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Coming Next: Pend Oreille County 1910-1919
The county chronicles of 1911
THE VOICE OF PEND OREILLE COUNT Y SINCE 1901
A Monthly Publication of The Miner Celebrating 100 years of Pend Oreille County
A county is born 1910s a decade of growth for the region, birth of Pend Oreille County By Janelle Atyeo Of The Miner
T
he Pend Oreille valley was growing rapidly
100 years ago, as the people of Washington’s northeast corner looked to break away from Stevens County and form their own government. Business was booming, with lumber mills working around the clock and a new cement plant in the new, new town of Metaline Falls (also established in 1911). Over the last 25 years, the Pend Fred Wolf Oreille valley had been homesteaded, and numerous little communities sprang up all along the river. Places like Blueslide and Jared that are all but wiped from the map today looked just as bustling as the established towns of Newport and Ione. Stevens County was all well and good with the division, so long as those Pend Oreille folks didn’t inch the boundary line any further west than was proposed. Stevens County had once encapsulated much of eastern Washington. For the last 40 years leading up to Pend Oreille’s split, 10 or so counties had been formed from its reach. Pend Oreille was the last to leave the nest. It’s the states youngest county.
Talk of taking Pend Oreille on its own had been going on for five or so years. The major players from King and Spokane counties didn’t take so warmly to the idea. Their major quarrel was with representation in the Legislature. At the time, each county had one rep. Giving lil’ ole Pend Oreille its own man would mean populous King County would have that much less of a say over things. King County’s delegate pointed out that representation would be 6,500 to 1 (Pend Oreille’s population) versus 15,000:1. We all know how much of a pull our rural counties have in Olympia today. I think King is doing just fine. The division’s major movers were Fred and Fred. Trumbull and Wolf, that is. Turnbull was an attorney from Ione who planned the town’s incorporation the year before, and Wolf was publisher of The Newport Miner. He was an all-around citizen activist since first coming to Newport to take the helm of the paper in 1907. The county division was his first major local cause. He also served three terms in the state House of Representatives, starting in 1919. He pushed for an improved highway through Newport, and all the way Fred into the 1950s, he Trumbull helped bring about the construction of Albeni Falls Dam. The two local men sent petitions around and lobbied for the division in Olympia. The reasons for splitting off from Stevens County had to do with transportation and population growth, but mostly – as in
most movements in history – it was money. Taxes from Pend Oreille citizens contributed $32,000 per year to the Stevens County general fund. They guessed they could run their own county government for $27,000 per year, and they’d be better off for it. The people felt under represented. The Pend Oreille side held only 17 of the county’s 77 voting precincts. They didn’t like all the new bridges and infrastructure they saw going up on the other side of the The first mountains. county officers, And there being appointed by no roads Gov. Hay, were across those sworn in at 2:10 Selkirks, the trip to p.m. on Colville was June 12, 1911. exhausting. For a local person wanting to conduct business with Stevens County, it was a three-day journey from Newport. The way the train schedules worked, a Pend Oreille resident would have to overnight in Spokane and in Colville, and again in Spokane on the homeward journey. Choosing a county seat was a hot issue. Newport was named as the temporary seat by the legislature’s bill. It would stand until the next general election in 1912, so that meant a lot of talk in each community’s newspapers about why they were the best. Cusick and Usk proclaimed their central locations as their claim for the title. Ione edged Newport on population (both were about 1,600) and infrastructure, but Newport had the link to the outside world with the railroad there connecting so readily to Spokane and Idaho. Ione
The New County From Chinookers in the Spokesman-Review (printed in The Newport Miner Feb. 23, 1911)
The people up to Metaline Exult in nature’s bounty, And know they’ve land enough in sign To continue a county; But how they groan and grouch and yell When people call it Penn Dorell. Ione, we know, has got the worth, Surrounding towns to dazzle; Her boosters say she has the earth All pounded to a frazzle; What boots it if competitors Are ground into a jelly, When rank outsiders call the place A name like Pan Dorelly?
COURTESY PHOTO|PEND OREILLE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM
Two loggers work in nearly perfect winter logging conditions – cold with moderate snow. They started a cut with a saw and axes on the left side and are about halfway through the trunk on the right.
There’s Newport, future county seat, A lively town, believe me; But what a wrench They give their French – Or do my ears deceive me? For even boosters proud as they Pronounce it blandly Ponderay. Small wonder that the senator Whose soul is steeped in history Should find the new-found title An Orthographic Mystery. But vain regrets would bow his head And salt tears drip a gallon Should he successfully impose The sainted name of Allen.
COURTESY PHOTO|PEND OREILLE COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM
Haying operations are in progress at George Johnston’s “Sky Ranch,” located southwest of Newport in Spring Valley.
Accept we then this county new, And place the name on file Where every prospect please And only man is vile. But wish yourself in for Hawaii Before you call it Pon-Do-rye-ee!
FILE PHOTO
Traveling on Cusick streets was rough in 1910. The Wike family’s store was one of the town’s first businesses.
SEE BORN, 10A
IONE DEPOT – COURTESY PHOTO|PEND OREILLE COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM
Next Centennial Events
July 24
March 25
• Triangle Shirtwaist Factory catches fire in New York City, 146 die
May 25
May 30
• First Indianapolis 500 auto race
• Revolution in Mexico overthrows President Jose Porfirio Diaz
• Machu Picchu, Lost City of the Incas, rediscovered
June 22
• King George V of England crowned
Sept. 29
Aug. 22
• Italy declares war on Turkey
Dec. 31
• French chemist Marie Curie receives her second Nobel Prize
Aug. 15
• Procter and Gamble unveils its Crisco shortening
1911 at a Glance
• First transcontinental airplane flight, New York to Pasadena in 82 hours
SATURDAY, FEB. 12
Howard’s Follies: 7 p.m. – Pend Oreille Playhouse 6 Foot Swing and Dessert Buffet: 7:30 p.m. – Cutter Theatre
• Mona Lisa stolen from the Louvre (Recovered 1913)
Sept. 17
SATURDAY, FEB. 5
Poker Tournament: 4 p.m. – Cusick American Legion
Nov. 27
• Audience throws vegetables at actors for first recorded time in U.S.
SUNDAY, FEB. 13
Howard’s Follies: 3 p.m. – Pend Oreille Playhouse
SATURDAY, FEB. 19
Howard’s Follies: 7 p.m. Pend Oreille Playhouse
SUNDAY, FEB. 20
Howard’s Follies: 3 p.m. Pend Oreille Playhouse
SATURDAY, FEB. 26
Howard’s Follies: 7 p.m. Pend Oreille Playhouse
SUNDAY, FEB. 27
Howard’s Follies: 3 p.m. Pend Oreille Playhouse
BORN | Description FROM PAGE 1 wasn’t quick to let go. Even up though 1915 as the new courthouse was going up, the town tried to claim the seat. After the county division bill passed both houses, Gov. Marion E. Hay signed off on March 1, making it official. The bill took effect June 10, but that was a Saturday, so the first county officers, appointed by Hay, were sworn in at 2:10 p.m. on June 12, 1911. Commissioners were Dr. G. W. Sutherland, a large property owner from Newport who had served on the county board in Stevens County; D. R. Atherton, a farmer from Cusick who had experience in road work, logging and administration; and L. L. Mathews, an accountant from Ione who had served as a treasurer before he left Minnesota.
The people were quick to criticize their appointed leaders. All three were voted out in the next general election. And early on, citizens balked at the commissioners’ stipend of $4 per day. Sound familiar? The name for the state’s youngest county was up for debate in Olympia. “Pend Oreille” had come from the French fur traders, their name for the Kalispel Indians supposedly because of the ear pendants they wore, or perhaps because Lake Pend Oreille was shaped like such an adornment. Whatever the case, it was hard to pronounce, even harder to spell, and it was French. Lawmakers in Olympia suggested Allen County, after John B. Allen, the state’s first U.S. Senator. The first county offices were
on Washington Avenue, just north of what is today POVN and was then The Newport Miner offices. They converted the second story of the Craig building and added a secured vault and jail to the back. Once the new county was allowed to take on debt, it went out for a bond, and in 1915, what we now know as the “old” courthouse was built for $27,000 – much to Ione’s dismay. New buildings were springing up all over Newport in those days. Although voters were tight with their tax dollars and originally rejected the bonds, Newport was able to put up its city hall in 1913 and a new high school in 1915. “Our demands cause taxes,” Fred Wolf wrote on The Miner’s front page in 1914. “People must awaken to reform.”