USA > Idaho > An illustrated history of the state of Idaho, containing a history of the state of Idaho from the earliest period of its discovery to the present time, together with glimpses of its auspicious future; illustrations and biographical mention of many pioneers and prominent citizens of to-day > Part 53
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Mr. York, the subject proper of this brief bio- graphical outline, was the second of a family of three children. He was educated in the public
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schools, was taken by his parents to New Hamp- shire, in their change of residence to that state in 1871, and to Evart, Michigan, in 1879. In 1881 Mr. York entered the Weekly Review office, at Evart, to work in the capacity of printer's "devil," and in the spring of 1883 left for Tel- luride, Colorado, where he was employed at the printer's trade. From the fall of 1884 to the spring of 1889 he was in North Dakota. Next he returned to Colorado and then proceeded to Salt Lake City, arriving there in the fall, and there he engaged in work on the Salt Lake Trib- une, as "Slug 14," until March, 1890, at which time he severed his connection with that estab- lishment to accept the foremanship of the Ava- lanche office, of which he became the proprietor in 1894.
As a newspaper man and editor Mr. York has considerable ability and enterprise. In January, 1894, he published, in book form, a Historical. Descriptive and Commercial Directory of Owy- hee County, finely illustrated, which reflects great credit on his ability and enterprising spirit. The work has been favorably received.
Mr. York was happily married, at Weiser, Ida- ho, September, 1893, to Miss Catharine Brady, and they have three children. Mr. York is an active member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and in his political principles he is a "silver" Republican.
R. W. BERRY.
A leading representative of the commercial in- terests of Hailey is R. W. Berry, the well known proprietor of a hardware store. He is an enter- prising and progressive business man, whose well directed efforts, sound judgment and capa- ble management insure him success, and to-day he is numbered among the substantial and valued citizens of Blaine county. A native of Maine, he was born in Augusta, on the 25th of March, 1842, and is of Scotch lineage. His father, Arthur W. Berry, was born in Maine and married Miss Lucretia Jane Marble, also a native of the Pine Tree state. The father was for many years engaged in journalistic work as the publisher of the Gospel Banner. He died at the age of thirty- two years, leaving a widow and one son, the sub- ject of this review. The mother lived to be fifty- seven years of age, and died in Boise. After the
death of Mr. Berry she married again and with her second husband removed to California, locat- ing in Yuba county in 1857.
In the public schools of his native state, R. W. Berry acquired his education, and when fifteen years of age began to earn his own living. He accompanied his mother to California. At- tracted by the discovery of gold, he went to Washoe, Nevada, where he engaged in prospect- ing and mining. He also entered land from the government and followed farming for a time, but subsequently abandoned that occupation and returned to San Francisco, where he accepted a clerkship in the Washington market, where he was employed for four years. In the fall of 1864 he went to Portland, Oregon, and the following spring made his way to the Oro Fino mines, fol- lowing placer mining there and meeting with satisfactory success in his undertakings. In the fall of 1865 he sold his claim for one thousand dollars and with a party crossed on the Lolo trail to Helena, Montana, and thence to Fort Benton, where he took a Mackinaw and pro- ceeded down the Missouri river to St. Joseph. From that point he retraced his steps to his old Maine home, and spent four years in his native state. In 1869 Mr. Berry became a resi- dent of Boise, Idaho, where for several years he acceptably filled the office of assistant assessor of internal revenue. He was also engaged in cattle raising and owned as high as one thousand head at a time. In the spring of 1881 he received the appointment of collector of internal revenue from President Garfield, and was also engaged in the drug business at Boise for six years, as a member of the firm of W. H. Nye & Company.
In 1886 Mr. Berry came to Hailey. The town was then at the height of its prosperity, silver bringing a high price, and the mines producing largely. He purchased an interest in the hard- ware firm of Coffin & Company, and the follow- ing year the business was incorporated, the prin- cipal incorporators being E. C. Coffin and R. W. Berry. Two years later a destructive fire swept over the town and with many others the com- pany lost heavily. They carried insurance to the amount of thirty thousand and five hundred dol- lars, but their losses above that were estimated at sixty thousand dollars. Four blocks of the enterprising little city were swept away by the
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fiery element, and many merchants were thus badly crippled financially. Almost immediately, however, a new business center rose phoenix-like from the ashes. Hardly had the smoke cleared away when Coffin & Company, on the site of their old store, began the erection of a good building, thirty-five by one hundred and twenty feet, refitted it with a well selected stock of hard- ware, and in the fall of the same year Mr. Berry bought out the other members of the corpora- tion and became the sole owner of the business, which he has since successfully conducted. He keeps a large general stock of hardware and min- ing supplies, and now enjoys a liberal patronage which comes to him not only from Hailey, but also throughout the surrounding country. His pleasant manner, his courteous treatment of his patrons, and his honorable dealing have secured
to him a large trade, and he justly merits his prosperity.
In 1875 Mr. Berry was married and has two daughters. The elder, Mary, is a stenographer for the civil-service commission at Washington, D. C .; and Louise, a graduate of the State Nor- mal School at New Paltz, New York, is now a successful teacher in Ulster county, that state. In 1863 Mr. Berry was made a Mason in San Francisco Lodge, No. 1, F. & A. M., in Califor- nia; has held various offices in the order, and is now affiliated with Boise Lodge, No. 2. In politics he has always been a Republican, but since 1896 has supported the silver wing of the party. He ranks very high as an honorable and successful business man, and well deserves men- tion among the representative citizens of his adopted state.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE PAYETTE VALLEY-ITS TOWNS, WATER, WEATHER, SOIL, PRODUCTS, RESOURCES AND VARIED ATTRACTIONS.
F OR the following graphic and ably written article in regard to the attractions of the Payette valley we are indebted to a sou- venir edition of the Payette Independent issued in March, 1898:
The Payette valley lies in the southwestern part of Idaho, with its upper and narrow end extending far back into pine-clad moun- tains and its lower flaring into broad, fer- tile fields, terminating at the banks of the Snake river, just across whose waters rise the mountain peaks of Oregon. Its length is upward of forty miles, its width varying from two miles at the upper point to eight where it merges into the larger delta of the Snake. On its northern side rise foothills which succeed each other with in- creasing height until they are lost in the great chain of the Seven Devils mountains; on the south a long, low line of hills divides it from its sister valley, the Boise; and through it from end to end the Payette river, broad, deep, perennial, threads its way around innumerable islands. At its mouth, its gateway and outlet, within half a mile of the confluence of the Snake and Payette rivers, is the flourishing town of Payette; midway in its length, on its mesa or bench lands, is New Plymouth, a new community established on the co-operative principle; still farther up the valley is Falk's Store, which in an early day was one of the most widely known stage stations in the state and an outfitting point for cattlemen of a large adjacent territory; and at its upper end, where the waters of the Payette, cold and clear, come tumbling out of a deep canyon, Emmett, a thrifty village, stands sentinel.
Such is a brief outline of the district to which we have come to pay tribute. Its area is not large, but the stuff it is made of is "pay dirt." Up to the time of the building of the Oregon Short Line Railway, a link in the Union Pacific system, the Payette valley lay, as did the greater part of the arid northwest, a desert which was covered with sage brush, and over which the coyote chased the jack rabbit for his daily meat. A few men, more hardy and more enterprising than their fellows, had located homes along the water courses, but they had done so with no other expectation than spending their lives in the picket
line of pioneers. Irrigation was then in its swad- dling clothes in the northwest. The general opinion of it then, as it is now to a less extent, was that it was a fad, a game to play at, but as a utilitarian proposition-nil. But the railroad drew people in its wake, who found a climate so genial that they cast about them for some occu- pation that would yield a livelihood, so that they might stay. Many embarked in the live-stock industry, some sought the great forests of pine, fir and tamarack toward the headwaters of the Payette, rafting logs to its mouth, and some, set- tling on the lower lands, easy to water, com- menced tilling the soil. To these latter and to the few who preceded them in the same work is due the growth of the tree of knowledge. Through them the possibilities of production of the valley's seventy-five thousand acres has been made known, and from that time the certainty of future prosperity was made as sure as the coming of the seasons is sure. It was these men who first planted fruit trees. They were set out for home orchards and home consumption, with little thought or expectation of their being utilized for anything else. But when they reached maturity their enormous yields and the excellence of the quality of the fruit opened a new field for en- deavor. Commercial orchards were planted. They came to fruitfulness and the future great industry of the valley was established. From this small beginning, although it was less than a decade ago, there are now in the valley upward of twenty-five hundred acres in tree fruits, five hundred acres in berries, and an annual acreage in melons in excess of two hundred and fifty.
The climatic, soil and moisture conditions which make it possible for the Payette valley to outrival even some of the famed lotus lands of . California and to raise fruit that is second to none in any market, are unusually felicitous. The summer season is long and warm, with an aver- age of twenty-nine days of sunshine each month. Practically no rain falls from May to October, making the harvesting of all crops a matter of comparative ease. The winters are short and mild, yet with that indispensable touch of frost which gives the crispness and flavor to fruits of the temperate zone which those of California lack. The soil is of the same nature as abounds throughout the inter-mountain region,-a deep
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alluvial, rich in all mineral constituents and of a durability widely known. In an irrigation dis- trict "water is king." On it depends the success of all crops; without it land is not worth annual taxes. The Payette valley claims, and is pre- pared to make good this statement to all comers, that it has the best water supply in the irrigated northwest. To-day four-fifths of all the land in it that is susceptible of irrigation is under ditch, yet at the time when the Payette river is at its lowest stage there runs to waste fifty thou- sand miner's inches. That is an amount suffi- cient to irrigate twice the number of acres in the entire valley. Should this present natural flow ever diminish there are on the north fork of the Payette two lakes whose storage capacity can hardly be estimated in figures. They lie in deep canyons, walled on all sides with mountains that reach the line of perpetual snow, and their out- lets are through deep cuts where they may be dammed at comparatively small cost. The canals now constructed and in operation are of a sub- stantial and permanent character and supplying water with every facility for the best and most economical use of it. Second only to getting water on land is getting it off. At no place in the valley is there a lack of ample drainage chan- nels which carry all waste to one of the two riv- ers. The slope on the bench lands is an even one to the north,-the ideal exposure for fruit, -- and on the lower lands to the north and west. These lands are universally level, but susceptible of easy irrigation.
While horticulture will be a leading industry it will not be the only one. The first settlers to accumulate means, and some of them wealth, were the stock men, and they form to-day a large proportion of the population. The foot hills ad- jacent to the valley form good ranges, on which large bands of cattle and sheep roam. The ma- jority of these are rounded up and fed during the three winter months, but many get no other forage than they can "rustle for themselves" throughout the year. The quantity of hay that can be raised to the acre makes the question of winter feeding an easy one to meet. The average is five tons. Here as elsewhere the cat- tle business is being divided into small holdings, and with the exceptional advantages for feeding it has already become a most important factor in the support of many homes. The many large valleys lying to the north of the Payette afford summer ranges for sheep that are wintered in the Payette. It is estimated that eighty-five thousand sheep were fed between Emmett and Payette last winter. making a market the value of which the growers of hay acknowledge. Dairy - ing is, up to the present, almost neglected, and it affords a field for enterprise second to none.
Where by actual test one-eighth of an acre of alfalfa pasturage has kept one cow from May to September, where five tons of hay can be grown to the acre, where other forage is plenty and cheap, and where in the neighboring cities cream- ery butter is quoted at from eighteen to twenty- two cents a pound, there must be some ground for the belief that dairying will at least keep the wolf from the door.
To those who are looking for a location for general farming the Payette valley offers induce- ments. Thirty bushels of wheat, fifty of corn, forty of oats, twelve thousand pounds of pota- toes, eighteen thousand of onions are some of the yields that are certified to by the state's engineer. A guaranty of plenty of water leaves nothing lacking to good crops but muscular en- ergy and that intelligence that makes the Ameri- can people the foremost in the world.
Reference has already been made to the tim- ber belts that surround the Payette valley. Their acreage runs into the millions,-pine, tamarack. fir, spruce and mountain poplar. There is but one natural outlet for this vast amount of lum- ber. It is the Payette river. Already a company has prospected the ground and made estimates on what is needful to be done to effect rafting of logs down the river to Payette, where it con- templates the establishment of a mill that will employ two hundred men. Taking into consid- eration that each year sees the visible supply of lumber in the world decrease, the practically un- touched forests of Idaho will be a source of boundless wealth.
In and contiguous to the Payette valley are a number of mining propositions that are on a well paying basis, and many others that promise much for the future. At Pearl a half dozen prospects have developed paying quartz: in the Seven Devils, copper that assays forty-five per cent pure is being mined on the surface; in Lit- tle Willow creek, a vein of coal has been un- covered that is getting better and better in qual- ity as the shaft is sunk: and in the sands of the two rivers any one may pan out gold practically the year round in quantities that will yield a revenue of two dollars per day. In these same sands lie untold riches, when some inventive genius perfects a way to separate the precious metal from them. Many have tried and failed, others have tried with a fair measure of success. and at the present time a large capital has been invested in a still newer process which promises greater results than have yet been attained. Although the money invested in the mining in- dustry in Idaho is small compared with such states as Colorado or California, her yield of precious metals ranks with the first. Yet there is two-thirds of her territory that has never been
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prospected, except in the most desultory manner, and much of this virgin ground properly belongs in a section to which the Payette valley bears the relation of a base of supplies.
The average prospective settler, when he be- gins to think of moving to the far west, hesitates because he dreads that he will be compelled to undergo himself or subject his family to hard- ships and privations incident to pioneering. In his mind's eye he sees his home surrounded by a wilderness,-neighbors, schools, churches and the doctor far distant; no conditions whereby his children may be brought up with proper social training or where he and his wife can secure re- laxation from the labor of overcoming the virgin soil, and possibly hinself engaged in some hand- to-hand encounter with wild beasts, or wilder men. Generally he who hesitates is lost; and by reason of failure to investigate he goes to some perhaps less genial clime. The Payette valley offers nearly all the advantages and many of the luxuries of any well regulated rural community, whether it be in effete New England or the mid- dle-aged central west. Payette has a graded school, housed in a handsome brick building; in all the country districts schools are opened and taught for six to nine months; and in New Ply- mouth, Falk's Store and Emmett there are good schools with ample facilities for all scholars. The state has a compulsory-education law, buys and furnishes all books. There are two denom- inational colleges,-a Congregational and a Presbyterian-within a day's drive of any part of the valley. Each community has its churches, which represent nearly every denomination with the exception of the Mormon. They have their regular pastors and services, their church so- cieties and entertainments and their work for the relief of the sick. Social organizations, such as literary and debating societies; fraternal or- ganizations, such as the Masons, Odd Fellows, G. A. R. and others; business organizations, vil- lage-improvement societies; outing clubs, gun clubs and riding clubs form nuclei around which revolves a social life that older communities would not blush to father. The business and banking facilities are on a par with what are called modern methods. The services of physi- cians in good standing can always be secured, and medicines are easy of access.
As for the struggle with the virgin soil, there are but few places in this wide land where the settler may first stick plow in the ground in the spring, with no previous preparation, and raise that same year a good crop of almost anything he is minded to plant ; and the Payette valley is one of those places. And wild animals! The fiercest animal that roams the sage brush is the timorous coyote, and next is the reserved and
distant jack rabbit. So that here is no pioneer- ing. It is of course not the excellence of living in some large center of population, but hardship there is none; and here is refuted the maxim that "the poor ye have with ye alway." There are no poor as it is understood to be poor in any older settled country. There is no man in the Payette valley so poor but that he has a roof to cover his head, a fire at which to keep warm, and food for himself and family when meal-time comes. Nor is there any man who, if he is willing and able to work, but can lay up that little store that is so needful on the "rainy day."
The lands of the Payette valley are cheap. Practically all that can be entered under the desert or homestead acts are taken up, but the best lands under ditch can be had for from fifteen to fifty dollars per acre. Those prices are a con- trast to what is asked for fruit lands in California, Colorado or any other recognized fruit locality; and those or any other states are challenged to show a greater yield or a better quality of fruit than that from the fertile fields of the Payette. The people of this section make no claim to a super-excellence or to an absence of disadvan- tages. It is not set forth that this is a Garden of Eden, a bower of the Fountain of Youth, or a land flowing with milk and honey, where the peo - ple, like the lilies of the field, toil not nor spin. There are those drawbacks always incident to the infant days of making a commonwealth. There are bad, muddy roads in winter and bad dusty ones in summer, transportation charges are higli, and neither DeWolfe Hopper or Miss S. Bern- hardt play at Payette's opera house, but there is no disadvantage that will not yield to time, and a short time at that. This is a place where ener- getic and intelligent men and women can secure, at a nominal cost, homes that will support then in their old age in ease if not in luxury; it is where a young man, if he will exercise the same industry as he does to keep his head above water in crowded avenues of trade, can acquire a com- petence if not wealth; and where no man, if he will work, will become a patron of a public soup house.
Each year sees a large number of the Ameri- can people seek to escape the heated term by flight to the mountains or sea side. Near to the Payette valley lies a country of mountains and forests and lakes, of perpetual snows, of magnifi- cent panoramas, of little sequestered valleys of indescribable charm, and of grand, deep canyons and precipitous mountains of granite, that offer such delights for the lover of nature and such possibilities to the adventurous traveler as no land excels. There, too, the hunter may find some of the remaining few of those vanishing species -the moose, the elk, the mountain sheep, the
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caribou and the fierce grizzly. The seeker of health may there locate himself at any altitude in an atmosphere redolent of the pines and fairly crackling with vigor, and on every side he will find living examples of the beneficence of nature to man.
Of the family of states that forms the empire of the northwest, Idaho is the Cinderella,-the least known and the most fair,-and her fore- most foot is slippered by the Payette valley and its surroundings. Even now the tread of the fairy prince who is to lead her to wealth and prosperity is heard. Now is the time to enroll in her train of courtiers.
PAYETTE.
Since the time, in 1836, when Marcus Whit- man demonstrated that it was possible to travel from the Missouri river to Puget sound on wheels, the Payette valley has lain in the direct route of travel to the northwest. But it was not until the building of the railroad, in 1884, that it was looked upon as a place for permanent settlement. In the previous year the engineers of the Union Pacific surveying the line through, located a bridge over the Snake at the mouth of the Payette valley, and at that time A. B. and F. C. Moss and others, under contract to de- liver a quarter million of ties, camped near the junction of the Payette and Snake on the site of the present town of Payette. That marked its birth. In July of that year the Moss brothers erected the first store building, and settlers be- gan coming in. The year 1884 saw the com- pletion of the railroad as far as Huntington; the building of the first school-house in the infant town on the site of the present Baptist church; the construction of the lower Payette ditch by the farmers along its route, an irrigating canal, with extensions, twenty miles in length and carrying a volume of water of seven thousand miner's inches; and the establishment of a sawmill by W. A. Coughanour. In this year and those im- mediately following there located in Payette the greater number of those men who now form the "old guard." This ancient and honorable pha- lanx has on its rolls such names as Peter Pence, Henry Irvin, William Ireton, S. W. King. J. T. Clement, Alex. Rossi, John Ashbaugh, James Welch, W. C. Johnson, Samuel and John Apple- gate. John, Ben and William Bivens, August and Adolph Jacobsen, John Henshaw, Jacob Stroup, D. S. Lamme, A. B. and F. C. Moss and others. The growth of the town was not particularly rapid from that time on to 1890, but the popula- tion steadily increased and from a supply station for railway-construction gangs it had become a center of trade and base of supplies for a coun- try an hundred miles in extent.
The "brick age" was inaugurated in 1890. It received its main impetus from the decision of a German syndicate, which had sent representa- tivés to investigate the resources of the valley, to make extensive purchases in real estate and place money in various enterprises. The syndi- cate invested about two hundred thousand dol- lars. Its faith in the future was pinned to the valley's horticultural, timber and live-stock re- sources. A two-story brick school-house had already been erected and following on the upward trend of affairs given by the location of the syndi- cate named there went up a two-story hotel, three-story bank building, two-story Odd Fellow building, the large establishments of the Moss, Payette Valley and Lamme mercantile companies and several large residences, all of brick, as well as a number of large frame buildings.
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