Klasen hauled coal to fire generators in 1919

There was no general electricity when Paul Klasen Sr. arrived in Soap Lake in 1919. Read on.

Grant County history

The Grant County Historical Society has compiled several volumes of Grant County history. The books are available for purchase at the Historical Society Museum gift shop in Ephrata.

I bought the series in 2009 and secured permission to relay some of the history through this column. Memories of Grant County, compiled from taped interviews by the Grant County Historical Society.

Today we begin the story of Soap Lake by Paul Klasen Sr. recorded May 11, 1976:

I hope my talk will be interesting to you. This is my first attempt in 81 years. You'll have to overlook some of the mistakes.

I came to Soap Lake in 1919 and when I came to Soap Lake there was no general electricity. The hotels had their own generator, but there was no general electricity system.

The street lights were green lanterns, kerosene lanterns. So help me! They were in the construction of a private utility system when I came, but it wasn't finished. Later on a lady opened up a restaurant and she called it the Green Lantern and she did good business, too. She was a good cook.

But anyway, they got this light system going in about September. I came here in the later part of September. Later in the fall they had the light system going and they only ran the system until midnight. They shut everything down at midnight.

I'm not sure whether they used gasoline for power or coal at first, but it did take a ton of coal a month to run the generator. I was one of the coal haulers. I got into that job.

There were seven hotels in operation when I came to Soap Lake. We had our railroad depot up at what they called Grant Orchards and there was quite a bit of activity.

There were three tracks, a passing track and what they called a house track, where they unloaded material and stuff like that. Each of these hotels had a car that would meet the trains.

We had two trains, local trains in the morning going East and one going west. They went from Spokane to Leavenworth and Leavenworth to Spokane. They used to meet about Stratford and my brother had the mail contract and also to haul passengers, express and mail and other things that came along.

We had to wait for those two trains. Then later on there were passengers on the local trains that would transfer to the through trains going to Seattle. They kept that through train at Wenatchee, because the through train didn't stop.

The through train carried the mail. We had a mail train sack on the track and our job was to hang the sack on that crane before the train came along and pick it up. It would generally be going about 60 miles an hour when it passed.

We never had any trouble except one time the passenger train took the siding to let a freight train go by and pass. The clerk threw the sack of mail off the passenger train, the freight train picked it up in the cowcatcher and carried it up to the switch. The mail was scattered all over Grant Orchards.

We had two trucks, one had pneumatic tires and the one I was driving had solid tires. It was pretty good riding. Seven days a week, twice a day, we had to meet the trains and I have to brag a little bit that I never missed a train in some 30 years I carried the mail to the station.

The trains never waited for anybody. I made as many as 11 trips from Soap Lake to the station in one day carrying different materials and things, such as coal, wood and lumber.

Everything and anything came by train. There were no roads. There was no road going to Wenatchee, unless you had to use the ferry and there was no road up along the lakes. There wasn't even a road as far as the Desert Inn. There was just a trail going that far.

There was a fellow who had a mud bath place there at the Desert Inn who gave mud baths and also there was a place in Soap Lake that gave mud baths.

They would go out in the middle of the Lake and dig up the mud and put it in a boiler trough and heat it up. Then they had something almost like you might say, a coffin that they laid the person in and packed that mud in there. For $2 they would do that, give you that service.

There were two separate water systems when we came, one on each side of town. They were just small systems. Each one was run by the Thomas Hotel and one was run by what was later the utility company.

Later on the city bought out both systems and drilled a well. They drilled a new well and built a water reservoir and did all that for $33,000. It was quite a job at that time to finance along about 1928. We had to get part of the money from the State and part was revenue bonds.

In 1934, I think it was, we had the pleasure of President Roosevelt coming through town and it caused a lot of excitement. We didn't know where he was going to stop, but he did stop at the corner and I have some pictures in the car that show the President as he stopped and shook hands with the people.

The children that went to high school in Ephrata went by car. Later on . they had a school bus and I have a picture of the first school bus and my had the pleasure of riding in it.

Out of the seven hotels three of them burned down, two have been torn down, none of them have ever been rebuilt. I have picture of the Siloam Hotel fire. It happened on a day when I was on the way back from the railroad station and the truck never went as fast as it did that day, because my brother, who was ill, was staying there at the hotel and we were very anxious to see that he got out of there. But before we got there people had taken care of him. He had TB and was sleeping outside, so there wasn't much trouble getting him away. But nobody was hurt in the fire. I think that was an 80-room hotel and I think within half an hour it was down to the ground.

E-mail from Cheryl

Facts from the past gleaned from the Moses Lake Herald, Columbia Basin Herald and The Neppel Record by Cheryl (Driggs) Elkins:

From the Columbia Basin Herald on Sept. 28, 1950:

Cashmere woman says our rodeo tops Ellensburg

The memory of the 1950 Columbia Basin Rodeo lingers on. Rodeo association members recently received the following letter from Catherine B. Chase of Cashmere:

"We attended your rodeo and I want to thank you for a very splendid show. We enjoyed it all. The stock was all good and no one was badly hurt, either the stock or the men.

"We saw the Ellensburg Rodeo the week before and were disappointed. Your show was so much better.

"I theink you have the right diea about not using regular rodeo stock, they are so used to crowds and have been hauled around so much they don't have much pep left.

"Your show was very good and moved right along. We enjoyed it so much and plan on coming again next year."