Yakima County, Washington - Chapter 1: Current History - 1860-1877, 1904

Chapter 1: Current History - 1860-1877

No attempt shall here be made to determine who first of the trappers and fur traders whose operations have been briefly outlined in previous pages visited the Yakima country. Neither is it practicable to detail the wanderings and vicissitudes of these nomadic traffickers within the limits of the territory forming the subject-matter of this volume, for at the time of their operations territorial, state or county lines had not been drawn, and there is a haziness about such meager accounts as have come down to us, which makes it difficult at times to determine with certainty just where a given event took place. So far as known no sectional history of the fur trade has ever been attempted, and it is doubtful whether any such could be successfully compiled. The historian of the fur trade, to produce a readable work, must do as did Washington Irving in describing the adventures of Bonneville, follow in his narrative the wanderings of his nomadic hero wheresoever they may lead him.

All sojournings by these nomadic merchants were of a temporary character, and though a small fort was built by the Hudson's Bay Company on the banks of the upper Columbia, the purpose of it and of every other establishment made by them was to drain the country of its wealth of peltry, not to develop its latent resources.

More noble in the motives which impelled them hither, though not more potent to effect anything like an industrial development of the country or any part of it, were the zealous Jesuit priests who first made their appearance among the aborigines of central Washington. In recent years a contest was had affecting the title to four hundred and forty-seven acres of land in Yakima county adjoining the present Yakima Indian reservation, which tract was claimed by Catholics by virtue of their having a mission established upon it prior to the organization of Washington territory and the passage of the Organic Act containing a proviso that title to lands not exceeding six hundred and forty acres, occupied at that date (March 2, 1853) for mission purposes, should be confirmed to the religious society to which said missionary station belonged. The testimony in this contest showed that a mission was established in the spring of 1852 by Fathers Chironse and Herlomez. The Ahtanum mission, as it came to be called, was maintained until the outbreak of the war of 1855, the progress of which forced its abandonment. The mission house was burned in November of that year by the regulars under Major Rains and volunteers under Colonel Nesmith, the reason for this destruction of property, it is said, being that the Catholic missionaries were supposed to have sympathized with and aided the Indians. Father Pandozy is mentioned as one of the priests who was in the country at the time of the war.

There is one man now living within the limits of Yakima county who looked upon its crystal streams, sage brush hills and beauti.ul mountains as early as 1853. It is believed that to him belongs the honor of having passed through it at an earlier date than any other white man now living in the county. The gentleman who has this splendid distinction is the veteran pioneer of the west, David Longmire. During those Octo- ber days of so long ago, and now of necessity so misty in his memory, he passed up the Yakima valley and over the Cascade mountains by the Naches gap. He was then but nine years old. He found on the site of his present home a subchief of the Klickitats by the name of Owhi, from whom the party to which he belonged purchased a quantity of potatoes that had been grown on the land. Some of the details of his transcontinental trip were thus narrated by him to a reporter of the Seattle Times and later to the writer:

"In the month of March, 1853, my father and mother, in company with thirty other families, left Franklin county, Indiana, for Portland, Oregon, traveling across the country by ox teams. November 16th of that same year we reached Olympia.

"We followed the old Oregon trail down the Snake river, crossed the Blue mountains into the Umatilla country, then journeyed to the northward, passing over the waters of the Columbia at Wallula. Walla Walla had not at that time been thought of. At Wallula the Hudson's Bay Company had its fort, an old adobe building.

"An old Indian chief at the mouth of the Yakima river killed one of his best and fattest steers for us and sold the meat at fifteen cents a pound. Father was made weigh-master. Peopeo-mox-mox, for such was the Indian's name, was a kind chief. He did not want us to cross the Cascades, and with other Indians tried to persuade us to go to the Colville reservation.

"But we did not let them dissuade us from executing our original plans. We crossed the Yakima at its mouth and came up on the east side, Indians following us all the way by thousands. There were thousands of them at that time in the Yakima country. Our wagons were great curiosities, for they were the first they had ever seen and the first to be brought up the Yakima valley and over the Cascade range.

"Not a white man lived in the valley at the time, save two Catholic priests, one at Tampico and the other on the ground taken by George Taylor in 1865 as a homestead. It is opposite the present George Hall ranch.

"In October we wended our way up toward the head of the Wenas creek, and in due time we began the ascent of the Naches river, the Indian name for which was Noch-cheese, meaning swift water. There were no wagon roads in either the Yakima or the Naches country, so we were pioneers in the matter of road-making. We had to ford the Naches something like forty times before we entered the mountains. The Indian trail was all right for single horses, but hauling wagons over it, even after the trees had been cut down to make it wider, was simply out of the question. We could not follow the trail at all, only in a general way. General George B. McClellan, who was located at Steilacoom in that year, was sent over the trail to examine it relative to the feasibility of making it passable for wagons, but we had made the road before the government got around to it.

"In 1854 the government made an appropriation for the improvement of the road, but after the outbreak of the Indian war it fell into disuse and became so overgrown with brush and clogged with fallen logs that it had to be abandoned entirely.

"We reached the top of the mountain all right, taking our outfit with us, and then the question was how to get down the other side. We found it necessary to use ropes to lower the wagons. After ten days of the hardest toil, we managed to overcome the obstacles presented by the almost impenetrable forest and sharp declivities of the west side, and at length we reached Olympia in safety.

"The Indians of those days were not treated altogether right by the white men who came in to take their lands. I remember well the two Nisqually chiefs, Leschi and Quiemuth, coming from a treaty-making meeting with Governor Stevens. They stopped in front of our house on Yelm prairie. I remember when Leschi was hanged. After this affair, Quiemuth gave himself up. He came to our house and asked father to deliver him over to Governor Stevens so the white men would not kill him. Father and the Indian went to Governor Stevens' office in Olympia. Both men stayed at the governor's home that night, sleeping in the same room. Some time during the hours of darkness, my father was suddenly awakened by the sound of a gunshot in the room. The Indian had been shot in the arm by some person from the outside, and moving toward the door, he was shortly afterward stabbed through the heart by the same midnight assassin. This made the governor very angry, and also made Indian affairs more difficult to handle."

Of course, the great Yakima war of 1855-6 made it impossible for white men, other than those banded together in military companies, to remain in or even pass through the valley of the Yakima river, but it is quite probable that those who came as soldiers or volunteers retained recollections of the pastoral wealth of the country, and that many of them, or persons interested by their representations, were induced to visit central Washington and perchance make homes in it in later years. Indeed, it is certainly known that a discovery made by one of the soldiers of this war had a very considerable effect upon the subsequent history of Yakima county, namely, the discovery of placer gold by Captain Ingalls, the sequel to which will receive due notice presently.

In another way also the Indians, by their hostility, hastened the occupancy of the country by white men, the very thing they sought by force of arms to prevent. One of the results of the war was the establishment of Fort Simcoe, which, though a military post, occasioned the presence of white men and furnished encouragement for the entrance of stock raisers into the country by offering them at once protection from predatory Indians and a trading point.

There can be no doubt but that the establishment of Fort Simcoe had much to do with rendering the home of the Yakimas, who were partially subdued in the war of 1855-6 and more completely overawed by the brilliant campaign of Colonel Wright in the .Spokane country, a safe place for white men. At any rate, in the late fifties it began to be visited by cattle raisers from the outside country. George Nelson tells us that in 1859 William Murphy and Benjamin E. Snipes, partners, drove cattle from the Klickitat valley onto the Yakima range, as did also John B. Nelson and Fred Allen, with the latter's two sons, Bart and Jacob. They remained with their herds on the Yakima river during the winter of 1859-60, but did not effect a permanent settlement. Mr. Nelson names also John E. Murphy, James Murphy, William Henderson, Preston, William Connell and John Jeffrey and his brother as among the Klickitat stockmen, who used the Yakima ranges at a very early date. During this period, the only whites, aside from these intrepid stockmen, who visited the country were the no less intrepid and even more mercurial packers engaged in transporting goods to the upper Columbia river.

It seems to be a conceded fact that the first permanent settler within the limits of the present Yakima country was F. Mortimer Thorp, who had likewise made journeys into it from Klickitat county and to whom its rich pastures and utter lack of civilization appealed with a peculiar potency. Mr. Thorp belonged to that old school of stockmen who considered solitude and primeval conditions essential to the success of their business. Utterly indifferent to the advantages of society and the luxuries which can be enjoyed only where a considerable number of people are united together in communities, he wished always to be so situated that his herds might multiply indefinitely and find an abundant pasture. His great desideratum was an unbounded country without farms and fences, where cattle might roam at will, nor ever, by any chance, involve their owner in bickerings and quarrels and litigation. Thus it came to pass that Mr. Thorp had sought earnestly the heart of the wilderness since 1844, when first he had set his face resolutely westward, making the long journey over plain and mountain to the land laved by the Pacific's billows. This desire of solitude and isolation had more than once impelled him to pull up stakes and move on, for the country at the time was being appropriated and subjugated with considerable rapidity. In July, 1858, he settled near the site of the present Goldendale; indeed, a part of the land on which that town is built served him as a calf pasture at this early period. Soon the progress of civilization drove him thence also, as it had driven him just before from Benton county, Oregon, and in his quest for more elbow room he turned naturally to the Yakima country. And so it happened that October, 1S60, found him once more on the move. Ben Snelling, John Zumwalt and A. C. Myers accompanied, assisting with the two hundred and fifty head of fine Durham stock. Establishing himself in the now famous Moxee valley, Mr. Thorp spent there the winter of 1860-61, his family remaining at their home in Klickitat county. The season was mild, and those with the cattle were able to make trips between the two places as often as occasion might arise.

In February, 1861, this pioneer stockman brought his family, consisting of his wife, Margaret, and a number of children, of whom the oldest was only eighteen, to the new place of abode he had picked out for them. The accommodations prepared for their use and comfort were necessarily of the rudest kind, consisting mainly of a small cabin with a dirt roof; the furnishings few and of home manufacture. As culinary utensils' had to be packed over a long rough trail, it may be assumed that only the most essential articles found their way into Mrs. Thorp's kitchen. Certainly this pioneer lady purchased at a cost of not a little inconvenience, privation and loneliness, the honor of having been the first white woman to make her home in the Yakima country. In company with the family came the now widely known Charles Splawn, who was engaged in packing to the mines during the winter of i860.

In the fall of 1861 Mr. Thorp succeeded in getting through from his old home in Klickitat county a. wagon, the first to enter the Yakima valley from that direction, and thereafter his worthy helpmate enjoyed the luxury of a cook stove. A supply of vegetables was obtained that fall from a garden of five or six acres planted in the spring.

"At that time," says Leonard L. Thorp, from whom our information concerning the first family to settle in the Yakima country was obtained, "the bottom lands were covered with a dense growth of rye grass twelve feet high in many places, while a luxuriant carpet of nutritious bunch grass made the sage brush hills a veritable paradise to cattle and horses. Within five minutes after turning loose the animals, they would be completely lost sight of in the tall grass and could be found only by trailing. Fortunately, the Indians were disposed to be friendly, and except by the occasional theft of an animal, never seriously troubled the early settlers. Indeed, they rendered us valuable service during the late fall of 1861, by bringing great quantities of salmon, which could be procured from them at

With the Thorp family when they came iDto the Moxee valley in February, 1S61, besides Mr. Splawn, before mentioned, were Alfred Henson and family, George Bearfield and John Grubsher, en route to the Peshastin mines. As the discovery of this district was an important event of the early days and doubtless exerted some influence upon the history of central Washington, it is thought fitting that a brief account of it should here be given.

One Captain Ingalls, the discoverer of the Coos Bay mines, in Oregon, and a typical representative of the nomadic prospecting class which formed so important a part of the early population of the West, may perhaps be considered the original discoverer of the Peshastin district. During the Indian war of 1855-6 he served as a scout, and in company with other scouts from the ranks of the friendly Indians, reconnoitered the eastern slope of the Cascade range. While on the Wenatchee river, so the story is told, he and an Indian named Colawash found, in one of the tributary canyons, several gold nuggets and other substantial indications of the existence of placer deposits. They dare not tarry for close investigation, however, for should they be discovered by the hostiles, their lives would not be a worth a copper cent. Ingalls was, therefore, compelled to abandon his find for the time being.

When at length the Indian troubles were at an end and the intrepid prospector might with safety attempt a further reconnoissance of the gold-bearing region, he again entered the country, but with all his experience in finding his way in the wilderness by landmarks, he was unable to rediscover the gold-bearing gravels or the creek whose bed and banks they formed. Eventually, in i860, he went to the home of Colawash in the Klickitat valley, hoping to induce the red man to guide him to the spot. Vain were his efforts. Colawash could not be induced by the most tempting offer to make the journey, and all hope of help from this source had to be abandoned.

Nothing daunted, Ingalls associated himself with Levi and Andrew Jackson Knott, Robert Ladd and one or two others, with intent to make a more extended and thorough search for the lost placers. Their expedition was destined to be brought to an abrupt and melancholy termination. While the company was in camp in the upper country, Ingalls was accidentally shot and killed by A. J. Knott, so the rest of the party, left without a guide, were compelled to return with sad hearts to the settlements.

The next effort to discover the lost placer ground was made by Charles A. Splawn, then living near the site of Goldendale. In the spring of i860 he had gone to try his fortunes in the Similkameen mines, having first talked with Colawash, with whom he was on friendly terms, regarding the Ingalls discovery. Colawash refused to guide him or anybody else to the spot, but told Mr. Splawn that the name of the creek was Peshastin; also drew a rough map for his further information.

While returning from the Similkameen district in the fall of i860, Mr. Splawn fell in with four other returning miners, whom he readily induced to join him in a search for the Peshastin prospect. The party proceeded forthwith to the mouth of the Wenatchee river, where an Indian guide was procured. As they proceeded up the Wenatchee, the Indian named the different tributary streams as he came to them. When the prospectors had reached a place between fifteen and twenty miles from the river's mouth, the guide pointed out a considerable creek flowing in from the south and stated that it was the Peshastin, of which they were in search.

Mr. Splawn, who is our authority for the story, states that he himself started up the stream while the rest of the party took a hill trail, the agreement being that all should meet at the summit of the divide. In the first narrow canyon after leaving the mouth of the creek, Mr. Splawn dug out a promising crevice and panned from its contents a dollar in gold. The bed-rock was slate.

With the evidence of his find safe in his pocket, Mr. Splawn eagerly pushed on to the appointed rendezvous, where he found his companions in waiting. They had accidentally fallen in with a young man named Russell, who joined their ranks. Russell was the messenger who had been entrusted to carry the news of Lincoln's election to the northern mines, and was on his return to the sound when he met Splawn 's party. He became enthusiastic over the discovery, and having begged the gold from its rightful owner, proceeded with it to Seattle. Its exhibition there caused not a little excitement. The few newspapers then in the Northwest published exaggerated accounts of the discovery, and some of them indulged in useless prophesying as to the future extensive development of the region. Numerous parties at once outfitted and started for the new diggings, and Mr. Splawn estimated that seventyfive miners spent the winter on the Peshastin. But the gold fields, though they produced nuggets weighing as high as twelve dollars, were of small extent. They were soon overshadowed in public interest by the more important discoveries made in Idaho and British Columbia about this time, and eventually ceased entirely to be the center of excitement, though gold was found there for several years, and in later days quartz ledges have been uncovered in the district. The principal branch of Peshastin creek is known today as Ingalls creek, having been so named in honor of the man who first discovered, but did not live to open the mines.

Central Washington

country in February, 1861. During the ensuing October they returned disgusted to the Moxee valley. Mr. Henson took a claim in that region, intending to plant there his vine and fig tree, but after a residence of two weeks, he decided that the danger to himself and family from Indians was too great and that prudence required him to give up the idea of establishing a home in the Yakima country just then.

The Thorps were, therefore, left the sole permanent settlers of the valley with none to bear them company except the savages and such travelers, packers and stockmen as might occasionally pass their way. Neither did they have a large force of employees to help beguile the lonely hours. The work of caring for the cattle was done entirely by Mr. Thorp, his sons and Charles A. Splawn, who had married the oldest girl.

But during the winter of 1861-2 the men at least had no time to think of their loneliness and isolation. That winter is known in local history as the severest ever experienced by white men in the Northwest, and the Yakima country was not more favored than were other parts. On the 10th of November, Mr. Thorp informs us, snow began falling, and it did not cease until it had attained a depth of eight inches. This settled down to four inches of hard, icy snow, upon which came successive falls, until by December 20th, the earth had a compact blanket two feet thick. Throughout the whole of the 22d and the succeeding night rain came down in torrents, settling the snow to a depth of eighteen inches. A hard frost on the night of the 23d converted this into a vast sheet of ice, the last of which did not disappear from the face of the country until after the middle of the following March. There was no thermometer in the valley at the time, but some idea of the cold may be obtained from the fact that the Yakima and Naches rivers very early froze to the bottom, swift mountain streams though they were. Their waters covered a large scope of lowlands, which, with the beds of the rivers, were supplied all winter with a thick, unyielding coat of mail. In the spring the ice marks were eight feet high on the trees in Moxee bottom, and when the center of the vast glacier began to move out, side walls of ice in some places more than twelve feet high were left.

Strange to say, the stock loss of the one family in the country was slight, notwithstanding this extreme cold. Their three hundred cattle and sixty horses were in prime condition when the cold weather set in, an important point in their favor, and those in charge of the animals made heroic efforts to secure forage for them. An unlimited range of nutritious bunch grass, cured while standing, after the manner of this peculiar plant of the desert, was concealed under the ice and snow. The only chance of saving the herds lay in breaking the crusts so that the cattle and horses might reach this excellent fodder, and for forty successive days the Thorps wrought with great energy, despite the extreme cold, assisting the animals to dig down for sustenance. The legs and arms of the men were at times so badly cut and frozen as almost to incapacitate them for further work, but still they toiled on and their labors and sacrifices were rewarded, for only seven of the neat cattle perished, while the horse band remained entire. About the 15th of February a Chinook began blowing, and soon the snow on the south hillsides cleared away, making it possible for the animals to take care of themselves. During the summer of 1861 several outbuildings were erected for the shelter of stock and the next summer Mr. Thorp built a permanent home for his family at the lower spring in the Moxee valley, a two-story hewed-log structure, much superior to the pioneer cabin of round cottonwood logs. The original home was, however, allowed to stand for many years as a monument of the early days.

The year 1862 brought a few additions to the population of Yakima county, perhaps the first of whom was William Parker, a Columbia river packer who had passed through the valley in 1861. He took a homestead on the bottom that has ever since borne his name, but being not yet ready to give up the trail, he left the place in charge of another arrival of the year, Andrew C. Gervais, who had heard of the Thorp settlement and had come over from Walla Walla to visit it. Mr. Gervais says John Allen and John Jeffrey, the former of whom, like Parker, was married to an Indian wife, were partners in this homestead venture. Gervais harvested a small crop of vegetables and cereals for his employers, then left the place in charge of its proprietors and entered the service of Mr. Thorp, with whom he remained that winter. Albert Haines also came to the country in 1862, locating with his wife and little daughter in the Moxee, a mile and a half north of the Thorp place.

An event of the winter of 1862 deserving of at least a passing notice was the establishment of the first school in the valley, a private one. The home of this pioneer institution was the upper story of Mr. Thorp's house; the teacher was Lutitia, wife of Albert Haines, a well educated young woman, equipped for her duties by a little former experience in teaching, and the pupils were the Thorp children, the only ones in the valley at the'time save the little Haines girl. It is said that Mrs. Haines proved very efficient and accomplished not a little in her three-month term, despite the many difficulties she had to encounter in the way of dissimilar text-books, lack of equipment, etc.

No serious trouble with Indians was experienced by the earliest settlers, though occasionally the thievish red men would appropriate to their own use some animal belonging to the whites. During the summer of 1862 a very fine horse disappeared from Mr. Thorp's band. The owner took up the trail of the animal, and after a long, hard chase, succeeded in overtaking him and the Indian who had appropriated him. The thief was captured, treated to a sound rib-roasting, and turned loose with the injunction to spread the news of his misfortunes among his brethren. Whether or not the miscreant obeyed Mr. Thorp's instructions and held himself up to his tribesmen as an example of the ills that are likely to befall the horse-thief, we are unable to state.

During the summer of 1863, Mr. Thorp and his family were given reason to believe that a serious difficulty with Indians was about to be experienced. One day the father and his son Leonard descried a band of Indians, mounted and in full war paint, approaching their home. Seized with a sudden alarm, they, with Charles Splawn, and Mr. Thorp's other sons, Willis and Bayless, hastily hid the women and children and prepared to make as stubborn a defense as possible, taking their stand behind a yard fence. The Indians rode up rapidly without sign of enmity or hatred. The white men saw when the advancing band came near enough that they were no other than Smohollah, the dreamer, and his following.

Just as the head of the column reached the fence, the older Thorp sprang over, revolver in hand, seized the chief's horse by the bridle and demanded the reason for such a warlike approach. The dreamer smiled affably, proffering his hand, and stated as the reason for his conduct that he had heard of a report current among the whites to the effect that he was about to overwhelm their settlements with a thousand warriors and had come to reassure them by exhibiting the smallness of his following. After a friendly talk, the chief rode away, bowing and smiling, but Mr. Thorp always believed that the ugly-looking revolver was really responsible for his apparent friendliness.

There being no newspapers or other printed or written records of general events during the earliest days, it is practically impossible to write with certainty regarding the pioneer settlers and the dates of their settlements. The average memory is hardly equal to the task of accurately retaining such minutiae of forty years ago as initials, the correct orthography of proper names, dates of personal incidents, etc., and a work treating of events which occurred prior to the advent of the printing press must needs be more or less inaccurate and deficient in detail. For these reasons it may be impossible to enumerate all those who settled in the county before 1865 or during that year, but a list would include, besides those already mentioned, William Ish, John Hailey and a man named King, who had formed themselves into a copartnership to cut wild hay from the Columbia plains near the mouth of the Yakima and ship it down the former river. Mr. Hailey later entered into the stage business and became very widely known throughout the Northwest. He was one of the organizers of the celebrated Northwest Stage Company, whose operations extended from Washington to Utah. Then there was J. T. Hicklin, to whom, on January 13, 1863, the legislature granted the right to operate a ferry across the Yakima at a location somewhere between the mouth of the Wenas river and a point three miles below the debouchment of the Naches, the tolls fixed by the act being : For a wagon drawn by two animals, $2 ; hack or sulkey, one horse, $1.50; man and horse, 75 cents; animal packed, 50 cents; footman, 25 cents; horses, mules or cattle, loose, 25 cents each ; sheep, goats or hogs, 8 cents. There were also in the valley Gilbert Pell, appointed sheriff by the act organizing the county; and William Wright, appointed county auditor; and Elisha McDaniel, who settled on a place near the Jock Morgan home ; and J. B. Nelson, who later served as probate judge of the county; and Augustan Cleman, who settled first on the south fork of the Cowiche, but moved a year later to the Wenas, becoming the first permanent settler there; and McAllister and George Taylor, the pioneers of the Selah valley; and Walter Lindsey, with his sons, except William, who was in the Civil war, daughters and daughter-in-law, and Dr. L. H. Goodwin, with his brothers Thomas and Benton, his sons, George W., Christopher Columbus and Flavius, and his stepdaughter; also John Rozelle, wife and three sons, and his son-in-law, William Harrington, and wife. The Rozelles and Harringtons soon moved to and settled in the Kittitas valley, then a part of Yakima county, where they suffered much the first winter from want and cold until brought back to the Yakima valley in February by the benevolent F. M. Thorp, who sent Andrew Gervais to their rescue. Here, also, was J. W. Copeland, who settled on the Ahtanum ; Nathan Olney, Perry and Jacob Cleman, and, no doubt, others. According to John Mattoon, who entered the employ of the government in March, 1864, as an attache of the Indian agency at Fort Simcoe, the persons living in the vicinity of the fort besides himself, or as many of them as he can recall, were: Indian Agent Bancroft, Rev. James H. Wilbur, school superintendent and Methodist missionary ; James McGue, blacksmith ; Foster, wagon-maker; Praspex, gunsmith; Hall, carpenter; Wright, harness-maker; Carman, miller; Thompson, superintendent of farming; Dr. Miller, physician, and Sumner Barker, post trader.

The entire population of what are now Yakima and Kittitas counties probably did not exceed two hundred in 1865. Almost all except the agency people were in the cattle business. This seems like a small number indeed to bear the burdens of county organization, nevertheless in that year they were intrusted with the responsibilities and granted the benefits of a local government. Indeed, as early as 1863, the territorial legislature had showed its willingness to bestow upon the people of central Washington as large a degree of autonomy as possible by creating the county of Ferguson. The extent of this political subdivision of the territory was thus described by section one of the act: "All that portion of Washington territory lying north of the summit of the Simcoe range of mountains, bounded on the west by the summit of the Cascade range, and the counties of Walla Walla and Spokane on the east, and the Wenatchee river on the north. ' ' Section two enacted that James H. Wilbur, Alfred Hall and Place be appointed county commissioners; W. Shaugh, justice of the peace, and

Thorp, sheriff. The act was passed January 23, 1863. But the few families then in the district took no interest in the new county ; the appointees were so little elated over the honors bestowed upon them that they never performed their respective duties, probably never qualified, and, in brief, the county gained no existence except on the statute book. The creating act was repealed January 18, 1S65.

This step was, however, taken by the legislature only for the purpose of clearing the way for other and more appropriate legislation. January 21, 1865, another act was passed directly affecting the section with which this work is concerned. Its text in full is as follows :

An Act

Section 1. That the territory heretofore embraced in the county of Ferguson, lying and being south of a line running due west from a point two miles above the lower steamboat landing at Priest's rapids, on the Columbia river, to the summit of the Cascade mountains, be, and the same is hereby, constituted and organized into a separate county, to be known as and called Yakima county.

Section 2. That said territory shall compose a county for civil and military purposes, and be subject to all the laws relating to counties, and be entitled to elect the same, officers as other counties are entitled to elect.

Section 3. That, until the next general election. William Parker, J. H. Wilbur and Charles Splawn be and are hereby appointed county commissioners; that William Wright be and is hereby appointed county auditor ; that and Gilbert Pell be and is hereby appointed sheriff, who shall, before entering upon the discharge of the duties of their respective offices, qualify in the manner as is now required by law for county officers.

Section 5. That the said county of Yakima is attached for judicial purposes and for the election of members of the legislative assembly, to the county of Stevens.

or until that worthy pioneer moved away, it found lodgment in his house; then, it is thought, the officers met for a short time at Charles P. Cooke's, but about 1870, Yakima City, a small village at the mouth of the Ahtanum, became the seat of local government. The courthouse stood on a block of ground donated by the Earker Brothers, near their store. We are informed by Andrew C. Gervais that it was a story and a half box structure, and that the lower floor was used for a jail and sheriff's office, while the upper floor served as a court room and recorder's office. The records were moved to another building in 1S80.

Throughout all the later sixties the country continued to settle up slowly, and gradually to take on the characteristics of a civilized community. According to records in the local land office, the first surveys in Yakima valley were made by Charles A. White. The third standard parallel, runing between Yakima City and North Yakima, Leonard Thorp tells us, was the basis of this survey and the first township surveyed was township thirteen north, range eighteen east. The survey was extended in later years as the development and settlement of the county demanded.

An incident of the early times which aroused considerable interest then and later was the exhibition at Fort Simcoe, by an old Indian named Zokeseye, of some silver-bearing rock. This was about 1862 or 1863. Zokeseye gave the quartz to the agency secretary, whose name was Walker, and about a week or ten days later Walker took it with him to The Dalles, Oregon, where he showed it, while intoxicated, to a California assayer, Blachley by name. Fully appreciating its richness, the Californian at once assayed the rock and found it to be nearly two-thirds silver. He questioned Walker regarding the place where it was discovered, and was sent to F. M. Thorp as the one who could most likely find the ledge on account of his friendliness with the Indians. Thorp joined him in a prospecting tour, taking along' some Indian guides, of whom, unfortunately, Zokeseye could not be one, as the old red man had died shortly after giving Walker the rock.

The party prospected for more than a month, going up the Tietan to the summit of the Cascades, thence northwest to the headwaters of Bumping river, exploring numerous streams, but finding nothing.

After returning from this trip, Blachley went back to California, but the next summer he was again in the Yakima country, ready for another search. With Thorp and Indian guides and part of the time Charles Splawn, he explored the Wenatchee country, the upper Yakima and towards Mount Baker, going wherever the Indians reported the existence of the precious metals. The search was bootless.

Charles Splawn gave a portion of each summer to prospecting. Numerous other parties and. individuals sought earnestly for the Zokeseye lode during the sixties and seventies, and the story has been revived frequently in more recent times, but, despite every effort, the ledge from which the old Indian took his rich specimen is still a lost one.

About the fall of 1864 a discovery of placer gold was made on what is known as Ringold bar on the west side of the Columbia river, twenty miles north of Goldendale, by a party of which a surveyor named Hall was one. Quite a large number of men flocked to the diggings, which were worked with water from the Columbia river. L. L. Thorp spent three months there and received as recompense for his labors only a twenty-dollar clean up, but White & Black, four claims below him, took out twenty-five hundred dollars in less than six weeks, while a French company did even better. The bar yielded some thirty thousand or forty thousand dollars in all to white miners, and an unknown sum to the Chinamen who washed its gravels intermittently for several years afterward.

Persons who were here at the time speak of the year 1867 as a particularly mild and prosperous one, though its closing month brought some disaster to lowland settlers. A snowfall of six or eight inches was followed by three days of rain, causing all the streams and rivers to rise to high water mark. The Naches was especially high and the old Nelson farm, situated on a low flat close to the river, was greatly damaged. A rapid erosion followed the flood, threatening to undermine even the house and farm buildings. The family were compelled to leave their house at midnight, but though their place was greatly damaged, the house still stood when the waters subsided. The farm of James Allen, near by, was also seriously injured, and other lowland settlers suffered, though in a less degree. Next season the Nelsons moved to a spot a little higher up the Naches, where they located the homesteads now known by their names.

Although the earliest settlers were practically all engaged in the stock business, the great industry of the country, yet some experiments had been made in agriculture from the first; small ones, however, owing to the erroneous impression which prevailed as to the capabilities of the sage brush lands, and confined to the areas of subirrigation, near the streams. But the facts being as they were subsequently discovered to be, such experiments could tend in only one direction, namely, toward the ushering out of cattle raising on an extensive scale, and the ushering in of the era of irrigation, farming, horticulture and the like. The first attempts at fruit raising were ridiculed by stockmen in general, who scouted the idea of planting trees in the desert. They lived to see their error, though the initial experiments

It is unnecessary to attempt to determine who first set out fruit trees within the limits of the county. No doubt many of the settlers planted a few in the late sixties and early seventies. Alfred Henson is said to have planted an orchard on river bottom lands in 1S66 which did not begin to bear until nine years old. N. T. Goodwin states that in 1868 he set out an orchard of one hundred and fifty trees on his homestead on the west side of the Yakima near the Moxee bridge. Being, like other pioneers, of the opinion that the sage brush land was worthless, he chose for his orchard a location on the bottom next to the river. The result was that the trees were washed away by high water. George Hinkle stated to the editor of the Herald that he planted an orchard about 1868, and that his experiments seemed a failure at first, the tender limbs of the trees being destroyed by frost during the winter season, but that the trees eventually got a start and bore bountifully. Mr. Goodwin states that in 1870 a man named Vaughn made a successful attempt at fruit tree culture, and it is known that during that year the late Judge John Wilson Beck set out fifty apple and the same number of peach trees on his homestead above Yakima City. These and other like experiments in time demonstrated the adaptability of the country to fruit raising.

The culture of some kinds of vegetables was contemporaneous with the coming of the earliest settlers; indeed, had been tried in a small way by Indians before the cattlemen came in to spy out the land. Small quantities of cereals were also raised; always, however, on the bottoms near the streams. Perhaps one of the first, if not the first, to demonstrate that the sage brush land farther back contained elements of fertility was the N. T. Goodwin heretofore mentioned. He preempted land near the Moxee bridge in the spring of 1866. A year later he cleared the sage brush from a five-acre tract, and seeded it with wheat, obtained from the Walla Walla country. That fall he harvested a crop, averaging forty bushels to the acre. The result of this success and the practical demonstration it gave of the fertility of sage brush land was the starting of an irrigation enterprise, by a species of farmers' cooperative company. The promoters were Messrs. Goodwin, Stollcop, Vaughn, Maybury and Simmons. Work was begun by these men during the spring of 1868, the intake of their canal being located about a mile above the mouth of the Naches river. The ditch was a small one. It had to be constructed under difficulties by men who were not blessed with an abundance of capital, and its progress was slow. By the early seventies, however, it was turned to good account by farmers near its head, though it was not completed to Mr. Goodwin's place until several years after- ward. In later times it was greatly enlarged and improved, becoming what is now known as the Union canal. Judge John Wilson Beck stated to a Herald reporter some time before his death that he constructed an irrigation ditch in 1872, "before Charles Schanno built his ditch," taking the water out of the Yakima half a mile above the Moxee bridge, and conveying it in a rudely constructed aqueduct to his homestead above Yakima City.

Simultaneous with or shortly after the construction of these simple and primitive irrigation canals, a number of others were put in, all small, each being used only by one or a few farmers. The era of extensive irrigation did not dawn until some years later.

The interview with Judge Beck just referred to gives us a glimpse of conditions as they were when he came to the country in 1869. Among other things, he said:

"After the close of the war I got the western fever, like a great many other people of the East. On June 1, 1865, our band of two hundred pioneers met at Fort Kearney, Nebraska, according to agreement and started across the plains by ox teams. We followed the old Oregon trail and experienced the usual hardships of such a long journey by land. We had no trouble with the Indians, for they were well under subjection by that time. We landed in Walla Walla September iS, 1865. That was a small place then with perhaps five hundred population.

"I remained there four years, and in the spring of 1869 left for the Yakima valley. This was a memorable journey, and when I look back I marvel at the development that has taken place in a few short years. We crossed the Columbia at Umatilla and followed up its west bank to the Yakima, and thence to the present site of Prosser, where we crossed the Yakima. The first family we met was at the Henry Cock place, ten or fifteen miles above Prosser. Then came Ben Snipes' ranch at Snipes mountain. Our next stop was Sam. Chapell's place near the present site of Zillah. He lived one-half mile northeast of this city (North Yakima). George Taylor and Alfred Henson lived in the Selah valley. A man named Mauldin lived near the Naches bridge; a bachelor named Bell lived on the John Cleman place in theWenas; Alfred Miller and A. Cleman, the father of John Cleman, also lived on the Wenas.

"On the Ahtanum there were Andrew Gervais, James Allen, H. M. Benton, 'Judge' Olney, Joseph Bowser, Joseph Robbins and a man named Honsacker. Father Santosh was the priest at the time at the mission on the upper Ahtanum. As far as I can remember these were the families living in the valley when I came here, and for a short time afterward. [Judge Beck overlooked a considerable settlement in the Moxee valley.] While I enjoyed the isolation, we had to

"The only store in the county when I came was kept by O. D. and Sumner Barker, under the firm name of Barker Brothers. Their place of business was at Fort Simcoe, where we went to buy our necessaries of life and other things. Store goods of all kinds were high then. The freight from The Dalles over the mountains was two dollars a hundred pounds. Sugar sold at twenty cents; muslin, twenty cents; oil was five dollars a can or one dollar a gallon ; coffee, fifty cents; nails, ten cents; but meat was cheap because this was the chief product of the valley at the time. We got our lumber and grist at Fort Simcoe."

The gentleman who is responsible for the foregoing quoted statements received his title of judge from his having served as justice of the peace for twenty years continuously. He was the first to hold that office in the county, having been appointed in 1870. The Indians who took part in the massacre of Lorenzo Perkins and wife had their preliminary hearing before him, and Kipe, Salusakin, Tommy Hop-Towne, Tewowney, Wyanticat and Moosetonic were by him bound over to appear before the superior court for trial. It is stated that in all the years of his service as justice, and very many cases were tried before him, he rendered just one decision that was reversed by a higher tribunal.

Mr. Beck's statement that there was only one store in the county in 1869 seems to be a little inaccurate. Wallace Wiley, who settled on the Ahtanum in early days, states that Joseph Bowser kept at his home, two miles east of the mission, a miniature trading post. The store room was a small addition to the cabin in which Mr. Bowser resided, and it could only be entered by the residence part. When a customer appeared, the worthy merchant would retire to the store and attend to the wants of his patron (who was compelled to remain without), exhibiting the goods and receiving the price through a small window, the only aperture by which direct communication with the outside could be had from the store. The Indians soon dubbed this window the "potlatch hole," and by that expressive sobriquet it became widely known among both races. It is stated, too, that a kind of general store was kept by a squaw man named French in Parker bottom. Mr. French was afterward killed in Klickitat county by a vicious horse.

During the early seventies, the process of settling and subjugating the country, already begun in the preceding decade, was carried on quietly and slowly. August 13, 1870, the pioneer settlers were given the first substantial intimation that their isolation from the rest of the world and the inconvenience of getting their products to trade centers and their supplies back might some day be things of the past. On that date the Northern Pacific Railroad Company filed its map of preliminary location in the United States general land office. The map showed that the railroad, if built according to the then existing plans, would traverse Yakima and Kittitas valleys, and to those of astuteness and prevision the future of the region began to reveal itself. Every step made by the Northern Pacific company in promotion of its great scheme to span the continent by a mighty highway of steel gave an impetus to the general progress of Washington territory, a progress in which every part of that commonwealth must necessarily have its share. There can be no doubt that the prospect of the transcontinental railway hastened on the work of settlement in Yakima county, though its influence was not specially marked at first. Time was required to demonstrate the value of the soil, the effect of irrigation and the practicability of agriculture; and when all of these were known, time was required to project and construct the great canal systems, without which farming, fruit raising or horticulture on a considerable scale was an impossibility.

Then, too, in accordance with the laws of agricultural development which have obtained among all peoples, the wealth of pasturage the country afforded must show signs of coming exhaustion before sufficient incentive could exist for seeking the treasures it might hold as a reward for the husbandman's toil.

But as already stated, there were premonitory signs of the larger and fuller development for central Washington very soon after the country was invaded by whites, and these signs did not disappear as time went on. Thus, in 1872, Sebastian Lauber and Charles and Joseph Schanno began their efforts to get water upon their land at Yakima City. The first ditch was a small one, taking its water out of Wide Hollow creek. It did not prove satisfactory, as a sufficient water supply was available only while the snow lay on the foothills, so its proprietors decided to construct a large ditch, conveying water from the Naches river. Operations were begun in 1873. The surveys followed the path of least resistance, utilizing natural draws as much as possible. When completed, the ditch was eighteen feet wide on the bottom and carried a body of water eighteen inches deep under normal conditions, with a fall of a quarter of an inch to the rod. Its length exceeded eight miles. Plows and scrapers were used in its construction, and at times as many as fifteen or twenty men were employed in its deepest cuts. Water did not reach the old town of Yakima until 1875, the reason being that the bed of the canal was very porous, necessitating a great deal of puddling. This was the first ditch of large size and public utility to be constructed in the country. While the ditch later known as the Union canal was sooner started, it was of slower growth and did not develop into an important factor in the agricultural progress of the county until some time afterwards. Of course, the number of small, private ditches constructed for the use of one or a few farmers increased with the passage of time.

Those who were residents of the Yakima country at the time will remember that a very noticeable earthquake occurred in the fall of 1872. No newspapers of that date are available and the memories of the old pioneers do not seem adequate to the task of fixing the day of the month upon which the seismic disturbance was experienced, but perhaps we are justified in supposing that the earthquake was the same as that noticed in many parts of the Inland Empire. If it was, it occurred on the evening of December 14th. The old north Idaho newspapers mention such a phenomenon at that time, as did the Baker City, Union and Walla Walla publications. Speaking of the shock in Yakima county, Wallace Wiley stated that the house on the Ahtanum in which his family lived was rocked with such violence as to scare the inmates. A Congregational minister, he said, was staying at his home with two children, and when the earth began its strange motions he lost his head and ran out, taking one of the children with him, but temporarily forgetting the other. At the mouth of Nasty creek, a small branch of the upper Ahtanum, Frank A. Splawn was then operating a small sash sawmill (said to be the first erected in the county). He was living alone in a little box house that he had built for temporary use. When the earthquake came his first thought was that mischievous boys were playing pranks on him, and wishing to give the practical jokers a scare, he rushed out, halfnaked, gun in hand. The shock is described as consisting of two disturbances, the first being of considerable force and lasting several seconds, the second milder and of shorter duration. It did no damage. The time of its occurrence here is stated as late in the evening, and the eastern Oregon newspapers fixed the hour of the disturbance in those parts as 10:21 p. m.

It is claimed that the summer of 1874 was rendered memorable by a remarkable series of earthquakes in central Washington, some of them of unusual severity. Indeed, it has been asserted that as many as sixty-four distinct shocks were counted. The Yakima Herald of March 4, 1892, states that not since Washington was known to white men had so great an earthquake been experienced within its confines. "The indications of its force,"- continues the publication referred to, "are still seen in great crevices, huge stone monuments of queer shapes and broken trails. A great mountain at Chief Wapato John's ranch, near the mouth of the Chelan river, was rocked into the Columbia, damming that huge stream, flooding the chief's ranch, carrying away his house, and forcing him to fly for his life. It was a number of days before the waters washed away a portion of the rocks and receded to anywhere near their original level. Chief John was so thoroughly scared that he never returned to his ranch. " It is thought by some that the flooding of Wapato John's ranch was an incident of the earthquake of 1872.

Leonard Thorp tells us that in 1874 a slide took place on the west side of Yakima river a few miles above the mouth of the Satus, opposite Snipes mountain. A slice of rock a quarter of a mile wide and of still greater length broke away from its fastening, forming an interesting monument to the force of the internal convulsions in that region. In other parts of Yakima county great cracks were made in solid rocks, and considerable excitement, sometimes feelings of apprehension and terror, were aroused, but no damage was done.

It is worthy of notice at this point that by legislative enactment approved November 14, 1873, the boundaries of Yakima county, as defined in the creating act heretofore quoted, were changed somewhat, the new boundary on the south and a part of that on the east being thus described: "Commencing at the northwest corner of township number six north of rar»ge number twelve east; thence east along the north boundary of township number six north, until said line intersects the Columbia river, thence north up the mid-channel of said river to the mouth of the Yakima river."

In 1875 the interests of Yakima and other counties of central Washington received due attention from the territorial legislature, as appears from the fact that a memorial to congress was that year passed asking for an appropriation from the national treasury of fifty thousand dollars for the construction of a wagon road to connect King and Yakima counties, said road to lead through the Snoqualmie pass. The memorial also petitioned that E. P. Boyles, George Taylor, F. R. Geddis, Jeremiah W. Borst and Rufus Sterns be constituted a board of commissioners to disburse said appropriation. Its initial paragraph reads:

"Your memorialists, the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washington, would respectfully represent to your honorable body, that the Cascade range of mountains divides the territory into western and eastern Washington ; that eastern Washington Territory is almost exclusively a grazing and agricultural country; that in the western country the lumbering and mining industries largely predominate; and that the western is largely dependent upon Oregon and the eastern portion for its supply of beef and breadstuffs; that even in the present undeveloped condition of the western, $200,000 in gold is taken annually from the Puget Sound district to the eastern portion for beef cattle, which sum is expended by the cattle raiser of the eastern section without this territory to the great detriment of the western and the whole territory; that the wheat, breadstuffs and dairy products of eastern Washington have to seek a market without this territory to the great detriment of both sections; that Puget sound is the safest and most accessible harbor known and affords facilities for commerce superior to any other body of water in the world ; that a connection of the material interests of the eastern and western sections of the territory would insure a rapid increase of population and wealth ; that direct mail facilities by said pass are of great necessity; that a semi-weekly mail and stage line could run on such road with very little interruption from snow, and accommodate the traveling public many times when they could not be accommodated by way of the Columbia river on account of ice. The unity and ultimate prosperity of both sections of the territory require that every means be fostered to protect and promote the material interests of both sections."

For some reason the national government did not see fit to make the appropriation petitioned for or any appropriation, and the much desired aid to communication with Puget sound was not secured at this time.

The same legislature memorialized the postmaster-general of the United States relative to the establishment of a mail route from Seattle to Wallula. As giving an idea of conditions obtaining during the period, its language is here reproduced :

Your memorialists, the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washington, would respectfully represent that there are over 2,000 inhabitants in the valley of the Yakima river in Yakima county in this Territory, and the number is very rapidly increasing in consequence of recently discovered gold mines in said valley, as well as the rich and extensive agricultural and grazing lands in that section; that a large portion of the people of said valley are entirely without mail service, and that what service there is in said valley is by very circuitous routes, namely, to Wallula via Umatilla on the Columbia river, over the foothills of the Blue mountains, and to Puget sound via the Columbia river. Also that there is no postoffjce at the mouth of the Yakima river, where one is very much needed to accommodate a large settlement at that point. Therefore,

Your memorialists prav that a mail route may be established from Seattle, in 'King county, via the Snoqualmie pass to Ellensburg, thence to Yakima City, thence to Smith Barnum's at the mouth of the Yakima river, and thence to Wallula on the Columbia river; that a postoffice be established at Smith Barnum's, at the mouth of the Yakima river, and that Smith Barnum be appointed postmaster of said postoffice Also that a semi-weekly mail service be immediately established on such route.

in isolated communities, were somewhat restive under the inconveniences and privations of their lonely life, and occasionally attempted to tear down the barriers which separated them so completely from the rest of mankind. The social instincts were strong within them. They possessed as broad a public spirit as did the residents of any other portion of the territory, and were willing to co-operate with others in an effort to build up a harmonious commonwealth, whose people should be drawn together by the ties of mutual interdependence and trade relationships. Furthermore, the pioneer stockmen were alert to secure from time to time new and more convenient markets for the products of their vast herds. During the first decade of the industry their beef found sale in the mines of British Columbia, Idaho and Montana. The annual drives would start from Yakima in the spring and would last for several months, in the course of which the value of each animal would increase from forty dollars at Yakima to from seventy-five to one hundred at the mines, but the danger of loss en route was great, not a few cattle perishing in attempts to cross the swift streams or being appropriated by the predacious savages and cattle rustlers. In 1869 the attention of central Washington stockmen was attracted toward the sound country as likely to furnish a promising market. About that time Joseph Borst, of Booth, Foss & Borst, butchers, of Seattle, came to the country by way of the Snoqualmie pass, purchased a number of steers and drove them over the Cascades. Having found these animals larger, fatter and better than those produced on the west side, they continued to seek a supply of beef in the Yakima valley. Other sound buyers followed their example, and a trade grew up between the two sections of the state which has continued to increase in importance, though changing in character with the change of conditions.

Notwithstanding the development of new markets, the cattle industry outgrew the requirements of the country, and the result was a decided slump in prices. For a number of years fine beef animals could be purchased for eighteen and twenty dollars per head, but about the middle seventies, eastern men began stocking the Wyoming ranges, thereby increasing the demand for, and enhancing the value of, neat cattle. However, the impetus thus given to the industry was nullified completely by the severe winter of 1880-81 ; the business was further curtailed by the introduction of sheep and consequent injury to the range, as also by the development of other antagonistic industries, and in the later eighties it began its long decline. While cattle are still an important factor in the wealth production of Yakima county, the industry is very unlike that of the earlier days, when countless thousands roamed freely over the hills, and the cowboy was a power in the land.