History at a Glance

This story is from a memoir written by Walter Jerome Gordon that was donated to the Mason County Historical Society Museum in 1970.

Walter was born near St. Cloud, Minnesota in March, 1889. When he was a year old, his family moved to Tacoma, Washington, and then took up a homestead and timber claim near a lake about 3 miles from Dewatto and 10 miles from Tahuya.

The family lived on the homestead long enough to get full title, then moved down to Little Dewatto where Walter's father engaged in fishing. "Father had an opportunity to look after an elderly lady with a deal that when she passed he would get the place, but he turned it down as it could be said that he had done away with her for the place, and the risk was too great."

From Little Dewatto the family took a one-year lease on the Lloyd ranch, about 2 miles up the canal from what was then known as the Huma Huma River.

"This is where I and my sister began school. I was 7 and my sister about 5. After school, we had to loiter around until five o'clock and then we would drive the cows home There were usually 13 head of milk cows and a lot of young stock, a yoke of oxen, and a big black bull that seemed to be angry most of the time. Can you imagine kids of this day cutting out our cows from the rest of the herd and driving them 2 miles along a narrow trail?

"I can remember going by boat to Tacoma from Allyn with Mother. Ruth was not born yet, Ethel was a babe in arms. I was old enough to walk. When we got to Tacoma I saw boys riding high-wheeled bicycles - the only time I have ever seen anyone ride them except on a vaudeville stage. We stayed at Uncle Fred's place. On the way back, the boat got stuck on a mud flat... and the rudder had to be taken off. They steered it with a big sweep, which was a pole with a board nailed on it. My mother was lying down so sick that she could not get up. When the boat went aground it listed over badly and I had fun climbing the upper side and sliding down to the low side."

After a year at the Lloyd ranch, Walter's father bought a place at Tahuya.

"There were five kids by then. Dad made a raft out of cedar logs and timbers, built a small house on it, and we moved all our belongings, including heavy things, tools, etc., and the cat and the dog and a heifer that would calve sometime later. Well the load was too great for the logs and it barely floated, so we had to get more logs under it. We finally started at noon. The north wind usually came up at noon and that was our only source of power to move.

"I do not know how far we went that afternoon but we pulled in behind a spit for the night. The next day we drifted all the way to Potlatch. That was long before there was a town there - only an Indian campground and some graves and arrowheads. Then there came a storm and we had to stay there for three days. On the fourth day it was clear and sunny in the morning and we began to tow the raft with the row boat. I was able to push the oars a little by that time. We were making for Bald Point. We got nearly there when a brisk wind came up from the south, which would have taken us back down the canal. So dad tied all of the rope he had together, tied one end to the raft and the other to the small row boat and pulled for shore at what was then known as Tom Phalen's Point. He didn't quite make shore but he was close enough to jump overboard and wade ashore, pulling the boat. It was a close call. He pulled the raft in behind the point and we stayed there for three days, waiting out another hard blow. We let the heifer off the raft to graze with other cattle and the cat jumped overboard and swam ashore to get a place to dig a hole.

"When the wind died down and fine weather came we did not leave the shoreline. Most of the way, a good 4 miles, Dad pulled the raft along with a rope while Mother and I used poles to keep it from getting too close to shore. I believe we made it in one day, and swung it around in the harbor at Tahuya before another storm came up.

"So here we were at Tahuya. I must have been 8 at the time. I began school again and we had a different teacher each term usually. Some of them boarded with us and others rented the front room and batched. The most pupils that ever attended was seven, all in one small room and we learned the lessons of the upper classes while in the lower. I was able to skip some of the grades as I knew all the lessons.

"Dad continued in the fishing business, catching salmon and smelt. He had a seine for both kinds as well as a gill net for salmon. I remember we knit some of the gill nets. I was not large enough or strong enough to take a real man's place yet, but I used to pick up smelt off the beach that they would shake out of the nets. They gave me 10 cents for a 5 gallon coal oil can full. I made enough money so that my dad's partner, Marius Carstensen, took the money and bought me a Stephens Favorite Single Shot 22 rifle.

"The buyers in Seattle were not very prompt in returning the empty smelt boxes. Once, when there was a big catch and not enough boxes to hold them, someone remembered there were a lot of small black coffins under the store at Union City. So they filled them and shipped them to Seattle and believe you me, the smelt boxes were returned regularly after that."

■ Jan Parker is a researcher for the Mason County Historical Museum. She can be reached at [email protected]. Membership in the Mason County Historical Society is $25 per year. For a limited time, new members will receive a free copy of the book "Shelton, the First Century Plus Ten."