35-2 Spring Text

Volume 35, No. 2 BRITISH COLUMBIA Spring 2002 $5.00 HISTORICAL NEWS ISSN 1195-8294 Journal of the British Columbia Historical Federation Acts of Kindness Big Bend From Utah to Kootenay Flats Business in the Lardeau: 1901 Bees in BC . y e v r a H . G . R y s e t r u o C This issue includes a registration form for a Jane (Fisher) Huscroft, ca. 1897, with her eleventh grandchild, William Rodger day of free workshops in Revelstoke in Huscroft Long. After a brief attempt in 1891 to settle on Baillie-Grohman’s Kootenay conjunction with the annual conference of Flats, the Huscrofts settled near Creston. R.G. Harvey’s article starting on page 2. the British Columbia Historical Federation. The Trek of the Huscrofts in 1891 by R.G. Harvey R.G. Harvey is the In the 1880s William Adolph Baillie-Grohman conceived a perfectly feasible scheme whereby author of two volumes some of the water of the upper Kootenay River would be diverted into the Columbia River on the development of highways, railways, and where the Kootenay—already about fifty miles along its course—came close to the Columbia steamboat routes headwaters. He calculated that the consequent reduction in the maximum flow of the Kootenay though the southern through the flats at the head of Kootenay Lake would enable a huge area of rich alluvial plain mountains, central and in the Creston area to be reclaimed from annual flooding by a minimum of dyking. By 1887 he northern British Columbia: Carving the had built a canal between the rivers at a place called Canal Flats near Columbia Lake. At that Western Pass. For his time he put out a widely-circulated brochure praising the wonderful Kootenay flats. book The Coast Connec- tion he received in 1995 a British Colum- HEN William Rodger Huscroft mar- but not all the way initially. Mary Elizabeth, bia Historical Federa- ried Jane Fisher in Provo, Utah Ter William’s second daughter, born in 1864, stayed tion award for histori- Writory, in 1856, Jane was fifteen years behind in Utah and married there. She died of cal writing. of age. William was twenty-six. They were both cancer in 1896, and never saw her parents again Last summer, at a quite recent immigrants to America, who had after they left. The eldest surviving son (their convention in Victoria, arrived a few years earlier from England, Jane with firstborn son died young) George Joseph the Canadian Society her parents, and William, an orphan, unaccom- Huscroft, aged 24 in 1891, married an Irish girl for Civil Engineering panied. Both had been recruited to the Mormon named Mary McKinney and a year later followed presented R.G. Harvey Church, otherwise known as the Church of the his parents to British Columbia. In 1893, on their with the W. Gordon way north, their first child, Vera Marie, was born Plewes Award for “his Latter-day Saints, by Brigham Young in his mis- many contributions to sion to England to increase membership in in Bonners Ferry. the preservation of the America. Huscroft had rejected polygamy in the The Huscrofts’ unmarried offspring were three history of transporta- years prior to his marriage, and he continued this boys and four girls: James, 22; John, 13; Charles, tion in British Colum- non-conformance, which probably led to his leav- 9; Effie, 19; Sophy, 15; Sarah, 11; and Maud, 5. To bia.” Bob Harvey gave a ing the church. In the midst of having and rais- carry this company as well as their two parents well-received after- ing their eleven children, he retreated with his and their worldly possessions, they decided on dinner talk titled wife and children to Missouri. two heavy wagons for the Huscrofts, and a heavy “Making an Author out Around 1876 they came back to Utah to be wagon and a light one for the Arrowsmiths and of an Engineer.” near to Jane’s parents, but William’s discontent their four young children. Therefore, in May of R.G. Harvey married 1891, when they left Jensen on the Green River, Eva, daughter of with Mormonism resurfaced fourteen years later, Charles Leroy Huscroft, after reading the brochure distributed by Baillie- there were three heavy wagons and one light the youngest son of Grohman, praising the virtues of the Kootenay wagon. There were also twenty or more head of William Rodger River valley some 900 miles north in British cattle and forty spare horses according to the sons’ Huscroft Columbia, Canada. Despite being over sixty years recollections. Quite a train. James must be given of age at that time, Huscroft decided to up stakes the credit for this livestock coming with them. and move north, to enjoy the benevolence of the He had earned the money to purchase them by Kootenay flats and live under the Union Jack. herding cattle in Wyoming in the months before. The Huscrofts planned their migration at their His experience at this would be well used on the home at Jensen by the Green River in Utah, and trip.1 it is there that we join them. To make the trip, William, the father, would have driven one of they decided first on the make-up of the party. the heavy wagons, James, his eldest son, another 1. Apart from those kept Emma, their eldest girl, was married to John and his son-in-law John Arrowsmith, the third. for farming, the balance Arrowsmith, and in 1891 they had two daugh- The light wagon would have been driven either of the horses was later ters, eight and four years old, two sons, two and by son John, or else by one of the older daugh- sold to mining ters Effie or Sophy. Driving the spare horses and companies in the Slocan six years of age, and a baby coming. The District of British Arrowsmiths travelled north with the Huscrofts, the herd of cattle were two young men, names Columbia. never mentioned, whom they took with them 2 BC HISTORICAL NEWS - VOL. 35 NO. 2 from Jensen. The two men might have been as- sisted by John from time to time, and even by one or more of the daughters. Charles, nine years old, was too young for any responsibility, but could help out. They would have been glad that they had the two men from Jensen accompanying them. These two left them at Kalispell to take work building a railway. The travellers reportedly visited Provo en route north, visiting Jane’s mother, Emma Burrows Fisher, who stayed there (she died in 1905), and son George. It is also said that they went through Wyoming, so they probably went back up the old trail to Fort Bridger and then by the old Oregon Trail north. Beyond Fort Hall they probably followed roads built by the Mormons and then they would soon come upon a number of mining roads built in the Montana mining boom of the 1880s. They saw the lights and heard the night-time noises of Missoula, Montana, as they passed, but they did not call in—it was a wild town. Beyond Missoula the family left the mining road network and struck off northwards through the huge Flathead Indian Reserve, of- ten, as John says, rolling along through the sagebrush without the benefit of a road. They then travelled along the east shore of Flathead Lake and from there onwards north to Kalispell, Montana, where they stopped and paused for a while. John Arrowsmith and his family stayed to winter in that outpost, but the Huscrofts did not. After a reconnaissance ahead by William and John, they hit the road again, and fifteen miles y e v r north of Kalispell they met the Great Northern a H . G Railway right-of-way along the Kootenay River, . R y s with the grade complete but without tracks, and e t r u mostly without bridges. It would be opened for o C its full length two years later. Here the rains came, and as they struggled along the muddy railway John, the teenager, would remain with his dad, Above: Map tracing the grade and laboriously struggled down and up to assist him moving the large wagons and their route taken by the again to cross the creeks for which there were no freight. William and John got the idea of build- Huscrofts to reach the bridges, they did some damage to the fills and ing a raft to take the larger wagons down the Kootenay Lake flats and slopes. Finally, after they had covered nearly a Kootenay River to the Canadian border. William future Creston. hundred miles on the grade the contractors had questioned the contractors, and he learned stopped them and said, “Go no further.” that at that point they had progressed far enough Relenting, the railwaymen consented to a com- to be past the Kootenay Falls, the main interrup- promise. The women and children would pro- tion to navigation within the loop of the ceed in the light wagon, but the heavier vehicles, Kootenay River in the United States. There were with the great majority of their possessions, would some rapids between them and Bonners Ferry, not be allowed to continue this way. James would but they were not too bad, or so the railwaymen guide the women and girls, and Charles would said, and best of all, their destination lay in the go along with them. All the horses and the cattle direction the current was flowing. would go with them as well. So they set to work, felling and trimming trees BC HISTORICAL NEWS - SPRING 2002 3 2.

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