A Matriarch's Picture Postcards

All images courtesy of the author A Matriarch’s Picture Postcards Capturing Life on Eastern Oregon’s “Dead Ox Flat,” 1910–1920 OREGON PLACES by Damian Koshnick IN MID AUGUST 2019, I made a and a few waves of emotion caught me pilgrimage with my father, William and my father by surprise — it felt good Koshnick, to a landscape formerly to be there and helped me visualize “COMING THRU’ THE RYE” is written on this image taken in the spring of 1912. Stella known as “Dead Ox Flat” near Ontario, the setting for the family history I had Koshnick walks through a field of rye holding her son, Otto, Jr., on the homestead she and her husband, Otto, claimed in 1910. Like others in the area known as Dead Ox Flat, Oregon — a 200-acre homestead claim uncovered. they were able to grow a few crops without irrigation. that once belonged to my great-grand- It was in this place that my parents, Otto and Stella Koshnick. great-grandmother Stella diligently Although I had researched the region choreographed, wrote, and sent hun- and my family for a year leading up to dreds of picture-postcards between her artistic sensibilities and reveal her Oregon tribes. The federal government the trip, it was not until my father and 1910 and 1918 to her family in Minne- unique sense of humor. This essay promptly redrew the reservation’s I drove toward Malheur County that I sota. Long before the modern ease reproduces some of the dozen or so of boundaries, under pressure from felt much more like Otto and Stella’s of photography, it is remarkable how Stella’s postcards that survive, showing White migrants who wanted to use great-grandson. The land, located a many picture-postcards Stella took, views of the region and telling a story the reservation’s grazing land, and few miles northwest of Ontario, is now retook, developed, and sent. These of early-twentieth-century migrants to following the Bannock War of 1878, Bohlender Farms. postcards were very popular at that eastern Oregon. closed the reservation and returned On an unusually cool and rainy day, time, and drug stores were the primary to public domain. The federal gov- Teldon Bohlender, one of the current place where amateur photographers STELLA EVELYN ALEXANDER ernment’s removal of Native people owners, graciously led us for over had their photographs developed.1 As (1886–1920) was educated and working made way for a homesteading boom an hour around the footprint of the years of advertisements in the Ontario as a school teacher when she married in Oregon’s southeastern High Desert old homestead. Although no obvious newspaper show, the Ontario Phar- Otto August Koshnick (1885–1960) in between 1905 and 1920.5 A consen- structures or signs remained, we spec- macy, located next to the train depot 1905. The following year, they took a sus had “emerged among boosters, ulated about the most likely location that still stands today, sold Kodak train west, joining waves of Midwest- engineers, and politicians that arid for their home on the landscape. From supplies and finishing. Developing pic- erners relocating to the Northwest.3 land reclamation was beneficial and the southern end of the property, you ture-postcards there would have cost This region is the traditional homeland could transform the West.”6 And yet, can look out miles across a beautiful, Stella about 10 cents, postcard-sized of the Wadatika Band of Northern only half the dry-land homesteaders variable landscape, into Malheur prints were 6 cents.2 Stella’s postcards Paiute.4 In 1872, President Ulysses stayed long enough to gain title to Valley, toward Malheur Butte and the were not just about loneliness and anx- S. Grant established the nearly 1.8 their land. In the end, it “was a failed massive Malheur Siphon below. During ious communication with distant family; million-acre Malheur Reservation effort.”7Although family letters do not our visit, heavy clouds brought rain, they also provided a critical outlet for intended for eastern and southeastern make clear exactly how Otto and Stella 416 OHQ vol. 121, no. 4 © 2020 Oregon Historical Society Koshnick, A Matriarch’s Picture Postcards 417 Jesse Nett made the decision to move to Oregon, the new “Empire of the West,” about to we know that by 1900 Congress had be “transferred into a tropical fertility.”12 “provided generous land grants to Land scams and wildly embel- promote Western settlement — to build lished accounts of the “dry land railroads and military roads, to attract farming” movement were also fac- settlers through homestead laws, tors. Land was often named “flat” to and . for reclamation projects.”8 We advertise it as readily farmable, but can also surmise several personal and the “dead ox” implies a warning that historical factors that led them to settle is still appropriate for an area that on this extremely dry patch of elevated receives less than sixteen inches of desert land. rain annually.13 Often promoted by Otto and Stella arrived in Ore- many self-interested parties, it was gon during a wave of migration that one way to convince people that the accelerated in 1909 with the Enlarged desert land, such as that found in Homestead Act. This expansion of the Oregon’s southeastern region, could Homestead Act of 1862 allowed up to be turned into farmland. The Ontario 320 acres to be claimed in non-irrigable Argus frequently focused on Dead areas in response to the promotion of Ox Flat, reporting on the exceptional dry farming in the West during the early efficacy of dry farming and of alfalfa twentieth century. At the time, these dry and flax growth — with the caveat that farming methods were experimental the method relied on rain to be suc- and highly dubious.9 The land, made cessful.14 One Oregon newspaper’s available at little cost to White men accounts specifically reported that and women, likely appealed to the Dead Ox Flat was about to “bloom.”15 young couple who were setting out on As migrants were drawn by the “last their own, despite it being “among the rush for free land,” new railroad lines THE 200-ACRE homestead claim that once belonged to Otto and Stella Koshnick least desirable of all land remaining in provided access to previously iso- 10 is shown on this map. the public domain at that time.” Stella lated parts of southeastern Oregon.16 revealed in her letters that she was Similarly, in Minnesota, newspapers distraught to leave her family, but also often published information entic- determined and confident in their abil- ing people to move west, although homesteaded in the southeastern High Journal ities. Both Otto and Stella grew up on reported that Dead Ox Flat sometimes the claims were quite Desert, was, to put it charitably, “mar- farms, and unlike some settlers, would 17 had become suitable for irrigation, exaggerated. Malheur County was ginal” — poorly watered, alkali-soiled and then joked: “No doubt if it had have known the risks of trying to turn promoted as a promising destination and higher-elevation land passed over by arid land into productive land, but like for those seeking Homestead Act farmers during earlier decades.18 secured irrigation sooner it would 19 many migrants during that time period, land available after 1900. According have escaped the name.” In 1906, the People in the region expected the Oregon Mist they were also likely encouraged by to archaeologist and historian Jeff reported that the farmers promotional materials produced by LaLande: federal government to make progress of Dead Ox Flat were “tired of waiting land boosters, railroad companies, and on big canal and dam projects, but for water from the various projects Between 1905 and 1920, more land in the local governments.11 This promoted the size and timing of these develop- contemplated” and took steps to American West was claimed under the 20 progress helped to build the foundation federal homestead laws than had been ments was wildly mischaracterized organize an irrigation district. The for a mythical regional and national claimed during the previous four decades for over twenty years. In the summer U.S. Reclamation Service started narrative that the area would become of the Homestead Act. Most of it, like that of 1904, for example, the Statesman surveying the irrigable lands of the 418 OHQ vol. 121, no. 4 Koshnick, A Matriarch’s Picture Postcards 419 That the country immediately surround- Security Administration. Arguably, ing Vale [Oregon] will soon be the scene Stella’s own photographic postcards of activity in ditch construction is now are equally as compelling. a certainty. While plans have not yet been definitely announced, it is safe to Most of the time, Stella directed say that the visit of Major L.H. French, Otto to do the “camera stunt,” as she of New York, to Vale, will result in the put it, with the tripod. Otto would take construction of Water systems for the the photographs, but under Stella’s purpose of irrigating the extensive and extensive instruction. She had very rich lands in Malheur County, although specific ideas about what could or he, himself, declines at present to speak of the matter except as a probability.26 should work in a photograph. Reading the backs of Stella’s postcards, you As it turns out, Stella and Otto arrived get the sense that she approached nearly a century too early to benefit her work like W.H. Auden adopted in from the dam project. On my visit to his poetry — photographs that ade- their old homestead plot, I learned it quately captured her family were never is still tricky land to farm because the finished, only abandoned.

Load more