The Hood River Glacier, Hood River, OR., December 30, 1893, page 2

TROUT LAKE VALLEY

     This peaceful settlement on the sunny slope at the about base of Mt. Adams has not heretofore been represented in the GLACIER, and is known to most readers only as a popular summer resort.  We have good farms, many cattle, half a dozen irrigating ditches, a good schoolhouse, a number of tough looking bachelor homesteaders, a back number railroad survey and occasionally, a snow-storm.  We also expect to have a sawmill in the spring.  Half a dozen fellows are trapping this winter, with only mild success.  Lynx and martens are the principal harvest.  Claus Pearson is in Portland this week.  Rev. Wilson has preached in the schoolhouse several times lately.  Mr. Wilson will take a claim in the 19-6-11, and settle with us in the spring.  There is no sickness in the valley.  The rule at all times is good health for everybody, which is very fortunate, as it is twenty miles to the nearest doctor.  At the time of this writing there has not been snow enough to close the road, but the mud is pretty bad below the falls. Messrs. Sev. Benz and Wm. Stadleman with their families celebrated Christmas with the family of Postmaster Pearson.  Noah Etter will do duty as a juryman in Goldendale next week.  The Sunday school kids had a howling good time at the Christmas tree.  It was the first effort in that line in the settlement and might very properly have been endorsed by more of the parents; but though only a modest and inexpensive seedling it was, as we have intimated, quite lum-tum p.c. for the little folks.  The gifts were distributed by Santa Claus Pearson in a marvelous costume, and there were recitations and songs to your heart’s content.  This may seem an unfavorable time for lively politics, but in Klickitat county we keep things moving by placing our county officers under the microscope.  At this time, when every true democrat in the broad land is driven by his native sense of justice to declare for queen Lil., and the souls of the pure republicans are consumed with rage at the thought of a royal nigger, it is most darned astonishing to see the populists denouncing in open convention and repudiating their chosen county leaders for offenses which are generally regarded as commonplace virtues.  If this is good politics it is so very good that it may be out of sight.

H.