060816seventhgradepress

THE MINER

Seventh Grade Press

Volume 1, Number 4

POVA railroad integral to local economy

BY MADELENE BEARDALL

The POVA Railroad was bought by the Port of Pend Oreille Sept. 9, 1979. It was 61 miles long, and cost $1.385 million.

POVA means Pend Oreille Valley Railroad. It travels from Newport to Metaline Falls, Wash. The POVA railroad saved two of Pend Oreille’s biggest employers: the cement plant and the timber mill. It still operates, serving other shippers. Now, the railroad goes to Sandpoint, Idaho, on the original route built by the Idaho and Washington Railway in 1908.

The railroad was constructed by Frederick Blackwell (1852-1922) in 1909-1911.

The railroad is used for transporting large cargo throughout the county. In 1916, Blackwell lost the POVA to the Milwaukee Road, which was the company that the Port first bought the railroad from.

A while later, the Milwaukee Road abandoned the railroad in 1976.

Losing the railroad decreased the population in Pend Oreille County.

Almost 1,000 of the 8,000 residents worked regular fulltime jobs. This was already an economic difficulty in the county. Nearly one third of those who moved worked at the Lehigh Portland Cement Company, or at the Louisiana Pacific’s Lumber

Mill. Both of these depended on the railroad for transportation of products. Without the railroad, they would have to close.

In December 1977, the residents started to find a way to save the railroad. They decided to build a port in the county. They would first have to get approved by the Legislature. Shortly after they received approval, they started the process of establishing a new port district.

Later, the county needed upgrades on the tracks. Even though they have authority for the upgrades, the Pend Oreille County citizens did not give them that power.

On Sept. 19, 1978 , the Port District was approved to make the new port in Pend Oreille County.

The Port gave a check to the Milwaukee Railroad. The check was worth $1,385,000. The ceremony was held at the Pend Oreille County courthouse in Newport. By October the railroad was using cars leased from the Milwaukee Railroad and Burlington Northern Railroad.

The railroad needed more shippers to keep running. They took advantage of the 20-mile stretch that went through Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) territory reaching into Idaho. The railroad obtained trackage rights to operate as far as Sandpoint.

The companies that POVA shipped with include Tri Pro Cedar, Bell Pole, Dyna Nobel, and Mountain West Bank. POVA has been trying to attract business to the region.

In 2011, they started working with Tri-County Economic Development District (TEDD) to develop an industrial park on Port owned land in Newport. However, the railroad is the Port’s main endeavor. The Port’s 17 fulltime employees (including summer help) have to handle more than 80 miles of track. In 1999, the Port constructed a working shop where employees work on POVA’s own locomotives and ones from other lines.

Day-to-day railroad operations occurred and locomotives were rebuilt. In 2013, POVA added on to the working shop. A 30-ton crane and a locomotive paint booth were included in this construction. POVA is one of the few Port Districts that do not collect property tax.

The POVA might just be one of the most important pieces of history in Pend Oreille County. Without it, we might not have the town of Newport.

Sources: www.historylink.org www.waymarking.com www.povarr.com www.icehouse.net

Early settlers and their food

BY LANA HANNI

I’m sure that kids got hungry back in the day, and they didn’t go to the refrigerator like I do when I want to eat.

In the beginning of Pend Oreille County, there wasn’t electricity. In the 1930’s electricity came to the county. The PUD was established in 1936 and then it became affordable to many houses. People used ice for refrigeration until about the 1940s.

They usually used root cellars to store food. To make a root cellar people dug holes in the side of a hill, and built a front on it.

Sometimes they got ice in winter and covered it with layers of straw to keep it from melting. This kept the food cold so it didn’t spoil or rot.

Storing food without refrigeration was very hard, but pioneers had multiple ways to store food.

People made almost everything. They mostly bought only essential foods such as flour, coffee and tea. They also bought molasses, and sometimes sugar. One way they stored food was drying it by hanging it in the sun.

3B

E D I TO R S N O T E

T

he Seventh Grade Press is a series of stories written by seventh graders in Ms. Irene Ewing’s class at Sadie Halstead Middle School in Newport. Each student chose a topic of local historical importance, conducted research and interviews and went through a lengthy editing process.

More than 80 students participated and each one will get a ‘by line’ in The Miner Newspapers. This is the fourth week of the project. Check back for the next several weeks for more on local history. See more on page 4B. If you find that you have something to add, interview candidates the class should talk to, or documents and artifacts you want registered in the local museum, contact the Seventh Grade Class, at Sadie Halstead Middle School, in Newport. They have agreed to collect and catalog everything that comes in, and deliver it to the museum for archiving.

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A root cellar.

The next most common way to store food was to smoke it in a wood shed with a fire making smoke.

Fermentation was kind of like canning, they just didn’t compress it, that way the good bacteria could come in.

Salting saves food too, especially ham or bacon.

They just pile it in salt and then wash it off when it’s time to eat.

Everything else came from the farm and animals.

Some of the common foods they had are things I would like even today.

I like homemade bread, apple sauce, steaks, pie, jelly, fried potatoes, cake, and hot cakes (that now we call pancakes), and cornbread. Some of the food they made are things I wouldn’t like. They ate some weird foods because they used up everything and because they had to grow what they could for free. Some of the things I could deal with are om-

elets, vegetables, stewed fruit, sausages, and maybe, frizzled beef, but I don’t know what it is.

The foods that would have been more than I can take were too weird.

They ate dandelion salad.

They ate pickled pigs feet, or soused calves’ feet, and they had oxtail soup.

I think that it would be kind of cool to try all the foods that the people in the olden days ate, and maybe someday I will try these foods.

Little Blue Grouse, Boyer mountains offer views of region

BY ANDREW BAILEY

JUNE 8, 2016 |

Let’s start out with Blue Grouse Mountain. Blue Grouse can be seen from Spokane. From the top it’s really cool, you can see Sacheen Lake and Diamond Lake, as well as Spokane.

The main road to get to Blue Grouse is called Harworth Road. The other way up is pretty hard to ride up to. You may need a dirt bike or in the winter you need a snowmobile. Either way you end up on Harworth Road, which takes you to the same place. It’s hard to get through because there’s these two hills of dirt blocking the road, one after the other. If you’re on a dirtbike you have to accelerate right after you go down. I’ve wrecked on it and it’s not fun.

One day our family planned a day trip, to go up Little Blue Grouse and Boyer Mountain.

We rode all day, it was really fun. It was in November, so when we got high enough it started to snow a little, but not that badly.

A long time ago I was on Harworth Road, the road that takes you up to Boyer and Blue Grouse. My friend and I were riding dirtbikes when a logging truck was pulling off of Fertile Valley Road onto Hayworth Road.

We were on the gas going up to Fertile Valley Road.

When I turned to get out of the way of the logging truck, he cut the corner and I went off the road into a really steep drop off on the side because I didn’t want to get hit.

Before I went off, I yelled at my friend to get out of the way, and he did. The reason I went flying over the drop off was because I was on the edge of the road. The side of the road gave away right as the logging truck almost hit me.

When I went down the side of the hill the dirt bike landed on me and I burned my leg, but it wasn’t that bad. What seems funny to me is the truck never driver SEE MOUNTAINS, 4B

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Biography of Lester J. Jared

BY MADISON HILDEN

I chose to do my report on Lester Jared because I looked in a Big Smoke magazine at the table of contents and I saw the name Jared.

I knew that our family is part of the Jareds. So I went home and I asked my dad if he knew who Lester Jared was. He told me, “That’s my grandpa, your great-grandpa.” I never knew that until he told me.

Lester Jared was my great-grandpa, who was born July 28, 1912, to John Madison Jared and Tina Marie Jared. He had nine brothers and sisters. He and his brothers would have to get a deer or two every couple weeks to feed the family. His brothers and he logged to provide for the family too. He was an avid hunter and fisherman and trapped animals and sold their furs for extra money too.

He went to school in Usk from 1917-1929. When he went to school he would have to walk four miles one way to get to the school in Cusick. During the Great Depression he went to Grand Coulee Dam and worked for two years. When he came back he was able to pay the taxes owed so the family could keep the ranch. The Jared ranch is out by Calispell Lake.

He got married to Helen Slater on Dec. 24, 1938.

He moved to Seattle and had a daughter, Dixie Jeanne Jared, July 12, 1941, and a son, Robert Richard Jared, Oct. 4, 1943. In Seattle he was a welder, building boats for World War II. He worked until 1974 as a welder until he retired.

The town of Jared was first started when Lester’s grandpa, Robert Payne Jared, moved west in 1870 and settled north of Cusick and started a town called Jared. The location is where the Riverview Bible camp is now in Cusick.

Names of his brothers and sisters were, Emmett Van, Sept. 26, 1901; Myrtle May, April 4, 1905; Jack, Aug. 15, 1910; Lester John, July 28, 1912; Claude Robert, Aug. 30, 1914; Russell Robert, about 1916; Cecil Richard, June 6, 1919; Pearl, May 6, 1922; Ruby, Nov. 25, 1925; and Bonnie March, 18, 1928.

He did a lot in the Usk and Cusick areas when he was younger and older. I never met him, but the way my dad described him made him sound like a cool person. I learned a lot doing this project, it may even motivate me to research other Jared family relatives.

My sources were The Big Smoke articles from 1979, The Book of Jared that my dad’s mother gave him or the original from my great-grandpa. My primary source was interviewing my dad who knew mostly every important detail of Lester’s life.

Proud of our history Proud of our community Making decisions with tomorrow in mind

SEVENTH GRADE PRESS

The restoration of Bull Trout passage at Albeni Falls Dam

BY KEAGAN STOTT

Listed as a threatened species of fish by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in 1998, the bull trout are in need of help. Albeni Falls Dam was built on the Pend Oreille River, and there was a question of how many bull trout were provided passage through the dam to reach Pend Oreille Lake.

A study was designed to monitor movements of bull trout that were provided passage above the Aleni Falls Dam. There is a problem for the bull trout, but there is no solution yet, even after all this time. All the discussion has brought this topic to a study.

The big fish must make it into Lake Pend Oreille from the Pend Oreille River to find refuge from heat in the summer time.

Bull Trout that can’t find a way from the warm river to the cool lake face a death sentence. Pend Oreille Lake has a constant water temperature of 39.5 degrees at 1,100 foot depth. This cools the upper part of the lake for the fish to hang around.

Years after Albeni Falls Dam was built, the bull trout populations had noticeably declined and were listed as endangered under the endan-

Body color gray to silvery gray Head Flattened

Small pale yellow spots mixed with orange spots

gered species act. Congress requested the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers agency to be responsible for studying the continuation of the species.

I interviewed Lori Morris, Tribal Liaison, the person in charge of The Albani Fish Passage study, in the Seattle office. In her work she first looked to see what needed to be done to save the bull trout. As part of the study it was determined that downstream from the dam is not the problem. The Corp looked at the upstream passage as the critical concern, ensuring the fish’s ability moving through Albeni Falls Dam. Could the bull trout make it up the Columbia River, through the Pend Oreille River, through the Dam, and to the cool, lifesaving lake?

Mountain whitefish were studied as

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Lower fins develop orange and red colors spotless

they went through the turbines of the dam and they were counted.

Roughly 90 percent of the mountain whitefish, similar to bull trout, made it through the dam unscathed. Tissue samples were collected from each bull trout and sent to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service Abernathy Fish Technology Center Conservation Genetics Lab in Washington.

The DNA extracted from tissue samples were compared to a catalog of bull trout population DNA from the Priest River drainage, Lake Pend Oreille tributaries, and the Clark Fork drainage to determine the most probable tributary of origin.

The study, considering the need for a ladder or passage for the bull trout to make it through the

dam is not completed yet, but is coming to fruition. A decision will be made as soon as possible, but not too far in the future. Congress will consider future suggestions for funding, design, plan, and completion after they review the study. Only the study phase was funded by Congress.

A passage around the Dam would allow bull trout that would have been lost from local populations to return to natal tributaries and contribute to overall recovery goals.

Fifty-three percent of all bull trout captured below Albeni Falls Dam have been genetically assigned to depressed spawning tributaries. These special fish were saved by the hard work of many men and women.

Newport, Idaho vs. Newport, Washington

BY STEVEN BURKETT

I would like to take you back to when Newport started. At that time people wore top hats and ugly mustaches. I was excited when I found out that I was assigned this particular project.

I knew it wasn’t only for the students who might learn, but also the adults. They are the only people who read newspaper anymore, within the county, who were interested in learning the not necessarily new information but actually very interesting information.

My information came from researching Newport, Wash., through Tony Bamonte’s book “History of Pend Oreille County” (1996). My missions was how it obtained its name and why the settlement was created.

Newport first started as a village. It was around 1890, and that is old. It was an ideal location because it was connected directly to the Pend Oreille River.

Therefore, it connected to Sandpoint and Rathdrum. At this time, the Model T wasn’t even invented, according to Model T Ford Club of America and the Albany Dam hadn’t been built yet.

So, water travel was highly sought after.

The Great Northern Railway was built in 1892. It made a huge impact and greatly improved the chances of Newport growing in size, population, and commerce.

Is Lost Creek really lost?

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THE MINER

However, with more people, more problems.

Three years later in 1895, the Talmadge Brothers came. They were surveyors. The brothers made controversy over whether or not Newport was located in Idaho or Washington. The post office was in Idaho so all the locals thought Newport must be in Idaho. To me, why would it matter? Since Washington in 1889 and Idaho in 1890 were official states and the borders had already been established.

The population in 1901 was 200 as compared to 2016 which is about 2,100 for Newport, Wash. But one of the problems was that the majority of the population was on the Washington State side in 1901. It became that way because the Talmadge Brothers bought 40 acres of land in Washington.

The Talmadge Brothers were selfish, so they teamed up with the Kelly Brothers to change the route of the railway to the Washington side. They knew it would make lots of profit for the Talmadge Brothers. The Kelly Brothers heavily advertised Newport, Wash., in the Newport Pilot which later became the Newport Miner.

This led people to believe that it should be Newport, Wash., not Newport, Idaho. So the Kelly Brothers did an under the table deal with one of the governors to change where the post office would be located.

Finally, many factors affected the development of Newport. Newport started as a village on the Pend Oreille River. The Great Northern Railway came and expanded the town, which led to the Talmadge Brothers that brought a dispute as to whether Newport was in Idaho or Washington.

I have learned this dispute has been colorful and that’s how Newport, Wash., got its name.

BY RUTH HILDRETH

“The Diamond City had an aerial tram, which took match stock across the Pend Oreille River to Lost Creek,” says Faith McClenny in her book titled Pend Oreille County.

Lumber was crucial in Pend Oreille County’s development. There was a sufficient amount of resource and a substantial demand for those products in the county.

Pend Oreille County was founded in 1911 and has an area of 1,425 square miles, with a population of 12,896 as of 2013.

Lost Creek is located in Pend Oreille County and on the Pend Oreille River. Lost Creek is approximately 2,050 feet above sea level. The outlying communities are Cusick and Ione. Although Lost Creek has creek in the name it is actually a stream.

My great-grandparents, Wilda and Arthur Chantry lived and owned a great cattle ranch at Lost Creek. After Wilda passed away on April 15, 2010, my family and I went camping on their property at Lost Creek. It was a lot of fun even though the water was super cold. We had fun fishing and walking around the property to see it all.

Lost Creek was and always will be a fun place to go. Also it is definitely not lost. It had an aerial tram and was home for many which later became a city named Diamond City.

Lost Creek had a contribution to Pend Oreille’s development.

MOUNTAINS: Good for dirt bikes, snowmobiles FROM PAGE 3B

stopped to help me.

Let’s get started with Mt. Boyer. Boyer Mountain is wider than Blue Grouse. On a topographical map it shows Boyer Mountain is a 5,256 feet mountain peak that is in Pend Oreille County. The mountain can be seen near Deer Park. It actually can be seen easily from Spokane also. It is a pretty high peak for this area. The nearest peaks are Granite Mountain, Power Peak, Little Round Top, Little Blue Grouse Mountain, Brush Mountain and Nelson Peak.

See the Boyer Mountain map, 3D fly around, and the Boyer Mountain photos to get a better sense of the mountain. The Latitude is 48°11’49.64” ,and the Longitude is : 117° 26’0.83”. Boyer Mountain is a lot like Little Blue Grouse as far as views go you can see Diamond Lake, Sacheen Lake, Spokane, and that’s from Pend Oreille County, but that’s just about all I know about Little Blue Grouse and Boyer Mountain. These Mountains are pretty cool and they are mostly cool for dirt bikes, quads, and snowmobiles.