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 one hundred 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, skirting 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 1937 Chevy panel truck a wooden signpost: “Wolf Creek Road 4 mi.”

The house wasn’t much. The log structure was sheathed in 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 that split the house into equal halves.

A bay window bulged from the west end of the house into a tiny fenced yard where yellow homestead roses 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 door that opened into a south yard where a pair of elm trees stood, pock-marked by vertical rows of woodpecker borings. A narrow, rock-choked irrigation ditch flowed eastward past the yard. It carried water from Wolf Creek to a barren pasture below the house.

Upstairs, the plank-floored bedrooms were spanned at their backs by a full length walk-in closet that bridged the stairway and could be passed through from doorways at each end. Windows in three walls of each room gave light and ventilation. Dee chose the room overlooking the west yard and driveway. Alex Jr. and Graydon got the east 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 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 wall. 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 insulation. Layers of felt paper topped with layers of cracked wallpaper covered the downstairs and upstairs walls. Other than sawdust and layers of paper, the house had no insulation. When storm winds blew, drafts would flutter the flour-sack curtains that Dee sewed with her foot treadle Singer machine. Methow Valley winters easily reached 20 and 30 degrees below zero.

Plumbing was primitive: there was one cold-water faucet over an enameled cast-iron kitchen sink. The sink drained to a dry sump outside. A weather-beaten privy stood in a weed-choked apple orchard 50 feet from the house. The door of the “two-holer” hung askew on 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 underneath, with a woodshed beside the cellar entrance. The bunkhouse and cellar doors stood half-open. Their interiors reeked the musky stench of groundhog dung scattered on the 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. Their boards were warped and weathered, pulled loose or broken, long neglected. A log tripod supported 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 the weeds. This homestead was way beyond producing hay or livestock.