Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/376



348 C. A. BARRETT

any railroad transportation in this country, when the nearest point was to haul the grain to Wallula and Umatilla landings, on the Columbia River.

HEADER BROUGHT INTO USE.

In 1878, the year of the Indian War, the section about Wes- ton had become mostly devoted to grain. The writer worked with the Edwards and Pinkerton threshing machine that har- vest, the outfit being a header and old-style hand- feed thresher. The grain was all measured in a half-bushel measure, placed in seamless sacks and hauled to a granary.

Up to this time but little headway had been made in opening up the bunchgrass country west of Athena, but settlement was being rapidly made in this territory. There had been some grain hay grown on Wildhorse Creek by stockmen, but the only threshing that had been done prior to 1878 that I am able to learn was by David Taylor, who raised a crop of oats on the creek bottom of what is known as the Jackson Nelson place, about one mile below Athena.

From 1874-78 there had been considerable settlement west of Athena and about 1877 David Taylor plowed about 40 acres of sod on his claim, three miles west of Athena, and planted it to corn by sewing the corn broadcast and harrowing the seed in. In the Spring of 1878 James Scott seeded this ground to wheat, which was cut and threshed that Fall, the cutting being done with a Buckeye wire binder, that is, wire was used to bind the bundles, instead of ties.

SQUIRRELS EARLY DESTROYERS.

From this time on the development of the main wheat belt of Umatilla County steadily, but slowly, advanced. For many years the squirrels were bad and it was nothing uncommon for the settler to go to the mountains after wood or posts and on returning the next day to find his small patch of grain all cut down by the squirrels.