The Homesteading Debutantes
Two young women from Spokane reject the domestic sphere to stake a claim on the rugged Washington frontier.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Two young ladies, Miss Maude Dutton and Miss Maude L. Boardman, residing upon Third avenue in Spokane, have presented themselves to the receiver of the land office and made homestead entries upon larger sections of Washington's fertile soil. These are not the daughters of farmers who are familiar and accustomed to tilling the soil; they are city girls, unaccustomed to the rougher realities of farm life. Their claims are situated about sixteen miles east of the western border of Newman's Lake. The young ladies say that in some parts of the ranch it will be necessary to have something to hold them while they dig the potatoes. Their intentions are to have orchards and utilize the rest in growing wheat. They have six months before settling upon their claims, and the young ladies say that they are already aware of the inconveniences and hardships which they will be constrained to settle upon in February.
“In some parts of the ranch it will be necessary to have something to hold them while they dig the potatoes.”
While these 'society girls' were viewed as an oddity in 1891, their move to homestead captures the mid-territorial dream of property ownership as a path to independence. Today, the dream of 'owning a ranch' has shifted into the realities of the modern Seattle housing crisis, where the same spirit of independence clashes with a market that makes such self-sufficiency nearly impossible for the average resident.
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