Chapter 2: Homesteaders

Dee Johns found her home at the end of a washboard gravel road four miles northwest of Winthrop. "A place to settle down," she said. They were at Wolf Creek where it emerges from a deep canyon that cuts between the north end of Thompson Ridge and the south end of Virginian Ridge, the western wall of the upper valley.

It was a sweltering 100-mile drive northeast along the Columbia River, then north along the Methow River, following sharper and narrower bends, climbing and winding, crossing from side to side over bridges to skirt along skinny riverside benches where isolated homes and apple orchards lay squeezed between the river and the canyon sides. Finally, hours later, they saw through the cranked-open windscreen of the hot and clattering '37 Chevy panel truck a wooden signpost: "Wolf Creek Road 4 mi."

The house wasn't much. The lower log story was sheathed in vertical planks of rough-sawn lumber. It supported a plank-built upper story. The roof was covered with rusted flat metal sheeting. Two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs were divided by a steep and narrow central stairway that ran between enclosing walls, splitting the house cross-wise into equal halves.

A bay window extended the downstairs west end of the house into a tiny fenced yard, where yellow homestead roses still bloomed. Warm daylight flooded the interior. A screened half-porch sheltered the side yard entrance as a work space for laundry and rinse tubs.

The stairway footed at a seldom-used front door opening into a south yard and a pair of young elm trees pock-marked by vertical rows of Flicker borings. A narrow, rock-choked irrigation ditch flowed east beyond the yard, carrying snow field water from Wolf Creek to a barren pasture below the house.

Upstairs, two plank-floored bedrooms were spanned at their backs by a single walk-in closet that bridged the stairway and could be walked through from doorways at each end. Windows in each outside wall provided light and ventilation. Dee chose the room overlooking the west yard and driveway. Alex Jr. and Graydon got the room over the kitchen.

A black cast-iron, pot-bellied parlor stove with chrome trim and a mica-paned fire door heated the main room. Its black steel stovepipe rose up through the floor above to a brick chimney, its base set on a shelf high in the stairway enclosure. A cast-iron wood-fired range with high-backed warming ovens stood against the kitchen side of the stairway enclosure. An under-stair pantry stood beside the kitchen entrance. The two stoves heated the entire house.

Sawdust filled the spaces between the sheathing planks and the log walls for crude insulation. Under-layers of thick felt paper topped with layers of cracked wallpaper covered the downstairs log walls and the upstairs plank walls. Other than sawdust and layers of paper, the house had no insulation. When the wind blew, window drafts would flutter the flour-sack curtains Dee made with her foot treadle sewing machine. Winters in the Methow Valley commonly reached 20 and 30 degrees below zero.

Plumbing was primitive: one cold-water faucet over an enameled cast-iron sink. The sink drained to a dry sump outside the kitchen wall. A weather-beaten privy stood in a weed-choked apple grove 50 feet from the house. The door of the "two-holer" leaned open, hanging from dried and cracked leather hinges.

A smaller two-room, single story bunkhouse stood in fair repair across the main yard. A rock-walled root cellar lay buried under. A woodshed stood beside the cellar entrance. The bunkhouse and cellar doors stood half-open; the interiors reeked a musky stench of groundhog dung scattered on floors and shelves. A fresh groundhog burrow tunneled under the bunkhouse floor beside the cellar entrance.

The farmyard north of the house and bunkhouse lay divided by a shallow irrigation ditch, bounded on its east side by a chicken house with a screened run, and a teetering open-front machine shed. A rough-plank barn stood on the yard's west edge, next to cow sheds and a cluster of four pig shelters in a tumbled-down rail corral. All were in disrepair, boards warped and weathered, pulling loose or broken, long neglected. A log tripod held a long hay-stacking pole balanced in a swiveling chain loop. A rusty cable sheave hung from its narrow tip 30 feet above the ground. The cable lay tangled in coils around the base, buried in years of weed growth. Many years had passed since this homestead had produced either hay or livestock.