The frequent references to Watson and other places such as Rockville, Sheaville, Pleasant Valley, Danner and Arock can be misleading. One might assume they refer to towns or villages, when in fact they merely denote the location of a post office that was usually in someone’s home. Aside from a small village such as Jordan Valley, most families were more or less scattered. Often there was also a school and perhaps a grange hall or community center, but saying a person was from Watson really meant that he got his mail at the Watson post office, his children went to the Watson school, and family were buried in the Watson cemetery. The family might in fact live several miles away and on the opposite side of the river. As Sophia Bethel described it,
Well, there was never any actual town of Watson. There was just a post office. And at that time Mother, Mother, had the post office. So that was called Watson. It was just on account of the post office. There were ranches strung up and down the river, and most of them weren’t close enough that they were adjoining.
Dispersed though they were, these families nonetheless formed communities based on common concerns and held together by interactions that cemented social bonds. Activities that outwardly appeared to be merely a form of amusement or celebration could serve to forge links among families spread over tens of miles. In the absence of town, village or even hamlet, they fostered a sense of community.
Holiday celebrations are probably the easiest and most natural for a new community to organize. The main holidays celebrated by the Owyheens were Christmas, Thanksgiving and Independence Day. In a sense, these were pre-fabricated social activities. The dates were fixed and came with traditions that provided guidelines as to when and how they were to be celebrated. A family that was consumed with the work of meeting its needs of shelter and food would feel obligated to pause and in some way observe the occasion. The interviews do not offer any descriptions of these events in the earliest days of settlement, but from what we know of the course of development of a homestead from dugout to frame house, we can be fairly certain that they tended to be simple. By the beginning of the twentieth century that the celebrations were becoming more elaborate and lively.
Families of course celebrated Christmas at home. It was a favorite with the children, for whom, as Josephine Scott noted, it meant they could have lots of different desirable things they could not have at other times. But there were also community gatherings. Walter Perry recalled there was always a community Christmas tree, and there would be school programs, when people would sing and put on shows or dialogues. Jim Page’s uncle, Ed Palmer, had built a big rock house at Watson at the mouth of Blue Canyon with a large vacant upstairs that became something of a community center where dances were held. Ed was Sophia Bethel’s father, and she remembered that he would cut a juniper tree so large that she couldn’t see how they got it up the steep stairs. The tree was lit with candles in small holders clipped to the branches. The tree would be for the children during the day, and there was dancing for the adults in the evening. Ed would also make an oyster stew, which was common at the different dances. Everyone of course brought cakes. According to Sophia, her brother was a pretty good cake maker and would sit for hours shelling black walnuts for a walnut cake. He would let her take credit for the cake so no one would think he had made it. She was grateful that his cakes were always good. In his later years he still was reluctant to admit that he liked to bake.
Thanksgiving was also an occasion for community celebration, though not on the same scale as Christmas. Still, such programs were major events in the community calendar and could draw people from some distance. There would be a school program, as with Christmas, followed by a dance perhaps the next day. Opal McConnell’s account is worth quoting at length. (The interviewer’s questions are in parentheses.)
Christmas and Thanksgiving, we always had programs. The teachers would train us, you know, to sing. I remember the Daleys, they were very good musicians. And they had an old organ at school, and the boys, some of the boys, played harmonicas, and we’d recite poems and sing songs and have little plays. One time I remember [the teacher] dressed all us little girls up in little red and white dresses like little fairies and we did a little dance on the stage, and I remember, I remember–Oh, I haven’t thought of that for a hundred years, I guess–but I remember I told mother I had to have some white shoes and stockings, and they just didn’t have those things in those days. They always wore black. And when she told me I’d have to wear those black shoes, that was all I had. But my Grandpa Ivers came to the rescue. He sent some place, I don’t know where he got them, but he got my sister and I a pair of white shoes and a pair of white stockings. The other kids all had white shoes and stockings too. To put on to wear with these little red and white fairy dresses. Oh, we thought we were cute. (Who all went to see these programs?) The parents, everybody in the community, even the ones from down below [i.e., down river.] At first they didn’t have a school down there But afterward they had a school down there, they’d come up to the programs, the whole community. They’d bring food for supper at night, dance til daylight, then they’d eat some more things, and then go home. (Did everybody fit in the school room?) No they didn’t dance in the school room. They went to the old rock house where Ed Palmer had a dance hall. And the kids would get to sleep, they couldn’t stay awake. The Palmers had all kinds of beds around. They’d put the kids on the beds and let them sleep and gather them up when they got ready to go home. (Anybody ever forget a kid?) Not that I know of. I don’t recall any such thing. There weren’t that many kids and families out there.
The third major holiday celebrated by the community was Independence Day. At Watson, folks would gather at the Rock House. Sophia Bethel’s family had an ice house and would cut ice to fill it during the winter. The children looked forward to July 4, for then the ice would be used to make ice cream. Joe Beach remembered also going up into the mountains to collect snow to freeze the ice cream. There would be crates of oranges and some candy, along with firecrackers and a potluck dinner. During the day there would be horse races and a bucking horse contest. The mustangs were never saddled, Joe recalled. They just tied a line on, let the rider mount up and then turned him loose in a field with three or four riders to keep the bronc away from the fence. “Some ran until they hit a fence and went somersaulting over.” And, of course, there would be a dance in the evening.
It wasn’t necessary to wait for a major holiday to have a community gathering. For some time, in Kirt Skinner’s recollection, there was something doing about every two weeks. He was part of a committee of sorts that would meet to organize a get together. Sometimes a Chautauqua would come to Jordan Valley, though Kirt admitted it wasn’t often. And occasionally horse races or foot races might be organized. There were of course community picnics on the 4th of July, but Opal recalled they would also be organized just for an occasion to get together and have fun. For Stacia Davis, the “gala day” was when one served on the election board. “You took your lunch. The election board was both the day board and the night board. Everybody brought something to eat, and when you came to vote, you made it all day. Everybody visited. It was a picnic.” Sophia Bethel’s father was often chairman of the election board at Watson, and Sophia helped. Folks would wait around for the votes to be tallied, not so much to learn the results as for the election dance to begin. One was usually held at Watson, but after the reservoir filled it was moved up river to between the Griffith and Mattingly places. That lasted but one year, Stacia said, because so many people had moved out there weren’t enough for a school district.
Dancing was common to nearly every community gathering, one of which occurred about every two weeks (Chesley Blake thought once a month). As Joe Beach said, “That’s where you had your fun.” Of course, there were dances in conjunction with the seasonal celebrations–Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas as well. But according to Bill Ross, the biggest dance of the year was on March 17. Some people would rather die, he said than miss the St. Patrick’s Day dance. “These Irishmen, you know.” Large families always came to Jordan Valley on that day. The Mahers, who lived at Poverty Flat some thirty miles miles from Jordan Valley always came, and if the roads were muddy they arrived by horseback. At the time Jordan Valley had three hotels where people could stay. Vernon Anawalt remembered drinking and fistfights, though he claimed to have avoided them. Other occasions for smaller celebrations included weddings, which might attract more than 100 persons, or gatherings at someone’s home if they had a large room. Other venues included the large second story room at Ed Palmer’s rock house and the school houses or the Arock grange. Attendees would bring food for a dinner that was eaten in the late evening and then followed often by dancing until dawn. Families would travel to Succor Creek, Jordan Valley, Arock or Watson often covering distances of twenty or twenty-five miles.
One measure of the importance and popularity of dancing as a social activity is the number of different steps found at the the dances. They included waltzes, two steps, the turkey trot, quadrilles or square dances, schottische, waltzes, polkas, varsoviennes, and the one step, which some considered obscene. “You just dragged your feet along. It wasn’t much of a dance, but my mother thought it was kind of shocking,” Opal remembered. A similar jaundiced view was accorded tango and ragtime dancing, and anyone who attempted them was made to get off the floor. The dances were learned from one’s parents; Opal’s experience was probably typical: “I learned to dance when I was just about high enough to reach my dad’s coat tails. My dad took us out on the floor and taught us to dance. I liked to polka with my husband. His mother taught him. She was very good. Parents used to teach their kids to do those things in those days.”
Music for the dances was provided by what Kirt Skinner termed a “home or hill billy orchestra” made up of family musicians. They included fiddlers, banjos, guitars, French harps, and harmonicas. At some of the larger venues, such as the hotels in Jordan Valley or the schools, there might be a piano. Sometimes there was even be a Victrola or an accordion. The variety notwithstanding, the fiddle remained the most common instrument at the dances. According to Vernon Anawalt, there was often drinking and fights, though he claimed to have avoided them.
Aside from community gatherings, there were of course smaller family gatherings to which neighbors might be invited. Ethel Raburn’s family would have a “little dance” and the neighbors would all come. They would dance to a Victrola, or someone might bring a violin or accordion. Walter Perry described parties held at “houses up and down the river.” (As a boy, Walter lived at the Island ranch about midway between the Birch Creek ranch and Watson.)
We used to have a lot of, kinda like dance and games that we used to play at those parties, and stuff like that. Especially when we didn’t have any music, we’d have our parties and sing to them. Everybody sang.
Playing cards was a favorite pastime. George Palmer especially liked pinochle, though he played poker and Blackjack as well. He could recall having thirty or forty people on their front lawn eating fried chicken. Ethel Raburn learned cards from her father but said her neighbors didn’t play much.
Weddings were an occasion for folks to come together and celebrate not just the creation of a new set of family ties but to reinforce the bonds of community. In Chesley Blake’s recollection while a judge might come out from Caldwell to marry a couple, most weddings took place in a nearby town. He cited the example of Hazel and Al winters, who went to Caldwell on horseback to be wed. But after a couple returned home to the Owyhee, there would be a big wedding party. Chesley’s description of his uncle George Palmer and aunt Elva’s wedding gives the flavor of these gatherings:
In 1928 there was about 150 to 200 people there. That was quite a big place up there. Uncle George,… when Uncle George got married, why he... We shivareed him. He didn’t have a chance to get, to have a dance. (Where’d you take him?) Right out there on the lawn. We had a big lawn. Everybody congregated right there from all up and down the river. We shivareed him right there. (What happened in a shivaree out there? What’d they do?) Oh, they rang bells, whooped and hollered and battered tin cans. They drank whiskey and everything else, I guess. They…. Yeah, they had plenty to drink and everything else. (Did they kidnap the groom?) Well, they took Uncle George across the river and made him swim back. They held Aunt Alva until he came across the river. I remember them doin’ that. Made him swim widest part above the wheel, made him swim across. Then us kids, we...I wasn’t into all this little deal. The rest of the kids got into his cigars and cigarettes and his treats and stuff, and I got blamed for it. Had an old water tank up there he used to water the sheep with. Dad, he came along there, smelled cigar smoke and everything, and he opened that up, and well them kids in there sicker than horses. I know good and well I wasn’t into it, but I got blamed for it. When he had his golden wedding, I asked him, I said, “Well Uncle George, you remember what happened 50 years ago.” “Yeah,” he says. “I was in pretty good shape, but you kids wasn’t. Pretty sick. Pretty sick bunch a kids.”
The occasions for getting together with one’s neighbors were not limited to the festive gatherings. Ranching work itself and the custom of cooperation between ranches for such tasks as gathering and separating cattle, and branding, presented opportunities to work and play together. But beyond that, one could meet friends, family and neighbors at rodeos or other events in nearby Vale or Ontario, and smaller groups might go swimming in the summer or skating in winter. While the smaller activities could provide the occasion for leisure and recreation, it was the larger events that fostered a sense of community through the cooperative efforts that went into planning, organizing and executing the event. Because they could attract even entire families from as far as thirty miles distant, these celebrations enlarged the area covered by one’s sense of community, building relations that extended well beyond those generally known to town dwellers. This led to the creation of networks across the sparsely settled I.O.N. land that shared a set of values and a way of life that was as cohesive as in the nearby town and village communities. Although the community centers such Jordan Valley have declined, these elements remain central to the lives and values of the present-day residents of the Owyhee Canyonlands.
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1 In the pre-WWII period Jordan Valley’s population rose from 110 in 1900 to to a 355 in 1920, then falling to 274 in 1940 and 196 in 1970. In 1980 it rose again to peak at 473 when the nearby mines were active. Since then it has declined steadily to an estimated 175 in 2016. Riley Moffatt. Population History of Western U.S. Cities & Towns, 1850-1990. Lanham: Scarecrow, 1996, 211.
2 Regarding the Watson post office and the ranches along the river, see Mildretta Adams, Sagebrush Post Offices: A History of Owyhee County. Pocatello, ID: Idaho State University Press, 1986, 272-77.
3 This case raises a question. A Caldwell judge would have been from from Idaho. While a couple might travel there and obtain their license and be married by an Idaho judge in Idaho, it seems unlikely an Idaho judge would have traveled into Oregon to officiate at a wedding.