'Horse and buggy days' resulted in community cemeteries

(It was on April 13, 2001, a few years before his death, that this interview with Harp Turnbull took place. Erik Daarstad filmed the meeting with Harp for the Sandpoint Centennial Movie and it was my privilege to conduct the interview. Today, Harp gives us a clear picture of how things were in the very early days of this area. He shares, in his unique way, the history of the place he called home and especially his love and respect for his family and his friends.)

Question: Harp, do you remember the steamboats?

Harp: I can remember I think one by the name of the Northern. I've seen 'em on the lake but I had no experience with 'em at all, Bob. We didn't get around much. This was horse and buggy days and there were very few trips. I was 17 years old before I ever saw Priest River. Those were horse and buggy days. A few of 'em had cars by the time I was born, but we didn't have one.

Question: What was it like just going to Sandpoint?

Harp: Well, of course, the horses would be down in the pasture. We went and got them, harnessed them, hitched em to the buggy, and went to Sandpoint.

There was no bridge there until 1910. The people who lived here (in the Sagle area) went to Cheney for their supplies in the spring and the fall. The only way into Sandpoint, for the 20 years that they lived here was to walk the railroad bridge or take a rowboat.

Sandpoint, as far as these people out here were concerned, was across the lake and you walked the railroad bridge or you took a rowboat and went across to Sandpoint. It was 1910 before there was any access from this side of the lake to it. That's the reason for many of these little cemeteries around over the country. It was horse and buggy days.

There was no access to Sandpoint to the cemetery. It was actually too far anyway, so they just buried their people around close to where they lived.

This is the way the country developed. My folks had lived here for 20 years and their source of supply was Cheney, Wash. The reason they went to Cheney was because my mother's folks were still living down there and they'd go down there to Cheney and visit them once in the fall and once in the spring - three days down; three days back. Yes, this thing didn't all just pop up at once, Bob. This was virgin territory in here - no roads, no nothing in here until Dad and Uncle John moved in here.

There had been people here but most of the people were on the lake, around the shores of the lake, and they were miners and trappers. There's a little cabin down here on the lower end of my place that my father assumed had been built by a trappers before he came here - some old trapper's cabin.

My dad told me about the beaver. There was a beaver dam down here almost a mile across - well, those beaver were all trapped out by the time they got here but those boys (trappers) were here. As I understand it, it was the Hudson Bay Company in here.

So, there were people here 40 years before my family got here. However, when they got here, in this particular area, there was no development, there were no houses, and they were just the first in this area, this particular area. Of course, Rathdrum was here. Rathdrum was the county seat of Kootenai County, Idaho Territory. I expect they could have got some groceries there if they would have stopped but they chose to go on to Cheney because mother's folks still lived there.

Question: Let's talk about your mother. Can you remember her talking about what life was like during that time when they first moved in here?

Harp: I hope you're not recording all this, because this comes back to sentimental things. Obviously, the Williamses had come West and had settled over in Willamette Valley in Oregon around Sweet Home before the Turnbulls ever came. My father told me after they had crossed the plains, and there is a little controversy over that, whether it was 1864 or 1865. Uncle Cy said it was 64 and he was older so he probably knew. Dad never told me the exact date by the year that they came across. He said that he came across as a 9-year-old boy. Well, he was born in 1856. That would have made it 1865 that they landed in Big Valley and he may have meant that he was nine when they got to Big Valley. Incidentally, he told me that he walked every step of the way except riding the ferry across the Missouri River from Polk County south of Des Moines, Iowa, to the Rogue River Valley in Oregon. He was a 9-year-old boy and he said he never rode the turn of the wheel. I've had people ask me why he didn't ride. Well, they don't realize that those people had all their life belongings in those wagons. Hell, they didn't have room for passengers. They were hauling their supplies. They had to live off what they had in those wagons across those plains.

No, I don't know. I think you older people kind of believe what I'm saying but I feel that I have been privileged being born late. My father was almost 60 when I was born. That's the reason I'm one generation behind here. I feel that I was privileged to know and live with the man for 37 years. I've lived a lot of this history through him, Bob. I tell these stories, well, this is just an old man talking.

To be continued.