THINGS REMEMBERED
Ida Frances Marshall
I was born May 14, 1927 in the town of Walden, Colo. at the home of a woman, Addie Bruce, who provided housing for women in the community who were soon to give birth since many lived on ranches far from town. Of course, I don’t remember that. I joined my family, Horace and Lucy Mason and my brother Bob who was 11 months old and went to live on the Hill Ranch for the next 15 years. Florence joined us on October 27, 1928.
ABOUT THE RANCH:
The ranch was 10 miles north and 14 miles west of Walden. We didn’t have neighbors nearby. Sometimes there was someone living at the South End of the ranch at Lake Creek. The Boettcher was a few miles away. Wattenburg’s Ranch abutted the Lake Creek property. Cowdry was 13 miles east. The settlement of Pearl was 9 miles to the north.
The house where we lived was good sized, with 2 bedrooms downstairs and 3 upstairs. Other rooms were living room, dining room, kitchen and a large pantry. Attached on the West side of the house were three other rooms or areas: a shed where coal and wood were kept and the car was parked there in the winter when we were snowed in for several months and two storage rooms. The one room missing was a bathroom. The outhouse was outside behind the house.
The Hill Ranch was part of the Big Horn Cattle Company, which was owned by Denver millionaire, Charles Boettcher. He was founder of the Great West Sugar Company and Boettcher and Company, a financial entity. There were seven ranches in all, one of them a leased School Section near Coalmont, The Home Ranch (Grizzly Creek) in the Southern part of North Park, The Hansen Ranch at Cowdry, The Hill Ranch, Boettcher Ranch, Schaeffer Ranch (the latter two over the hogback from the Hill Ranch). And, later the Big Horn acquired the Hunter Ranch near Cowdry. My dad told me that including the pastures, the Hill Ranch was about 3000 acres. On the Hill Ranch itself, the usual hay harvest was about 1200 tons and there was additional hay on the lower end of the ranch at Lake Creek.I don’t know how many tons were put up there, but not as much as the main ranch.
The Hill Ranch had two bunkhouses for my dad’s hired men and the cowboys who worked the cattle under the supervision of a cow foreman. The second was only used during the summer haying season. My dad who worked on contract was in charge of irrigating the meadow, harvesting the hay and feeding it out to the cattle in winter as well as maintaining the fences, barns, etc. There were about 50 horses on the ranch which were my dad’s responsibility. Milk cows had to be milked twice a day. There were also chickens to provide meat and eggs. We made our own butter and cottage cheese from the milk.
Life was routine most of the time as there was a lot of work involved both in the house and the ranch work. My mother never worked outside. She had to clean the house with brooms and mops and scrub brushes. We had no vacuum cleaner but did have a push carpet sweeper for the rugs. Throw rugs were shaken outdoors and sometimes beaten with a broom while hanging on the clothesline. Of course when we kids were big enough, we helped with the housework.
When I was really small we had an old wooden washing machine that had a lever that was pushed back and forth to agitate the clothes. I don’t remember when, but we got a gasoline powered washer sometime in the 1930’s which we still had when the family moved to the town of Walden when I was 15. As I remember, my parents didn’t get a new electric washer until after I went to college in 1945. There was no dryer. Clothes had to be hung outdoors on a clothesline no matter what the temperature. Sometimes in winter they froze before one could get the clothespins attached. Eventually they dried most of the way and were brought into the house to finish. They did smell good though.
My mother baked all the bread that was needed for the family, hired men and cowboys. That was quite a feat in itself as it could be 8 to 16 loaves a week and even more during haying.. Occasionally when we went to town to buy groceries, they would get a loaf of store bread. At the time, we didn’t like it much.
We all helped with making the butter. We had hand cranked butter churns. When we were big enough, we kids could start the process because it was easy in the beginning but as the butter separated from the milk, it became harder to turn. Mom did the churning sometimes, but if Daddy was in the house, he would help. He was very good at the washing and pressing part of making the butter. We had a big wooden bowl and a large, flat paddle that was used to press the water out. The less water that remained, the longer the butter would keep. If the cows were giving a lot of milk, we would have excess butter that was stored in large crocks and layered with salt. That would keep it fresh for a long time.
One thing I remember vividly was getting the food supply that was to last several months during the time we were snowed in. Late in the fall, my dad would put in an order with the grocery store and hire a large truck (stake side truck) to deliver the order. We kids were always on hand to watch the unloading and storage. The pantry was a large sized room where all the cases of canned vegetables and fruits, dried fruits, pickles and other staples were stored. There was an area over the staircase where 100 pound sacks of sugar and flour were stored as well as sacks of various kinds of dried beans and some rice. There was a root cellar north of the house constructed of wooden poles and covered with soil several feet deep to keep out the cold. In it were the potatoes that were grown on the ranch, bushel baskets of apples, crates of oranges, and several kinds of root vegetables as well as cabbage that kept well for several months. Also on the north side of the house there was a meat house where hams, slabs of bacon, and large pieces of beef (maybe quarters) were stored. They did not spoil because they were frozen.
The house was heated with coal and wood stoves. There was a “pot bellied” stove in the living room for a number of years. It was eventually replaced with a circulating heater, which was essentially the same but had an attractive iron jacket around it so that it looked like a piece of furniture. I believe that is the same one that we took along when we moved to Walden. The kitchen had a large range for many pots and also a reservoir for heating water, since we didn’t have hot running water. We had cold running water in the house rather than a pump that many other rural homes in the area had. The water came from a spring and it was left running constantly so it wouldn’t get stale and the spring clogged. The water ran out of the house into a drainage ditch and then to a slough.
An aside to the drainage ditch: One time we were playing near it and Bob fell in head first. Fortunately, I managed to pull him out and he ran to the house with his head covered in black sludge.
An aside to the reservoir in the stove: One morning when I was seven years old, I was going to dip some water to wash with but the coffee pot was sitting just over the edge and it tipped over and spilled all over me, burning me severely on the ankle and foot. That was serious because we were snowed in because it was February. My dad called the doctor in town and they talked it over. Daddy had tannic acid for use on the horses and the doctor told him how to mix a solution and put it on my burns. There was a bandage over and it was kept wet with the solution. It got a funny grey sort of coating over the burn which had to be removed with a syringe. They a solution of bleach was used and after about a month the burn healed. I still have a scar from that incident.
Saturday night was bath time. We had three wash tubs that were filled with water heated on the stove. The tubs were set up in front of the kitchen range and the door left open in winter to warm the room. Towels were usually placed on the oven door to warm. My dad had a big fold up rubber bath tub that was a fascination to me. It had old fashioned folding legs on each end like an old camp cot. It had a drain hose that went into a hole in the kitchen floor so the water would drain out into the drain ditch. The wash tubs had to be emptied with a big dipper until they were light enough to pick up and dump down the sink. Mom usually took a wash basin to her bedroom and had a sponge bath every day.
Mom had a lot of cooking to do since there were five of our family and we always had one hired man year round. The Company paid Mom for the meals she provided for the cowboys. Sometimes there were one or two stationed at our ranch all the time. Then there could be several others who would be temporary depending on whether it was calving season, branding going on or whatever else the cattle needed.
The cattle were moved from ranch to ranch depending on the feed and the weather. Usually the hay at the Schaeffer Ranch was fed out first as that ranch was between the hogback and the Continental Divide and would get six feet of snow on the level in the winter.
In the summer haying season, my dad hired up to 16 men for several weeks. That was an adventure for me. Many of the same people came back year after year. They came from Missouri and Arkansas and Kansas, and from towns on the Eastern Plains of Colorado. These men were farmers who finished their own harvests before coming to North Park for haying season.
For that event, we had to enlarge the dining room table. The usual sized table was in two pieces and there was a permanent extension which was nailed in between the two pieces, making it big enough for about 20 people. We used oilcloth table covering which could be washed right on the table. We used enameled metal dishes for the haying season. We used several sets of salt and pepper shakers and sugar bowls since the table was very long. One of my chores was to see that they were full before meals. Also, we had several big pitchers of milk at each meal. We had three meals each day as the men were doing hard physical labor.
Mom had a cook helper for the haying season. Usually Daddy hired a couple; the man would be what we called the cycle grinder (for the mowing machines) and took the “grub wagon” to the field each noon. They would have a room in the house. Mom cooked a hot meal at noon for the hay crew and packed it in two specially made wooden boxes which were put on the wagon and carried out to the hay crew. She made meals like roast beef, mashed potatoes, vegetables, pies, coffee and milk and homemade bread. A couple of times I remember the grub wagon was the victim of a runaway when the horses just took off running and there was trouble stopping them. Hopefully this only happened on the way home because what was in those boxes was really a mess.
Sometimes the three of us kids would go along to the field with the grub wagon. After Bob was 10 years old, he drove a rake so was part of the hay crew. Sometimes Daddy would let us ride on his “sweep” which is sometimes called a buck rake. It was used to gather up the hay that had been raked into rows. Then the hay was delivered to the stacker, where a pusher (a piece of equipment) was used to push the hay up a slide using a team of horses, The hay was dropped down onto the stack and two men would put it into the right place.(Occasionally Daddy would let us ride the pusher which was a big thrill.) That created a stack that remained in the field until fed to the cattle and horses. Nobody uses this kind of machinery or horses in haying anymore. The stacks were fenced after the hay season and before the cattle were let into the field to graze on the stubble. Later in the year when there was little feed or it was covered with snow, Daddy and his hired man fed the hay to the stock.
During the winter we had school every week day but sometimes on the weekends we would go with my dad to feed the cattle. The big hay sled was pulled by a team of big work horses. The men would go out to whatever stack they were using, load the hay onto the sled and take it to where the cattle were. It was fun to ride on the loaded sled. Sometimes we kids would get on our skis and loop a long rope around one of the rungs on the ladder which was part of the back of the sled and hang onto it and get an easy ride. If we lost the rope, we were out of luck!
One time before I was school age, I went with Daddy to feed. He first had to open the water hole so the cattle could have a drink. He had broken the ice on top of the water so it was in big chunks. Of course, I had my own short handled pitchfork and was trying to get the ice out when I dropped the pitchfork and fell into the water. The temperature was below zero. Daddy snapped me up out of the water and got the horses into a fast run to the house. I was no worse for the wear on that adventure, but Mom and Daddy were both upset about it.
In summer we kids spent a lot of time outdoors. Our dad built a swing set and Florence and I spent a lot of time using it. There was also a turning bar which was favored by Bob. Of course we found lots of things to do like playing in the watering trough which provided water for the milk cows and the horses that were kept in the corral and barn. Then there were the roofs – the house and barn – which we played on frequently. It was a real struggle for me to get onto the barn roof as we had to get on the top pole of the gate which was latched with a hook and could move easily. Then we had to catch a pole at the top of the frame and hoist ourselves up onto the roof. I remember Mom would get up there with us. One time Bob got down and opened the gate so none of the rest of us could get down. Mom hollered at Bob a lot until he hooked the gate and we got down.
We had a play sized ranch of our own with a barn and stick horses. We used horns sawed off the calves as our cattle and we moved them around by kicking the horns. This was on orders from Bob. Sometimes I got tired of it and made an excuse to go in the house. I did this a lot, especially in winter because I didn’t like to be outside in the snow and cold. We named our ranch the Hoo Doo Cattle Company and when we were in school, we produced a newspaper and Hoo Doo News was part of it. There are still some of these newspapers around.
An interesting aside about the paper we used: One year Malcolm Little who worked for the Chicago Tribune and was the husband of our Aunt Florence, sent us a huge box of all kinds of paper in all sizes. Some was even padded. That paper is what we used for our Hill Ranch School News. Some of that paper was around more than 50 years later.
Another entertainment was the dump. It was a short walk from the house and we could spend a lot of time digging around and taking things apart. There was an old car in the dump, an old record player and other things. We had a lot of fun there.
We also had a prairie dog town that was fascinating to us. The three of us would carry buckets of water out there and pour them down the holes so the prairie dogs would have to run out another hole. We tried to recognize them but they all look alike so we couldn’t do that.
An evening pastime in summer was watching the barn swallows. Near dusk they would all come out of their mud nests that were along the eaves of the barn. There were a lot of insects in the air, particularly mosquitoes, so the swallows had a feast. We would try to catch our eyes onto one bird and see if we could follow it on its flight.
Florence and I played dolls a lot. We would dress up, take our dolls and sit in an old roadster car that was up on blocks and used to saw wood. We probably did a lot of traveling and gossiping while we were doing that. Our Grandmother Mason and Aunt Jane sent us beautiful dolls when I was probably 11 years old and Florence about 10. They had made complete wardrobes for these dolls. They were very special. I passed my doll on to my granddaughter Melissa when she was 7 years old. Florence still has hers.
In the summer during our grade school years, we frequently had friends from town come to stay for a week at a time. I am sure their parents liked that. We had both boys who were friends of Bob’s and girls who were friends of Florence and me. Sometimes I would go spend a few days with the Ray family but Florence got too homesick. One time she tried it but our dad had to meet Mrs. Ray at Cowdry in a heavy rainstorm late at night so Florence could go home. One time when I was about 12 we went to visit the Lamb family in Wellington, Colo. I stayed for 10 days but after one night Mr. Lamb took Florence to Fort Collins so she could take the bus home to Walden. I remember she lost a pretty jacket on that junket.
Also during the summers a family from Sterling, Colo. came to their cabin which was a quarter mile or so to the North of the ranch. They came to the ranch to get milk and would invite us to spend time with them. They had two children, Jane and Charles, both who were older than we were. When I visited the ranch in 2009, the person who looks after the Hill Ranch told me that the Sandhouse family built a nice new cabin a few years before and that Charles still went there in the summer. He must have been nearly 90 at that time.
Mom enjoyed outdoor activities and after the hay crew moved to the Lake Creek Ranch to finish haying Mom would decide that we would climb the hogback. So we packed a sack lunch and climbed. At the top you could see the valley on the west side and the Continental Divide Mountains not far away. Other times we would go on a picnic to Independence Mountain. From that vantage point, much of North Park could be seen.
HORSES
We all rode horses. Mom was an excellent horse woman but didn’t have time to go with us a lot. Of course, Daddy rode frequently for doing his work on the ranch. When we kids were small, we had one horse that was very tame and had a colt. We sometimes rode double, or even all three of us. When I was about four, Trixie went up on the cellar with me on top without a saddle. It was a very steep incline and I fell off. I would not get back on a horse for a long time. Gradually, our dad acquired several more horses that belonged to the family.. Trixie was a ranch horse. He bought Monk from a friend at Rand and he was shared by Florence and me. He bought Sox for Bob but sometimes I would ride him too. He would try to brush me off when we were going through the trees. Monk would throw his head up and down to fight the horseflies in the summer. I didn’t like to ride him then. Anyway, he was mostly Florence’s horse. For my 10th birthday, I got a horse of my own, Diamond. He was a great horse and I liked him very much. Sometimes if we were crossing a ditch, he would just leap over it and that was a surprise to me. One time, he ran away with me and stopped dead in his tracks in front of the corral gate. I almost fell off.
Daddy had two horses. The one he liked best was old and his name was Rex. He was mostly a pensioner but occasionally Daddy would ride him and Bob did some. I only rode him once. Then Daddy bought a horse from Pete Monroe from the south end of North Park. His name was High and his main characteristic was that he bucked everyone off, especially in the morning. It was a challenge for people to ride him. One time he ran away and went to where he came from, which was maybe 30 miles from the Hill Ranch. We took Daddy to where he was and Daddy rode him home, except late in the evening we were anxious because Daddy was still not home and it was getting dusky. As we looked down the road from the lower end of the ranch, we finally spotted him walking and leading the horse. High had thrown Daddy off and Daddy had a broken collar bone so could not get back on the horse. Of course, at that late hour, Mom had to take Daddy to town to the doctor to get the bone set.
Mom had an old horse, Jimmy, that Daddy had given her before they were married. She was especially fond of that horse, but he didn’t get ridden much after I can remember because he was old by that time. She liked one of the ranch horses, Dell, that was a colt of Trixie, and Mom rode that horse whenever she could. Trixie also had another colt, Blackie, that was a riding as well as a work horse. Trixie was also both.
There were a lot of other horses on the ranch that were used for work – pulling the hay sleds in winter and the haying machinery in the summer. More were used in the summer. There were several year-round teams that were kept in the corrals by the barn. Others were in the meadow except when needed. Daddy had a favorite horse, Buster, that he loaned to some carpenters who were repairing the flumes that shored up the ditch that ran from Big Creek Lake to the Hill Ranch. Unfortunately, they did not feed him properly up there in the mountains and he became very ill. Daddy was leading him back to the ranch through the forest when the horse became too ill to go any further. I remember taking a hot dinner and coffee to a place at the edge of the forest and then Daddy walking back into the dark where he stayed all night with the horse until it died. That is something I will not forget because I was so worried about my dad. It was scary.
HOW THE MASONS GOT TO NORTH PARK
One of my dad’s brothers, Ralph Mason also lived in North Park. He was the first Mason to go there from Chicago. He had worked on a ranch on the Laramie River one summer while he was a veterinary student at the University of Illinois. Evidently he had ridden by horseback or taken the train into North Park and fell in love with the country there. He always liked it, thought it was paradise. He loved to show it off to his family from Illinois. Ralph and his brother Norm homesteaded at Owl Creek. Their father and Horace came out to see about the operation as their father had helped finance it. Horace stayed a while but had not graduated from high school yet so Ralph insisted that Horace return to Chicago to finish high school. He did that but soon after returned to North Park and worked with Ralph and Norm at the Owl Creek Ranch. Horace also went to the army during his years on the Owl Creek Ranch with his brothers. Their Grandma Hurd from Chicago came out and lived with them for several years. When she was in her eighties, they made her return to Chicago since they were sometimes away riding with the cattle for several days and they worried about her staying alone. She didn’t want to leave. She lived until she was about 102.
After Ralph married Hazel, Horace went to the Big Horn Cattle Company and got a job. I don’t know when Norm left Owl Creek. When I remember, he had married Ila Cross and was living in California. During the depression, he came back and worked for my dad on the Hill Ranch for a year or more. Horace worked on the Big Horn Home Ranch for a few years and when he married Lucy they gave him a job managing the Hill Ranch. Mom had once said she would never live on that ranch, but she lived there for 17 years and shed a lot of tears over leaving.
CHICAGO RELATIVES WHO VISITED US AT THE RANCH
A few times relatives came from Chicago to visit with us. When I was about six years old, the Little family – Malcolm, Florence, Jane and Charles – came.. Mom and Daddy showed them around the area, took them fishing and to Big Creek Lake. Malcolm made fried bread. They probably didn’t like the primitive life because they never returned. I remember they brought us tennis rackets. We didn’t know anything about tennis.
Grandma Mason (Frances) brought Charles Little for a visit about 1937 (according to a picture we have). All I remember about that is how Mom lectured me for weeks about not swearing or giggling. And, I remember Charles thinking the town of Walden was somewhat of a joke as he stood in the middle of Main Street and directed traffic. I can still see him doing that. We took them to Granby where they took the train back to Chicago.
One time Leonard Lange (my dad’s cousin) and a friend of his visited. All I remember about that is him playing with us kids out in the yard. We were still pretty small.
Jane Mason and Jane Little came for a visit when I was seven or eight years old. I think Jane was 9. All I remember about that was that I combed out the curls of Jane’s Shirley Temple doll. That was a disaster and Daddy made me give her money for a new wig.
One year Jane Little came out to Colorado on the train by herself. She spent time with Uncle Ralph and Aunt Hazel and then with us. She didn’t like to stay with Ralph and Hazel because Hazel made her eat oatmeal. If she wouldn’t eat it for breakfast, it was lunch.
After we lived in Walden, Dave Mason visited. I think he had visited the ranch also because I remember him giving us nicknames like “Idawanna” because that is what I said a lot. He was at our house in Walden when I was a senior in high school. I have a nice photo of my dad that he took while he was there.
MOM’S FAMILY: THE DONELSONS
My mother, Lucy, was born in North Park in 1897, the daughter of William and Ida Donelson. She had a brother, Henry. William had been a pioneer in the area, arriving about 1880 to work in the silver mines at Teller City, which now only has a few remnants of log cabins. It is grown up with trees which had been cleared for the mining camp. Mom said when she was young there were no trees among the cabins. Anyway, when the price of silver fell, the mines were closed. William (My grandmother, Ida, called him Billy) then took up a homestead down on the river north of the town of Rand. He had friends do the same and after they had “proved up” he bought them out to establish a good sized ranch. Later he built a ranch house and barn up on the high ground which is now the Stevens Ranch just north of the town of Rand.. My grandmother designed the house. The barn was built from the materials of the buildings of the original ranch. My grandfather was an innovative man, grubbing sagebrush to create a meadow and raise other crops. He had the first steam tractor in the community. Unfortunately, he contracted tuberculosis and died at age 52 in 1908. My mother was 11 at the time. Henry was 15.
A few years before my grandfather died, he and my grandmother became the guardians of his nephew and four nieces because their mother had died of Scarlet Fever a few years before that and then his brother died and left them orphans. They children were Fred, Mary, Eva, Josie and Hazel. Hazel was one year younger than my mother and was the youngest. Fred was probably 16 when my grandfather died. My grandmother then had the responsibility of finishing raising those children and her own two.
There was a lot of debt on the ranch because of my grandfather’s illness. They had traveled to California to try to find a cure and had also visited doctors in Ft. Collins. After my grandfather died, Grandma tried to keep everything together but had to sell the ranch. She moved to Walden, bought a house and rented rooms to school teachers and provided their meals to earn money. The original sale fell through and they moved back to the ranch for a time but eventually sold it.
When my mother was a teenager, Grandma, my mother (and I suppose some of the girls) moved to Ft. Collins for one year where Grandma also rented rooms to teachers and provided meals. She made this move because my mother was musically talented and she wanted to have her take piano lessons from a music teacher in Greeley (Mrs. Eldridge. Mom took the train to Greeley every weekend for her piano lesson and stayed overnight with the music teacher. Then she would return to Ft. Collins the next day. She was a good pianist and gave piano lessons to children for many years. Later, when mom attended Colorado State Teachers’ College (now Univ. of Northern Colo.) in Greeley, she lived with Mrs. Eldridge and kept in touch with her until Mrs. Eldridge died.
Henry, his mother and Lucy bought a small ranch between Walden and Cowdry when my mother was 18. Mom took the teacher’s examination, which meant she was a certified teacher, and taught for seven years in one or two room schools before she married Horace Mason.
Henry and his mother lived on that ranch until I was 12 years old. The year I was 10, Mom and Daddy agreed to let me go there and help Grandma during haying. I was there for 10 days and did all the running to the milk house, washed dishes, peeled potatoes and set the table for all the meals. They raised sheep and cattle. The ranch was small. My mother said too small to make a living. They moved to Walden and bought a small home. Uncle Henry worked for the Fish Hatchery and for the County on highway maintenance. He had some big stories to tell about plowing the road to Laramie in winter. He also was County Water Commissioner but that may have been while they were still living on the ranch.
My grandma, Ida Donelson, had crippling rheumatoid arthritis before she was 50 years old. I don’t remember her not being bent over and having bad knees. Later her hands were severely affected also. She kept house for Uncle Henry until she was 82 even though she was suffering from the effects of the arthritis. Finally, after she fell when Henry was away on a job, she went to live with my parents in the house they owned and which Florence still has. She lived with them for 8 years until she had a massive stroke and died. I was very fond of my Grandma Donelson.
William Donelson’s nieces and nephew:
Fred had a ranch at Rand and did a lot of horse trading. My mother was critical of him and said he was a big liar. He was a good friend of Ralph Mason after Ralph moved to the Monroe Ranch at Rand. Fred and his wife Lucille had two sons, Philip and Dick. Philip mostly lived in Denver but Dick lived in North Park until he became ill and moved to Ft. Collins for his final years. Both these men died at fairly young ages.
Mary was married when she was quite young to Les Ish, who left her after the honeymoon and took all her money. Then she married Will Rosenbaum and they had a daughter, Jean. When Jean was 20 or so, Mary divorced Will and married Fred Adams. They bought a ranch near the sand hills called the Horse Ranch. The Ray family had lived there previously. Mary lived to be 100 years old. She and Fred celebrated 50 years of marriage a few years before she died.
Eva worked in Denver for the Welfare Department but got appendicitis when she was in her thirties. Since she was a Christian Scientist, she refused surgery and died. Lucy and Henry went to Denver for the funeral.
Josie was married to Charles Hankins (Hank) and they lived in Wyoming, both in Wheatland and Buffalo. We saw them a number of times at Mary ‘s home. He died of an aneurism and then Josie lived on the ranch with Mary in her own mobile home until she was stricken with dementia and was in a nursing home in Laramie for a number of years. She was elderly when she died.
Hazel worked as an occupational therapist for the U.S. Public Health Service, first at Fitzsimmons Hospital in Denver, then at Letterman Hospital in San Francisco until World War II when she was transferred to Little Rock, Ark. where the government had moved the World War I veterans which whom she worked. A few years later she transferred to the Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) Center at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she lived until she retired. After she retired, she married Johnny McFarland, whom she had known when she was young. They lived in California until he died. She died of cancer in Ft. Collins, Colo.
BACK AT THE HILL RANCH -- THE HILL RANCH SCHOOL
When Bob was five, years old, Mom and Daddy had to make a decision. Many mothers moved to town with their children for the school year and left their husbands to do the ranch work and keep the house going. My folks decided they didn’t want to do that and with Mom being a certified teacher with seven years experience they decided to have a school at the ranch with Mom as the teacher. The County Superintendent of Schools oversaw the curriculum and progress, coming for a visit once or twice a year.
The schoolroom was one end of the kitchen. There were two tables, one large and one small. One of us sat at the small table and two at the larger one. We had a bookcase and a blackboard. We had regular school hours, starting at 9 am and going until noon with one recess. Then we started again at 1 pm and went until 3:30 with a recess or other activity. Of course, we were all in different grades, but Mom was used to that. She had taught in one room school houses for several years.
This was a real undertaking for Mom since she still had to take care of the house and do all the cooking, baking bread, making butter and cottage cheese, do the washing and ironing, etc. She frequently would prop a text book on the drawer of a cabinet while she was cooking and listening to our reading lessons at the same time. She could work at the stove stirring something while watching us do math at the blackboard.
Mom had a lot of creative ideas and was artistic, so she worked interesting projects into our school work. We participated in countywide scrapbook contests when we were in upper grades and won honors for our work. We always had art and craft classes during school and sometimes after. When we did a scrapbook on conservation, we won the county and Bob got to go to Denver to present it at a statewide assembly. I have that scrapbook. Florence also won a trip to Denver for a Safety Project..
The county had a school exhibit every spring where all the small schools would bring their students’ best work and assemble displays with a banner for each school. Everyone around the community would attend and look everything over. We always participated in this. There were prizes for the best display and Mom worked hard on it.
When the weather was good in the fall, on Fridays Mom took us to Walden to visit school in the appropriate grades. We participated just like the other kids and sometimes showed off a bit if we were ahead of their class. We got to know all the kids in town and enjoyed being a part of the town school. When we graduated from eighth grade, the Walden school invited us to be part of the graduating class. Occasionally through the years we would visit other schools, Higo, Pearl and Cowdry. We, at least I, preferred Walden. The other schools were one room schools.
One thing I liked was that every summer we got to pick our Reading Circle books. Those were grade appropriate books that we read outside of school hours and wrote book reviews. I often picked adventure type books and I still like that kind of reading. I have a few of those books today and there are still some in the Walden house.
When Bob finished eighth grade, he had to go to high school in Walden. He lived in town with the John Anderson family during the week and went home to the ranch on weekends until the road got too bad and we were snowed in for a few months. When I went to high school I did the same thing for the first year. Bob and I both lived at Andersons. There were several other students there also. Lynn Howard became my first ever roommate other than Florence. Lynn’s parents lived in Rand and operated the store there. Another girl, Ursula Simpson stayed there on occasion. Her parents later moved to town and they lived across the street from my parents. There were quite a few boys at Anderson’s. Bob and one or two others stayed in the home but there were some who lived in cabins on the grounds. When it was time for Florence to go to high school, World War II had started and it was expensive for three of us to board in town so Daddy decided to leave the ranch and move to town. That was the end of the Hill Ranch School.
LIFE IN TOWN
The family moved to town in May, 1942. My dad bought a house after the family had considered a few others. Mom and Dad lived in that home until he died in 1978. Mom continued to live there until she became ill in 1992 when she moved to Denver and lived with Florence and Dick Roberts until her death. She still owned the house in Walden and we went there some while she was ill. Florence still owns the house and Steve Roberts goes there frequently.
Daddy ran the Mossman General Store. It sold everything from groceries to clothing, to household accessories, to nails and kerosene. Since Mrs. Mossman had died and her niece, Hazel Taylor owned it, it had lost business, so it was Daddy’s job to bring it back to profitability. He did that and eventually the store was sold but Daddy continued to work there until he retired at age 68. The store operated by the new owners as the Fair Share. When my dad was running the store Uncle Dave would call Daddy there from Chicago. He thought that was fun because he could get the Walden telephone office and ask for “Number 1 Please.” That was the phone number of the store.
The four years I was in high school was the duration of World War II. It started when I was a freshman and ended in August after I had graduated in May, 1945. During those years many of our friends went to the military services. Bob enlisted in the Marines as soon as he graduated from high school.
The war affected our lives in many ways. There was rationing of gasoline and tires. No new cars were produced during the war so we were stuck with the one we had. Daddy had ordered a new one just before the war but it was never delivered. We also had rationing of shoes, nylon stockings were non-existent. Canned foods were rationed as were sugar and red meat. We had ration books for these things. I still have some of them.
We also collected scrap metal that was recycled to build war machinery and battleships.
After we moved to town, all of us kids worked. I worked for my dad in the store. Bob worked for another store down the street, and Florence worked both for the telephone company and the movie theater.
We had a lot of friends who came to our house often and Mom liked having them around. We had parties with a lot of people there. I remember her making a whole platter of hamburgers and her famous chocolate cake. We often played Monopoly and Tripoli with our friends, either at home or at the homes of our friends. I enjoyed the three years I spent in Walden before I graduated from high school and left home to attend the University of Colorado in Boulder.
COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
My parents were active in several organizations in North Park. My dad belonged to the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) from its inception. I remember selling “Buddy Poppies” on Main Street in Walden before every Memorial Day. This raised money for veterans’ services. The VFW started and sponsored the annual rodeo. Daddy did a lot of work on that. He was the Commander of the VFW for one year and remained active in the organization until he was very old.
Daddy was also active in the Lions’ Club, a civic organization that made needed improvements in the community. The Lions’ Club started the ambulance service which took severely injured or ill people to a hospital in either Laramie, Wyo. or Ft. Collins, Colo. Walden had one or two doctors but no hospital.
Daddy also participated with Bob in the Boy Scouts. He drove Bob to Walden every week for meetings when we weren’t snowed in.
Mom belonged to multitudes of clubs: The West Side Club was the County Agricultural Extension club and she belonged to this when we were on the ranch. She also belonged to the Women’s Club, Ladies’ Aid, Rebecca Lodge. Later on she joined the Happy Hour Sewing Club, which she belonged to until she was 94 years old. And, she belonged to the Business and Professional Women’s Club. In the Women’s Club and the B&PW, she traveled around the state to district meetings. After Daddy retired, he would drive her to these meetings and sometimes other people would ride along. Most of these meetings were in Western Colorado.
DANCES
There were dances in Walden and at Rand almost every Saturday night. We often went to these when we weren’t snowed in while we wee at the ranch. Everyone in the county would go to these dances and take their kids. The kids all slid around on the floor or curled up on the benches and napped. Sometimes we would dance with our parents. I could never do square dancing, though. It was too fast. Mom was an expert.
At midnight, everyone would either have a box lunch at the dance hall or go to someone’s home for a midnight supper. Then they would return to the dance which lasted until 2 a.m. or later. One time my parents were invited to the Swedish Picnic at the Old Homestead at Rand (which is still there). There were several Swedish families in North Park and they had an annual all day, all night festival. I remember when we were driving home to the Hill Ranch that it was getting light, which probably meant close to 4 a.m.
BASEBALL GAMES
While we were still at the ranch, my dad played baseball during the summer. There were several teams in North Park. Daddy played with the Cowdry team. Some of the games were played at a ball field behind the Cowdry store. Everyone would park their cars around the field and when someone made a good play, everyone would honk their horns. We kids enjoyed going into the store and getting soda pop and ice cream. The women would move from one car to another to visit. It was a big social get together.
Another social time was when everyone went to Walden on Sunday afternoon and parked their cars on main street mainly in front of the drug store where people got ice cream cones and then visited with each other standing in front of the cars.
MY COLLEGE DAYS
In August, 1945, I left home to attend the University of Colorado at Boulder. It was a big change for me as I had lived at the ranch and in the small town of Walden all of my life. Boulder, though small by today’s standards, was a big place for me. So was the campus. The University of Colorado was still in the program set for World War II as it had only ended a couple of weeks before I went there. The University had several U.S. Navy programs going on. The V-12 and V-5 programs and the Navy Language School where students were immersed in a language useful to the war effort. The men associated with those programs were housed in all the dormitories on campus and the women were housed in the Fraternity houses off campus. The fraternities reserved their reception areas for their meetings but the women who lived there could use them other times.
The first year I was at the University the student population was about 4500. The next year when most of the service men and women had been discharged from the military and the GI Bill had been initiated, the student population increased to 7200. That created a lot of problems with overcrowded classes, Saturday classes, impossible crowds at the bookstores which were much too small to accommodate the influx of students. The University even erected some temporary classrooms on campus.
During the first year, I found many new friends and expanded my horizons. Some of my classes were extremely boring, such as Modern European History. When I didn’t like a class, I didn’t do well in it. That was a classic example, but the same was true throughout my college years.
The second year, first semester, I lived off campus with an old couple on Arapahoe Street and ate my meals across the street with another family. I didn’t like that arrangement, so after Christmas I moved into a dormitory to room with a girl I met in one of my classes. I lived in the dorm for three semesters and had several roommates. After that I stayed out of school for two semesters to work and went back in a summer school and went year round until I graduated in August, 1949. That last stint, I lived at Miss Geer’s boarding house where Florence lived before I went back to school. I met my last roommate, Kiyo Suyematsu there. Florence moved to her sorority house but came around frequently as she had several friends there too.
It took me a while to settle on a major in my college studies. I started out with Math but decided that most people were better at that than I was. I was then a distributed major for a while but after taking several aptitude tests decided to major in Journalism. I made a lot of friends there and liked the studies. Our classes included reporting on Boulder City Council meetings and attending part of a murder trial. I got my degree in the Advertising sequence in J-School.
College was the worst and best times of my life. I wasn’t the best student nor in the social swim. I managed to weather all the rough times and graduated with average grades. Fortunately, in all the years of my career nobody ever asked me for a transcript of my grades. I doubt that would happen in the 21st century. I was able to work in journalistic endeavors for 30 years or so.
Ida Frances Marshall
I was born May 14, 1927 in the town of Walden, Colo. at the home of a woman, Addie Bruce, who provided housing for women in the community who were soon to give birth since many lived on ranches far from town. Of course, I don’t remember that. I joined my family, Horace and Lucy Mason and my brother Bob who was 11 months old and went to live on the Hill Ranch for the next 15 years. Florence joined us on October 27, 1928.
ABOUT THE RANCH:
The ranch was 10 miles north and 14 miles west of Walden. We didn’t have neighbors nearby. Sometimes there was someone living at the South End of the ranch at Lake Creek. The Boettcher was a few miles away. Wattenburg’s Ranch abutted the Lake Creek property. Cowdry was 13 miles east. The settlement of Pearl was 9 miles to the north.
The house where we lived was good sized, with 2 bedrooms downstairs and 3 upstairs. Other rooms were living room, dining room, kitchen and a large pantry. Attached on the West side of the house were three other rooms or areas: a shed where coal and wood were kept and the car was parked there in the winter when we were snowed in for several months and two storage rooms. The one room missing was a bathroom. The outhouse was outside behind the house.
The Hill Ranch was part of the Big Horn Cattle Company, which was owned by Denver millionaire, Charles Boettcher. He was founder of the Great West Sugar Company and Boettcher and Company, a financial entity. There were seven ranches in all, one of them a leased School Section near Coalmont, The Home Ranch (Grizzly Creek) in the Southern part of North Park, The Hansen Ranch at Cowdry, The Hill Ranch, Boettcher Ranch, Schaeffer Ranch (the latter two over the hogback from the Hill Ranch). And, later the Big Horn acquired the Hunter Ranch near Cowdry. My dad told me that including the pastures, the Hill Ranch was about 3000 acres. On the Hill Ranch itself, the usual hay harvest was about 1200 tons and there was additional hay on the lower end of the ranch at Lake Creek.I don’t know how many tons were put up there, but not as much as the main ranch.
The Hill Ranch had two bunkhouses for my dad’s hired men and the cowboys who worked the cattle under the supervision of a cow foreman. The second was only used during the summer haying season. My dad who worked on contract was in charge of irrigating the meadow, harvesting the hay and feeding it out to the cattle in winter as well as maintaining the fences, barns, etc. There were about 50 horses on the ranch which were my dad’s responsibility. Milk cows had to be milked twice a day. There were also chickens to provide meat and eggs. We made our own butter and cottage cheese from the milk.
Life was routine most of the time as there was a lot of work involved both in the house and the ranch work. My mother never worked outside. She had to clean the house with brooms and mops and scrub brushes. We had no vacuum cleaner but did have a push carpet sweeper for the rugs. Throw rugs were shaken outdoors and sometimes beaten with a broom while hanging on the clothesline. Of course when we kids were big enough, we helped with the housework.
When I was really small we had an old wooden washing machine that had a lever that was pushed back and forth to agitate the clothes. I don’t remember when, but we got a gasoline powered washer sometime in the 1930’s which we still had when the family moved to the town of Walden when I was 15. As I remember, my parents didn’t get a new electric washer until after I went to college in 1945. There was no dryer. Clothes had to be hung outdoors on a clothesline no matter what the temperature. Sometimes in winter they froze before one could get the clothespins attached. Eventually they dried most of the way and were brought into the house to finish. They did smell good though.
My mother baked all the bread that was needed for the family, hired men and cowboys. That was quite a feat in itself as it could be 8 to 16 loaves a week and even more during haying.. Occasionally when we went to town to buy groceries, they would get a loaf of store bread. At the time, we didn’t like it much.
We all helped with making the butter. We had hand cranked butter churns. When we were big enough, we kids could start the process because it was easy in the beginning but as the butter separated from the milk, it became harder to turn. Mom did the churning sometimes, but if Daddy was in the house, he would help. He was very good at the washing and pressing part of making the butter. We had a big wooden bowl and a large, flat paddle that was used to press the water out. The less water that remained, the longer the butter would keep. If the cows were giving a lot of milk, we would have excess butter that was stored in large crocks and layered with salt. That would keep it fresh for a long time.
One thing I remember vividly was getting the food supply that was to last several months during the time we were snowed in. Late in the fall, my dad would put in an order with the grocery store and hire a large truck (stake side truck) to deliver the order. We kids were always on hand to watch the unloading and storage. The pantry was a large sized room where all the cases of canned vegetables and fruits, dried fruits, pickles and other staples were stored. There was an area over the staircase where 100 pound sacks of sugar and flour were stored as well as sacks of various kinds of dried beans and some rice. There was a root cellar north of the house constructed of wooden poles and covered with soil several feet deep to keep out the cold. In it were the potatoes that were grown on the ranch, bushel baskets of apples, crates of oranges, and several kinds of root vegetables as well as cabbage that kept well for several months. Also on the north side of the house there was a meat house where hams, slabs of bacon, and large pieces of beef (maybe quarters) were stored. They did not spoil because they were frozen.
The house was heated with coal and wood stoves. There was a “pot bellied” stove in the living room for a number of years. It was eventually replaced with a circulating heater, which was essentially the same but had an attractive iron jacket around it so that it looked like a piece of furniture. I believe that is the same one that we took along when we moved to Walden. The kitchen had a large range for many pots and also a reservoir for heating water, since we didn’t have hot running water. We had cold running water in the house rather than a pump that many other rural homes in the area had. The water came from a spring and it was left running constantly so it wouldn’t get stale and the spring clogged. The water ran out of the house into a drainage ditch and then to a slough.
An aside to the drainage ditch: One time we were playing near it and Bob fell in head first. Fortunately, I managed to pull him out and he ran to the house with his head covered in black sludge.
An aside to the reservoir in the stove: One morning when I was seven years old, I was going to dip some water to wash with but the coffee pot was sitting just over the edge and it tipped over and spilled all over me, burning me severely on the ankle and foot. That was serious because we were snowed in because it was February. My dad called the doctor in town and they talked it over. Daddy had tannic acid for use on the horses and the doctor told him how to mix a solution and put it on my burns. There was a bandage over and it was kept wet with the solution. It got a funny grey sort of coating over the burn which had to be removed with a syringe. They a solution of bleach was used and after about a month the burn healed. I still have a scar from that incident.
Saturday night was bath time. We had three wash tubs that were filled with water heated on the stove. The tubs were set up in front of the kitchen range and the door left open in winter to warm the room. Towels were usually placed on the oven door to warm. My dad had a big fold up rubber bath tub that was a fascination to me. It had old fashioned folding legs on each end like an old camp cot. It had a drain hose that went into a hole in the kitchen floor so the water would drain out into the drain ditch. The wash tubs had to be emptied with a big dipper until they were light enough to pick up and dump down the sink. Mom usually took a wash basin to her bedroom and had a sponge bath every day.
Mom had a lot of cooking to do since there were five of our family and we always had one hired man year round. The Company paid Mom for the meals she provided for the cowboys. Sometimes there were one or two stationed at our ranch all the time. Then there could be several others who would be temporary depending on whether it was calving season, branding going on or whatever else the cattle needed.
The cattle were moved from ranch to ranch depending on the feed and the weather. Usually the hay at the Schaeffer Ranch was fed out first as that ranch was between the hogback and the Continental Divide and would get six feet of snow on the level in the winter.
In the summer haying season, my dad hired up to 16 men for several weeks. That was an adventure for me. Many of the same people came back year after year. They came from Missouri and Arkansas and Kansas, and from towns on the Eastern Plains of Colorado. These men were farmers who finished their own harvests before coming to North Park for haying season.
For that event, we had to enlarge the dining room table. The usual sized table was in two pieces and there was a permanent extension which was nailed in between the two pieces, making it big enough for about 20 people. We used oilcloth table covering which could be washed right on the table. We used enameled metal dishes for the haying season. We used several sets of salt and pepper shakers and sugar bowls since the table was very long. One of my chores was to see that they were full before meals. Also, we had several big pitchers of milk at each meal. We had three meals each day as the men were doing hard physical labor.
Mom had a cook helper for the haying season. Usually Daddy hired a couple; the man would be what we called the cycle grinder (for the mowing machines) and took the “grub wagon” to the field each noon. They would have a room in the house. Mom cooked a hot meal at noon for the hay crew and packed it in two specially made wooden boxes which were put on the wagon and carried out to the hay crew. She made meals like roast beef, mashed potatoes, vegetables, pies, coffee and milk and homemade bread. A couple of times I remember the grub wagon was the victim of a runaway when the horses just took off running and there was trouble stopping them. Hopefully this only happened on the way home because what was in those boxes was really a mess.
Sometimes the three of us kids would go along to the field with the grub wagon. After Bob was 10 years old, he drove a rake so was part of the hay crew. Sometimes Daddy would let us ride on his “sweep” which is sometimes called a buck rake. It was used to gather up the hay that had been raked into rows. Then the hay was delivered to the stacker, where a pusher (a piece of equipment) was used to push the hay up a slide using a team of horses, The hay was dropped down onto the stack and two men would put it into the right place.(Occasionally Daddy would let us ride the pusher which was a big thrill.) That created a stack that remained in the field until fed to the cattle and horses. Nobody uses this kind of machinery or horses in haying anymore. The stacks were fenced after the hay season and before the cattle were let into the field to graze on the stubble. Later in the year when there was little feed or it was covered with snow, Daddy and his hired man fed the hay to the stock.
During the winter we had school every week day but sometimes on the weekends we would go with my dad to feed the cattle. The big hay sled was pulled by a team of big work horses. The men would go out to whatever stack they were using, load the hay onto the sled and take it to where the cattle were. It was fun to ride on the loaded sled. Sometimes we kids would get on our skis and loop a long rope around one of the rungs on the ladder which was part of the back of the sled and hang onto it and get an easy ride. If we lost the rope, we were out of luck!
One time before I was school age, I went with Daddy to feed. He first had to open the water hole so the cattle could have a drink. He had broken the ice on top of the water so it was in big chunks. Of course, I had my own short handled pitchfork and was trying to get the ice out when I dropped the pitchfork and fell into the water. The temperature was below zero. Daddy snapped me up out of the water and got the horses into a fast run to the house. I was no worse for the wear on that adventure, but Mom and Daddy were both upset about it.
In summer we kids spent a lot of time outdoors. Our dad built a swing set and Florence and I spent a lot of time using it. There was also a turning bar which was favored by Bob. Of course we found lots of things to do like playing in the watering trough which provided water for the milk cows and the horses that were kept in the corral and barn. Then there were the roofs – the house and barn – which we played on frequently. It was a real struggle for me to get onto the barn roof as we had to get on the top pole of the gate which was latched with a hook and could move easily. Then we had to catch a pole at the top of the frame and hoist ourselves up onto the roof. I remember Mom would get up there with us. One time Bob got down and opened the gate so none of the rest of us could get down. Mom hollered at Bob a lot until he hooked the gate and we got down.
We had a play sized ranch of our own with a barn and stick horses. We used horns sawed off the calves as our cattle and we moved them around by kicking the horns. This was on orders from Bob. Sometimes I got tired of it and made an excuse to go in the house. I did this a lot, especially in winter because I didn’t like to be outside in the snow and cold. We named our ranch the Hoo Doo Cattle Company and when we were in school, we produced a newspaper and Hoo Doo News was part of it. There are still some of these newspapers around.
An interesting aside about the paper we used: One year Malcolm Little who worked for the Chicago Tribune and was the husband of our Aunt Florence, sent us a huge box of all kinds of paper in all sizes. Some was even padded. That paper is what we used for our Hill Ranch School News. Some of that paper was around more than 50 years later.
Another entertainment was the dump. It was a short walk from the house and we could spend a lot of time digging around and taking things apart. There was an old car in the dump, an old record player and other things. We had a lot of fun there.
We also had a prairie dog town that was fascinating to us. The three of us would carry buckets of water out there and pour them down the holes so the prairie dogs would have to run out another hole. We tried to recognize them but they all look alike so we couldn’t do that.
An evening pastime in summer was watching the barn swallows. Near dusk they would all come out of their mud nests that were along the eaves of the barn. There were a lot of insects in the air, particularly mosquitoes, so the swallows had a feast. We would try to catch our eyes onto one bird and see if we could follow it on its flight.
Florence and I played dolls a lot. We would dress up, take our dolls and sit in an old roadster car that was up on blocks and used to saw wood. We probably did a lot of traveling and gossiping while we were doing that. Our Grandmother Mason and Aunt Jane sent us beautiful dolls when I was probably 11 years old and Florence about 10. They had made complete wardrobes for these dolls. They were very special. I passed my doll on to my granddaughter Melissa when she was 7 years old. Florence still has hers.
In the summer during our grade school years, we frequently had friends from town come to stay for a week at a time. I am sure their parents liked that. We had both boys who were friends of Bob’s and girls who were friends of Florence and me. Sometimes I would go spend a few days with the Ray family but Florence got too homesick. One time she tried it but our dad had to meet Mrs. Ray at Cowdry in a heavy rainstorm late at night so Florence could go home. One time when I was about 12 we went to visit the Lamb family in Wellington, Colo. I stayed for 10 days but after one night Mr. Lamb took Florence to Fort Collins so she could take the bus home to Walden. I remember she lost a pretty jacket on that junket.
Also during the summers a family from Sterling, Colo. came to their cabin which was a quarter mile or so to the North of the ranch. They came to the ranch to get milk and would invite us to spend time with them. They had two children, Jane and Charles, both who were older than we were. When I visited the ranch in 2009, the person who looks after the Hill Ranch told me that the Sandhouse family built a nice new cabin a few years before and that Charles still went there in the summer. He must have been nearly 90 at that time.
Mom enjoyed outdoor activities and after the hay crew moved to the Lake Creek Ranch to finish haying Mom would decide that we would climb the hogback. So we packed a sack lunch and climbed. At the top you could see the valley on the west side and the Continental Divide Mountains not far away. Other times we would go on a picnic to Independence Mountain. From that vantage point, much of North Park could be seen.
HORSES
We all rode horses. Mom was an excellent horse woman but didn’t have time to go with us a lot. Of course, Daddy rode frequently for doing his work on the ranch. When we kids were small, we had one horse that was very tame and had a colt. We sometimes rode double, or even all three of us. When I was about four, Trixie went up on the cellar with me on top without a saddle. It was a very steep incline and I fell off. I would not get back on a horse for a long time. Gradually, our dad acquired several more horses that belonged to the family.. Trixie was a ranch horse. He bought Monk from a friend at Rand and he was shared by Florence and me. He bought Sox for Bob but sometimes I would ride him too. He would try to brush me off when we were going through the trees. Monk would throw his head up and down to fight the horseflies in the summer. I didn’t like to ride him then. Anyway, he was mostly Florence’s horse. For my 10th birthday, I got a horse of my own, Diamond. He was a great horse and I liked him very much. Sometimes if we were crossing a ditch, he would just leap over it and that was a surprise to me. One time, he ran away with me and stopped dead in his tracks in front of the corral gate. I almost fell off.
Daddy had two horses. The one he liked best was old and his name was Rex. He was mostly a pensioner but occasionally Daddy would ride him and Bob did some. I only rode him once. Then Daddy bought a horse from Pete Monroe from the south end of North Park. His name was High and his main characteristic was that he bucked everyone off, especially in the morning. It was a challenge for people to ride him. One time he ran away and went to where he came from, which was maybe 30 miles from the Hill Ranch. We took Daddy to where he was and Daddy rode him home, except late in the evening we were anxious because Daddy was still not home and it was getting dusky. As we looked down the road from the lower end of the ranch, we finally spotted him walking and leading the horse. High had thrown Daddy off and Daddy had a broken collar bone so could not get back on the horse. Of course, at that late hour, Mom had to take Daddy to town to the doctor to get the bone set.
Mom had an old horse, Jimmy, that Daddy had given her before they were married. She was especially fond of that horse, but he didn’t get ridden much after I can remember because he was old by that time. She liked one of the ranch horses, Dell, that was a colt of Trixie, and Mom rode that horse whenever she could. Trixie also had another colt, Blackie, that was a riding as well as a work horse. Trixie was also both.
There were a lot of other horses on the ranch that were used for work – pulling the hay sleds in winter and the haying machinery in the summer. More were used in the summer. There were several year-round teams that were kept in the corrals by the barn. Others were in the meadow except when needed. Daddy had a favorite horse, Buster, that he loaned to some carpenters who were repairing the flumes that shored up the ditch that ran from Big Creek Lake to the Hill Ranch. Unfortunately, they did not feed him properly up there in the mountains and he became very ill. Daddy was leading him back to the ranch through the forest when the horse became too ill to go any further. I remember taking a hot dinner and coffee to a place at the edge of the forest and then Daddy walking back into the dark where he stayed all night with the horse until it died. That is something I will not forget because I was so worried about my dad. It was scary.
HOW THE MASONS GOT TO NORTH PARK
One of my dad’s brothers, Ralph Mason also lived in North Park. He was the first Mason to go there from Chicago. He had worked on a ranch on the Laramie River one summer while he was a veterinary student at the University of Illinois. Evidently he had ridden by horseback or taken the train into North Park and fell in love with the country there. He always liked it, thought it was paradise. He loved to show it off to his family from Illinois. Ralph and his brother Norm homesteaded at Owl Creek. Their father and Horace came out to see about the operation as their father had helped finance it. Horace stayed a while but had not graduated from high school yet so Ralph insisted that Horace return to Chicago to finish high school. He did that but soon after returned to North Park and worked with Ralph and Norm at the Owl Creek Ranch. Horace also went to the army during his years on the Owl Creek Ranch with his brothers. Their Grandma Hurd from Chicago came out and lived with them for several years. When she was in her eighties, they made her return to Chicago since they were sometimes away riding with the cattle for several days and they worried about her staying alone. She didn’t want to leave. She lived until she was about 102.
After Ralph married Hazel, Horace went to the Big Horn Cattle Company and got a job. I don’t know when Norm left Owl Creek. When I remember, he had married Ila Cross and was living in California. During the depression, he came back and worked for my dad on the Hill Ranch for a year or more. Horace worked on the Big Horn Home Ranch for a few years and when he married Lucy they gave him a job managing the Hill Ranch. Mom had once said she would never live on that ranch, but she lived there for 17 years and shed a lot of tears over leaving.
CHICAGO RELATIVES WHO VISITED US AT THE RANCH
A few times relatives came from Chicago to visit with us. When I was about six years old, the Little family – Malcolm, Florence, Jane and Charles – came.. Mom and Daddy showed them around the area, took them fishing and to Big Creek Lake. Malcolm made fried bread. They probably didn’t like the primitive life because they never returned. I remember they brought us tennis rackets. We didn’t know anything about tennis.
Grandma Mason (Frances) brought Charles Little for a visit about 1937 (according to a picture we have). All I remember about that is how Mom lectured me for weeks about not swearing or giggling. And, I remember Charles thinking the town of Walden was somewhat of a joke as he stood in the middle of Main Street and directed traffic. I can still see him doing that. We took them to Granby where they took the train back to Chicago.
One time Leonard Lange (my dad’s cousin) and a friend of his visited. All I remember about that is him playing with us kids out in the yard. We were still pretty small.
Jane Mason and Jane Little came for a visit when I was seven or eight years old. I think Jane was 9. All I remember about that was that I combed out the curls of Jane’s Shirley Temple doll. That was a disaster and Daddy made me give her money for a new wig.
One year Jane Little came out to Colorado on the train by herself. She spent time with Uncle Ralph and Aunt Hazel and then with us. She didn’t like to stay with Ralph and Hazel because Hazel made her eat oatmeal. If she wouldn’t eat it for breakfast, it was lunch.
After we lived in Walden, Dave Mason visited. I think he had visited the ranch also because I remember him giving us nicknames like “Idawanna” because that is what I said a lot. He was at our house in Walden when I was a senior in high school. I have a nice photo of my dad that he took while he was there.
MOM’S FAMILY: THE DONELSONS
My mother, Lucy, was born in North Park in 1897, the daughter of William and Ida Donelson. She had a brother, Henry. William had been a pioneer in the area, arriving about 1880 to work in the silver mines at Teller City, which now only has a few remnants of log cabins. It is grown up with trees which had been cleared for the mining camp. Mom said when she was young there were no trees among the cabins. Anyway, when the price of silver fell, the mines were closed. William (My grandmother, Ida, called him Billy) then took up a homestead down on the river north of the town of Rand. He had friends do the same and after they had “proved up” he bought them out to establish a good sized ranch. Later he built a ranch house and barn up on the high ground which is now the Stevens Ranch just north of the town of Rand.. My grandmother designed the house. The barn was built from the materials of the buildings of the original ranch. My grandfather was an innovative man, grubbing sagebrush to create a meadow and raise other crops. He had the first steam tractor in the community. Unfortunately, he contracted tuberculosis and died at age 52 in 1908. My mother was 11 at the time. Henry was 15.
A few years before my grandfather died, he and my grandmother became the guardians of his nephew and four nieces because their mother had died of Scarlet Fever a few years before that and then his brother died and left them orphans. They children were Fred, Mary, Eva, Josie and Hazel. Hazel was one year younger than my mother and was the youngest. Fred was probably 16 when my grandfather died. My grandmother then had the responsibility of finishing raising those children and her own two.
There was a lot of debt on the ranch because of my grandfather’s illness. They had traveled to California to try to find a cure and had also visited doctors in Ft. Collins. After my grandfather died, Grandma tried to keep everything together but had to sell the ranch. She moved to Walden, bought a house and rented rooms to school teachers and provided their meals to earn money. The original sale fell through and they moved back to the ranch for a time but eventually sold it.
When my mother was a teenager, Grandma, my mother (and I suppose some of the girls) moved to Ft. Collins for one year where Grandma also rented rooms to teachers and provided meals. She made this move because my mother was musically talented and she wanted to have her take piano lessons from a music teacher in Greeley (Mrs. Eldridge. Mom took the train to Greeley every weekend for her piano lesson and stayed overnight with the music teacher. Then she would return to Ft. Collins the next day. She was a good pianist and gave piano lessons to children for many years. Later, when mom attended Colorado State Teachers’ College (now Univ. of Northern Colo.) in Greeley, she lived with Mrs. Eldridge and kept in touch with her until Mrs. Eldridge died.
Henry, his mother and Lucy bought a small ranch between Walden and Cowdry when my mother was 18. Mom took the teacher’s examination, which meant she was a certified teacher, and taught for seven years in one or two room schools before she married Horace Mason.
Henry and his mother lived on that ranch until I was 12 years old. The year I was 10, Mom and Daddy agreed to let me go there and help Grandma during haying. I was there for 10 days and did all the running to the milk house, washed dishes, peeled potatoes and set the table for all the meals. They raised sheep and cattle. The ranch was small. My mother said too small to make a living. They moved to Walden and bought a small home. Uncle Henry worked for the Fish Hatchery and for the County on highway maintenance. He had some big stories to tell about plowing the road to Laramie in winter. He also was County Water Commissioner but that may have been while they were still living on the ranch.
My grandma, Ida Donelson, had crippling rheumatoid arthritis before she was 50 years old. I don’t remember her not being bent over and having bad knees. Later her hands were severely affected also. She kept house for Uncle Henry until she was 82 even though she was suffering from the effects of the arthritis. Finally, after she fell when Henry was away on a job, she went to live with my parents in the house they owned and which Florence still has. She lived with them for 8 years until she had a massive stroke and died. I was very fond of my Grandma Donelson.
William Donelson’s nieces and nephew:
Fred had a ranch at Rand and did a lot of horse trading. My mother was critical of him and said he was a big liar. He was a good friend of Ralph Mason after Ralph moved to the Monroe Ranch at Rand. Fred and his wife Lucille had two sons, Philip and Dick. Philip mostly lived in Denver but Dick lived in North Park until he became ill and moved to Ft. Collins for his final years. Both these men died at fairly young ages.
Mary was married when she was quite young to Les Ish, who left her after the honeymoon and took all her money. Then she married Will Rosenbaum and they had a daughter, Jean. When Jean was 20 or so, Mary divorced Will and married Fred Adams. They bought a ranch near the sand hills called the Horse Ranch. The Ray family had lived there previously. Mary lived to be 100 years old. She and Fred celebrated 50 years of marriage a few years before she died.
Eva worked in Denver for the Welfare Department but got appendicitis when she was in her thirties. Since she was a Christian Scientist, she refused surgery and died. Lucy and Henry went to Denver for the funeral.
Josie was married to Charles Hankins (Hank) and they lived in Wyoming, both in Wheatland and Buffalo. We saw them a number of times at Mary ‘s home. He died of an aneurism and then Josie lived on the ranch with Mary in her own mobile home until she was stricken with dementia and was in a nursing home in Laramie for a number of years. She was elderly when she died.
Hazel worked as an occupational therapist for the U.S. Public Health Service, first at Fitzsimmons Hospital in Denver, then at Letterman Hospital in San Francisco until World War II when she was transferred to Little Rock, Ark. where the government had moved the World War I veterans which whom she worked. A few years later she transferred to the Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) Center at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she lived until she retired. After she retired, she married Johnny McFarland, whom she had known when she was young. They lived in California until he died. She died of cancer in Ft. Collins, Colo.
BACK AT THE HILL RANCH -- THE HILL RANCH SCHOOL
When Bob was five, years old, Mom and Daddy had to make a decision. Many mothers moved to town with their children for the school year and left their husbands to do the ranch work and keep the house going. My folks decided they didn’t want to do that and with Mom being a certified teacher with seven years experience they decided to have a school at the ranch with Mom as the teacher. The County Superintendent of Schools oversaw the curriculum and progress, coming for a visit once or twice a year.
The schoolroom was one end of the kitchen. There were two tables, one large and one small. One of us sat at the small table and two at the larger one. We had a bookcase and a blackboard. We had regular school hours, starting at 9 am and going until noon with one recess. Then we started again at 1 pm and went until 3:30 with a recess or other activity. Of course, we were all in different grades, but Mom was used to that. She had taught in one room school houses for several years.
This was a real undertaking for Mom since she still had to take care of the house and do all the cooking, baking bread, making butter and cottage cheese, do the washing and ironing, etc. She frequently would prop a text book on the drawer of a cabinet while she was cooking and listening to our reading lessons at the same time. She could work at the stove stirring something while watching us do math at the blackboard.
Mom had a lot of creative ideas and was artistic, so she worked interesting projects into our school work. We participated in countywide scrapbook contests when we were in upper grades and won honors for our work. We always had art and craft classes during school and sometimes after. When we did a scrapbook on conservation, we won the county and Bob got to go to Denver to present it at a statewide assembly. I have that scrapbook. Florence also won a trip to Denver for a Safety Project..
The county had a school exhibit every spring where all the small schools would bring their students’ best work and assemble displays with a banner for each school. Everyone around the community would attend and look everything over. We always participated in this. There were prizes for the best display and Mom worked hard on it.
When the weather was good in the fall, on Fridays Mom took us to Walden to visit school in the appropriate grades. We participated just like the other kids and sometimes showed off a bit if we were ahead of their class. We got to know all the kids in town and enjoyed being a part of the town school. When we graduated from eighth grade, the Walden school invited us to be part of the graduating class. Occasionally through the years we would visit other schools, Higo, Pearl and Cowdry. We, at least I, preferred Walden. The other schools were one room schools.
One thing I liked was that every summer we got to pick our Reading Circle books. Those were grade appropriate books that we read outside of school hours and wrote book reviews. I often picked adventure type books and I still like that kind of reading. I have a few of those books today and there are still some in the Walden house.
When Bob finished eighth grade, he had to go to high school in Walden. He lived in town with the John Anderson family during the week and went home to the ranch on weekends until the road got too bad and we were snowed in for a few months. When I went to high school I did the same thing for the first year. Bob and I both lived at Andersons. There were several other students there also. Lynn Howard became my first ever roommate other than Florence. Lynn’s parents lived in Rand and operated the store there. Another girl, Ursula Simpson stayed there on occasion. Her parents later moved to town and they lived across the street from my parents. There were quite a few boys at Anderson’s. Bob and one or two others stayed in the home but there were some who lived in cabins on the grounds. When it was time for Florence to go to high school, World War II had started and it was expensive for three of us to board in town so Daddy decided to leave the ranch and move to town. That was the end of the Hill Ranch School.
LIFE IN TOWN
The family moved to town in May, 1942. My dad bought a house after the family had considered a few others. Mom and Dad lived in that home until he died in 1978. Mom continued to live there until she became ill in 1992 when she moved to Denver and lived with Florence and Dick Roberts until her death. She still owned the house in Walden and we went there some while she was ill. Florence still owns the house and Steve Roberts goes there frequently.
Daddy ran the Mossman General Store. It sold everything from groceries to clothing, to household accessories, to nails and kerosene. Since Mrs. Mossman had died and her niece, Hazel Taylor owned it, it had lost business, so it was Daddy’s job to bring it back to profitability. He did that and eventually the store was sold but Daddy continued to work there until he retired at age 68. The store operated by the new owners as the Fair Share. When my dad was running the store Uncle Dave would call Daddy there from Chicago. He thought that was fun because he could get the Walden telephone office and ask for “Number 1 Please.” That was the phone number of the store.
The four years I was in high school was the duration of World War II. It started when I was a freshman and ended in August after I had graduated in May, 1945. During those years many of our friends went to the military services. Bob enlisted in the Marines as soon as he graduated from high school.
The war affected our lives in many ways. There was rationing of gasoline and tires. No new cars were produced during the war so we were stuck with the one we had. Daddy had ordered a new one just before the war but it was never delivered. We also had rationing of shoes, nylon stockings were non-existent. Canned foods were rationed as were sugar and red meat. We had ration books for these things. I still have some of them.
We also collected scrap metal that was recycled to build war machinery and battleships.
After we moved to town, all of us kids worked. I worked for my dad in the store. Bob worked for another store down the street, and Florence worked both for the telephone company and the movie theater.
We had a lot of friends who came to our house often and Mom liked having them around. We had parties with a lot of people there. I remember her making a whole platter of hamburgers and her famous chocolate cake. We often played Monopoly and Tripoli with our friends, either at home or at the homes of our friends. I enjoyed the three years I spent in Walden before I graduated from high school and left home to attend the University of Colorado in Boulder.
COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
My parents were active in several organizations in North Park. My dad belonged to the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) from its inception. I remember selling “Buddy Poppies” on Main Street in Walden before every Memorial Day. This raised money for veterans’ services. The VFW started and sponsored the annual rodeo. Daddy did a lot of work on that. He was the Commander of the VFW for one year and remained active in the organization until he was very old.
Daddy was also active in the Lions’ Club, a civic organization that made needed improvements in the community. The Lions’ Club started the ambulance service which took severely injured or ill people to a hospital in either Laramie, Wyo. or Ft. Collins, Colo. Walden had one or two doctors but no hospital.
Daddy also participated with Bob in the Boy Scouts. He drove Bob to Walden every week for meetings when we weren’t snowed in.
Mom belonged to multitudes of clubs: The West Side Club was the County Agricultural Extension club and she belonged to this when we were on the ranch. She also belonged to the Women’s Club, Ladies’ Aid, Rebecca Lodge. Later on she joined the Happy Hour Sewing Club, which she belonged to until she was 94 years old. And, she belonged to the Business and Professional Women’s Club. In the Women’s Club and the B&PW, she traveled around the state to district meetings. After Daddy retired, he would drive her to these meetings and sometimes other people would ride along. Most of these meetings were in Western Colorado.
DANCES
There were dances in Walden and at Rand almost every Saturday night. We often went to these when we weren’t snowed in while we wee at the ranch. Everyone in the county would go to these dances and take their kids. The kids all slid around on the floor or curled up on the benches and napped. Sometimes we would dance with our parents. I could never do square dancing, though. It was too fast. Mom was an expert.
At midnight, everyone would either have a box lunch at the dance hall or go to someone’s home for a midnight supper. Then they would return to the dance which lasted until 2 a.m. or later. One time my parents were invited to the Swedish Picnic at the Old Homestead at Rand (which is still there). There were several Swedish families in North Park and they had an annual all day, all night festival. I remember when we were driving home to the Hill Ranch that it was getting light, which probably meant close to 4 a.m.
BASEBALL GAMES
While we were still at the ranch, my dad played baseball during the summer. There were several teams in North Park. Daddy played with the Cowdry team. Some of the games were played at a ball field behind the Cowdry store. Everyone would park their cars around the field and when someone made a good play, everyone would honk their horns. We kids enjoyed going into the store and getting soda pop and ice cream. The women would move from one car to another to visit. It was a big social get together.
Another social time was when everyone went to Walden on Sunday afternoon and parked their cars on main street mainly in front of the drug store where people got ice cream cones and then visited with each other standing in front of the cars.
MY COLLEGE DAYS
In August, 1945, I left home to attend the University of Colorado at Boulder. It was a big change for me as I had lived at the ranch and in the small town of Walden all of my life. Boulder, though small by today’s standards, was a big place for me. So was the campus. The University of Colorado was still in the program set for World War II as it had only ended a couple of weeks before I went there. The University had several U.S. Navy programs going on. The V-12 and V-5 programs and the Navy Language School where students were immersed in a language useful to the war effort. The men associated with those programs were housed in all the dormitories on campus and the women were housed in the Fraternity houses off campus. The fraternities reserved their reception areas for their meetings but the women who lived there could use them other times.
The first year I was at the University the student population was about 4500. The next year when most of the service men and women had been discharged from the military and the GI Bill had been initiated, the student population increased to 7200. That created a lot of problems with overcrowded classes, Saturday classes, impossible crowds at the bookstores which were much too small to accommodate the influx of students. The University even erected some temporary classrooms on campus.
During the first year, I found many new friends and expanded my horizons. Some of my classes were extremely boring, such as Modern European History. When I didn’t like a class, I didn’t do well in it. That was a classic example, but the same was true throughout my college years.
The second year, first semester, I lived off campus with an old couple on Arapahoe Street and ate my meals across the street with another family. I didn’t like that arrangement, so after Christmas I moved into a dormitory to room with a girl I met in one of my classes. I lived in the dorm for three semesters and had several roommates. After that I stayed out of school for two semesters to work and went back in a summer school and went year round until I graduated in August, 1949. That last stint, I lived at Miss Geer’s boarding house where Florence lived before I went back to school. I met my last roommate, Kiyo Suyematsu there. Florence moved to her sorority house but came around frequently as she had several friends there too.
It took me a while to settle on a major in my college studies. I started out with Math but decided that most people were better at that than I was. I was then a distributed major for a while but after taking several aptitude tests decided to major in Journalism. I made a lot of friends there and liked the studies. Our classes included reporting on Boulder City Council meetings and attending part of a murder trial. I got my degree in the Advertising sequence in J-School.
College was the worst and best times of my life. I wasn’t the best student nor in the social swim. I managed to weather all the rough times and graduated with average grades. Fortunately, in all the years of my career nobody ever asked me for a transcript of my grades. I doubt that would happen in the 21st century. I was able to work in journalistic endeavors for 30 years or so.