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This said stage road went through the "Gap" some seven or so miles N.W. of Swope or Suffolk, about a mile or two from Ernest's place. This I did not know then so got off the stage at Swope and walked the six or so miles to my brother's place. The Ernest and Maude Haight homestead. Was chinooking and I had trouble with water in the coulees. Mr. and Mrs. "Preacher Brown" and their two daughters were living a mile east of my present home and at the top of what was known as the "Brown Hill".
My brother Ernest and his wife Maude did the locating -minus the fee- and I felt I was a landowner. I was one of the last to file in this immediate area. There had been some fieldwork done before the first of March that year (1913). Burbridge, north of the "Gap" had seeded oats in into the fields again.
I worked the summer of 1913 on the Parker and Montgomery ranch, managed by a bachelor John Montgomery. He was the best sourdough bread and hot cake baker I ever ate after. Later in the summer upon my recommendation he wrote a cousin of mine-a Viola Fordyce at Alta, Iowa, near where I came from and hired her as a housekeeper. Ethan or Turk as he later became known was a little guy and was with her. Wages were $45. per month. My co-workers in order that summer were, "Indian John-Jim Andrews-and Gus Schubert, an ex-Rhodes Scholar and one time lawyer was herding sheep nearby. During the summer I hooked my ear on a nail while helping catch a pig and had to hunt medical aid a couple of times. First time I went to Hilger via a saddle horse and got it tended to but the M.D. drunk and the tending did not take. Next time I went to the hospital about sixteen miles south in the Mts to a mining town known as Kendall. (Now Kendall is a ghost town-1958)
Bought three colts off the Vanek brothers about 25 miles south toward Lewistown at a place known as Brooks that summer. Ernest broke one for the use of him. Ernest and Maude got leaned on a lot those first years. As I noted I worked on the Suffolk elevator that winter. One of my jobs was to sharpen all saws-and I had never before sharpened one or even seen one sharpened-when I first took the job. I did most of the work on the office building, which still stands. The reason I held down my job was because the boss was either drunk or gone-or both-most of the time. The elevator building however is still standing. During the fall of 1913 I had bought a second hand set of harness, a grindstone, and a wooden tooth harrow from James Fergus. (James Fergus and his brothers were pioneers of Fergus County and a county bears their name). Later I bought from the Montgomery Ward catalogue, a walking sod bottom plow. In the spring of 1914 I broke those other two colts and I was a in those days, farmer. In them days there was just two classes of people-"The Old Timers", always called-"Ranchers" and the "New Comers", always called-farmers, or nesters, or honyockers, or tenderfeet, or something or another, but in any case if the calling were being done by an "Old Timer" it was in a "Look-Down Upon" attitude.
On July 23rd 1914 the Winifred preacher who came to Suffolk by train and then borrowed from O. B. White a mule team to come out the five miles to my place married Mable Chamberlain and me. He got $5.00.
It was my first and I learned latter it was the preachers first wedding to . As also It was Mable's first, so it was a "First" all the way around. We set up housekeeping In the 10-by-14 building now tin roofed and used as an oat granary. It was located on the hill about 100 rods south west of our present home. An indication of what weather can mean is the fact that pieces of boards left lying there 44 years ago are still solid and sound at this time. (1958) Treated the same way in Iowa they would have been rotted in less than that many weeks. Mable, my wife had filed before she was married on land that joined mine on the south and our cabin was located as it was, so that we could comply with the then law and move it across the line after I had proved up on mine, and live on hers until she had proved up on it to. By law though she had to establish residence on her place before marriage in order to hold it after marriage, This she did by staying one night-ALL ALONE** in a dugout but cozy little place I had dug in a south side hill. Walls were mostly made of logs and poles and the roof was dirt. I had, though, provided an honest to goodness very prominent out door "Bath Room" made entirely of brand new lumber. No roof but I figured that she would likely have a parasol. Seems now that it the bath room - was a heck of a lot of work for just one night's possibilities but I did not mind it then. Maybe there was really some reason for the "Old Timer" calling us "Tenderfeet". From that southwest hill we could see a lot of lights at night. Fred Hiningers, Ray Haight's, Ernest Haight's, Mrs. Thompson, (Mrs. Ernest Haight's mother). Andrew Anderson's, George Evans, Fred Baralou, Granvile Clary, the two Browns ( preacher and Windy), Tierneys, and Kurtses were those close at hand with a whole lot of them that were unknown. The 160 A. homestead law caused, in addition to some things not inspiring, a lot of lights. As the number of lights began to diminish Uncle Sam raised the "Ante" first to 320 A. and later to 640 A. that one could homestead. Both were to late to do the most amount of good. There was and is a good view of the Mts. From that ridge to. At that time very little plowed land was visible from that spot. I recall looking west from there, toward Salt Creek area where the only plowed land we could see was a potato patch on the Tierney place and some cultivated ground on the Fred Shell claim and saying to Mable - "I will bet you we will see a lot of farming done over that way some day". We have.
Either because the financial future had a dismal aspect or because of her deep interest in her profession- Ex School Ma'am Mable (My Wife) was not contented to continue an Ex. She began teaching and kept it up whenever she could and whenever babies did not interfere. Her first school was on the Henry Wheeler - Now Stanslie )) * place. She taught the second term of school held in a log schoolhouse in the later Balky Horse District. She also taught there many years later when our son Neil attended, She taught, Salt Creek, up at Dealaneys, in some down a half mile from here near the Hininger corner. She taught in Winifred seven or so miles N. E. from here and she taught at home. Except when after Neil (our youngest son) was big ennui to drive the car to Balky Horse, and when she taught at Delaenys, and in Winfred, - she traveled horseback and was home for the usual housework.
It was a shame that so completely dedicated teacher was ever talked out of the classroom and into a kitchen. Farm income was decidedly scanty and I do not see how we would have lived without the admittedly low pay she got. I believe she taught one nine-month term for less than a total pay of $300.
Our first means of transportation was walking or bumming rides with neighbors, friends, or relatives. We made a horse trade with Ernest and got one that we could ride, which we did both single and double. When I got those colts so they could be hitched we for awhile rode on a stone boat. (Boards nailed across top poles made to drag around to loadstones on easily. ) Later we acquired an iron wheeled wagon from "Uncle Monty" (Montgomery and Ward ) but no box. In place of a box we conjured up some poles that answered the purpose. A brand new Peter Shuttler wagon came next and it is yet a good wagon. I still have it. Next we got hold of a sort of a buggy to get around in. Along about 1917, Burl, who was then staying with us, and I traded 40 A. of land we jointly owned to Ray for a new Model "T" Ford car. (We thought we had something and we did). Built a garage for it after sagely reasoning the cars would get bigger and acting accordingly by building it higher, but not longer. Of all the various cars we have had the Ford Model "A" has best filled the bill.
At first there were absolutely no roads, only trails, and with gates in the many fences. The more homesteaders, the more fences, the more gates.
The first wheat to be marketed in Suffolk (was Swope ) was from the Parker and Montgomery place and was hauled in by Walter Wooten. He came via the Bar-L ranch on Salt Creek, forded Salt Creek half way between the Bar-L, and the Tierney place (Knudsons now came up the coulee on our place one half mile south of the present road, up over the Fleming bench, and out to the Dog Creek trail (Lewistown Winifred road ) near where Balke Dawson now lives. (A mile or so south of Suffolk). The elevator was not quite in shape to take grain the day he arrived so he camped overnight and unloaded the next day. The wheat was all in sacks as was the way of handling all grain in those days. A Mr. Quaintance hauled wheat from Bear Springs on the west side of the Judith River crossing that stream at the Brooks place and on to the elevator at Hilger. (Must have been thirty to forty miles) . He stopped at the Montgomery ranch where I was working and I helped him grease his wagons. (Remove the wheels and smear Axle grease on the axle and re-place the wheels ). He had two wagons each drawn by four horses. They had "doubled up" that is used eight horses on each wagon taking them one at a time - to the top after crossing the Judith river. (This hill is some three or four miles long and STEEP . roads were slow in being "laid out" and slower in getting work done on them. An early trail to Winifred was across the Gaylan place and out by Wells coulee. Our first route to Suffolk from here was up Cottonwood creek to the stage trail that went through the gap and took a left on it to Swope or now Suffolk.
Ray Haight, who homesteaded just east of me a mile or so early took the bull by the horns and circulated and presented the petition for our present road. It followed much of its present course except that it kept on the west side of Dog Creek and crossed the present schoolhouse.
I got my idea from my first homestead cabin from my brother Ray's rock homestead house. It was sort of a half-and-half affair built some 60 rods southeast of the "Twin Gates". (Those gates are around a half-mile west of my present home on the road to Knudson's. A gate on the south and one directly across the road on the north). Dug a hole in the hill above the present reservoir that provided drinking water. Darned thing caved in and still has buried my tin cup, about the only dish I had at the time. My only furniture was a bed-and that was made of pine boughs. It was not long until I built the cabin on the hill where we doubled up. Added a sod hen house (still well remember how tickled we were when we got our first egg), a bathroom and a pole fastened to the tops of a couple of posts which was our barn. It served the purpose all right but sometimes had a lot of trouble finding the horses to put in it. Not much around in the way of fences and plenty of open range. No feed to keep the saddle horse up to ride for the horses-so lots and lots of walking after the workhorses. Frequently it would be nearly noon before I could find them. Once it was three p.m. and they were on Salt Creek just below the present bridge over Salt Creek at the Knudson place. (M. Tierney place then and now, 1958, is the L.C. Knudson place). They were grazing just below the now Knudson Bridge. These and other accounts may sound as if we endured a lot of misery. It was not so. Firstly all these conditions did not last long and secondly it did not seem like
misery and was not.
We traded Fred Hininger 40 acres (Mable's) for the west 25 acres of his 40A. upon said 25 A. are is where our buildings now stand. We moved the cabin down from the top of the hill to where our present home is in 1914-the fall. With Orrin Fordyce's help I had previously built a sod barn located around half way between the present well and the present hog house. (Said sod barn served as a barn for about 25 years). These two buildings were the beginning of the homestead. The cabin was located right in front of the barn door and less then 20 feet from it. We lived there that winter while we were building the "house" which was and is, the main part of it, the house located just west of the groves of trees, west of our present house. (Our hired help lives in this house now-1958). When we built it in 1914 it was then situated on the spot where the little lawn is, just south of the dining room in our present house. When we built in 1914 we were going to make it a one story affair but Fred Bareslow talked us into a second story and we have never been sorry. (Fred Bareslow was a neighbor homesteader who lived where Leonard Brooks now lives some mile or two N.E. of our place). Both Fred Bareslow and my brother Burl J. Haight (b. 1888) helped a lot getting it built. With some small additions we lived in that house a long time - (Around thirty years).
When we had little need for more room we took on our present three decker in which we rattle around like a couple of dried peas - (A large part of the present house was made by moving my brother Ray Haights house from a mile or so east to its present location.) And by spending several years of work and some nine or ten thousand dollars to put it in its present condition) (A large part of Rays house was made from lumber the Haight Bro's bought from the School Dist and was formerly a Lewistown school building.)
It has however been easier to Modernize. In the foundation of this present house is a brick made by my grandfather Cassiday, (Mother's - Father) for a house he built near Montezuma, Powsheik county Iowa at or about Civil War time - 1860 or thereabouts. Think I am repeating. Have no copy at hand of the earlier written part of this - Herbert Haight History I am writing.
After the first well caved in I, and we, carried water from Cotton Wood Spring. (Almost a half mile north of where we lived. It seemed like ten miles for it was hilly between the spring and our house.) Next came a barrel on a stone boat and then two barrels in a wagon. (The stone boat was two poles with boards across with a barrel setting on the boards. We used a team or a horse to draw the stone boat.) Come to think of it I guess it was nearly a mile we carried water for a time - by hand - before we got the barrels. After we moved down from the top of the hill to where the buildings now are, I, with the help of Gus Shubert (A neighbor to the west - a bachelor - and still living - 1958) dug a well some 50 feet deep in the coulee - south - and above the present hog house. Not much water but enough for a real scare. Mrs. Sam Hamilton (Neighbors two three miles S.W. of our place) with her little daughter Florence (Now 1958 is Mrs. Jo Yaeger of Glenngary Mont.) stopped to visit. We used a windlass for a pump hence the well was not covered. In the middle of the afternoon Henry Brooks came out to the field to tell me that the little girl, Florence, had become lost. (Henry Brooks lived some eight or so miles west on the Judith river.) When I got in there were several neighbors hunting for her. I was just getting ready to go down in this well and I was sure fish her out of the water, when Jimmy Andrews showed up with her. (Jimmy was another homesteader and neighbor some four or so miles west of here) He had found her asleep in
some brush over on the first place east of ours - the Fred Hininger place. Later we found tracks where she had started rolling a round rock - the only way a rock would roll - down hill.
There have been many other wells at other times and at other places but none I remember as well as this well which gave me such a scare.
Our first live stock, in addition to the colts mentioned above were five heifers also purchased from Vanek Brothers at Brooks. We Haight's bought numerous cattle and horses from Vaneks and I think without exception gave a note in return which they always took willingly. Eventually they always got their money. In 1914 there was still a lot of unfenced (although not much unclaimed) land which was still open range. Only fences I had was a sort stretch put up to keep stock out of the ten acres of wheat I had hired plowed and seeded in the fall of 1915. No pasture so I turned the heifers out on the range and figured to watch them till they got settled down. Might have worked too but I took time off to sleep and the very first night they pulled out. Next morning I took off too and caught up with them --- contentedly chewing their cuds on the Vanek ranch at Brooks. Not all cattle that moved, or got moved, around were always so easily located. Rustlers were a
problem, harassing, and numerous. Some of the slickest operated from headquarters only a few miles away. Some closer even than that. Spent two weeks hunting an unbranded bull we had and found him fenced up in a box canyon at the mouth of Plum Creek. In the same enclosure were 17 head of P N cows with their brands very plainly worked over into other brands. My unbranded bull by this time had a neatly done hair plucked hip brand. One of the men involved was the brother-in-law of a neighbor who lived about a mile away and ate supper there the night he helped to abscond with the bull. (It should be said here that both the neighbor and the brother-in-law have long ago departed from Salt Creek.)
An annoying procedure of the expectant cattle thief was to keep stuff stirred up and moved around. One night he maybe would move a bunch from coulee No 1 over into coulee No 2 and then bring back some others from No 2 to No 1, He was careful never to get in a spot where any wrong doing could be tied to him even if he had stolen stuff really in his possession he was careful to admit neither the stealing nor the possession. By and by some one maybe got some cheap dressed beef. In the case of cows they might be let run and raise calves. Well-reworked brands, after they were well healed over, would get by stock inspectors and get marketed in the regular way. It was extremely hard to get the right kind of evidence. Losses were numerous but convictions were few. They even assembled over 40 head on Three Mile, west of here, and drove them out in broad day light on a trip that took them eventually clear up on Flatwillow Creek and got away with it, for the time being. We finally sent two of them to Deer Lodge. I have laid out with the cattle at nights but with no results other than a cold the next day. They had wave of fighting back in addition to keeping your cattle scattered. Long after it was done I was told of a couple of them who slit the hide of a unbranded heifer, inserted a quarter, and turn her with my bunch which by that time were running in a pasture, If I claimed her and put on my brand instead of selling her as a stray I could now be leading revolts over in the Deer Lodge Retreat.
As cowboys got cars and with the passage of the Volstead Act a lot of the careless - with -a - rope gentry began to explore other fields in which late night horseback ridding was involved. The second still to be found and destroyed by Federal agents in Fergus County was on the Lockwood place and less than a half mile from our land.
Our first telephone was a three-part line running between Ernest's, Ray's and us. For a line we used the barbed wire of the fences. Set up poles at the gates and went over them with baling wire that we picked up at the Winifred "Livery Barn" (That institution bought and sold, broke, fed, and rented horses and for a time did a lot of business.) In 1919, encouraged and AIDED by Father and Mother we increased our coverage and built a honest to goodness two wire line with a switch at Suffolk by which we could be connected with the Bell system, which out here is called the mountain states. The barbed wire line was mighty hand and worked well too except when some old cow got involved. We used no insulators where the wires were fastened to the posts and it could short our if it got wet or icy. Some time after the line in to Suffolk we extended it to the west as far as Burls over on Paradise Heights and south to the Heldt, Sam Hamilton and the Bar-L ranches. Mrs. Clow got busy and promoted a line over in that area which later on was connected with ours by a switch at Sam Hamilton's. Theirs was a one-wire line. Because two wires are much more difficult to keep up and going than one wire ours also was cut back to one wire. We had been charging rent of the patrons as we owned all the equipment and at least theoretically, kept it going. As there got to be more and more "charging" and less and less paying the up keep slowed down too, or vice versa with the result that we donated the use of the line to the community. In the fifties the community decided it wanted still better service and bought materials and with donated labor built a new two-wire system serving some two dozen phones all hooked one-one circuit. This again, on the part of some, left something to be desired with the result that several joined up with the dial system (nearly 200 phones) that was installed in the north and of the county in 1958. This house has of this date three phones, one on the dial system, one on the community line and a private line between the employee house and ours. Our road got a shot of W. P. A. gravel in the thirties and R. E. A. came in the late forties, think it was 47. Of course we have radio, and some have T.V. (A school bus from Winifred started making this route today) Now that we have dial phones it could seem there is nothing else to want. Wrong assumption. Next thing in a mail route, unless so many get killed off in the fight over the project that there is no one left to carry mail to. In past years there has been very little discussion and neighborhood quarreling in the community. It would be a good present and future procedure.
Prices we have paid for land we have bough and dates we have acquired it are as follows.
1.) My homestead filed on in 1913.
2.) Mable's " " " ".
3.) W. K. Turner place @ $13.50 per acre
4.) R. A. Brown 160 @ $22.60 per acre
5.) Of Ike Tyson the Cottonwood 160 @ $23.00 per. Too high at the time but on account of the water the best buy we ever made. Sold E. W. two acres with the spring on it for $80.00 per acre.
6.) I had sold Burl and 80 of the R. A. Brown land and he had "scripted" and additional 40. We had bought the Boshen place which we traded to Burl for his land here. Anyway that is the way I remember it although my records tells a different story. Plenty of room on the back of this for Burl to set the record straight.
7.) 320 acres of the Salt Creek pasture bought of the about to go ker-flunk old Bank of Fergus County for $10.00 per acre. This was a contract deal. The bank later offered to and did settle for 50 cents on the dollar for cash. And it was not because I was not keeping up the payments either.
8.) Galyan 320 @ $10.00 per
9.) Miss Wetmore 160 @ 5.00 per
10.) Earl Irwin 480 in 1948 @ $8.00 per (one half for the land and half for the water)
11.) 680 acres from Ray Haight in 1943 for $3000.00
12.) 333 acres from Fred Hininger for about $900.00
13.) In 1931 bought the Malloy 160 of the Hilger bank for $240.00 later sold 120 acres of the same to Frank Clow @ $1.00 per acre. I got an abstract, he did not.
14.) A.S.C. office shows present acreage 3590. I believe the abstracts show more. Do not quite see how but some way we got it all paid for (total nearly $30,000.00).
While still a student ? in college a classmate, Floyd Jardine (now living at 11696 Plateau Dr., Los Altos, California about seven miles south of Burls Palo Alto) and I filed on homesteads in the San Louis Valley some six or eight miles north east of Center, Colorado. Some one had been around before because there was a good flowing artesian well on one of the place. Had to dig only 50-80 feet to get such a well. The valley was so well equipped with water that in places it had begun to "sour" the ground and caused it to go to what is called "seep". We were located in such a spot but were lured there by I discovering the little known fact that it was open to entry, 2, by an offer of friend John J. Sylvester to finance the building of cabins etc. for a half interest in the proved up claims, and 3 by the hope and belief that a drainage ditch was going to be dug that would rehabilitate the area. We got the cabins built and proceeded to establish residence by living in them. Our equipment was decidedly scantly. Only thins I recall are a small pot bellied stove and a two gallon water jug. Reason for that is that on what I still believe has the most uncomfortably fold night I ever was spending I finally thought of building a fire, heating water, filling that jug, and the wrapping myself around it. I did not "wrap" very successfully then, either. Cannot now refigure out why I did not try warming up that cabin via that stove. Could have been lack of fuel and could have been it would have been too much like trying the heat up all outdoors. Not sure I had a door. For a window had just a hole where I intended to put one. In the absence of a keyhole say with which to cut a stovepipe hole in the roof I ran the stovepipe out this to be window. Having things in what we thought was hunk dory shape and having established residence at least to our own satisfaction, we went back to college contemplating mean while the nice little was we were eventually going to get out claims. Then like a bolt form the blue came a summons from the U.S. land office at Del Norte notifying us to appear and defend ourselves. A saloon keeper from that town had got the idea that he also would like to take a change on owning that nice flat piece of land with the fine artesian well. He also had the idea, and said it right our, that we were not honest to goodness homesteaders, that we had no intention of living on the land otherwise we would not have run the stove pipe out of the window that we were just a couple of Bozo's trying to out one over on Uncle Sam. In fact he ever suggested we had some deal on with one John Sylvester and that we would fold our tents and steal away in the night, like the Arabs, as soon as it became financially profitable for us to do so. That saloonkeeper was wrong about that stealing away in the night business. For we would not have waited nearly that long if the heal had closed up earlier in the day. Anyway the other fellow got the land and the drainage ditch was dug, and I am told the project (flat piece of land we wanted) is now a really going farm. Never learned for sure but I suspect that, the liquid refreshment man, was not a permanent fixture either. The Sangre De Christo mountain range on the east side of that valley is the finest sight I have ever seen. The Mission Range in the Flathead country in N.W. Montana is, I believer, its closest competitor. Colorado has, I think, the most, the best, the biggest mountains of any state in this U.S. A. I have walked to the top of Pikes Peak may times and have driven a car to the top once. I believe the driving was harder on the car than the walking was on me.
One summer I drove stage horses from Woodland Park which is at the foot of the peak on the northwest to the summer resort at Manitou Park. Colorado College, in my time, had fewer buildings and students than now. When I hit the campus in 1904 Palmer hall had just been completed. The only other building were Cutler Academy, Perkins Hall, Coburn Library, Hagerman Hall, the boys dormitory, Ticknor and McGregor Halls for the girls. What is not Monument Valley Park was then "The Jungle" and that is what it really was too. A good thing the "Jungle" cannot talk. Along about 1910 I wrote a history of the college for the "Tiger" college paper, I though_________________ (cut off Sue 2001).
Since this area was practically all settled up by homesteaders and under the 160 acre per homestead law there were once a lot of people here. Something like half of them from the dwindling mines at Kendall, Maiden, and Gilt Edge. The other half was made up of people of many former occupations and from many places. The fact that so many lacked farm experience is often pointed to as the reason for so many failures. It sometimes was a contributing factor and, in some cases, the real cause but there were other reasons more fundament why so many did not make things go. No matter what ones back ground nor how much he knew about farming he almost certainly found that it did not apply here. No one knew for sure what this land would and would not do, especially that up and away from the creek bed bottoms, for the very good reason that there was no existing knowledge about it. A major and often times first (no matter how much he knew or did not know about farming) consideration of the land seeker was level land that therefore could be plowed. It was not know then that some of the poorest land in the county is the level-est. Information about soils was not available even to those who realized its importance. One big first mistake made by every one was to try to raise a crop on the some ground every year. We did not know what crops would and would not grow. Seed corn was brought from the eastern corn belt. In short we tried to farm here as we had in areas of mare rainfall from which most had come. We even went one better and tried "stubbling in" or raising tow crops with one plowing. it was not the "miners and milliners, the bankers and bakers" who took the lead in that direction either.
The 160 limit to a homestead was way, way too small. Increases later allowed were still too small and came too late to help much anyway. Just about everyone lacked capital many lacked even the money to get enough food for the family. So they stick it our way for the 14 months it took until one could "commute", that is take a short cut and by paying $1.25 per acre get title to the land without waiting the regular five years. We probably got the $1.25 per acre somehow because he was going to (and did) mortgage the place and get a loan. Said loans wee customarily made at a interest rate of at least 10 % with usually an extra commission of 8% for the local representative of the loan company. The abstract of our place shows mortgages that drew 18% interest. No farming anywhere could stand such interest rates. The loan companies were sticking their necks out just as far as the homesteaders. They too were short on information about what could and could not be done with and in the country, no matter what the background of the homeseeker.