Runaway fire ignites interest in history for Nancy Bridges

ROYAL CITY – Byron Bridges was clearing some of his new land along Beverly-Burke Road, near Road 12 SW in 1969 and his fire got away.

Fortunately it went up a draw and came to an end pretty much by itself. When Byron reached the stopping point, he found that the fire had uncovered a bit of history.

Byron went home and told his wife Nancy what he'd found. They both went back to the spot, dismantled the little wood stove that was made for covered wagon travel and took it home.

Someone had dropped it there, or had lived there, decades ago. It was halfway covered with sand, but the top part had been hidden by the weeds that burned.

Nancy was not particularly fond of history class during her school days, but this bit of history piqued her interest. It made her start looking for other homesteader artifacts in the same area, and she found several.

The Bridges have a gadget on which people placed shoes to repair them. They have two irons (for ironing clothes) and several other small items that were used by the pioneers.

The more Nancy looked, the more her interest in history grew. Soon she wanted to know everything, even where the town of Burke had been.

Nancy had visited Beverly, but she'd never seen Burke. She used her experiences with family genealogy to track it down and eventually found it.

Ask any Burke in the area about their connection to Burke, and they will likely say: “It's sort of a family joke. We say we're family, but we're not.”

Nancy agrees with that. She believes James Burke, for whom the town was named, did not leave any family behind when he returned to his home state of Tennessee in 1909.

According to Nancy, it appears that Bill Viring, originally of Minnesota, applied for a U.S. Post Office for his store in the yet un-named town. Somehow, when it was granted, Burke was named the postmaster. Nancy believes it was because Burke's son was in the military.

The government named the Post Office Allouez in honor of Domberger Allouez, one of the first settlers in the area.

Mail was brought from Quincy, twice a week, Nancy said. It was taken to Burke's home, from where it was delivered or picked up.

The Burke home was little more than a shack, and soon people were complaining about bed bugs in their mail.

Finally, in 1908, the U.S. government moved the post office to the store, and Bill Viring was named postmaster. By that time, the name of the post office and community had been changed to Burke, and it remained Burke.

The next year, James Burke moved back to Tennessee. Nancy believes his family went with him.

Burke grew. It was the last community for travelers seeking the Columbia River in this area, Nancy said. Covered wagons took essentially the same route to the river as U.S. Highway 10 did later.

Burke had the store and a few other buildings, according to old timers who remember the last years of Burke. The last building to remain upright, many said, was the town's Catholic church.

In its last years, around 1960, the same people said, the church's parking lot was used as a transfer station for students of Quincy schools who lived on the Royal and Wahluke Slopes.

A Granger woman who lived in Burke her first four years, said there was a grand exodus from Burke in the 1920s because of a drought.

Her father moved her family to the Toppenish area. She and her mother went by car. Her father drove a horse-drawn wagon and livestock across the Columbia by ferry and then down to Toppenish.

If you'd like to see the town of Burke Today, take the Beverly-Burke Road to the Gorge Amphitheater sign across the freeway from George.

Snap a picture of that sign and the ground ground it. That is pretty much Burke today.