Frenchman Hills

[AL WORRELLS KID]

What's in a name?
Frenchman Hills was just a place on the map close by where we used to Trap Coyotes, Beaver, Badger and Muskrats near "The Potholes, Seep Lakes" where we also Hunted Ducks and Geese at the same time, Back in the 1960's and 70's.

Just a name, until I read this story.......

One former Trapper and possibly the earliest white resident of the Royal Slope, lived at "The Low Gap" (below todays Wanapum Dam) during the decades of the 1860's and 1870's, and is known as "The Frenchman" or just "Frenchman."
He became the semi-legendary figure for whom Frenchman Hills is most likely named.

Historian "Monte Hormel"
is one who has told a version of the Frenchman's story, elements
of which follow:

Nobody knew his real name. He had been a Trapper and
Mountain man in the early days ... he chose to stick with as much of
the old free life as he could by catching Wild Horses in the remote and
lonely Columbia Basin.
His cabin and corrals stood on the ridge later
named after him. His foreman was an Orphan Boy when the Frenchman
found him and raised him as a Horse Catcher.
The 1872-73 Winter
hit the Columbia Basin early and hard. The Frenchman was preparing
the Herd from the Season's Roundup to take to the Dalles for sale, when
he became ill.
 He told the foreman and crew to take the herd to
market. The foreman objected, but the old man insisted. Obedient to
his orders they fought their way down the Columbia and fording it
twice, eventually bringing the herd to The Dalles.

Once the horses were sold, the crew became surly and insisted that
the old man was dead--that they should keep the money and abandon
him.
Loyal to his trust, the foreman stood his ground alone, and guns
were drawn. With two of the rebellious crew falling to the foreman's
six shooter, the others [ran] to their horses and fled!

Upon his return with food, medicine, and the money, the foreman
found the old Frenchman dead with a scrawled note near his hand
"Knew you'd be back--bury me here, and keep it all!"

An Old left over "Barbed Wire Corral" can still be seen in a naturally formed outcropping, just North of Lenice Lake on Lower Crab Creek (Google Earth). Along with the many old "Rock Walls" you will stumble across while out Hunting were built and used to help round up the Wild Horses back of the past.
Doug

[Pegasus]

Thank you for posting that. I hunted Crab Creek for years and never heard the story. I am sure a number of people who have fished Lenice Lake have also probably never heard this story.

[Jake Dogfish]

Very interesting piece of history! Thanks!

[JakeLand]

Good piece of history there! Thanks

[acrocker]

Where do you find that stuff? I love hearing about the history of the Basin, imagining how things were way back when in the same areas that I like to go hunt, fish, and explore. I found a website -  https://nosleinad6.wordpress.com/2018/02/17/murder   that has a number of historical stories about various areas in the Columbia Basin. Some interesting reading, if you've got time.  Thanks for sharing!

[AL WORRELLS KID]

Here's some shots of the Crab Creek Area, posted by another guy that I found interesting.  The Basalt Butte's pictured, were used in the past by Warring Tribes to escape when attacked while they were Subsisting along Crab Creek.

  In the First Picture Below
The Lower Crab Creek Valley runs for about twenty miles east to west. In this picture, above the bluff in the background is the Royal Slope Looking north at part of my boyhood playground during the WWII years. The old road cutting across the terrain above (built in 1910) behind the lava butte, leads to "Royal Camp" and the WWII Bombing Fields where the Planes dropped their practice payloads.... a road only a trail now and for the past 75-85 years.

The Second Picture Below
One of our favorites when we were small because we found a fairly easy way to climb it to the top of the Butte. We nicknamed this Basalt Butte "Quarter-Mile Mesa" .... but that length was in the eyes of small children and it's more likely only between 150' and 200' long.
When we were tiny and relatively helpless, we were only allowed to roam as far as Mother's brass police whistle would reach, to summon us home for dinner. Fortunately that included most of the face of the Saddle Mountains that rose a few hundred yards south of our "Company House" in Smyrna, WA, (my Dad was a Section Foreman on the Milwaukee Railroad).

The Third Picture Below
The Crab Creek Bridge at Smyrna, WA
This was once a passable Car Bridge. A bridge which my brother and sister and I rode across in Dad's '39 Chevy, with the three of us sitting on a 100-lb. practice bomb that Dad had found on the WWII Bombing Range at the top of the hill just north of our house. I believe we were sitting on it to keep it from bouncing around in the back of the car. (On those occasions when these things did go off, they blew a crater three feet deep into the topsoil.)

What can I say .... we didn't have Child Welfare Services and OSHA looking out after us in those days.

Wow, Jim, if you ask me, you grew up in Paradise!
Doug

[Buckhunter24]

Doug, you make a lot of great posts, local history like this is great and would be lost if it wasnt for stories like this 

[AL WORRELLS KID]

acrocker, Thanks for sharing your website. Nothing like hearing Old Stories about the places you too have learned to love.

I can only imagine a Native Boy at the top of the Butte, calling to his Family below to HURRY, as their Enemy approaches from across Crab Creek. His Father, spear in hand protecting their flank on the only trail leading to the top and safety. 
 Doug

[AL WORRELLS KID]

Even though the soil was sandy and sources of water
were at least ten miles away, a surprisingly large group of
settlers had been convinced that they could overcome all
obstacles and farm successfully around the place called Low Gap.
One of the first, a widow, Mrs. Ella Louise Park arrived by rail
from Springville, Utah on December 3, 1903. She was
accompanied by her son and daughter, as well as their spouses and
children. Mrs. Park later bought a "relinquishment" for $150.00
and moved her family sixteen miles south of Quincy to Low Gap.
Water was the big problem here, just as it was
throughout the central desert. What little water there was had to
be hauled over ten miles from the Columbia River or sixteen miles
from Quincy. In wintertime when there was snow on the ground,
settlers collected and melted it for household use. Needless to
say, water was precious and none was ever intentionally wasted.
The women often went into Quincy to do their laundry since
driving the 16 miles with dirty clothes was more easily done than
hauling barrels of water.
Gladys Dunsire, whose family name was Taskey,
described the impact on her family, including a considerable
elevation in social standing, when they drilled their first well
after being nine years on the slope. It was a windmill-driven
well, so whenever the wind would blow, Gladys noted the
neighbors lined up with barrels and other containers to get
water.
The Parks built a cistern their first year in the area, and
in 1905 they added a well with a windmill which drew twenty
feet of water. The first years there they planted wheat, which
was not irrigated, along with potatoes, and peas which they were
able to water once they had a well.
Wood for fires, houses and other purposes was also in
short supply on the Royal Slope. Most everyone used the
sagebrush, which was plentiful, to cook their food and to warm
their cabins. Most agreed that, although you could not very well
build a house out of it, "the sagebrush made good fire."
Although not abounding with lush vegetation and wild
game, there were various wild animals on the Royal Slope,
wild horses or "slickers" as they were
often called. These were a pest for many of the homesteaders,
especially those who farmed the Crab Creek area.
Coyotes, which are still plentiful to this day, could also
be a problem at times for the homesteaders. Families worried
about the safety of their small animals and children. Florence
Chadborn remembered that the Coyotes killed her dog.
The principle food source for the coyotes was
undoubtedly the rabbits which were described as plentiful.
"They used to have what they called rabbit drives once in a while. They
would come in from Seattle, and they'd take the rabbits back with them to sell
.... for rabbit drives they just spread out all over and just walked along, and
some of 'em would use sticks and what have ya.

The town of Corfu, which sat on the Crab Creek on the south end of the
slope, had "a whole lot of bachelors and little tiny tar-paper
shacks." It also contained a store, a school, and teachers'
cottages, with a hotel above the store, and a section house for the
railroad workers to live in. Red Rocks, a community also
located on the Crab Creek, had a store and post office. Explosive
growth continued until, in 1909, there was sufficient population
to justify the creation of a new county, Grant County.

I remember while Hunting Doves, Ducks and Coyote in the 1960's on the Royal Slope down through The Potholes and Lower Crab Creek we would see Jackrabbits all day long. Now that they have outlawed Leg Hold Traps we have all kinds of Coyotes and a few Cottontail but no Jackrabbits (as they won't Hole Up to escape like the Cottontails will ).
Doug

[j_h_nimrod]

Thanks Doug, love reading history like this.

[AL WORRELLS KID]

At the start of World War II, the government began using
much of the area as a bombing range, (which gives you an idea of the
value the government placed on it). Army planes flew out of Moses
Lake and Navy planes out of Pasco. The regular bombing
practice runs caused brush fires to rage along the slope during
most of the war. Residents of the area noted that, "Sometimes
the bombs started fires, and the people from the valley had to put
them out. Occasionally the fires were so bad that they spread
from the west side of the slope far to the east--near Othello. At
times a person could see ten bombers at one time.

Not only was isolation unpleasant for many settlers, but
it was sometimes also dangerous. Some of the dangers of being
so isolated and away from emergency services are illustrated by
the experience of Frank and Kay Niessner which occurred soon
after they moved into their new place on the Royal Slope.
That winter happened to be one of the coldest ever,
with temperatures at a steady twenty six degrees below zero.
After living in their house for only three weeks, one night they
began to smell a fire. They found that a fire had progressed quite
a ways burning inside one of their outside walls.
Since there were no phones yet, Kay jumped into her car
and drove to Royal Camp, leaving Frank behind to do what he could
to fight the fire. The roads were treacherous and it was bitter
cold and windy. She drove to the Meyers place outside Royal
Camp. They had watched her coming, trying to figure out who
would be driving on a night like that. When they realized who it
was, they met her at the door.
Kay and the Meyers got what help they could and hurried
back to the house. When they got there , they thought Frank had
flipped. He was up on a ladder with a bucket of water and a cup.
He was tossing the water, a cup at a time onto the hot parts of the
fire.
 The weather was so cold that the water would freeze
almost immediately around the fire and thus slowed down its
spread.
 Pretty soon, the Royal Camp volunteer fire department
arrived to find the area around the fire under ice; almost
completely frozen. They could see that the fire was pretty much
out and so they all just went into the house and had coffee.

 We had a little Caterpillar Tractor that we would use all over to doing stuff. At
times if we got the truck stuck, we would just run that out . . . and pull Dad
out. He had his Cat out somewhere doing something with it ... on a day
when there wasn't anybody else out there, just him .... He had his Pickup Truck
and this Cat and he wanted to get it back to the Gravel Pit.
So how is he going to do it with only one person? So he starts the Cat up, (it had a hydraulic loader on
it, so he lifted the blade up and aimed it toward the Pit. He put it in
gear, put the throttle on slow speed and aimed it toward the pit.
Jumped in his Pickup and headed toward the Gravel Pit planning to wait for it to
come. On the way he ran into a couple of his Neighbors out getting ready to clear some ground. They were asking him questions about the
area and so forth. And he got into this conversation and forgot all about his
Cat taking off across the country.
 Suddenly he said, "Oh my goodness!" (He probably didn't use
those kind of words) .... He took off,  remembering that his Cat was still on the loose.
 He started following the tracks wherever he could but then he lost
them in the Sagebrush where he couldn't drive the Pickup.
So he got out on the O'Sullivan
Dam Road and he found where it had crossed the road. so he just kept looking. But there was nothing
out there...then he finally found it.
It had been stopped and it had been turned off
Then he noticed this Sheep Herder nearby and he had a bunch of sheep with him.
My dad went over and talked to him and he said this guy was just beside
himself!
He thought somebody had been on that Caterpillar, got thrown off, run
over and it had killed him. He was just thinking of all these terrible things that
must have happened. My Dad said, " Oh, No, no, it's okay. It was nothing like that.'
And he had to fess up and tell him what he'd done. 
Only in Sagebrush Country! Doug

[Pegasus]

acrocker, Thanks for sharing your website. Nothing like hearing Old Stories about the places you too have learned to love.

I can only imagine a Native Boy at the top of the Butte, calling to his Family below to HURRY, as their Enemy approaches from across Crab Creek. His Father, spear in hand protecting their flank on the only trail leading to the top and safety. 
 Doug

I climbed one of those buttes years ago when I had a lost dog. It gave me some great visibility over the entire area. While on top I found a lot of flint chips where the native sat many years ago working to make arrowheads. Oh yea, I also found the dog about a mile away.

[Axle]

Good stuff!

[Sandberm]

Sitting on the north rim above the valley and the little community of Smyrna? one early December day I could hear the children playing outside at what must have been a mile away. Their voices echoing off the valley walls. Its a neat place to explore. 
Love the history, thanks.

[AL WORRELLS KID]

RESIDENTS ON THE SLOPE BETWEEN THE 1920'S AND THE ARRIVAL
OF COLUMBIA BASIN PROJECT WATER
At the time construction began on the Grand Coulee Dam,
the thriving communities that had sprung from the optimism of
railroad promotion after the turn of the century were, for the
most part, dead. Nearly all signs of life were soon covered over
by the blowing sands. The community at Low Gap was a Ghost
Town without a single resident. The sole occupant of the east end
of the Royal Slope, who had moved in after World War II, was a
sheep or goat herder named Newt Holstein.

I remember our first brush with a rattlesnake ... late Spring of 1942, my Brother was a first grader and I was in the second grade. We were running home from school to eat our lunch (about a hundred yards through the sagebrush and across a couple of dirt roads). There was a two-rut dirt road that we normally leaped across in our mad dash for food. I could clear both ruts, but he - being smaller - could only make it to the middle of the second rut. When I noticed he was no longer with me, I looked back ... and there he was jumping up and down in the road like a Jack in the Box. His leap had landed him right on an eighteen-inch rattlesnake and he thought he couldn't jump clear of it without getting bitten, so he stomped it to death. An ill advised, but effective tactic.

Jim, How you Folks survived growing up..... I'll always respect you Kids.
Doug

[Axle]

The flywheel on that old tractor sure brings back some memories.

[DeerThug]

Thanks for the read.  It reminds me of two books of my Dad's - Blowsands a book about the last Indian wars here in Washington a real account of the history of the time.  And the other it Ben Snipes Cattle King.  Another account of the settling of Central Washington.  His accounts of the Yakamas and the Colvilles and how he coexisted with them.  I think the books were written in the Teens.  I remember from reading them how amazing it was how people lived back then.  I still have them somewhere.   I'll have to get them out and read them again.

[Sandberm]

Thanks for the read.  It reminds me of two books of my Dad's - Blowsands a book about the last Indian wars here in Washington a real account of the history of the time.  And the other it Ben Snipes Cattle King.  Another account of the settling of Central Washington.  His accounts of the Yakamas and the Colvilles and how he coexisted with them.  I think the books were written in the Teens.  I remember from reading them how amazing it was how people lived back then.  I still have them somewhere.   I'll have to get them out and read them again.

I read the Ben Snipes book and enjoyed it. To be specific to Als talk about the Frenchmen hills area I remember in the Snipes book, talking about walking the cattle through single file in that one section before crab creek as the trail was so narrow between the cliff and the river. Also , how Ben had to pay a toll, so to speak, in the night, as the Moses lakes would come out of Crab creek in the night to snag a couple head of cattle.

Ill google that Blowsands book tomorrow  I already ordered the book written by the guy Al referenced in his original post.

Thanks guys

[AL WORRELLS KID]

DeerThug, I may have to pick up a copy of Blowsand, sounds like good reading for under $4.00. Doug

Blowsand (Paperback)
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[acrocker]

Yep, that looks like some good reading to me, too.

A few years back I read a book called Lonesome Animals by Bruce Holbert, its fiction, and it deals more with the Okanogan area and north Basin, if I recall but it was a good read also and had some good insight into how things were in the 1930's and 40's. It's about a retired lawman who comes back into the fold to chase a serial killer - kind of like True Grit but with a twist.

Didn't mean to hijack the thread, it's kind of in the same vein...

[Remnar]

tag

[AL WORRELLS KID]

The Frenchman still lives in the tales that are told around the campfires.

[GWP]

Resurrecting an old thread! Glad you did. Wife and I have been all over those hills for a lot of years. Fun reading about some of the history!