Harp Turnbull tells story about family's arrival in area

(In April 2001, I sat at the kitchen table of Harp Turnbull listening to him recall the history of his family and how they came to this area of the country. Erik Daarstad was busy filming the conversation for use in Sandpoint's centennial movie, in which only a small part of the interview could be used. I want to share with you excerpts from the interview, in Harp's own words, that give an excellent picture of early Sagle/Sandpoint and the people that made the area what it is today.)

Question: Harp, your family was the first, or one of the first, to come to this area. Is that right?

Harp: The way I understand it, Bob, yes, probably in the Sagle, Westmond area they were, if not the first, among the very first settlers in this area. My father and his sister, and his brother-in-law, came into this area together. My parents, my father and mother, were not married at the time that dad came in here with his brother-in-law and sister in the 1800s. The way it came about, as I understand it, my father was born in Iowa, and he crossed the Plains in the 1860s with his family as a small boy and settled in northern California. They heard of this area opening up, the railroad going through and government land to be homesteaded, so my Dad came up here in 1882 and looked the country over…

If this is part of the story you want to hear, he told me he got off the work train over here at old Algoma, that was the end of the line at that time. He patrolled around the country up here and decided this might be the place that they could make a living. He landed here on April Fool's Day in 1882 and Uncle John and Aunt Polly came up and they wintered, I guess, down around Turnbull wildlife refuge in Cheney and then he and John and Aunt Polly came up and they squatted on this property in 1884. I use the word squatted because the country was not surveyed so they did not know which land they could homestead or which was railroad land. I have a letter that evidently he had written to the Cleveland administration asking about squatter's rights. I have the answer to the letter from the Cleveland administration stating that squatters had no rights. They were told if they had squatted on the government land, they could homestead. If they had squatted on what was given to the Northern Pacific Railroad as an incentive to build through here, they would have to buy it from the railroad. Luckily, he and John Summers had done most of the development on the homesteadable land. So that's about the story of the Turnbulls' existence at this spot.

Question: Harp, what do you remember being told what the area was like - the people here in the area?

Harp: There were no people here except the railroad workers. The railroad was just going through. As I said, the end of the line was what they called old Algoma. The railroad at that time went through approximately where Highway 95 goes now. The railroad trestle was being built at that time and there was quite a settlement. I think he said there must have been around 300, 400 or 500 people in a tent town at this end of where our highway 95 bridge is now. It was a place called Ventnor. The railroad was going through, and as far as my family is concerned, they were the first permanent settlers. Many of those railroad workers left because they were just here to get the railroad built. About where the Sagle post office is now, there was a saloon there at that time. This is part of the story of their life here. The saloon was built of lumber and the man that was running it wanted to quit so he told Uncle John Summers and Dad that they could have the lumber out of the building if they would run the saloon until the railroad shut down. So, my Dad spent his first occupation in the country running the saloon. I figured he made more money in that saloon in six weeks than he did on the farm in the whole time he was here.

I think they operated it for about six weeks. They made their whiskey by putting a few pellets, a pill type thing, in a jug of water and that was the whiskey. I suppose it was just acid of some kind, I don't know. That's how they manufactured the whiskey was those pills thrown into that barrel of water and made the liquor that they were selling at that time. It wasn't bonded whiskey, I guess.

He said on pay day the boys would come in and drink up every dollar they had. The last man that drank in that saloon had a silver dollar in his pocket left from their payday, and he threw it just as far as he could send it out into the timber around the saloon. I suppose that silver dollar is right in there somewhere today.

The sad part of that story is that the saloon burned so my dad and Uncle John didn't get the use of the lumber after they fulfilled their contract with the saloonkeeper.