The John Weiss and Earl and Mattie Morelands lived up on top of the mountain, about 6000 feet where the firs grew. I don’t know anything about their background. Weiss had a small cabin, tightly chinked, a really good cabin. The Morelands had a bigger cabin and even had a bunkhouse and a barn. They had the Lone Star Mine, I believe it was, and worked it for years. A shaft went down 200 feet with stopes going off here and there. Daddy and I got to go down there once.
Herb and Irma Gorman were up there for years and years. They lived in the Claraville flat area. Claraville was an interesting area because there was a public meadow there, something like twenty acres. It had been kind of a city back in gold rush days. There was one little cabin there, known as the Recorder’s Shack, the oldest cabin in the Claraville area. It was made out of squared logs. When Mother built the fireplace at our cabin, the mantle log came from the Recorder’s Shack. My brother carved “Blessed by that spot where cheerful guests retire, to pause from toil and trim their evening fire” on it, a few letters at a time. Fritz was good at carving. My mother always liked the quote, she said, because it showed that guests were supposed to work.
Also we lived in a comparatively big cabin that was rotting into the ground that for a while, Tip Fulton’s old place. Now there was another real character. I wish I could remember what Tip did for a living. Everybody was supposed to be a miner because that’s the only way they could hold their claims. There was very little private property other than Nick’s meadow up there. I don’t know if any of the claims had ever been patented. I suppose a few had way in the past.
A lot of people lived in this old cabin through the years. It was abandoned, but had board floors. I think it had two rooms and an old stove. It had what you needed. And it had an old outhouse back a ways from it. So a person could move in and be sort of comfortable.
Kelso Creek wasn’t more than three- or four-hundred feet from the Claraville Meadow. You couldn’t drink out of it, but you could use the water for cooking and other things. Also, the Claraville Meadow had a wonderful spring that had been rocked in so the livestock couldn’t drink out it, but could drank out of the overflow instead. That’s where we got water for that cabin.
I don’t think Tip was married in the early days, but he got married some time when I was young. Tip liked to tell stories. He was famous for talking about the time the pigs ate Little Nevy, and how it rained for forty days and forty nights. And it was either he or his father got bit by a rattlesnake and he sucked the venom to “keep the pizen from gettin’ to his heart.” Tip was kind of a gossip and scandal monger, according to my folks. He had a lot of stories.
Later on, when we lived over on French Gulch, Tip owned a cow. Every day in the evening we kids would walk over to Tip’s place, probably a couple miles, to get a half gallon of milk. We had milk all that summer.
I actually don’t know the background of these people very much because I saw them through a child’s eyes.
Copyright Joanne Harris 2009
Showing posts with label Tip Fulton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tip Fulton. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Range war on the mountain
Range War on the Mountain
Copyright Andrea Heyser 2009
Though I have never met a cow boy who was not a perfect gentleman, they seemed at times to have a dark and ugly side concerning grass. There was no crime a cowman would not commit to get more grazing for his cows.
The Paiutes used to have a public meadow near Tip's place. It was about a thousand feet on each side, was fenced and had grass that was thick and lush. Folks on the mountain could bring their horses or cows to live during the summer, the deer and wild life in the meadow were plentiful.
Nick, a cowman, wanted his cattle to graze in this little meadow when his cows were moved off his pasture so the grass could go to seed. Nick's meadow was French Meadow which was about eight miles long, had a river in it and it cost only one hundred dollars a year for the lease.
Nick complained that the gate to the public meadow was kept closed and his cows could not get in. The gate was kept closed so that the horses and milk cows would not leave, get lost in the forest and die when winter came.
The county ruled that the gate and fencing were to be removed.
Now Frank King had a horse in the meadow he used to plow his garden and Tip had a milk cow there. The cow wandered off and Frank's horse Pasco joined two wild horses, a mare and her colt, a little pinto stallion.
The wild horses taught Pasco to jump the cattle guard to Nick's meadow and the three of them would eat Nick's grass and drink form his river. Nick and his cowboys warned Frank to keep his horse out of his meadow and of course they quarreled a number of times.
Once when Frank was driving his old pickup down the county road he met a cowboy on horse back. They both stopped and had a few words. The cowboy tried to open the truck door to pull Frank out of his truck when Frank picked up his sawed off shot gun, pointed it at the cowboy and said, "Did you calculate on this?" Every one on the mountain knew that Frank always carried a sawed off shot gun on the front seat of his truck but the cowboys kept pretty much to themselves and so did not know.
A few weeks later Pasco, the mare and little stallion were found dead, shot. A month later Joanne and my mother found two dead bulls, cost thirty thousand each, dead at the onion patch. They had been shot in the eye so that after the buzzards took out the eyes you could not tell how they died.
The little meadow is now dead and no animals live there. The grass was eaten down to the dirt too many times by a cowboy who ran too many cattle for the mountain to support.
Years before this happened several cowmen got together to get rid of the wild life that eats seed which grows into grass. They rented an airplane, loaded it up with poison grain, flew all over the mountain and spread their deadly grain. The pigeons all disappeared, the quail survived and the grouse disappeared.
When I was just a little kid I used to sit on a rock looking over the meadow and once I heard the tom tom sound of a grouse in the distance. I didn't know then that it was a grouse, but I found out laterand after that I never heard one again.
I don't eat beef anymore, it is too expensive, in my opinion it's time has past for a kinder and more gentle time.
Copyright Andrea Heyser 2009
Though I have never met a cow boy who was not a perfect gentleman, they seemed at times to have a dark and ugly side concerning grass. There was no crime a cowman would not commit to get more grazing for his cows.
The Paiutes used to have a public meadow near Tip's place. It was about a thousand feet on each side, was fenced and had grass that was thick and lush. Folks on the mountain could bring their horses or cows to live during the summer, the deer and wild life in the meadow were plentiful.
Nick, a cowman, wanted his cattle to graze in this little meadow when his cows were moved off his pasture so the grass could go to seed. Nick's meadow was French Meadow which was about eight miles long, had a river in it and it cost only one hundred dollars a year for the lease.
Nick complained that the gate to the public meadow was kept closed and his cows could not get in. The gate was kept closed so that the horses and milk cows would not leave, get lost in the forest and die when winter came.
The county ruled that the gate and fencing were to be removed.
Now Frank King had a horse in the meadow he used to plow his garden and Tip had a milk cow there. The cow wandered off and Frank's horse Pasco joined two wild horses, a mare and her colt, a little pinto stallion.
The wild horses taught Pasco to jump the cattle guard to Nick's meadow and the three of them would eat Nick's grass and drink form his river. Nick and his cowboys warned Frank to keep his horse out of his meadow and of course they quarreled a number of times.
Once when Frank was driving his old pickup down the county road he met a cowboy on horse back. They both stopped and had a few words. The cowboy tried to open the truck door to pull Frank out of his truck when Frank picked up his sawed off shot gun, pointed it at the cowboy and said, "Did you calculate on this?" Every one on the mountain knew that Frank always carried a sawed off shot gun on the front seat of his truck but the cowboys kept pretty much to themselves and so did not know.
A few weeks later Pasco, the mare and little stallion were found dead, shot. A month later Joanne and my mother found two dead bulls, cost thirty thousand each, dead at the onion patch. They had been shot in the eye so that after the buzzards took out the eyes you could not tell how they died.
The little meadow is now dead and no animals live there. The grass was eaten down to the dirt too many times by a cowboy who ran too many cattle for the mountain to support.
Years before this happened several cowmen got together to get rid of the wild life that eats seed which grows into grass. They rented an airplane, loaded it up with poison grain, flew all over the mountain and spread their deadly grain. The pigeons all disappeared, the quail survived and the grouse disappeared.
When I was just a little kid I used to sit on a rock looking over the meadow and once I heard the tom tom sound of a grouse in the distance. I didn't know then that it was a grouse, but I found out laterand after that I never heard one again.
I don't eat beef anymore, it is too expensive, in my opinion it's time has past for a kinder and more gentle time.
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