FRED G. HARRIS
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Still active and spry, one of Franklin County’s oldest residents, Fred G. Harris resides at his home about 10 miles west of Pasco. He arrived in the county with his mother when only a young boy in 1889 before Washington became a state. Accompanying him and his mother west were his grandfather, Alex Gordon, his Uncle Will Gordon and his Aunt Lou Fender, and her husband Lincoln Fender and their two children.
With salvaged lumber bough from the Northern Pacific after the railroad bridge across the Columbia River was completed, his grandfather built his house on “A” Street, and a blacksmith shop on Second Street which he operated until his retirement. He also built two other houses.
Harris attended school when the schoolhouse was still in what is today down town Pasco, located in the southwest corner of the block which today contains the Pasco city hall, the down town postoffice, and numerous business buildings. There were 57 pupils when he started school in 1893, and Mr. Dorsey was one of the teachers, he recalls. In those days the grades and the deportment marks of students were published. He listed the names of his classmates as follows: Mabel Marvin, Fred Clark, Maude Coleman, Bessie Lyda, Fred Spates, Myrla Plumb, Jessie Helm, Roy Wehmeyer, Grace Coldman, Norbert Sylvester, Earl Wallace and Jessie Leach.
He recalls seeing many Indians along the river, and they were feared by many people. I don’t think they ever hurt anyone, but when they were around everybody locked their doors, else the Indians would walk right in and pick up anything they wanted, he said. To cure illnesses the Indians used the sweat bath. When the measles epidemic struck in 1893 the Indians built dome-shaped stone buildings about four feet across, with a door in front, just large enough to crawl inside, where rocks that had been heated over a fire had been taken in. When the patient got inside, hot water would be poured on the hot rocks, creating steam, while the patient was inside and while a deerskin door flap was closed.
When they got hot enough they would come out and jump into the cold Columbia River, with he result that many died, as that treatment “drove the measles in,” Harris said. The survivors would come to town after dark and go back dragging wooden boards with which to build coffins to bury their dead, in the meanwhile singing in a fearsome sing-song fashion.
Harris also recalls seeing “quite a few” Chinese people working for the railroad, who lived in shacks built over caves or cellars near the railroad track. They used flattened five-gallon oil cans for building material. All of them had long pigtails or braided hair tied with silk thread. Some of the Pasco boys would run up and jerk the pigtails and then run away.
Harris remembers a city well on the corner of First and Lewis Streets, and another one on the school block mentioned above. Some water was hauled from the Columbia River, and we could also get water from the railroad depot. Ice was cut from Sprague Lake (near Sprague, Washington) in winter and brought to Pasco to be stored in the icehouse for summer use. Workers were paid $1.50 a day for a 10-hour day to help harvest the ice, he added.
The Presidential election of 1896 brings memories for Harris. He said that when William Jennings Bryan came through on his special train there was a big Democratic rally with fireworks and all the fixings. Fireworks and red railroad fuzees lit thing up. When McKinley came through he too spoke from the rear of the train. Since my grandfather was a Democrat and my stepfather was a Republican I got both side of the situation, Harris said.
In an article written for the FRANKLIN FLYER, William F. Harris, Fred’s son, wrote that his mother, whose maiden name was Lura Mae Wallace, was born on January 8, 1890 on her parent’s homestead just north of Pasco where the airport is now located. In 1893 they moved out to the old Radelmiller place out in Riverview, where Wallace established a horticultural experiment station, with more than 25 varieties of grapes, apples, plums and cherries, but which were all lost in the great flood of 1894 when they were covered with drift wood. He had used a horse-powered water pump to irrigate his orchard.
Fred and Lura were married in 1912, and their first home was down on the Columbia where Big Pasco, now a part of the Port of Pasco, is located. It is here that Harris started the very productive Diversity Farm, which became known across the country, as the Northern Pacific used it as an example of the agricultural prosperity with which they lured new settlers to come west.
In 1942 came a blow that made the family “sick at heart,” when the U.S. Government took the farm and built the Army Reconsignment Depot (Big Pasco) there, destroying many years of hard work. All that remains from this showplace is the reinforced concrete of the large dairy barn that Harris built in 1926. A new dairy farm operation was established 10 miles west of Pasco on the banks of the Columbia River, now being operated by one of his sons, F. Wallace Harris.
Harris, who celebrated his 90th birthday in April 1977, today lives in a brown stucco home overlooking the Columbia River 10 miles west of Pasco. He still raises a garden that includes tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, and peppers, not only for himself, but also for sale. “It keeps me in running money,” he says. At his 90th birthday party he reminisced about his early Pasco days, recalling that when he arrived in 1889 most of the town was on the East side, and there was a row of houses along each side of the Northern Pacific tracks. There were 16 saloons in town by then, and in those days there were ten passenger trains per day in and out of town in a 24-hour period. Twenty-five to thirty hoboes would come in on every train, he said. He recalls a devastating fire around 1895 which burned all of the buildings on Tacoma Avenue between Lewis and Clark Street. It occurred on the 4th of July, probably caused by firecrackers that ignited the papers, dried Russian thistles and other material that had blown under the wooden sidewalks, he added.
The dairy that he and his wife developed obviously was one of the highlights of his life that he recalled. “When we finished the large concrete dairy barn in 1926 we held a barn dance to celebrate the occasion, which is still remembered by the hundreds who came and participated,” Harris said. “Our dairy was probably one of the most modern in Eastern Washington. I doubt if there is anyone in Eastern Washington who has lived longer in one place,” Harris remarked, as he reminisced about his 88 years residence in the Pasco area.
