Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/375



EARLY FARMING IN UMATILLA COUNTY 347

secured from Mr. Mays and the other from a Mr. Rinehart, who had opened up a farm about three miles east of Weston, well up the mountainside.

This grain was hauled by the writer on bob-sleds with a six-horse team, and fed to sheep at one of the Adams sheep ranches located near where the town of Felix now stands.

Thus it appears that all the available surplus wheat to be had in the winter of 1874-75 was fed out to one band of sheep. It was the custom to scatter the grain on the tramped snow and let the sheep eat it from the ground, afterwards to make trails to the hills and herd them and let them paw the snow from the large bunchgrass and feed on the grass.

IRRIGATION BEGUN IN 1869.

About 1869-70 one T. Dickenson commenced raising grain by irrigation at the junction of Dry and Pine Creeks, in the Hudson's Bay country. In the Fall of 1873 the writer hauled threshed oats for feed from the Dickenson ranch, and also wheat, and had the same ground into flour at the Miller mill at Milton, for use on the Adams ranch. This mill was built in 1872 by John Miller and is still operated by his three sons, Henry, John and William.

In the spring of 1884 the writer hauled a load of wheat from Weston, grown by Mr. Hartman (the father of Mrs. Lina Sturgis and the late Judge Hartman) and had the same ground into flour at the Indian mill on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, just below Cayuse station.

From the completion of the Dr. Baker narrow-gauge rail- road to Blue Mountain station, in 1879, the development of grain growing in the Weston- Athena territory was more rapid. Among the early settlers then growing grain were H. Mc- Arthur, R. Jamieson, T. J. Kirk, Robert Coppeck, P. Ely, William Pinkerton, Joe Lieuallen, Richard Ginn, Tom Price, O'Harra, Downing, Gibbons, Winn and others. These people had engaged in the growing of grain in a small way prior to