New Rural Heritage Collection: “Old” Kettle Falls.
From the desk of Evan Robb
When construction of the Grand Coulee Dam was completed in 1941, much of the town of Kettle Falls disappeared beneath the rising waters of Lake Roosevelt. About 300 individuals picked up and relocated to the site of present-day Kettle Falls, WA (a few miles away, in what had previously been Meyers Falls). Our newest collection, from the Kettle Falls Public Library, tells the story of that original town (or “Old” Kettle Falls as it’s now known), from its incorporation in 1892, to its last high school class, to final relocation efforts.
One of our favorite documents in the collection is a short biography by Harrison Reed, whose family came to Washington in 1902, and homesteaded in Ferry County, on the side of the Columbia opposite Kettle Falls. A few of Reed’s recollections include: the tiny town of Kettle Falls as he first saw it in October, 1902; crossing the Columbia by row boat to attend school; and accompanying Doc Brigham on his rounds to treat Spanish flu victims during the winter of 1919-1920. Here’s a quick excerpt describing several rough years during the late 1920s-early 1930s:
My father passed away at 87. A hale [sic] storm came through where the folks lived, ruined their crops, roofs and killed the chickens. While raking hay I was thrown under a dump hay rake and dragged one quarter mile by a run away team, many cuts and bruises, but soon was all right. Then came the depression years of the early thirties, bad years for us. Margaret, Mable and Leta all had whooping cough and measles. 1930 lost my finger. Prices were low. Good two year old steers at twenty three dollars a piece. Cows from four to ten dollars. Cream average $1.50 per five gallon can. Wages for hay hands 50 cents per day and board…I lost two good mares by a strange poisoning.
The Kettle Falls Collection also depicts the Falls themselves–for thousands of years, a critical salmon-harvesting and meeting point for tribes of the Columbia Plateau and beyond. For an excellent summary of fishing on the Falls, as well as the later impact of the downstream cannery industry and dam development, take a look at this article from HistoryLink (a free online encyclopedia of Washington State History).
A big thanks to our participants at the Kettle Falls Public Library (Libraries of Stevens County) for their hard work digitizing and cataloging these materials. Thanks to their expertise, individual and family names have been thoroughly indexed in this collection; it should serve as great resource for those researching Northeast Washington.
The Kettle Falls Collection can be accessed through Stevens County Heritage (browse all items in this new collection here). Or if you’re simply at a loss for where to start, here are a few of our favorite images:
- Lizzie McKellar (from one of Kettle Falls’ original families).
- Fruitland irrigation flume.
- Fuller-Larsen-Kelly store.
- Hudson Bay Co. fort.
- Kelly Hill School, boys only.
- Kelly Hill School, girls only.
- Meyers Falls, WA (1900). The same view in modern-day K.F.
- Two men in ‘kettle’.
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