Histories

This reminiscence was written in response to a 1981 school assignment of Agnes' great-granddaughter. Agnes would have been about 14, making this memory from about 1906. --Linda Houlroyd, granddaughter.

My name is Agnes Regina Wiedenman, 89 years. Born in 1892, Superior, Wis. I started to school in N. Dak. and went to British Columbia, Spokane W. and the times I remember more clearly were in Heyburn, Ida. when I was in the eighth grade. The school was the first in that community and attended by the children of the first settlers of that region. The grade school building was quite large having three large rooms. It was furnished with handmade benches and desks made by some of the farm men. Heated with wood and coal burning stoves. There were three teachers, teaching mixed grades up to Jr. High.
Jr. High building was located near and just taught two grades, 9-10. No hot lunches! We carried our lunches. We spent the day at the school and school grounds, 9-4. I liked the eighth grade best as I had a very nice teacher, Lesle Fleisher. She was always pleasant and jolly. Entertaining us with stories and reading books in spare time. In Jr. High we girls had basketball and the boys had baseball. Jr. High was more interesting with sports and more subjects added.

The hardest thing I had to do wasn't at school but the process of getting there. Most students rode horses or drove light riggs drawn by horses. Parents had to furnish transportation to and from school. I road a pony and when I arrived at school, I had to remove the saddle and bridle and tie him up to a manger in the barn. The barn was located behind the school house and contained hay and grain for the horses. After eating my lunch at noon, I would have to go out, regardless of the weather and feed and water my pony. After school I would saddle up, tie my books on and ride home.

Ice skating was popular in the winter. My father told me never to go skating on the river. We would take our skates to school and skate on some ponds near by at noon. One day someone said, "Let's go down to the river." The river was about two blocks from the school. Well, a bunch of us went. We were having fun when all of a sudden someone yelled, "Help!" A girl my age had fallen through a place in the ice (an air hold) and was trying to get out but kept slipping back. A big boy lay down on the ice a short distance from the girl and another boy laid down grasping the big boy's foot. The first boy caught hold of the girl's hand and the tow pulled slipping and sliding they finally got her on solid ice. Every one who was wet rushed to the school and soon were dried out. Skating wasn't very popular for a while. Vera could have drowned! Then I thought about what my father had said, "Don't go to the river to skate." I had disobeyed! He forbid me to take my skates to school after hearing about Vera's narrow escape.

My advice to young people of today is to go to school and college. Try for the best grades and spend your time with your books not wasting time running around. Education is cheap and easily acquired and needed today and in the future.

Camp Minidoka 1942-1945

Located in Jerome County, a total of 13,078 detainees were processed through this camp
Opened 10 Aug 1942 - Closed 28 Oct 1945
Detainees came from:
Washington - Seattle and Pierce County
Oregon - Portland and Northwest Oregon

Minidoka Reclamation Project

There is a drop in the Snake River of a few feet about two miles above Storey Ferry, the crossing of the river on the old road between Minidoka and Albion called Minidoka Falls. This point presented an ideal place for the construction of a dam across the Snake River, which would be the starting point of a canal to irrigate lands below it on the north side of the river, and could be used for a pumping plant for lands on the south side of the river. The Government in 1904, through the secretary of the interior, authorized the Minidoka Reclamation Project to be constructed at that point, and work was shortly after commenced.

On the north side of the river, there extended from this point in all directions a large area of arable lands, 120,000 acres of which could be watered from the contemplated canal, and the remaining portion of which would require a canal from the vicinity of American Falls, in order to fully cover it.

At a cost of $6,000,000, the Government constructed the dam across the river at the falls, built the canal on the north side of the river and put under irrigation through a gravity system the 120,000 acres lying below such dam, the canal having been finished over ten years ago, and nearly the entire area covered by it being now under cultivation.

Situate on the north Minidoka tracts, are the prosperous towns of Rupert, Paul, and Heyburn. A portion of this land so watered lies very flat, and required not only an irrigation system, but a drainage system as well, which has been finished by the Government, and there is no more successful farming area in all the state than is contained in this project.

On the south side of the river, conditions are different. Goose Creek runs more than thirty miles through a beautiful valley commencing at the Town of Oakley and extending to Burley. This valley becomes merged to a great extent in the great Snake River Valley before the Snake River is reached. Most of the arable land situated in this expanse cannot be watered by a gravity system from the Minidoka Dam, but the water supply at that point was sufficient to irrigate the 90,000 acres that could be readily covered, and in order to accomplish this result a powerful pumping plant was installed. Three different lifts were made in order to water the land at various stages of elevation. The entire tract is now under successful irrigation, and has proved itself to be one of the most fertile tracts in the Northwest, and become the center of a prosperous, thriving population.

The Town of Burley, the county seat of Cassia County, is the principal town of this tract and is the largest center of population between Pocatello and Twin Falls.

--Extracted from 1920 History of Idaho: The Gem of the Mountains by James Hawley, volume 1, page 449

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