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site contents At the beginning of the 20th century Charles and Allie Fann took their family to homestead in eastern Washington. The venture lasted three years, and was described by their daughter in the document that follows. I have included links where possible. Most are to modern-day references, but some are historic. Pause every now and then and visit them to find out more about the topics. If you have any questions or comments, please email the author. |
Pioneering
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From Midwest to Northwest |
When I was 12 years old Dad had a sale and sold all our
livestock and chickens and household articles and we went to Washington state, that was
the year 1901 in February. We boarded the train at Raymore, Missouri for Kansas City where we changed trains and were
on our way west. We changed trains at the old Kansas City depot, it was down near the
river (across south from the airport) that part of the city faded away when they built the
Union Station. Incidentally we kids had never rode on a train before so we were very
thrilled. From Kansas City we went by the way of Lincoln, Nebraska and so on up into Montana where at Billings, Montana we were set out on a side track (our car, I mean) and had to wait for extra engines to pull us up over the Rocky Mountains. There were 2 engines in front of the train and one on the back end, the conductor told us kids that the train had been known to break in two and in that case the engine in back would hold us from going back down the mountain "hell bent for election". There was no dining car on our train, in fact I think probably there were no dining cars period in those days, every one carried their own food (there were drinking water containers and rest rooms). We started from home with a whole baked ham and pickles and bread with some donuts and such things, we had plenty to last us all the way. There was Dad, Mom and 5 kids. Bill was the smallest, 4 years old. |
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"We were real pioneers." |
Mother's sister and her husband were living near Cheney,
Washington. We stayed there with them while Dad and Uncle Jim Ralls went out into what
was called the Big Bend country, there they filed claims on government land. It was a pure
desert country, nothing but sage brush, 60 miles to a tree or any good drinking water,
there were no comforts of home. Dad bought a team of horses and wagon and a cow and we
started with our covered wagon and Uncle Jim and Aunt Lydia with two wagons from Cheney to
the Big Bend of the Columbia River. We were real pioneers. We made about 10 miles a day,
we had about a dozen head of cows and calves and young stock to herd along, which is very
slow business. Me and my brother Ray and our cousin Guy walked the distance, herding the
cows. We had one old riding horse to chase the cows when they took a crazy notion to run off. We had paid $2 for the horse, but our saddle cost $30. The old horse was a western cayuse that would toss us off every morning. Uncle Jim always started kidding we about who was going to warm up the saddle. After someone got tossed then the old horse was all right for the rest of the day, so us 3 kids walked. Sometimes we only saw the wagons when they stopped for lunch or to camp for the night. We only found our way by following the wagon tracks. Our meals left much to be desired, fried potatoes, bacon, country style gravy, and pan cakes (made with water or milk and flour with or without baking powder). To this day I hate flap jacks as they were called, even the tender-est pan cake I can do without. When we arrived at Dad's claim we camped out, put the stove out on the ground and cooked under the sky for a roof. The only thing to make a fire out of in that desert was sage brush, which was about knee high to a dwarf. So you can see us kids rustling fire wood, it would take a heap of that stuff to cook a meal, we were 60 miles from trees. |
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"I know it, bird, you don't need to tell me." |
The only moving thing we ever saw was the "dust
devils". They were immense whirl winds that seemed to reach the sky. There were no
birds or animals there, for it was too far to water. Once in a while we would hear an old
coyote yelping at night, and there were some kind of owls that would sit on top of our
covered wagon at night and they made a noise like an old cuckoo clock. Mother used to
laugh at that old bird and she would say, "I know it, bird, you don't need to tell
me!" We would hit the canvas top of the wagon cover to scare it away. There was an old sod buster had a claim about 5 miles from Dad's claim, and the old geezer had a well, where we got water. We would get 10 gallon a day for drinking and cooking for 10 people. We had two syrup buckets, they were about the size around as a gallon bucket but were long things, about 5 gallon buckets tall, enclosed in a wooden slat like deal. We tied two of them together with rope and hung them across our $30 saddle and our $2 horse and ride for water. There was very few faces ever got washed and no heads and clothes for sure. There was never a cloud in the sky, just brassy sun all day long. We lived there in that open air-dome for six weeks. |
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Hole in the ground
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Mother and Dad decided it was no place for them to bring up us
kids as there was no indication that there would ever be any schools or ever any more
people, so we went to what was called the "Hole in the Ground" country. There
were two lakes at the bottom of a canyon, Bonnie Lake was 30 miles, I believe and Rock
Lake was 60 (I may have forgotten my Washington geography) and about a mile square of land
separated the lakes. This land was called the "Hole in the Ground". There were two farms down there, you got down to them by a trail dug out of the side of the canyon wall and it was all you could do to get a wagon down and up, it was so steep and narrow and also darn dangerous. We went down there a few times but we were always scared to death. The house we rented was near what was called "rattle snake ridge". We killed enough snakes to have a pint cup full of their rattles. Our cellar was a cave in the yard, we kept the milk crocks and butter and such things in the cellar, so to keep from getting mixed up with a rattler we would always throw a gunny sack down in there before we ventured down. If there was an old snake down there he would "rattle". This part of the country was teeming with wild life, coyotes and foxes were so numerous they were a nuisance. You could hardly have any chickens, the coyotes could jump over a fence unbelievable high and grab a hen and away he would go, the old hen squawking at the top of her lungs. There were bob cats, Canadian lynx, a few rabbits and ground hogs and mountain lions. Wild horses roamed in bands, some of the prettiest things you ever saw. They were Indian cayuses, small and every color and color combination you could imagine. If you could catch and tame one of them he was yours. Some people corralled bunches of them and sold them for $2.50 apiece, fifty cents more than our old cayuse cost us. There were lots of horned frogs there and all kinds of lizards, one in particular it was brown about 8 inches long with a long blue tail, when he was hit he would let his blue tail drop off and he would scuttle for cover. There was a beautiful flower grew all over the hill sides. It was called "Indian Bread". The roots were used to make flour by the Indians. The old house had a big rock fireplace and on cool evenings we always had a fire in it. Wood was free for the back breaking work of getting it out of the woods. Everything was pine trees there, we enjoyed the smell of the pine burning. We kids would roast potatoes and eggs in the hot ashes. Sometimes an egg would explode, which was a real to-do like the 4th of July. |
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Larson Ranch |
We lived all summer at the top of the "Hole" then we moved five miles west to the Larson ranch. We started to school that fall, our teacher was real nice, she was a big, fat woman, real peppy, she really kept us on our toes. It was only about a mile and half, so we could walk to school. Once a man came riding to the school house full tilt and yelled to the teacher to let us go home at once, a big dust storm was near. We just made it home by running, and were mighty glad we made it, the wind had almost tornado fury, sand and dirt flying so thick you could not see any distance. It raged for a night and a day, abating the second night. There was nothing in the house free from sand. The biscuits, the gravy, every thing was full of sand. Us kids complained bitterly about it, but Dad said, "we had to have some sand in our craws". | |
The big old yellow dog. |
Dad planted about a hundred acres of wheat on a piece of land
about a mile from our house. We made a garden near the gate to the wheat field. It was
where Dad planted the potatoes so they just made a place for some garden truck. We
pastured the old cow in the wheat field too. So one time, Ray, Carl and Edna went to drive
home the cow (old Snowball, she was pure white) and also to pull a mess of green onions.
Ray was getting the onions when Carl said "Oh, Ray, look at that big old yellow
dog". Ray looked and knew at once it was a mountain lion, he said "its a
lion!" Carl and Edna started to run but Ray made them stop and face the lion. It lay
down and started switching its tail, like they do when about to attack something, but some
men in a wagon appeared around the bend in the road about that time and the lion ran into
a clump of trees, and the kids cam running home, their little white faces wet with tears. Always after that we kept the small kids close to the house. People said a cougar would not attack a grown person, so me being about 14 I was the one to bring in old Snowball! A farmer living about three miles from us lost a good many of his prize pigs to that old lion. The farmer would close his pigs up in the barn, but the lion would tear off a board and get in and get the pig. The first snow that fell, a bunch of men got together with rifles and dogs and tried to follow the lions tracks to his den but he always got into rocks so they would lose his trail. Dad said that old lion made a track almost as big as a plate. |
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Journey to Bellingham |
We lived about a year at the Larson Ranch, then we sold all
live stock and went to Bellingham. We stayed all night in Sprague, Washington. A neighbor
took us there to catch the train. It was 20 miles by wagon. When we left Sprague, we went by the way of Walla Walla, Washington. That is where the Washington state prison is, then through the Yakima Valley where they grow a lot of apples, peaches and apricots. We crossed the Cascade mountains at night. Because of snow and land slides, a man walked in front of the train all night long, carrying a lantern (there were two men, actually, taking turns as it was very cold). There was a stove in one end of the car we were in to keep us warm. There were no steam heated cars then. We arrived in Seattle the next day. There we changed trains (after one night and part of the next day) as the trains up the coast to Bellingham were few and far between, I guess. In Seattle we saw our first ocean steamers. The boats came into Puget Sound to load with meat, lumber and other things for foreign countries. We also got our first sight of an automobile. This was in the fall of 1902. It was night when we arrived in Bellingham. We knew no one there, so we hunted up a hotel for the night. Next morning Dad rented a house and rustled up some furniture and we moved in. |
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The Foundry |
Dad got a job working in the foundry there as a molder's helper. They made things out of melted iron, the iron was melted into a liquid which two men carried in a big pot and poured it into the molds. Like maybe an iron wheel or an iron horse (they made the horses for merry-go-rounds). These molds were made from wooden patterns, which were pressed into wet sand. When the liquid iron was poured in it hardened into the patterned object. Dad's shoes and pants legs were always full of holes burned by the splatter of hot iron. In the summer the foundry had a slack spell, and they put Dad on as a night watchman. I used to take his supper to him and he showed me the boiling pots and pattern room where they made the patterns. The "boiling pot" was a great big thing and men had been known to fall into it and of course disintegrated, I imagine. I was more comfortable away from that thing, but it was all very interesting. | |
Lincoln School |
After one month in our rented house, Dad bought a large lot
with two houses on it so we moved into one of the houses and rented the other. We were
only a block from the school house. It was a three story brick building and had 4 large
rooms on each floor. It was called the Lincoln School. We lined up in our rooms and 2 by 2
marched out into the halls and joined the kids from the room across the hall then we were
4 abreast. We marched to music and all feet hit the stairs at the same time, wooden steps,
and anyone within a mile nearly could hear us coming out, ha! We had fire drills every
whipstitch and we could empty that old building in nothing flat. Once we had a fire in the
basement (they burnt wood in the furnace) and when the music started up in double time we
really moved. We were all out before the smoke got up to the first floor. There was every nationality in the world there in that school. You name it, we had it. There was blood letting almost every day, like between Italy and Greece or some place. I saw a lot of knife fights and a lot of spilt blood of different kinds, but found out all blood is red. |
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"Half of Independence is my kin." |
Dad always got home of a morning about the time we were getting up. One morning as he came home he met an old man standing in front of a saloon (incidentally, every other store was a saloon where they sold booze). The old man spoke to Dad and Dad said "well it looks like rain" which it did in that place 24 hours a day and 30 days a month. So the old man said "Well, I guess you are an easterner for sure". Dad said, "Yes". The old man said "Where?" Dad said, "Kansas City, Missouri." The old man said, "Know anybody in Independence?" Dad said, "Hell yes, half of Independence is my kin". The old fellow said "I'm kin to half of Independence too, by marriage. What's your name?" Dad said, "Charley Fann". The old man said "Great horned toads, I married Margaret Fann". So they soon found out who each other was. He took Dad home with him for breakfast, but Aunt Meg didn't believe Dad was her nephew. He had to take mother and us kids over to show her he wasn't just some bum Uncle Joe had dragged in. | |
Uncle Joe |
Uncle Joe was a retired sea captain. He had his own boat and
was a pirate, in fact, but pretended to be running a fishing business. He would go out at
night and steal oysters out of other fellows oyster beds and when the revenue cutter came
looking for oyster thieves, Uncle Joe would be fishing and there were no oysters on his
boat (he had sold them before daylight). He said once they caught a big shark and cut it
open to find a man's leg in its stomach. Uncle Joe had a pet bear he kept in the back yard on a chain. He used to take the old bear out for a walk around town. People always looked at Uncle Joe like they thought he had lost his mind. One of his favorite expressions was, "I feel like I had been picked and singed and pulled through a knot hole." Another was "I feel like I had been drug through hell and beat with a soot bag". That old man was white headed and kind of fat but he could sing and dance a jig good as a teener. He carried a gold watch and chain that he said he cut out of a shark's belly. Grandpa came to visit us and his sister, while we lived in Bellingham. Uncle Joe died in the old soldiers home in Washington. He was a civil war vet. While we lived in Bellingham we often went down to the fish market. Once they had a big shark that they caught near the beach. It was a whopper with a mouth big as a oven door and teeth galore. We saw a squid and also a devil fish. The devil fish was round as a plate, big as a chair cushion and eight legs each 15 feet long, they said, a bad looker. |
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"A real good look at the Iggirotes." |
We came back to Missouri in 1904. They had the World's Fair at St. Louis that year, and on the way from Seattle we had on our train a separate car that was occupied by a king and queen and their son and daughter-in-law and the son's two kids. They said they were Russian "Iggirotes". They were to be an attraction at the World's Fair. In Montana we had a wreck on the railroad. Our train ran over a section car and we set in the middle of nowhere till they brought another engine from somewhere. We were just on the prairie there for 2½ hours, so everybody got off the train and walked up and down the track, so we had a real good look at the "Iggirotes". | |
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Eastern Washington: 
