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Shirk Family History in Klickitat County, Washington State

My name is Larry D. Shirk and I grew up in Mabton, WA. My father owned a farm shop in Mabton Shirks Machinery and Garage and made a living repairing farm machinery. In his earlier years (during the great depression) his family spent a number of years in Klickitat County near Bickleton and Cleveland homesteading some remnants of parcels (smaller than a quarter section) that had gone unclaimed. Both he and his brother Ivan Shirk ended up owning homesteads. I went off to college and became an electrical engineer. I worked for the Boeing Company for 41 years and am now retired and living some 10 miles south of Seattle.

This is my Dad's homestead. He said it was a log cabin but it sure looks like they made it of cut lumber from their little saw mill? Of course it is long gone now. He gave it to an Indian squaw who took it apart and reassembled it on the Indian reservation. I do not know if the reassembled building still exists or not. In the picture from left to right we have Paul Menisse (a black man Dad hung out with, holding the axe), Dad (center), Uncle Harry Eaton, and their dog named Teddy. I wonder if that name had anything to do with President Teddy Roosevelt. The property was on the side of a rather steep hill leading up to a point which bordered the Yakima Indian Reservation. There is no road into the property, just a subtle jeep trail that cuts through property owned by another Klickitat county resident.
When my youngest daughter was in High School all the students in her class were given an assignment to create a display explaining their family history. The displays were to be put up in the gymnasium for all the local community to see. Her project was titled “Digging up my Roots”. We went up to my Dad’s homestead, located the old garbage pit and started digging. Our finds consisted mainly of old cans and bottles but along with some photographs they made an interesting display none the less. The interesting part of the story is that after the project was over she insisted that we make the jeep trail trek up there again to re-bury all the bottles old rusty cans etc. so as to leave the place totally undisturbed. This we did and had a great time doing so.

Here is a more recent picture taken on Dads homestead. From left to right we have Ivan Shirk, Rita Shirk, Earl Shirk (in cab), Glen Williams, Dolores Shirk, Dionna Shirk and Linnea Shirk. Glen Williams, a family friend and Klickitat wheat farmer, took the family up the rugged jeep trail to Dads homestead property. Dad and Ivan always enjoyed trips to the property. I later bought a 4 wheel drive Isuzu Trooper II and took Dad and Mom here several more times while Dad was still alive. The land beyond the fence is in the Yakima Indian Reservation and the elevation at this highest point on the property is 4128 feet.

This township map of Klickitat County shows the homesteads of Earl Shirk and Ivan Shirk. Ivan's property was homesteaded by his uncle George Shong who later deeded it to Ivan. Both homesteads have been sold. Earl Shirk's homestead was been sold to a friend who lives in Mabton and I am not sure who bought Ivan Shirk's homestead. Ivan went on to become a Mechanical Engineering Professor at Gonzaga University in Spokane. To get to Ivan's homestead we would traverse the Mabton Goldendale road past Cleveland and turn in at Box Springs.

Here is a picture I took during my high school days. The building is the old wood shed on Ivan's homestead. From left to right in the back row we have my sister Jean, my Mom Dolores, my sister Erma, my Aunt Eva, Hob Finley a family friend and I. In the front row we have Grandma Shirk, my Dad Earl Shirk, Uncle Allen Brekenridge (husband of Aunt Eva), and Uncle Ivan Shirk. The only persons still living are my Mom and myself. Mom is in a nursing home in Prosser, WA.

     I can remember first going to Ivan's homestead when I was only 6 to 8 years old. At that time there was a two story house, the wood shed, a blacksmith shop, a coral and barn, a smoke house and an outhouse located on the property. The old house was taken apart for the lumber and over time the other buildings have all but disappeared. Only some rotting wood fragments remain marking the locations. This property was once a stage coach stop and the two story house had some rooms for rent along with providing accommodation for the stage people. Water was piped in from a spring located up hill. The spring has dried up and the only water there now is in Quartz Creek which flows through the property. I am pretty sure the Stage quit running through that route before Ivan and Dad filed for their homesteads during the 1930's depression days. The property is not on the route I would envision to go from The Dalles to Fort Simcoe as it lies east of the current Satus Pass highway. However I do know there was a stage route between Bickleton and Mabton. Perhaps it took a route via Box Springs, across Quartz Creek and over the mountains to Mabton.

     My relatives cut wood from their homestead properties along with purchasing cutting rights to trees on state land. They would cut down trees with a two man crosscut saw, use an old one cylinder drag saw similar to the one shown in the picture above to cut rounds, and then they split the rounds with hammer and wedge.  The finished product was hauled to Mabton in an old Model T they converted to a truck. The old truck only had a capacity of about 1/3 cord. They sold the wood for people to burn in their wood burning kitchen ranges. Dad said that in those days they barely made enough money from wood sales to buy fuel for the truck. He used to tell stories of how he would kick the old truck out of gear and turn off the engine during the downhill runs to save gas. The old truck got going pretty fast on the steep old rutty and dusty Mabton Bickleton Grade. One morning on their way to town with a load of wood they came across one of the local residents whose car had broke down. He wanted to know if they would be kind enough to let him ride to town with them where he could get the necessary parts. They said that they would be glad to take him into town but that he would have to ride in back up on the load of wood as the Model T had a very small cab. He said that would be fine and climbed up on the load. Dad proceeded to town and soon forgot about their newly acquired passenger. When he came to the Mabton Grade Dad kicked the old truck out of gear and began his usual high speed coast down into Mabton. The old truck would reach speeds of 50 miles per hour or more on the steep mountain road. Dad knew ever rock and every curve as he had been driving this road almost daily. In order to negotiate the curves he would take the entire road surface including the oncoming lane. Even then the old truck would slide around the curves in a rather precarious manner. When they arrived in Mabton Dad suddenly remembered his passenger. There he was up on the load of wood clinging on for dear life. His face was as white as a sheet. Dad told him that he had forgotten his presence and was sorry for the rough ride. He then offered a ride back up the mountain after the needed auto parts had been procured. The old man declined. In fact he would never again ride anywhere with my Dad.
     The times were tough and money was scarce. When the Babbitt bearings wore out on the old truck engine my relatives began using bacon rind as a substitute. Dad was always interested in mechanics and he soon became proficient at changing the bearings. They would drive to old truck to Mabton with a load of wood and while they were waiting to make the trip back up the mountain Dad would crawl under the truck, pull the pan, leaving the oil in place, and install new bacon rind liners in the bearings, all in about than an hour. Those old Model T engines were simple and easy to work on.

     The old drag saw my relatives used had a different engine than the one in the drag saw picture. The main difference was in the cooling system. Instead of water circulating between a tank and the cooling jacket surrounding the cylinder a much simpler system was employed. That system can be seen here in a picture I took at the Old Molson Museum. There was a large cast iron reservoir which was actually an integral part of the cylinder. One simply filled this reservoir with water and kept adding more as it slowly boiled away.
     Their drag saw had wheels and to cut wood you would roll it longitudinally along the log, set the saw blade up on the log and hammer in the dogs. After starting the engine the reciprocating blade and gravity did the rest.
      They managed to acquire a one-man sawmill manufactured by the Belsaw Machinery Company of Kansas City, Missouri. They used the saw mill to make lumber for Dad's homestead shack and for a garage building they later put up in Mabton. The old garage is still standing tall and proud in Mabton.

Here is photograph from the 1935 advertisement brochure for the Belsaw one-man sawmill.

Here is the Belsaw one-man sawmill in operation. Pictured left to right are Ivan Shirk?, Arthur Shirk (Earl's father), Earl Shirk (my father) in the darker clothes, and Harry Eaton (Earl's uncle).

Here my sister Jean and Dad are shooting his Marlin 22 at Ivan's Homestead. We used to make an annual trip every 4th of July. The whole family would come and we would have a big picnic dinner made at home back in Mabton and heated up on the old wood burning kitchen stove from the old house. My grandmother Shirk would make a huge pot of baked beans centered on a ham hock. I can still remember how good they tasted. There would be fried chicken, pies and a lot of other goodies too. I can still remember lying on the ground, looking up into the pine trees and listening to the wind blowing through them while waiting for my body to digest one of those huge meals. The old stage house was torn down by this time but the wood burning range remained and it had been moved into the wood shed which was converted to a hunter’s cabin.z

I have these great old photos showing some of the crews that cut and threshed the Horse Heaven wheat in the old days. Unfortunately I do not know who any of the people in the photographs are. These photos were taken in the early 1900s.

This is a photo of the Lou Roberts crew taken in the Plainview area. The threshing machine and a steam tractor they used looks much the same as the one I recently saw in the Molson museum. The length of the leather belt from the tractor to the threshing machine is impressive. I only remember seeing a leather power transmission belt one time at my grandfather's (on mother’s side) farm. He had an old two cylinder John Deer tractor with a belt pulley on it. I do not remember what machine was being driven, only the tractor and the belt. I was pretty young.

Here is another photograph of the Lou Roberts Crew. I found this one and some of the others that follow hanging in the Bickleton Museum. Harvest required a lot of horses back in those days. It was necessary to get up early in the morning to feed and harness the horses before starting work. The horses had to be rested mid day and provided with feed and water before work could continue in the afternoon. At the end of the day they had to be taken back to the barn or corral, unharnessed and fed and watered once again. It was a lot of hard work for less hours of actual harvesting than can be accomplished with a modern combine.

Here is a picture of one of the water wagons.

This is another early threshing crew. Notice the donkey engine and long leather belt powering the threshing machine. The belt is twisted to obtain the correct rotational direction for the thresher.

The next generation of wheat harvesting equipment consisted of combines pulled by tractors. This picture was taken in 1943 on the Vergil Fezell farm. The wheat was hauled in trucks to a grain elevator located in Mabton next to the railroad tracks. There it was sold to be later loaded onto rail cars and transported to other parts of the country. Vergil lived with his family in Mabton while farming on the Horse Heaven Plateau. Wheat farming provided a good income and he was eventually able to construct Mabtons first swimming pool at his home. In the hot summers his back yard was very popular with all the local young people.
By this time Earl Shirk, my dad had established a business in Mabton, “Shirk’s Machinery and Garage”. He continued to work there, repairing Lower Yakima Valley and East Klickitat farm machinery until his retirement at about age 65. He and his best friend Densil Heise put together a duck hunting operation on the Yakima River which they shared for some deer hunting with the farmers of East Klickitat. The hunting was enjoyed by all. Dad’s love of the outdoors also including fishing and fish, duck and venison became a regular part of our family meals.

Here is another tractor pulled combine of the era. Wheat harvest today employs some very large self propelled combines that have heated cabs, stereo audio equipment and air conditioning. Unlike the old days the entire operation is accomplished much faster and with a much smaller crew.

This story was changed/updated by Mr. Shirk in August 2008