History buffs urged to hit fair's Neppel Days

Event seeking stories from area residents

Even though he was born there, Harold Hochstatter is too young to have any memories of the town known as Neppel.

But as he remembers it, his fondest memory of growing up in the area ended with "one heck of a spanking."

The now 68-year-old and his older brother, Cliff, then approximately 9 and 11 years old, came upon a series of boats that had been used at one point by the Mini-Wash Fish Company, which had long since ceased its business.

"We had just never seen anything like that great huge toy, unattended," Hochstatter recalled. "We could just range all over, and we felt like Vikings. And they were so huge, compared to anything."

Upon their fascination in making the discovery, the Hochstatter brothers ended up staying too long.

When Hochstatter and his brother finally returned home, "nobody was interested in our explanation," he remembered with a grin.

Neppel was a small town platted around the body of water Moses Lake in about 1911, while Moses Lake was a small town up around what is presently Nelson Road. As Neppel grew and more people came to town, the town of Moses Lake, which was never platted, failed to develop and the federal government pulled out the small town's post office in 1934. The town of Neppel voted to change its name to Moses Lake in 1938.

At the Grant County Fair Aug. 16, local history buffs will have the chance to meet and talk with people acquainted with the history of their own area, as the annual Neppel Days will meet at noon in the Grange Hall.

"Before it used to be just a reunion," Hochstatter said of the event. "We who were old Neppel folks wanted to get together, just have a reunion, just shoot the bull and see our friends. That's what we wanted to do. But hey, we're running out of old Neppel guys. We're going away. There was 326 people in Moses Lake in 1940, and I was one of that 326. But hey, you can't make much of a reunion if you take that census and move it forward 60 years. A lot of those folks now aren't going to make the cut."

For Hochstatter, the appeal comes in knowing the stories of the things and the people, and he likens the experience to coming upon an old photograph in a drawer, and finding out who the people are in the picture.

"Our goal now is to broaden the interest in the history of Moses Lake, and Neppel," Hochstatter said, noting the event is open to everyone.

But Hochstatter cautioned of a danger to nostalgia, and the ability of some people to get completely lost in the past and live there. He recommended instead using history to gain some perspective on the future, while trying to save as much as possible.

It is the hope of Hochstatter and other coordinators of the Neppel Days event to be able to identify and catalog some photographs, in addition to socializing. As with last year's event, Hochstatter is asking for people to share their own photographs, and said he will have a copying machine on site.

"It's not anything remarkable," he said of the local history, but added that it is the roots of the area. For instance, Hochstatter's father owned a garage in Moses Lake, and he likened having a car break down in the area to being "stranded in the middle of the Sierra Desert." No one came to Moses Lake by accident, he remembered with a smile of those times.

The town changed with the introduction of water and irrigation, Hochstatter said, pointing to the way the numbers increased from 326 in 1940, about 2,700 in 1950 and 11,000 in 1960.

"From 1950 to 1960, water came, and the town changed dramatically," he said. "Water made the difference."

Those numbers also "pose the problem" for the Neppel people, Hochstatter said, because more people came in those formative years following the introduction of water.

"We would like to involve them in the history of this town," he said. "They don't have to zero in on our history, we want to know their history. That's kind of our appeal, that the town doubled and doubled again. There's a lot of stories that we're not getting that we'd love to hear."