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The West Klickitat News, Bingen, WA., June 26, 1936, page 8

HISTORY OF HORSE SHOE BEND WRITTEN FOR PIONEERS
Area, at One Time, Furnished Indians with Herbs and Roots for Use with Salmon, Huckleberries and Other Redskin Food; Camas Also Found Valuable.

EDITOR'S NOTE - These articles were prepared for and read at the Klickitat Valley Pioneer Association meetings for the purpose of gathering information concerning pioneer days in the various localities.
Miss Nellie McCann prepared two fine papers concerning the Columbus community and has promised a third. Frank Fenton wrote about the No. 4 district,. Mrs. Emma Hunter has written for Spring Creek, the first paper to be prepared; Mrs. Locy wrote about the No. 2 community, Mrs. Ella Shell another, Robert Ballou wrote an account of the early day attorneys. There have been more and they will be mentioned from time to time. The following article was written and prepared by Tal Bratton and concerns the Horseshoe Bend locality.

HORSESHOE BEND, 1888, BEFORE AND AFTER

I date it 1888 for the fact that our family arrived in Klickitat County that year. As there were but a few hundred bushels of grain threshed that year in the Bend, most of the residents were still making their living by any means possible.
The Horseshoe Bend proper consists of a very small area. It can be outlined from the higher hills to the east, being bound by the Swale canyon on the southwest, on the west by the Big Klickitat on the north by the Little Klickitat and the inner part of the shoe by a short canyon that diverges the Little Klickitat. By common designation it is generally understood to include an area extending about ten miles east and west and from three to five miles wide. The pattern of the horseshoe is destroyed yet the old association is bound to the larger area. The canyon surrounding is probably 800 feet deep and the sides abrupt and rocky.
In 1888 a number of Indians lived along the big Klickitat river and traveled through the Bend to their villages. The mortar and pestles found at their old camping places at the springs on the side next to the Little Klickitat give evidence of the early use of this locality. The Bend was still a much visited placed by the Indians in procuring the herbs and roots for their winter rations to combine it with their salmon, huckleberries, venison, and such other provisions as they were able to purchase. By no means a minor supplement was the blue-flowered camas, growing in profusion along the draws or ravines. This was taken out of the ground with an iron instrument about 20 to 24 inches long, curved and tapered to a sharp point, pointed at each end, made to be exchangable as the points became dull. The upper end was inserted in a hole in a half moon shaped piece of wood so that the weight could be placed theiron to pry the roots from the ground. Other roots were wild onions which were often gathered by the grain sack full, sowich or wild carrot, with its dark peeling and white meat, and blossoms easily distinguished from other vegetation. There were the Indian potatoes, some having white blossoms and smooth foliage whereas the white have leaves more like the carrot. Neither of these was gathered in abundance like the onion or camas roots. There was also the angelica, or wild celery which I have seen gathered and tied on the pack horses until it resembled a small load of hay, the perrerp grass or chickweed, and numerous other small spicy tasting herbs used for flavoring in their meats, as one squaw told me.
The bunchgrass at that time for the most part was in its virgin state. A blue bunchgrass grew under the protection of the coarse kind which stayed green the year round. The stock were thus able to work their noses under the snow where the taller protruded and gather the more succulent in the severest weather. The large bunchgrass was eaten by the cayuses or horses and cattle preferable browsed on the willow buds or oak when the snow was deep. There was a small, I might say dwarf, bushy willow that did not grow so tall but that cattle or sheep could gather the buds and it likewise provided food for the prairie chickens that were very plentiful. Water in the fall for the stock consisted mainly of numerous seepage springy places that oozed out of the ground on a space a few rods across where the stock drank out of the tracks made previously. Man hunted for one near the head that he hoped might be a little cooler or cleaner. Nearly everyone at that time kept some stock, and rye was the principal hay of the fall. Sown grains, some spring wheat, and corn fodder were also raised. Straw was hauled in from the Centerville neighborhood or stock was driven out to be turned to the straw stacks to winter. In the spring old leaders with their herds that had been pastured in the mountains would start out on their own initiative and go to the summer range. After the frost killed the grass in the fall they would wind their way homeward and bring most of the herd with them excepting, perchance, some of the younger ones that might follow other herds.
This search caused most of us to search from the Signal Peak country in Cedar Valley to the Columbia river or perhaps go without meals for a day or two while hunting for those that went towards the Yakima Valley over on the reservation. It sometimes happened that the Indian police would round up both stock and owners and take them to the fort to assess damages.
In Horseshoe Bend there have been many different settlers. The names mentioned are not arranged in the order of their coming. Since few of them are living, it would be difficult to get all their names and when they came and left. There are not many descendants of the early settlers living in the Bend today.
Among the sellers of the Bend were a Mr. Jamison in the lower Bend, partner of William Morehead in cattle business. A Mr. Brooks came for his health, settled on a place across from the church and raised horses. He later turned his horses over to Michael J. Mudge on the shares. The Fuhrman family moved on his place and became associated with Fred Dee in the sheep business. They sent their children to school in 1886. Sam Carson, now living at Grandview, married Kate White, daughter of George White, and Mr. Fleck married a sister, Allie F. White, now a widow living at Rufus, Oregon. She wrote that she was the only woman in the Bend during the winter of 1877-78 and that they left the Bend in 1883, moving to Grants, Oregon where they operated an orchard. Fleck and Carson, leaving in 1883, sold to Fred Dee who could neither read nor write. He made a success of his business, however, until marital difficulties over took him. He moved to Alkali Landing, now Roosevelt, across from Arlington, formerly Alkali. His widow married Dave Kiley who was a bachelor and had a homestead on part of what is the Richardson property. Sam Foss also built a house east of the Ellis or Foss place which was taken over by Smith Warren who had moved, next, to a piece a couple of miles northwest of Blockhouse. Ameron E. Scott got his place.
Robert Richardson was one of the earliest settlers in the Bend country although his place was not in what was known as the Bend proper.
The Geizentanner family took the first homestead in the Bend in 1880, leaving in 1888, and moved later to the Yakima Valley.
James Crawford and a man by the name of Johnson got the place where the Crawford family was raised. Charles Hammond, his wife and daughter were early residents. The girls, and Ella and Myrtle, with the main dependents of the neighborhood for leadership in vocal and instrumental music since both were endowed with very nice voices.
Our family came to the Bend in 1888 and settled on the Mudge place. Other early settlers included Mr. Whitson, his wife and three daughters who married W.E. Snyder, John Fry, and Amanda Hartshorn; Tom Brown and his wife who was formerly Mary Adams, his brother Joe, the Clayton brothers, J.W. Jackson, W.R. Lusby, Ed Sweeney, John McGraw, the Gilbreath family. Benjamin A. Hill lived on the Dempster Adams place.
Among the first to farm in the Bend were William Kamholz who bought in 1884 from C.S. Reinhart. The latter became editor of The Sentinel and later moved to Olympia to become clerk of the Supreme Court, which position he held until his recent death. Mr. Kamholz started farming by raising seed corn, next trying some wheat of a size about three times the size of our milling wheat. This shattered badly and was only fit for feed so he changed to Bluestem, which, when it stood the winter, yielded well, but it was found unprofitable to take the chance. Mr. Kamholz was the outstanding wheat raiser of the district and his system was an example for others to emulate. For a long time previous to his passing he operated a combine on his own farm.
In 1880 James Shepard, when only a boy, with his mother and brother moved up from Skamania county and erected a log cabin where they spent the winter. They brought with them about sixty head of cattle which perished on account of the severe winter and lack of feed. That same winter several thousand sheep belonging to George Waldron died.
Later, to take care of their stock, the Ellis family would move up on the Simcoe mountains near the Devil's Canyon and milk the cows where the range was open and free. They returned to winter in the Bend as did also William Morehead. Robert Richardson and the Bratton family took their stock to Cedar Valley or Mesecher Valley as it was then called after the pioneer by that name.
One of our old characters was Mr. Mudge who prided himself in dress and manner to imitate our old acquaintance Mr. Satan, his old white hat worked out to a point at the crown and pinned together in front and back of the rim, his beard shaved to a goatee, next, a red flannel shirt and red face and arms to match, a vocabulary of profanity unequaled, with lungs to expel it. He could be heard for miles away in some heated argument with someone or abusing his work horse or dog.
The wheat raised in the early days in the Bend was marketed at The Dalles. Four horses hauled from 60 at 100 bushels. The trip took two days. Later when the railroad was built up through the Swale, the association with The Dalles terminated.
The first school in the Bend was held in 1884 with Ms. Loretta Darland as the teacher. Pupils from the Geitzentanner, Smith Warren and Ellis families attended. The district register records the district being organized in 1886 with T.D. Adams as teacher. The first schoolhouse was located in the central part of the Horseshoe Bend proper. The new one was built three-fourth of a mile southwest in the year 1904.
Church services were held in the schoolhouse by itinerant preachers and circuit riders until a Methodist church was erected in 1897. It came about largely due to the efforts of C.W. Hammond, who canvassed in Goldendale and also in The Dalles where the district people traded and sold their wheat. Local labor contributed in the erection of the building. The minister from Centerville divided his time between Pleasant Valley, High Prairie, and Horseshoe Bend, and church was held whenever possible.
In 1906 a rural telephone system connecting with the Goldendale switchboard was established and consisted of one line with perhaps twenty subscribers.
At first most of the mail came to Goldendale and for a number of years was brought out to the Dempster Adams home where people would call for it. Some, however, went to Blockhouse and Centervillw. Later, after the government authorized and experimented with two small lists of rural delivery systems, application was made to the Post Office department for a tri-weekly system with the following route: from Centerville north three miles, then west through the Bend, thence south through the Happy Home district, east to the Centerville line and thence north to Centerville. The application was granted and the Bend was one of the first to receive this rural mail service. There were not many rural routes at this time in the United States.