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The Mt. Adams Sun, Bingen, WA., June 21, 1962, page 4? Photograph

FIRE REVIVES “HOT STORY” ABOUT BUILDING OF DOCK ROAD & STAIRS

“In the early days, nobody went to White Salmon. Everyone went to the River. In order to get there without going through Bingen, White Salmon built the Dock Road in 1892 at the old bluff stairway in 1897. But don’t publish this story until all I am gone. Everyone remembers things a little differently; and I don’t want to pick a fight at my age.”
These words, from an interview with the late John Wyers, are from of The Sun’s files.
The time is ripe to tell the story. Mr. Wyers died on April 5, 1961 and the Sam C. Ziegler home at the foot of the old bluff stairway burned last Sunday, June 17.

Indian Trail

When John Wyers came to White Salmon from Kansas in 1891, the shortest distance between the town and the river was a wide trail up the bluff.
An Indian named Joe Alec brought the daily mail by row boat from the Hood River and piggy-backed it up a steep trail which crested between the John Wyers and Bill Lauterbach homes.
There was no parcel post, but Alec’s incoming sack often weighed about 100 pounds. At Christmas and on other special occasions, Joe lashed the load on his horse and led it up the trail.
White Salmon received mail every weekday, but back-country dispatches were tri-weekly.
Outgoing mail was lighter. An old White Salmon postoffice record shows daily cancellations -- some days as much as 20 letters.

Strange Hold

White Salmon’s lifeline to the ferry landing was an old wagon road through Bingen. When the late Theodore Suksdorf closed this right-of-way in 1892, White Salmon found itself strangled.
Teunis Wyers, Sr., Rudolph Lauterbach and Clinton Wolford, White Salmon’s first merchant and mayor called a council of war.
They joined battle by building their own steamboat dock, the Dock Road and a wooden stairway down the bluff. Most of the work and materials were donated by the irate white Salmon men.
Father Wyers donated five days road work by each of his sons. Merchants of The Dalles helped buy blasting powder. Men of Trout Lake and Glenwood showed their sympathy by giving a week’s work. White Salmon expressed gratitude by “putting them up.”
Steamboat companies contributed use of their pile drivers. Others chipped in with free piling and hauling.

Stairway

The ladder-like stairway from the foot of the Old Ziegler Place at the foot of the bluff to the top-landing between the present Pollard and Tune Wyers’ homes had nearly 400 steps.
Several pioneers who used them to “spoon” on the landings claim there were 365, “one for every day in the year.”
To give the last push for nails and lumber, White Salmon gave a “Step Dance” and oyster feed in the old Lauterbach Hall. Admission was $1. To put the stairway over the top, a steamboat provided free passage for dancers from The Dalles.
The steps were in use for 15 years -- for both business and pleasure.
A platform halfway down was a favorite spot to rest or for romance.
Nothing remains of the old stairway which some people don’t believe ever existed. The last boards were consumed in a bluff fire12 years ago.
Now the Old Ziegler house has gone too -- the last visual proof of a pioneer feud that out-lived the combatants.