City of Rocks Historic Resources Study

Most of the soil in the [Almo] valley is very fertile and especially adapted to raising lucern [alfalfa (English)]. But the scarcity of water prevents a dense population. [158]

In 1878, Henry R. Cahoon, his young wife Annie Durfee Cahoon, his father-in-law Myron B. Durfee, and Myron's large family settled along Almo Creek with the intention of farming. "Stockmen" told them and those who followed that they "could not grow anything here," [159] that the "snow would bury [them]." [160] By 1882, 35 Mormon families had "proved to the contrary." Henry R. Cahoon boasted that:

Last year we raised about 5600 bushels of wheat, oats, and barley, 1500 bushels of potatoes of the best quality . . . There is land here for a good many more settlers, and about 12 miles southwest of here is what is called Junction Valley; there is room for 20 or 30 families (so come along ye homeless). [161]

Church chronicler Andrew Jensen sounded a more cautious note: "If water was more plentiful in this valley, there would be land and all other facilities to sustain a large population." [162]

Land now encompassed by the City of Rocks National Reserve, sandwiched between the productive Almo Creek and the promising Junction Valley, is conspicuously absent in Cahoon's account — yet validated Jensen's warning; only limited pockets of land within what is now the reserve were claimed in the first wave of settlement.

In 1882, Iowa farmer George W. Lunsford claimed irrigable land along Circle Creek and the right to the water therein; in 1901 he sold his developed tract to William Tracy who developed the Circle Ranch on this and adjoining land. George Davis filed claim to the upstream tract ten years later. In 1901, Mary Ann Tracy claimed 160 "Desert" acres downstream from Lunsford's original claim, testifying that this land would not, "without artificial irrigation, produce an agricultural crop of any kind in amount reasonably remunerative . . . the same is essentially dry and arid land." Construction of storage reservoirs along intermittent North and South Circle creeks ultimately allowed successful cultivation of oats, barley, and alfalfa; the remaining acreage was relegated to spring and summer range for the Tracys' cattle. Margaret Hansen also filed a Desert Land Act claim in 1909, irrigating her fields of alfalfa, wheat, and rye with water conveyed by reservoir and ditch from South Circle Creek. In a delayed conclusion to the first phase of area settlement, Eugene Durfee [163] patented 160 acres at the eastern gateway to the City of Rocks in 1919. This land was reportedly planted in water-intensive corn, beets, potatoes, and alfalfa suggesting that Durfee had constructed an irrigation system. [164]

By 1909, the agricultural zone watered by Circle, Almo, Grape, Edwards, Cassia, Marsh, Basin and Circle creeks consisted of almost 12,000 acres of irrigated farm lands, surrounding the communities of Almo, Ward, Elba, Basin and Albion [165] These lands supported primary crops of hay (native, timothy, or alfalfa) and grain (barley, oats, and wheat). The hay, barley, and oats provided winter feed for ranchers' sheep and cattle; sold to Hailey's Kelton-Boise stage company, the hay also served as an important cash crop. Wheat provided flour and a medium of exchange for "other necessities."

Fruit and vegetables were also successfully grown, primarily for home use due to limits to the transportation infrastructure. Potatoes were an exception — easily transported to the mining communities of Wood River (Hailey) and Boise Basin, they served as one of the few non-grain crops readily converted to cash. Pigs, chickens, and dairy cattle provided additional subsistence and additional assets with which to barter in the local economy. By the 1920s, cheese factories and creameries in Albion, Almo, Burley, Oakley, and Winnemucca, Nevada provided a market for milk and cream; longtime resident Jake Bruesch recalled in a 1974 interview that, circa 1920 "Albert Tracy brought in a herd of Wisconsin cows, Holstein cows, . . . and a bunch of us bought 'em — five or ten or fifteen each . . . and started to milk 'em and bought separators and separated milk and sold the cream for a good many years." By the 1940s, local resident Bernus Ward reported that, aside from those few ranchers with large cattle herds, "the chief income of the farmers here comes from their milch cows." [166]

In his 1888 testimony for final patent of his homestead, George Lunsford claimed ownership of a wagon, a plow, a harrow, a shovel, a hoe, and little more. With these rudimentary tools, he had cleared and planted 20 acres in wheat, oats, barley and potatoes. [167] He most likely harvested this first oat and barley crop with a cradle or a horse-drawn dropper, and then gathered and bound the grain by hand; if he was lucky, he or a neighbor had a "self-rake reaper" to cut and rake the grain.

By 1909, years after Lunsford had left the area, "two or three individuals" in Almo purchased horse-drawn binders; "during harvest season they went from farm to farm binding grain. [168] The threshing process followed a similar technological evolution:

The first threshing was done by the tramping of horses' feet. In a short time, however, the threshing machine was brought in. It was run by horse power and had belts to carry off the straw. It was not until the last two decades [ca. 1925-1945] that the "blower" was used to eliminate the straw. In the last three decades gasoline engines have replaced the horse power. [169] (Figure 10)

Figure 10. Horse-drawn Thresher (Idaho State Historical Society photograph #1274-C) "The small threshing machine and tread power worked very well, after they learned to operate the outfit. They threshold from 100 to 150 bushels of grain in an eight hour day. Two gentle horses were trained to tread the power, each one was used a half day. Four hands could easily operate this thresher—a bundle pitcher, the table feeder, grain measurer and straw pitcher. The children took care of all the work except the feeding, which the father or some older man did. It worked so nicely that neighbors came to watch curiously first, then to help and beg to have their grain threshold." (Lind, "History of ...," p. 41.)

Residents harvested hay (native, alfalfa, or rye) — first by hand, then with reapers, finally with bull rakes. Cable (or "Mormon") hay derricks or beaver slides were used to stack the "hundreds of tons of hay" put up in the valley (Figures 11 and 12). [170]

Figure 11. Hay derricks (Idaho State Historical Society photographs, #60-52.137-140). The haying was done all by hand. It would be cut and then piled. They used what they call...cable derricks. Then finally the grain was cut with reapers...it was a long time before they got anything like bull rakes or anything like that. (V. Tanner, interviewed by Verna Richardson, August 22, 1973.

Figure 12. Beaver Slide (Idaho State Historical Society photograph, #77-5.158).