Paradise in the desert
A picture of the Bolyard farm in 1936. According to Dan Bolyard, the big bunch of trees in the middle are still there and would obscure the view of his house today if he were to retake this photo. The building towards the right center with the windmill behind it survives as well, though in poor shape. Note the tank on top of the building. The family would fill it with water from the windmill, then pipe it everywhere. There are still bits of those pipes on the property. The buildings with the white-looking roofs on the right have fallen in. The house seen to the left of the big bunch of trees …
Courtesy photo/Dan Bolyard
Harriet Zinn Bolyard and Doliver Otto Bolyard in 1945. Doliver and Harriet are Dan Bolyard’s great-grandparents who first moved to the property in 1926.
Doliver and Harriet's house, taken in 1945, is still standing today. This is the building the Bolyard family calls ‘grandma's house’ even though Harriet was Dan’s great-grandmother.
Oscar and Selma, Dan Bolyard’s grandparents, three years after their marriage in June 1945. The house they are standing in front of is still standing too, but is in very poor condition, Dan said.
COULEE CITY — While he may not know the reason behind his family swapping land in 1926 with a man called Badger, Dan Bolyard still lives off the land that has been in his family ever since.
“Everyone in the family just calls it ‘the ranch’ but the original homesteader called it Paradise Farms,” said Boylard.
The story behind the property begins nearly 100 years ago when Bolyard’s great-grandfather, Doliver Bolyard, swapped land with Albion Wilson, a man whom locals called Badger, Dan said.
He explained that Wilson lived on the property in a cave, rather than a home, which is why he was called Badger.
The property sits in the middle of the scabland southeast of Coulee City and Dan said he has never been able to figure out why his family would trade their greater Tumwater area farm for land quite literally in the middle of nowhere. One could speculate a million different reasons but none may ever be proven, he said.
“That’s really the question, I’d love to know,” Dan said. “It happened 97 years ago, there is absolutely no one left who would know anything about it.”
Dan went on to say it doesn’t make sense why they would swap properties or even how the two came into contact with each other.
“What kind of relationship did these people have to go ‘Hey, I’ve got this place out here, I like your place, let's just switch’,” said Dan.
What Dan knows, however, is that his great-grandfather turned the property into a homestead and business. He has found receipts from the 1930s showing that his great-grandfather sold veal to Pike Place Market in Seattle. He has also found leftover milk bottles from the milk Doliver would also bottle and sell.
Dan said his grandfather bought the property from his father in the 1940s and turned the property from a dairy into a ranch. He not only raised livestock but also grew wheat and hay for a time.
In 1989, Dan’s uncle bought the property before willing it to Dan in 2009.
Now Dan and his wife utilize the property for their own benefit and lease part of the land to neighbors for their livestock. He said they are turning the property back into more of a farm as it was when the original homesteader lived on the property, although they will not be living in the cave as he did.
Dan said the future of the family ranch is for it to stay in the family and be passed to his daughter one day.
Rebecca Pettingill may be reached at rpettingill@columbiabasinherald.com.
