Rick Just's Blog, page 221

Things go Better With...

You finish the phrase. That’s right, things go better with history. Of Coca Cola.
 
Your great grandparents may not have enjoyed a Coke, but they certainly had the opportunity. Coca Cola began appearing in advertising in the Idaho Statesman in 1896. The drink had been invented in 1886 by pharmacist John Pemberton. The beverage’s inventor knew nothing about marketing, so didn’t do especially well with his drink. It was Asa Griggs Candler who took over the company and made it work, first advertising Coca Cola as a patent medicine that would get rid of fatigue and headaches.
 
And, yes, early version of Coca Cola did contain a trace of cocaine, which was a common patent medicine ingredient. In 1907, the Idaho Pure Food Commission did an analysis of “the popular soda drink called Coca Cola.” A story in the Statesman said the commission had found no cocaine, but, “While this is not to be classed with as dangerous drug as cocaine, it is not one which can be recommended for constant us. A glass of Coca Cola, as ordinarily served at soda fountains, contains about one grain of caffeine.”
 
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union wasn’t convinced. A 1908 Idaho Statesman article noted that a WCTU meeting had been about the danger of drinking Coca Cola. “Mrs. McIntyre reading from various sources descriptive of this evil. These articles claim that in spite of the requirements of the new pure food law, this beverage still contains injurious quantities of cocaine.”
 
The WCTU had better luck, for a time, with prohibition of alcohol. Coca Cola went on to be a somewhat popular drink in Idaho and every other corner of the earth.

B Bar B

​From time to time I’m going to step away a bit from history and highlight an Idaho business or two that you’ve probably never heard of, but that is doing well in its niche and has an interesting creation story.
 
It’s darn tough when you’re a cowboy and want to make a living doing what you love. Bob Schild of Blackfoot loved rodeo. He was good at it. In 1954 he won the Intercollegiate championships in both saddlebronc and bareback riding. In ’53 and ’54 he was also the runner-up for the Intercollegiate All Around title.
 
After college he hit the professional rodeo circuit. Bob had one thing going for him that other cowboys didn’t. Whether he finished in the money or not, he could still make a little money. He’d learned how to do leather work when he was a kid, so he always brought a sewing machine along with him. He made rodeo chaps and other leather items to keep himself going.
 
After rodeoing for years, Bob and his wife Gay started B Bar B Leather in Blackfoot in 1961. They caught a lucky break when Western Horseman magazine did a couple of stories on Bob's rodeo days, mentioning the shop, and the shop took off. Bob made a lot of saddles, chaps, and other gear.
  
The next generation of Schilds came along and Jeff, Shawn, and Kelly took over the shop. In 1996, they started a wholesale business. Shawn did his share of rodeoing and learned something that would make that new business busy. Riding broncs, Shawn found out that the leather gloves everybody used were so thick and stiff you couldn’t close your hand and get a good grip. He got to thinking about it and over a period of years developed a glove that protects a rider’s hands while allowing them to get a grip. He patented the design and called the gloves “Bear Knuckles.”
 
When Shawn made his first prototype gloves he took a tip from his dad and made them pink so people would notice. They did. Shawn still does most of the sewing on the rodeo gloves, which have become standard attire for riders in the US, Canada, and Australia. Demand for Bear Knuckles work gloves is way beyond what the shop in Blackfoot could keep up with, so Shawn and a friend started a company to have them made overseas.
 
Bob Schild retired a few years ago and today does something else he loves, writing and performing cowboy poetry. His books are available on Amazon.

Shawn Schild at work on one of his famous gloves.

Moscow by any other Name...

Idaho has some lofty place names that would seem to honor much larger and better-known places. Paris is one of those. If you’re expecting an Eiffel Tower, you’re not likely to find one. The name Paris came from the man who platted the town. His name was Frederick Perris. How the name morphed into the spelling that place in France uses is unknown. The U.S. Postal Service is most often the culprit in such cases, having a long history of “correcting” the spelling of post office names.

That happened to a place called Moscow. No, not the one in Idaho. I’ll get to that in a minute. Moscow, Kansas, one of more than 20 Moscows in the U.S., was honoring a Spanish conquistador named Luis de Moscoso, according to a story on the PRI website about the naming of the Moscow cities across the country. For some reason, they wanted to shorten the name to Mosco. A postal person in DC may have thought Kansans simply didn’t know how to spell, so he helpfully added the W, and it officially became Moscow.

None of the Moscows seem ready to claim a Russian connection. The one we know best was allegedly named by Samuel Miles Neff, who owned the first general store there. In that story, Neff had lived in Moscow, Pennsylvania, and Moscow, Iowa, so why not live in another Moscow, this time in Idaho.

There is at least one Idaho town that gets its name, more or less, from the city you would expect. Atlanta was named for a nearby gold discovery that was called Atlanta. It was named after the Battle of Atlanta. News of Sherman’s victory there came about the same time gold was discovered, according to Lalia Boone’s book, Idaho Place Names, A Geographical Dictionary .

Leaving His Mark, the Clark Rock

​William Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame, certainly left his mark in history. He also left it in a sandstone column in Montana, known today as Pompeys Pillar. He wrote in his journal about carving his name on the rock. He did not write about carving his name on any other rock. But, did he leave another mark behind?
 
In the September 14, 1911 edition of the Idaho Statesman there was an article about a rock found by the son of M.D. Yeaman, who was described as a pioneer farmer. Yeaman’s son allegedly found the rock while plowing a field near the headwaters of the South Fork of the Snake River. A scar made by the plow can be seen on the rock. Carved into the sandstone was “Clark 1805.”
 

In 1805 there were not a lot people named Clark trekking around what would become Idaho. Speculation grew that it was William Clark who had carved his name into the rock. To historians the location of the stone seemed too far south for it to have been genuine. Clark documented his travels well, and those documents don’t seem to place him on the South Fork of the Snake. Mr. Yeaman had a theory about that. He thought the stone might have been traded by Indians and found its way to the banks of the Snake.
 
To confuse things a bit further, the Statesman received a letter a few days later in which a second stone was said to exist. The article is reproduced below. ​The story of the rock, or rocks, seemed to die after that. There was a mention of it in the May 1997 issue of We Proceeded On, the official publication of the Lewis and Clark Heritage Foundation.
 
Thanks to Idaho State Historical Society Curator of Collections Sarah Phillips, I’m able to show you a picture of the Clark Rock. She located the rock in their collection and sent me the photo below right. The genuine Clark marking on the left is from Pompeys Pillar. Compare it to the stone found in Idaho on the right. Since the carving on the pillar is in cursive it is difficult to say if the word "Clark" was done by the same hand. One could speculate that Clark would have used cursive again for a second stone, but who is to say? The only marks that can really be compared are the numerals. The 8 and 0 on the rock seem to have been formed differently than the same numbers​ on the pillar. Meanwhile, the 5 in both instances does look similar.

We will probably never know for certain. My best guess is that the Clark Rock is just a prank.

Thanks, again, to the Idaho State Historical Society for use of their photo of Clark Rock. 

Henry C. Riggs

What’s worthy of getting you a place in Idaho History? Introducing quail to Idaho might do the trick. Henry Chiles Riggs did that in 1871, bringing 56 birds from Missouri. That would be just a footnote, clear down at the bottom of the page in a history book that had little else to talk about.

Okay, how about claiming to be the first citizen of Boise? There were a couple of cabins built where Boise would be, but they were unoccupied, according to Riggs. He claimed that first person honor by pitching a tent and living in it. So, history.

Riggs might have a better chance of making it in print if he brought the first newspaper to Boise, which he did. He didn’t start the Idaho Statesmen, but he went to Portland in 1864 and found some folks who were willing to establish a newspaper in the new town which, by the way, had been named Boise by Henry C. Riggs. Solid footing on the historical footnotes, now.

Riggs was elected to the first Idaho Territorial Legislature from Boise County. He didn’t do a lot in Lewiston during that first session. He just introduced a bill to move the territorial capital to Boise and was instrumental in another one to split Boise County in two. Both passed. Oh, and he suggested the name for the new county. It would be called Ada County, named for his daughter Ada Riggs.

He spent most of his later life at a ranch he bought near Payette. Henry Chiles Riggs died on July 3, 1909, at the Old Soldiers Home in Boise, his place in Idaho history assured.

Why Boise High Didn't Sink

Two reasons, really. First, it’s not floating on an ocean and, second, icebergs are extremely rare in Boise.
 
No, I haven’t completely gone off the rails. There is a persistent rumor that the boilers in the basement of Boise High School (BHS) were of the same design—perhaps by the same manufacturer—as those on the Titanic. I’ve even heard that when James Cameron made the movie Titanic he borrowed the boilers from Boise High, then put them back when they were through with them.
 
Nope. The boilers haven’t moved much since the first ones were installed in 1912. That was the year the Titanic went down, which may have contributed to the rumor. Moving the boilers would essentially mean tearing down the school, so the movie theory is easily put to rest. Someone would probably have noticed.
 
But were the boilers like those on the Titanic? Yes, yes they were. Sort of. They were like them in the sense that boilers are much the same design the world over as their function doesn’t vary a lot. Boilers are where water is heated by a furnace to create pressure and heat for some function. In the case of BHS, heat was the primary function. In the case of the Titanic it was the pressure the engineers were after, since that could drive the gigantic propellers of the ship.
 
Still, the boilers could have been a lot alike, right? Well, the BHS boilers are 11’ 9” long. The boilers on the Titanic are (though a bit damp) 20’ long. All the boilers are about 15’ 9” in diameter, but that’s about the biggest aha I found. BHS has 5 boilers, though they are no longer in use. The Titanic has 29, also no longer in use. Most of the boilers on the Titanic were fed by six furnaces each, as opposed to a single furnace per boiler at BHS.
 
The heating plant at BHS may not have had a connection to the Titanic, but it was titanic. It required three crews of three men running it around the clock, seven days a week during the heating season. The vast underground coal storage bunker—now under the administration parking lot—would be filled at the beginning of the season, then a couple of wagons (later trucks) kept bringing more coal as fast as the men could unload it. Meanwhile, a couple of men were underground loading a large handcart, rolling it to a stoker, and unloading coal into the stoker almost constantly. An engineer had to be on hand at all times controlling the pressure. In the early years, before automatic safety valves, that was critical. Explosion was more than theoretical. The basement where the boilers boiled was well away from other buildings in the beginning and had concrete reinforced walls, ceiling, and floor.
 
The boilers at Boise High heated things up with coal from 1912 to 1972, when the fuel was replaced by gas. Much of the campus went to geothermal in 1983.
 
A sad footnote to the BHS boiler story is that a student, Terry Glancey, fell into the smokestack in the spring of 1979. He and three friends were drinking and had climbed the six-story smokestack on a Wednesday night. He would have graduated the following Tuesday, but died, probably from suffocation in a pile of ash in the throat of stack.
 
Much of this information comes from the 2004 book Temple of Liberty, Boise High School Defines a Frontier Town , by Dean Worbois, which is a fascinating read. 

Dispatches from the Past

​Time for one of our occasional Dispatches from the Past where we feature oddities from newspapers that caught our eye while researching some unrelated topic.
 
From the August 8. 1867, Owyhee Bullion, an ad for the Poorman Saloon in Ruby City. “I have now opened a saloon in my own elegant styled building. I desire the patronage of those only WHO ARE LIABEL TO PAY.” 
 
From the Idaho News, Blackfoot comes this light-hearted jab about the Grangeville paper on September 12, 1891. “The Free Press, published at Grangeville, has been as prompt to roll from the press on publication day as ‘Old Faithful’ the famous old geyser of the Yellowstone Park, is to throw up mud and water at its stated periods. But September 1st, Mrs. Parker honored her husband, the editor, as he was never honored before. She presented him with a daughter and that day the Free Press did not dance to the call nor the music. We are not kicking; editors should be allowed some privileges and daughter days are the times when allowances should come in. Next week we expect to see the Free Press bubbling over with sparkling gems of poesy, sentiment and songs about the little queen of the home empire.”
 
For context on this next one, you need to know that Idaho was a prohibition state beginning in 1916. Here’s a little blurb from the September 18, 1917 American Falls Press.
 
“Earl Fleming of the Bonanza Bar country was in town Friday night and somewhere in his travels picked up a bottle of the forbidden. He was in one of the pool halls and Deputy Sheriff Fred Walworth came in. Now you know Earl had known Fred a long time so he proffered the latter the bottle. Fred took the bottle all right, also the prisoner and Earl, after waiving his preliminary hearing, is awaiting under bond the session of the district court. Moral: don’t offer a sheriff a drink in a crowded pool hall.”
 
From the Blackfoot Idaho Republican, November 10, 1920.
 
“Because he had the Ford habit of getting out of his car when he wanted to start the engine, J.T. Burroughs, traveling salesman for an Idaho Falls wholesale grocery company, lost his Dodge car Saturday night, when it was struck at the crossing north of the depot by Short Line train No. 34, and barely escaped himself.”
 
The article went on to explain that the Dodge had stalled on the tracks, so Burroughs, out of habit, jumped out to crank the thing to a start. That’s when the train hit the car, which featured one of those new-fangled dashboard starters.

An Indian Education

The sad looking wreck of a school shown in the picture below represented an enormous improvement for the children of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation. Built in 1937, the Lincoln Creek Day School operated only until 1944. It was part of a last-ditch effort from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to indoctrinate Shoshone and Bannock children into white culture. After this school, and a couple of others like it on the reservation were closed, Indian children most often began enrolling in regular public schools.
 
The Lincoln Creek Day School was an improvement over the Lincoln Creek Boarding School which was built at the first site of the military Fort Hall a few miles away. Children were cajoled to attend the day school to receive an education during the day and allowed to go home to their families at night. Like many such schools on reservations around the country, the earlier boarding school was much like a prison. Beginning in 1882 children were taken from their families, often by reservation police, and forced to live at the school in sometimes dangerous conditions.
 
At the Fort Hall boarding school children would attend classes during the morning hours. In the afternoon the girls would work in the kitchen, laundry, or sewing room, while the boys raised crops for school use and tended milk cows. All wore uniforms and most got new names. Siblings from a family might end up with two or three surnames.
 
Sickness spread quickly in the cramped boarding school. In 1891, ten students died from scarlet fever. Some students committed suicide. Years later students remembered playing in the schoolyard and finding bones of buried children at the Lincoln Creek Boarding School.
 
The attitude of the government was probably best summed up by the following quote.
 
"The Indians must conform to ‘the white man's ways,' peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must. They must adjust themselves to their environment, and conform their mode of living substantially to our civilization. This civilization may not be the best possible, but it is the best the Indians can get. They can not escape it, and must either conform to it or be crushed by it." –Thomas Morgan, US Commissioner of Indian Affairs, October 1889
 
Dr. Brigham Madsen, prominent historian of the early West wrote in his book, The Northern Shoshoni, "An ironic footnote to the educational troubles at Fort Hall came in a directive from the commissioner's office in August 1892 that all Indian schools were to hold an appropriate celebration in honor of Columbus Day in ‘line with practices and exercises of the public schools of this country.' Furthermore, the ‘interest and enthusiasm' of the children' were to be ‘thoroughly aroused.' No doubt many of the Shoshoni and Bannock wished Columbus had discovered some other country." 
The Lincoln Creek Day School, not far from Blackfoot.

The Western White Pine

Today's post is about an Idaho state symbol that is so useful, you probably have one of its products in your kitchen cupboard right now. The western white pine is an important tree for the timber industry. It's a durable, close-grained tree, that is uniform in texture.

White pine is lightweight, seasons without warping, takes nails without splitting, and saws easily. That makes it a terrific tree for door and window frames, cabinets, and paneling. Oh yes, about the white pine that's in your cupboard right now--kitchen matches.

The western white pine does best in a cool and dry climate. Although it can grow at sea level, it prefers elevations of 2500 to 6000 feet. In Idaho, it grows mostly in the panhandle. A mature tree typically gets to be about 100 feet high.
A gregarious tree, the western white pine seems to prefer mixing with other common evergreens rather than in large stands of its own. One plant it would be better off not mixing with is the currant. A fungus called pine blister rust kills the pine, but it's only found where currants or gooseberries also grow.
​
The western white pine was named the state tr ee of Idaho by the 1935 legislature
 
The photo below is on display at the Museum of Northern Idaho in Coeur d’Alene. It’s labeled as the “Largest Known White Pine.” How large? It was 207 feet tall and its diameter was 6-feet 7-inches. It scaled at 29,800 board feet measure. The rings counted out at 425, so it was 425 years old when cut down in 1912. The live tree was located seven miles northwest of Bovill.

An Old Ford Ad

​I see a lot of interesting ads while I’m skimming through old newspapers looking for a little quirky history to share with you. For some reason, this one from the Idaho Republican in Blackfoot from June 13, 1921 caught my eye.
 
I think I was drawn to it because of the naked looking truck chassis on sale for $621. It seemed pretty bare bones compared with the less expensive runabout for less money. The truck was for work, the runabout more for recreation. Note that the chassis, which did not include such frills as a place to sit, also sold without a starter. You were expected to build much of your own truck around the frame, engine, and wheels, adding a bed for whatever purpose you had, and a cab if you were one of those finicky farmers who preferred not to choke on dust in the summer or freeze to death in the winter.
 
That $621 dollars back in 1921 would equal the buying power of about $8,900 today. Don’t take that amount of money to your local Ford dealer and expect to get a one-ton chassis with it today, though. You’ll need about another $24,000 to buy a basic one-ton chassis. The good news? It comes with both a seat and a starter.