The Bachelor Frontiersmen of White River
An early settler describes the agricultural promise of the river valley and the social isolation of the men carving out homesteads in the dense wilderness.
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.
Thinking that an account of this section of the country will be of sufficient interest to find a place in your paper, I will make a note of what I have seen and heard since I have been in the place. Duwamish river and its tributaries possess facilities for agricultural purposes second to none in the Territory, and I think persons looking for farms would do well to look at the land along Black and White rivers before purchasing elsewhere. Among other inducements, the most important is a large body of bottom land along the river, from one to five miles wide, and I doubt whether there is a single quarter section which will not afford enough dry land for plowing and raising small grain. The timber is principally maple, cottonwood, and a heavy growth of underbrush. The soil is good and has generally a clay bottom. One man harvested nine hundred bushels of wheat from 17 acres. From the valley rise gentle sloping hills, covered with tall fir and cedar. There is quite a number of settlers all along the river, but the greater portion, I believe, are bachelors—candidates for matrimony—who have taken up claims and are waiting for something to turn up. Bachelors hall! What a queer-looking place it is! Yes, it lacks wife, mother, sister and brother to cheer the man and speed his plow and enjoy the fruits of his labor. Recent reports of Indian outbreaks are doing a great deal of mischief. There is no doubt some cause for suspicion, but many reports are false; however, I think Government should put a company of soldiers somewhere on White river to guarantee the safety of the settlers.
“Bachelors hall! what a queer-looking place it is! Yes, it lacks wife, mother, sister and brother to cheer the man and speed his plow.”
The writer captures the profound social isolation of 1860s Washington, where land acquisition was often divorced from community life. Today, the White River valley is heavily developed and suburbanized, a far cry from the 'bachelor's hall' wilderness described here.
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