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Wilderness Fever: A Family s Adventures Homesteading in Early Jackson Hole, 1914-1924
In 1914, Linda and Mac McKinstry left their secure jobs in Washington, D.C., married, and moved west to establish a homestead in country both untouched and beautiful, but also inhospitable, dangerous, and forty miles from anywhere.
Their hair-raising, yet charming, account of their struggles to build a homestead and raise a family at the foot of the Tetons provides a glimpse into life in an region so wild and scenic that powerful outside interests covet its cascading water for irrigation and its land for preservation as a national park.
Their hair-raising, yet charming, account of their struggles to build a homestead and raise a family at the foot of the Tetons provides a glimpse into life in an region so wild and scenic that powerful outside interests covet its cascading water for irrigation and its land for preservation as a national park.
224 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 29, 2017
Most Americans think of homesteading as having occurred in the 1800s. We can all picture the wholesome farm families sitting on the seats of wagons pulled by oxen, the billowing white canvas covering all their possessions. Possibly a milk cow is tied to the back of the load beside a crate full of chickens. On the horizon—is that cowboys, or possibly Indians?
Some parts of the West, especially including western Wyoming, stayed wild longer than, for example, the Dakotas. And for Linda Preston McKinstry and her husband Harold Cole McKinstry, homesteading began in 1915 when they left bureaucratic jobs in Washington, D.C. and took advantage of the government’s offer of “free” land.
McKinstry, called “Mac” of course, grew up in North Dakota and had studied agriculture and Linda was a home economics teacher when they settled in Jackson Hole. In several ways, they were not typical homesteaders. For one thing, they were thirty years late for the peak of homesteading. Both were well-educated, and most importantly, they had money. If homesteading hadn’t worked out, they could have gone elsewhere and done something else. Having a ready supply of cash also allowed them to have luxuries such as Valentine’s Day cards and gifts for each other on special occasions.
Still, their lives were hard and demanding. This book is composed of letters they wrote to Linda’s mother, which retain the freshness of experiences just lived, and from memoirs they wrote years later. Besides the dangers of their chosen lifestyle, with no doctor, no telephone, and only rare mail service, they had to become adept at planning ahead. Once winter dumped several feet of snow on their remote home, they knew they wouldn’t be able to leave for months. They ordered groceries to be shipped to the nearest settlement, Victor, Idaho.
Think about this list: 500 pounds of white flour, 100 pounds of cornmeal, and 75 pounds of whole wheat flour. There’s your bread and pancakes for the season. Several hundred pounds of potatoes. 25 pounds of navy beans, 10 pounds of macaroni, and 25 pounds each of prunes, dried pears, figs, and dried apples. 1 24-can case of tomatoes. 12 cans each of corn, string beans and salmon. 10 pounds each of lima, red kidney and chili beans. 14 pounds of noodles. Add in 50 pounds of brown sugar, 300 pounds of white sugar, 10 pounds of coffee and a little tea, and you’ve got your menu for the winter.
On this diet, the McKinstrys cut ice, skied and snowshoed and drove starving horses through drifts twice as high as the horses. In November one year, they ordered 500 pounds of potatoes. Two ranchers drove to Victor to collect a supply of potatoes for themselves and neighbors. Because of the extreme cold, the potatoes had to be unloaded and kept close to a fire each night to keep them from freezing.
They supplemented their diet with elk shot near their home. In order to eat meat in the summer, Susan had to can it, which required packing it into quart jars that had to be kept covered with boiling water on the wood-fueled stove for several hours.
Because few fences existed in the country where they lived, Mac was constantly searching for their strayed horses and cattle, sometimes in extremely cold weather conditions. Travel required hardships and risks most of us can’t even imagine today. This meant that when anyone was traveling through the neighborhood, they’d stop for a visit—and every visitor had to be fed, and sometimes bedded down in the tiny, poorly-insulated log cabins that served as their homes. Linda writes often of expecting only Mac for lunch only to have as many as 10 people show up expecting to be fed.
Yet their youngest daughter reported that the couple loved the lifestyle, and only left it when they had three children who needed schooling. In addition, they believed it was likely that Yellowstone National Park would absorb their ranch, making it impractical to continue improving it.
One of the fascinating aspects of the book is the comparison and contrast between Linda’s and Mac’s accounts of the same events, allowing us to see how the life affected both of them. The book designer helped the readability immensely by reserving the outer third of each page for the notes that might have been turned into annoying footnotes, providing additional information on the text, as well as information describing the photographs in the book.
For me, the hardest part of the reading was that the authors wrote often in passive voice—but that was the style of the times, and probably also because they were writing about their past, looking back at their adventures. “Thanksgiving Day was spent at the ranch,” they write, rather than “We spent Thanksgiving Day at the ranch.” But these are small matters.
Read this book for a clearer understanding of homesteading, and to enjoy the astonishing steadfastness and adaptability of these two heroic explorers. Their adventure was reality for most of our pioneering western ancestors.
Some parts of the West, especially including western Wyoming, stayed wild longer than, for example, the Dakotas. And for Linda Preston McKinstry and her husband Harold Cole McKinstry, homesteading began in 1915 when they left bureaucratic jobs in Washington, D.C. and took advantage of the government’s offer of “free” land.
McKinstry, called “Mac” of course, grew up in North Dakota and had studied agriculture and Linda was a home economics teacher when they settled in Jackson Hole. In several ways, they were not typical homesteaders. For one thing, they were thirty years late for the peak of homesteading. Both were well-educated, and most importantly, they had money. If homesteading hadn’t worked out, they could have gone elsewhere and done something else. Having a ready supply of cash also allowed them to have luxuries such as Valentine’s Day cards and gifts for each other on special occasions.
Still, their lives were hard and demanding. This book is composed of letters they wrote to Linda’s mother, which retain the freshness of experiences just lived, and from memoirs they wrote years later. Besides the dangers of their chosen lifestyle, with no doctor, no telephone, and only rare mail service, they had to become adept at planning ahead. Once winter dumped several feet of snow on their remote home, they knew they wouldn’t be able to leave for months. They ordered groceries to be shipped to the nearest settlement, Victor, Idaho.
Think about this list: 500 pounds of white flour, 100 pounds of cornmeal, and 75 pounds of whole wheat flour. There’s your bread and pancakes for the season. Several hundred pounds of potatoes. 25 pounds of navy beans, 10 pounds of macaroni, and 25 pounds each of prunes, dried pears, figs, and dried apples. 1 24-can case of tomatoes. 12 cans each of corn, string beans and salmon. 10 pounds each of lima, red kidney and chili beans. 14 pounds of noodles. Add in 50 pounds of brown sugar, 300 pounds of white sugar, 10 pounds of coffee and a little tea, and you’ve got your menu for the winter.
On this diet, the McKinstrys cut ice, skied and snowshoed and drove starving horses through drifts twice as high as the horses. In November one year, they ordered 500 pounds of potatoes. Two ranchers drove to Victor to collect a supply of potatoes for themselves and neighbors. Because of the extreme cold, the potatoes had to be unloaded and kept close to a fire each night to keep them from freezing.
They supplemented their diet with elk shot near their home. In order to eat meat in the summer, Susan had to can it, which required packing it into quart jars that had to be kept covered with boiling water on the wood-fueled stove for several hours.
Because few fences existed in the country where they lived, Mac was constantly searching for their strayed horses and cattle, sometimes in extremely cold weather conditions. Travel required hardships and risks most of us can’t even imagine today. This meant that when anyone was traveling through the neighborhood, they’d stop for a visit—and every visitor had to be fed, and sometimes bedded down in the tiny, poorly-insulated log cabins that served as their homes. Linda writes often of expecting only Mac for lunch only to have as many as 10 people show up expecting to be fed.
Yet their youngest daughter reported that the couple loved the lifestyle, and only left it when they had three children who needed schooling. In addition, they believed it was likely that Yellowstone National Park would absorb their ranch, making it impractical to continue improving it.
One of the fascinating aspects of the book is the comparison and contrast between Linda’s and Mac’s accounts of the same events, allowing us to see how the life affected both of them. The book designer helped the readability immensely by reserving the outer third of each page for the notes that might have been turned into annoying footnotes, providing additional information on the text, as well as information describing the photographs in the book.
For me, the hardest part of the reading was that the authors wrote often in passive voice—but that was the style of the times, and probably also because they were writing about their past, looking back at their adventures. “Thanksgiving Day was spent at the ranch,” they write, rather than “We spent Thanksgiving Day at the ranch.” But these are small matters.
Read this book for a clearer understanding of homesteading, and to enjoy the astonishing steadfastness and adaptability of these two heroic explorers. Their adventure was reality for most of our pioneering western ancestors.
February 11, 2021
Homesteading memoir--but one from a later period than you might imagine. The author was a New Englander who, freshly married to a North Dakotan, set off on a homesteading adventure to Jackson Hole, Wyoming in the 1910s. She and her husband lived in the remote mountain valley for 10 years, built and operated a small ranch, and had 3 children there before relocating to Denver to raise their family.
The beginning is choppy as the memoir rotates between her notes and her husband's, but the information itself is quite interesting.
The beginning is choppy as the memoir rotates between her notes and her husband's, but the information itself is quite interesting.
January 29, 2018
A fascinating memoir, Wilderness Fever: A Family’s Adventures Homesteading in Early Jackson Hole, 1914-1921, written by Linda Preston McKinstry with Harold Cole McKinstry, shows a way of life that’s hard to imagine in this modern age. Homesteading accounts normally entail life in the 1800's, but the McKinstry’s story shows the toughness and determination of early 20th century settlers in the untamed Wyoming wilderness.
Linda and Harold (called Mac) were not typical homesteaders. They both had been professional people: Linda, from Massachusetts, taught home economics in Washington D.C. and Mac, from North Dakota, worked for The U.S. Department of Agriculture, also in Washington D.C. They married and set out in 1915 to find adventure in the wilds of Wyoming. Unlike many hardscrabble homesteaders, they arrived with the financial means to obtain the supplies and equipment needed to start a life in a place devoid of almost all creature comforts.
Having the means to buy necessities helped establish their homestead, but what made their venture a reality was their unrelenting, grueling hard work. The area is known for its long freezing winters. Cooking with a wood-burning stove may have been a luxury compared to cooking over an open fire, but keeping the stove supplied with wood for both cooking and warmth was a never-ending job. In the early days, their meat consisted of what Mac could hunt. Although they could purchase groceries from the nearest town, it was many miles away and it took an entire day to get there, if the roads and weather even allowed travel. A garden produced much of what they consumed. Linda canned meat and vegetables to have when fresh was unavailable. The endless list of chores involved cutting blocks of ice to keep food fresh, caring for stock, milking a cow for milk and butter, raising chickens, always striving for a variety of food to keep the family healthy. Along the way, three children were born, which necessitated long trips into town for the births. In those days it was believed women needed at least ten days of bed rest after giving birth.
Neighbors helped neighbors, and I was surprised at the amount of travel back and forth over many miles on horseback or wagon. Because of the great distances between homesteads, over-night stays were often necessary. Linda routinely had guests for meals, especially mid-day, since travelers had no other place to eat.
Mac spent much of his time building his ranch and increasing his stock. His many talents and ingenuity helped make his ranch profitable. He was also in high demand as a licensed surveyor, both for the government and for ranchers. They were in a financial position to hire help for Linda so that Mac could be away, sometimes for several days at a time, either surveying or helping a fellow rancher.
Through it all, they found strength in each other and in the quietness and beauty of their wild surroundings at the foot of the Tetons.
The memoir, gleaned from their journals, is told by both Linda and Mac initially, but the last several chapters are in Linda’s voice, taken from letters mailed to her mother and sister. The book’s format has sidebars with dates, providing interesting footnotes and additional information. Photographs also bring the story to life. Wilderness Fever is an unusual, outstanding read. I highly recommend this account of an enterprising couple determined to find their own way in the wilds of Wyoming.
Linda and Harold (called Mac) were not typical homesteaders. They both had been professional people: Linda, from Massachusetts, taught home economics in Washington D.C. and Mac, from North Dakota, worked for The U.S. Department of Agriculture, also in Washington D.C. They married and set out in 1915 to find adventure in the wilds of Wyoming. Unlike many hardscrabble homesteaders, they arrived with the financial means to obtain the supplies and equipment needed to start a life in a place devoid of almost all creature comforts.
Having the means to buy necessities helped establish their homestead, but what made their venture a reality was their unrelenting, grueling hard work. The area is known for its long freezing winters. Cooking with a wood-burning stove may have been a luxury compared to cooking over an open fire, but keeping the stove supplied with wood for both cooking and warmth was a never-ending job. In the early days, their meat consisted of what Mac could hunt. Although they could purchase groceries from the nearest town, it was many miles away and it took an entire day to get there, if the roads and weather even allowed travel. A garden produced much of what they consumed. Linda canned meat and vegetables to have when fresh was unavailable. The endless list of chores involved cutting blocks of ice to keep food fresh, caring for stock, milking a cow for milk and butter, raising chickens, always striving for a variety of food to keep the family healthy. Along the way, three children were born, which necessitated long trips into town for the births. In those days it was believed women needed at least ten days of bed rest after giving birth.
Neighbors helped neighbors, and I was surprised at the amount of travel back and forth over many miles on horseback or wagon. Because of the great distances between homesteads, over-night stays were often necessary. Linda routinely had guests for meals, especially mid-day, since travelers had no other place to eat.
Mac spent much of his time building his ranch and increasing his stock. His many talents and ingenuity helped make his ranch profitable. He was also in high demand as a licensed surveyor, both for the government and for ranchers. They were in a financial position to hire help for Linda so that Mac could be away, sometimes for several days at a time, either surveying or helping a fellow rancher.
Through it all, they found strength in each other and in the quietness and beauty of their wild surroundings at the foot of the Tetons.
The memoir, gleaned from their journals, is told by both Linda and Mac initially, but the last several chapters are in Linda’s voice, taken from letters mailed to her mother and sister. The book’s format has sidebars with dates, providing interesting footnotes and additional information. Photographs also bring the story to life. Wilderness Fever is an unusual, outstanding read. I highly recommend this account of an enterprising couple determined to find their own way in the wilds of Wyoming.
January 2, 2018
I read this book for the Wyoming Library Association in order to provide a review so I will share that below. It was exciting to read because I live 2hrs away from Grand Teton National Park so I was able to picture in my head the locations that they discuss in the book. The following is the review:
Imagine leaving the city to homestead in a rural and relatively unknown part of the country.
Today, this may sound like a dream come true but imagine that life without electricity, telephones, or even automobiles. Wilderness Fever is a wonderful collection of memoirs by the McKinstrys who left the comforts of Washington D.C. for a shot at homesteading in the Jackson Hole area. Modern homesteaders and city dwellers alike will find that there is much to be grateful for after reading how early homesteaders’ lives were easily impacted by much more than unpredictable weather and
rough terrain. Everything from the introduction of modern technologies such as the telephone to
the development of Yellowstone National Park guided homestead decision-making. This book
will drive home just how brave and tenacious early homesteaders had to be in order to survive.
Imagine leaving the city to homestead in a rural and relatively unknown part of the country.
Today, this may sound like a dream come true but imagine that life without electricity, telephones, or even automobiles. Wilderness Fever is a wonderful collection of memoirs by the McKinstrys who left the comforts of Washington D.C. for a shot at homesteading in the Jackson Hole area. Modern homesteaders and city dwellers alike will find that there is much to be grateful for after reading how early homesteaders’ lives were easily impacted by much more than unpredictable weather and
rough terrain. Everything from the introduction of modern technologies such as the telephone to
the development of Yellowstone National Park guided homestead decision-making. This book
will drive home just how brave and tenacious early homesteaders had to be in order to survive.
April 25, 2017
I READ THIS FOR THE HIGH PLAINS BOOK AWARDS PROGRAM. THIS IS A MEMOIR OF LIFE IN EARLY SETTLEMENT OF THE TETON MOUNTAINS NEAR JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews