Irrigation Developer, Idaho Governor, and U. S. Senator James Brady [otd 06/12]

Senator and Governor James H. Brady.
Library of Congress.

U. S. Senator and Idaho Governor James Henry Brady was born June 12, 1862 in Indiana County, Pennsylvania. According to the biography in J. H. Hawley's History, Brady graduated from Leavenworth Normal School and then taught for three years while studying law. From this statement, one can infer that young James was a intellectual prodigy. Leavenworth Normal School closed after the 1876 year.

Very young professionals, including lawyers, often fudged their age back then so as not to put off potential clients. It appears that's what James did. When the 1880 U. S. Census recorder for Dickinson County, Kansas came round, James listed his age as 24, adding six years. He later began "correcting" that, giving his age as 36 for an 1895 Kansas state census.

After two years as a newspaper editor, Brady started a very successful real estate business, with offices in Chicago, St. Louis, and Houston. Extensions of that enterprise brought him to Idaho in 1895. From a base in Pocatello, Brady led irrigation and water power developments all over eastern Idaho.

One of those projects was an American Falls hydropower plant, which began operation in 1902. The initial structure included a diversion weir to direct flow into the power plant. (A dam impounding the entire river was not built until twenty-five years later.)

In 1907, The Oregonian, in Portland, reported (October 23, 1907) that “The Idaho Consolidated Power Company, with a capital of $2,000,000, has absorbed the American Falls Power, Light & Water Company, the Pocatello Electric Light & Power Company and the Blackfoot Power & Water Company.”

James had holdings in all of these companies and the paper noted that “Brady retains the presidency of the new company.” Power County, created in 1913, got its name from the presence of the American Falls hydropower plant. The town of American Falls easily won the county seat.

Brady also played a major role in the National Irrigation Congress, serving as its Vice President and on its Executive Committee. His activities for other national business development organizations gave him considerable name recognition outside the state of Idaho.

In 1909, Brady began a two-year term as Idaho Governor. During his tenure, Idaho instituted a school for the deaf, dumb, and blind, and made provision for orphaned or neglected children. The legislature also authorized local option liquor laws and implemented a direct primary system.

Brady failed in his re-election bid. However, Idaho's U. S. Senator Weldon Heyburn died in office and, in 1913, Brady was selected to fill the remainder of his term. At the completion of that term, Brady was elected for a full term that was to run into 1921.

War bond sales, WW-I. Library of Congress.

His national reputation earned him a number of important committee assignments. His seat on the Military Affairs Committee particularly interested Brady. Despite deteriorating health, he threw himself into legislative programs intended to support World War I soldiers and sailors, and their families.

The Senator had a heart attack and died in January 1918. Hawley, a political opponent but personal admirer of Brady, wrote, "his dying regret was that he could not live to do his part in the solution of the problems which he saw would confront this country after the victory, which he knew would come to the arms of the Allies."
                                                                                 

References: [Hawley]

“Brady, James Henry, (1862 - 1918),” Biographical Directory of the United States Senate, online.

“Idaho Governor James Henry Brady,” National Governors Association, online.

Albert R. Taylor, “History of Normal-School Work in Kansas,” Transactions, Vol. VI, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka (1900).

Prolific and World Famous Bridge Designer David Steinman [otd 06/11]

D. B. Steinman.
Boston College collections.

David Barnard Steinman, considered one of the greatest bridge designers of all time, was born June 11, 1886 in New York City. He grew up almost literally in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, which turned his thoughts in that direction. The first in his family to attend college, he received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1911.

Even before the doctorate was finished, the University of Idaho hired Steinman as a civil engineering instructor. A technical publisher later issued his doctoral dissertation as a book that became a must-have text among professionals of the day.

Steinman proved to be an enthusiastic and popular teacher. He handled, at his request, a heavy teaching load of engineering courses. But not content with that, Steinman also organized and taught the first classes in architecture offered by the University. Remarkably, he attained full professor status before he moved on after just four years.

He actually executed his first bridge design while in Idaho. Limited to logs for material and the Boy Scout troop he led as Scoutmaster for a construction crew, Steinman developed innovative ways to complete the design anyway. Beyond that and his teaching, he found time to lead an extensive program of campus improvements.

However, although he enjoyed teaching, a relatively new, little-known university offered too little scope for someone of Steiman's genius and drive. In 1914, he took a job in New York City with one of the leading bridge designers of the era. After a brief period with another well-known designer, Steinman started his own engineering firm in 1920. Soon, he and another designer formed a partnership that would work together for a quarter century.

Entire books have been written about the many bridges (over 400) Steinman and his partner designed and built, the innovations he devised, and the string of awards he won. Some of the projects they tackled were considered almost impossible, and many required new designs and approaches.

One example was the Waldo-Hancock Bridge across the Penobscot River in Maine, completed in 1931. The historian for the Historic American Engineering Record program wrote that, “Technologically, the Waldo–Hancock Bridge represented a number of firsts.”

It was one of the first two in the United States to use pre-stressed cabling, which reduced the installation and adjustment time. Also, for the first time, parts were pre-marked as to where they were to be installed – another significant cost savings. The bridge was also the first to include a tower truss type that would later be used in the Golden Gate Bridge.

Like engineers worldwide, Steinman was shocked by the wind-caused collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940. He went on to make major contributions to our knowledge of bridge aerodynamics.

Mackinac Bridge.
Wikipedia Commons, submitted by “Jeffness” in April 2007.

Steinman considered the Mackinac Bridge his "crowning achievement." The span, which connects the bulk of Michigan to its upper peninsula, held the record as the longest suspension bridge in the world for forty years. It's still the longest in the Western Hemisphere.

While Idaho could hold him for only four years, the University can point with pride to a remarkable number of his students who went on to make important engineering contributions. One of his students became Chief Engineer for the Hoover Dam project. Another worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority and consulted with Israeli officials on water projects for the Jordan River.

Steinman was working on a design to bridge the Strait of Messina, to connect Sicily to the Italian "boot," when he died in August 1960.
                                                                                 

References: [Brit]

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

Katherine Larson Farnham, Waldo-Hancock Bridge, HAER No. ME-65. Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service, Washington, D. C. (November 1999).

Rafe Gibbs, Beacon for Mountain and Plain: Story of the University of Idaho, The Caxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho (© The Regents of the University of Idaho, 1962).

Richard G. Weingardt, Engineering Legends: Great American Civil Engineers, American Society of Civil Engineers (August 1, 2005).

More Paved Highways, Better Bridges Demanded by “Good Roads” Groups [otd 06/10]

On Tuesday, June 10, 1913, the Fourth Annual Convention of the Intermountain Good Roads Association opened in Boise. Convention sessions ran through Thursday evening, with such topics as "Good Enough Roads for the Traffic." Thursday morning, former Idaho Governor James H. Hawley spoke on "Good Roads and Their Relation to Mining."

Mud is the enemy. National Archives

On Friday, the convention offered a tour to the Arrowrock Dam site. The dam was then about two years from completion. At this fourth convention, member states were identified as Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.

Roads in Colonial America were notoriously bad. As long as most people lived near the Atlantic coast, goods and people could travel by small ships built for that trade. Roads stretching inland were little more than widened trails scraped on the surface. That slowly improved, mostly through the efforts of toll road builders.

Thus, except for special cases, almost the only decent road surfaces were the streets in towns that could afford them. Rural areas largely made do with dirt tracks that turned to bottomless quagmires when it rained. Farmers knew they would benefit from better roads. However, the status quo was “good enough” most of the year and they shied away from the cost for something they used only once in a while.

Oddly enough, pressure for change arose from what was essentially a recreational fad, the bicycle. Without going into the morass of who invented what, when, bicycles were “all the rage” in the United States by the 1870s. Clubs proliferated, and they wanted to do more than just pedal around town. Thus, bicycle enthusiasts started the Good Roads Movement in 1880.

Good Roads associations quickly grew all over the country. The advocacy changed as cars became more common, and automobile companies took up the cause. By 1913, better roads and bridges for motor vehicles were the main focus.

The first Intermountain Association convention had urged "the American Automobile Association to consider a transcontinental route from New York to San Francisco or Los Angeles or the north coast cities." Such a planned road would hopefully replace the hit-or-miss (often "miss" in the West) patchwork of locally-maintained routes.

The Boise convention passed a resolution that expressed the delegates' "appreciation" of national efforts to construct such a route: "a great national free thoroughfare for the accommodation of all sorts of transportation."

Delegates also advocated educational improvements. They recommended the creation of collegiate engineering coursework "wherein shall be given special consideration and attention to the subject of public highways." Moreover, the faculty offering that coursework should establish an outreach program to provide instruction for county road builders and overseers.

As it happened, the University of Idaho already had such a program. They had completed their second annual good roads short course just months earlier. One of the lecturers was David B. Steinman, who would go on to become a world renowned bridge designer [blog, tomorrow].

Howdy! Montana State University Archives.

Another resolution said, "we demand the opening of the Yellowstone and all other natural parks to motor-propelled vehicles, thus enabling the people of our country to 'See America First'." That resolution paid off two years later, when the first cars were admitted to Yellowstone Park.

At the conference, delegates elected prominent Boise physician Dr. Lucien P. McCalla to be the Association’s next President. Within a day of so of the convention’s closing, Dr. McCalla received a telegram welcoming the Intermountain Association as an affiliate of the National Highways Association. Such recognition was expected to significantly enhance the prestige and resources of  the regional body.
                                                                                

References: [Brit], [French]

“Fourth Annual Convention of the Inter-Mountain Good Roads Association,” Better Roads Magazine, Vol. III, No. 7, Better Roads Publishing Company, Jamestown, Ohio (July 1913).

William Clark Hilles, The Good Roads Movement in the United States: 1880-1916, M. A. thesis, Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina (1958).

“Join National Organization on Highways,” Idaho Statesman, Boise (June 14, 1913).

Mary Pickett, “Powered Vehicles had Bumpy Start in Yellowstone, Glacier Parks,” Montana Standard, Butte (October 4, 2008).

“Resolutions of the Good Roads,” The Evening Standard, Ogden, Utah (Sept 26, 1910).

Treaty of 1863 Reduces Nez Perce Reservation, Sows Seeds of Trouble [otd 06/09]

On June 9, 1863, U. S. government negotiators concluded a treaty with the Nez Percés Indians. That treaty substantially reduced the "official" reservation, and promoted tensions that would bear ill fruit many years later.

Nez Percés Chief Lawyer, ca. 1861.
University of Washington Special Collections.

By 1845-1850, white settlement between the future border of Idaho and the Cascade Mountains had significantly intruded on native tribes there. This resulted in series of clashes, the “Cayuse War,” that ran on until 1855. At that point, the government “negotiated” treaties that forced several tribes onto small reservations. In fact, the restrictions in those treaties led to yet another Indian war three years later.

Officials also negotiated a first treaty with the Nez Percés in 1855. However, unlike the other tribes, the Nez Percés received a reservation that included much, although not all, of their traditional homeland. Space precludes a full discussion of all the white misconceptions concerning the tribe and this treaty. Basically, white officials felt they were benevolently “granting” the Indians an expansive domain. Conversely, the Nez Percés saw the treaty as recognition of their sovereignty over lands they had held since before Europeans settled in the New World.

Also, the Indian Agent disliked dealing with fifty-plus band chiefs. Thus, he arbitrarily designated a Head Chief who would ostensibly speak for all. His chosen one was a man known to whites as "Chief Lawyer.” Indian leaders, who composed a council of equals, put up with this foolishness, but not to the extent of letting the so-called Head Chief do anything important. Fifty-eight band chiefs signed the 1855 reservation treaty.

Yet even then many tribesmen opposed the agreement. They felt that the goods and services promised by the white negotiators were not a fair trade for the lands that were ceded. Then delays in providing the promised payments further strengthened the anti-treaty faction. Still, events proceeded without severe problems for several years.

But opposition to the pact grew even greater when white settlers began to push onto Nez Percés treaty lands. The numbers were small at first. As time passed, however, more and more stock raisers began to compete for Nez Percés range. Given time, even this friction might have been resolved.

But then prospectors discovered gold on the reservation lands in Idaho. Local chiefs feared permanent settlers, but transient miners seemed to pose no particular threat. The Indians agreed to the construction of a warehouse where steamboats could offload shipments for transfer to pack trains. Nothing more, however, was to be built there.

Lewiston, 1862. Nez Perce County Historical Society.

Whites violated that agreement almost immediately. The full tent city of Lewiston sprang into being on Nez Percés land and grew explosively.

Government officials had a far greater agenda than just solving the Lewiston situation when negotiations for the 1863 treaty began. Land-greedy settlers wanted the territory alloted by the 1855 treaty. With glowing promises, officials "persuaded" Chief Lawyer to accept, for the whole tribe, a small allotment stretching from near Lapwai to around Kamiah.

Naturally, tribes living on the “ceded” lands refused to sign the new treaty. The Nez Percés were thus split into "treaty" and "non-treaty" factions. By some chicanery, officials scraped up over 50 signatures for the treaty, even though the agreement covered no more than half of the bands.

Amazingly, this untenable situation held, despite rising tensions, for fourteen years. (As usual, few of the glowing promises were honored consistently.)
                                                                                 

Refrences: [B&W]

Jerome A. Greene, Nez Perce Summer, 1877: The U.S. Army and the Nee-Me-Poos Crisis, Montana Historical Society Press: Helena (2000).

Francis Haines, The Nez Percés: Tribesmen of the Columbia Plateau, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman (1955).

Silver City Volunteers Battle Bannock Indians at South Mountain [otd 06/08]

On June 8, 1878, a loose column of Silver City volunteers moved generally southward along South Mountain Creek. Angry Bannocks led by Chief Buffalo Horn were trying to join possible allies in Oregon. Common sense said they might head west over this broad, rugged saddle between the Silver City Range and South Mountain.

High plateau between Silver City Range and South Mountain.
IdahoSummits.com, Dan Robbins.

Many factors combined to cause the Bannock War. Most stemmed from the failure of white officials to deliver on the promises that induced the Shoshone and Bannock tribes to moved onto the Fort Hall Indian Reservation [blog, June 14]. One provision reserved the southern Camas Prairie for the tribes. The camas beds there were a vital food source. They became almost a matter of life and death when the Indian Agency failed to provide adequate rations. (This happened on a regular basis.)

White stockmen ignored the Camas Prairie clause of the treaty and officials did nothing to enforce it. Tension peaked when settlers drove hogs onto the Prairie. The hogs loved camas bulbs and devastated the beds. Even then, the tribes did not retaliate immediately. But finally, facing starvation, Bannock warriors fired on three stockmen, wounding two. Over the next week or so, the Indians burned many outlying homesteads and killed several settlers.

On June 4th, citizens in Silver City met and organized a troop of volunteers to fight the Bannocks. The roll call looked like a “who’s who” of Owyhee pioneers, including some who had been there from the beginning. For years they had dealt with Indian attacks on isolated settler cabins, stagecoaches, and freight wagons. They had no confidence that the Army would do any better this time than they had before. The volunteers marched out on the 7th and camped at a ranch about fifteen miles south and a bit west of Silver City.

Sources disagree somewhat as to who knew what on the 8th. It seems that the whites only suspected the Bannocks were in the area, while Buffalo Horn may have known all about the white column. Accounts of their meeting vary: Some say the two groups exchanged challenges and insults, and then the Indians attacked. Others claim the initial assault was a total surprise.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between, with some whites yelling at the Indians, while others didn’t even know the tribesmen were close by. In any case, the Indians' sudden attack threw the volunteers into confusion and, outnumbered at least two to one, they retreated to avoid being surrounded.

Guns blazed on both sides. Indians fell, but four or five volunteers were unhorsed, either because their mounts stumbled or were hit. Shots killed two whites, including Oliver Purdy, one of the discoverers of the Jordan Creek placers. The outcome was very much in doubt when the Indians suddenly broke off the attack and milled about. Before they could regroup, the volunteers galloped off.

Bannock tribesman at the reservation. National Park Service.

Who mortally wounded Buffalo Horn is uncertain, but it surely turned the tide of battle and may have turned the course of the war. For Buffalo Horn was their most experienced chief, having fought as an U.S. Army scout against the Sioux and in the pursuit of the Nez Percé in 1876 and 1877. With their leader gone, many Bannock scattered and made their way back to the reservation. The rest hurried into Oregon and joined the uprising there, where most of the rest of the War was fought.
                                                                                 

References: [B&W]

George Francis Brimlow, The Bannock War of 1878, Caxton Printers, Ltd., Caidwell, Idaho (1938).

Mike Hanley, with Ellis Lucia, Owyhee Trails: The West's Forgotten Corner, Caxton Printers, Caidwell, Idaho (1973).

A Historical, Descriptive and Commercial Directory of Owyhee County, Idaho, Owyhee Avalanche Press (January 1898).

Farm Equipment Dealer and Agricultural Developer Sylvester Hill [otd 06/07]

Agricultural pioneer Sylvester Hill was born June 7, 1855 in Dekalb County, Illinois. Bolstered by a business school education, he first worked as a traveling salesman for the Deering Harvester Company. The Deering company was one of several farm equipment firms competing for business in the Midwestern grain fields.

Reaper-binder, ca. 1881. National Archives.

Sylvester spent seven years on the road selling. He then became Assistant Manager and then Manager for the Deering interests in Minnesota. Around 1888, he left to help organize another implement company. Unfortunately, their majority investor died suddenly and the company folded. Hill then became a District Manager for the Plano Manufacturing Company, another of the strong competitors in the grain cutting and binding business.

After five years with Plano, Hill moved on to work for the Milwaukee Harvester Company. At this stage of his career, Sylvester had held management positions in three of the four strongest companies in the farm equipment field. The only one he had not worked for was the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. Cyrus McCormick, Jr., son of the inventor of the patented McCormick reaper, led the company. It was arguably the strongest competitor in the now-crowded business.

In the fall of 1901, Sylvester quit Milwaukee Harvester and moved to Idaho. He never said “for the record” why he quit the business to which he had devoted over half his life. Less than a year later, Cyrus McCormick engineered a consolidation of McCormick, Deering, Milwaukee, Plano, and one other small firm into the International Harvester Company. It is difficult to avoid the notion that there’s more to this story than we know. Perhaps Hill “saw the handwriting on the wall” and left before consolidation forced him out.

Sylvester Hill.
J. H. Hawley photo.

Hill purchased “raw” land near Roswell, 2-3 miles south of Parma across the Boise River. Over the next five years, he converted his sagebrush-covered tract into productive farm acreage. Perhaps his expertise with the latest agricultural equipment aided with those improvements. The Idaho Statesman reported (September 2, 1906) that “One of the best crops of clover seed ever produced in this section has just been threshed by Sylvester Hill … ”

He sold that first spread for almost five times what he paid for it and then homesteaded another, larger plot. Hill held that land for over a decade before again selling at a premium.

Sylvester next had a contract with the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation to build a long stretch of the Golden Gate irrigation ditch. (The Golden Gate Canal branches off from another canal about six miles west of Caldwell and winds about eighteen miles west to end less than two miles from the Snake River.) He spent nine years as Secretary and Treasurer for an irrigation district in the area before retiring in 1917.

At that time, Hill sold his farm property and moved to a home on the east side of Parma. However, Sylvester apparently found sitting at home uncomfortable and sold that place about eighteen months later. He moved his family into Boise and began selling insurance. By 1921, Sylvester and his wife, along with an unmarried daughter, had started wintering in California.

Finally, in August 1925, Hill sold their Boise home. He then retired for good and moved to Glendale, California. Hill passed away there in 1937.
                                                                                 
References: [Brit], [Hawley]
“[Sylvester Hill News],” Idaho Statesman (Sept 1906 - Aug 1925).

Weiser Stockman and Irrigation Developer Thomas Galloway [otd 06/06]

Tom Galloway. Illustrated History.

Weiser pioneer Thomas C. Galloway was born June 6, 1837 in Iowa County, Wisconsin, about forty miles southwest of Madison. According to the Illustrated History, his grandfather came to America from Scotland in time to fight in the Revolutionary War and was present at Yorktown when Lord Cornwallis surrendered there. Thomas was a teenager when the family emigrated along the Oregon Trail to Yamhill County, Oregon in 1852. Tom pursued a variety of jobs, including some time as a teacher, before leading pack trains to the British Canadian gold camps.

In 1863, Galloway packed supplies into the Boise Basin, then stayed to work in the gold fields. The following year, he and Woodson Jeffreys settled along the Weiser River [blog, February 11]. Tom built a log hut at the future site of Weiser City, and then replaced it three years later with a frame structure. Galloway ran these first buildings in the area as a simple hotel for several years. About 1868, he began a major expansion of his horse and cattle holdings.

His horse herd grew to be one of the largest in the area. Galloway’s Weiser City properties increased in value even more with the arrival of the Oregon Short Line Railroad in early 1884.  Tom served two terms on the Territorial Council (equivalent to the state Senate) in 1882 and 1884. He moved the family to Boise City at that time, partly so their children could take advantage of its better educational institutions. Tom maintained interests in Weiser and they moved back when the children had graduated from high school.

Weiser, ca. 1888. Weiser Museum.

During this period, Galloway was considered such an expert on stock raising that the leading agricultural journal of the day published his views on “Points of a Good Jack.” He recommended various male ass breeds for siring mules for different uses. If one needed a heavy draft animal, “then the Maltese ass or the Poitiers ass is required.”

In addition to his ranch, real estate, and business holdings, Galloway led the way in bringing irrigation to the higher plains along the Weiser River. A cooperative started the project, but apparently had neither the resources nor relevant skills to complete the job. Thomas attracted additional investors to finish the work. However, according to Judge Frank Harris, they eventually sold their rights to a local water district "at somewhat of a loss" because of the hassles involved in running the enterprise.

By the turn of the century, Tom owned over fourteen hundred acres of land around Weiser, some of it within the city limits. In late 1901, Galloway represented Idaho as a Delegate-at-Large at the Annual Convention of the National Live Stock Association. A few months later, he was elected President of the Washington County Stock Raisers Association.

In 1903, he served a term in the state House of Representatives. He also served as a justice of the peace in Weiser City, on the city council, and later on the school board. While the Galloways lived in Boise, they had a son, Thomas C. Jr., who became an eminent medical researcher [blog, March 17.]

Galloway House.

The elder Thomas passed away in June 1916. The Weiser mansion he had built in 1899-1900 is now on the National Register of Historic Places. He reportedly sold eight hundred horses to finance the place. (Today, it is a bed & breakfast furnished in period decor.)
                                                                                 

References: [Illust-State]

Thomas C. Galloway, “Points of a Good Jack,” The American Agriculturist for the Farm, Garden and Household, Vol. 48, Orange Rudd Company, New York (1889).

"T. C. Galloway dies," Oregonian (June 11, 1916).

Frank Harris, 'History of Washington County and Adams County," Weiser Signal (1940s).

Charles F. Martin (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Convention of the National Live Stock Association, December 3-6, 1901, P. F. Pettibone & Co., Publishers, Chicago (1902).