History Corner

As I said last week, after John Peters’ store burned, he built a new store southwest of the town square. On the night of July 4 the McMahan store at Alpine burned down. Isaac and Lucy McMahan almost immediately moved to Council and went into business with Peters in Peters’ new building.

By late summer, Lewis Winkler was the Road Supervisor in the Council area. The county commissioners routinely hired someone to maintain roads in various parts of the county. In August the Idaho Citizen reported that Winkler was busy building a new bridge across the Weiser River just west of Council. Just how accurate this report was is not clear, as the very next summer local newspapers mentioned several times that a bridge was being built at the same location. It could be that Winkler’s bridge was washed out the following winter or spring, but I find no report of such. Or it could be Winkler was building a bridge, but the Citizen got the location wrong.

That August the Idaho Statesman newspaper gave an account of an unusual ore milling technique being used at the French Ledge gold claim on Bear Creek. At least it was unusual for this area. It was a arrastra, which used technology brought to America by the Spanish, and was more commonly used in the Southwest. An arrastra is a simple, inexpensive to build, ore-crushing mill consisting of a circular, stone-lined pit in which heavy drag stones are pulled around to grind ore. Traditionally powered by animals or water, it was widely used in early Spanish and Western mining districts where stamp mills were impractical.

The Statesman said the arrastra at Bear was “run by a four horsepower under-shot waterwheel. It is 10 feet in diameter and is calculated to crush a ton of rock a day.” The newspaper added: “Twenty-two years ago Arthur David, known as ‘Frenchy,’ and Charles Walker discovered the French Ledge. There were apparently two ledges, 75 feet apart and running north and south toward Bear Creek. And places the quartz, blue stained, rose like a cliff and the ledges could be traced for nearly 1000 feet. ”

The September 7 Idaho Citizen said Annie Wilkerson had bought McMahan’s Alpine store. Since the store had burned in July, it might be that she bought the property and planned to build, or rebuild, a store.

Idaho County Free Press, September 21, 1894: “Leroy Gordon has taken measurements for a cable by which he will run a ferry across the Salmon river at the mouth of Race creek. This will fill a long felt want for the people of Little Salmon as it will be the most convenient way of crossing the river, and will be just above the end of the State road as now contracted for.” Race Creek enters the Salmon River from the west, about a mile north / downstream from Riggins.

The summer of 1894 was the first time that a newspaper mentioned a school at School District 34, which was located at what was later called Fruitvale. Until a school was established there, the children of that area had to travel to the White School at the corner of what is know Lappin Lane and Highway 95, which is over 3 miles from Fruitvale. My impression is that everything north of the White School was called the “Glenn District” because at least a couple Glenn families lived in the Fruitvale area. John Emsley Glenn (born 1878), his sister, Walsa Ellen, and their brothers attended the White School during the three summer months when school was in session.

A story handed down in the Glenn family says that one day while Emsley and the other Glenn kids were making the long walk home from school, several Indians wearing war paint came riding by, going very fast. The warriors paid no attention to the kids, and acted as though they didn’t see them. It was later learned some whites had stolen horses from them, and the warriors were in pursuit. Some time later the Indians came back through with their stolen horses. They had caught the men starting to swim the horses across the Snake River near the mouth of Wildhorse and killed the men.

I find that story nearly impossible to believe because after 1879, all natives in this area were confined to reservations. They were sometimes allowed to leave the reservations to harvest food, but a war party chasing, much less killing, white men would have a major historical event, making headlines in every newspaper in the region.

Dora Black seems to have been the first teacher there, with 22 students, including Cora, Ova Josie and Edna Biggerstaff; Ida and Etta Glenn, Mary, Laura and Albert Robertson and Tom Sevey. The school year was only 3 months, starting in mid June and ending in mid September.

By 1894, schools in the area had proliferated. Schools had been established at Bear, Lick Creek, Cottonwood, Upper Dale and Lower Hornet. It isn’t clear where the Lower Hornet School was located. Several of these early schools were log buildings.

All through the 1890s speculation and rumors about a line to be built to the Seven Devils Mining District came and went. At the end of 1894 the Weiser Signal said that engineer E.H. Mix had issued a detailed report, giving the route, grades, trestles, culverts, cattle guards and more, which would be necessary for construction of the Weiser & Idaho Northern Railway to the Seven Devils Mining District” containing “maps, profile and approximate estimate of cost of road.” This may have been true, but it would be another five years before construction on a similar line would actually become a reality.