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The Friendly Neighbors Club

Posted on by Amy Story / Leave a comment

“Would you like to go to lunch with me sometime?” said Jean, a senior lady I’d just met. She was short, and her sparkling blue eyes, crisp voice, and white hair reminded me of an elf.

It was 2001, and we’d just moved out to the rural Lake Shore Drive area near Lake Lowell. Each home in the neighborhood had at least an acre or two, and I was out exploring. Jean walked to her mailbox at the same time I trudged up the steep gravel road, and our chat led to a lunch invitation. Worried I’d be lonely living the rural life, I said, “Sure.” She was a spitfire, and I had plans to be that way at her age. I was ready to watch and learn.

A few days later, she picked me up in her sports car. I got inside and simply held on, certain she was a NASCAR fan. We stopped to pick up Thelma, who lived nearby. She laughed a lot, and told great stories. Three seemed like a good number for a get-to-know-you lunch, but at the restaurant, I was surprised to find nine others waiting there. They called themselves the Friendly Neighbors Club, all women who lived around Lake Lowell. They needed new blood . . . and that was me. Continue reading →

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Hooked on Books

Posted on by Joe Davis / Leave a comment

I really don’t remember when I caught the reading bug. I just remember that sometime during my first-grade year in Mrs. Snow’s class in Thirkill Elementary School in Soda Springs, I was bitten.

It wasn’t a painful bite, and it has been quite rewarding over the years. At that time in the mid-Sixties, the classrooms of our school were separated by giant accordion doors. The three first-grade teachers would open them up several times during the day or week so they could take advantage of team teaching, or if one of the other teachers had to leave her class for a time, the other teachers could keep an eye on the others’ classes. During that first school year, I tore through all the books that all three teachers had in their classrooms.

Many of them were basic reading primers, but there was also an abundance of beginning reader books by Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, and Stan and Jan Berenstain, among others. Through these books I began to see entirely different lands, cultures, and peoples, and realized that these worlds were limited only by my imagination. Given that the school year extends primarily through the winter, and winters in southeast Idaho are pretty brutal, there was plenty of time to spend in these worlds.

At about the same time that I finished all of the books in the classrooms, Mrs. Snow took us to the school library for the first time. What a treasure! Books upon books upon books were neatly shelved in long rows of color. To me, they looked like the military medals and ribbons I had seen on the chests of the veterans in their uniforms marching in the Fourth of July parade. They were beautiful beyond measure. Continue reading →

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Recycling Forever

Posted on by Les Tanner / Leave a comment

The time has come, my friend Al said,
To speak of many things:
Of bricks and rags and scraps of wood,
Of nails and worn out springs.

My usual excuse for picking up run-over gloves, rusty washers, and other lost and discarded objects is that I am a child of the Great Depression.

I was born in 1934 and thereby missed, or was at least unaware of, the financial and weather-related problems of the 1930s. But my parents didn’t miss them. Their parents had tough times, too. Nothing went to waste in any of those households. Whatever the reason, I am what is known in polite circles as a pack rat. If there is a glimmer of potential use remaining in a container, or a piece of wood or wire or cloth, or whatever­­—the list is virtually endless—it joins a wealth of similar objects in the storage location of our Caldwell home that I fondly refer to as “somewhere.” My filing system is simple. If it has come in the door, it is still here. Somewhere.

Numerous examples come to mind, but the fifteen or so banana boxes we bummed from a supermarket produce manager when we moved to Georgia in 1965 will do. Anyone who might see them would surely agree that they are fine boxes indeed, and they served us admirably during the several moves we have made over the years since then. Empty boxes, however, do take up critical storage space, so several years ago I spent a couple of weekends creating room for them. First, I cut a hole in the ceiling of the garage and manufactured a great door for it. Next, I built a beautiful ladder out of two-by-fours and hinged it to the ceiling, so that it can be raised and lowered by a very clever pulley system of my own design. Eight sheets of half-inch plywood (A/C grade), sawn in half lengthwise to fit through the hole I’d cut, became a good, solid floor, and voila’, problem solved. Continue reading →

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The King Hill Diaries

Posted on by Jerry Eichhorst / 3 Comments

Pioneers Brave The Long Climb By Jerry Eichhorst Clover Creek Canyon In 1852, emigrants on their way to Oregon first crossed the Snake River above Salmon Falls on what is known as the North Alternate Oregon Trail. After
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King Hill

Posted on by Dean Worbois / 1 Comment

King Hill was a thriving community when my grandfather bought the last unclaimed property of the King Hill Irrigation District in 1920. Today the place is devoid of businesses. With the coming of diesel engines, the railroad no longer needed the water tower and began keeping its helper engines for the King Hill Grade in nearby Glenns Ferry, where the main yard and roundhouse were located. Nowadays, the trains don’t stop even in Glenns Ferry. But in my grandfather’s day, the pride of King Hill was a substantial two-story brick schoolhouse dominating the town from a knoll just north of the bank, hotel, bar, grocery story, café, and other businesses lining Meridian Street. 

Signs of the First Inhabitants

People lived on this big bend of the Snake River for two thousand years before a wheel ever crossed the land. Mark Plew, a professor in Boise State University’s Department of Anthropology, has excavated five sites along the river at King Hill. Bands were small, just ten to twelve people. The deer and rabbits that comprised most of their diet were plentiful, but scarce fuel for cooking and warmth forced the bands to move on. An interesting oddity of the archeological record around King Hill, including from Three Island Crossing in Glenns Ferry to Hagerman, is that this is the only place on the Snake River where metal points are found in the digs. We know from Captain John C. Fremont’s journals that he brought metal rings for trade. Apparently, native people quickly realized how handy metal is for working into projectile points.

In the valley around King Hill everyone picked up rocks—and they’re still picking them up. Rocks are piled into fences and have been used to build homes, including the one my mother was raised in west of town. About five years ago, when I first introduced myself to Jean Allen, who now owns the property with her husband Roy, Jean’s first words were, “Well, we’re still picking up rocks” (for that story, see “House of Stone,” IDAHO magazine, November 2008). Roy now assures me he has a big tractor with teeth, and he’s going to get those rocks out for good. Jean rolls her eyes.  Continue reading →

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Wiring The Backcountry

Posted on by Betty Derig / Leave a comment

When I was a little girl growing up in Weiser, the after-dinner conversation often included my mother and father’s stories of their time in what was then called the Idaho Primitive Area, now part of the Frank Church—River of No Return Wilderness. My mother’s story about meeting the fugitive Dan Ruth always fascinated me. Dad often talked of wrangling his packhorses up the trail from the Payette National Forest Service headquarters at Big Creek to Thunder City and beyond. He loved the scent of pine all his life.

In the summer of 1923, my father, the newly married William M. Carson, participated in wiring the backcountry. Crews were hired to string telephone wire from tree to tree along a well-known stretch of the Idaho Primitive Area. This work was to put Big Creek Ranger Station in communication with remote Forest Service outposts as well as with mines and ranches throughout Chamberlain Basin, the Thunder Mountain area, and beyond. Packers were hired to carry food supplies and wire to the telephone camps as they moved deeper into the wilderness.

My father arrived at Big Creek in July with his string of seventeen packhorses. Deer filled the meadow surrounding Big Creek, chewing on the strings of his saddle at night. Eventually, they became so gentle they ate from his hands. Keeping a journal of activities was required for all Forest Service employees. Now in the possession of my son, Paul Derig, my father’s journal gives us a peek into the life of a packer during the months of August, September, and the first part of October 1923. Twice he records receiving monthly checks of $60 and $62, plus $1 a day for each packhorse he used. Although he had seventeen horses, usually only nine or ten of them were on the trail at any one time. Continue reading →

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Riverboat, Ahoy

Posted on by Grove Koger / Leave a comment

It’s one of the ironies of Idaho’s geography that our longest river, the Snake, is navigable for only short distances.

Part of the reason is that over the course of its nearly 1,100 miles, the river drops more than 8,500 feet. The other reason is that until recently our grandest natural wonder, Hells Canyon, proved impassable to any vessel attempting a run upstream. But the lowest reaches of the Snake enjoyed busy traffic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and for a time riverboats even served the mining trade on the middle Snake. At least one made it as far as the mouth of the Bruneau River.

I’m an Idaho native, but I didn’t grow up particularly close to a river. Instead I had to make do with a small drainage canal that ran through our farm outside Meridian. But it was water, and that was enough. In some way that I couldn’t have explained, water was magical. Years later, when I became a reference librarian at Boise Public Library, I discovered the wealth of information in its Idaho Pamphlet File—clippings about canals and rivers and steamboats and much, much more. Since then I’ve supplemented my reading with such books as Fritz Timmen’s Blow for the Landing and Bill Gulick’s Steamboats on Northwest Rivers. And here’s what I’ve learned. Continue reading →

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Haunted High

Posted on by Tanae Clayson / Leave a comment

A Graduate Returns To Investigate Story and Photos by Tanae Clayson I was graduated from Pocatello High School, which has the usual complement of honors, academics, and championships, but also is known by its students for something else.
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The Past in Pieces

Posted on by Andrea Clark Mason / Leave a comment

Digging up a Japanese Internment Camp By Andrea Clark Mason Having my morning cup of coffee, I open the Lewiston Tribune to an article on a public archeology day at the excavation of a former Japanese internment camp.
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Firth–Spotlight

Posted on by Wallace J. Swenson / Leave a comment

An Insider Finds This Old Town Still Reluctant to Make Noise

By Wallace Swenson

Straddling the rail line that angled through the Upper Snake River Valley southeast to northwest, and bisected by the two-lane track that eventually became US Highway 91, the sleepy hamlet of Firth didn’t amount to much in 1900. But as was often the case while the West was settled, the railroad put the namesake of a pioneer, Lorenzo Firth, on the map. In 1903, the Oregon Short Line, a narrow gauge connection to the transcontinental Union Pacific Railroad, decided to move the existing siding at Basalt, along with its water tower and maintenance sheds, one mile south. Exactly why this move was made has been lost in history; but back then, when railroad owners spoke, sparks flew and wheels turned. As was the fashion, the Pocatello Tribune reported laconically:

“As far as the Oregon Short Line affairs are concerned, Basalt is a matter of history. The new siding, called Firth, is three thousand feet long. A loading track has also been put in.”

And that was that. Continue reading →

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