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The Klickitat County News, Goldendale, WA., July 19, 1934, page 4

MANY DEVELOPMENTS NOTED IN COUNTY SINCE INFANCY
W.F. Byars, Starts Series of Articles Dealing With Klickitat County's Growth;
Interesting Data Is Included in First Remarks Concerning This Section

This is the first of a series of articles which have been given to The News correspondent by W.F. Byars, local postmaster. A complete, more or less, impersonal resume will appear. The article is published in his own words:
One who has been raised west of the Cascades and has never seen the great Inland empire can scarcely visualized the "upper country." When resided at Salem, we took a trip over the Cascades by way of the Santiam pass to the Prineville and Fossil sections. My father had a band of horses south of Fossil, which Benton Mires, his half brother, was taking care of. They broke two young Morgan horses and we took them back with us to my father's ranch near a Mehama.
The next summer I took one of them to buck straw which was on the Siegmund ranch, situated in the "Fern Ridge" section north of ours. This was a wheat section. My father had cattle, goats and sheep. When the threshing machine started up, my horse ran away. So I was given an old mare off of the "horse-power" and my horse put in her place. Don't you know, that was just what that "bunch -grasser" needed to make him a "good citizen." He thrived under the treatment. My father traded that team of Morgans for a stallion, and after I moved to Goldendale he gave the horse to me. He was a good buggy and saddle horse and some trotter. He got blind in one eye, so I sold him to "Bill" Lear, who was then in the freighting business. The horse slipped and fell on the Grants ferry slip and was so badly injured he had to be shot.
The second time that I visited the Inland Empire was on my first visit to Goldendale, forty-four years ago. The Columbia river gorge was something different then the "Santiam trail." I had been up the Columbia a few miles above Camas, having gone on steam-boat excursion from Salem, sponsored by the Willamette University. I think the boat was the "Harvest Queen." We visited the Camas paper mills that night, and returned to Portland, stopping there until the next day. Therefore my first trip through the Cascade gorge was on the O.R. & N. and not only a great pleasure, but one of admiration. I have often wondered what the impression was on the mind of those from the middle west when they first beheld the lofty mountains and scenic grandeur of this great northwest.
In the early days of its operation the O.R. & N. had much difficulty in combating the sand between The Dalles and the John Day river. Some days the trains were delayed several hours. They had not yet learned the efficacy in planting the sand dunes with rye and grass, and the spraying of oil on the surface was unknown.
Grants, south of the ferry landing on the Oregon shore, was the chief embarking point for passengers and freight destined for the Goldendale country. Grant was a town of shifting sands. Its business section comprised a store or two, a hotel, livery stable and a few houses. Later a distillery was erected and W.A. Maxwell, a one time editor of The Sentinel, had a newspaper. The town and distillery were washed away by the big flood in the Columbia in 1894. Goldendale made the town; so with the construction of the Columbia River and Northern (Goldendale-Lyle railroad) and the Northern Bank railroad, is destiny was sealed.
That Goldendale staged was pulled by four horses, and in going from Grants to Goldendale the stage went around by Columbus, in order to deliver and take on mail at the post office. From there the road went direct up the bluff by way of the Stonehenge, or, more particularly speaking, where it now stands, as it was not constructed until years later, funds being provided by the late Samuel Hill.
After passing through the drifting sands of the river and ascending the steep and torturous road, following the east side of the canyon to the summit of the barren Columbia Mountains, one could not helpful but ponder as to the appearance of the typography of the country lying below. Such was my state of mind, that June day forty-four years ago, when approaching (to me) that undiscovered country which, unbeknown to me, was later to be my habitat for over forty years.
So when we had reached the summit and could get a glimpse of the evergreen Simcoes to the north, rising 4,000 feet above the Columbia; and looking northwestward beheld hoary Mt. Adams standing out boldly, glistening in the summer sun, towering o'er all the landscape round about, with its lofty brow lifted two and one-eighth miles above the waters of the briny deep, and to the southwest beautiful, symmetrical Mt. St. Helens tucked among and guarded by the fir-clad Cascades; and looking lower we could trace the gorge of the Big Klickitat, with "grey-back" rising like a sentinel on the Simcoes western brow, guarding the whirling waters 2000 feet below; and in between the distant hills and the traveling coach were billowing waves of the golden grain covering the hills and dales of the beautiful Klickitat Valley as far as the eye could see, and winding through the valley to the west was Swale creek, disappearing at the Stacker canyon, turning abruptly to the north and losing its waters in the Big Klickitat at Wahkiacus; and directly south of the Stacker canyon rises The Dalles mountain, the highest found in the Columbia mountains, with its bare summit rising high above the Happy Home and High Prairie country with The Dalles nestling at the south end of the bend in the Columbia, ten miles to the self and over 3000 feet below. But why say more? There are other sections of Klickitat just as beautiful, with scenery unsurpassed, which in due time will receive due recognition.
I have had opportunities not enjoyed by many, to become acquainted with all sections of Klickitat county, its topography and early settlers on account of my various avocations, having been in the newspaper business here during my first fifteen years, and also serving as a private and county surveyor, deputy assessor and engineer. It also fell to my lot to make the first plats for the county assessor, showing all of the homestead filings, topographical maps, irregular tracts, towns and villages. While at Olympia one winter, I made a tracing of all the public land surveys in Klickitat county from the official plats in the Surveyor General's office. Then in my twenty-five years in the abstract business, I had all these plats to make for the abstract record. So, being familiar with all sections of the county and acquainted with citizens in all parts thereof, I have never been jealous of any community and have rejoiced when prosperity came their way.
To me they are friends and neighbors. How much happier this world would be if all people in all climes were such. Then truly could swords being beaten into plow-shares, and the wealth of nations, squandered for engines of war for the purpose of destroying human lives and property, be expended for the development of our resources and the happiness and prosperity of all the people.
Nations, like the Israelites of old, have forgotten God, and joy, peace and happiness will not return until we take to heart the admonition of the Son of Man to love our neighbors as ourselves.
An appropriate heading for the following may be "Forty Years Before and Forty Years After." Forty years before the writer first saw the Klickitat valley, with its growing golden grain nodding before the unseen force of the gentle eastern breeze and the homes of the tillers of the soils, interspersed here and there, brightening the landscape o're, this beautiful valley was a waving sea of bunch grass, the habitat of the red-man, cayuse, coyote and jackrabbit.
But is it true that the progress of the forty years before excelled the forty years after?
Klickitat county forty years ago had no improved roads or highways; there was no railroad between Goldendale and Lyle; no North Bank railroad; no telephone lines; no electric lights; no R.F.D. lines; no radios; no automobiles; no gasoline trucks; no high schools; no flying machines and no "Klickitat County News."
Must we say that the next forty years will not surpass the forty years gone before? I have always tried to be an optimist. Everything is for the best and things could be a whole lot worse. To me the growth and development of Klickitat county is but in its infancy. There are other highways to be constructed, virgin timber at that our very door yet untouched, irrigation systems yet to be installed, sea-ports established, a railroad connection with the Yakima Valley, the cheapest electric power to be inaugurated employed by no other section in the world and the beginning of a great manufacturing era in the northwest.
The dark night of adversity is but the harbinger of a new day. The cloud and mists are disappearing and the sun is rising above the horizon to shine again on the American people who have never yet lost hope in the ultimate building of a nation, sound and secure, resting on the foundation supervised by the Great Architect of the Universe.