buhl around 1909. 

Marjorie Reynolds.
Publicity Headshot.

In 1922, the family moved to Los Angeles. Later, studio publicists offered some fanciful stories about how they relocated, but these can be discounted. In any case, her mother enrolled Marjorie in dance classes at an academy that specifically trained students for roles on the stage or in movies. During the following two years, she appeared as a “waif” or dancer in at least four productions.

After that, she was inactive for several years. She danced in a stage play in 1929 but did not appear again until 1933, when she had three roles that involved dancing. For these, she was billed as Marjorie Moore. One, the silent film Wine, Women, and Song, also included her first small acting part. Her career was securely launched in 1935-1937, with roles in seven productions.

Sadly, her mother died in January 1937. However, later that year, she married John Wesley “Jack” Reynolds, a casting director. He helped get her first (small) speaking role, in the thriller Murder in Greenwich Village, now using the name Majorie Reynolds. Over the next five years, Majorie appeared in at least fourteen low-budget westerns, interspersed with musicals, standard dramas, and thrillers. She was the female lead for many of them, and received quite favorable reviews.

In 1942, she landed what many consider her highest accomplishment: The love interest in Holiday Inn, with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. She got to dance with Fred Astaire, whom she found “wonderful to work with.” Moreover,  Crosby sang the renowned “White Christmas” for her. She received rave reviews for her performance and many predicted it would make her a superstar.

Like many performers, Majorie made time during the war years to deliver shows to service audiences, including a trip to bases in the Aleutian Islands. (She would reprise that role during the Korean War.) Although she took time out to have a baby girl in November 1946, she performed in at least seventeen feature files (starring in most) by the end of 1952. Unfortunately, Marjorie and Jack Reynolds divorced in the spring of 1952. She would remarry about a year later.

She had her first minor role in a TV series in 1949 and that picked up as time went on. Thus, her main focus from 1953 to 1958 was as the long-suffering but resourceful wife on the TV show The Life of Riley, with William Bendix. She found her role somewhat repetitious, but loved the rapport with the cast and crew. 

Bendix & Reynolds. Studio Publicity.

Majorie made only two feature films (in 1959 and 1962) after Riley ended, but found plenty of work in various TV series and commercials.  Her last screen credit, in 1978, was for the three-part miniseries, Pearl. The story dramatizes “ordinary” peacetime life in Honolulu during the few days that ended with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It was noted as “one of the ten most watched” programs when it aired in November. Overall, she appeared in over 60 movies as well as countless TV commercials and series episodes.

After Marjorie retired from movies and TV, she filled her days as a hospital volunteer. Also, her second husband became ill in 1984 and she nursed him as best she could until he died in the spring of 1985. After that, she spent more time with her daughter, who also worked in the film industry. In 1997, she passed out while walking her dog, was taken to a hospital for observation, but died that evening, on February 1.

A consummate professional, Majorie was well-like by everyone she worked with in movies and TV, cast or crew. And over those years, she shared the cast with many major stars: Vivien Leigh, Bob Hope, Roy Rogers, Marilyn Monroe, Mario Lanza, Shirley Temple, Robert Mitchum and on and on.

Many wondered why she never became a superstar herself, despite her good looks, outstanding ability as a dancer, and versatility as an actress. One wonders if she might have been too versatile … tackling an amazing range of comedic and dramatic roles. In westerns, she might be a standard heroine to be rescued, a determined ranch or mine owner, or even a dancehall girl. As a wife and (or) mother, she had roles as faithful, doting, jealous, manipulative, cheating … or even unwed (quite racy when she did that back in 1938). Other roles included models, detectives, nosy reporters, a princess, a refugee, and more. That is, her fans never quite knew what to expect … which may have counted against her.
                                                                                 

References:  Colin Briggs, “Marjorie Reynolds: Benevolent Beauty,” Classic Images, Muscatine Journal Division, Muscatine, Iowa (2010).

Gary Brumburgh, “Biography: Marjorie Reynolds,” Internet Movie Database, imdb.com.

Dick Vosburgh, “Obituary: Marjorie Reynolds,” The Independent, London (February 15, 1997).

Presbyterian Missionary and Preacher’s Wife Narcissa Whitman [otd 08/12]

Narcissa Whitman.
Oregon Historical Society.

On August 12, 1836, Narcissa Prentiss Whitman wrote in her journal, “The hills are so steep and rocky that husband thought it best to lighten the wagon as much as possible and take nothing but the wheels.”

“Husband” referred to the Reverend Marcus Whitman, to whom she had been married less than six months. Narcissa’s calm chronicles of the dangers and difficulties of their trip rather “set the standard” for pioneer wives on the Oregon Trail.

Born in New York state, Narcissa felt the tug of a religious call as a pre-teen. She thought about becoming a missionary for many years, but found no way to further that dream. Then, in 1834 she heard a minister speaking about the need for missionaries in the Oregon Country. The catch was, Narcissa, at 28 years old, was still not married … and the Presbyterians would probably not send out an unmarried missionary.

In February 1835, she became engaged to Marcus Whitman, a physician with an interest in becoming a medical missionary. Neither party ever mentions any courtship, and some historians speculate that they had an “arrangement” in case church authorities decided single women were not welcome as missionaries.

Almost immediately after the engagement, Dr. Whitman left on a trip to the Pacific Northwest. He returned to the East in December and two months later he and Narcissa married.

They immediately headed west to join up with the Reverend Henry Harmon Spalding, Spalding’s wife, and some other missionaries. Narcissa and Spalding’s wife, Eliza, become the first white women to cross the Continental Divide, traveling on to attend the mountain man rendezvous on the Green River.

They entered Idaho in late July and stopped at Old Fort Hall. They visited the fort’s garden, but the plants were doing very poorly. They talked to the factor, who said that “his own did extremely well until the 8th of June, when the frost of one night completely prostrated it. It has since came up again, but does not look as well as it did before. This is their first attempt at cultivating.”

When they continued, they were still dragging one wagon along. Then, as noted above, they decided to dismantle the wagon and use the wheels to assemble a cart. Whitman had to discard her favorite trunk. She wrote, “If I were to make the journey again I would make quite different preparations.”

Three Island Crossing. Re-enactment, Glenns Ferry Tourism.

The very next day they encountered an obstacle that became notorious in Oregon Trail diaries: the Three Island Crossing, near today’s Glenns Ferry.

Some trains found this Crossing of the Snake so dangerous they chose the more arid and difficult route south of the river instead. Narcissa wrote, “Husband had considerable difficulty in crossing the cart. Both cart and mules were turned upside down in the river and entangled in the harness. The mules would have been drowned but for a desperate struggle to get them ashore.”

Despite these and other trials, the missionaries made it safely to the Columbia. The Spaldings opened a mission at Lapwai among the Nez Percés [blog, Nov 29], while the Whitmans built theirs at Waiilatpu, west of today’s Walla Walla. Unfortunately, it ended badly for Marcus and Narcissa. In November, 1847, they were murdered by the Indians they had traveled across a continent to help.
                                                                                 

References: [B&W], [Brit]

Julie Roy Jeffrey, Converting the West: A Biography of Narcissa Whitman, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman (1994).

Narcissa Whitman, “Narcissa Whitman Journal,” published in Myron Eells, Marcus Whitman, Pathfinder and Patriot, Alice Harriman Company, Seattle (1909).

“History and Culture,” Whitman Mission National Historic Site, National Park Service (2004).

Idaho Falls Medical Pioneer Clifford M. Cline, M.D. [otd 08/11]

Idaho Falls physician Clifford M. Cline, M.D., was born August 11, 1884 in a rural area sixty miles or so north of Des Moines, Iowa. Accounts of his early life are a bit skimpy. However, in 1900 he was living west of Des Moines with his mother and stepfather, a physician. Years later, Dr. Cline said that browsing his stepfather’s medical library inspired him to pursue that career. He proved to be an outstanding scholar. In 1902 – aged 18 – he was listed among the anatomy faculty of the University of Iowa (officially the “State University of Iowa”). 

C. M. Cline. Family Archive.

From there, Cline moved to the Northwestern University School of Medicine, attaining his M.D. degree in 1905. He then won an internship to a well-respected teaching hospital in Chicago. Married in late 1906, he and his wife moved to Idaho Falls early the following year. “C.M” – as he was almost universally identified in the news – quickly teamed with another physician to operate one of the first hospitals in Idaho Falls.

Already a highly skilled surgeon, Cline continued to travel east during most summers to learn new techniques. However, sorrow visited the Cline household in the summer of 1909, when an infant son died at the age of six months.

In January 1911, the Idaho governor appointed Dr. Cline to the state Board of Medical Examiners. (He would be appointed to the Board again sixteen years later.) In 1912, he briefly moved his practice to Boise, and the couple’s daughter was born there. However, the family was back in Idaho Falls by early 1913. C.M. then made the first of several trips overseas. Leaving Idaho Falls in June 1914, he attended medical conferences in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, then spent until August visiting hospitals in London, Paris, Berne, and Berlin.

All that study was put to good use in 1915, when he and another doctor opened a new hospital, known as the “General Hospital.” This was the first structure built specifically as a hospital in Idaho Falls.
 

General Hospital. Bonneville County Historical Society.

Besides operation of the hospital, C.M. had other business interests in the city. He further expanded those in 1919, when he and a partner worked with a local contractor to erect the Colonial Theater. Said to have the largest and finest stage in the Mountain West, the venue hosted all kinds of theatrical and musical performances. He sold his investment after several years, and it was later adapted for motion pictures.

The General Hospital ceased operation in 1923, when the Mormon Church spearheaded construction of a larger facility, initially known as the “L.D.S. Hospital.” Dr. Cline served on the medical staff as well as the executive board for that hospital.

A Fellow  of the American College of Surgeons, Dr. Cline was a member of the American Medical Association and the Idaho State Medical Society. Also, in 1921, he helped organize the Idaho Falls Medical Society and became its first president. As a sideline, he chaired the funding-raising committee for the local chapter of the American Red Cross.

C.M. participated in the Commercial Club, the Elks, and the Idaho Falls school board. He also helped found the Idaho Falls Rotary Club and served as its president for a time. Even all that wasn’t enough to fill his life: He was reportedly an ardent sports fan and a fine gourmet cook.

Dr. Cline  was also a frequent traveler. Besides in-country trips to conferences and educational venues, Dr. Cline took has wife and daughter to Europe in the summer of 1927. Ten years later, he and his second wife traveled to South American, where a group of doctors toured a wide variety of clinics and hospitals. (His first wife died in 1934; he remarried two years later).
 

Boeing 247. Smithsonian Air & Space.

C.M. also kept up with the times outside his profession. Scheduled airline passenger service came to Idaho Falls in 1934, in the form of a innovative ten-passenger Boeing aircraft. That fall, he and his daughter boarded a flight destined for San Francisco. That familiarity served Dr. Cline well a few months later, when he flew to Moscow in response to a medical emergency.

Although he apparently cut back his travel after his second wife died in 1952, he stayed active in his profession until right near the end. Dr. Clifford M. Cline passed away on September 13, 1962, after a career that spanned over a half century.

                                                                                 

References: [Hawley]

Bulletin of Northwestern University, 1905-1906, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois (1906). Catalogue, State University of Iowa [University of Iowa], Iowa City, Iowa (1903).

“[C. M. Cline News],” Idaho Statesman, Boise, Post-Register, Idaho Falls, Idaho; Winona Daily News, Minnesota; Deseret News, Salt Lake City, Utah (July 1909 – March 1952).

Harold S Forbush and Contributors, The Idaho Falls LDS Hospital, Ricks College Press, Rexburg, Idaho (1987).

Mary Jane Fritzen, Idaho Falls, City of Destiny, Bonneville County Historical Society (1991).).

Cassia County Attorney and Idaho Chief Justice T. Bailey Lee [otd 08/10]

Thomas Bailey Lee, Chief Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, was born about twenty miles southwest of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on August 10, 1873. He attended law school after graduating from the University of North Carolina but chose not to practice at that time. Instead, he found a position as a prep school Latin teacher in Asheville. In 1898, he took up the practice of law in Butte, Montana.

Burley, ca 1918. J. H. Hawley photo.

In 1905, Lee moved to the new town of Burley [blog, July 19], becoming the first lawyer there. He also secured a position as a Director of the Burley Town Site Company. He spent two years as the City Attorney for Burley, and also served four terms as Prosecuting Attorney for Cassia County.

For six years, T. Bailey served as District Court Judge for the region encompassing Cassia and surrounding areas. Then, in October 1926, Lee was appointed to fill a vacancy in the Idaho Supreme Court. A month later, he won election to continue in that position. At that point, Bailey moved his family to Boise.  He rose to the position of Chief Justice in 1931.

His most recent biography, in Defenbach, makes the point that, “Three of his ancestors were Revolutionary soldiers, two of them with the rank of captain.”

In 1931, Judge Lee’s Congressman wrote a letter to the Bureau of Pensions. A family Bible, now “two hundred and nineteen years old,” had been submitted as verification to allow the widow of Captain John Dickey to continue receiving his Revolutionary War pension. That document now reposed in the National Archives.

T. Bailey Lee. Family Archives.

Since the relevant pages had been torn out, the Judge wanted the bulk of the Bible back, as a family memento. This request was refused, so Lee wrote a personal note to the Director of the Veteran’s Bureau. Addressed to “My Dear General,” Lee commented, “I am presuming to write you direct upon a purely personal matter, as the only methods I understand are those of a soldier and lawyer. God save me from civilian bureaucrats!”

T. Bailey had personally seen the Bible, “dumped in an old box.” Someone had filed the torn out pages, “and tossed the wrecked volume into the scrap heap.” As such, he went on, “it’s mere junk … and is about as valuable to Uncle Sam as … an empty bottle of Lydia Pinkham's.”

Again the Administrator refused his request … for the good of all researchers, not just the family, they said. In his letter to Lee’s Congressman, the Administrator said, “To insure added protection to the Bible in question it was securely wrapped and tied in kraft paper, given the file number of the claim from which it was removed, and locked in a cabinet free from dust. It is now reposing in a steel vault.”

So the Judge “lost,” but perhaps he accomplished something more important: He rescued a potentially-valuable historical document from oblivion.

Through 1932, judges campaigned for election to the Idaho Supreme Court as partisan candidates. That year Judge Lee ran on the Republican ticket. Although Bailey did better than most other Republican candidates, he lost his seat during the Democratic landslide behind Roosevelt on the national ticket. He returned to Burley after the end of his term, and finally moved his family back in late summer (Idaho Statesman, Boise, August 23, 1933).

Lee would again serve as a District Judge in 1942-1946. He passed away in March 1948.
                                                                                 

References:[Blue],  [Defen], [Hawley]

“Letters Concerning the Family Bible,“ Captain John Dickey Revolutionary War File, U. S. National Archives (1931-1932).

Ben Ysursa, Idaho Blue Book, 2003-2004, The Caxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho (2003).

Rancher, Businessman, and Party Leader Robert Coulter [otd 08/09]

Robert Coulter.
Family portrait photo.

Political operator, state Representative and agricultural pioneer Robert Coulter was born August 9, 1875 in Richmond, Kentucky, about eighty-five miles southeast of Louisville. In 1892, he moved to Oregon, where he worked at various jobs, including insurance and real estate, ranching, and boiler room operations. He married in 1901, in Portland, and moved to Washington County, Idaho the following year.

He first ran a dairy operation near Cascade (later county seat of Valley county). Coulter sold that after five years to go into general farming and stock raising. He also helped organize an irrigation company to water land midway between Payette and Weiser on the Oregon side of the Snake River.

Rather than the usual gravity flow, they used an electrically-powered pumping station to lift water from the Snake River. The results transformed sagebrush plains and dry-farmed grain fields into productive fruit and vegetable farms. Within a year, the project inspired five imitators.

When boosters formed the Washington County Fair Association, Coulter became one of its first Directors. In 1909, Robert spearheaded formation of a partnership to deal in real estate and mortgage loans. According to H. T. French, in 1914 the firm was “known for one of the largest real estate and loan companies in the county.”

Soon after he arrived in Idaho, he began taking a very active role in Democratic Party politics. For a number of years, he lived near Weiser and served as Secretary of the party Central Committee for Washington County. In the early 1920s, he moved his family back to Cascade.

For quite a long time, Coulter did not seek political office himself, working diligently for other candidates at all levels. In 1922, however, he ran successfully for the state House of Representatives. He would be re-elected for a total of six consecutive terms, running unopposed in at least one of those elections.

In 1931, Governor C. Ben Ross appointed Coulter to be Director of the Bureau of Budget. In that position, Coulter led the preparation of the budget to be presented to the legislature. He was also, ex officio, a member of another board charged with recommending construction of needed public buildings.

Senator Borah, 1937. Library of Congress.

Defenbach’s History of Idaho, published in 1933, characterized him as “one of the most forceful figures in Democratic politics at this time.” He served as Chairman of the Idaho Democratic Party for the first time in 1934-1935. Asked about party prospects, he incautiously predicted that they could defeat popular Republican Senator William E. Borah [blog, June 29] the next time he ran for re-election. Borah won handily.

For most of Coulter’s career in the House, Democrats were the minority party, yet he proved to be a very effective floor leader. When the party attained a majority in 1933, he was elected Speaker of the House. Coulter then apparently did not run for re-election, but filled the position of state Land Commissioner in 1933-1935. He would hold that office again in 1941-1947.

In 1935-1937, Coulter chaired the State Liquor Commission. Some time during this period, he moved to Boise. He served again as Chairman of the Idaho Democratic Party in 1940-1941 and 1942-1943. He ran again for that position in 1952, but was soundly defeated.

Two years later, he retired from the chairmanship of the Ada County Democratic Central Committee. He called that  “the last office I shall hold in the party.”

Coulter lived to be almost one hundred years of age, passing away in August 1974.
                                                                                

References: [Defen], [French]

Robert Coulter Collection, MS 415, Idaho State Historical Society.

“[Robert Coulter News],” Idaho Statesman, Boise; Post-Register, Idaho Falls; The Express, San Antonio, Texas (May 1912 – June 1961).