Memory of Meeboer homestead halfway to Yakima

The Sun Tribune ran a picture recently of an old house in the Black Rock Valley that doubtless thousands of travelers on Highway 24 stopped to view and photograph over a great number of years.

We ran it because the house is no more. It went down in a wildfire that struck the valley this summer. All that’s left is a memory for all of those travelers.

Desert Aire’s Karl Gruber, riding his motorbike to Yakima, took a photo of the spot and sent it in with the news that only the rusted, beat up and now burned-out shell of a car remained.

“No great loss but, still, it was an interesting glimpse into the past,” Gruber said.

Gruber asked around and came to understand the building, called the Halfway House, was 120 years old. We asked if any of you knew more and would share.

Another Desert Aire resident, Velma Best, did. She remembered a story she had clipped from the Jan. 5, 1982 Yakima Herald-Republic. She dug it up and called.

Velma and I visited last week. She did not remember why she clipped the article. It must have just caught her fancy, she said.

The YHR story was about Yakima sketch artist Chuck Naasz, whose works were appreciated by many. It had taken him 15 years to complete his sketch of the Meeboer homestead.

According to that story, Gysbert Meeboer was among the early homesteaders of Black Rock Valley. He homesteaded in 1898 and built the house in 1902. So it stood 114 years.

Today, the homestead is about a half hour from Yakima or White Bluffs, the Columbia River town that was wiped out by the development of Hanford in 1943. In 1902 it was a full day by horse-drawn wagon in either direction.

The house became known as the Halfway House because travelers from White Bluffs rested there overnight on trips to and from Yakima.

In another story in the YHR in 1955, Mrs. Peter Meeboer, daughter-in-law of Gysbert, said:

“When I would go to bed at night, I never knew how many would be at the table for breakfast. Sometimes it would be the family. Sometimes a half dozen or dozen strangers.

“Sometimes we could give them all beds, but sometimes there would be so many that some of them would have to sleep on makeshift beds on the floor.”

Thanks to Karl Gruber and Velma Naasz, we all know a little more of our area’s history. People like them, who are willing to make a call or send an email, are an important part of producing the Sun Tribune.