The Valley Sixty Miles From a Railroad

In 1892, the Big Bottom settlers of Lewis County had no road, no sawmill and no rail line — just hand-hewn homes, packhorses, a tobacco-chewing cat, and a Fourth of July party for 160 neighbors.

“It is very common to see a man at one end of a plug of tobacco and this cat at the other, each gnawing with a full measure of earthly bliss.”