Rummaging in a basket at a thrift store, I found a small tourist pamphlet dated 1902 touting Calgary. Published by the Board of Trade, City Council of Calgary, the little 30-page brochure was such a fun read!

“The country surrounding Calgary has been especially favored by nature in more ways than one.” Then all the wonders of nature were extolled. 

“It may be safely said, for the meterological records amply prove it, that there is no place in the western hemisphere that enjoys more bright sunshine the year around than Central and Southern Alberta.”

“Free homesteads may be secured within from 3 to 20 miles of the city, and improved farms and ranches can be purchased at reasonable prices.”

“The capitalist will find in Calgary an interesting and profitable field for investment; the existing channels for investment are legion.”

“The Calgary district offers high wages to good domestic servants. In the city of Calgary, $10 and $12 per month is the common wage for household work.”

“The invalid will find in Calgary a gracing and pleasant climate to recuperate his health. The virtues of its invigorating ozone and almost continual sunshine are becoming universally extolled.” 

Prices: “Butter, 18cents per pound; potatoes, 1penny per pound; eggs, 15cents per dozen; poultry, 12cents per pound; pork, 6cents per pound; beef, 2 cents per pound.” 

No wonder “936 homesteads were taken up and 41,000 acres of Canadian Pacific Railroad Lands purchased during the year of 1901.” (The land was purchased for $3.00 per acre.)

Did your ancestor settle permanently or temporarily in Calgary?? Sounds like a wonderful place, no? 

Bet you would never have guessed that the Union Pacific Railroad operated passenger buses! But they did, through Union Pacific Stages, Interstate Transit Lines and Union Pacific Railroad of Sun Valley.

Union Pacific bus stages ran between town where the railroad did not connect them. Locally, UP started in 1927 to run a bus route between Pendleton and Walla Walla. Soon routes to Salt Lake City and Portland were added and as decades passed, more routes were added. The route to connect rail lines to Sun Valley was completed in 1939. 

The UP sold its stages (buses) to Greyhound in 1952. 

With Grandma Google’s help (:-)) I located a 21-page article, Buses of the Union Pacific Railroad, published in the Mar-Apr 1991 edition of Utah Rails. This article had a good many black-and-white photos of these old buses.

If you’d like to set aboard one of these buses, visit the Union Pacific Railroad Museum in Omaha, where they boast “150 Years of Rail History.”  Here’s the link: UP RR Museum

Did you, or your ancestor, ever ride on a Union Pacific BUS??

This is The Most Delightful book! Written in 1971 by James W. Phillips, its nearly 180 pages give a bit of history for scores of places in the Evergreen State. For instance:

Cashmere:  Originally known as Mission as a result of early Catholic missions established in the area between 1850s and 1870s. Town renamed in 1903 to emulate in name, as well as fertility and valley setting, the beautiful and productive Vale of Kashmir in India. 

Hadlock:  Originally known as Port Hadlock, the town was named for founder Samuel Hadlock, who built the Washington Mill Co. on Port Townsend Bay in 1870. 

Home: In Pierce County; established as a social reform colony in 1896 on Carr Inlet by George H. Allen and named to demonstrate the group’s friendship to all.

Maple Valley:  Named Vine Maple Valley by the first settlers in 1879 because of the maple trees growing along that portion of the cedar River, the name was shortened by postal officials in 1888.

Moclips:  A Quinault Indian word describing a place where maidens were sent to undergo puberty rites.

Monse:  In Okanogan County; original name of Swansea was changed in 1916 to honor Mons, Belgium, where the British fought the first battle of WWI on 23 August 1914.

Jovita:  In Pierce County; Townsite developed by the Jovita Land Co. of Seattle. 

Joyce:  In Clallam County; named in 1913 by its first postmaster J.M. Joyce, who operated a store, a shingle mill and a farm nearby.

Otis Orchards:  In Spokane County; originally a railroad flag station called Otis after an early settler; name amended in 1908 with the establishment of a post office to tie into the area’s image as a fruit growing center.

Lots more to come! This book is still available if you want a copy. 

So often in the 17th century, a will was handwritten and was accompanied by an inventory. This inventory was mandated by law and some of the items might be sold to pay off any debts of the deceased. This was the inventory of Aquila Chase, of Ipswich, Massachusetts, dated 15 May 1666. 

I ask you: how many pages would it take to “inventory” every single one of your possessions? And would there be archaic terms then that were well known today…… like “saw and pillion.” What is a pillion? What is an “Apple watch?” An “electric hot pot?” 

And take note of what you don’t see: any art, music, crafts, hobbies, things we would call comfort things like fuzzy slippers or teddy bears? Could YOU cook a meal using just the utensils mentioned here? 

                                                                    Eleven swine

                                                                    Twenty sheepe

                                                        Two heifers & three calves

                                                                One steer & three calves

                                                            One feather bed/ bolster/pillows

Blanket & curtains

Wearing apparell

One new curtain

Six paire of sheets

Linen yarne

20 lbs of woollen  yarne

One bed furniture/blankett

70 bushels Indian corne

6 bushels barley

Some wheat, rye & pease

Saw & pillion

2 wheels

Muskett/swort/pike

                                                                        1 saddle/bridle

                                                            3 iron potts/hookes/tramells

                                                            Spitt/fire pan/tongues/peele

                                                        1 fryeing pan/greediron/ 2 skilletts

                                                                        Carpenter tooles

                                                                4 axes/ beetle & wedges

                                                        Pewter platters/basons/potts/spones

                                                                    Box of earthenware

                                                                        Books/ 2 chests

                                                                        Hog lard/butter

                                                                        Grinding stone

                                                                    Cart/dung pott/plow

                                                                    Yoakes & Chaines

                                                                            Old lumber

1 hay boate 

 Looking back in those wild west days, we might be astonished at the number of saloons in most towns in the far West. Frontier communities and camps in the mountains (mining, lumbering, etc.) were saturated in alcohol. Much of the color and vitality of life on the frontier was associated with the saloon and so was much of its violence and degradation. 

But the shoot-’em-up tradition of Western history usually ignores the ways in which the saloon helped the urban frontiersman cope with his many pressing problems.  Saloons were meeting places, entertainment centers, refuges for the weary and haunt of the mischief-maker. There has been plenty of words written about the societal aspects of these “places of refreshment.” I’d like to share something else I learned about “wild west” saloons.

Leafing through old photos or visiting restored towns, today’s tourist will find three types of buildings dominating the rest: the church, the fraternal lodge and saloons. These institutions gave the pioneer something he considered important. The church, the lodge and the saloon might seem different but shared certain characteristics and afforded similar sociality. 

Each of these places strove to recreate the structure, trappings and decor of the same sort left behind “back East.” The church had its altar and symbols, the lodge its emblems, and the saloon its bar, games and traditional artwork. Each place had its rituals and distinctive vernacular transplanted directly to the frontier.. Each had is figure of authority: minister, grand master and barkeeper, all of whom dressed in special vestments, set the tone, welcomed the newcomer and served as a keeper of tradition. 

This post comes from a wonderful 10-page article titled Men, Whisky & A Place To Sit, by Elliott West, in the July 1981 issue of American History Illustrated. 

 Minor moral of this story? Never overlook old magazines in thrift stores! 

Today, canning is a convenient and safe way to preserve all kinds of food, but in 1898 and the early 1900s, it was a very different story….. the Embalmed Meat Scandal during the Spanish-American War caused soldiers and all American citizens to lose trust in their government for a time. 

Remember that refrigeration was, in those early days, an innovation not yet perfected. Experimentation in the early 1900s led to risky conclusions. No wonder the Embalmed Meat Scandal occurred.

The average soldier in the Spanish-American War had a typical ration containing 12 to 20 ounces of meat. When soldiers began opening cans of meat and discovering something that smelled of “bouquets of cesspools” they began dumping this meat into the water or eating it and feeling sick. Word quickly spread about this “embalmed beef” which was said to smell like an embalmed human body. The government and military officials tried to get the situation under control; this ultimately led to better quality control for preserving food.

The instigator of the Embalmed Meat Scandal was Major-Gen. Nelson Miles who stated on December 1, 1898, that 337 tons of embalmed beef were sent to troops in Puerto Rico the previous summer. This caused public outrage and a full scale investigation as to what was in the food American soldiers and citizens were eating. 

I had read Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, which describes in horrific detail how meat packing plants in Chicago operated in the early 1900s. You want a good but awful read? Try this one. 

And think how this situation affected YOUR ancestors, possibly?

Did you know that our very own Bickleton in Klickitat County is known as the Bluebird Capitol of the WORLD? It’s so called because thousands of bluebirds spend most of the year in the area.  

Bickleton has become a bluebird-watchers’ paradise.

The area was first settled by Charles Bickle in 1879; he established a trading post and livery stable. Like most early residents, he was also a rancher and wheat farmer. A series of fires in 1937 and 1947 destroyed many of the town’s original buildings; the oldest surviving building is the Bluebird Inn which opened in 1882 and still serves guests.

In the 1960s, Jess and Elva Brinkerhoff were picnicking in this small town and put a can in a tree for some birds. This quickly became a local fad and now there are thousands of birdhouses purposely built to house bluebirds. Both Mountain and Western Bluebirds come; the above is a Western Bluebird. 

And “thousands” of bluebird watchers come every year to see these very special birds. Have you been one? Want to be one?

Needing a worthwhile way to spend time these housebound cold winter days?

 How about a Cold Case Ancestor research project?!? The Washington State Genealogical Society still has a long list of individuals and families needing to be researched. These would be those who were known to be in Washington Territory BEFORE statehood (11 Nov 1889). There is an index of these pioneers and indigenous families on their website….. take your pick! 

Resources you might use are Ancestry, FamilySearch, Washington Digital Archives, Find A Grave, USGenWeb, Linkpendium, WA Territorial censuses ……… any resource you’ve used in the past for your own research.

The really good news about this volunteer project is that since it’s not your family, just find what you can find, period. If you find lots, great. But only scarce documentation, that’s fine too. 

Click to Washington State Genealogical Society and then Pioneer Pursuit and look at the Sample, Hints & Helps, Frequently Asked Questions and Instructions. 

Why not get busy helping to document these wonderful Washington pioneers………. and before you know it, spring will be here!

Today let’s talk about the oldest tree in the world and the loneliest tree in the world. And we think our “tree” is old! Trees are older by far than our ancestors are.

“Scientists have examined an ancient tree still growing in a remote part of central Chile’s Alerce Costero National Park, claiming it could be the oldest tree in the world. They believe it has survived for more than 5,000 years making it older that California’s 4,850-year-old Methuselah, the bristlecone pine.  Known as “Gran Abuelo,” or great-grandfather, the Patagonian cypress can be accessed only by an hour-long hike and is patrolled by a number of park rangers to make sure it is not harmed. The tree is 189-feet tall and is 13-feet in diameter.” (Bit in Spokesman Review.)

Nestled in a windswept cove on far south end of New Zealand’s Campbell Island, is a lone tree that should not be there. A 30-foot tall Sitka spruce has grown into a cauliflower shape rather than the cone-shape typical of the species. How in the world did a Sitka spruce, native to the North American western coast, end up here? Well, according to Google, the lonely tree was planted about 1900 by New Zealand’s then-governor, Lord Ranfurly. More than 100 years later, the introduced spruce is considered the most isolated tree in the world. 

The conifer endures not only isolation but also the wild weather of the “Furious Fifties” latitudes. Campbell Island has 325 days of rain per year and gale-force winds for 100 days per year. Surprisingly, the spruce seems to be thriving in these conditions and still growing. 

In many Native American cultures, trees are considered to be ancestors, meaning they are viewed as part of the family lineage and are deeply respected as living beings with a spirit, sharing a connection to the past generations and the natural world at large; this belief stems from the understanding that humans and trees are interconnected and part of the same life force. (AI generated response in Google.)