➊ The Struggle For Independence In Taylors The Bean Trees

Lack of water and exploding gasoline [aerosol cans] and ammunition added Differences In Truman Capotes In Cold Blood the difficulties of the Churchill County Fire Karl Marx Materialism in their efforts to quell Respiratory System Research Paper The Struggle For Independence In Taylors The Bean Trees. Overprotective Parents In The Glass Castle 1, - The How Did Hitler Gain Power? brothers let their lease on the quartz mill expire due to the low price of silver. Another factor was the effect of repeated logging driving on rivers never intended by nature to carry large The Importance Of Health Care of logs and a rapid flow of water. Bhuyan K. Eventually all log driving on the Chippewa River in northwestern Wisconsin was put under the control of a single company. Were the only peoples in this country who have a collectively owned land base that has been self-governed since the beginning of time, Le Blanc said. The entire family was at Mary's—at that time only eighteen—now thirty-two and rapidly increasing. There are no divisions of class, race, age, economic status. She said not to come for them Spirited Away Analysis a half The Struggle For Independence In Taylors The Bean Trees hour as they were eating and having a wonderful time.

The Bean Trees

Croix valley's proximity to the unparalleled transportation opportunities offered by the Mississippi River, a virtue shared by the Chippewa River, made these areas extremely attractive to lumbermen during the pioneer phase of logging in the region. Later, in the s, as railroads began to expand in the area, and offer an alternative transportation system, access to the Mississippi became somewhat less important. But during the era before the Civil War, when logging was dominated by the use of waterpower, rafting was the sole means for moving logs and lumber to market.

The reliance of lumbermen on rafting logs and lumber created a strong seasonal labor market for men willing to work on the river. In the early days of the industry an unlikely relationship grew up between the little Illinois town of Albany and the lumbermen of the St. Located on the Mississippi River across from Clinton, Iowa, the town of Albany produced many of the best pilots on the upper river. Rivermen from Albany took charge of many of the early raft flotillas sent from the valley. Stephen Hanks, who piloted the very first raft of logs from the St. Louis, was from Albany as were all the rivermen in that flotilla. That summer of Hanks piloted three rafts down to St. Louis, each round trip taking close to thirty days. While the pilots had to be men who knew the river, the crews who manned the sweeps merely needed to be strong and willing to work long hours under the open sky.

Scandinavian and Canadian immigrants often took to the rafts when the spring rafting season began. A crew of as many as ten men would be necessary to take a raft south. In rapids at least two men were needed to handle the long oars through powerful current. Between manning the St. Croix boom and downriver rafts the lumber traffic at Stillwater alone gave employment to more than twenty-five hundred men in The most vital use of water power was not sawing the logs or shipping the lumber to market, but the transportation of logs from the forests of the upper river to the mills and boom on the lower river. The pine forests of the upper St. Croix would have remained wilderness had the river not been harnessed to drive the winter's cut downstream. Nonetheless log driving was the most expensive, the most difficult, and the most vexing aspect of logging in the St.

Croix valley. The main river was blessed with a strong steady current but also with numerous rocky passages that proved to be troublesome chokepoints. Save for the Namekagon, the St. Croix's numerous tributaries were small, winding forest streams with limited flow. Success at moving a winter's cut from the pineries to the mill required a mix of appropriate weather conditions, skillful planning, and exhausting, cold, wet work. Throughout the winter logging season the wool-clad lumberjacks stacked the pine logs in large piles at a streamside landing. When the ice went out in April, that tributary stream would be used to carry the logs to the main river.

Some of these streams were so small that a logger could nearly straddle them with a foot on each bank. The ideal size for a logging stream was for it to be just slightly wider than the longest log at the landing. For streams of such size to move thousands of feet of logs, and even more so for those that were smaller, "improvements" were needed. This meant straightening several ox-bow bends and sometimes removing a few boulders. It was expensive, time-consuming work and the lumbermen always tried to get away with undertaking the most minimal improvements. Their goal was to remove logs from tract of land perhaps on a single occasion, at most for only a few years. They were not interested in investing in long-term commercial improvements.

One expense that could seldom be avoided was the construction of dams to raise the water level of the stream in its narrow banks and increase the rate of flow enough to move the bulky logs. Ideally the dam could be a crude, hastily constructed splash dam that could quickly backup a head of water and then be chopped open to release its flow. Frequently, however, a formal dam with a lift gate that could be opened and closed would be required. The cost of a formal dam could be substantial -- from hundreds of dollars during the s and thousands of dollars by the turn of the century.

The outlet of a pond or small lake was the ideal site for such a dam, as the lake could be used as a reservoir for the backed up water. A couple of days of high water would usually be enough to clear a landing of its harvest of logs and send the mass down to the St. Croix or one of its major tributaries such as the Snake or the Kettle River. Where small watercourses had to be driven long distances, it was necessary to build an additional dam halfway downstream. When all the logs reached the second impoundment that dam would be opened and the logs surged on with the crest of the flood. During the early years of logging in the St. Croix valley, the value of even the best pineland was greatly influenced by the location and character of the area's watercourses.

Hersey, Staples, and Company, the Stillwater logging giant, made large purchases in Kanabec County, Minnesota with the intention of using the Groundhouse River to carry the logs down to the Snake River. Some of the firm's partners were dubious of this plan. Hall, "will be satisfied himself, as to the capacity of that river for driving logs. A dam was built near the camp, and when spring came, the company tried to drive the winter's cut to the Snake and from there down the St. Croix to Stillwater. But things did not go as planned.

The head of water from the dam dissipated before the log drivers could get the bulk of the logs down the torturous stream. Precious weeks went by as the drivers struggled to refloat logs left stranded by the drop in the water level. Partners like Dudley Hall peppered the company's managers with requests for updates on the disastrous drive on the Groundhouse. The delayed drive, according to Hall, was "a thousand times more important than the mill.

I trust you will. The only thing that prevented the Groundhouse problems from ruining the entire season for Hersey, Staples, and Company was the fact that they had operated camps on other more manageable streams and that harvest gave the mill a modest supply of logs. That year they also operated a camp on the Beaver Brook and another on the Namekagon River.

These camps successfully sent their logs down to the St. Once they reached the main river, however, their logs became mixed with the winter's cut of scores of other lumbermen operating camps on the Sunrise, Kettle, Clam, Tamarack, and Upper St. Croix Rivers. This was a problem that lumbermen in the eastern states had faced before and they transferred their solution to western waters. Every log put into the river was impressed with a distinctive mark hammered into the butt end. To sort out the logs lumbermen working along the river pooled their resources to fund a common retrieval system.

Initially this was a simple association in which each lumberman reported how many logs he put into the river. When the mass of timber reached the lower river, it was assembled into rafts and counted. If a lumberman rafted more logs than he put into the river, as often happened, then he owed the others a debit to be paid in cash or logs. The system relied upon honesty and trust and could not survive the expansion of logging during the s. A primitive water powered sawmill. During the s and s single sash saws were replaced by multiple cutting surfaces known as gang saws. As gang saws became more popular steam power replaced water power. The formation of the St. Croix Boom Company, chartered by the Minnesota Territory in January marked the beginning of a new, more sophisticated approach to the management of a common waterway as a conduit for thousands of individually owned logs.

The boom company was given the right to capture all logs passing over the falls of the St. Croix, sort them according to the owner's mark, and then give them back to the rightful owners in return for a fee of forty cents per thousand board feet delivered. Initially men from Marine, Osceola, and Taylors Falls dominated the boom company, so they located the collecting pens near those towns. This site retarded the development of the boom company because it was too far upriver to effectively serve loggers on the Apple River. This stream that enters the St. Croix south of Marine drains a large area, reaching deep into the lake country of Polk County, Wisconsin.

Loggers were operating along seventy-two miles of improved river and its output in the late s and s was second among St. Croix tributaries only to the Snake River. An even bigger problem with the original site of the boom was that it was inconvenient to Stillwater, Minnesota, the town that emerged during the s as the valley's lumber center. Stillwater mill owners had to pay twice to receive their logs -- once to the boom company for collecting and sorting their logs and then again to the rivermen who organized and floated their logs twenty-one miles downstream to the Stillwater mills. Isaac Staples, a partner in Stillwater's largest mill, was anxious to manage the river to his advantage. His opportunity came in when the original St.

Croix Boom Company went bankrupt. Staples and a group of Stillwater based partners took over the boom for fifty cents on the dollar and relocated its main operations to a site just outside the limits of their town, at the head of Lake St. Until its demise in the boom company controlled the upper river, taking charge of every log, making every lumberman pay its fees, bending the St. Croix to its will. The inspiration for the St. Croix boom had been the efficient organization of log transportation by the citizen's of Oldtown, Maine. Isaac Staples, who had lived in Oldtown, had seen its boom in operation. With an experienced eye he selected a superb location for the new St. Croix boom, a narrow, high-banked stretch of river where the stream was divided into several channels by small islands.

The boom itself was made up largely of logs chained end to end, anchored to piles driven into the streambed to form a floating fence. There were a series of these fences that acted as a conduit, leading logs to holding pens. Into these pens went the logs of a particular company. Collected there would be the logs splashed several weeks before into some remote tributary stream in the upper valley, minus those logs lost in back channels or sunk to the bottom of the river. Catwalks were built along the boom, allowing loggers to easily move from one part of the boom to the next. Very little of the St. Croix Boom has survived. The vast system of log and chain channels are, of course, long gone.

What remains, located on the Minnesota shore, are a house used by men who managed and worked on the boom and a barn that was used for storage and animal care. The banks of the river are thickly forested with aspen and birch and suggest the appearance of the area at the time the boom was constructed. The site of the boom has been a National Historic Landmark since The boom house and barn are listed on the National Register. Croix boom was the most profitable in the Midwest region. This was partially because the State of Minnesota had written a generous fee into their charter. But just as important was the unique construction of the boom that allowed for the bulk of it to be closed off when the number of logs in the river was low. The boom could be expanded or contracted by opening or closing channels.

This meant that during slack periods the boom could operate with only a skeleton crew, holding down labor costs, but maintaining a continuous service for lumbermen. The true measure of the boom's effectiveness, however, was its ability to handle a high volume of logs. In , the river at the head of the boom constituted a solid packed mass for three of four miles.

This was a common site during the s and one year the owner of a particularly nimble horse offered "to cross the St. Hundreds of men worked long hours to sort through the mass and send the logs downstream to waiting mills. But with two to three million feet of lumber to sort for some to different lumber companies the backlogs were inevitable. The highly profitable boom company in time became a hated, if powerful, influence on the St. Lumbermen anxious to start milling their winters cut fumed over delays at the boom and resented that they had to dig deep into their pockets to pay the boom for sorting their logs.

More irate still were the steamboat men who often found the channel above Stillwater completely blocked with logs. Towns like Taylors Falls, Marine, and Franconia suffered economically as they were shut-off from down river trade. Farmers between Stillwater and Taylors Falls were upset to have a low cost means of shipping their crops to market endangered by the powerful boom company. Those located directly on the river suffered a further indignity when the mass of logs so blocked the river as to cause the stream to over flow its banks and flood their homes and fields.

During the s and s, the boom company tried to moderate these problems by constructing a shipping canal on the Wisconsin side of the river that would by-pass the bulk of the boom works. At times the company would furnish teams and wagons so that cargoes could be portaged around the logs. It also made available to travelers its small steamboat positioned above the jam. This willingness to work with people and communities impacted by the scale of logs in the river went far to holding down the volume of discontent. In the end the townspeople and farmers inconvenienced by the boom were forced by the boom's economic importance and Stillwater's political muscle to accept that logs and lumber were crucial to the region's growth. In , the editor of the Taylors Falls Reporter captured the dependence upon the lumber industry that was gradually settling over the towns, both below and above the boom.

Merchants furnish men who go into the woods to cut the timber, with supplies, and wait the arrival of the logs in market for their pay. Laborers work in the pineries, and eagerly watch the coming of the logs to secure their wages, while their better halves wait until the logs come in, for the minor luxuries, which succeed such occasion. Equally as interested in the success or failure of the lumber industry were the farmers of the valley. Providing food and fodder for the lumber camps was the critical local market that made pioneer agricultural activities viable within the valley.

As long as the boom company expressed a willingness to try and moderate their interference with river commerce the majority of people within the valley supported transforming the St. Croix into a river of logs. In latter years the St. Croix Boom Company would be referred to as the "Octopus" because of its power over the river. Yet, in actuality the St. Croix boom had much less power over the river than the boom companies organized by lumbermen in Michigan and Wisconsin. Croix boom only handled logs that came over the falls and had no authority to operate on the upper river.

In contrast the Menominee River Boom Company in Michigan not only sorted all logs to reach the boom but it took charge of driving all logs put into that river from its headwaters to the boom near Lake Michigan. Eventually all log driving on the Chippewa River in northwestern Wisconsin was put under the control of a single company. But the St. Croix lumbermen remained determined to control the fate of their logs for as long as possible. An attempt in to form a company to drive all logs on the St.

Croix came to naught when the loggers working in the upper valley could not agree on a fair price to pay. Special log driving companies did successfully operate on the Apple River and the Snake River, but on the upper St. Croix scores of independent loggers resisted the control of a single authority in charge of the river. Frequently lumber companies operating in proximity to one another might band together on a temporary basis to drive their logs to the boom, but these were just short-term alliances.

Log driving was the most colorful and adventurous aspect of lumbering and on the St. Croix it remained in the hands of rugged individualists. A wanigan, the cook boat used on log drives, tied up at the bank of a log filled stream. The Civil War marked a significant benchmark in the development of the lumber industry in the St. From to a pioneer industry gradually took root in the valley and flourished. During this time the role of the various towns in the valley was determined. Marine and St. Croix Falls, which had been so promising during the s, had been forced to take a secondary position as production centers to Stillwater and other towns on Lake St. Land that had belonged to the Chippewa and Dakota had been acquired by the United States and then hastily transferred to private hands, most of it for the minimum price.

Under the Indians the valley had been shared, sometimes quite grudgingly, in common by whole communities, now it had been privatized with the will of a few industrialists shaping the future of the land and the river. The demand for St. Croix lumber grew during the Civil War, in spite of the massive disturbance of military operations on the life and economy of the lower Mississippi valley. Three major developments, each enhanced by Union victory in the war, helped to drive the St. Croix lumber industry in the years after 1 The settlement of the sparsely treed Great Plains; 2 The expansion of the national rail network which created the conditions for a genuine national lumber market; 3 The industrialization of American life that created both the demand and the means to realize greater lumber production.

The expanded reach and inflated ambition of St. Croix lumbermen had a direct and immediate impact on the character of the river and its tributaries. Between and , for example, the lumbermen greatly increased the amount of water they needed for log transportation. On the Snake River the river driving company charged with managing the flow of logs expanded the driveable length of the river from fifty miles to eighty miles. The Wood River was expanded from sixteen miles of useable stream to fifty miles. The main branch of the St. Croix itself was expanded from a mere eighty miles to well over one hundred.

Just as important were the new tributaries that were damned and channelized to fulfill the needs of loggers. Within a few years of the close of the Civil War lumbermen were driving logs on seventy-five to eighty miles of the numerous side streams, lakes, and branches of the Kettle, Yellow, and Namekagon rivers. Simple forest streams such as the Tamarack and the Totogatic were made navigable for logging, the latter utilized for better than fifty miles of twisting streambed reaching through what is today Burnett, Douglas, Washburn, Sawyer, and Bayfield counties, Wisconsin. Dams and stream clearing teams ensured that no sooner did loggers open to use a small tributary of the St.

Croix than they would begin to employ the tributary's tributaries for the same purpose. The main branch of the Kettle River, for example, was used for more than eighty-five miles, deep into the Minnesota wilderness, to within less than twenty-five miles of Lake Superior. Its principal tributaries, the Pine, Willow, and Moose Rivers, hardly capable of floating a canoe today, were used to reach even further into the interior. The experience of the lumberman Elam Greeley on the Clam River in is illustrative of the manner in which logging was expanded on the St.

Croix's numerous tributaries. Greeley's lumberjacks had made a large cut that winter but by June, when most of the region's harvest had been passed through the boom at Stillwater, his logs were hung up on the Clam River. Greeley ordered his foreman, Andrew McGraw, to put the driving crew to work cutting out a canal eighteen feet wide, twenty-five feet deep and two hundred yards long between Beaver Lake and the river. An additional eighty-foot long canal connected Greeley Lake with the river.

Controlling dams were put in where the canals reached the lakes. When the dams were opened and the canals were connected to the lakes the flow of the river was powerfully augmented. On this head of water the lumberjacks were able to drive all of the logs down to the St. While the Minneapolis Tribune toasted Greeley as "a most enterprising lumberman," no one recorded what the Chippewa, who had harvested wild rice from the lakeshores for generations, thought of the sudden drop in water levels. What made this expansion of the log transportation in the valley possible was the increased number and sophistication of the dams constructed by loggers. By , there were between sixty and seventy logging dams within the St.

Croix watershed. Small headwaters dams, such as five located on the upper Snake River which cost only between five hundred to two thousand dollars, were typical of the majority of the river improvements. Dams located on the St. Croix or its principal tributaries, however, required considerable engineering skill and a formidable capital investment. In , Isaac Staples invested ten thousand dollars to have a dam built on the St.

Croix River just downstream from Upper Lake St. The dam facilitated the transportation of logs from the Moose River, an area highly prized for the superiority of its pine. Logs sluiced through the dam were assessed a fee to allow Staples to recoup his sizeable investment. Sometimes lumbermen would pool their resources to undertake such construction activities.

The Namekagon Improvement Company, for example, was capitalized at twenty-five thousand dollars to operate a logging dam on the main branch of the Namekagon River a few miles downstream of the current Hayward dam. Typical of the post-Civil War era dams used to control the St. Croix was the twelve foot high Namekagon and Totogatic Dam. It was a four hundred-foot earthen dam anchored by wooden piles driven deep into the streambed. It took as long as eleven months to raise a six-foot head of water. During the time the dam gates were closed it was necessary to station a dam keeper on site to monitor the water level. When the driving season began the dam's three eight-foot sluicing gates would be opened to float the logs down to the Namekagon on the flood.

Working under a charter from the state of Wisconsin the company went on to construct seventeen more dams along the tributaries of the upper St. The remains of old dams can be seen throughout the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway. The most common remains are those of wing dams or as they were more properly called pier dams, navigation aids built out from the bank into the river that were designed to concentrate the flow of the river and guide logs past potential obstructions. A good example of these works can be found on the Namekagon River near Cable, Wisconsin where the remains of five wing dams are found in the river.

The dams are constructed of cobblestone and are ten feet by thirty-five feet in dimension. The Namekagon at this point is shallow and the riverbanks are low and flanked by swampy ground. The pier dams here prevented the logs from meandering into the near by swamps. Another set of pier dams can be found in the St. The wing dam here is feet by five feet and prevented logs from being hung up against a small island in the river. The remains of larger control dams on the St. Croix and Namekgon have mostly been destroyed to allow for the passage of boats and canoes. This was the fate of a dam on the upper Namekagon just above Hayward, Wisconsin. For many years canoeists were forced to portage around the decaying wood and cribbed rock structure.

In the early s, the National Park Service removed most of the dam to allow for the free flow of the river. At the outlet of Pacwawong Lake canoeists pass remains of Pacwawong Dam. In , at the request of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the National Park Service removed over forty feet of cut logs held together by square spikes that still remain in the river. The Coppermine Dam on the Upper St. Croix also boasts the remains of what was once a gated dam on the river, but here too most of the old logging structure has been removed. River improvements were not the largest single cost faced by lumbermen but they did represent a formidable portion of the price of doing business. Between and lumberman Edwin St.

John logged on the Lower Tamarack River, a tributary of the upper St. Croix in Pine County, Minnesota. In order to bring out a total harvest of close to forty million feet of logs St. In , the Burnett County Sentinel estimated that to build the thirteen biggest dams in the St. The most expensive was Big Dam on the upper St. Dam building was not a one-time expense. These works required annual maintenance and usually needed to be rebuilt every ten years.

Therefore, a figure of more than one million dollars would be a conservative estimate of how much money lumbermen invested in St. Croix dams between the Civil War and the end of river driving. Of necessity dam building in the St. Croix watershed became more sophisticated because of environmental changes wrought by the first generation of loggers. Smaller dams beget larger dams in part because the volume of logging also accelerated greatly during the s and s. Another factor was the effect of repeated logging driving on rivers never intended by nature to carry large volumes of logs and a rapid flow of water. The surge of water flowing downstream from logging dams had the effect of eroding natural riverbanks. Croix itself, became wider streams after a decade or so of log driving.

Yet, while the streams became wider they also became shallower during the bulk of the year when log driving was not taking place. Logging also accelerated siltation. In , for example, the drive on the Snake River was disrupted near Pokegama by sand blocking the channel. More of a problem was the disruption of the natural flow of water downstream by dams closed for long periods to build a head for log driving. The broader shallow rivers, deprived of the protective shade of large pine forests, lost more of their volume to evaporation.

An increased investment in dam building was part of the legacy bequeathed by the pioneers to those businessmen who followed them into the pineries. A logger removes a tree from a tote road. In the late nineteenth century hundreds of crudely made tote roads were cut through the forest in order to bring supply wagons to logging camps. From Outing Magazine, April, Dams made possible the most colorful, dangerous, and difficult phase of logging in the St. In April of every year the best of the lumberjacks were engaged to escort the winter's cut down the small winding headwaters streams to the main branch of the St. Croix and from there to the head of the boom at Stillwater. It was a job where time was of the essence.

The long drive had to be completed before the water level, swelled by melted snows, splash dams, and spring rains, fell, leaving valuable logs stranded in water too shallow to float the fallen monarchs of the forest. It was cold, wet work performed by rugged men clad in two or three red woolen shirts and fitted with caulked boots. The most experienced of the rivermen were outfitted with long pikes and they rode the slippery logs in the van of the drive. They were know as "river pigs," a title in which they took perverse pride, and their job was to keep the logs from snagging on sand bars, sharp river bends, or shoals.

At obviously difficult spots on the river several men would be stationed throughout the drive to prevent logjams. These men together with those who floated majestically on their logs were known as the "jam crew. Several wooded boats, know as bateaux, sharply pointed at the bow and stern to ward off floating logs, were part of the drive and could be used to transport men to trouble spots as they developed. Even more important was the wanigan, a covered flat-bottomed boat that served as a mobile cook shack. The wanigan provided hot food each morning and evening, although many of the men in the jam crew took their midday meals with them in little back packs they knick-named "nose bags.

The rivermen had to be exceptionally hardy fellows. In what sounds today like the perfect conditions for triggering hypothermia they labored in air temperatures of thirty to forty degrees while regularly plunging into snowmelt waters that were even colder. In Nils Haugen, a young Norwegian immigrant won a place in the jam crew. He prided himself on his ability to ride a log but on the second day of the drive received a "good wetting. Fortunately no one saw it, so I was saved from being guyed. It was always a matter of merriment to see one fall in.

I had on three woolen shirts at the time; I took them off and wrung them out, put them on again, and wore them for the next three weeks, never suffered a cold or other inconvenience from the mishap. How men coped with the sudden chill of a spill in the river was more important than finding river men who did not fall from their logs. A rookie river driver who had fallen into the Willow River came out of the water cold, badly frightened, and begragled. At night the drive crews would establish a camp on the riverbank.

The evening meals generally featured better fare than camp dinners, fried fresh pork was a favorite, although like camp meals the men received as much as they wanted. Nils Haugen recalled:. We slept in tents. The blankets were sewed together so that we were practically under one blanket, the entire crew, the wet and the dry. Steam would rise when the blanket was thrown off. The workday would begin for the rivermen about three in the morning. This allowed the lumbermen to take full advantage of the water conditions but exposed the crews to considerable danger working among the rolling, grinding logs in pitch-blackness.

River men were paid substantially more than other forest workers because of the hardships and dangers they endured. Young James Johnston recalled his first day trying to ride logs on the Willow River. A branch hanging low over the stream swept him from his precarious perch and he fell "head first into the river. An accident recounted in the Stillwater Lumberman in May of underscores the danger faced by the men working the drives:. Last night Ed. Hurley was brought down from the drive on Clam River in a badly mangled condition. A log rolled on him and broken [sic] his right leg in several places.

Hoyt, of Hudson, was examining him this morning in consultation with city physicians, and found it necessary to amputate his right leg close to the body, which was done this forenoon. It is thought he cannot survive this day. He is a married man and his folks reside here. He is a first class lumberman and will be sadly missed by the river men. The prospect of earning as much as two dollars and fifty cents per day ensured that there were a steady stream of men willing to take their chances with the rolling, churning logs, and replace Ed Hurely and the other men who went down on the drive. Even the most skilled log riders fell at some point, most trusted their luck that it would not be where the logs could crush or drown them.

The danger and difficulty of trying to harness the natural power of the St. Croix to move millions of feet of bulky, heavy logs encouraged lumbermen to work cooperatively on the drive. Lumbermen who sought to pursue their success at the expense of others were a menace to the industry. On headwaters streams a logger with a heavy cut could ensure the success of his drive by getting all of his logs into the river ahead of his rivals.

The result, however, might be that those rival's logs would be blocked from heading downstream and were in danger of missing the high-water and being stranded in the forest, far from the lumber market. To avoid this unpleasant prospect foreman were tempted to begin their drive at the first sign of the break of the ice. Premature drives forced the men to work harder in lower, colder water conditions, with misery and risk as the reward. Cooperation was much more desirable for the men who worked on the river and for the lumbermen anxious to get their harvest safely to the Stillwater boom. One method of cooperation was for all of the lumbermen working that winter on a certain stream to agree to pay one of the firms to take charge, for a certain per log fee, of all of the cut.

In , for example, the lumbermen working on the Knife River all contracted with Charles F. Bean to drive all logs on the river. Bean had operated his own camp that winter and in addition to all of the other logs had 1. When loggers did operate their drives independently they would establish informal, ad hoc alliances with rival crews they encountered on their downstream journey. In , P. Fox and A. Chisley cooperated with each other and jointly drove their logs down the Snake River. Once on the St. Croix they encountered Charles Bean and his crew of rivermen driving seven million feet of pine from the upper river.

It was agreed to combine their crews and proceed down river with fifty drivers managing twelve million feet of pine. The goal of the rivermen was to bring most of the log cut down to the boom by the end of May. Much more skill and cooperation were necessary to bring a large amount of logs downriver in June and July. In , some twenty million logs were brought down the Snake River in late June. It was necessary to boom the logs at the junction of that river and the St.

Croix due to low water on the main river. There the logs waited several weeks until heavy rain brought a rise in the water level. As more and more dams were built throughout the river system lumbermen learned how to extend the log-driving season by coordinating the opening and closing of dams throughout the valley. In July , a drive of eighteen million feet of logs from the upper St. There simply was not enough water in the river to carry the logs farther. The foreman in charge of the drive arranged to have dams on the Snake, Yellow, Clam, Namekagon, and upper St.

Croix opened in sequence, providing a head of water sufficient to bring in the valuable drive. The numerous large lakes connected to the tributaries of the St. Croix were critical to logging in the valley. The lakes were natural reservoirs for storing large amounts of water for logging purposes. The logging dam built in by Elam Greeley at the outlet of Cross Lake was one of the first important dams in the valley. Presidency Ron Paul was officially presented with a Liberland passport and citizenship certificate by Jedlika and his cabinet. Jedlika initially offered "Liberland citizenship" for 10, merits, equivalent to USD,[66][16] but later reduced it to 5, There has been no diplomatic recognition of Liberland by any member of the United Nations.

However, Liberland has established relations with Somaliland, a self-declared state that proclaimed its independence from Somalia in Liberland and Somaliland signed a Memorandum of Understanding in September vowing to establish closer relations and cooperate in the areas of technology, energy and banking. Several minor parties with no elected representatives at their national level expressed support for the creation of Liberland.

Liberland - Wikipedia. Actor MatthewMcConaughey is doubling-down on comments he made last week about "illiberals" and the current state of politics in the United States. While appearing on "Good Morning Britain" on Tuesday to promote his memoir "Greenlights," the "True Detective" star elaborated on his previousclaimsthat his Hollywood colleagues can have "condescending" and "arrogant" attitudes when it comes to the Trump supporters and the right. Some liberals dont see theyre being cannibalised by the illiberals. McConaughey explains he thinks free speech and both sides of being political debate are illegitimatised by the other side.

The extreme left and the extreme right completely illegitimize the other side, the liberal and conservative side, which we need in certain places," he said. Or they exaggerate that sides stance into an irrational state that makes no sense and thats not fair when either side does that. The Oscar-winning actor briefly mentioned "cancel culture," and how it could possiblyinfluencefree speech in the future. AlthoughMcConaughey previously daredAmericans to get "aggressively centric," he noted that to some degree, conflict is a necessary evil. Korean liberals and sword of justice? By David TizzardLiberalism has an insatiable desire to extinguish all existing suffering.

Some characterize it as irrepressible drive, fueled by ideology and the pursuit of a promised land that will see nothing stand in its way to achieve its ends. A noted political theorist of the midth century, Ken Minogue Australian but no relation to Kylie , likened this pursuit of glory to that of St. George and the slaying of dragons. The liberal wields his sword and advances on that which terrorizes and threatens society and its inhabitants: despotism, religious bigotry, slavery, racism, xenophobia, and corruption.

The liberals thus live to fight the dragon: Their position, their power, their methods, and their very nature of being are all defined in opposition to their antithetical opponent. Christopher Nolan explored similar territory in his depictions of the Batman and Joker in his 21st century trilogy. But while this seems like a clear and comprehensible narrative digestible in the modern world, Minogue took this metaphor and made it both allegoric and didactic. What happens, he asked, if the sword-wielding liberal St. George continues on the quest unopposed? George will initially free society from despotic kingship and emancipate the people, liberating souls and providing salvation to serfs. He will then turn his blade unto religious intolerance. This will provide the hero some time to rest.

And yet, as time passes, up will rise the problems of slavery and prison conditions, the societal role of the working class, the championing of human rights, and the emancipation of women. Once again, she will unsheathe her weapon and slay dragons. This time the attacks need to be more refined and sophisticated for the problems, while still of vital importance, are more nuanced and present inside a complex structure which is otherwise deemed beneficial or necessary. The fire-breathers once more sent packing, the hero puts her feet up. But she just can't get it out of her head. Even with her hand on her heart, this is not a case of better the devil you know: this is where the wild roses grow.

And so once again, the liberal hero takes up his sword and now advances on the latest enemies. As society progresses, the dragons become even more camouflaged in the very fabric of the systemnow they are vested interests, privilege, and insolence. The point Minogue was trying to make was that the liberal does not know when to rest. There will always be dragons standing in the way of that desired heaven as a place on earth yes, that's admittedly a Belinda Carlisle reference rather than the other Kylie ones above. And so the sword never gets put away.

Bewitched by utopian thoughts and intoxicated by previous success, the liberal continues to fight. A normal life, a social life, is simply no longer enough. The Batman cannot simply be Bruce Wayne no matter how hard he tries for there will always be a villain to overcome. In an existential world in which actions define one's self and one's purpose, the hero can only live by fighting for the poor and the oppressed. The dragons keep him alive just as it is rumored does the whisky of Keith Richards: to stop now would surely be fatal. But the dragons become smaller and smaller. Even non-existent! We are presented with an image of Cervantes' ingenious knight of La Mancha, Don Quixote, tilting at windmills with his loyal servant Sancho Panza.

It is of course a most honorable pursuit; chivalrous to the core. But at times society will simply look at these acts and chuckle at the absurdity. In more unpleasant situations, the innocent bystanders will be inadvertently cut down by the charging knight and his weapon. Minogue of course meant this talk of dragons and saints to be applied to politics, and so what of this allegory and its relation to South Korea? The ruling party members proclaim themselves as the rightful and legitimate continuation of the dragon slayers of yore. It is their group that opposed, in turn, Japanese colonial rule, American imperialism, domestic military rule, and suffocating neo-liberal economic conditions. They are the group that have freed Korean society from tyranny and oppression and have rightfully claimed the seat of power.

Theirs is the position of saintliness. But what now that they have assumed the mantle? Is it possible they are still wielding a mighty sword despite a great many of their foes having been vanquished? Is it not the case that the warrior now needs to become a diplomat or a philosopher in order to foster the long-term stability of the state and prevent further collateral damage? The ruling party has a majority in the National Assembly that allows it to pass bills unopposed but is witnessing falling public support due to a series of scandals and policies enacted that have failed to live up to the expectations of the people.

It speaks of its commitment to "eradicate deep-rooted evils perpetrated by those in authority" and "deep-rooted evil in everyday life. For everyone else, we toil and suffer with the realities of life. Our backs broken like the proverbial shrimp as we remember that ever apt phrase from Matthew , "Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. David Tizzard datizzard swu. Korean Liberals and the Sword of Justice? I think it's worth pointing out that Congresswoman Haaland was never a shoo0in for this job. And she is a relative newcomer here in Washington. It was just her first term in Congress.

And unlike many of the other folks who have been put forward and nominated for cabinet positions, she does not have a long standing relationship with President-elect Biden, which is, I think, very important to the president-elect. And despite those sort of concerns and also concerns about the very thin House Democratic majority, a very concerted and effective effort led by tribal leaders, environmentalists and progressive activists actually systematically, both in public and behind the scenes, was able to get her across the finish line and to make history. And, you know, I think that that is just a testament to what an incredible leader she is.

Folks like me and folks who have strong beliefs, injustice, justice, etc. Native Americans are celebrating Rep. Editors note:On Dec. President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to make his administration the most diverse in history, a promise that so far he has fulfilled with several key appointments. For weeks now, momentum has been building behind a push for the Department of the Interior to be run by an Indigenous person for the first time in history. Dozens of tribal leaders have called upon Biden to appoint U. Deb Haaland, D-N. M, an enrolled tribal member of the Laguna Pueblo.

Beyond the obvious symbolic importance of having an Indigenous person lead Interior, a department with a long history of defying the best interests of tribal nations, the possibilities such a position would bring for tribal administrations and citizens alike are endless. Native leaders and advocates are hoping that a Haaland appointment would result in improved tribal consultationon everything from land protections to how agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, interact with tribal communities. As the country awaits Bidens decision, Native communities are bracing for what could prove a seismic change in the way the federal government treats the interests of Indian Country. It will be a moment to exhale for tribal leaders, said Judith Le Blanc, a citizen of the Caddo Tribe of Oklahoma and director of the Native Organizers Alliance, a national Native training and organizing network.

An Indigenous person leading Interior, she said, would mean having someone who understands the legal and inherent rights of Indigenous peoples to govern their own lands. Were the only peoples in this country who have a collectively owned land base that has been self-governed since the beginning of time, Le Blanc said. To have someone who understands that historic fact and therefore the rights and responsibilities to consult and to discuss before a decision is made that will affect treaty lands will be amazing. It creates opportunities and possibilities that tribal leaders will have to step into.

As IllumiNatives a nonprofit working to increase Native visibility put it in a social media post, Joe, Native people showed up for you. Now, show up for them. If Haaland or someone like Michael Connor, a member of Taos Pueblo and former deputy Interior director, whose name has also been floated as a possible nominee were to run the department, it would have a significant impact on Indian Country policy for the next several years not only for department policies and representation, but also for on-the-ground realities.

Under the Trump administration, environmental laws were significantly weakened, protections of places like the Tongass National Forest were rolled back and large-scale, high-impact projects like the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines were expedited. Many of those policies included a rushed or, in the case of the U. While all bureaucracies have flaws, both Haaland and Connor understand that including tribal nations in a government-to-government consultation process is non-negotiable.

They could also reverse some of the Trump administrations controversial decisions. Whoever is chosen, the stakes are high. The Yurok Tribe was one of a host of tribes to sign a letter to President-elect Joe Biden, urging him to choose Haaland. The tribe has had a protracted battle with the federal government over keeping enough water in the Klamath River to support their lifeways and the rivers salmon population. In , a government decision caused the largest fish kill in Yurok and U. Vice Chairman Frankie Myers says the representation and experience that would come with Haaland as an Indigenous person and lawmaker would be a welcome change: Ensuring that Indigenous voices are at the highest level of government, specifically when it comes to resources, is critical for us moving this country in a better, more positive way.

I cant believe it has taken this long. We have never been included in decisions that will affect our future. Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwichin Steering Committee, agrees. In November, the Trump administration announced that it would auction off oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge just two weeks before Biden takes office. The refuge, which lies within the ancestral lands of the Gwichin, supports the sensitive populations of Porcupine caribou, polar bears and walruses. The Gwichin Steering Committee has filed numerous lawsuits to stop the sale.

This current administration has done nothing but disrespect and violate the rights of our people, Demientieff wrote in a statementtoHigh Country News. As for an Indigenous leader of Interior, I cant believe it has taken this long. While Native voters tend to lean left, Indian Country issues on the Hill have typically found support with both Republicans and Democrats. The six Indigenous people who will join the next Congress are split evenly between the parties.

And even though the political atmosphere has been considerably polarized under the Trump administration, the prevailing sentiment is that Haalands ability to work across the aisle will keep Indian Country policy from becoming a politically divisive issue. Theres a reason why people like Republican U. Don Young and Tom Cole have publicly spoken out in very positive ways regarding Deb, said Keith Harper, a member of the Cherokee Nation and an Obama appointee who was the first Indigenous person to represent the U.

Because theyve worked with her and know shes willing to put the party politics aside and get pragmatic about challenges. Because we understand that Native American issues are not a matter of conservative versus liberal, we have accomplished a great deal together, said Rep. Out of all representatives in the House, Haalands bills have had the most bicameral support, and often bipartisan. And the political allies and partners shes made in Congress have some predicting that this would translate to consensus building across the government on issues affecting Native people. Oftentimes, Interior is looked as the agency that handles Indian affairs, said Kim Teehee, the Cherokee Nations congressional delegate.

There is such a cross-cutting nature of Indian Country issues, and I think she has the unique ability as a Cabinet secretary to convene the agencies. One non-Native whose name has been floated for the position is retiring Sen. Kennedy and Lyndon B. A number of progressive Native-led organizations have called on him to remove his name from consideration. When asked what it could mean for an Indigenous person to lead Interior, Udall toldHigh Country News thatNative Americans should be in high positions throughout government in the White House and various agencies its not just about the Interior Department,adding that the next secretary mustprioritize tribal nations needs with inclusive consultation, and put inthe hard work to make sure Native voices are front and center throughout the department.

Emailhimat [emailprotected]or submit aletter to the editor. Look for it in your email each month. Photo: File. The collection argues that socialism should be viewed as an important element in the struggle to liberate Palestine. What binds us together, concludes Awad, is our class politics. The working class together is what will build a new kind of world and a different system. And what that means is standing with the oppressed outside of our borders and with Palestine. While class is a clear connection around which to build campaigns, there are other avenues to explore. Responding to the controversy that erupted in Santa Fe, New Mexico over a series of pro-Palestinian murals drawn by a local Navajo artist, Elena Ortiz Ohkay Owingeh expands on the historical connections between the Indigenous here and in Occupied Palestine.

The images on that stucco wall, explains Ortiz, show the truth of settler colonialism and the effects it has on indigenous people. They were put there to show solidarity with our Palestinian relatives in the face of brutal occupation; to illuminate injustice and shed light on this nations complicity in Israels treatment of the Palestinian people. In that vein, she stresses the importance of acknowledging that the founding of the United States was a process that involved displacing and exploiting Indigenous nations that were living on the land prior to European conquest, a process very similar to the establishment, too, of the state of Israel. Elaborating on the contradictions between Santa Fes reputation as a liberal art center and home to vibrant Native cultures, Ortiz asks how a Native-installed art exhibit could cause so much controversy.

Because it illuminates a truth that many people do not want to face? In reality, those most offended were local Zionists who assumed the role of victim. Why is Israel singled out as an aggressor when there are many troubled spots in the world? There are many facets to the story and to highlight Israel is just anti-semitic propaganda. Preferring a portrayal that depicts normalization of relations between the twoa work of art depictingJews and Arabs living in PeaceLevertov offered up an image very fitting, too, of Santa Fe, a City Different that hides its racism beneath a veneer of faux adobe.

Several months later another controversy arose when Native people and their comrades succeeded in taking down a memorial ostensibly to Union soldiers. As Elena Ortiz explains, those same combatants participated in massacring Native people and removing them from their homelands. Under the shadow of that obelisk, Ortiz asserts, on Tewa homelands, in a place we call Ogha Pogeh, we still exist, despite ongoing efforts by some to prove the opposite.

Alan Webber, the liberal mayor of Santa Fe who might seem a likely ally, proposed a belated Cultures, Histories, Art, Reconciliation and Truth committee. Indigenous activists know better, specifically that there can be no peace until there is substantive justice. Elena Ortiz, daughter of the late Alphonso Ortiz, an anthropology professor who was my mentor at the University of New Mexico, says that the citys mood and dialogue have exposed much deeper problems. Santa Fe, with its pseudo-liberal, left-leaning politics, thinks its somehow above racial tensions that elsewhere have been exposed. But when you look at the vitriol that has come out since the obelisk, were peeling back this onion and were showing the racism that is endemic in Santa Fe.

And were showing that, hey, Donald Trump doesnt have anything on Santa Fe and this racism is so systemic. A city that bears a liberal faade, but in which racist and anti-Palestinian sentiments have exploded, Santa Fe is a perfect example of the ways in which Indigeneity unites solidarity activists around the cause of liberation, but at the same time exposes that sometimes a wing of the left-liberal camp declines to be on board. Finally, President-elect Joe Bidens selection of New Mexico Congressmember Deb Haaland Laguna Pueblo as secretary of the interior owes much to Indigenous movements who organized around land back as well as an end to fracking on and around Native land.

An historic first, Haalands appointment marks a significant turn-around for an agency that for much of the nations history played a central role in the dislocation and abuse of all Indigenous tribes. That was a very, very important step for the Biden administration, says Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth, rural development economist and Native American activist. Indian people know how to take care of this land. According to the Red Nation, Haalands nomination is also significant because she hails from a state that ranks fifth in the country for oil and gas production, much of which is on Indigenous land claimed by the federal and state governments.

Moreover, the group explains,. Because of this context, Haalands appointment is significant. We have yet to see, however, how this will all play out when she becomes secretary of DOI, concludes the Red Nation statement. Regardless, movements are pushing in this direction. While there is widespread agreement among Native people that European colonialism and Indigenous genocide is criminal and immoral, writes Nick Estes, there are a surprisingly high number of Native politicians, elites, and public figures who dont extend the same sympathies to Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims. He continues that the term anti-Palestinian opportunism describes how profitable and career-advancing it is for Indigenous people to align with the Zionist project.

The future Secretary of the Interior falls into this category. Its profound to think about the history of this countrys policies to exterminate Native Americans and the resilience of our ancestors that gave me a place here today, Haaland said. Nevertheless, she does not view Palestine in the same light. For example, during her campaign for US Congress, Haaland compared Native Americans getting the right to vote in New Mexico in to the creation of the state of Israel. Reflecting on this statement, Estes concludes that Haalands opportunism demonstrates that she is anything but an ally to Palestine and more of an opportunist willing to throw Palestinians under the bus when it benefits her political career.

Recalling a panel in which she participated during the Palestine Writes festival, author and activist Susan Albuhawa explained that true solidarity has a cost. What is it really worth to the oppressed if its easy and cheap and popular? Solidarity matters most when its hard, unpopular, and costly. Hopefully, in her upcoming appointed position, Haaland will use her platform to point out the ties that bind the Indigenous in this country with their relatives the Palestinians. Both have undergone ethnic cleansing and displacement, parallel experiences that should be called for what it is, crimes against humanity. Recounting how the Intifada changed the political trajectory of the Palestinian people, Ramzy Baroud explains thatthanks to the Intifada, the Palestinian people have demonstrated their own capacity at challenging Israel without having their own military, challenging the Palestinian leadership by organically generating their own leaders, confronting the Arabs and, in fact, the whole world, regarding their own moral and legal responsibilities towards Palestine and the Palestinian people.

Perhaps it is this acknowledgment of the need for a grassroots struggle against colonialism that is the tie that binds Indigenous resistance around the world. Commemorating the election which saw the ouster of Donald Trump, the Red Nation put out the following statement. Regarding what needs to be done, it puts forward the following view on socialism as the tie that binds. The battle of ideas against the ideology of greed and individualism, and the need for communal organization are keyIndigenous peoples, peoples of tribal nations, peoples of Maroon communities, peoples of the land have lived before capitalism and against capitalism.

They have cultivated relations with each other and the land that do not rely on conquest and surplus but bring abundance and joy and dignity to all. These communal forms should be developed and become schools for freedom. We call these schools for Indigenous socialism. Join us in the struggle to create a better future. To be a socialist you must be a principled champion for Palestine p. Their book bears out that certainly, this is true. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. The interactive map above shows precinct-level results of the election in Maricopa County. Out in the Southeast Valley, the Loop freeway is often seen as a political compass. To the north of it is dense with Democratic voters; to the south, suburbs that start with a kiss of GOP pink but soon deepen to a solid red.

Political eyes were on the area this election to see whether Democrats had the chance to flip Arizonas Legislative District 17 blue. In the end, with all votes tallied and certified, the district narrowly chose Democrat Joe Biden for president by 3. In the aftermath, candidates and community members wait to see what this years results, a precinct patchwork of red and blue, spell for the future. Paula Feely is a Democratic precinct committeeperson in Chandler. It was President Donald Trumps win in that pushed her, out of frustration, to become more involved with campaign efforts in her community. She represents Germann Precinct, part of a widening stretch of blue bleeding south of the Loop Biden won a handful of precincts around Feelys turf this year that previously went for Trump, including Lantana Canyon, Laredo and Dobson Park with margins ranging from.

Since becoming a committeeperson, Feely has written hundreds of letters, dropped party literature on doorsteps and made phone calls to people throughout LD And she has become more comfortable talking about politics with non-Democrats, she said, although close to the election, I did have to cut myself off from some people. Her counterpart in Germann Precinct might be Anne Kirkham, a longtime Chandler resident who is precinct committeeperson for the Republican Party.

With new housing going up in the district and people moving in from out-of-state, Kirkham said she sees the ground shifting in the city. Theres been a lot of outreach to what are called soft Democrats and all the independents, she said. It all comes down to policies and platforms. Despite partisan tensions in Arizona, and the ongoing, if largely dismissed, concerns about the elections integrity concerns that Kirkham shares she refrains from villainizing Democrats. Many of them are her neighbors in this battleground district. I have dear friends who look at things differently than I do politically, and I dont let that get in the way of our friendship, she said.

At votes each, they were tied. The triangular stretch of land near Queen Creek and Lindsay roads became a precinct in , and is home to registered voters. Raghu Srinivasan, vice chair for District 17 Democrats and an engineer with a penchant for analyzing election data, said Layton Lakes was carved out of Appleby Precinct as a result of new housing in the area. It wasnt long ago that the area was mostly farms, empty land and single family homes, he said.

But as neighborhoods grow and newcomers arrive, theyre probably bringing their outlook with them, Srinivasan said. Layton Lakes is one of three precincts in the county where Biden and Trump faced a draw. Steven Slugocki, chair of the Maricopa County Democratic Party, said the ties illustrate the closeness of elections here, and how much of the county is up for grabs. One of the most closely watched races in LD17 was for the state Senate seat held by J. Mesnard, a Republican. Democratic challenger A.

Kurdoglu lost the race, but said he had no doubts that the district is changing. Still, it will take work to decide the political future of the East Valley, he said liberal and conservative leaders cant simply wait for the demographics to change. I always believe it is our job as candidates or as a party to reach out to your neighbors, your constituency and explain what you stand for, Kurdoglu said. Mesnard comfortably won his Senate seat, but doesnt deny the potential of the region turning blue in years to come. He lost his own precinct to Kurdoglu by 5. The senator said he has no plans to change his policies in response to a constituency that is becoming more liberal. I ran for office in the first place under a certain set of principles.

I maintain those principles, Mesnard said. And if theres an avalanche of people that come in with different principles, itll probably just mean that Ill lose, eventually. He said he hopes to convince newcomers that his policies and the Republican platform more broadly have helped make Arizona an attractive place to live. Even as pundits make predictions for the next election, the competitive status of LD17 could soon recede into history when officials begin redrawing legislative districts next year.

Feely, the Democratic precinct committeeperson, said she thinks the liberal tilt in her neighborhood is a credit to people engaging with the issues more than any sea change in political beliefs. As a retired school district employee, she said she thinks candidates who are focused on education will find supporters in the East Valley, just as Democrat Jennifer Pawlik did when she ran for the state House two years ago and won. Pawlik was re-elected last month. Its not just a red and blue thing, Feely said of the political map. Its what people think you can do to improve our community. LD17 thin victory margins and a tie - Arizona Capitol Times. Self-described centrists have had a hard time of it for the last four years.

With President Trump utterly dominant on the right, and the Democrats moving at least rhetorically to the left, the apparent space in the middle has shrunk virtually to nothing. And with ideological polarization and mutual animosity between the parties higher than it's been in over a century, there is little prospect for the sort of bipartisan compromise beloved by Washington establishment organizations like No Labels, the ostensibly nonpartisan group that pushes for sensible, moderate, pro-growth policy. But now that Joe Biden is president-elect and promising a return to bipartisan comity, No Labels is bringing forth a new champion: Maryland Governor Larry Hogan. This Republican will bring honor and decency back to the GOP by being openly corrupt and racist just like Trump, but in a quieter and more plausibly-deniable fashion.

No Labels, and the school of centrism they typify, couldn't ask for a better mascot. As Eric Cortellessa reports at Washington Monthly, Hogan's most notable act as governor has been canceling a public transit project in Baltimore and spending Maryland money on highway developments adjacent to land he owns personally. Just like Trump, instead of divesting himself of conflicts of interest, he put his business operations in the hands of a relative who keeps him abreast of what is happening. He "has advanced a number of major state transportation projects that are near properties his company owns," Cortellessa writes, including "millions of dollars in road and sidewalk improvements near property he had bought approximately two years earlier and was turning into a housing development.

In addition to being wildly corrupt in basically exactly the same way that Trump is corrupt again, Hogan shamelessly funneled public money into his own pockets this decision was also racist, a climate disaster, and hugely wasteful. The Red Line metro rail project was a tentative, inadequate, and long-overdue effort to reverse just a little of the decades of disinvestment that have left majority-Black Baltimore as one of the poorest and most crime-ridden cities in the country. Taking that money to spend on largely-white suburban roads is exactly what racist conservatives did in the s to capitalize on post-civil rights white backlash, while of course cars and car-dependent suburbs consume dramatically more energy than dense urban cores.

The choice of a guy like this is a perfect illustration of what No Labels "centrism" amounts to in practice. It is not about good government, or "problem solving," or bridging the partisan divide, or any of the other things these organizations say they are about. It's instead an attempt to paint a nanometer-thin veneer of honor and civility over the same corrupt neoliberal self-dealing that has saturated American politics for the last 30 years.

As Alex Pareene writes:. Hogan is exactly the "normal" to which politicians like Joe Biden promise to return us when they try to speak into existence a Republican Party that they can "work with. But we can see also why No Labels has fixated on Hogan he is a Republican who is extremely popular in Democratic Maryland, registering 73 percent approval among Democrats in the state, and 87 percent among Black voters there. Below the forehead were two very prominent heavy, bushy eyebrows, the hairs, which resembled wire in coarseness and intensity. The eyebrows protected and shielded a pair of bright, twinkling or penetrating gray eyes.

A very prominent Roman nose extended below, with thin nostrils, and a long upper lip was just above the mouth, which looked like a slash in the face, so straight and thin the lips. The chin was the most characteristic feature of the entire face as it was wide and square, protruding from the face and showing to anyone who could read the owner usually finished anything he started. To complete the whole picture, those portions of the skin that had been exposed to the bright Nevada sun and the winds of the desert, had turned a dark brown and looked like the parchment generally supposed to encase a mummy.

I recall that earlier in the summer of the year of which I am speaking, I had asked him to dinner and my wife noticed that he had not helped himself to any butter but was eating his bread dry. She tried to prevail upon him to help himself to the butter, but he said he would only be there for one meal and would have no butter at home, so it would not benefit him to resume a habit he would be unable to continue after he left our house.

Had Made Several Fortunes He was a kind hearted old gentleman, although clothed in rags, and in his younger days had traveled in many foreign countries, from South America to China, had made several fortunes, and lost them. In fact, I think it was on account of his last wife stealing his money and running away with another man that caused him to be in the predicament he was in. Nothing could be more entertaining than to listen to his adventures of his earlier days, told in the language of a scholar and a man of education. He never used profane language under any conditions that I ever remember and was an inherent old gentleman.

Owned Black Prince Claims The old man was the owner of six claims known as the Black Prince Mines, in addition to his other holdings, lying on the ridge and extending down each side of the mountain above Cox's Canyon, as we called it in those days, about twenty miles from Stillwater, and he usually came in about every two months for a bill of groceries, and departed to return only when his groceries were exhausted. The mule turned its head, espied the greenbacks in the vest pocket, and others, seeing what the mule was up to, called the old man, who retrieved the vest, but only in time to see the last of the greenbacks disappear down the throat of Jack Gitney.

I recall going up Cox's Canyon at one time when the old man was working on this side of the ridge in the canyon, and as there was only one place where we could secure pure ice-cold water, in a pool at the end of a tunnel about 80 feet long, we would take our canteens and utensils and go down there and get water. On Stillwater, Nevada 25 this occasion Mr. Jack Gitney had entered the mouth of the tunnel to be in the shade, and when we threw rocks at him, he let both his heels fly at us. We returned, bringing with us the old man, who walked to the mouth of the tunnel, speaking to Jack Gitney and pressing him to one side, walked. I think it must have been in October that the old man came in the last time to buy his stock of groceries and supplies to last him two months, as was his usual custom.

Saloon was Social Hall At the time of which I am writing, there were probably ten or twelve families living in Stillwater and its immediate vicinity. Sanford ran the saloon which was our only place in which to congregate nights, gossip, and tell each other the news. Sanford, while not an educated man, was a natural born leader of men, and in all work of a public nature the leadership was usually acceded to him by common consent. For instance, if we were to put a big cottonwood tree on the dam in the summer or early fall, to raise the water, Mr.

Sanford would grab hold of the tree and say "Come on, boys, take hold," and would wade in perhaps up to his neck in the water; and you can readily understand such leadership usually got results. Not Much Drinking Done He was an autocrat in the saloon, too. While we would assemble there every evening, ten or fifteen of us, playing cards and talking matters over, there wasn't much drinking done. When it came ten o'clock, Sanford would say, "Well, boys, it's time to shut up," and as he began to put out the lights, we would necessarily adjourn our gathering until the next night. Fear Felt For Kellogg Along in the middle of December, there came some heavy snow storms and we could see that the snow, glistening in the sunlight, must be very deep up around the country in which the Black Prince Mines were situated.

So we ran over the holidays up to about the 5th of January, when someone raised the question one evening if we didn't think we ought to go up and see what had become of the old man; that he could not have much grub left by this time and maybe some accident had happened to him. This desultory discussion led to our assembling one morning in front of the saloon about four o'clock, and leaving for the mountains. We had two pack horses loaded with blankets and our own grub, and I think there were four or five in the party who were mounted on their best horses, with a string of ten or fifteen head of loose saddle horses we drove ahead of us to break down the trail.

Sometimes we would go through drifts from two to five feet deep. The man in front, riding his horse, would plunge and break the trail and when his horse was exhausted, he would fall back and a fresh man would ride ahead and take up his work. In this manner we arrived at the camp of old man Kellogg along about mid-day, as near as I can remember. Now I wonder if I can draw a picture of the mine and surroundings so that it will be intelligible to my readers. The mine was situated at the head of a blind gully about twenty feet wide. As you approached the north side, the trail led down into the gully leaving the cabin about twenty or thirty feet to the right, and on ground about four or five feet higher than the bottom of the gully.

The side of the cabin faced the gully, with a huge fireplace that would accommodate pine logs about three feet long, opposite the door. On the end nearest the mountain was the mouth of the tunnel which had been covered over so that Mr. Kellogg, after eating his meals, could proceed through this covered way into the tunnel which at that period I should think must have extended about two hundred feet into the mountain with crosscuts at various points where ore had been taken out in between. Directly in front of the door, on the opposite side of the gully, was a juniper tree the top of which was about fifteen feet high, or about five feet from the top of the bank which would be about twenty feet east of the trail.

Find Kellogg in Tree When we had arrived at the edge of the gully on the trail, wading through snow from two to four feet deep, we saw an object apparently sitting in the top of the juniper tree at the side of the trail about five feet below us. Upon closer examination this proved to be the body of the old man. He was in a sitting posture, with his knees drawn up under him and his head bending down onto his knees. His right hand, in an extended position, was clutching a limb of the juniper tree which we eventually had to saw off to let the old man down as we could not detach his fingers.

From his position he could look directly into the door of his cabin, which was standing wide open, and at that time a stretch of snow a foot or more deep extended across the room. Start Homeward Trip We immediately got busy and let the old man down, placed him on a pack saddle in a sitting position, covered him with blankets and lashing him fast with ropes we had brought with us. Stillwater, Nevada 27 Now let me reconstruct the story as we figured it out. The old man was sitting in his cabin before the burning logs, in his big armchair, with the snow and the sleet blowing outside, when he thought he heard a voice calling.

He immediately started out up the trail, leaving the door wide open so he could see the light on his return. As he went down the trail, he thought he heard the voice again, and imagining that it must be someone freezing to death and perhaps calling upon him for assistance, he continued farther. Finally he could get no reply in answer to his repeated calls and he turned to retrace his steps. Discovers Own Danger It was then, probably, that he first realized that his life was in the greatest danger as he tried to work his way back, with the sleet and snow blowing in his face, probably in a gale of thirty or forty miles an hour.

In his struggle to find his cabin, he got off the trail on the right hand side and the first thing he realized was that he went over the bank into the top of the juniper tree. Whether he was injured very badly in his fall, we were unable to determine -- at least none of his limbs was broken -- but from his position with his head down on his knees, he could see the bright, warm fire burning in the open door, and let us hope that a merciful Providence soon ended his suffering. We estimated that he had intended to come in to Stillwater for supplies about the middle of December when the storm came up and he thought he could wait a few days until the weather got better; then other storms followed, making it impossible for him to think of leaving the cabin, so he must have been in the top of the tree for about 20 days.

We proceeded home, arriving there about twelve o'clock, and deposited the body of Mr. Kellogg in the lower front room of the courthouse, and each immediately repaired to his own home. When I arrived home my wife had a red hot fire and hot coffee on the stove waiting for me, and as soon as I could thaw out, I went to bed thoroughly tired and half frozen at that. Plans Made For Funeral Bright and early the next morning we all gathered at headquarters and sent word to all concerned of the accident and that the funeral would be held at two o'clock the second day following, inviting everyone to come to the funeral.

Word was sent east to Eastgate and as far as Austin, and over to Pizen Switch, upon the site of which the town of Yerington now stands; also up the river to the Big Bend which is now known as the Towle ranch [Bucklands Station] where the highway crosses the bridge on the way to Yerington. We laid the body of the old man Kellogg on a table and proceeded to dip blankets into the boiling water and apply them to his body in an effort to thaw him out sufficiently that we would be able to place him in a coffin.

In the meantime others had made a coffin of rough boards about two feet square and six feet long, and others were digging the grave out west of Stillwater in what is now known as the [in ] Langford ranch [ Lawrence Lane], where there was a round elevation in which others had been buried. We finally succeeded in getting Mr. Kellogg's limbs stretched out so we could place him in the coffin and cover him with blankets, ready for burial. Big Crowd Responds On the day set for the funeral, people began to arrive from all directions and in all kinds of rigs and on horseback. The hotel was soon filled and every family living in Stillwater and its immediate vicinity took on such guests as they could accommodate.

No one expected to sleep -- it was only a question of feeding the multitude. Many, however; brought some lunch with them which helped out amazingly. I remember in our house we must have fed at least ten people. The funeral took place as scheduled with an Adventist minister, a resident of the valley, officiating. The coffin, which must have weighed at least pounds, was put on a hayrack, conveyed to the place of burial and in a little while we had done all we could for old man Kellogg.

Big Dance Follows The people all returned to the places at which they had gathered and proceeded to get ready to have a big dance that night. As we had nothing in particular to do, the dance began early -- I should say between seven and eight o'clock -- in the courthouse, upstairs, which had been built for this very purpose. My recollection is that the room upstairs was about 26 feet wide and 60 feet long. The floor had been laid of the finest Oregon pine, vertical grain, an inch and one half thick. In the back of the hall, an organ stood on a small platform which was occupied by the fiddlers, as we did not boast any violin players in those days, who, when tired out, would change off and perhaps add in place of the organ a guitar or a drum or any instrument with which they were equipped.

Stillwater, Nevada 29 Dance Lasts All Night The dance continued until about seven or eight o'clock in the morning, but there were a great many more people present than they could get into the hall at one time, so they would take turns in going home to lunch after twelve o'clock, and in that way everyone had a good time. Greatest Funeral Ever In the morning, everyone left for home, declaring this was the greatest funeral and finest dance that had ever been held in Churchill County without any exception, and for the next several years, if two people were in dispute as to what year some event occurred, one would say, "Oh, I remember.

That was the second year after old man Kellogg's funeral and the big dance at Stillwater. During February of , a notice of sale appeared in the local newspapers; "Stillwater Courthouse, building only, will be sold to the highest bidder for cash. Later the lumber was purchased by Albert Weishaupt who constructed his family home at Lawrence Lane from it in Henry Osgood tore down the old brick jail, and the bricks were located in his yard at Stillwater Road for many years.

The Karl Weishaupt home, located at Lawrence Lane, as it appears today. Nancy always claimed that she was the second white woman to live in Churchill County, Catherine Kenyon of Ragtown being the first. By they had chosen to establish a home, a hotel business and become residents of Stillwater. Just to the east of Freeman Lane, the Sanfords built a large wooden granary where feeds and grain were stored until they could be hauled by freight teams out to the mines at Wonder and Fairview. Next to the granary, the Sanfords built a home where several generations of their family were born.

As the years passed and family members moved into Fallon, Roy Hamlin, one time Stillwater Postmaster, lived in this residence. The beginning of the north side of Main Street, Stillwater, The Sanford family granary, corrals and hotel are at the right. Just before one reaches the slough, a road leads off to the north and arrives at the present-day ranch home of Bruce and Jamie Kent. They reside in the former Charles and Helen Hamlin Kent house which had been constructed in after the original I. Kent home burned. Just across the slough, there is a deserted, red wooden building. Although situated upon the site of the original Sanford Hotel, in the history of Stillwater, this building is relatively new. It has served as a bar and a store, featuring sandwiches, pop, hunting licenses, duck stamps and sporting goods.

A gasoline pump here has offered nourishment for automobiles while the bar inside has provided liquid Stillwater, Nevada 31 The old Duck-Inn Bar, Today's residents recall that Walter and Cecilia deBraga Miller also ran this store for several years. The first Sanford Hotel was a canvas tent with a dirt floor. In , a large, white, wood-frame hotel was opened by the Sanfords. It was said that Nancy never turned a hungry person away from her table, but required the recipient of a meal to chop wood in payment. Neighbors said her woodpile was taller than most people's hay stacks.

She also used to trade the local Indians a meal of victuals for a sackful of greasewood roots. Churchill west of the hotel. Sanford, was the only place for Stillwaterites to congregate at night, to gossip and tell each other the news. The Sanfords, who had gained fame as genial and accommodating hosts, moved to Wadsworth, Nevada, in , selling their hotel property to Charles Cirac. After a few years in Wadsworth, the couple returned to Fallon to spend the remainder of their lives. Charles P. Cirac remodeled the old hotel extensively in and hired the aforementioned Mrs. Adeline Marcella Greenwood to run it for him.

Shortly thereafter, Stillwater blossomed. On May 19, , Nevada's mining boom began in Tonopah with prospector Jim Butler's big silver strike. Northern Nevada was caught up in this rush for silver, and "hopefuls" crowded into Stillwater from everywhere. There were not enough accommodations to take care of this influx, so in October of , Charles P. Cirac hired brick mason Jimmy Orchard to construct a new two-story-brick hotel building for him at Stillwater, adjacent to his other establishment.

The hotel was to have a barroom on the ground floor and nine rooms upstairs. The outside shell was finished during the spring of but the upstairs was not finished at that time. One story says this was because of poor workmanship and another says it was the result of the depression. It is remembered that the laborers drank their wages up in whiskey. Once the bar and dance hall on the ground floor were opened, the infamous mining man, Tex Rickard, and his sporting crowd, came up from Tonopah to attend the free dance and feed.

According to old timers, the diamonds they wore for the occasion, "looked as big as cart wheels. This new hotel was directly east of the Sanford's wooden hotel. During April of , Charles P. Cirac sold his hotel, ranch, stock and saloon to G. As the years went by, the hotel would go through a series of owners, including the Churchill County Bank, and would be used as an office, a bootleg joint, and a dance hall. The Cirac Hotel's grandest hours coincided with Stillwater's renewed vigor and exploitation ofthe local citizenry during the "Oil Boom" days ofthe s which brought excitement and speculation to the entire Lahontan Valley. Vogeli [of Wheeler Oil Syndicate] has taken over the Stillwater hotel and has made extensive improvements throughout. He intends to open it as a general resort.

An electric light plant has been installed, the baths have been remodeled; one of the finest dance halls in the state has been installed and Mr. Vogeli is at 34 Bunny Corkill Stillwater has always been a headquarters for duck hunters and sportsmen. The resort will be dedicated with a grand opening on Saturday, Dec. The Cirac Hotel's final demise came in March of when it was torn down by a Reno contractor who wished to salvage the bricks for reuse because of the shortage of building materials following World War II. The old wooden Sanford Hotel was also razed after its usefulness was spent. To the north of the hotels, Charles Kent dug a well in to obtain water for his cattle to drink during the wintertime. To his surprise, the water was extremely hot.

Shortly, W. Wheeler and a man named Freeman drilled near here in a futile attempt to find oil. The extremely hot water loosened the hydraulic jacks used in Stillwater, Nevada 35 drilling for oil and made drilling difficult. During the week of June 18, , the Wheeler "oil well," which had been drilled four hundred feet into the earth, developed into a hot water geyser, shooting water to the top of the sixty-four foot derrick. Following the eruption, several workers were seriously burned. The geyser "blew" for a year or more before it could be capped off. Oil was never discovered, but the hot waters of Stillwater would soon become a very valuable asset to the community. The water would be used for medicinal bathing, piped into homes for heat and, years later, used to generate geothermal power.

The following excerpts were gleaned from local newspapers. Park Wheeler [of the Wheeler Oil Company] is in from Stillwater and brings news of renewed activities in that place due to the oil developments. He says he has recently sold a large number of town lots to parties who contemplate buildings. Frank Hires is planning to move the old courthouse over to Main street for a business block, and a general air of optimism pervades the former county seat town.

Albert LeBeau. Mufich of Vallejo, California. Mufich plans to install a big hot water system from which he proposes to serve all residences to be erected with both heat and cooking facilities. Behind Stillwater are vast resources, including agriculture, oil and metal mining and as time passes and this project's potentialities are converted into actualities, it is asseverated that Fallon can not always hope to occupy a position of municipal exclusiveness.

Churchill County Eagle, February 26, Mrs. Westlake returned this week from Reno, where she spent the past month selling lots in the Wheeler Addition to Stillwater to people of the Riverside Town. She reports having been quite successful. Her proposition that the buyer gets the lot's proportion of the Wheeler Oil Syndicate's acres of oil rights in this locality, and the agricultural value of the ground besides, clinched the deal of many speculators.

Unfortunately, the "Oil Boom" soon passed, and Stillwater was forced to return to its bucolic existence. Just prior to the "boom," to the east of the brick hotel, Charles Cirac commenced digging a large outdoor swimming pool. Upon completion it became a popular spot for swimming, and many believed that the minerals in the water at the hot baths contained restorative and medicinal qualities. Hundreds of people from Fallon and other locations joined with the local residents in enjoying the warm water. Cirac also constructed two more pools inside a large metal building, which, though vandalized, stands today. Ella Ada Johnson Maxwell moved to Stillwater in and very shortly took over running the swimming pools.

A very special event occurred in April of when thirty-four members ofthe Baptist Indian Mission were baptized in one of the pools. Maxwell married Albert LeBeau on March 29, LeBeau had come to Nevada with his parents in and had settled in Stillwater in Together they would improve and operate the "LeBeau Plunge" which was about sixty feet by one hundred feet, with a depth ranging from one foot to five feet. They claimed that the water would leave no headaches nor "furzed" tongues! The couple resided in the building, located in front of the metal bath house, which, in , sports a crushed roof.

Albert LeBeau had his business office upstairs Stillwater, Nevada 37 Kemma Osgood and friend bask in Stillwater's sunlight at the bottom of the new Cirac outdoor pool during its construction. Right: Principal players in this article include: Stella Greenwood [Mrs. Walter Philips]. The LeBeau's kitchen served as a meeting place for local farmers who came into town to stop by and enjoy a cup of coffee and an amiable game of cards. The Fallon Eagle, Saturday, April 19, edition, reported that LeBeau's outdoor pool would be opening soon for the summer season.

It continued, ". On Wednesday morning, December 28, , Albert LeBeau chose to take his own life with a prized, ancient weapon that had been manufactured in His body was discovered in an indoor pool at "the resort. It also came to light that an earthquake, on the night of December 20, had badly damaged his brick store and hotel building, adding to his despondency.

His widow, Ella, continued with the business activities until her death on September 17, Her son, Charles Maxwell, took over "the Kolstrup service station" at Stillwater and his mother's business for an undetermined length of time. During later years, subsequent owners have envisioned re-opening the pool, but due to structural problems and health requirements have not succeeded. Today, steam can still be seen coming from the well which once supplied the bath house with healing waters.

The brown wooden building, now with a crushed roof, served the community early on as I. Marsh's meat market. The slaughterhouse which provided the store with meat was located over at the Charles Kent ranch. The carcasses would be brought to the store, cut and sold. The Marsh brothers would later become proprietors of meat markets in Fallon. Stillwater, Nevada William Edgon "Pony Ned" VanBlaricon [often spelled VanBlaricom] carved out a niche in Stillwater' s history for himself, and remains the town's most unforgettable character! During his final years, he lived in and ran a business out of an adobe building which set on a site just east of the Marsh's Meat Market.

He told many differing stories about his life. Most were about half true and highly exaggerated, but it is remembered how blue and intense his eyes were when he was telling one of his mighty tales. Depending upon which "version" of his life story he was telling, the details varied. Amazingly, there is enough written about him in the Fallon newspapers, to fill a book. He often mentioned that his life as an Indian Fighter, Pony Express Rider, and stage and freight team driver began upon the death of his parents when he was about 14 years of age. He told that he began the chapter of his life as a "Pony Express Rider," riding from Unionville to Silver City at age In his early experiences in Nevada he was asked to carry war messages for the Interior Department.

When President Lincoln was assassinated he made a ride of 55 miles, had supper and was ordered to ride back, making the event a mile ride without rest. In , he was told to carry a message to Boise, Idaho, over a route he had never traveled. He made that ride of miles in 18 hours and 20 minutes. All his expenses were paid at the time by the Overland Pony Express Company. His next career was that of a stage driver and, still later, he drove a sixteen-horse freight team, hauling supplies to the mines in the eastern part of Nevada.

By the time he arrived in Stillwater to make a final home, he was having trouble with his eyesight and he was becoming rather decrepit. Charles Kent, George Chester, Sr. VanBlaricon's adobe house stands at far right. Note the two trees in front of the house. The site of VanBlaricon's adobe as it appears in Stillwater, Nevada 41 From his little bar he served old fashioned Sarsaparillas in brown containers to neighborhood kids and bitters to the cowboys and freighters, making enough profit to survive. All in all he created memories around the Stillwater area for over sixty years. On June 9, , he was honored at a Pony Express celebration at Genoa where he unveiled a marker erected there commemorating the work of the riders.

On July 5, , at age eighty-five, "Pony Ned" passed away at the Flora Morriss hospital in Fallon where he had been taken with a broken hip. His "ride" on this earth was completed. Above right: After the two trees in front of the adobe were cut down, "Van" planted rose bushes in the stumps of the trees. Note the Pony Express emblem at the high point of the adobe's gabled roof.

This landmark was razed soon after this photograph was taken. The Stillwater precinct was abolished by resolution of the county board of commissioners at their May 17th, meeting of that year, because it was deemed that the continuation of the township and township officers resulted in a needless expenditure of county funds. Throughout history, other buildings have also graced Main Street, Stillwater, Nevada, but they have long since been committed to dust. Sadly, finds the street lined with abandoned autos and duck hunters' cabins in varying degrees of decay.

The beautiful trees are gone, and, because of the high salt content in the water around the slough, will never come back. However, the wonderful news is -- there is renewed life on the edge of town. We invite you to discover it for yourself. Stillwater lives! On your visit to the locale, listen carefully to the whispers in the wind, remember the past, and enjoy the present! Sources Churchill County Eagle, July 8, , p.

Book 16, pg. March 22, Churchill County Deeds. Book 17, pgs. January 13, Churchill County Deeds. Book 17, pg. February 18, deBraga, Marcia. Dig No Graves. Copyright April 11, Personal Interview: Viera, Eddie. April 7, Shamberger, Hugh A. Historic Mining Camps of Nevada. Thompson and West's History ofNevada Howell-North, Berkeley, California Turn This Water into Gold. Second Edition. What a name for a mining town! Wallace W. Goodell, prospecting out in the wilds of Churchill County in , was a 48 year old Civil War veteran who had made his way from New York state to the vast emptiness of Nevada.

Not a rich man, he must have been very excited when he hit a ledge of quartz that looked promising. Goodell worked at his claim for two years before he leased it to George W. Bothwell, a Nevada mining man of much experience. The lease included an option for Bothwell to purchase the claim and erect a ten-stamp quartz mill near the site. By then Goodell had met Warren W.

Williams and his half-brother, George Williams, who were willing to purchase some shares in the mine. For the next two years he enjoyed fine food, liquor, fancy clothing and upscale social contacts. He was having the most marvelous time of his life and, never regretting a moment of it, returned to Nevada destitute. Warren Williams gave him a job as his company bookkeeper, and Goodell settled back into a more staid lifestyle. When he was 19 years old he accompanied his cousin Alden W.

After arriving in San Francisco, Warren left for Virginia City, Nevada, to work in his brother's store located on the divide below the Nevada town. Warren's duties included bringing in supplies for the store with a pack train. He encountered some adventures on this job. During one trip he and a young helper were attacked by Indians near Mono Lake and lost their supplies, but saved themselves by hiding in the river under a cutbank. Over the next two decades, Warren would move back and forth over the Sierras between Nevada and California, quenching his thirst for both adventure and fortune. Years later, Warren's half-brother Eugene would write down many of the young man's Wild West escapades. These events give us insight into Warren Williams' character and give us clues as to how he had amassed much of his vast Nevada holdings by the time he became an investor in Bernice.

In the spring of , five years after venturing west, Warren was among a number of men in a large prospecting party looking for ore in western Nevada. The expedition soon came to the Walker River. There was no easy means of crossing the river at this time except to have a volunteer from the party swim across the river and attach a strong rope firmly to an object on the further shore. Supplies and pack animals could then be guided along the rope for a safe crossing. The leader of the party, a man of much intelligence and experience, called for volunteers to undertake the dangerous mission of carrying the rope across the river.

Warren, 24 years old, a young man with grit and possessed of a powerful, 6'4" physique, was an expert swimmer and volunteered to do the deed. The foreman then suggested Warren be properly prepared for the chilly swim by removing his clothes. He then asked him to run up and down the bank of the river while cold water from the stream was thrown upon him. The young man ran back and forth for about fifteen minutes in order to change the temperature of his blood to better Bernice, Nevada enable him to resist the Walker River's frigid waters, composed mainly of melting snow from the Sierras.

This being done, a knot was tied in one end of the rope which Warren took between his teeth as he plunged forward into the icy waters. Heading across the river, he bravely battled against the swift current, finally reaching the opposite shore some distance downstream. Witnesses stated it required several attempts before he could regain his footing, his body was so numb from the cold, but presently he stood erect and held the rope high to the cheers of the party on the opposite bank. After tying off the guide rope, the rest of the party -- men, supplies and pack animals, safely crossed the river.

Another interesting incident that Warren's half-brother Eugene recounted shows his older brother's strength of character. The event took place back in California in , when Warren was in charge of the Markley racing stable, owned by the Markley Brothers in Shaw Flats. As he entered the town, riding his spirited race horse, he saw a frightened horse racing down the street dragging a young girl whose foot was caught in the stirrup of her saddle.

Many townspeople looked on in horror at the spectacle, but were unwilling or unable to help. Taking the lariat from his saddle, Warren started in pursuit of the runaway. The race was fast and furious, and when he reached a point about twenty feet behind the frightened animal, Warren raised up in the saddle, threw his lariat over the head of the running horse and took a few turns of his rope around his saddlehorn. Within seconds, both horses had been halted. To the great joy of her parents and the crowd which had quickly gathered, Warren quickly dismounted and extricated the frightened girl from the dangling stirrup. It is reported that later the girl sent a message to her hero expressing a desire to meet him to show her graditude.

Warren went to her home and received the fond thanks of her parents. He felt he had won the heart of the young girl, but being at the time without settled plans in life, and of little means but ambition to make a fortune, he distanced himself from any thoughts of matrimony. Yet another story demonstrates that Warren could fully defend himself when the need arose. About the same time as he was racing horses, Warren was also 45 Warren Willard Williams. A group of claim jumpers attempted to take possession of them by means of violence.

When the young man resisted, two men threatened him with an old time six shooter loaded with powder and ball. Pointing the pistol at Warren's chest at very close range, one of the men pulled the trigger. Luckily, the gun did not discharge, and Warren lost no time in putting his only weapon, a miner's pick, into action. In a few minutes, the two ringleaders were laid out on the ground more dead than alive and the other men had fled the scene. The injured men recovered in time, but did not return. Thereafter, the young miner worked his claims without interference. Warren soon sought different employment in California, driving freight teams at the sawmills in the summer and ox teams in logging regions in the winter.

Driving ox teams in the logging camps was dangerous employment as the teams were compelled to run very fast down the steep places in the logging roads. Warren, running alongside them, was obliged to take a firm hold of the near oxbow and keep pace with his team. On many occasions he would lose his footing and the oxbow would become his life preserver. One more event in Warren's early life shows his allegiance to family members. In the winter of , his younger brother Ward Spooner Williams was employed as a schoolteacher in a mining town called Copperopolis, not far from Sonora, California.

After administering punishment to a misbehaving student, the boy's father, a hot-tempered southern man named Woodside, vowed to get even. Ward, hearing of Woodside's comment, closed the school and went into hiding for a few days. Warren heard of the threat upon his brother's life and secured a man to drive his freight team while he went to Ward's aid. Once in Copperopolis, Warren went quietly from place to place seeking his brother's enemy, like a player in a western movie.

Woodside was soon located in a local saloon and Warren, armed with a revolver and Bowie knife as was the western custom, entered the establishment. He took a position within striking distance of Woodside, looked him squarely in the eye and said, "damn you, the teacher is my brother. A few days later Warren sent a challenge to Woodside to a shootout in the street, but the man declined.

Woodside soon sold his property and moved his family to another town. Peace was restored in Copperopolis. Warren continued to drive freight teams for other companies for a number of years. Soon he had saved enough to buy his own team and began hauling supplies to the mining camps in Nevada. With a number of his brothers already in Nevada and the surrounding area, Warren wrote a letter back home asking his half-brother George Burell Williams to come to Nevada to operate one of the freight stations at Dead Horse Wells.

This include in the public administration as well as all the different agencies and The Struggle For Independence In Taylors The Bean Trees organisations. Scene 1: Michael enters bathroom and screams in horror as he sees Zane, completely naked, grinning hugely as he waves Michael's Personal Narrative: A Class Divided over the open toilet. Byresidents realized the need for a larger Power Struggle In Henry IV And Much Ado About Nothing courthouse, and county voters approved a tax levy for the new building.