History

Houck’s Move to the Kootenai Valley

By Marvin Houck

On September 16, 1924, we were ready to start our move from the Cheney Ranch to our new home about three miles south of Porthill, Idaho, in the Kootenai Valley.

Our Dad had previously taken Mother, Bertha, Viola and Raymond in the old 1916 Buick touring car to our new home leaving Erma to come with Dad, Edward and Marvin and the wagons and cows. Dad had also taken the cookstove, piano, and a few necessities in Uncle Artie Ryker’s Dodge van as he and Aunt Edna wanted to see the country.

That trip was almost a disaster as at that time you had to go down the Turner Hill road and continue on down the valley road. When they started down the hill, they had no brakes on the van and could hardly stay in the road before reaching the bottom.

He had milked the cows early the morning of September 16. With two wagons heavily loaded and the old “hack” heavy duty carriage loaded with the things for camping and the cream separator, we headed out. As we approached Spokane going up Hangman Creek Hill, a front wheel on my wagon broke down on the street car track as I tried to go past a couple of parked cars near the top of the hill. There I had to wait until my Dad could come back with his team to help pull the load to one side of the street car track. A street car had to wait for a while. At that time there was a blacksmith shop not far from the top of Hangman Creek Hill. While the wheel was being rebuilt, Edward and Erma continued on through Spokane with the old hack and the milk cows to where the Trent Road crossed the Spokane River near the old cement plant. There they set up camp for the night and that was where my Dad and I caught up with them.

Altogether we were eight days on the road milking cows and separating milk all the way. The last day was from the Nimz place at the south end of District No. 4 where we stayed overnight after being soaking wet from a rainy day. We had stayed at the old Bonners Ferry fairgrounds the night before. The day of September 24, 1924 was sunny and warm and we arrived at our new home mid-afternoon. What a trip and experience. The first thing we needed to do was build a corral and patch the old barn up to make it useful. There were no stanchions or floor where we fixed up for the milk cows.

By the time we arrived with the wagons and cows, Mother, Bertha and Viola had the old house scrubbed up and the bed bugs cleaned out. I never saw a bed bug until Clara and I went to clean up our old log house and it was loaded.

In October, my Dad and I took two wagons and went back to the Cheney Ranch to get what machinery we had. We put the 8-foot McCormack grain binder on my Dad’s wagon along with some odds and ends and I had the 6-foot Van Brunt grain drill, a 6-foot double disc and the old bob sled. It took us there days going back empty and five days to get back home again.

There were no fences on the valley land and very few remains of any on the hill land. We got some fencing done and some wood in before the weather turned cold and rainy. There was no wood shed. During the winter, we went out and found dead trees for fire wood. The Kingston-Thompson sawmill was in operation just over the hill on what is Edward’s place. Since the only income we had was from cream checks which were pretty small, we needed a little more for groceries. Our Dad, having a little experience in wood works got us a job at the mill sawing logs at a $1.25/thousand. The timber was frozen and the snow got deep. We walked back and forth. The timber the mill getting at that time was on the 160-acre piece of Indian land east of Edward’s place. So, we could be out all day in the deep snow and cold we had to wrap our feet and legs in gunny sacks, drying them out at night for the next day.

Sometimes Edward and I would both go. Otherwise the one left at home did the chores. On weekends, we usually had to haul hay for the horses and cows for the next week. We got wild hay at $8.00 a ton from Tom Montgomery who lived along the river just upstream from Lucas Creek. Montgomery’s hay shed was immense, about 60 feet by 100 feet at least. The hay had been put in the barn by “hurdie gurdie” method and was hard to dig out.

We got alfalfa hay from Charles Daufau at $10.00 a ton for the milk cows. His place was along the old county road on the bench about four miles from home. His also had to be dug out of his barn.

When warm springtime weather came, the mosquitoes were so thick that all of the timber crew quit for a while as the bugs just about set the skidding teams wild. During mosquito time, the high water had flooded the valley and had about ten feet of water in the barn so the cows had to be milked outside the hillside. We made smudge fires with green weeds added to make a thick smoke to help keep the mosquitoes away. Old Jim, one of the horses, got smart and stood real close to a smudge.

There were no screens on any windows or doors when the mosquito plague hit. The house was full of them. When Edward and I couldn’t stand them anymore, we got up and went out on the hill and hoed potatoes, just after daylight. By evening the next day we had gone to Porthill and come home with enough mosquito netting to cover all of the windows and doors giving us a chance to sleep.

While the high water was on, we used an old rowboat to go to Porthill for the mail and to go to Harold Roe's place along the river to get a chunk of ice from his ice house and take it home to make a freezer of homemade ice cream. After high water receded, it wasn't long before the wild red top grass was tall enough to make hay. We also cut wild rushes that grew out on lower ground from the red top. The rushes were used for cow feed.

If you didn't have a barn to put the hay in for the winter and stacked it out in the flat, you had to put a good fence around it as there were always loose horses roaming around, both Indian owned and some belonging to local farmers. The same for cattle as there were no herd laws in the valley at that time.

There was enough fine sediment left by high water on the red topo hay that it would give horses the "staggers." Usually, the horses could be saved by drenching them with raw linseed oil. It took at least a gallon at a time to bring them out of it. The first time a horse had the "staggers" was the hardest on them. We lost three horses that first year.

Now after over 60 years and having gone through two floods, several extremely high waters, bank moratoriums, refinancing the districts through reconstruction finance corporation as all the drainage districts were unable to repay the drainage tax cost, plus paying off the construction bonds, you would wonder if the coming generations will ever think of what it took to make a home in the Kootenai Valley.