Two Cabins Across the Valley

Nora checked the roast, spooning hot drippings over the browned meat before sliding the pan back into the oven. The pie was cooling on the counter; she set it aside and fed another stick of wood into the cookstove, listening for the familiar settle and hum as the fire caught.

The kitchen smelled of things nearly done.

Outside the late afternoon light lay warm across the yard. Inside, the small room held the quiet order of a house where supper would soon be on the table. Nora moved easily between stove and counter, brushing flour from her hands and glancing now and again at the oven door. She had dug new potatoes that afternoon and picked green beans from the garden; both were ready to set on the stove.

She heard her father come in, boots heavy in the entry, and expected him to step through alone.

When he called out, his voice carried an edge that made her startle. The Salmon River kid?

Nora wiped her hands on her apron and smoothed her hair, just once, before Bill came into the kitchen with their guest.

“Nora, meet Ed Callahan. Ed, this is my daughter, Nora.”

Ed Callahan and Nora Williams were married midsummer—on July 11, 1911—and soon after set out for southern Idaho. As the wagon neared the Arrowrock Reclamation Project, Nora felt a flicker of guilt over having packed the portrait of the young man she had once been engaged to before marrying Ed.

Ed only laughed and told her he didn’t mind after she confessed saying, “That cowboy got his horse. I got the girl.”

It was a brutally hot summer, and hotter still when they reached their destination. They took their time choosing a campsite beneath a large stand of cottonwood trees. A makeshift city was springing up around the dam under construction, and they camped near others drawn there by the scale of the project and promise of steady wages. Together they cleared brush, raised their tent, built a fire pit, and set up an outdoor kitchen. By the time order was made of the place, they were too tired to do more.

Ed washed up and lay down inside the tent to rest while Nora prepared supper. When dinner was ready she called to him and got no answer. Alarmed, she rushed into the tent but no matter what she tried, she could not wake him. Panicked, she ran through the brush in search of help.

She found a woman at a nearby camp who came quickly to her aid. Together they dragged Ed into the open air and doused him with water. No sooner that Ed came around, Nora collapsed. The woman tended both of them through the long evening, and when their senses returned, delivered a stern lecture to go along with their dinner. They got a hard-earned lesson about heat exhaustion.[1]

Construction of the Arrowrock dam was an immense project that began with excavation. It was hard as any work Ed had known, but it was also an adventure. When the dam was completed, it would stand 350 feet high — the tallest dam in the world.



When the opportunity to move to Boise to work on the completion of the Idaho State Capitol, Ed took it. He liked construction work and Nora liked the idea of giving birth to their first child in a hospital.

Construction on the Capitol began in 1905, but the building was so elaborate that it was finally nearing completion.

On September 19, 1912, Lois Viola Callahan was born in Boise, and both mother and child came through the delivery well. In October, Ed was part of the crew that raised the 250 pound copper eagle on top of the dome.

Ed’s wages were good—paid in gold coins—and he could easily have stayed on with the company, but Nora intervened. Plenty of men were injured at work and after a year of having Ed working at such heights, she feared his luck would not hold forever.

About that time, word came from Peter Barton, Ed’s brother-in-law, who was superintendent of the Ulysses mine. He had a job for Ed if he wanted it. Ed didn’t hesitate. He missed home—the Salmon river country, hunting and fishing outside his front door—old friends and family.

After a visit with the Williams family in Hailey, they headed over the divide. Nora had never been to central Idaho, and knew the remote river canyon only from Ed’s stories.

Nora loved Ed’s sister Alta and her little girls—one the same age as Lois. But they only stayed in Ulysses for a few months of 1913—the mining operation was small and Pete had to lay some men off come winter.

Ed’s mother, Annie asked them to come to Pine Creek, offering Ed a lease on the ranch. Annie needed help and mining operations still existed around Shoup, even if the population had dwindled since Ed’s boyhood.

Nora, motherless most of her life, looked forward to getting to know her mother-in-law, so they moved to the valley of Pine Creek a few miles from Shoup.

Nora knew her way around a kitchen, garden, chicken yard and had no fear of horses, but her mother-in-law was another matter. Annie was rough yet sophisticated, both direct and sarcastic and not motherly aside from doting on her granddaughter. Annie absolutely adored baby Lois, but insisted her name should have been Louisa, so she called her that. The child and chores were something they could share -- oh and Jane Stewart, a lovely Scottish widow who lived on Pine Creek with her son Thomas Hardy.

They lived in an old abanded mining shack until Ed finished a small cabin. His mother's cabin stood in the pines along the creek. Ed and Nora Callahan’s cabin stood across the valley on the road to Upper Pine Creek. Annie’s log cabin was a good walk away—giving Nora some respite. It was tiny, but it was theirs and if things worked out, Ed could build a bigger cabin in time.

Ed and his stepfather did amalgamation work in Gibbonsville, then Bill Taylor took out a lease at the Monolith Mine. While Bill and Ed worked out, Annie and Nora tended the ranch.[2]

Alta and Peter stayed in Ulysses, but everyone gathered at Shoup or North Fork for dances and celebrations.

Nora loved her little cabin and gave up on expecting motherly warmth of Annie who was strong and tiny and not yet sixty. She did have a stomach ailment that left her in agony from time to time. When an attack came on, Annie would ring a large cowbell outside her door. Nora gathered Lois and whatever was needed for the day—or night—and crossed the field to Annie’s place. In time, she realized that Annie didn’t want remedies. She simply needed her company.

Annie ran cattle on the range and knew their grazing grounds by season. The Pine Creek valley was narrow but fertile, and she knew every meadow and hillside. They kept a large garden, raised chickens, sold eggs and produce, and dressed birds for sale. Deer provided venison when they strayed into the hay fields. Annie grew strawberries as large as any in Lemhi County.[3]

They bought little beyond flour, sugar, molasses, cloth and shoes. Clothing was sewn at home, and treats came out of their ovens.

One evening, while Nora was helping Annie through one of her spells, Annie suddenly pushed herself upright in bed.

“You scrawny little piece of calico,” she snapped, “what are you doing here?”

Nora gathered her things, took Lois by the hand, and without a word walked out of Annie’s cabin and went home to her own.

A young man named Arlin Howell worked at the sawmill and Nora kept him fed—so did Annie. Annie called him a “bald-faced Mormon.” Arlin would laugh, trade barbs and deep conversation. Later in life he would say that Annie was one of the most remarkable women he had ever met.[4] And so it was, Nora and some neighbors thought Annie was a bit off and some thought she was amazing.

Among the few women of Pine Creek, Jane Stewart stood out for her warmth and kindness. She was Annie’s closest friend and made the long winter evenings wonderful. Jane taught young Lois to tat while she told stories of Scotland in her lilting accent. Widowed twice, she remained in the valley with her son. She, like Annie was tough as nails, but Jane had a soft spirit.

When Nora’s sister Olive came for the summer of 1914, Nora was in heaven. So, was Arlin Howell and when he wasn’t working at the saw mill, he was horseback riding the hills with Olive. When their was a dance, their feet were light.

Only two things rivaled the pleasure of Olive’s visit. One was the construction of the celebrated pack bridge at Shoup, built by Jack Bundy. It replaced the old, rickety footbridge and made Shoup easily accessible from the south side of the river.

Alta and Peter Barton welcomed their fifth little girl in 1914 and Ed and Alta’s half-brother, Billy Taylor married Madge Buster. Lois turned two in autumn, old enough to follow her grandmother into the coop to gather eggs, and collect flower seeds to scatter in spring.

When the men were home, ranch work kept them busy—there was hay to cut, bale and put up, wood to bring in for winter, horses to break and train, and cattle to move to higher, greener pasture.

In far off Europe, a war began to brew and Annie, who subscribed to national newspapers and periodicals kept the community well apprised of the situation.

When Olive had to return to Hailey at summer’s end, both Arlin and Nora were sad. The hills seemed quieter after she left.

Arlin lingered more than usual at the post office in Shoup, hoping the stage might bring a letter.

Life on Pine Creek moved on as it always did—gardens to tend, chickens to feed, cattle to watch on the range. Lois followed her grandmother everywhere she was allowed, and sometimes where she was not.

And in the evenings, when the valley settled into its long summer twilight, the lamps were lit in two cabins across the valley.

NOTES

[1] Heat exhaustion, resulting from prolonged heat exposure and dehydration, can cause weakness, confusion, and loss of consciousness. Without prompt cooling and hydration, the condition may progress to heatstroke, which is often fatal.

[2] The expression “worked out” was widely used in this era. In mining regions, men who “worked out” hired on at nearby claims or mills, sometimes for months at a time, while their wives (when they had one) managed the household.

[3] Idaho Recorder, July 9, 1901

[4] A story relayed to S.E. Crie by Arlin’s son, George Erwin Howell.