The remains of Oscar Danielson’s irrigation pipes lead to his fields and ditches from the site of the Danielson dam.
In a previous post I published a photograph of swimmers perched on the top rail of the irrigation dam Oscar Danielson built to draw water out of the community canal. This canal redirected some of the flow from Crab Creek towards a number of farms or orchards west of the watercourse. Around 1920 Oscar purchased surplus wire-wrapped wooden water pipes from the city of Seattle to tap into the canal, pumping water from the reservoir behind his wooden dam. His single-stroke gas engine is still hidden in the weeds near the ranch he later occupied on the banks of Lower Crab Creek.
Oscar Danielson mows hay in a field watered by the pipes leading from the Danielson dam. The photograph is probably from the latter half of the 1920s.
The swimmers were part of a larger crowd gathered at the dam for a Fourth of July celebration. It was a custom amongst the farmers and ranchers Continue reading
Posted in Anthropology, Celebration, Columbia Basin, Crab Creek, Disaster, Family History, Farming, Fourth of July, Genealogy and Family History, Geology, Grant County, History, Irrigation, Native Americans, Natural Disaster, Washington
Tagged A. J. Splawn, Celebrations, Central Washington, Chief Moses, Crab Creek, Culture, Eastern Washington, Education, Family History, Farming, Highway 26, History, Irrigation, Kamiakin, Low Gap, Moses Lake, Native Americans, Nature, Oscar Danielson, Photography, Saddle Mountain, Scablands, Seattle, Washington State
Sam Hutchinson looms over another man, possibly Hugh Dunlop in this photograph from an unidentified historical archive.
When my brothers were old enough to drive it wasn’t uncommon for several of us to pile into a car and head out into the Potholes to fish, swim or hike. We liked swimming in a certain hole in Hayes Creek. A favorite fishing spot was Hutchinson Lake, where red basalt cliffs rimmed the cool greenish waters. Even at that age, my father had told me plenty of stories about the Hutchinson brothers. My imagination placed old Sam Hutchinson on those clifftops, dressed in a black lawman’s cutaway coat and a flat-rimmed hat. Taller than seven feet, he once rode over those hills and lived in a cabin not far from where the lake is found.
Perhaps it was this image that inspired me to wander while my brother fished for those big trout that rarely got caught. I trudged out into the brush north of the lake looking for anything that might have been dropped by old Sam and he rode out one day. I found crushed and rusty tin cans, flaking apart. There were the remains of wire fencing smashed into the earth. Bits of purpled glass sparkled at me through the cheat grass. Then I found a rut. Continue reading
Posted in Archaeology, Columbia Basin, Crab Creek, Education, Hiking, History, Native Americans, Soldiers, Trails, Transportation, Washington
Tagged Artifacts, Cariboo Trail, Central Washington, Central Washington University, Chelan, Chief Moses, Coconuts, Crab Creek, DeLorme, Desert, Eastern Washington, Education, Fishing, Fort Okanagan, Fort Vancouver, Hawaii, Hiking, History, Horses, Hudsons Bay Company, Hugh Dunlop, Hutchinson Lake, Indians, Native Americans, Nature, Potholes, Roads, Rock Creek, Sam Hutchinson, Sandwich Islands, Spokane, The Dalles, Trails, Washington, Wenatchee
Beneath this towering cliff and rubble fallen from it lie the remains of the Saddle Mountain Ice Cave.
There has been a fair amount of mystery concerning the Saddle Mountain Ice Cave. Even today you’ll find inquiries about it on internet chat sites. Over the years, locals disagreed on lots of points concerning this phenomenon. Some said it was a natural cavern, a huge chamber full of glittering perpetual ice. Others said it wasn’t really anything more than a big root cellar where people kept chunks of ice they would cut out of Crab Creek in the wintertime. Some people even doubt its existence. But it’s there.
Virtually all that’s left of the Ice Cave is a pile of old timbers and the remains of the massive wooden doorframe.
The Ice Cave is about four miles west of the end of the paving on the old Corfu Highway after you leave Smyrna, around eight miles from Beverly. It’s difficult to spot the remains from the roadway, so look for a large alkali clearing in front of it and a huge slope of tumbled rock flanking its other three sides. Continue reading
Posted in Archaeology, Columbia Basin, Crab Creek, Education, Geology, Grand Coulee, Hiking, History, Ice Age flood, Native Americans, Othello, Railroads, Saddle Mountain, Science, Speculative History, Travel, Washington
Tagged A. J. Splawn, Anthropology, Beverly, Bruce Bjornstad, Carbon dioxide, Central Washington, Chief Moses, Cold Traps, Corfu, Crab Creek, Culture, Dan Bolyard, Deer, Desert, Eastern Washington, Education, Erratics, Family, Flood, Geology, History, Ice Age, Ice Cave, Icebergs, Jericho Camp, Milwaukee Road, Missoula Flood, Moses Coulee, Nate Lewis, Native Americans, Nature, New York Times, Othello, Palisades Road, Pioneers, Saddle Mountain, Sentinel Gap, Smyrna, Spokane Daily Chronicle, Tri-City Herald, Washington, Washington State
Although Wikipedia describes this image as the steamer John Gates navigating Priest Rapids in 1884, the locality is surely not Priest Rapids, but Rock Island Rapids where the Chelan capsized on her upriver attempt and lost her rudder on her return downriver.
I’ve struggled with where to begin the story of the first steamboat Chelan. It’s a tale with roots in the larger conflicts that made the Northwest of the 1870s such a tragic and violent place. The steamboat wouldn’t even have been built if it were not for the breakout of the Nez Percés under Chief Joseph, but it wasn’t built as a direct result of that conflict. It was a response to another attempt by Native Americans to claim their natural rights and to reclaim their freedom. Even so, that was still only an indirect cause of this steamboat’s birth. It was a result of a murder by renegade Indians, angered by the deaths of their friends and family who were cut to pieces by the gatling gun mounted on a different river steamboat. Yet Chelan wasn’t built because the Perkins died. But all of these events led to the eventual arrest of Chief Moses and the removal of his followers from their land in the Columbia Basin. It was the creation of a new reservation for the Sinkiuse Indians that inspired the army to build the Chelan. The boat was needed as a ferry for crossing the Columbia River on the trail to a newly established fort that would safeguard Moses’ Indians on their new reservation.
As far as I know, no photographs of the steamboat Chelan exist. There are photographs of a later steamboat, built in 1902, which operated on the upper stretch of the Columbia until it was retired in 1910 when freight began moving by rail. The 125 foot sternwheeler was operated by the Columbia & Okanogan Steamboat Company. It was one of four retired steamboats tied to one another at a Wenatchee mooring, that burned in a spectacular fire on July 8, 1915. Continue reading
Posted in Columbia Basin, Crab Creek, Education, History, Native Americans, Saddle Mountain, Washington
Tagged Army, Ben Hutchinson, Bridgeport, Camp Chelan, Cascade Rapids, Central Washington, Charles Maynard, Chelan, Chelan River, Chief Joseph, Chief Moses, Colonel Merriam, Columbia & Okanogan Steamboat Company, Columbia Basin, Columbia River, Crab Creek, Desert, Eastern Washington, Education, Fitzcarraldo, Fort Walla Walla, Foster Creek, Gatling Gun, History, Lake Chelan, Lt. H. B. Larson, Lt. Thomas Symons, Moses Lake, Native Americans, Nez Perces, Perkins Murder, Portage, Portland, Priest Rapids, Railroads, Rock Island Rapids, Rocky Ford, Ron Anglin, Saddle Mountain, Second Regiment of Infantry, Sinkiuse Indians, Snake River, Taunton, The Dalles, Vernita ferry, Wallula, Washington, Washington D. C., Waterville, Wenatchee, Werner Herzog, White Bluffs
Lower Crab Creek provided water. In Eastern Washington, that was a godsend. Temperatures on the Columbia Plateau routinely soar to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summertime, and rain is scarce. Cleaning irrigation ditches with a shovel west of Othello as a boy, many were the prayers I sent for even one scanty cloud to shield me from the overbearing sun.
The Sinkiuse Indians who lived there before me probably shared my distaste for the relentless sun. But they didn’t have the benefit of a well of cold water I could retire to, an air conditioner that cooled the house when I took a break. They were stuck with the weather the way it was: hot in the summertime, cold in the winter. They took a more basic approach to living on the Columbia Plateau: they stuck close to water, or if that weren’t possible, they found the shortest route from one water hole to the next.
Over centuries of migration and travel, humans developed routes that guided them along the most direct lines of travel from one pool or stream of potable water to the next. Continue reading
Posted in Anthropology, Archaeology, Books, Columbia Basin, Computer, Crab Creek, Family History, Hiking, History, Horses, Ice Age flood, Native Americans, Railroads, Saddle Mountain, Washington, World War II
Tagged Andrew Jackson Splawn, Anthropology, Archaeology, Astor Company, Ben Hutchinson, Beverly, Bridge, British Columbia, Bunchgrass, Burke Museum, Canada, Cariboo Trail, Celilo Falls, Central Washington, Cheat Grass, Chief Joseph, Chief Moses, Chinese, Columbia National Wildlife Refuge, Columbia Plateau, Columbia River, Colville Reservation, Corfu, Corfu Slide, Corfu Switchback, Cow Creek, Coyote Rapids, Crab Creek, Culture, Desert, Eastern Washington, Ellensburg, Environment, Family, Family History, Ferry, Frenchman Hill, Grand Coulee, Highway 26, History, Horses, Hutchinson's Hill, Ice Age, Ice Cave, Immigration, Indians, Kamiakin, Low Gap, Manashtash Ridge, Milwaukee Road, Missoula Flood, Model T, Moses Lake, Mount Adams, Nature, Nez Perce, Okanogan, Oregon, Othello, Perkins Murders, Plateau Indians, Quincy, Railroads, Ranchers, Rattlesnake Springs, Ross Cox, Rustlers, Saddle Gap, Saddle Mountain, Sagebrush, Sam Hutchinson, Seattle, Second World War, Sheriff, Similkameen, Sinkiuse, Taunton, Trails, Vantage, Wahluke, Wanapum, Warden, Washington, Washington State, Washington State Archives, Wenatchee, White Bluffs, World War II, Yakima, Yakima County, Yakima River
My son investigates the sandstone banks that have weathered out of the basalt cliffs on Saddle Mountain.
Rust coats the rails where electric trolleys once pulled passenger trains along Saddle Mountain.
My son enters the upper end of Column Crevice on Saddle Mountain.
This sportive predator was dashing to and fro across the ridge for quite a while.
It’s difficult to capture the scale of this landscape.
As the rest of the mountainside slumped into the flood, this point seems to have resisted.
My grandfather first climbed to the cliffs on Saddle Mountain in the 1920s. He was not the first visitor to a high ledge where soft sandstone is sandwiched between layers of black basalt. Names were carved into the soft rock, dated, gouged deeper on subsequent visits. My father, whose first visit to the cliffs must have been when he was a youngster in the 1920s, introduced the site to his children. Our first visits were made by motor vehicles. Rough trails still exist that can be followed by a truck with high suspension…not that I recommend the method of access. You miss so much when you’re trapped in metal.
My favorite route to the cliffs followed the Milwaukee Road tracks for a mile or so, then veered up the fenceline separating private cultivated land from the BLM sections. After you leave the railroad tracks you start a relentless climb, like going on foot up a mile-long stairway. First you traverse massive slopes of yellow clay, silt that precipitated out of the flood when the waters struck the mountain, slowed and diverted to the east and the west. These banks are composed of countless thin layers. In some places you can find petrified bones, usually blackened vertebrae of fish or small animals. We also found turtle shells and I keep a broken bison bone in my classroom, orange and yellow and imperfectly petrified. Continue reading
Posted in Anthropology, Archaeology, Biology, Columbia Basin, Crab Creek, Family History, Hiking, History, Ice Age flood, Native Americans, Natural Disaster, Philosophy, Railroads, Saddle Mountain, Science, Speculative History
Tagged Andrew Jackson Splawn, Anthropology, Ben Hutchinson, Bison, British Columbia, Canada, Cariboo, Cavalry, Chief Joseph, Chief Moses, Columbia River, Corfu, Coyote, Coyote Rapids, Crab Creek, Crab Creek National Wildlife Refuge, Custer, Desert, Eastern Washington, Education, Environment, Family, Family History, Flood, Fort Okanaga, Fossils, Frenchman Hill, Geology, Golden Eagle, Hanford Reservation, History, Hudsons Bay Company, Ice Age, Ka-Mi-Akin, Low Gap, Milwaukee Road, Native Americans, Nature, Nez Perce, Oregon, Petrified Wood, Railroads, Rattlesnake Springs, Saddle Mountain, Sam Hutchinson, Sincayuse Indians, Smyrna, Taunton, Trails, Trident Missiles, Wagon Roads, Wanapum Dam, Washington, Washington State, White Bluffs, World War II, Yakima, Yakima County, Yakima Firing Range