Voice - Winter 2018

V

Winter 2018

oice

Of the Pend Oreille River Valley

The History Issue

•METALINE FALLS • NEWPORT RODEO• •SOROPTIMIST CRAB FEED • ADVERTISING OF YORE• •PEND OREILLE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY•

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Winter Voice

Editor’s Note Some traditions hopefully never go away. Two of those in the Pend Oreille River Valley include the Newport Rodeo and the Soroptimist Crab Feed, annual events that are always sure to pack the house.

In our annual historical issue of Voice, we visit these two events through the ages. Newport Rodeo is turning 70 years old this coming June. It’s evolved through the decades, but remains the biggest weekend of the year.

The Soroptimist Crab Feed sells out most every year. Hopefully the feed coming this January packs the house so the Soroptimists of Newport can continue their amazing work supporting and lifting up local women and girls.

While now-a-days, the town of Metaline Falls is a serene place to live and visit, it has quite the history. We look back at the town that was the economic hub of the region back in the day.

Print advertising continues to evolve, even on the pages of our own Miner Newspapers.

We take a trip down the marketing memory lane that has bolstered our local economy over the last century.

But before all those stories, we visit one local group that keeps all this history documented and organized. The Pend Oreille County Historical Society is the gatekeeper of the past. They maintain a wonderful museum in Newport chocked full of local history and lore.

We hope you enjoy this issue of Voice.

-MCN

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About the cover COURTESY PHOTO|NORTH PEND OREILLE HERITAGE WEBSITE

A group of miners sit in a hand dug silver and lead mine in Metaline Falls with their two dogs.

Winter Voice

INDEX Historical Society Gatekeepers of the Past Page 4

The Sordid and Exceptional History of Metaline Falls Page 8

Newport Rodeo Turns 70 Page 11

Decades of Eating Crab Courtesy the Soroptimists Page 18

Advertising Through the Ages Page 21

Voice PUBLISHED: December 2018 PUBLISHER: Michelle Nedved WRITERS & EDITORS: Caneel Johnson, Sophia Aldous and Don Gronning DESIGN: Brad Thew ADVERTISING: Lindsay Guscott, Cindy Boober and Micki Brass

VOICE is published quarterly as a supplement to The Newport Miner and Gem State Miner, 421 S. Spokane, Newport WA 99156.

TELEPHONE: 509-447-2433 E-MAIL: minernews@povn.com FAX: 509-447-9222 Reproduction of articles & photographs is prohibited without permission of the publisher. See all issues at The Miner Online: www.pendoreillerivervalley.com

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History’s gatekeepers Historical Society volunteers preserve the past ALL PHOTOS BY SOPHIA ALDOUS

BY SOPHIA ALDOUS

Winnie Sundseth, a Pend Oreille County Museum volunteer, has catalogued over 118,000 entries from The Miner newspapers from 1903 to 1992. “I have categories for businesses, churches, schools—it’s about forming a cohesive archive,” she says.

NEWPORT – When we think of history, most of us tend to entertain the subject with a mindset that is simultaneously vast and narrow—maybe in a fashion that reflects what the majority of us learned in high school: important dates, people and places without deeper context of the impact the past has on our present, and to some extent, our future. We may view museums as multimillion dollar monolithic structures in densely populated urban areas that we might never visit.

But in that bigger conception of what history is, it’s not a stretch to say that small, local museums and historical societies make up the frame of that larger CONTINUED ON PAGE 5

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picture. The Pend Oreille County Museum is one of those entities, along with organizations like the Kalispel Tribe, the Priest River Museum just across the state border and the Tiger Museum in North Pend Oreille County (see the story about Metaline Falls in this issue of Voice).

The Pend Oreille County Museum is operated by the Pend Oreille County Historical Society, Inc. an all-volunteer, non-profit 501c3 organization. Paul Wilson has been the board president for four years and like many of the volunteers, he takes their mission of preservation to heart.

“I like history, I’ve always been interested in history,” Wilson says. “Our history might not be unique, but it’s interesting. From the Kalispel tribe to early pioneers, preserving history is important.”

Located at 402 South Washington Ave. in Newport, the museum sits on a two-acre complex that consists of the historic I. & W. N. Depot Building built in 1908 which houses the gift shop and displays on the first and second floors.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

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Volunteer Meg Decker sorts through school correspondence throughout Pend Oreille County from 1925 to 1927. “Now, we just think of the four school districts in our area, like Newport, West Bonner, Selkirk and Cusick,” Decker says. “But there used to be school houses up and down the county and throughout the Pend Oreille River Valley.”

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The adjoining Stuart B. Bradley Memorial Building, built with private funds, was dedicated in 1994. Back in the sixties the Bradley family was instrumental in spearheading the organization of the historical society. Stuart Bradley was raised on a Tacoma Creek Homestead and became a maritime attorney in Chicago. He was the editor of The Big Smoke, an annual publication of Locke School in the town of Jared, which was located about 12 miles north of Cusick.

“The name of our historical magazine is derived from that publication,” Wilson says of The Big Smoke.

The main floor houses numerous displays including the research department, library and military display. The administrative office, storage and a small meeting room are downstairs. There are three log cabins on the grounds, all of which were taken apart at their original locations and reconstructed from the same materials on the museum grounds. There is the Claire Howe Schoolhouse, the Settler’s Cabin and the Hunter’s Cabin. There is also a replica of a fire lookout constructed using Forest Service blueprints.

“It’s hard to pick one favorite exhibit or piece,” Wilson says. “There’s just so much to look at and appreciate.”

The Clark Family Sawmill was dedicated and opened for display at the museum in 2014. There are various displays of tools, farm machinery, a washing machine display, in the equipment shed area and a logging camp bunkhouse replica. The bunkhouse also features an icehouse and root cellar, both of which are original buildings that were torn down then reassembled on the museum grounds.

Including Wilson, there are nine board members, all volunteers. Officers are elected from the group. The first documented historical society was the Pioneer Association, formed in 1923 and used to host Pioneer Picnics at the Pend Oreille County Fairgrounds in Cusick. That group held their last meeting in 1954. In 1961 the Pend Oreille Valley Development League appointed a committee to organize the county’s 50th birthday. The Pend Oreille County Historical Society (POCHS) was born from that. The POCHS had their first meeting in Jan. 7, 1967.

The museum is open seven days week from Memorial Day to Labor Day and open during the Scenic Pend Oreille River Train rides, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

“The caboose is a unique, interesting display, and I really appreciate the Clark Family Sawmill,” Wilson says when asked which exhibits he likes. “The fire lookout is a big draw for kids.”

Other sites at the museum available for visitors’ exploration is the pioneer church that was built from scratch, but with the original stained glass windows from the first Catholic Church in Newport. The main exhibit in the railroad display is a Burlington Northern metal caboose. Large farm machinery is also CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

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located on the grounds. The museum grounds adjoin Centennial Plaza where The Big Wheel, a Reynolds Corliss Engine, can be seen from the street. The engine was built in 1909 and ceased operation in 1964.

It had powered the various mills that operated in the same location over the years. The Diamond Lumber Corporation donated the wheel to the City of Newport in 1964 and the City donated it to the Historical Society.

The Society also maintains the twostory log Lindsey House on the Pend Oreille County Fairgrounds. The house was dismantled and moved from Skookum Creek and re-erected on the fairgrounds. It is fully furnished and is open for visitors during the Pend Oreille County Fair in late summer.

With so much ground to cover and so much history to look after, the POCHS is always open to volunteers, and schedules are flexible.

“We are volunteer dependent,” Wilson says. “No volunteers, no museum.

We are appreciative of anyone with a love of history that wants to help.

You don’t have to be here every day or weekend; whatever time people have to spare is welcome.”

From archiving to cleaning, to manning admissions and the gift shop, to helping find funding and/or doing maintenance, there’s a use for all talents.

“We have a good bunch of people that volunteer, but people are getting older and we could always use new blood,” Wilson says.

Under the direction of the Board of Directors, four officers guide the administration of the society. Committees consisting of society members and volunteers carry out the day-to-day operations. Membership in the society is highly encouraged as the Historical Society and Museum is dependent on membership funds to operate. Membership is open to anyone who wishes to join and yearly dues are a reasonable $10. The museum receives the

majority of its funding from membership dues, admissions to the museum, which is $5, sales from the gift shop, donations for genealogical and historical research, and some hotel/motel tax funds from the City of Newport and Pend Oreille County.

According to Wilson, it costs an average of $1,500 a month to keep the museum up and running.

Membership meetings are held the first Saturday of each month with the society annual meeting being held in July. Quarterly Board of Director meetings, covering the operation and budget of the society are held in January, April, June, and October.

Another issue the museum will have to face sooner rather than later is space. More space for storage to accommodate the archives of historical newspapers, magazines, correspondence, survey maps and donated antiques, from 100-year-old clothing to a set of 60 antique blowtorches.

“Periodically we get all kinds of different donations, from a 1938 refrigerator to 14-inch block planes,” Wilson says. “We hate to turn historical objects away because it would be a shame for them to end up in the garbage, but at the same time we need more space to store, house, preserve and display these artifacts.”

Wilson says the POCHS would like to acquire the building behind the museum that is owned by Stimson Lumber, but as of now that is just a wish, not a reality.

Meg Decker is a volunteer that knows all about needing her space. As she sifts through local school correspondence from 1925 to 1927, wearing white gloves, she muses on a gas mask from World War I that currently resides in the military display.

“It would be nice if we had a head to put it on,” she says of the display, smiling. “We have quite a few torsos, no heads. But that’s just one small thing out of many small things that need expanding on.”

One of the projects that Decker has taken on is the organizing and cataloguing of county justice dockets dating from 1911 to the 1960s. Most of them center on Ione, Usk, and Cusick.

“I find it fascinating,” she says, pointing out some of the crimes reported in 1923. “The times change, human behavior doesn’t.”

For volunteer and retired board member Faith McClenny, being a part of the historical society and museum helps her connect people with their past and acknowledge their roots.

“I am always surprised how many of the old timers do not know about the steamboat era we had, the building of the dams, and how they don’t know

about the cement plant at Metaline Falls that was a backbone industry in our county for years,” McClenny says. “People are just not aware of how it has impacted their own life.

Sometimes history gives us wonderful information, sometimes it’s information people would rather not know, but it is all interesting and varied.”

Contact the society for more details or a membership application. With membership, a bi-yearly newsletter is sent either electronically or paper copy sent via USPS mail. The best way to explore volunteer possibilities is to drop in around 10 a.m. on a Wednesday workday at the museum. Call (509) 447-5388 for more information.

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The colorful past of Metaline Falls

BY CANEEL JOHNSON

In the early nineteenth century Metaline Falls was a thriving hub of activity with tales of brothels, illegal booze, death, and bandits tying up nurses to steal drugs.

It was also an economic center complete with its own hospital, cement plant, mines, and entrepre-

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neurs.

“I am always surprised that the old-timers don’t know that the county had steamboats and a cement plant,” said Faith McClenny, author of Images of America Pend Oreille County.

Fur trappers were the first non-Indians to visit Metaline Falls. In the early 1800s David Thompson came to the area in hopes of finding passage to the

Columbia River. He noted in his journal that the only trappers in the area were from his company, the Northwest Company and the Hudson Bay Company.

The discovery of gold brought the first settlers to the area in the late 1850s, but the town of Metaline CONTINUED ON PAGE 9

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COURTESY PHOTO|NORTH PEND OREILLE HERITAGE WEBSITE

A group of miners sit in a hand dug silver and lead mine in Metaline Falls with their two dogs.

Falls was not established until 1911 after the railroad arrived making it possible for zinc and lead be profitably mined.

At its height in 1950 its population was 547. The population went from 153 in 1920 to 547 in 1950 and back down to 242 by 2016. From 2016 to 2017 the population grew by three people to 245.

Gold discovered Gold was discovered in the Pend Oreille River in 1859 between Metaline Falls and Z Canyon. Placer mining, the method of using water to excavate gold, was hard work, and primarily done by the Chinese after the more easily extracted gold was harvested by the white prospectors.

After gold reserves dwindled in the 1870s zinc and lead became the primary minerals harvested. One of the earliest prospectors was Carl C. Harvey who lived in a cabin by Z Canyon and harvested the minerals from the same places in the river the Chinese harvested gold from. He was one of the major participants of developing Metaline Falls and the surrounding areas.

George Linton filed seven mining claims in 1887 that included gold, silver, zinc and lead.

The Josephine Mine was discovered by C. W. Clark in the early 1900s and later sold to Lewis Larsen. It operated until 1919 and closed until it was combined with other mines to become the Pend Oreille Mines and Metal Company.

The minerals were carried out in small amounts on pack animals until the Pend Oreille River was reshaped to allow steamboats to pass in 1889. Joe Cusick built the first steamboat to traverse the Pend Oreille River in 1907. It was called the Red Cloud. The federal government blasted rock from the riverbed to allow steamboats to reach Metaline Falls in 1907. Three years later the railroad would come to Metaline Falls and end the steamboat era.

Three men killed working on railroad The Idaho and Washington Northern Railroad was owned by Frederick Blackwell. Blackwell had up to 2,000 people working on the railroad. The Blueslide Tunnel was a major undertaking that made the trip to Metaline Falls possible. It took 300 men working two shifts to complete the 1,100 feet of tunnel. The project required drilling and dynamiting to cut through the mountainside.

Two men were killed in the construction, a night foreman was killed during a landslide and Eli Anderson was killed at the celebration of the completion of the project. The tunnel is now unsafe and is the main reason the train does not go to Metaline Falls any more.

“There have been a number of repairs over the years, but it would take major repairs to run an operation up there now,” said Bob Shanklin, commissioner of the Port of Pend Oreille, which operates Pend Oreille Valley Railroad. “There is no reason to take a train up there since the cement company and mines stopped

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shipping goods to Kellogg.”

Bear barbecue A bear barbecue was held to celebrate the arrival of the railroad in Metaline Falls. A band from Spokane was brought in and the Prouty brothers were paid $25 for each bear that fed the crowd.

Lewis Larsen is the founder of Metaline Falls. He migrated to the United States from Denmark in 1893. He first packed into Metaline Falls in 1905 after visiting Canada. He was searching for limestone and quartz to make cement. He found it and became one of the founders of the Lehigh Portland Cement Company.

Cement was the major economic industry in Metaline Falls from 1909 until 1989. The Inland Portland Cement Company was established in 1909, and operated until 1911 when it became the Lehigh Cement Company, which operated until 1956. Then the plant went through many owners until its closure in 1989.

At its height it put out 2,000 barrels of cement a day and employed 400 people. Cement from the plant was used in the construction of Grand Coulee Dam. Saloons and prohibition The thriving industry attracted many types of entertainment and growth to the area. There were several saloons, taverns and other merchants in the area.

“As the community boomed we had a diversity of businesses. There were three mercantiles, and a drugstore,” said Rev. Tara Leininger, mayor of Metaline Falls. “Even during the prohibition there were a variety of places the gentlemen could go to relax.”

During prohibition the saloons and taverns in Metaline Falls had to change the way they did business.

They couldn’t sell liquor publicly so they started to

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sell sarsaparilla and root beer, but if you knew what to look for you could still get a beer.

“They certainly weren’t prosperous because they sold sarsaparilla and root beer,” Leininger said.

The salons and taverns started to display pool tables in the front window to let people know that there was a bar in the back room.

“I can’t verify it, but everything points to the authorities looking in the other direction,” Leininger said. “The town was mostly loggers, brick makers and miners.”

The town instilled an entertainment tax or pool tax for every pool table at an establishment. At one point the town needed more money so the council raised the pool tax by $1. There were a couple of tavern owners on the council who objected, but they were in the minority, and the ordinance passed, Leininger said.

A couple of years after prohibition started some of the women from town went to the council to complain about the pool tables. The young children had taken to watching the matches from the window. The mothers were concerned it was not a good influence on the children. An ordinance was passed that prohibited the pool tables from being displayed in the front windows, so they were banished to the back room with the bar, Leininger said.

“There is a play called the ‘Music Man’ that came out in the late 1950s about a con man who tries to sell musical instruments to a town with the promise of free lessons. He uses the promise of luring children away from the trouble that pool tables bring as a gimmick to sell his wears,” Leininger said.

“I just think it is funny that there is a Broadway play dealing with a problem we had almost 50 years before that,” she said.

Churches and schools Leininger is the Reverend of the United Church of Christ, which was one of the first churches established in Metaline Falls. It was originally the Con-

gregational Church, and in 1910 they used to hold Sunday school above one of the saloons in town.

“The owner was one of the members and they lived above the saloon,” Leininger said. “It was not as scandalous as it seems. Before the prohibition saloons did not have the stigma they have now. It was just the way of life.”

The congregation first met in the school gymnasium that they shared with the Catholic Church until their own church was built in 1951.

“The church was first to be built in the 1920s but then prohibition hit,” Leininger said. “Then they were going to build it in the 1940s but the war hit.”

The school was built in 1912 and designed by architect Kirtland Cutter. His work was popular with business leaders throughout the northwest, southern California and England.

The school cost $25,000, and educated children until 1972. The school was built with bricks made at the brickyard in Metaline Falls, Leininger said.

The school hosted overnight dances that did not end until after midnight. The school was later used as offices for the school districts. The building fell into disrepair and was unheated for a decade. It was remolded in 1990 and became the Cutter Theatre. The remodel took volunteers 14,000 hours. The building has hosted non-profit performing arts for 23 years.

Cutter also designed a house for Lewis Larsen in Metaline Falls.

Hotels and brothels Cutter designed the Washington Hotel. It was built in 1910 for the cement workers and visitors to the area. It cost $15,000 to build. Gov. Marion Hay spoke at the hotel in 1979, and the building housed the U.S. Customs offices until 1932.

It hosted many community gatherings and had one of the area’s best restaurants, according to Historylink’s website. Today it is listed on the National CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

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Newport Rodeo celebrates 70 years

Historic rodeo continues to evolve

BY DON GRONNING

The Newport Rodeo will turn 70 this year and it has a lot to celebrate. Each year the rodeo has been a muchanticipated event in Pend Oreille County, with adults and children alike looking forward to the pageantry, the animals and the excitement rodeo brings.

There are plenty of people still around who have been involved in the rodeo for decades.

Gary Yeaw, 82, is one of those people.

“I was involved for 40-some years,” he says, going back to the 1960s. Over the years he’s been a rodeo association president, ran the bucking chutes and was a contestant.

His name shows up in the bull riding in the 1969 program. He had drawn bull No. 4.

“I just got on a few bulls,” Yeaw says. “Usually I was in the wild horse race.”

COURTESY PHOTO

CONTINUED ON PAGE 15

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In 1995, the ProWest Finals Rodeo was held in Newport. Here Newport steer wrestler Greg Seeber gets down on one. Seeber won second at the Finals rodeo.

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Metaline Falls

COURTESY PHOTO|NORTH PEND OREILLE HERIT

A view of Metaline Falls taken Aug. 12, 1916, from up river

Newpo

COURTESY PHOTO|NORTH PEND OREILLE HERITAGE WEBSITE

Humorously titled the first jail in Metaline Falls. E.R. Kirkland is in the doorway. He operated the first general store at the Commercial.

Mr. Love, second from left, with muff. Women dressed as men, including Madge Love at far right, holding rifle.

The Newport Rodeo has been consistently known for top rodeo.

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COURTESY PHOTO|NORTH PEND OREILLE HERITAGE WEBSITE

The Metaline Falls in 1912 designed by architect Kirkland Cutter. It later became the Cutter Theater.

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COURTESY PHOTO|NORTH PEND OREILLE HERITAGE WEBSITE

The Lehigh Portland Cement Company produced 2,000 barrels of cement a day and employed 400 people.

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Volunteers have always been the reason the Newport Rodeo happens. Here a group of workers build the grandstands in this undated photo.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

Register of Historic Places and holds a deli, art gallery and still provides hotel rooms.

There were three hotels besides the Washington Hotel in Metaline Falls in the 1920s and 1930s, according to Leininger. At least one of them housed a brothel according to town gossip.

There were at least two known brothels in Metaline Falls; the other was housed in an apartment complex, although the location of which hotel or apartment is a mystery since everyone who knew about it refused to disclose its location.

“There was mention of a woman coming to inquire about licensing a brothel in the city minutes sometime in the 1950s,” Leininger said. “Nothing further was mentioned, no record of whether the request was granted or denied. There was no mention of her again at all. She just disappeared.”

The Pend Oreille Mine and Metals Company completed a water-diversion hydroelectric plant in 1937. It was the first power project on the Pend Oreille River. It provided power to the mines and Metaline Falls. Its unique construction diverted water through diversion tunnels that were blasted through solid rock instead of through a dam. It was abandoned after the construction Box Canyon Dam in 1956, but the structure still stands.

Robbery at the hospital Metaline Falls had their own hospital, first established in 1911, according to Faith McClenny of the Pend Oreille County Historical Society. It was remodeled in 1918.

In 1957 funds began to be acquired for a new building, according to an article in The Miner from July 11, 1957.

The 17 bed hospital cost $300,000 to build, and was finished in July of 1958.

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The hospital appointed a woman, Mrs. D. A. Underwood as the supervisor of the hospital Oct. 16, 1958. The hospital was dedicated Mt. Linton Hospital Nov. 6, 1958.

The hospital had expanded to 21 beds by the time it closed.

“We did everything,” said Nancy Kiss, a former nurse at the hospital. “There was an emergency room, surgery and we delivered babies.”

In March of 1981 bandits tied up all the nurses and stole all the drugs, McClenny said.

“A doctor from the Ione Hospital called Mt. Linton and when no one answered he went up there to check on them and found the nurses tied up,” McClenny said.

The hospital was closed in 1988 and converted into the Mt. Linton Inn. A newspaper for the new town When the town was in the process of getting organized Larsen wanted to establish a newspaper to get local news out to the rest of the world and to help establish Metaline Falls as a town, McClenny said.

He employed Arnold Reading, a young man who had experience in a newspaper in his teens and had come to Metaline Falls. They secured a warehouse, and recruited Oscar Wolf who was working at The Newport Miner with his brother Fred Wolf, who was known as the father of Pend Oreille County. The first issue was published April 7, 1911.

“It helped them to fell like a real town,” McClenny said.

The paper lasted a couple of years then stopped until Wolf restarted it July 24, 1929.

It was combined with the Ione Gazette in 1931 and ran until Wolf took ill in 1964. Then it became part of The Miner.

Winter Voice

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Saturday night crowds have always been large at the Newport Rodeo, but the late 70s and early 80s were a heyday for the Newport Rodeo.

Here a bull rider makes a ride before a full house at the 1979 show.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

The wild horse race was a rowdy event where three men would try to saddle and ride an untamed horse.

“Joe Kelsey used to come here from Salinas,” Yeaw remembers. The rodeo stock contractor would stop in Blackfeet, Idaho, and get some wild horses there to bring to Newport for the event.

Yeaw got on his last bull in the 1970s. His partners told him to be sure to spur No. 6 White of the Ralph McLean rodeo string. By then McLean and Kelsey had started working together providing stock.

“So he turned out and I spurred him and he jumped into the gate and broke my foot,” Yeaw remembers. “I had to go to work with a slipper on.”

That brought Yeaw’s bull riding to an end. He started competing in team roping.

Lola Rickey is another person who has been involved with the rodeo for decades.

Her father, Glen Earl, was a rodeo association president and committeeman so Rickey was involved from an early age.

“We used to have to go pick rocks from the arena for two weeks before the rodeo,” she remembers.

Rickey and her sister, Glenda, both went on to be rodeo queens, Glenda in 1969 and Rickey in 1973, when she was a sophomore in high school. Rickey was already competing in the barrel racing by that time and competed several years in that event.

Started in Cusick The rodeo’s history begins with rodeo events that were part of the Pend Oreille County Fair back in the early 1930s in Cusick, along with the merger of a private group of riders, the Hoot Owl Group, who made their rodeo headquarters in a meadow owned by Al Pease.

Outside buildings were built, bucking horse strings from outside the area were contracted and attendance improved.

In 1938, the Cusick Rodeo was held Sept. 4-5. It included a bronc riding contest, with a $2 entry fee and the rodeo’s highest purse, $40 a day.

Rodeo was still being invented in those days, so rules

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were spelled out and are considerably different than today’s rules.

In the calf roping, contestants were given three loops, with a two-minute time limit. Modern rules limit ropers to two loops. Bucking horses had to be spurred the first three jumps, not just one, as rules require now.

There were events for locals. Contestants in the cow and steer riding were given $1 for each one they successfully rode, as were junior calf riders. Junior calf riders could ride with two hands.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

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There were also a number of horse races, including a slow race, chariot race and novelty race, all with purses from $5-$20.

In the slow race, the last horse across the line won, with workhorses excluded. In the novelty race horses had to walk the first quarter mile, trot the second quarter and run the last quarter mile.

Rodeo gets more organized The rodeo was shut down during World War II, but it resumed it 1946. The rodeo committee was faced with rebuilding and in 1947 many citizens of the community voluntarily gave their time – only to see their efforts washed away by the 1948 flood. Little could be done to repair the damage, so the rodeo was dropped from the fair program.

In 1949 a few men urged that some sort of rodeo be planned. Meetings led to organization of the Pend Oreille County Rodeo Association, Inc. – now the Newport Rodeo Association. They produced the best rodeo up to that time and this was the first time the rodeo was sanctioned by the Rodeo Cowboys Association.

The anniversary of the Newport Rodeo dates back to this show, held in Cusick.

The first year as an RCA rodeo was a huge success, according to news accounts.

“1949 PEND OREILLE COUNTY RODEO LAST WEEKEND DREW ALL-TIME RECORD CROWD,” the front page headline of the Aug. 11, 1949 Newport Miner read.

Gate receipts amounted to $6,340 total for the two-day show, the story reported. That’s more than $67,000 in 2018 money.

Ken Brower of Alberta won the saddle bronc riding, Walt Salina of California the bareback riding, Bobby Pickerel of Cusick won the bull riding, Bud Spence of Omak won the bulldogging, and Ellis Upchurch of Spokane won the calf roping.

The 1949 rodeo continued with the other events, including horse racing and amateur cow riding. Saturday there were quarter mile and half mile races for county horses.

Sunday the same races were held for “outside” horses.

The cowboy dances at Cusick and Usk, with interchangeable tickets, drew a large attendance Saturday night, the paper reported.

Move to Newport In 1956, the rodeo association members made a controversial decision – to move the rodeo to a larger community and therefore separate from the county fair. The Diamond Mill had closed, and association members wondered if a rodeo could be sustained. They decided to move the rodeo to Newport, 18 miles to the southeast.

Joe Berendt, Lawrence Miller and Howard Kimmel were instrumental – they inspired the community to help build the 144-foot-long stands along with corrals and chutes for the

new rodeo grounds. The only thing that existed at the site at that time was a baseball pitcher’s mound and lights for football games.

A 1957 Miner front-page story said the move to Newport was because of the lack of places to stay overnight in Cusick. The story also tried to fend off talk of a ticket price increase.

“Despite rumors to the contrary, there will be no increase in admission prices this year, $2 for adults and $1 for children,” the paper reported.

The top bucking stock of the Kelsey-Moomaw bucking string was available that year, as the stock contractors had no other rodeos booked.

Among the broncs was “Snake,” recognized as one of the best in North America, along with Devil’s Dream, Sky High and Smuggler.

By the 1960s Joe Kelsey was the sole stock contractor for the Pend Oreille County Rodeo, a relationship that would last for decades, as would the relationship with rodeo announcer Bob Chambers.

The rodeo continued to grow through the ‘60s.

By 1967, a gymkhana had been added, with horse competitions such as pole bending open to non-professional riders. That was the first year the wild horse race was held. The rodeo committee was putting the finishing touches on 200 new seats.

The rodeo parade had been steadily growing, with as many as 100 horses and riders participating. The parade started in Oldtown, Idaho, and proceeded to downtown Newport.

The rodeo drew its largest crowds to date for the Friday and Saturday night shows in 1967. In the crowd was 200 German Boy Scouts who attended the show. The Shanholtzer and Knuth teams tied for the win in the wild horse race that year and Myrna Dahlin of Newport won the barrel racing.

Biggest crowds in 70s and 80s The rodeo expanded to three days in 1974.

“Big Three Day Rodeo Begins Friday,” The Miner announced on its Aug.1, 1974 front page.

“Newport’s biggest weekend in history gets underway tomorrow.

The Pend Oreille County Rodeo, proclaimed the fastest growing in the West, had lived up to that name, judging from the events and participants announced. Because capacity crowds have overwhelmed the seating in past years, and because children sometimes get sleepy before the big night shows are over, there will be a third Sunday matinee performance at 2 p.m.,” the newspaper announced.

That was also the same year one of the most famous bullfighters in the business, Wick Peth, appeared at Newport. Peth is an uncle to current rodeo association president Ray Hanson.

The rodeo lived up to the hype, setting an attendance record, with $10,304 in ticket sales.

The three-day rodeo became a

Winter Voice

regular stop on the circuit for many pro cowboys. The late 1970s and 1980s were probably a high point in rodeo in general and for the rodeo in Newport.

“We had huge turnouts then, with multiple world champions coming,” says Mike Haptonstall, who won money in the saddle bronc riding at Newport many times in the 1970s and ‘80s. “I remember world champion bull rider Donnie Gay flying into the old airport.”

Gay won fourth in the bull riding the year he competed at Newport after landing his plane at the airstrip where Sadie Halstead Middle School is now.

In 1980 the movie “Urban Cowboy” came out, spiking a surge in rodeo attendance throughout the country and the Pend Oreille County Rodeo benefitted as well.

The rodeo continued to draw top competitors through the 80s, but fewer of them, as more towns around the country started holding rodeos and contestants were stretched thin.

Dates moved to June In an attempt to draw more competitors, the rodeo switched the dates from early August to late June in 1990. Arena action remained as unpredictable as ever.

In 1992 a bull jumped through the fence, creating chaos as cowboys went to capture it.

Rodeo committeeman and team roper Phil Earl had to get 20 stitches in his bicep after he tore his arm on the fence trying to get to the bull. Bullfighter Bruce Kimsey had been knocked out by a bull earlier in the performance and was recovering in the ambulance when the bull got out. He jumped out of the ambulance to open the gate to put the bull back in a pen with no spectators injured.

The Pend Oreille County Rodeo underwent another change the next year.

The rodeo changed from Pend Oreille County Rodeo to the Newport Rodeo in 1993, when the rodeo changed sanctioning bodies, from the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association to the Professional Western Rodeo Association or ProWest, as it’s also known.

It simply became too expensive to have a PRCA show, so the committee decided to go from being a small rodeo in the PRCA to a big rodeo in ProWest.

Another event was added when ProWest started sanctioning the Newport Rodeo. Breakaway roping, for women and boys 16 and under, was added.

Contestants rope a calf, with their rope tied to the saddle horn with a piece of string. When the calf hits the end of the rope, the string breaks and time is taken.

In 1995 Newport was chosen as the site of the ProWest Finals, the seasonend event for the top competitors. For one Newport contestant, steer wrestler Greg Seeber, it was a career highlight.

“After a long season of going to every rodeo I could travel to, I was lucky to be in the top 10 and make the finals. There I was in the finals in my hometown. It was awesome!” Seeber said.

Seeber placed in two go-rounds and won second in the average to finish in the top five for the year.

VOICE PHOTO|SANDRA JOHNSON

Sandra Johnson was the 1956 Newport Rodeo Queen and used her $75 in earnings to purchase this white, beaded French jacket. She is shown here in 2009 in that same jacket.

Johnson was 19 when she was the rodeo queen, home from Washington State University that summer and working in the office of the Diamond Match Co. She grew up at Diamond Lake and was a member of the Moon Creek Riders Saddle Club. She graduated from Newport High School in 1955.

Bull-A-Rama begins Stand-alone bull riding events were becoming popular so rodeo committeeman John Swenson suggested Newport have a Bull-A-Rama, a contest that features bull riding and barrel racing. In 1998, what would eventually become the John Swenson Memorial Bull-A-Rama was born.

Held the first week in August, the Newport Bull-A-Rama and Barrel Race was a money loser the first year, but drew 20 bull riders and provided good action. Priest River’s Isaac Knapton won the bull riding. Usk barrel racer Shawnee Pickerel won the barrel race.

It has since grown into a regular stop for the region’s top bull riders.

The Newport Rodeo continued evolving as the years went on.

In 2007, the rodeo dropped the Sunday matinee performance, concentrating on the two profitable days.

In 2013, the rodeo added ranch bronc riding, a wild event for working cowboys. It’s a special contest in which working cowboys try to ride a bucking horse with a regular saddle. Just about anything goes and contestants can ride with one hand, two hands or no hands. The wildest ride wins.

Also in 2013, the Rough Stock Rodeo was started. The show consists of bareback riding, saddle bronc riding and bull riding – the rough stock events, along with ranch bronc riding.

Newport is one of the larger and more popular Pro-West rodeos. The rodeo committee goes out of its way to treat contestants well, awarding gas cards and day money to winners each day. It has been named Contestant’s Favorite Rodeo for several years.

The rodeo would not be possible except for the locals who continue to volunteer long after their days in the area ended.

Over the years, volunteers have wielded saws and hammers to build and improve the rodeo grounds. The rodeo arena is part of a community sports arena that includes baseball, softball and soccer fields and a skateboard park.

The Newport Rodeo has plans for the future. Upgrades to the lighting are underway and the rodeo is being talked about to host the ProWest Finals again.

Improvements to the camping area are planned.

Under the leadership of Newport Rodeo Association president Ray Hanson, the rodeo is making the investments to continue to be a major attraction for the area for decades to come.

Winter Voice

17

Crab feed turns 30 18

Winter Voice

BY DON GRONNING

In 1988, Newport’s Soroptimist group was looking around for a fundraiser to support their scholarship program.

“We didn’t have any money in the treasury,” says Gladys Bishop, who was Soroptimist president at the time. Soroptimist International is a worldwide volunteer service organization for business and professional women who work to improve the lives of women and girls. The Newport chapter needed money. “But we didn’t want another rummage sale.”

She and the late Anne Swenson, who was on the ways and means committee, came up with the idea of holding a crab feed. “We’d never done anything like that before,” Bishop says.

So they embarked on a learning experience.

“We didn’t know what we were doing but when you put a bunch of women together in a kitchen, it will happen,” she said.

It was quite an undertaking. They had to have mallets to open the crabs when they were served. So they went to the woodshop teacher at the high school, and asked if his students could make some gavels.

“The Fish Man,” who used to park at the State Line Tavern every Tuesday and take seafood orders, arranged crab that first year. The crab had to be cleaned, though.

“The community helped us clean,” Bishop said. “Gentleman from the community helped.” Newport school superintendent Dave Smith, father of his namesake, the current Newport School District superintendent, Dave Smith, helped with the cleaning, as did Mike Wolever, among others.

Crab wasn’t the only food served, there were green beans to prepare, cabbage to clean for the coleslaw, dressing to make and potatoes to cook. The potatoes were put in the dishwasher to wash.

That first year, Bishop was called on to decide which of two coleslaw dressings was best.

“They wanted me to taste them and decide,” Bishop says. “I took a bowl and poured them together and said this was best.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 20 FILE PHOTO

Left: Ray King, Mike Wolever and Pearl Pulford are shown working on 550 pounds of crab that were served at the Soroptimist’s 22nd annual Crab Feed in 2011.

COURTESY PHOTO

Right: Soroptimist crab feed cooks Audrey Henderson, left, and Anne Swenson, pose with a plate of food in 1991.

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FILE PHOTO

Newport Soroptimist Pearl Pulford serves up Dungeness crab for Kim Manus at the 2013 crab feed held at the Newport Eagles Club.

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All Soroptimists worked and sold tickets. The preparations came down to the wire that first year.

“At about 1 o’clock, we collapsed,” Bishop remembers. “We had lunch and got ready for the first seating.”

The first year the crab feed was held at the old Eagles building, where it remained for several years. The first seating had about 75 people and the second about 100 that first year.

After the last seating, the women had to clean the Eagles so that could have live music by about 8 p.m.

The first crab feed was well received.

“The first one was a huge success,” Bishop said. “It has never been done before and it was wildly successful. People loved it.”

After the whole thing was over, the Soroptimists and their supporters were exhausted and elated.

The first couple crab feeds were held in December, right after Christmas. That continued for a couple years but the Soroptimists figured it was too close to Christmas. They moved the date to the second Saturday in January, where it has remained. This year’s event will take place Saturday, Jan. 12.

The Soroptimists have had to contend with a number of problems over the years, but as current president Micki Weisbarth says, nothing is insurmountable.

The second year of the crab feed, seven inches of snow fell the night before.

“Everybody still came, they had already bought the tickets,” Bishop remembers.

The weather can vary a great deal. Some years will be super cold, some snowy.

The supply of crab can be precarious.

“One year we had to order from Alaska because red tides made the other crab too expensive,” Bishop said.

After a year or two, the Soroptimists had the crab feed down pat.

“After the first year, it got easier,” Bishop said.

Still, there were challenges to overcome.

“Things happened we didn’t think would happen,” Bishop remembers. “At the start of the second seating one year, the Eagles hot water tank couldn’t keep up.”

So the women sent someone to the store to buy paper plates and the cooks boiled water in the kitchen to sterilize what needed cleaning.

“We’ve had to run to Safeway for coleslaw and bread,” says Weisbarth. “One year the freezer didn’t work. But nothing is insurmountable.”

When the Eagles closed in 2015, the Soroptimists had to find another place to hold the crab feed. They held it at the Cork and Barrel Restaurant in Newport one year, but when that restaurant closed, they were left looking again.

As fate would have it, the Soroptimists found another place, this one the best one yet.

“One of the highlights of the 30 years is when the Knights of Columbus asked us to hold it at their place,” Bishop says. Their place was the basement of Saint Anthony’s Catholic Church.

“A couple women went over and checked it out and were elated,” Bishop says.

There is plenty of parking and people don’t have to wait outside between seatings.

Now the two organizations – the Knights of Columbus and the Soroptimists – work together on the crab feed. The Knights of Columbus handle the bar and the Soroptimists put on the crab feed.

The Soroptimists use the proceeds from their biggest fundraiser to provide scholarships for local girls. Each year they chose two area girls for the $750 scholarships.

The Newport Soroptimist chapter has about 20-30 members. The membership ebbs and flows as members move in and out of the area.

This year’s event will take place Saturday, Jan. 12, with seatings at 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. Advance tickets cost $30.

In addition to the crab feed dinner, which includes potatoes, coleslaw and green beans, there will be raffle baskets offered.

“That started about 10 years ago,” Weisbarth says. The baskets are put together by Pearl Pulford, who uses items donated by members. “She’s very creative,” Weisbarth said about Pulford. The tickets, which sell for $1, give people a chance of drawing one of 20 themed baskets.

The baskets have themes like coffee, chocolate, Italian, movies and baking.

“We make almost as much on the baskets as we do the crab feed,” says Pulford.

Sometimes, when crab is expensive, the take on the meal isn’t that much. The baskets are pure profit, as members provide the contents.

The crab has changed over the years. Now the crab is fresh frozen. It arrives with the legs off and doesn’t require cleaning.

As far as Weisbarth goes, that’s a good thing, as she is allergic to crab.

“I can’t touch it, eat it or smell it,” she says. “I can’t do anything with the crabs. I have to give orders.”

This year the Soroptimists will buy 425 pounds of crab from Pacific Seafood for the crab feed.

People should bring their own cracking equipment, Weisbarth says. People bring things like scissors, nutcrackers and pliers to open the crab to get at the sweet meat.

“Everyone has their own technique,” she says.

People come for the crab, but the green beans are also popular.

“When you see men lining up for seconds of green beans, you know they’re good,” Bishop says.

Once available, tickets can be purchased at Seeber’s Pharmacy and Owen’s Grocery and Deli in Newport, and the Beardmore Wine Bar in Priest River.

Winter Voice

FILE PHOTO

Remember when you could pick up your sound system at the pharmacy? Sold on easy terms, in case you were wondering. Ad is from a 1917 edition.

FILE PHOTOS

Above: Time for the county fair and rodeo in Cusick in 1947. Right: Newport Optical, 1910. Far right: JC Penney’s celebrates their sixth anniversary in Newport in a 1935 edition of The Miner Newspaper. Below: Sensible indeed!

A roadster ad from Newport Garage in 1920.

Winter Voice

21

The art of the sale Ads of yesteryear evoke a different time

BY SOPHIA ALDOUS

The Miner Newspapers’ attic is a time warp that transports you to the past.

No, I haven’t been huffing printer ink cartridges, in case you’re wondering.

I’m referring to the old newspapers that reside upstairs, tucked in their stacks and dated. The earliest copies in our possession are bound in well-worn leather, the pages yellowed with age. Unfortunately, our archives don’t go all the way back to the inaugural issue. Newspapers are fragile things, and the archival process is expensive and time-consuming. Thankfully, there are other institutions and organizations that are able to pick up the reins of historic preservation, like our local library districts and museums, which have earlier copies of Pend Oreille County newspapers on microfilm and digitally catalogued. Our copies aren’t available to the public, as unfortunately a few curious researchers over the years took it upon themselves to snip or rip sections of the newspaper they want out of the archives and make off with them. Sorry, it’s always

22

a couple spotted apples that ruin it for everyone else.

While our attic of course does not literally allow you to travel in time, it’s something of a fib we tell ourselves in the office when one of us in the news department says, “I’m just going up to the attic for a little bit.”

Okay, so it’s a fib I tell myself. It’s probably not fair to implicate my coworkers in my diversion. It’s hard to resist the pull the past has, though, particularly when you look at it through the lens of your local newspaper. Starting in the earliest year of Miner editions in our possession, which is 1910, I found not only local news, but national and international news as well. It’s easy to forget in this day and age of having the Internet on our person constantly via our cell phones that in the not too distant pass, most of our ancestors didn’t have connection to the wider world.

Besides the footnotes and milestones of important news events and pertinent social connection, it’s a continuing source of amusement and even inspiration for

me to look at newspaper advertisements of yesteryear. There’s something about design and the creativity that goes into the imaging and printing that interests me. Sometimes it’s the sheer outrageousness of the advertisements when compared to the knowledge that we now have, e.g. cigarette ads from the 1930’s touting the health benefits of smoking. It’s also a bit wistful to see how many ads for retail stores in the area there are, from tailoring to JC Penney. There are also large ads heralding upcoming social dances, not just for teenagers, but for everyone (I love to dance, and it doesn’t happen enough).

Leading up to the rodeo when it was still held in Cusick, there are star-spangled, full-page advertisements that denote a sense of anticipation and celebration (see rodeo history story by Don Gronning in this edition of Voice). There are even ads touting quality butter wrappers from your local Miner Newspaper to keep your butter fresh.

I hope this selection of ads from the past bring you as much entertainment as they did me.

Winter Voice

FILE PHOTO

Not just a funeral home. Sherman Funeral Home in Newport, ad from 1951.

Loved Ones

deserve only the best

Plan ahead for peace of mind FILE PHOTO

Buying and eating local in 1966.

Funerals • Monuments • Cremations performed locally 423 2nd St. • Newport, WA • (509) 447-3118 • www.sherman-knapp.com

FILE PHOTO

Ringing in the New Year in 1947.

Winter Voice

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