Rick Just's Blog, page 76
November 27, 2022
The Great Ice Fire of 1929 (Tap to read)
In a post earlier this month, I talked about the pea picker strike of 1935 in Teton County. There’s a quirky little story that I discovered in researching that. Let’s call it The Great Ice Fire of 1929.
Peas are highly perishable. They need to be harvested quickly and refrigerated so that they don’t lose their sugar content. Shipping the pea crop from Teton County necessitated ample supplies of ice in the days before refrigerated railway cars were available. Local entrepreneurs began farming ice in the winter and storing it in an insulated shelter during the hot days of the summer for use for shipping peas in August.
How do you farm ice? Well, you can gather it in the wild by cutting blocks of ice from a river or lake, or you can dig a pit and fill it with water, letting winter do its work.
The Hillman brothers had gone the pit route in 1929, covering the ice-filled hole with generous quantities of straw. Pea harvest was about to begin that August. Unfortunately, some careless smoker tossed a butt onto the covered pit, igniting the straw. The resulting fire burned about 500 tons of ice, worth about $1500.
Peas are highly perishable. They need to be harvested quickly and refrigerated so that they don’t lose their sugar content. Shipping the pea crop from Teton County necessitated ample supplies of ice in the days before refrigerated railway cars were available. Local entrepreneurs began farming ice in the winter and storing it in an insulated shelter during the hot days of the summer for use for shipping peas in August.
How do you farm ice? Well, you can gather it in the wild by cutting blocks of ice from a river or lake, or you can dig a pit and fill it with water, letting winter do its work.
The Hillman brothers had gone the pit route in 1929, covering the ice-filled hole with generous quantities of straw. Pea harvest was about to begin that August. Unfortunately, some careless smoker tossed a butt onto the covered pit, igniting the straw. The resulting fire burned about 500 tons of ice, worth about $1500.
November 26, 2022
Boise's Platt Garden (Tap to read)
I was working on a story recently that involved plats in Boise. At the same time I stumbled on a familiar name, Platt Garden. I wondered if there was a connection between that name and platting in Boise. There wasn’t.
Platt Gardens, according to the City of Boise website, was designed by Spanish landscape architect Ricardo Espino to grace the grounds of the Boise Train Depot. Union Pacific built the gardens which feature a winding walk, benches, ponds, a monument of volcanic rock and a welcoming display of greenery in 1927.
The Depot and Platt Gardens were donated to the City of Boise by Union Pacific in 1982. The gardens were named for Howard V. Platt who was the general manager of the original Oregon Short Line Railroad.
Platt Gardens, according to the City of Boise website, was designed by Spanish landscape architect Ricardo Espino to grace the grounds of the Boise Train Depot. Union Pacific built the gardens which feature a winding walk, benches, ponds, a monument of volcanic rock and a welcoming display of greenery in 1927.
The Depot and Platt Gardens were donated to the City of Boise by Union Pacific in 1982. The gardens were named for Howard V. Platt who was the general manager of the original Oregon Short Line Railroad.
November 25, 2022
The Peapicker Strike (Tap to read)
If you know anything at all about peas grown in Idaho, you may know that we have an Idaho Pea and Lentil Commission, that Idahoan Calvin Lamborn perfected sugar snap peas, and that most of Idaho’s pea crop is grown in Nez Perce, Lewis, and Latah counties. But did you know that peas caused the Idaho governor to declare martial law in 1935?
For decades, from about 1925 and into the 1970s, Teton County grew a lot of peas. Peas start to lose their value quickly after they are picked, so a secondary industry popped up in the county: ice harvesting. Peas are picked in August, not a time when ice is widely available, so ice blocks were cut in the winter and stored all summer to keep peas cool in transit after harvest.
Getting peas to market quickly also necessitated the employment of armies of pea pickers. Most were seasonal workers from Mexico. In 1935, some of those workers realized that the farmers might not have the upper hand when it came to wages. They vowed to strike, demanding 85 cents per hundred weight of peas instead of the offered 70 cents. Farmers were over a barrel, because they had to get the crop out fast. So, of course, they caved to the pickers demands.
Just kidding. The farmers called Idaho Governor C. Ben Ross and asked him to declare martial law and send in the Idaho National Guard.
Ross issued the order, sending in 150 armed men from Boise, Buhl, and Twin Falls. Some 2,000 field workers were on strike. The local sheriff blamed “white agitators” for stirring up the Mexican workers.
Workers who didn’t want to toil for the wages offered were told to get out of Idaho. About 100 of the agitators were deported. After a couple of days everyone else went back to work for 70 cents per hundred weight and the harvest—which turned out to be a record crop—was completed.
Martial law has not been declared often in an agricultural emergency in Idaho, but in this one instance the guardsmen solved two ag problems. Coincidentally there was a dispute raging over water between Teton River Basin water users and Snake River Valley users downstream. Drought had made the upper basin farmers stingy with their water. They closed headgates, keeping water in the valley and not letting it flow downstream. Guardsmen, guarding headgates, convinced the Teton water users to open the gates and let the water flow, as downstream users had an established right to it.
So, one more problem solved with a show of force. When the Guard made peace with the pea pickers and the water users, they went back home. Governor Ross said it was all good and went Sagehen hunting.
Two minor footnotes: First, calling out the Idaho National Guard did result in one casualty. A guardsman accidentally shot himself in the knee while disassembling a .45 caliber pistol. Second, using the phrase “pea picker” reminds me that there is one more thing about peas and Idaho that you should know. Tennessee Ernie Ford, "The Ol' Pea-Picker,” spent much of his last years at his cabin near Grandjean, Idaho. Ernie earned that nickname because he often said, "Bless your pea-pickin' heart!"
Tennessee Ernie Ford had nothing to do with the pea picker strike in Idaho.
For decades, from about 1925 and into the 1970s, Teton County grew a lot of peas. Peas start to lose their value quickly after they are picked, so a secondary industry popped up in the county: ice harvesting. Peas are picked in August, not a time when ice is widely available, so ice blocks were cut in the winter and stored all summer to keep peas cool in transit after harvest.
Getting peas to market quickly also necessitated the employment of armies of pea pickers. Most were seasonal workers from Mexico. In 1935, some of those workers realized that the farmers might not have the upper hand when it came to wages. They vowed to strike, demanding 85 cents per hundred weight of peas instead of the offered 70 cents. Farmers were over a barrel, because they had to get the crop out fast. So, of course, they caved to the pickers demands.
Just kidding. The farmers called Idaho Governor C. Ben Ross and asked him to declare martial law and send in the Idaho National Guard.
Ross issued the order, sending in 150 armed men from Boise, Buhl, and Twin Falls. Some 2,000 field workers were on strike. The local sheriff blamed “white agitators” for stirring up the Mexican workers.
Workers who didn’t want to toil for the wages offered were told to get out of Idaho. About 100 of the agitators were deported. After a couple of days everyone else went back to work for 70 cents per hundred weight and the harvest—which turned out to be a record crop—was completed.
Martial law has not been declared often in an agricultural emergency in Idaho, but in this one instance the guardsmen solved two ag problems. Coincidentally there was a dispute raging over water between Teton River Basin water users and Snake River Valley users downstream. Drought had made the upper basin farmers stingy with their water. They closed headgates, keeping water in the valley and not letting it flow downstream. Guardsmen, guarding headgates, convinced the Teton water users to open the gates and let the water flow, as downstream users had an established right to it.
So, one more problem solved with a show of force. When the Guard made peace with the pea pickers and the water users, they went back home. Governor Ross said it was all good and went Sagehen hunting.
Two minor footnotes: First, calling out the Idaho National Guard did result in one casualty. A guardsman accidentally shot himself in the knee while disassembling a .45 caliber pistol. Second, using the phrase “pea picker” reminds me that there is one more thing about peas and Idaho that you should know. Tennessee Ernie Ford, "The Ol' Pea-Picker,” spent much of his last years at his cabin near Grandjean, Idaho. Ernie earned that nickname because he often said, "Bless your pea-pickin' heart!"
Tennessee Ernie Ford had nothing to do with the pea picker strike in Idaho.
November 24, 2022
Boise's Lemp Triangle (Tap to read)
Boise has played the waiting game several times in its history. Citizens have waited for a promised project for decades while staring into a hole or across a dusty gravel parking lot.
The Hole at 8th and Main gaped there on the verge of great things for more than 20 years. Zions Bank opened its new tower in 2014, finally fitting into the footprint of the old Eastman Building that burned in 1987. The gravel parking lot that covered the block where the Boise Convention Center and other downtown amenities now sit was a point of conjecture for years. Ideas bounced around until the proposal to put a squat, concrete shopping mall that would be as enticing as a prison on the site invigorated enough opposition to rethink and renew downtown.
But those projects were just blips compared with the field of dreams known as the Lemp Triangle. Dreamers started envisioning its future in 1870 and continued plotting until 1937, when something important finally got built.
The Lemp Triangle is an accident of platting. When city fathers drew up the first maps of Boise, they platted it so that streets would run roughly parallel to the Boise River. That was just a convenient way to layout a town that might not be around very long. As the City survived and grew, developers of new additions mapped streets that ran to the points of a compass. Fitting the new additions to the original town plat created some odd-shaped properties. One became known as the Lemp Triangle in the North End, bounded today by W Resseguie to the north, N 13th to the east, W Fort to the south, and N 15th to the west. Clever readers may now be asking themselves why a triangle has four sides. The answer is that the property is a triangle with the western tip cut off. "Lemp Sort-of-a Triangle" just doesn't have the verve of the shorter name.
John Lemp, brewer, businessman, and local politician, began planning to sell lots in his new Lemp Addition north of the City in 1891. Mayor James Pinney saw the wisdom in snugging up the Lemp Addition to the original plat for Boise, so he deeded what became the Triangle to Lemp for $1.
Then came the tricky part. Did Boise own the land in the first place? In 1867 Boise had petitioned the US Department of the Interior for a townsite patent. The City was expecting a patent for 410 acres, the size of the original plat. Instead, they received a patent for an extra 32 acres, which included the Lemp Triangle. Maybe.
Imagine John Lemp's surprise when in August 1892, J.C. Pence, another local politician and businessman, began constructing a house on the Lemp Triangle. Lemp offered to pay Pence a small sum to remove the house. Pence declined, claiming that he owned the land. So on August 18, Lemp sent a group of armed men to demolish the house. They piled the resulting debris in the street, then tore up the foundation.
This dispute began a series of lawsuits that kept the property tied up for the next 25 years. At various times it became clear that Pence owned the property or that Lemp owned the property, or that the City owned the property. There were wins and losses enough to keep all parties confused. When the last, really, truly, absolutely final decision came down, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that Lemp owned the property through adverse possession. Unfortunately, Lemp had been dead four years by that time, so he didn't get a chance to celebrate.
With ownership determined, the Lemp estate began advertising lots for sale in the Lemp Triangle. But remember those dreams and visions that had been bouncing around? Citizens had talked up a public park on the site for years. They dreamed about a playground for kids and a baseball field. At one point, when the City was temporarily confident it owned the property, voters narrowly turned down a proposal to make it a park.
In 1922 the Lemp estate came close to making the park dreams come true when it offered the city Camel's Back and the Lemp Triangle for the bargain price of $35,000. One stipulation was that any park built in the Triangle would be called John Lemp Park. The City mulled that over for a while. Maybe too long.
The Boise School Board finally put all disputes and dreams to rest when in 1925, they purchased the Triangle for $22,500. But, true to the site's history, it was another dozen years before anything happened there. North Junior High, designed by Tourtellotte and Hummel, was built in 1937.
The school, lauded for its art deco design, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The Lemp Triangle itself might have qualified without the beautiful public building given the long, sordid history of nothing happening there.
North Junior High is built on land that was long contested, the Lemp Triangle.
The Hole at 8th and Main gaped there on the verge of great things for more than 20 years. Zions Bank opened its new tower in 2014, finally fitting into the footprint of the old Eastman Building that burned in 1987. The gravel parking lot that covered the block where the Boise Convention Center and other downtown amenities now sit was a point of conjecture for years. Ideas bounced around until the proposal to put a squat, concrete shopping mall that would be as enticing as a prison on the site invigorated enough opposition to rethink and renew downtown.
But those projects were just blips compared with the field of dreams known as the Lemp Triangle. Dreamers started envisioning its future in 1870 and continued plotting until 1937, when something important finally got built.
The Lemp Triangle is an accident of platting. When city fathers drew up the first maps of Boise, they platted it so that streets would run roughly parallel to the Boise River. That was just a convenient way to layout a town that might not be around very long. As the City survived and grew, developers of new additions mapped streets that ran to the points of a compass. Fitting the new additions to the original town plat created some odd-shaped properties. One became known as the Lemp Triangle in the North End, bounded today by W Resseguie to the north, N 13th to the east, W Fort to the south, and N 15th to the west. Clever readers may now be asking themselves why a triangle has four sides. The answer is that the property is a triangle with the western tip cut off. "Lemp Sort-of-a Triangle" just doesn't have the verve of the shorter name.
John Lemp, brewer, businessman, and local politician, began planning to sell lots in his new Lemp Addition north of the City in 1891. Mayor James Pinney saw the wisdom in snugging up the Lemp Addition to the original plat for Boise, so he deeded what became the Triangle to Lemp for $1.
Then came the tricky part. Did Boise own the land in the first place? In 1867 Boise had petitioned the US Department of the Interior for a townsite patent. The City was expecting a patent for 410 acres, the size of the original plat. Instead, they received a patent for an extra 32 acres, which included the Lemp Triangle. Maybe.
Imagine John Lemp's surprise when in August 1892, J.C. Pence, another local politician and businessman, began constructing a house on the Lemp Triangle. Lemp offered to pay Pence a small sum to remove the house. Pence declined, claiming that he owned the land. So on August 18, Lemp sent a group of armed men to demolish the house. They piled the resulting debris in the street, then tore up the foundation.
This dispute began a series of lawsuits that kept the property tied up for the next 25 years. At various times it became clear that Pence owned the property or that Lemp owned the property, or that the City owned the property. There were wins and losses enough to keep all parties confused. When the last, really, truly, absolutely final decision came down, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that Lemp owned the property through adverse possession. Unfortunately, Lemp had been dead four years by that time, so he didn't get a chance to celebrate.
With ownership determined, the Lemp estate began advertising lots for sale in the Lemp Triangle. But remember those dreams and visions that had been bouncing around? Citizens had talked up a public park on the site for years. They dreamed about a playground for kids and a baseball field. At one point, when the City was temporarily confident it owned the property, voters narrowly turned down a proposal to make it a park.
In 1922 the Lemp estate came close to making the park dreams come true when it offered the city Camel's Back and the Lemp Triangle for the bargain price of $35,000. One stipulation was that any park built in the Triangle would be called John Lemp Park. The City mulled that over for a while. Maybe too long.
The Boise School Board finally put all disputes and dreams to rest when in 1925, they purchased the Triangle for $22,500. But, true to the site's history, it was another dozen years before anything happened there. North Junior High, designed by Tourtellotte and Hummel, was built in 1937.
The school, lauded for its art deco design, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The Lemp Triangle itself might have qualified without the beautiful public building given the long, sordid history of nothing happening there.
North Junior High is built on land that was long contested, the Lemp Triangle.
November 23, 2022
Idaho Skiing History (Tap to read)
We know Idaho has some terrific skiing history. Sun Valley was the first destination ski resort and boasted the first chairlift. Bogus Basin is the largest nonprofit of its kind in the country. But skiing was everywhere in Idaho in the early days of the sport.
A great source of skiing history is Ski the Great Potato * by Margaret Fuller, Doug Fuller, and Jerry Painter. They cover 21 existing ski areas in the state and give a hat-tip to 72 areas that have since, let’s say, melted away.
Have you seen the big M on the side of the hill overlooking the town of Montpelier? That was a local skiing site in the 60s and 70s. The city ran a rope tow for skiers there. Many sledders used the hill, but they had to trudge up without benefit of a tow.
Getting up a hill was always the challenge. Rope tows were a popular method. They used an old Ford engine on the rope tow at Pine Street Hill outside of Sandpoint in the 1940s. Later they used a Sweden Speed Tow. The portability of those units, which had engines mounted on toboggans, made them popular for little ski hills all over the state. They cost less than $350.
Downhill skiing wasn’t enough of a thrill for some. In 1924 the City of McCall built a ski jump on land owned by Clem Blackwell a couple of miles out of town. Blackwell’s Jump, as it was called, was the main feature of the first Winter Carnival. In the early years McCall didn’t have the lodging options it does today. Carnival participants would come up from Boise on a train, then ride in logging sleds pulled by horses out to where the jump was. After spending the day enjoying the flying skiers, they rode back into town and slept on the train.
Ski jumping wasn’t the only event at the Winter Carnival. They had cross-country skiing and snowshoe races, dogsled racing, and ski-joring. Spectators could become participants in at least one recreational pursuit, if they wished. Snowplanes, basically airplane engines—props spinning—were bolted to skis or toboggans. The brave could catch a thrilling ride. One could theoretically ride to the top of a hill and ski down, but that didn’t catch on.
Skiers on a rope tow at Bogus Basin, circa 1950. Photo from the Idaho State Historical Society digital collection. 
Ad for a Sweden Speed Ski Tow. Note that they were made by the Sweden Freezer Manufacturing Company of Seattle. The units were a bit of a sideline for them.
A great source of skiing history is Ski the Great Potato * by Margaret Fuller, Doug Fuller, and Jerry Painter. They cover 21 existing ski areas in the state and give a hat-tip to 72 areas that have since, let’s say, melted away.
Have you seen the big M on the side of the hill overlooking the town of Montpelier? That was a local skiing site in the 60s and 70s. The city ran a rope tow for skiers there. Many sledders used the hill, but they had to trudge up without benefit of a tow.
Getting up a hill was always the challenge. Rope tows were a popular method. They used an old Ford engine on the rope tow at Pine Street Hill outside of Sandpoint in the 1940s. Later they used a Sweden Speed Tow. The portability of those units, which had engines mounted on toboggans, made them popular for little ski hills all over the state. They cost less than $350.
Downhill skiing wasn’t enough of a thrill for some. In 1924 the City of McCall built a ski jump on land owned by Clem Blackwell a couple of miles out of town. Blackwell’s Jump, as it was called, was the main feature of the first Winter Carnival. In the early years McCall didn’t have the lodging options it does today. Carnival participants would come up from Boise on a train, then ride in logging sleds pulled by horses out to where the jump was. After spending the day enjoying the flying skiers, they rode back into town and slept on the train.
Ski jumping wasn’t the only event at the Winter Carnival. They had cross-country skiing and snowshoe races, dogsled racing, and ski-joring. Spectators could become participants in at least one recreational pursuit, if they wished. Snowplanes, basically airplane engines—props spinning—were bolted to skis or toboggans. The brave could catch a thrilling ride. One could theoretically ride to the top of a hill and ski down, but that didn’t catch on.
Skiers on a rope tow at Bogus Basin, circa 1950. Photo from the Idaho State Historical Society digital collection. Ad for a Sweden Speed Ski Tow. Note that they were made by the Sweden Freezer Manufacturing Company of Seattle. The units were a bit of a sideline for them.
November 22, 2022
Lalia Boone (Tap to read)
When it comes to Idaho place names, Lalia Boone was the acknowledged expert. Her book
Idaho Place Names, A Geographical Dictionary
is indispensable for Idaho historians.
You might think that Boone came from an old Idaho family and grew up hearing Idaho place names over the dinner table. If you thought that, you’d be way off.
Boone was born in 1907, in Tehuacana, Texas. She graduated from Westminster Junior College there in 1925. Boone taught in county schools in Texas for years, becoming a principal in 1944. A lifelong educator, she never stopped learning, getting a BA in English in 1938 from East Texas State College, and a masters in medieval literature and linguistics from the University of Oklahoma in 1947. Boone was a trailblazer in 1951 when she became the first woman to get a doctorate at the University of Florida.
In 1965 Boone took a job as professor of English at the University of Idaho. She taught there until her retirement in 1973.
Lalia Boone became interested in Idaho place names because many of them seemed strange to her southern ears. Her curiosity led her to found the Idaho Place Names Project in 1966. The project received early funding from the National Science Foundation, and it became one of two pilot projects nationwide in the American Name Society Place Name Survey.
She and her students spent years interviewing locals across the state for the project, the archives of which are housed at the University of Idaho. Cort Conley, who ran the University of Idaho Press at the time, said that Boone “Commandeered derivations from her students the way wool socks snag wood ticks.”
The first book that came from the project was a volume on Latah County names in 1983. The statewide edition was published the following year. Sadly, the book is currently out of print, but good used copies are often available in local bookstores and on Amazon.
Lalia Boone died at 83 in 1990.
You might think that Boone came from an old Idaho family and grew up hearing Idaho place names over the dinner table. If you thought that, you’d be way off.
Boone was born in 1907, in Tehuacana, Texas. She graduated from Westminster Junior College there in 1925. Boone taught in county schools in Texas for years, becoming a principal in 1944. A lifelong educator, she never stopped learning, getting a BA in English in 1938 from East Texas State College, and a masters in medieval literature and linguistics from the University of Oklahoma in 1947. Boone was a trailblazer in 1951 when she became the first woman to get a doctorate at the University of Florida.
In 1965 Boone took a job as professor of English at the University of Idaho. She taught there until her retirement in 1973.
Lalia Boone became interested in Idaho place names because many of them seemed strange to her southern ears. Her curiosity led her to found the Idaho Place Names Project in 1966. The project received early funding from the National Science Foundation, and it became one of two pilot projects nationwide in the American Name Society Place Name Survey.
She and her students spent years interviewing locals across the state for the project, the archives of which are housed at the University of Idaho. Cort Conley, who ran the University of Idaho Press at the time, said that Boone “Commandeered derivations from her students the way wool socks snag wood ticks.”
The first book that came from the project was a volume on Latah County names in 1983. The statewide edition was published the following year. Sadly, the book is currently out of print, but good used copies are often available in local bookstores and on Amazon.
Lalia Boone died at 83 in 1990.
November 21, 2022
Blackfoot's Billionaire (Tap to read)
How many billionaires have been born in Blackfoot? I’ll wait while you compile the list. Here’s a hint: I was born there. But I’m not on that list.
I can think of only one but correct me if you came up with others.
Jon Huntsman Sr., born in Blackfoot, was a billionaire chemical industrialist, which is an achievement in its own right. But he was also a notoriously generous philanthropist, giving away more than $1.5 billion during his life and founding the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah in 1993, one of America’s major cancer research centers.
Huntsman had a political side. He was the White House Staff Secretary in the Nixon administration. In 1988 he began raising money to run for governor of Utah. He backed out of the race to back Governor Norm Bangerter, saying that party unity was more important to him than a political career.
His son, Jon Huntsman Jr., became governor of Utah in 2005, serving until 2009. Huntsman Jr also served as U.S. Ambassador to China, after an unsuccessful presidential run.
Both Jon Huntsman Sr and Jon Huntsman Jr have extensive Wikipedia pages, should you want to read more.
The billionaire philanthropist was born in Blackfoot, Idaho in 1937. His father, Alonzo Blaine Huntsman was a piano teacher. The family moved to Palo Alto, California in 1950 where Alonzo earned an M.A. and Ed.D, later becoming a superintendent of schools.
Jon Huntsman Sr, courtesy of the Science History Institute.
I can think of only one but correct me if you came up with others.
Jon Huntsman Sr., born in Blackfoot, was a billionaire chemical industrialist, which is an achievement in its own right. But he was also a notoriously generous philanthropist, giving away more than $1.5 billion during his life and founding the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah in 1993, one of America’s major cancer research centers.
Huntsman had a political side. He was the White House Staff Secretary in the Nixon administration. In 1988 he began raising money to run for governor of Utah. He backed out of the race to back Governor Norm Bangerter, saying that party unity was more important to him than a political career.
His son, Jon Huntsman Jr., became governor of Utah in 2005, serving until 2009. Huntsman Jr also served as U.S. Ambassador to China, after an unsuccessful presidential run.
Both Jon Huntsman Sr and Jon Huntsman Jr have extensive Wikipedia pages, should you want to read more.
The billionaire philanthropist was born in Blackfoot, Idaho in 1937. His father, Alonzo Blaine Huntsman was a piano teacher. The family moved to Palo Alto, California in 1950 where Alonzo earned an M.A. and Ed.D, later becoming a superintendent of schools.
Jon Huntsman Sr, courtesy of the Science History Institute.
November 20, 2022
A Farragut ID (Tap to read)
Dan Eggart sent me a photo of an ID tag of his dad, Ronald E. Eggart. Ronald Eggart served at Farragut for a time before going to Europe during WWII. Both of his brothers also served over there.
Dan wondered what kind of ID tag it was. I’d never seen one before, so I asked Dennis Woolford who is a ranger at Farragut State Park and coauthor of a book on Farragut Naval Training Station. Dennis said it was an ID tag often used by civilians who were working on the base. He sent a photo (below) that showed several people who worked in Supply and Accounting wearing similar badges. Most wearing them were civilians, but I spot a few on Navy personnel, too. I also spot a dog some of the men snuck into the picture in the upper left-hand quadrant.
Dan wondered what kind of ID tag it was. I’d never seen one before, so I asked Dennis Woolford who is a ranger at Farragut State Park and coauthor of a book on Farragut Naval Training Station. Dennis said it was an ID tag often used by civilians who were working on the base. He sent a photo (below) that showed several people who worked in Supply and Accounting wearing similar badges. Most wearing them were civilians, but I spot a few on Navy personnel, too. I also spot a dog some of the men snuck into the picture in the upper left-hand quadrant.
November 19, 2022
The Moore of Mores Creek (Tap to read)
Mores Creek is a tributary of the Boise River. Misspellings often find their way into place names, so it’s not surprising that it has also been known as Moore Creek and Moores Creek. J. Marion More, for whom the stream is named, used both last names himself, so the confusion is not surprising.
More was born John N. Moore in Tennessee in 1830. He carried his given name with him as he struck out for California when he was about 20. He settled in Mariposa where he became an undersheriff and was prominent in local Masonic affairs. Sometime in the late 1850s, Moore got into a “fracas” of some sort that was embarrassing enough that he skipped town, headed north to Washington Territory, and changed his name to John Marion More.
His past apparently forgotten, More was elected to the Washington Territorial Legislature in 1861 from Walla Walla. In 1862, stories of gold in eastern Oregon Territory enticed More and his friend, D.H. Fogus to the Boise Hills. More and Fogus were among the first miners to strike gold. More led a mining party that founded Idaho City on October 7, 1862. He staked some paying claims before heading back to Olympia to serve a second term in the Washington Territorial Legislature, where he was unsuccessful in pushing for the creation of a new territory east of the Cascades. Other interests prevailed in forming a territory with different boundaries, called Idaho Territory, on March 4, 1863.
More came back to the Boise Basin where his mines were doing well. He and Fogus bought controlling interest in the Oro Fino and Morning Star mines in Owyhee County. They pulled more than a million dollars from those operations within two years. Nevertheless, the bills caught up with the mine developers and they went bankrupt in 1866.
J. Marion More’s fortunes had again turned around by the spring of 1867. He had acquired a large interest in the Ida-Elmore properties atop War Eagle Mountain. An underground war had erupted between those working the Ida-Elmore and the Golden Chariot mines over the boundaries of those claims. More had been a key negotiator in bringing peace to the miners.
The agreement that brought the peace was not universally embraced by every miner. One Sam Lockhart, who had worked for the Golden Chariot, confronted More after the latter had been celebrating with alcohol and friends on the afternoon of April 1, 1868. Heated words were exchanged between Lockhart and More. More, according to Lockhart, had raised his cane as if to strike the miner. Lockhart pulled his gun and shot More in the chest.
Bullets flew back and forth. Lockhart took one to the shoulder. His friends drug More away to a local restaurant where he died three hours later.
Lockhart insisted that a man in More’s party fired the first shot. That became moot when gangrene set in, causing Lockhart to lose first his arm, then his life, a few weeks later.
According to Findagrave.com two stones mark J. Marion More’s grave, one spelling it More and one Moore. Oh, and the N. in his given name stood for Neptune.
More was born John N. Moore in Tennessee in 1830. He carried his given name with him as he struck out for California when he was about 20. He settled in Mariposa where he became an undersheriff and was prominent in local Masonic affairs. Sometime in the late 1850s, Moore got into a “fracas” of some sort that was embarrassing enough that he skipped town, headed north to Washington Territory, and changed his name to John Marion More.
His past apparently forgotten, More was elected to the Washington Territorial Legislature in 1861 from Walla Walla. In 1862, stories of gold in eastern Oregon Territory enticed More and his friend, D.H. Fogus to the Boise Hills. More and Fogus were among the first miners to strike gold. More led a mining party that founded Idaho City on October 7, 1862. He staked some paying claims before heading back to Olympia to serve a second term in the Washington Territorial Legislature, where he was unsuccessful in pushing for the creation of a new territory east of the Cascades. Other interests prevailed in forming a territory with different boundaries, called Idaho Territory, on March 4, 1863.
More came back to the Boise Basin where his mines were doing well. He and Fogus bought controlling interest in the Oro Fino and Morning Star mines in Owyhee County. They pulled more than a million dollars from those operations within two years. Nevertheless, the bills caught up with the mine developers and they went bankrupt in 1866.
J. Marion More’s fortunes had again turned around by the spring of 1867. He had acquired a large interest in the Ida-Elmore properties atop War Eagle Mountain. An underground war had erupted between those working the Ida-Elmore and the Golden Chariot mines over the boundaries of those claims. More had been a key negotiator in bringing peace to the miners.
The agreement that brought the peace was not universally embraced by every miner. One Sam Lockhart, who had worked for the Golden Chariot, confronted More after the latter had been celebrating with alcohol and friends on the afternoon of April 1, 1868. Heated words were exchanged between Lockhart and More. More, according to Lockhart, had raised his cane as if to strike the miner. Lockhart pulled his gun and shot More in the chest.
Bullets flew back and forth. Lockhart took one to the shoulder. His friends drug More away to a local restaurant where he died three hours later.
Lockhart insisted that a man in More’s party fired the first shot. That became moot when gangrene set in, causing Lockhart to lose first his arm, then his life, a few weeks later.
According to Findagrave.com two stones mark J. Marion More’s grave, one spelling it More and one Moore. Oh, and the N. in his given name stood for Neptune.
November 18, 2022
Teton Dam Flood Survivor (Tap to read)
Saturday, June 5, 1976 wasn’t a great day for fishing on the Teton River. Daryl Grigg and his friend David Benson made it to the river from their homes in St. Anthony about 11 am. They’d had good luck fishing in a big eddy at the end of an access road in the past, but that day nothing was biting, so they set out for an island upriver a bit.
The anglers had just gotten to the island when they spotted an airplane flying down through the canyon above them. They were close enough to see the pilot. He seemed to be waving at them. They waved back.
The young men—Daryl was 22 and David 23—had started fishing again when the water rapidly rose about six feet. Benson said, “We’ll have to swim out of here!”
Grigg turned and looked upriver to see a 30-foot-high wall of water coming straight at them. He yelled for Benson to jump in and start swimming.
“We started out swimming, but that didn’t work,” Grigg said in a 1977 oral history recorded for Utah State University, Ricks College, and the Idaho State Historical Society. “Then, that was the last time I (saw) David. There were thousands of logs, so I grabbed onto one of them. I didn’t have to swim after that. I just remember looking around. It was unbelievable, everything was tearing everything else up. I couldn’t hardly hear anything because of the noise. Then I saw a couple of houses get wiped out.”
Grigg had no way of knowing that the Teton Dam, which had just finished filling for the first time, had washed out, one side of it collapsing. He rode the debris downstream, getting crushed by logs, about three miles before hanging up on a tree. He was able to work his way into the tree and climb above the roaring water.
Wrapping his arms around the cottonwood tree about 30 feet up, Grigg found a fork he could collapse into. It was hard to get his breath. He went in and out of consciousness, stuck in the tree for what would be at least four hours. Later he learned that he had five broken ribs and a punctured lung.
Describing his chaotic ride to the tree that saved him, Grigg said, “I was right in front of the wave. I could see it grow, the trees coming up, that I’d go right through them and there would be nothing left. Sometimes it really scared me. Some of the logs I was on, they’d get caught on a tree, sit there and stop for a couple of minutes, nearly five minutes, just sit in one place. And you see water tearing up everything all over. The water would raise and then we’d go down the river again. I was climbing over the logs quite a bit, trying to get to shore.”
About his eventual rescue, Grigg said, “I think I was in shock really bad and I think I went out for a while. I woke up, it was getting really late, so I started yelling. I couldn’t see anything. I was scared. Luckily, there was a bunch of people over on the hill there… and they could hear me. So, they brought a boat out.”
Grigg was flown first by helicopter to the St. Anthony hospital, then in another helicopter to the hospital in Idaho Falls, where he spent 10 days recuperating. The body of his friend, David Benson, was found two days after the flood, one of 11 victims of the Teton Dam collapse.
The Teton Dam in the early stages of the 1976 flood.
The anglers had just gotten to the island when they spotted an airplane flying down through the canyon above them. They were close enough to see the pilot. He seemed to be waving at them. They waved back.
The young men—Daryl was 22 and David 23—had started fishing again when the water rapidly rose about six feet. Benson said, “We’ll have to swim out of here!”
Grigg turned and looked upriver to see a 30-foot-high wall of water coming straight at them. He yelled for Benson to jump in and start swimming.
“We started out swimming, but that didn’t work,” Grigg said in a 1977 oral history recorded for Utah State University, Ricks College, and the Idaho State Historical Society. “Then, that was the last time I (saw) David. There were thousands of logs, so I grabbed onto one of them. I didn’t have to swim after that. I just remember looking around. It was unbelievable, everything was tearing everything else up. I couldn’t hardly hear anything because of the noise. Then I saw a couple of houses get wiped out.”
Grigg had no way of knowing that the Teton Dam, which had just finished filling for the first time, had washed out, one side of it collapsing. He rode the debris downstream, getting crushed by logs, about three miles before hanging up on a tree. He was able to work his way into the tree and climb above the roaring water.
Wrapping his arms around the cottonwood tree about 30 feet up, Grigg found a fork he could collapse into. It was hard to get his breath. He went in and out of consciousness, stuck in the tree for what would be at least four hours. Later he learned that he had five broken ribs and a punctured lung.
Describing his chaotic ride to the tree that saved him, Grigg said, “I was right in front of the wave. I could see it grow, the trees coming up, that I’d go right through them and there would be nothing left. Sometimes it really scared me. Some of the logs I was on, they’d get caught on a tree, sit there and stop for a couple of minutes, nearly five minutes, just sit in one place. And you see water tearing up everything all over. The water would raise and then we’d go down the river again. I was climbing over the logs quite a bit, trying to get to shore.”
About his eventual rescue, Grigg said, “I think I was in shock really bad and I think I went out for a while. I woke up, it was getting really late, so I started yelling. I couldn’t see anything. I was scared. Luckily, there was a bunch of people over on the hill there… and they could hear me. So, they brought a boat out.”
Grigg was flown first by helicopter to the St. Anthony hospital, then in another helicopter to the hospital in Idaho Falls, where he spent 10 days recuperating. The body of his friend, David Benson, was found two days after the flood, one of 11 victims of the Teton Dam collapse.
The Teton Dam in the early stages of the 1976 flood.
