1887 — A Voice and a Name

Alta Hawthorne Callahan came into the world on February 4th, 1887, three months after Jimmy and I arrived in Shoup. She was the first child born in the downriver camp, named for two women I loved dearly—my sister Alta and our mother, whose maiden name was Hawthorne. A piece of home for this wild new place.

I’d fully adjusted to mining camp life. Hard work wasn’t foreign to me. I was raised in a Maine farmhouse, not a parlor. I knew how to feed a household from a garden, how to card and spin, knit and mend, and how to stretch a hen to feed a horde. I’d helped raise seven of my siblings. I could swaddle a baby in one arm and steer a horse with the other and wore breeches when I rode, because skirts were made for waiting, not for riding.

About 1885, Charlie Spayds [1] and Tom Wend[2] settled about five miles east of Shoup below a bluff that folks started calling “Tourist Bluff,” probably because so many people came and went. James and I were living there and it was below named rock that I began sending dispatches to the Idaho Recorder, signing them with the pen name “Tourist.” I didn’t say I was a woman—but I never quite claimed to be a man, either. Let readers make their guesses. It was a place where I could earn my keep—every camp needs a cook with a baby on her hip. Ours just happened to have the only baby.

That spring the Salmon River rose up in fury and took the trail from Shoup to North Fork with it. Charley Spayds—by then a county commissioner—was paid to cut a new path around the bluff. He’d be chipping at rock and hauling brush for some time to come. By April, when the ice began to give, the flatboats started running again. Two boatmen per scow, freight loaded to the rails, and sometimes passengers clinging to the gunwales. Trees that had fallen all winter lay in the river like sleeping giants, turning each run into a gamble.

By 1887, Shoup had grown up a bit. The post office was still using the Kentuck mining office but there was at least one saloon, two hotels, and even a place calling itself an opera house, where traveling performers stayed long enough to sing for their supper and a little more. Henry Westfall added a billiard hall to his saloon that year.

One of the best freight crews on the river were Captain Elias Suydam and his pilot George Sandilands, along with George’s dog, Tray. When passengers shot ducks or geese in the calm stretch between North Fork and Shoup—what we all called “the lake”—Tray would leap into the water and fetch the birds back. That section of river used to be a swan haven, you could once count them by the hundred.

By midsummer, the mail carrier was warning of bears “gathered in swarms” along the trail. That was also the summer Charlie’s brother, Eli and his cousin John came west for a long visit. Good-natured men who were eager to help. They brought news, stories and things we didn’t know we missed until they arrived.

Then came the news from Salmon City. On July 9th, the Recorder reported that Sam James—better known as “Singing Sam”—had been hauled into the jail “by our eagle-eyed sheriff,” where he’d stay until he sobered up and for good reason.

A few years before my arrival, I heard that Sam married a woman by the name of Julia Howard in April of ’83, inside the brewery across from the jail. Sam never did kiss Julia after the vows—just walked straight back to the saloon. She left town within the month, though she’d be back, years later.

Sam was addicted to strong drink, but sweet-tempered when in his cups. He’d play his fiddle, sing old hymns, and toss coins to children in the streets when he was in Salmon. He wasn’t the tall, white-horse-riding figure later writers made him out to be. Sam stood about five-seven, had a dark complexion, brown hair, and rode a grey horse. He may well have fiddled while riding—it wouldn’t surprise me.

Justice Burleigh wrote years later that Sam made “no secret” of his sprees, and that “everyone knew” when he was on one—even if they couldn’t see him, they could hear him. [3] Still, no one around Shoup ever complained about Sam. He was a lucky prospector, generous with his winnings, and he’d discovered the very mines that gave work to most of the men on our end of the river. When there was music, Sam was part of it. When there was dancing, he kept the beat, but when he went to Salmon City and got too drunk, he’d spend the night in jail so as, perhaps—to keep him from getting married again.

By late July, a group of Kentuck minning men rode into Salmon for a break: Pete Handlin, Thomas McKeever, Jim Burns, Tom O’Day, Tommy Boyle, Dan Noonan, Hurley, and Johnny Lavin. The paper noted their good behavior and their kind words for Pat O’Hara, [4] the mine’s new superintendent—no small thing in a camp where a man’s reputation could rise or fall with the river.

I made my own trip to Salmon in August. And whether signed “Tourist” or “Itemizer,” I kept sending in my reports from the Tom Wend and Charley Spayds’ place. The prose was mine, though I wrote in a voice some mistook for male. That was by design. It wasn’t Mary Sweeney or Elizabeth Merritt writing those columns—they lived on Spring Creek, and neither was known to take up the pen. But I did. With a child on my hip and a river in flood, I found my voice and sent it down the line, wrapped in newsprint.

DOWN THE SALMON RIVER

Spayds’ Ranch, Aug 1, 1887

To the Editor of the Recorder:

“Here easy quiet, a secure retreat,

A hamlet up that knows not how to cheat,

With home-bred plenty the rich owner bless,

And rural pleasures crown his happiness,

Unvexed with quarrels, undisturbed with noise,

The country king is peaceful realm enjoys.” [5]

Could the author of the above lines been a sojourner at the present day in this remote quarter of the continent, and for the same cause as all traveling public sought the hospitality afforded by mine hosts, Messrs. Spayds and Wend, he could not have been more forcibly impressed with the verification of what he has herein inscribed, and should either of the aforesaid gentlemen secure a hostess to preside at their residence the picture would be complete.

Here the learned M.D., or the worthy city official tarries, if but for a day, and then returns to the monotonous tasks of city life with renewed zeal for their respective duties. Ye humble pedestrian is not at a loss to locate his blankets as the shades of night appear. The more fully equipped equestrian reins his cayuse at the stable door, and dismounts, with the supreme confidence that for himself and beast he has found a secure retreat.

Last, but not least, the portly form of the stubborn-headed old mining prince graces the veranda once in while to have a talk with the boys, for however much it may be to his amusement he cannot always travel incognito. [6]

Should business or pleasure be your object in going a little further down the river, the first habitation you approach is on a small ranch occupied by a persevering old couple who very prosperously till their few acres with every semblance of the primitive age. [7]

Next in order is the mining camp of Shoup, which according to statistics, is not as yet of very great magnitude, there having been but one death, a birth and a marriage in the place since the town originated.

The above named place is the location of the Kentuck mine owned by the well known J.B. Haggin and others of an equally reliable financial basis. The mine embodies a quartz ledge, so situated as to require only a mill [8] to reduce the ore, therefore machinists, engineers nor assayers need apply, for as long as the company employs a clerk to make out the monthly reports, any one that has ever “packed his blankets” this side of the Missouri River is capable of riding up and down the hill from the mill to the mine with the distinguished sobriquet [9] of S—U—P—T attached to his cognomen.

Want of space forbids further note at present of places or celebrities of Salmon river, but it is most natural to presume that you will hear again from - TOURIST

The Kentuck’s stamp mill stood below the mine beside Boulder Creek, in a canyon so narrow the builders had to wedge the house against the rock and stack its timbers like a deck of cards. A heavy iron pipe of considerable diameter, stout enough to carry a torrent under pressure, brought water from high on Boulder Creek. That water turned the wheel, the wheel turned the camshaft and the cams caught hold of the stamps—hauling them up, while gravity brought them down. Up, down, up, down, all day and all night when there was enough ore on the dump—the pounding as steady as a preacher’s sermon and twice as hard to get away from.

Ore came down the Sky Wagon Road, an almost two-mile descent from the mine, so steep a man and his team took their lives in hand every wagon trip downhill. At the mill, the rock was first hauled into the upper room, where bins and breakers fed it into the stamps. There the thunder shook the timbers, the air turned white with dust, and the iron shoes beat the ore into sand. From there the stream spilled to the lower room, across wide copper plates slick with quicksilver. That lower room had fewer crashes to rattle the bones, but the dangers there were the kind you couldn’t see—invisible mercury fumes rising from the plates, working their way into a man’s lungs and blood.

The mill man—Billy Taylor at the time—had to tend those plates like a miser over his till, scraping the amalgam, re-coating the surface, and minding every shining smear of mercury and gold. Between times he fed the ore steady, kept the water to its measure, greased the cams, shoveled tailings, patched belts and prayed his clothing stayed clear of the gearing so he wouldn’t lose an arm, a leg, or his life. The company clerk might make out reports in a neat hand, and the “SUPT” might ride the hill, but in truth it was pipe and water, stamp and cam, dust and mercury, danger and an expert mill man that kept the Kentuck paying.

Idaho Recorder, August 27, 1887

DOWN THE SALMON RIVER

Spayds’ Ranch, Aug. 25, 1887

To the Editor of Idaho Recorder:

While in Salmon City a few days ago your correspondent overheard an order given by Corporal __ following __ bottles for Charley Spayds’ “Baby Ranch. [10]” We have always regarded Commodore Spayds as a law abiding citizen, but if he is running a little Mormon kingdom of his own in any of the isolated retreats on Salmon river, an investigation is necessary. We hope the Hon. Board will attend to the matter at once.

It is our painful duty to announce the fate of “Tourist” your late correspondent from this place.[11] He had got as far as the saw mill bridge at Shoup, and Dame Rumor was relating to him the topics of the day, among them the most interesting or amusing theme was the manner in which the Kentuck mill is being managed. It seems that a very illiterate scion of Erin’s Isle who has got just enough of the dust of the coal mines of Pennsylvania washed his eyes to see to get over the trail to Shoup and has by the adroit maneuvering of the preceding incumbent, got into a position where he thinks he is “monarch of all the surveys,” and as a matter of course under circumstances of such unparalleled promotion, his cranial department has developed an enormous growth, so much so that he thinks himself capable of running a ten-stamp mill without an amalgamator.[12]

At this juncture of the conversation “Tourist” gave vent to a spasmodic burst of myrth and in so doing lost his balance and fell backwards into the seething waters of the raging Salmon. We might quote “Tis over thus,” etc but not being adept at wielding the quill we will not attempt an obituary for one departed, “Tourist.” In the future, however, we will as occasion demands inferring the benighted outer world of the doings of the day in this suburban district.

Miss Emma Merritt, [13] of your city, is visiting friends and relatives near Shoup. Jack Gilmer[14] and son[15] is stopping at the city of Shoup for a few days looking up mining matters. W.W. St. Clair[16] is remodeling his little steamer. ] Henry Westfall’s hotel is overflowing with tourists just now. He intends to enlarge the building shortly.[17]

Charley Spayds’ hospital is full of sick people.[18]

The ball given at Spayds’ hotel last evening was a grand affair.

ITEMIZER[19]

As aforementioned, in 1887, a man named William H. Pilliner came blowing into Salmon City with a camera, a wagon full of gear, and a talent for making people believe they were better looking than they were. He called himself an artist, and I didn’t argue. He opened a gallery first in Salmon City, then in Shoup—tintypes, cabinet cards, and the like. He took photos of the mines and miners, the river, the canyon walls—but portraits paid the bills.

John Booth, who always had something to say, wrote in the RECORDER that “W.H. Pilliner, the artist has opened a neat gallery near Westfall’s hotel—and getting rich very fast.” Another time he added, “Pilliner, the artist, is ready for business. Now is your time to have your picture taken. If you are ugly, Pilliner agrees to make you look as handsome as Barnum’s $10,000 beauty. Call around and see him.” That last line nearly sent me into a fit of laughter. If Pilliner could make the men of Shoup look like stage beauties, he deserved every dollar he charged.

In the first week of September, the town of Salmon City crowded at the end of Main Street to see the launching of the “Steamer Idaho,” though calling it a steamer was generous—it was a flatboat. Pilliner was there with his camera, catching the crew and passengers before the boat pushed off. Then, to no one’s surprise, he climbed aboard with them. Eli Suydam captained the vessel and George Sandilands piloted her through. Among the passengers were John Booth—of course—perched on the deck, looking ready to report on himself. Mr. and Mrs. Ritter and a Miss Ollie M. Shore from Kansas City were aboard too, all dressed for travel, though probably not for the kind they were about to have.

Idaho Recorder, September 19, 1887

DOWN THE SALMON RIVER

Mark Ainslie Reports finding a $100,000 Silver Mine.

Capt. Parody’s Big Log Contract—A Young Ladys’ Perilous Ride

Spayds’ Ranch, Sept. 25, 1887

To the Editor of the Idaho Recorder:

Summer boarders and visitors are taking their departure from this quiet retreat—Spayds’ Hotel—on the banks of the raging Salmon river. The towering hills, gorges, deep canyons, lakes, trails, etc. in these parts are one of grandeur, while the snow capped mountains in the distance is a sight that one loves to gaze upon. I could spend hours in writing up the magnificent scenery that abounds in all directions, but your valued space will not permit of the same, so I will turn my thoughts to local happenings.

Captain Parody[20] is hastening to complete a large log contract for the Kentuck Co. W.W. St. Clair has drove in another lot of beeves[21]] for his market at Shoup.

Mark Ainslie, the pioneer prospector of the Rocky Mountains, has returned from a Summer’s trip, reporting finding a hundred thousand dollar mine of silver, copper, and gold.

Thos Wend and Eli Spayds have just got in from a short hunting expedition, bringing in two fine deer. They say this species of game is more numerous than they have ever known them to be.

A member of the sex whose lot it befalls to wear more or less profuse drapery; was in fear days ago en route across the mountains between Spayds’ ranch and Pine creek mines. In coming down a very steep grade the party were all walking leading their animals, the lady following directly in the rear of a colt, so near that his coltship objected to the proximity and elevated his heels in the direction of her face, bringing them down entangled in the meshes of her hoop skirt and then darted out dragging the lady at his heels down a grade which as near the perpendicular as a geometrical line can be drawn.

The unwilling actor in this scene had just time to think the the skirt in question as only very frail affair of “two bit” expenditure, and suiting the action to the thought, grasped hold of a small pine tree and held fast until the colt kicked himself free with the wires still clinging to his heels. The most remarkable fact to state is that no injury was done with the exception of an unlimited number of rainbow colored flesh spots which would naturally be sustained in rolling down hill.

From this experience we will venture the suggestion to all females traveling the trails that is to either discard the crinoline or adopt the costume which Anna Dickinson[22] wore when she crossed the continent on her long-eared pony before the advent of the steam carriage.

The woman left unnamed in the newspaper—the one who nearly lost her life on the trail—was dear Elizabeth Merritt. Everyone knew, of course, but correspondents can be coy when it suits them. Elizabeth and her husband Zephaniah were raising their granddaughter, little Theresa—Tresa, as we all called her—after their son Jerry’s marriage went sideways and left the girl in their care.

Tresa grew up listening to her grandmother’s stories, sitting close while Elizabeth spun out the hard and beautiful pieces of her life downriver. The child had a habit of writing things down as fast as she could, catching the words before they drifted off like smoke. She scribbled on anything at hand—newsprint, flour sacks, and even strips of wallpaper peeled from the parlor wall.

Grandma and Horses

There were several people [riding on the narrow trail] and when they came to place of level ground all started to gallup their horses, grandma was behind the others when her horse stumbled and fell. Grandma started to dismount as she did the horse got up and her long riding skirt caught over the horn leaving her hanging head down. The horse hit her in the face with his hoof before the others saw her and came back to help.

Another experience grandma had in her horse back riding days she was going to visit a neighbor, in those days women wore full skirts down to floor and a hoop under them to hold them out, (hoops were a circle of heavy wire held together with tape) grandma was riding a mare that had a colt following. Grandma decided to get off and walk. The colt became frightened ran up behind her and stuck its foot through her hoop then took off down the hill. Eventually she caught on a small tree and the colt broke loose. That time she was just bruised and scratched.

By the time the leaves thinned and the wind took on that dry, empty sound it always gets before snow, the river had dropped. What roared through spring and surged through summer now ran low if still wild, rushing around gravel bars like it was tired. Soon, the boats would stop running until spring. The seasonal folks—prospectors chasing rumors, entertainers—packed their bags and drifted off like autumn geese.

My final column for the year ran in the Idaho Recorder on November 5th, 1887. I didn’t say it was the last. I’d written through births and high water, through bear warnings and boat landings, and now the year would soon turn. What news I had to send that week was brief but worth noting: two more women had arrived at the Pine Creek mining camp and as Mr. Booth reported, Miss Blanch, an opera singer from Helena arrived with no firm plans on leaving.

It made me pause. Just a short line in a paper, but I knew what it meant. The camps were changing. A woman could unpack her trunk, sweep a floor and make a home, or sing in the Opera House. The place began to feel less like wilderness and more like home. That winter, I thought often of those three women and wondered if they, too, were writing their first year into memory.

DOWN THE SALMON RIVER

Spayds’ Ranch, Oct. 27, 1887

To the Editor of the Idaho Recorder:

King Sol ne’er beamed on a fairer day than that of the 20th nite, which brought to the “manor,” so to say, the genial party en route for Pine creek. Though each day brings to us its number of arrivals and departures—they so unanimously consist of the gander sex that they do not attract our especial notice, but, when they come bringing their fairer mates of wedded life accompanied by cherub epitomes of manhood and womanhood, we shall demand their pardon for taking the liberty to tender them a passing tribute of good will and best wishes for success, and hope we but re-echo the sentiments of all others with whom they are to make their home in the new El Dorado. Mrs. Palmer and Mrs. Parfet are ladies of culture and refinement and it is, comparatively speaking, like an oasis in a desert to meet such, though it calls to mind a time when we were so situated as to have the society of genial companions.

Mrs. Parfet and Palmer are apparently above the mediocrity in point of ability or stability, and though they have met with more than the usual amount of embarrassing difficulties in starting a camp in an inter-mountainous region, yet they have surmounted all obstacles in a manner which distinctly proves that they are not experimenting in any maiden efforts over the affairs of which they have control. In their mode of settling a new country they have deservedly earned the respect and gratitude of a class of people whose tastes are above the plebeian cast, and we will close by wishing them prosperity in “A realm of beauty and land of wealth, A home of contentment and an abode of health.”

ITEMIZER

By December, Jimmy, baby Alta and I moved into the Kentuck boarding house where I served as cook and bottle washer. Then, just as I was thinking that our camp was becoming civilized as all heaven, that all hell broke out.

Notes

[1] Charles Hiram Spayds, born 1853 in Pennsylvania, started out in the coal mines of Pennsylvania and by 1880 was placer mining downriver.

[2] Thomas Wend was a German immigrant who left Wisconsin for Colorado and was in Shoup by 1886.

[3]Samuel James Lemhi County probate records, page 258, statement by Henri J. Burleigh.

[4] This wasn’t the Pat O’Hara who prospected Shoup with Sam in 1882, but a man with the same name.

[5] Excerpt from Dream of Happiness (II), by British poet, John Dryden.

[6] Probably a reference to Sam James.

[7] Z.L. and Elizabeth Merritt who lived on Spring Creek.

[8] When Annie refers to a “mill” in mining contexts, she often means a stamp mill.

[9] A sobriquet⁠ is a patch worn on a hat.

[10] Charley Spayds was probably tasked with ordering baby bottles at an earlier date and while Annie was picking up bottles, someone in jest called Spayds ranch, the “Baby Ranch”. Alta Callahan was the only baby downriver in 1887.

[11] This is the last of Annie’s columns wherein she uses the pen-name of Tourist. She is moving into the town Shoup.

[12] The writer is no doubt describing Charley Spayds, who was formerly a coal miner from Pennsylvania who had a county contract to build a new trail.

[13] Emma Merritt is the daughter of the late Henry Clay and Ada (Chase) Merritt; granddaughter of Zephaniah and Elizabeth Merritt.

[14] John Thornton Gilmer, Sr. born Oct. 22, 1841, Quincy, Illinois.

[15] John Gilmer’s eldest sons were Charles and Earnest.

[16] William Wallace St. Clair, born 14 Dec 1846, Madison, Missouri. Orphaned in California 1850. Was a butcher downriver by 1880. In 1888 he married Annie Grieber on Pine Creek. Annie died after the birth of her second child. William St. Clair lived in Ulysses in 1910 and was back in Shoup by 1920; died December 23, 1922 in Salmon, Idaho

[17] Henry Westfall is taking apart a freight boat. Westfall, a German immigrant, born 1852. He owned a saloon, billiard hall, opera house and married Elizabeth “Lizzy” Sperry in Shoup, 1887.

[18] Annie is writing in jest—Spayds' ‘hospital’ was likely his home, where visitors were more often treated with whiskey than medicine.

[19] Annie Callahan’s new pen name.

[20] George Parody was living in Lemhi County by 1880, a widower. He was born in Maine, 1844.

[21] Beeves are cattle.

[22] Anna Dickenson was an American orator, lecturer, advocating for the abolition of slavery and women’s rights. She was invited to Colorado by Ralph Meeker, arriving in Colorado in 1873. On the back of horses or mules, she climbed Pikes Peak, Mount Lincoln, Grays Peak and Mount Elbert. She joined the Hayden survey for a climb of Longs Peak, but Boulder County News weren’t as impressed by these accomplishments, as horrified that Dickenson wore trousers.