Washington
I have spent many years as a kid and adult listening to ‘old
timers’, as they are called, swap and tell stories of the good
old days harvesting with horses, plowing, trips to town on Saturday
night, good times and bad. They’re all fascinating to hear. I
love to see the old photographs.
My neighbor, Mac Hatley, who is, as he puts it, a ‘tired and
retired farmer’, and whose land borders mine, recalls the first
steam engine to come to the Palouse country in the state of
Washington. I also received information from Mac’s brother,
Norman, whose farm is also next to mine.
The year is 1887, a man named Riley B. Hatley, who was Mac’s
father, went to Stillwater, Minn., where he bought a Stillwater
steam engine. It was made in the state prison by the inmates. The
engine was a 10 HP and was self-propelled by a chain drive from the
fly wheel to the right rear ground wheel. It was also equipped with
a seat for the driver and a tongue so it could be pulled by a team
of horses. The engine was shipped down the Mississippi River by
river boat to New Orleans, or that area. It was then transferred to
a ship. From there it sailed around the tip of South America and up
the west coast to the Columbia River, and on up to Portland,
Oregon. It was again transferred to a river boat, a steam powered
paddle wheeler, and made the trip up the Columbia River, to what is
now Pasco, Washington, where the Columbia and the Snake River come
together.
From that point it may have been transferred to another river
boat for its trip up the Snake River, although the river boats from
Portland to Pasco did not usually make that trip up the Snake
River. At Almota, the engine was unloaded and R. B. Hatley hitched
up a team of horses and the Stillwater engine was pulled up the
Snake River canyons on a wagon road to his farm some 20 miles
away.
As can be seen in the photo, the seat in the front of the engine
was for driving the team. The smoke stack was on the rear of the
engine. The teams and wagons hid most of the separator. It was made
of wood and the make was Columbia.
R. B. Hatley not only did his own harvesting with this outfit,
but hired out to the neighbors also. I was told that one neighbor
paid him in three dollar gold pieces at the end of harvest. Some
payments were made this way and at other times they were done on
shares.
The Stillwater engine was used until about 1904, when it was
replaced by the more modern horse-drawn combines. The engine was
junked out just before or during World War I. This was the only
Stillwater engine that I have heard of in our Palouse country, in
fact, it’s the only one I have ever heard of. Most of the
popular steam engines here were J. I. Case, Advance-Rumely,
Minneapolis and others.
The photo of the river boat is the steam boat at Lewiston,
Idaho, a paddle wheeler on the Snake River which would have been
typical of the river boat which hauled the Stillwater engine up the
rivers.
