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 54
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Payette was incorporated as a village in 1891. In 1891 the first car load of fruit was shipped. To-day Payette has a population of one thousand. In speaking of its future, A. B. Moss, one of the original pioneers, says: "I traveled in Col- orado in 1866, when it was less advanced than Idaho is to-day. Colorado is now a rich and populous state, yet it has never had any more ad- vantages to offer than has Idaho and particularly the Payette valley. Therefore I look to see this valley support a population of fifty thousand people; I look to see a town within its borders of ten thousand people inside of fifteen years; I look to see a railroad running the length of it inside of ten years; and I look to see its people prosperous and happy. This may happen much sooner than the time I state, but I do not think my time will be overrun."
NEW PLYMOUTH.
New Plymouth is the youngest of the com- munities in the Payette valley, and is the result of the first organized effort to secure immigra- tion. In the year 1893 the Payette Valley Irri- gation & Water Power Company completed the construction of an irrigation canal forty miles in length on the bench lands of the valley, and at once set about to induce settlement under it. B. P. Shawhan, in charge of this plant, in 1894 associated himself with William E. Smythe, then chairman of the executive committee of the Na- tional Irrigation Congress, for the establishment in the Payette valley of a community under the general plan of colonization, but also to include a number of novel and advantageous features. The plan formulated was based on the principle of co-operative business interests, government by the people, the prohibition of the sale of in- toxicating liquors in any manner, and social and civic equality.
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The city of Chicago was selected as the most available point at which to introduce the project, and during the summer of 1895 a committee of seven was sent to Payette to investigate the country. Its report was so favorable that in the fall of that year some thirty-five families sub- scribed to the plan offered and settled where New Plymouth now stands. During that winter -1895-6 a town site of three hundred and twenty-five acres was laid out, upward of ten miles of streets graded, thirty-six hundred shade trees planted, and a village hall and two houses for general occupancy erected. From that time to the present the growth of New Plymouth has gone steadily forward. People from all sections of the United States have become its citizens. To-day, although it is less than three years ago when its being was certainly decided upon, it has handsome residences on its streets, commodi- ous public buildings, business buildings, a con- siderable population of intelligent and industri- ous people and has passed the stage where its successful future was in doubt.
When the irrigation ditch was completed, the year before the establishment of New Plymouth, the lands which it now waters and of which New Plymouth is the logical and geographical center, were as innocent of the taming hand of man as in the days when fierce mountain torrents swept it from divide to divide. Now there are upward of three thousand acres of land under fence and annually yielding crops; there are one thousand acres of orchard, some of which will this year bear fruit; and from a desert it has become a garden.
FALK'S STORE.
Falk's Store is the oldest settlement in south- ern Idaho between the Boise basin and the Snake river. A station on the Utah, Idaho & Oregon stage line was first located there, and around it sprang up an outfitting and trading post which had all those lively characteristics incident to the frontier. The first store was established about 1867, by James Toombs, on what is now called the Scott Stuart place, about a mile and a half below Falk's Store proper. A few years later he was bought out by A. J. McFarland, who successfully conducted a large business for about ten years. Nathan Falk, now a prominent mer- chant in Boise city, then established a store at the station, and from it the name was taken. In those days the place boasted a hotel, store, sa- loon, blacksmith shop and numerous smaller en- terprises, and in proof of the assertion that times were good in the seventies it is said that Falk's store alone did a business of sixty thousand dol- lars in one year. The building of the railroad. however, put an end to staging and Falk's Store has since declined.
EMMETT.
James Wardwell built a sawmill on the Payette river close at the head of the valley in the early seventies, to which logs were rafted from the great timber belts lying to the north. Around this mill lumbermen and merchants congregated, with the result that the town of Emmett was es- tablished. Emmett now has a population of five hundred, large mercantile establishments, fine residences and is surrounded by bearing orchards of many acres in extent. The sawing of lumber has been moved further back into the mountains, but Emmett is the distributing point for the in- dustry.
WATER.
The Payette valley has that most necessary ad . junct to an irrigated section,-water. It has the best water supply in the irrigated northwest. Not only has it a supply greatly in excess of all de- mands that are being made on it at present, but it has a supply that is more than twice sufficient to irrigate every acre of land that the valley con- tains, and should its present annual flow ever be diminished by some unforeseen disturbance of nature there are at its source two natural reser- voirs of an extended surface area and of a depth that has heretofore baffled measurement, and a mountain chain on which there are snows and ice an hundred centuries old. This fact in itself makes the Payette valley pre-eminent among the many of this section of the country. There may be others where the soil is as fertile, the climate as salubrious and the people as intelligent and industrious, but there are few whose family skele . ton is not labeled, "Fear for future water supply." Therefore the Payette valley says to any and all home-seekers that to leave it out of consideration in the making of permanent homes is to be blind to self-interest.
During the year 1896 the state engineer of Idaho, F. J. Mills, made measurements of the flow of water in all the rivers in the state front which water was diverted for irrigating purposes. The tables of figures he has compiled are too cumbersome for reproduction here, although they may be obtained from him on request; but his general statement as to the Payette's water sup- ply is the best of evidence. He says:
"The gauging station on this stream is at the wagon bridge near the town of Payette not far from the mouth of the stream and below all di- verting canals. As the flow of this river is so much greater at all times than any possible de- mands upon it by any existing or projected ca- nals, this station answers all purposes as well as one located above the canals. The quantity of water carried at all seasons of the year hy the Payette is more than sufficient for the irrigation of all the agricultural land in the valley, and
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therefore there need be little fear of any scarcity of water. The Payette lakes offer natural reser- voir sites, but it is doubtful if it will be necessary to make use of them, certainly not for many years, and never unless a larger part of the flow of the Payette be taken out of its own drainage area for use elsewhere."
The Payette lakes, to which the engineer re- fers, lie on the north fork of the Payette, distant about one hundred and forty miles. Their com- bined surface area is about fifty square miles. The deepest sounding ever made in the lower lake was two thousand and five hundred feet, which failed to reach bottom, so that it is im- possible to compute the number of gallons of water it contains. They lie in deep, steep-sided ravines and their outlets dash over rocky bot- toms through walled canyons. The cost of dam- ming them so as to raise their surfaces many feet will be, if it should ever become necessary, light compared with the enormous expenditures of time and money to conserve almost an in- finitesimal amount of these waters in the states of California, Colorada and New Mexico. The middle fork of the Payette rises in eternal glaciers in the Sawtooth mountains. Here is another fruitful source of water supply. Just at the time when other accumulations of water begin to ebb the snow and ice here are melting most rapidly. The south fork of the river drains a large area and contributes no little to the general fund of moisture. If you want to irrigate, the Payette valley can furnish you with water.
Water for drinking is found at depths varying from twenty to sixty feet and is universally free from impurities and any trace of alkali.
WEATHER.
The state of Idaho has as many varieties of climate as there are styles in feminine headgear. On the exposed mountain peaks and in high alti- tudes old Boreas holds frozen court the greater part of the year, while on the lower levels and in the sheltered valleys winter is little more than a name. One of these latter is the Payette. Its altitude is two thousand and two hundred feet, and it stands open-mouthed to the warm winds from the Japan current that come sweeping up the deltas of the Columbia and Snake. Its latitude is the same as that of southern France and Italy, and it is protected from the fierce colds that originate in the region of Montana by the continental divide. The winter season usually lasts about three months, with varying degrees of cold. Taking one winter with another the mean average temperature is but little below the freezing point. The thermometer generally sinks to zero for not to exceed three or four nights during the season. The lowest point it has ever
reached since the establishment of a voluntary observer's station in Payette, seven years ago, is twelve degrees below zero. The ground sel- dom freezes to a depth greater than six inches.
The summer season approaches the tropical as far as the thermometer's record is concerned. It is no unusual thing for the one hundred degree mark to be hovered around for weeks at a time, but there the resemblance to the tropics ends. There is no depressing humidity, nor hot, sultry nights. The average difference of thermometer readings between day and night is, for the summer months, thirty- five degrees, and the rarity and dryness of the air so tempers the rays of the sun that no bad effects are ever experienced. At the same time, when in Chicago and other eastern cities, with the thermometer standing at about ninety degrees, people and horses have been dying of sun-stroke by the dozens, the ther - mometers in the Payette valley have registered as high as one hundred and fifteen, with men and animals working under its mid-day rays practical- ly oblivious of their heat. A case of hydrophobia has never been known in the state of Idaho.
The dry season lasts from about the first of May until the first of October. During this time the atmosphere is practically devoid of humidity and days of uninterrupted sunshine succeed each other, furnishing, in connection with the abun- dant water supply of the valley, the most favor- able conditions for plant life and growth. The periods of rain are in the fall and spring, when a considerable volume falls. Snow sometimes suc- ceeds during the winter months, but sleighing of more than two weeks' duration seldom occurs. What makes the coldest of weather the easier to endure is the fact that the colder it gets, the less the wind blows, and if the thermometer hovers at the zero point the faintest breath of a breeze cannot be detected. Such conditions produce a climate that is beneficial, and in many cases cura- tive to pulmonary complaints, catarrhal troubles, malarial diseases and many other ills that flesh is heir to. In other words the climate is health- ful and stimulating, and there are many persons living in the Payette valley to-day, vigorous and robust, who left former homes with a doctor's prophecy hanging over them that life for theni was short.
SOIL.
The soil of the Payette valley is an alluvial de- posit of a volcanic nature, varying in weight and depth in different places. Surrounding the town of Payette, including those lands adjacent to the mouth of the Payette river, the bottom lands of the Snake, and an area containing about one thousand and five hundred acres, which is known
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as the Washoe flat, the soil borders on a sandy loam. It assimilates irrigation waters with great ease, and is deep and friable.
On the bench lands about New Plymouth there is more of a clay consistency. It makes a soil less friable when first cultivated than the more sandy, but competent judges are of the belief that it will be longer lived. In the upper end of the valley there is a mixture of sand, clay and bottom lands.
The statement is made here without fear of successful contradiction that there is no hard pan or gumbo land in the Payette valley; and no alkali except along the river bottoms, which form a most insignificant part of the total acre- age. The soils are all rich in the ingredients needful for plant life, and their longevity is in- creased in that the running of irrigating water on their surface continually refertilizes them.
FRUIT CULTURE.
An advancement in fruit-growing has already been made in the Payette valley that places it among the foremost in the state and surrounding country. It is past the experimental stage. N. A. Jacobsen shipped the first solid car of fruit- prunes-from Payette in 1891, since which time shipments have increased, until last season they amounted to twenty-five car loads of green fruit, twenty-three car loads of melons ; and by express, 3,537 crates of berries and 1,689 crates of cantaloupes. In addition there have been from time to time shipped dried fruits. There are about six hundred acres of tree fruits now in bearing, an acreage that will be doubled within the next two years, and should not even another tree be planted there will within the next five years two thousand and five hundred acres come to bearing. There is little danger, however, of planting ceasing. An average yield of such fruits as prunes and apples is a car load to an acre, and the average number of hands ordinarily required to care for it during the harvesting season is five per acre.
The above figures give an idea as to the point whither the industry is tending. The acreage of berries is large and in many instances the grow- ing of them has been more profitable than of tree fruits. The production of melons is assum- ing some magnitude, and the acreage of them the coming season will reach two hundred and fifty.
The following is a list of the fruits that are grown in the valley with profit: Apples, prunes, pears, peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, quinces, cherries, grapes, strawberries, raspber- ries, dewberries, blackberries, currants, goose- berries and ground-cherries. Plantings of wal- nuts, chestnuts, pecans, almonds and English
walnuts are also being made, and the few nut trees in bearing have shown big and profitable yields.
The right of the apple to the title of the "king of fruits" was established early in the history of man. It has successfully defended that title against all challengers ever since; and while the apple is the "king of fruits" the "king of ap- ples" grows in the Payette valley. It is of large size, fancy flavor, colored so highly that gen- erally the same apple grown by irrigation and perpetual sunshine here is unrecognizable beside the one grown in the east, and is of a weight and keeping-quality not excelled. Its early produc- tiveness is a feature of its value. One-year-old nursery stock will bear fruit the fourth year front planting, will yield a partial crop the fifth, a large crop the sixth and seventh, and from the eighth to tenth come to maturity. The number of apples that a tree will put forth is an increasing marvel as one year succeeds another. From two to three boxes-forty pounds to the box-of marketable fruit off a five-year-old tree to twenty boxes off one from seven to ten years old are ordinary figures, although the standard estimate of first-class fruit from trees aged seven and up- ward is ten boxes. Taking the latter as a basis, there being generally planted fifty trees to the acre, the average yield year in and year out may be safely placed at five hundred boxes per acre- an even car load. Last season these apples sold in the Chicago and New York markets for from two to four dollars per box, if they were Jona- thans, and from one to three dollars ut less fancy varieties.
"Incredible as it may seem, Idaho has the best show of prunes in the general exhibit" (at the World's Fair)-San Francisco Examiner, May 10, 1893.
Coming as this does from the heart of Califor- nia it is generous praise from a worsted com- petitor. The prunes in this exhibit were from southwestern Idaho, some of them from the Pay- ette valley. If the apple is the "king of fruits," the prune is the "royal consort." The state en- gineer of the state of Idaho places the average yield of prunes in Canyon county, of which the Payette valley forms a considerable part, at twen . ty-five thousand pounds to the acre. Although there are a number of prune-growers in the Pay- ette who annually exceed these figures, and there are some whose trees are yet in the first years of bearing, who equal them, they are sufficient for the purpose of illustration and are an official statement capable of proof. The average num- ber of trees to an acre is about one hundred, making the yield of each tree two hundred and fifty pounds. Many of the Payette valley grow- ers sold their product in the green state, some
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for three-quarters of a cent per pound on the trees, and others for one cent delivered at the station in Payette. Gross proceeds of two hun- dred and fifty dollars per acre leave a wide mar- gin for the expense of care and picking. Others have shipped to eastern markets with large profits, and some have made long shipments at a loss. As yet the only practical way of handling this crop, by evaporation, has not been adopted to any extent. The need of it is felt, however, and there are at least two projects on foot look- ing to the establishment of evaporating plants. The particular excellence of the Idaho prune is in its size, flavor and large percentage of sugar. In the Payette valley there is no fear of wet weather to give it an excess of water, making it dry, light or poor, or to develop the fungus dis- eases that sometimes cause disaster in Oregon. The prune has become a staple in the market and where the properly cured and packed Idaho product has been offered it has commanded a price often above that of California. Prune trees begin bearing the third year from planting and yield largely the fourth and fifth. .
There are many residents of the Payette valley who contend that the pear is the fruit to grow for profit. Certain it is that it reaches a size, lusciousness and carrying quality which make it as marketable as it is in any country. An aver- age acre's yield according to the state engineer's estimate, is eighteen thousand pounds. On mar- ket pears are generally quoted at from two to four cents, with even higher figures for the fancy article attractively packed. So far none of the pear orchards in the valley have suffered serious- ly from blight,-that universal enemy of the pear tree, the cause of which is yet a matter of specu- lation among pomologists and bacteriologists. Like other fruits the pear bears early, the third year generally furnishing a crop.
The quality and productiveness of these fruits is such that many orchardists are planting them extensively. Some question their ability to stand the climate, but the Payette valley furnishes peaches when they are a failure in every section about here, and none of the bearing apricot or- chards have gone a season uncropped. Peaches yield from eighteen to twenty thousand pounds to the acre and always command a good price. The yield of apricots is about the same. Both begin bearing the second year. They, too, await the advent of the evaporator that their entire value may be utilized.
Cherries, plums, quinces, nectarines and other tree fruits all bear in like proportion to those stated above and at the same early date, but have not been so extensively planted. Their acreage will, doubtless, be much less than of the staple fruits, but they will be grown at a profit and
form a considerable part of the total volume of business.
The staple small fruits grown commercially are the strawberry and black raspberry. Both yield profusely and have that same carrying qual- ity that makes Idaho's tree fruits famous. Al- ready large shipments of strawberries are being made, some of them going to points east of Chi- cago, and the profits secured in some instances seem almost fabulous. A prominent nurseryman of Payette sells his berries on the vine for two hundred and fifty dollars per acre, the buyer picking and packing. The black-cap is grown chiefly for drying, yielding at a conservative esti- mate from one thousand to one thousand and five hundred pounds of the dried fruit to the acre. In the season of 1897 the market prices were from ten to fifteen cents. While every fruit-grow- er and rancher has nearly all the other small fruits and grapes on his place in quantities suffi- cient for home consumption, no extensive effort to utilize them commercially has yet been made, although there is no reason why there should not be.
The most popular of fruits in its season is the melon, particularly the cantaloupe. It is the ne plus ultra of the breakfast table and the facile princeps of all desserts. It is said of the canta- loupe that it is the one fruit of which enough cannot be had; and the smiling watermelon is synonymous with a tickled palate. Both these melons grow to a state of high perfection here. The sandy soil on the lower lands is just what they require for an early and rapid growth. Last year twenty-three car loads and thousands of crates were shipped. The standard for melons in recent years has been, by common consent, the melon grown at Kocky Ford, Colorado. Pay- ette valley melons shipped to Denver have elic- ited the following comment from the G. G. Lieb- hardt Commission Company, under date of January 5, 1898: "We know of no other place, outside of Rocky Ford, where as good melons are raised as we have seen from your point. The trouble with all cantaloupes raised in the east is that they are just like a turnip: there is no taste to them. The only way they can eat then! is to put sugar on them; but the beauty of the Rocky Ford melons, and also the melons at your place, is that they are sweet. They do not re- quire any artificial sweetening."
One incalculable advantage that the Payette valley melons have is that they are from two to three weeks ahead of the Rocky Ford. The first shipments here in 1897 were on July 26.
Some idea of yields and profits may be gained from the experience of R. L. Jimerson, who cer- tifies to the fact that in 1897 from two acres of ground, he delivered at the Payette station eight
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hundred and twenty-seven crates of cantaloupes that netted him $627.32. It does not neces- sarily follow that all can come and do likewise, but what man has done man may do. For the purpose of advancing this industry there has re- cently been incorporated a company styled the Payette Valley Melon Growers' Association, with a capital stock of three thousand dollars.
GENERAL FARMING.
General farming is most successfully carried on throughout this entire section, but as the growing of fruit and handling of cattle and sheep hold out inducements for larger profit, only a comparatively small acreage is devoted to it. All cereals and grains and all vegetables yield well, and farmers have in instances made unusual profits from potatoes, onions and other special crops. A strict adherence to the truth, however, makes necessary the observation that the Pay- ette valley is not as well adapted to the growth of general farm crops as it is to fruits, and that there are better grain sections in the state.
In the state engineer's report before alluded to the following yields for this county are given: Wheat, 30 bushels per acre; oats, 42; corn, 35; rye, 18; barley, 34 ; potatoes, 10,480 pounds; car- rots, 19,900; beets, 19,900; and onions, 18,666.
Many orchardists successfully plant and grow root crops and corn between tree rows, assisting materially in meeting the expenses of caring for the trees until they come to bearing. The growth of early vegetables has, up to the present time, been wholly in the hands of the Chinese, who have made it extremely profitable to themselves and demonstrated that it may be made profitable to others. So much so has it been to them that one of them, a man of means and education, has made the offer that if a cannery could be estab- lished in the valley he would agree to take five hundred acres of land at an annual rental of twenty-five dollars per acre, pay water rental and taxes on it, and put it out to vegetables.
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