"History" Wickahoney Stage Stop, Owyhee County, Idaho

[kd7ost]

Please use this thread for discussion and comments for the Wickahony Stage stop located here.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=688187

Dan

[quailbird]

I loved every word, Dan! This is fascinating! The grave marker is for his family. Next time you go out there, look to see if any food stuffs are in the hole. It must have been some kind of can goods from the period. Great great story. Tell your wife, her contribution really made the story exceptional.

[Gray]

It was very interesting to see the remote location the Danning family lived in.
The stone used in the building, would that be local stone on imported? It must have been a full time job getting enough fire wood to last the winter out there or is it not too cold in winter? I suppose thinking about it there would always be a regular supply of goods from the coach depending on how regular they were!

Nice research and history Dan.

Gray.

[kd7ost]

Thank you for the comments guys.

Quailbird,

I looked at the two Cairns on top of the hill behind the station and deemed that neither of them was the one made by Charles Spencer. There was no food cache in the side and the pictures showed them to be different. I'm thinking that the Cairns above the stage stop were simply placed so distant travelers getting close to the station, but couldn't see it, knew they were getting close and which direction to travel. Naturally if they were on the roads they would probably know already. But riders coming across the plains would know where to head to find shelter.

Somewhere in one of my books I seem to recall reading a short blurb about a line of survival Cairns built by Mr. Spencer in the early 1900's. After doing more of this kind of research and exploring, I seem to be able to connect and cross reference information. I'll keep an eye out for that passage as I re-read my books and hope to follow up on that story later.

Gray,

The stone in the building looks to be a mix. Most of the wall structure is made of the local basalt rock from Lava flows. It even takes on the appearance of the Cairns which were made from broken up basalt picked up right on the spot. The only real difference I see is around doorways where there is some imported sandstone. I don’t know where that came from. Most likely it comes from the older geological Nevada or Utah if I were to venture a guess.

The chimney’s and stove pipe openings provide evidence that they burned wood. The winters out there can be quite harsh. Frequent deep snows settle in the fall and freezing temperatures keep it that way till the spring thaw. The altitude at the stage stop is 5,200 feet above sea level.

In the aerial pictures I supplied there is a line of fruit trees just down hill from the small reservoir and inside the marked out fence line. There are a few stumps around too. I speculate that they planted trees for use. They probably also burned sage brush stocks and Juniper pine. Naturally any real lumber would have been brought in by wagon.

Dan

[quailbird]

Dan, were there any buffalo left at the time of this stage house? Maybe, like many pioneers, who burned buffalo chips.

[kd7ost]

That sounds like a good possibility. Although I haven’t run across any references to Buffalo being indigenous to this region. From the early days of being settled by the white man, there has been domesticated cattle raising.

Dan

[Tom Harper]

The common wisdom is that there were no bison west of the Rio Grande.

Maybe they cheated and got around the northern source of the river.

Tom

[quailbird]

What is really amazing, is our ancestors and early pioneers, took off to areas like this withour worrying about "where are we going to get fire wood"? and they survived. Modern man would say, "Hey, there's no fire wood, nor a Wal Mart, I'm not going"!