Harold and Ila Koon (July 8, 1978)

              Voices From the Past
Harold and Ila Koon
By Harold and Ila Koon
July 8, 1978
Tape # 119
Oral Interview conducted by Harold Forbush
Transcribed by Tia Aucoin April 2007
Edited by Jamie Whitehurst May 2008
Brigham Young University- Idaho
Harold Forbush: Side one. A taped interview with Mr. Harold Koon, spelled K- O- O- N, made at Rexburg, Idaho on the 8th day of July 1978. Mr. Koon, will you state your full name, your present address, and your occupation?
Harold Koon: Harold Cliffton Koon. Now that’s my full name. And I have been a farmer. That’s what I did in my productive years but anymore I’m retired. I don’t do anything.
HF: And what is your address?
HK: Route 3 Rexburg.
HF: Now where is this? Which community?
HK: Well, Thornton. Thornton.
HF: Through the community of Thornton.
HK: Thornton, yes. And we used to have a post office there but the last couple of years they’ve changed that.
Ida Koon: They took it away from us.
HK: They took the post office out of there.
IK: After all those years.
HK: Our mail comes out on the route.
HF: I see. Now the record should show that your wife is present with you this morning as we do this interview. And Mrs. Koon, will you state your name and your maiden name?
IK: Ila Midelna Beck is my maiden name.
HF: Beck? B- E- C- K?
HK: Yeah.
IK: B- E- C- K.
HF: Ok. Now what were the names of your parents, Mr. Koon?
HK: You mean their surnames?
HF: Yes.
HK: Well, my father’s name was Frank Luther.
HF: And your mother’s maiden name?
HK: She was Mable Olive Graves.
HF: And where were these people from?
HK: Nebraska. My father was born in Wisconsin, near Michigan Lake.
HF: And what induced them to come out west?
HK: Well, they just didn’t make it there in Nebraska. They had too many droughts and too many crickets and grasshoppers and one thing to the other. And they were trying to farm and my father he never did own a farm. His mother had a homestead but he never did own a farm there in Nebraska. He rented and Colorado was where he started for. That there was you know, some good land there and opportunities in Colorado that they didn’t have it there. Well, my uncle came with him, my mother’s brother. And they took a team and wagon and left there. And they got out and into Colorado somewhere and sold the team and wagon and he came up here to St. Anthony.
HF: Your father?
HK: Yeah.
HF: Did he bring his wife and children with him?
HK: Well, not at that time. We did come later. Well he got a job working for the consolidated wagon machine company. That was a Utah firm that belonged to the Mormon Church really. And he worked out for a while and then a neighbor from back home there bought some property down there in that independence area and he run across him up there and he got him to come down and work for him on the farm, you see. Well, he worked there and my mother then moved down there when her school was out. She was teaching school in St. Anthony. When school was out we moved down there. Now he furnishes a house and a cow.
HF: What year did your father bring his family out here and they moved to St. Anthony? About what year?
HK: I think about 1903.
HF: She, your mother, taught school? HK: She taught school in St. Anthony one year.
HF: One year? And then the family moved to Independence?
HK: Well, around that area. W went to the what they called at that time the Union’s School.
HK: Did she teach school?
HF: She taught school at Lorenzo for about two and a half years and then they built this Independence school and she taught there for a year.
HF: Now, why is this community called Independence?
HK: I don’t know.
HF: Why was it called and referred to sometimes by old timers “ as down in the brush”?
HK: Well, of course that country down in there was pretty much of a brush country, you know. There was hawthorn, willows and cottonwood and down in there farther there was not very much ground under cultivation. And the road meandered down through the brush and mud in the wet seasons, you know. And it was down on the river between the north and the south fork of the Snake River and they just got to calling it that, you know.
HF: Now, I’d like to have you make me and present a contrast of that area. I think it’s understood that much land clearing had to be done and much swamp filling had to be done in order to make this really productive.
HK: There wasn’t a great deal of swamp or anything. What was done that cost a lot of money and was done by the core of engineers was to rip raft and dike the south fork of the Snake River. My folks had quite a little land along there and I believe half of it washed into the river.
HF: And so the core of engineers …
HK: The core of engineers rip raft it with [ inaudible] and built a dike all the way along there from clear up here to Big [ inaudible]. And they still have to do a little work on it. It will wash into places where they didn’t’ put any rock and they have to rock that up.
HF: Well how about the brush? What type of vegetation was it that had to be removed?
HK: Well, hawthorns and willows and stuff of that kind and some cottonwood, not a great deal of cottonwood but …
HF: Now did that extend over the entire Independence community?
HK: Well, you see, the country up around Thornton at that time was sage brush.
HF: That was higher ground?
HK: That was higher ground. That was sage brush. And that counted down in there on the river where we were settled before this other was because it grew some feet. It grew wild grass and people could put up some hay and keep it [ inaudible]. We had some livestock and they could make a living there. Up here where it was just sagebrush they had to get the water on it before it was productive, you see. Then there was a time I can remember when a lot of that land was just sagebrush. We used to hunt rabbits up there. But the ground down on the river a lot of it was open meadow land- like. And they plowed that up. The place my father bought in the first place, he didn’t have a bit of cultivated land on it at all. It was just meadow and grass. He plowed it up and then some years the river would get too high and it would kind of drown out but not all of it usually. Then he’d done fairly well there raising oats mostly.
HF: Now down in the Independence area you still have a residue of some very deep swamp areas.
HK: Oh, not much.
HF: Which places are those called? I know…
HK: Well, there’s most of that across on the west side of the river than there is on the east side.
HF: I see. Now the west side of the river would be in Jefferson County?
HK: Well, some of it yeah. Some of it is down in Madison County. But as far as you mention swamp, there were [ inaudible] through it, you know, not places that cover a big area but just low like when the water went away from there and left those low places, those swells. They had to be filled up, of course.
HF: And this was done with a bulldozer?
HK: Well, you know, some of it was done with teams, horses and that. But that was really a slow process because when the bulldozers came in there and then they made a short work with that small brush, I’ll tell ya.
HF: Didn’t Lobnitz…
HK: Yeah, Lobnitz brothers had some outfits in there.
HF: And who was… Barrick. Mr. Barrick?
HK: Barrick worked for them. He was their foreman there like.
HF: They did a quite a lot of work.
HK: They did quite a little bit of work around in there, yes. They’d done some for me.
HF: Oh, I see. Would this have been early or in the teens or maybe in the …
HK: Oh, yeah. It was in the 30’ s. Maybe in the ‘ 40s.
HF: Is that right?
HK: Yeah.
HF: After heavy equipment was available.
HK: Yeah. And then I had some ground cleared a young man by the name, what was his name? Howard Rutledge cleared some ground for me.
HF: You’ve mentioned that the principle portion of your life in making the livelihood has been from farming.
HK: Oh, yes.
HF: Have you engaged…
HK: I owned some livestock. We usually kept a few. We always had a few cattle. [ Inaudible] when I was at home and I did and we nearly always had some cattle around. When I was on the ranch at home before I was married we had 100 head or so and they ran down on the river bars on the summer time down in that brush and some of that brush is still there.
HF: What size a ranch do you call the home ranch?
HK: Well…
HF: What size was it?
HK: Well, it was about, let’s see, there was one, two, three sections or three quarter sections and 80. And then after we bought out some of our neighbors that homesteaded in there.
HF: You could have had more than 600 acres then around?
HK: We eventually had 1000 acres.
HF: Down in the Independence area.
HK: Yeah, we eventually did have. And then one night we kind of divided it up when my father died and I got the ground that was over in the north. That was over in the [ inaudible] of the north fork of the Snake River. It was in part of the west. I got 400 acres there and my brothers got the other part over on the south fork of the river.
HF: How many brothers were there?
HK: Two. One older and one younger.
HF: So there were just the three boys?
HK: Yeah.
HF: That would be Morris Koon.
HK: Yeah.
HF: Yourself as Harold.
HK: Yeah. And Lowell.
HF: And your younger brother, Lowell.
HK: Yeah.
HF: I understand Mr. Koon that sometime you and your folks were involved with establishment of a grain elevator.
HK: Yeah, we bought into a grain elevator. It was called Anderson and Koon. Now John H. Anderson and his sons were part owners of it see. And we put up part of the money, my father did, of course.
HF: Where was this elevator located?
HK: Well, down here in what do they call it? One [ inaudible].
HF: Farmers?
HK: Farmers. What do they call it? Farmers Feeding Supply, do they?
IK: I believe they do.
HF: Ray Payne had it for years.
HK: Yeah.
HF: And you and your father and his sons and Sanderson established it?
HK: Well, it belonged to Miller Brothers in the first place.
HF: To the Miller brothers?
HK: Miller brothers, yes. They owned that elevator here in Rexburg and one in St. Anthony and…
HF: And you people…
HK: They kind of disband it and now the one that the Miller brothers own, Steiner…
HF: Steiner and Harrob?
HK: Yeah. But we bought this one from Miller brothers. John X. Anderson and my oldest brother, Morris, they run the elevator. Morris was the bookkeeper and he had had…
HF: What years would this have been?
HK: Oh, dear.
IK: It’s hard to remember that isn’t it?
HK: It would have been…
HF: Before the Depression years?
HK: Well that’s when we started before the Depression years, yeah. That’s when we went broke in the Depression years.
HF: In your grain elevator?
HK: Yeah.
HF: So you had begun this maybe before you went away to the war?
IK: [ Inaudbile]
HK: I can’t… No.
IK: You must’ve had another [ inaudible] didn’t you?
HK: No. No.
IK: You bought it while you was gone?
HK: No, right after I come back. About 1920.
HF: Is when you bought the elevator?
HK: Or ’ 21, yeah.
HF: And it was operated by Koon and Anderson in the ‘ 20s and in the ‘ 30s?
HK: Yeah.
HF: And you sold out, what in the ‘ 30s?
HK: Oh, dear. I guess.
IK: The ‘ 30s when we got married.
HF: What did you do? What did they do there at the elevator? Did they grind wheat?
HK: Oh, yeah. They bought and sold grain mostly.
HF: Did they?
HK: Yeah, bought and sold grain.
HF: Well did they do a lot of grinding?
IK: Well it made they made feed out of it.
HK: They had a grinder there. We also had the elevator at Thornton at that same time.
HF: What was that called?
HK: Well, it was part of the same. We had both these elevators.
HF: Koon Anderson?
HK: Yeah.
HF: Koon Anderson elevators?
HK: Yeah. And we also for a few years we didn’t own them. We operated the flour mill in there. That’s where the checkerboard people are.
HF: Now this is…
HK: Now that was a flour mill.
HF: In Rexburg?
HK: Yeah. We operated that. We didn’t own it. And we had pretty good success with it for a time but a small mill can’t operate because you have to have old grain. New grain, , new thrash grain ain’t too good for flour. It should be a year old before you try to make flour out of it. In a small outfit you can’t do it. You can’t carry that much grain. You can’t afford to. The big mills are the only oned that can carry large amounts of grain like that.
HF: Who managed the mill in Rexburg?
HK: John X. Anderson.
HF: John X. Anderson. And Morris Koon was the secretary.
HK: He was a bookkeeper.
HF: He was a bookkeeper/ secretary.
HK: Yeah.
HF: Did they have a quite a few persons employed there?
HK: Oh, more sometimes than others. They always had a couple or so employed there.
HF: Who managed the one in Thornton? HK: Olan Anderson. That was [ inaudible] Anderson’s brother.
HF: Now did you people eventually sell out to… Who did you sell to?
HK: Let’s see, can I think of his name…
IK: Morris sold out.
HK: It was the people that we always bought our coal from. What in the dangit was their name?
HF: Anyway, it wasn’t Ray Payne?
HK: No, he bought it from them. You see, these people had the mortgage on it. We had to borrow money and finally, you know, when the bank in Rexburg went broke, the First National, why it kind of put us in a bind. We had to find another place to get money. Then all together it didn’t work out very good. Finally we had to let it go and we lost a lot of money on it. We had a mortgage on the ranch and everything.
HF: Mr. Koon, what were your recollections of the First World War?
HK: Well…
HF: Can you remember some details?
HK: You see, that started about in 1914. But we didn’t get in it; the United States didn’t get into it until about 1917. And I went to training in… they took a bunch of men to what they use to call the Pocatello Polytechnic Institute. It was a kind of a college and they took a bunch of people in there to train for different things in the army. It was a bunch of people went in there, some of the young fellows were signal core. They learned to send these messages, you know, these bugger messages over the wire and flag signals. And I took up the mechanic. They were training some automobile mechanics, too there. And we were only there two months.
HF: At Pocatello?
HK: Yeah, Pocatello. And then went overseas from there… Well we started overseas and went down to Fort Logan. No we went to Fort [ inaudible]. No…
IK: Trying to think of somebody’s name?
HF: Badge? Budge? Kansas or Driggs? Or…
HK: Shoot.
HF: In Kansas?
HK: We were there two weeks is all.
HF: In this camp in Kansas?
HK: Yeah. It was the old army fort.
HF: It wasn’t Levinworth?
HK: Yeah, Port Levinworth. Went there. And we were there about two weeks. Then we went to Camp Dixon, New Jersey and then from there overseas.
HF: Who were some of the buddies that you went in with from this area? Do you recall some names?
HK: That’s the only one that went from this area that I knew. His name was Atkinson, John Atkinson. There were some other men from this area that I got acquainted with afterwards, you know. Well, there was one from St. Anthony and one that I didn’t know his name. It’s funny to forget those things.
HF: Now, didn’t some of the Anderson boys get into the service?
HK: Yeah. Jim and Oscar.
HF: But not at the time you went in.
HK: No. And they never did go out of the United States. They were down in Kansas.
HF: How about Alma Larson?
HK: Yeah, he was down in about the same as the Andersons were.
HF: He didn’t go over seas?
HK: He didn’t go over seas. No.
HF: Did you ever know my dad, Elmer Forbush?
HK: Well, I knew him through Allen A. Larson.
HF: But you didn’t know him as a soldier? HK: No, I didn’t.
HF: Now as I understand Dad did go overseas, but he was from Teton County.
HK: Yeah.
HF: Now how long did you spend overseas?
HK: I was only overseas, let’s see, I went over was it September in the replacement draft. And I came home …
HF: Now that would have been in 1917 or 1918?
HK: That was in 1918.
HF: In 1918.
HK: And I stayed there until we left the first of March.
HF: In other words the armistice was declared?
HK: In the First of February. I was only over seas about, let’s see, four months.
HF: And the armistice was declared when you were overseas.
HK: Yeah.
HF: Did you get into action?
HK: No. Never happened to be that.
HF: Where did they send you? France or England?
HK: France.
HF: France Do you recall where you were stationed in France?
HK: Yeah. Celeste. It was on the Marne river. It was just a little place. Now [ inaudible] was the largest town of any. It was close and it was about oh, five or six miles from where we were. [ inaudible] We unloaded at, let’s see, St. Cesaire in France. But when we embarked to come home we went to [ inaudible].
HF: On the west. HK: [ inaudible]
HF: And then you were discharged.
HK: I was discharged at Fort Logan, Colorado.
HF: About what date?
HK: Well, I got home here the first day of March.
HF: Here in Rexburg?
HK: At home, yeah, Thornton. I got home the first day of March. Now I left the first day of July, so that’s as long as I was in the army. But I was on the move all the time, it certainly seemed like.
HF: Did there seem to be quite a lot of enthusiasm for young men to get into the service when you went in?
HK: Oh, yeah. Most of them went it, you know… they didn’t like to but then they felt they should and they went in that way.
HF: Do you personally know of any casualties of the First World War?
HK: Earnest Thornton, he lived there at Thornton. He was a casualty. And Jeff Anderson, he didn’t get killed, he got hurt. He got wounded. But he’s overcome that. He does get a disability pension, you know. And there were some other fellows from around there that I knew but I don’t remember their names now, who it was. They were not from our immediate vicinity, you know.
HF: Mr. Koon, following your discharge from the United States Army, did you get out as a private or a private first class, maybe?
HK: Yeah. No, just a regular private.
HF: A private. What did you do in the years that followed in the ‘ 20s. Well, I just worked there at home on the farm same as I did before I went. My folks were still there and my oldest brother was married and my younger brother got married, but I stayed there at home. I didn’t get married until I was 35 years old.
IK: [ Inaudible] moved to California so …
HK: Yeah, he married. He worked in the elevator there in Rexburg while we owned it. And then he went to work for … anyway, it was a big grain company. And he went to California and ran their elevators there. And then afterwards he went to work for the Santa Fe railroad.
HF: Did you pretty much put your full time into the farming operation?
HK: Oh, yes, full time.
HF: What were you growing in those years?
HK: Oh, hay and grain mostly and then we had quite a bunch of cattle.
HF: So you’d feed the cattle the produce?
HK: In the winter time. We sold quite a lot of hay to different sheep men mostly. Earl Gardner, Ed Jones, and …
HF: Where would you market your cattle? Did you have to take them to…
HK: Oh, sometimes men would come by right there on the ranch and we’d take them to Rigby and load them.
HF: Did they have any livestock companies in those years?
HK: Oh most of the buyers that came round to the country came from Ogden.
HF: How would they get their animals down there?
HK: We’d just take them to the train and load them on the cars.
HF: Now, the train freight service was pretty good in those years.
HK: Oh, yeah. It was different from what it is now. It was, you know what I mean, everything was handled that way. In fact, all the grain and everything was handled right on the railroads.
HF: And the railroad service there in Thornton was pretty important?
HK: Well, yes. It was a branch line, of course. It finally went there to West Yellowstone, you know. When we were in St. Anthony that was the end of the rail. Afterwards it was built on up to Ashton.
HF: And then through West Yellowstone? HK: And then finally it was built to West Yellowstone and the branch was built out in Tetonia.
HF: Victor.
HK: Victor. Yes.
HF: Right. Well now you mentioned that you married this lady here Mrs. Beck. In 1930?
HK: 1930, yeah.
IK: August the 6th, 1930.
HF: 1930. Who married you?
HK: I don’t know, a judge down there in Idaho Falls. I don’t remember who he was.
HF: Did you move on into another home or did you still remain…
HK: Well, we had this ranch that we had bought over north of where we lived. And it was a house, in fact, all the buildings on it.
HF: Now, was this still in…
HK: And then we moved over there.
HF: Was this in the community of Burton?
HK: Well, the children that had lived on this place went to the Independence School.
HF: Well now I’d like to have you recall, maybe both of you can share in providing answers, I’d like to have you share some of your actual experiences during the Depression years, just how serious it was. You give me some illustrations just what things were like during the Depression years.
HK: Of course we had this farm and we had some livestock. We had some pigs and we had some chickens…
IK: Chickens.
HK: And we had a garden and we had enough to eat. And I sold cream or milk sometimes, one or the other. And it would bring us in maybe some years it got down to $ 10 a month. But all we needed to buy… IK: We managed to make that do.
HK: Yeah, all we bought was just sugar, and coffee, and a few things like that.
IK: Canned the garden stuff.
HK: Yeah, she canned a lot, canned the garden stuff and we had enough to eat.
IK: Prepared chickens and…
HK: We didn’t suffer that way. And we had plenty of wood and all we needed to do was work.
IK: By managing we got along just fine.
HK: Oh yeah, we in fact use to go to the dances. We had a car all the time. Didn’t drive it much but couldn’t afford the gasoline.
HF: You had a car by this time?
HK: We had a car all the time. From the time that I was at home on the ranch and from the time we got our first car I never was without a car from then on.
HF: What was your first car?
HK: My first car that I owned personally was a ‘ 27 Chevrolet Coup. A good little car.
IK: Yes.
HF: Is that the one you courted in?
HK: Yeah, that and we had at home a Dodge Sterling car that I drove way before I bought this. I didn’t buy this little Chevrolet until after I was married.
HF: When do you think you owned your first car? What year did you get your first car, do you think?
HK: I think… You mean my father?
HF: Uh- huh. The family.
HK: Well…
IK: That Dodge.
HK: No, we had a Buick.
IK: Oh, you had a Buick before that?
HK: Yeah, we had a Buick before that.
IK: Oh.
HK: I imagine about, let’s see, 1922 somewhere along there.
HF: Do you recall who may have owned the first car in your community in the Independence area?
IK: Did you own the first car?
HK: No. Who did own the first car? I imagine Marlers, the storekeeper, George Marler. I imagine they owned about a car about as soon as anybody.
HF: And that could have been before the First World War?
IK: Yes it would be, wouldn’t it?
HK: I guess it would be, yeah. I guess it would be.
HF: Now in the years before you were married did you people use horses or by that time had you commenced to use self- powered equipment?
HK: Let’s see.
IK: That’s during the Depression years.
HK: Yeah, we bought a Mccormick Deering Tractor. The first tractor we owned and about the first tractor in the country, too. Very few people had a tractor. I can’t remember, was that after we were married?
IK: When we got the tractor?
HK: Yeah.
IK: I thought you had one when we got married.
HK: I think we had it. IK: Yes, you had it.
HK: I think we had it. I think we got that tractor about ’ 28 or ’ 29.
IK: We bought one after but…
HK: Well I bought one.
IK: We had the first one that we bought…
HK: But this one’s the one we had out there on the ranch.
IK: We managed to save up enough to build a new home down there on the ranch.
HK: Yeah, we built a new home down there on the ranch after we were married but…
IK: [ inaudible]
HF: Now what year was this?
HK: Oh, that was getting along towards in the early ‘ 50s.
IK: About 18 years after. Yeah, it was in the ‘ 50s.
HF: This was a long time after you were getting ready to celebrate your 20th or 21st wedding anniversary then?
HK: We’d been married a quite a little while.
HF: I see. When you built your home?
HK: Yeah.
HF: The Depression years were all over.
HF: Yeah.
IK: Boy, were they.
HK: You know, a lot of people don’t realize even at that time there wasn’t much money. It was hard to make any amount of money.
HF: When? HK: Well, even in the ‘ 50s and then in the early ‘ 60s. It was hard to make any great deal of money. Not like people make money now a days. You must remember that?
HF: Oh, yes. Yes, I can remember those years. Well now Mr. Koon, give me some illustrations if you will, the effects of the depression. Did you see many people out of work?
HK: Oh, there was a quite a number of people out of work, of course. People that didn’t own any property, didn’t have any farm. There were a lot of people, you know, like that. And they worked on that WPA, some of them. And when they could get jobs they worked for other people, you know. There were some farmers hired men to work in the summer time especially. Some of them hired men all winter. They had a lot of livestock. And there was a few, you know, around there with quite ranchers, quite big farmers. We didn’t hire anybody. I couldn’t, I did all my own work. I hired help in the summer time in hay and thrashing and things like that. But I tell ya, one instance that I can remember my neighbor was thrashing peas and his men that he had working for him, when one day at noon they said, “ We ain’t gonna do anything more. We’ve got to have 25 cents an hour.” They was getting 20 cents. They said, “ We have 25 cents an hour.”
HF: These were young men?
HK: Yeah, they were young men. Yes.
HF: What, were they working on a pitch fork?
HK: Yeah. They were thrashing peas.
HF: Using a pitch fork?
HK: Yeah.
HF: Did he agree to pay them 25 cents?
HK: Yeah. He said okay. And then from that on that was about the going wage: 25 cents an hour for several years.
HF: That would be about $ 2 a day.
HK: Yeah, or two and a half. Most people worked 10 hours a day then.
HF: What did a pig sell for at that time?
HK: Oh, right at that time I fed out quite a bunch of pigs one winter. The grain was cheap, about 75 cents a hundred and I got seven cents a pound for those. But my folks when I was home on the ranch we fed a bunch of pigs out one winter and got three cents a pound for them.
HF: About six dollars for a 200 pound pig.
HK: Yeah, about six dollars. I took one pig over for my neighbor when we took some pigs to Rigby [ inaudible] and it weighed 200 pounds and brought in just six dollars.
HF: I suppose that’s why in those years people ate a lot of pork?
HK: Well, beef was the same way.
HF: Was it?
HK: Yeah. I can remember one instance where Lee Robertson up in Lyman, his brother had a Rome cow that his father had given him. And he got married and he needed some money so he wanted to sell the cow. He sold the cow and the man came there to get her and then he said, “ How much did you give for that cow?” He said, “ Eleven dollars.” He said, “ You’re not taking that cow away from here for eleven dollars. I’ll buy her myself.”
HF: Well that’s very interesting.
HK: That was in the Depression years.
HF: I suppose as you’ve grown up in the area down there you’ve seen a lot of changes in the road conditions.
HK: Well, the road conditions when I first moved down in there, where it was hard to [ inaudible]. When it rained and it got wet why, those roads were almost impassable.
HF: They started hauling in gravel?
HK: Well, eventually. Now the first gravel we got on there was when the WPA hauled some gravel in there. I hauled some on myself. The WPA furnished men to load it. And then I fixed up and my neighbor helped too and we hauled some gravel on the road.
HF: Where did they get the gravel from?
HK: Oh, my neighbor there, Vivian Young, had a place there where they got it.
HF: Hauled it down there in a wagon or something? HK: Yeah, we hauled it in a wagon. They called them dump boards they had on there. You just turned them up on edge and the gravel all fell through after when you got to where you wanted to unload it.
HF: So the roads have improved tremendously.
HK: Oh, yeah. [ inaudible]
IK: Oh, I’ll say.
HK: Since they’ve got trucks to haul stuff with and outfits to load it with, why they gravel the road and mix them up. Yeah, the roads are much better. However, the roads in that area, most of them are still gravel.
HF: As we approach the conclusion of this interview let’s just comment about some of the very early things that you remember of the Independence area as a boy and remember the people talking about, for example, some early settlers.
HK: Well, I don’t know. As I tell it this man Pelton, he made the remark one time that some of the people that came in there said, “ When we came here there was nobody here but Indians and horse thieves.” He said, “ I was the only white man in this country at that time.”
IK: That’s what he said.
HK: He said that himself.
HF: That was Bob Pelton?
HK: Hank Pelton.
HF: Hank Pelton.
HK: Also Henry I suppose his name was, but they all called him Hank. And he was an early settler there. He was one of the first.
HF: Do you remember him a little?
HK: Yeah, I remember him a little?
HF: Now did you know the Carters? A. M. Carter?
HK: No, I knew his daughter. What was her name? IK: Who’s this?
HF and HK: A. M. Carter’s daughter.
IK: Oh.
HK: She married this doctor here in town. He used to live here in town. That was her son. What was his name?
HF: Well, I think I know who you mean.
HK: He moved down the country somewhere.
HF: Right. Now you’ve mentioned a Frenchman. What was his name?
HK: Cartier.
HF: And he had a ranch…
HK: On the west side of the river.
HF: On the west side of the river.
HK: Right in there along the north end of the butte and down in all the way in there.
HF: Was the fishing good in the river in those days?
HK: I think probably it would have been if we’d had the kind of tackle we have now a days.
IK: We didn’t have anything to fish with.
HK: All we had was a stick and a string.
HF: You didn’t have much?
HK: No, we didn’t have much tackle.
HF: And the river would often in the spring of the year would overflow and flood things terrible.
HK: Oh, yeah, in years it was terrible. In 1918, practically all the land we owned was under water. HF: Yeah. Well as a young man growing up in the Independence, Thornton area, do you feel Mr. Koon that you’ve enjoyed a lot of good opportunities to make a livelihood?
HK: Oh yeah and passed up a lot of good opportunities, too.
HF: But you feel happy about your life down in that country?
HK: Yeah, we’ve had a good life there.
HF: If you were going to select come individual in your community who you feel was an outstanding person and made a real contribution to the welfare and the good development of Thornton and Independence, what name would you provide? Who do you think would be…
HK: What do you mean that…
HF: Who was really a good influence and did a lot for the country down in that area?
HK: Well, I don’t know. Who would you think?
IK: You mean a name for the country, or what?
HK: No, somebody that has… I probably could mention more than one.
HF: Who would you mention?
HK: Well, you mean… Carl Horn has been a quite a prominent. He’s been on the school board and one thing or another. He’s never been a county commissioner. They’ve tried to get him to run, but he wouldn’t do it? But he’s done a lot to help, you know, on the irrigating canals and he’s been quite a figure in that locality.
IK: Good [ inaudible].
HK: Then there’s been others that have…
HF: Has he been a farmer?
HK: Yeah.
HF: A rancher?
HK: Yeah.
HF: A businessman?
HK: Mostly a farmer, yeah. He was on the school board on this building, the school building was built down here. Oh, I don’t know different ones.
HF: Well your brother was a pretty good man, community man, too wasn’t he?
HK: Yeah.
HF: Morris?
HK: Yeah. But I didn’t want to mention him. He’s my brother, you know.
HF: Yeah, well. I asked for some names.
HK: But there were several people there that were, you know, quite influential in their day, you know. John L. Jones, Henry McGary.
HF: Has the McGary family been quite a noted family down through the years?
HK: Oh, yes. Roy still lives down there. They had 400 acres there. Let’s see… how big would it be, half a mile long and a half a mile wide?
HF: Oh, about 360 acres.
HK: I think they had 400 acres.
HF: 400? Well now as we close here, do you have any comments that you’d like to make of your living experience in the Independent Thornton area, Mrs. Koon?
IK: Of my own experiences?
HF: Uh- huh. Of what things you’d like to, is there anything you’d like to comment about your living experience?
End of Tape