In October 2020 the Idaho State Journal reported that Bull Canyon Ranch, the Tubbs family's cattle ranch in Arbon Valley, had received the Idaho Century Ranch designation, and told how it began with a young homesteader in 1913. Bull Canyon is a mountain canyon in the Summit area, the high part of the valley between Arbon and Buist. Papers printed in the homesteader's lifetime confirm much of the family's account, correct one part of it, and add a few things it leaves out.
A claim at the top of the canyon
According to the Journal, Walter Fredrich came from Washington to Malad in 1913, at 19, looking for land to homestead. "The best land had already been claimed," so he took 160 acres with spring water at the top of Bull Canyon. After a hard first winter in a one-room cabin he built, he moved his homestead farther down the canyon. His 1970 death notice appears to give his birth as June 11, 1893, at Spokane.
In October 1915 the American Falls Press's South Arbon column reported Walter in Malad visiting his brothers Albert and Reinhold, and two weeks later that "Albert Frederich, of Malad has been visiting his brothers Walter and Reinhold for the past week." The next summer a mare went missing from Bull Canyon, and the Press ran this notice for four weeks:
STRAYED OR STOLEN—From Bull Canyon, June 22, one blue mare, weight 1000 pounds, 6 years old, brand lazy J on the right thigh. A reward will be paid for any information leading to the recovery. Address R. Fredrich, Arbon, Idaho.
"R." was probably Reinhold.
The teacher from Pomona
In September 1917 the Los Angeles Times, in its news from Claremont, the home of Pomona College, listed graduates who had gone to teaching positions in other states. Among them were Margaret Overholtzer and Rachel Fryer, both of the class of 1917, who had gone to Arbon, Idaho. The Journal says Rachel answered a request for teachers in Idaho. The papers do not say which of the valley's schools she taught.
On August 11, 1918, the Times reported her wedding twice. Its Claremont column said that Miss Fryer, "who taught last year at Arbon, Idaho," had married Walter S. Fredrich of Arbon the week before, at her sister's home in Alhambra. The Alhambra column described the wedding:
The bride was gowned in white Georgette crepe and carried a shower bouquet of white rosebuds and maidenhair fern. … The bride is a graduate of Pomona College and has spent some time with her sister. The bridegroom enters the United States service Wednesday at Camp Kearny, hence the honeymoon trip will be deferred until the war is over.
Camp Kearny was an Army camp at San Diego. The Journal says Walter was drafted and sent to California to care for the Army's horses as a veterinarian, and caught the Spanish flu there. It places the wedding after the war, but the 1918 reports show it came first, just before he entered the service.
Home in Bull Canyon
The couple made their home in the canyon. Late in 1922 Rachel's mother, Mrs. Elizabeth P. Fryer of Pocatello, was reported visiting "Mr. and Mrs. W. S. Fredrich," and that month Rachel gave a birthday dinner for her, with covers laid for five: Reinhold and his wife, Walter and Rachel, and Mrs. Fryer. In November 1923 the Press noted that Mrs. Walter Fredrick and her baby daughter, Betty Jeane, had "returned to their home in Bull Canyon" from Pocatello. The couple also had a daughter named Frances.
Rachel kept up interests of her own. In June 1927 she advertised in Writer's Digest, a magazine for writers:
KODAK PICTURES CRITICIZED
Are you in doubt about your pictures selling? Send them to me with return postage. All advice is frank, kindly and confidential. Questions answered.
Criticism—$0.10 each; $1.00 for 12
RACHEL FREDRICH, Arbon, Idaho
In July 1946 the same magazine carried her notice as a "CONSULTANT for Human Relations, with understanding heart."
Walter advertised too. In June 1927 Popular Mechanics carried a classified offering "RUSSIAN Wolfhounds, registered" from the "Kan-Yon Kennels, W. S. Fredrich, Arbon, Idaho," and in 1929 the American Kennel Club's stud book named him as the breeder of a registered Russian wolfhound. The Journal's account tells of greyhounds he trained to kill coyotes; whether those were the same dogs, no record says.
The Journal adds that he bought a sawmill in a nearby canyon that "cut the majority of the lumber used in Arbon Valley." William King, a Summit native, remembered Walt Fredrich as the last of the Bull Canyon sawmill men, after the Walkers and the Nunnelleys (see the Summit history and the first sawmill). By the Journal's account, Walter raised cattle, sheep, pigs, wheat, barley and oats, and built the place up to about 2,200 acres by buying out neighboring homesteads as their owners gave up. In the winter of 1948–49 he was snowed in up Bull Canyon for the season.
To the Tubbs family
Rachel Fredrich died at her home in Malad in December 1957, at 65. Her obituary, in a badly jumbled digitized text, appears to say that she had taught at Arbon, Pocatello and Cherry Creek and belonged to the Idaho Writers League. According to the Journal, Walter sold the ranch when he was 72 to his daughter Betty and her husband, Earl Tubbs. Walter died in March 1970, at 76, at a daughter's home near Malad. His death notice, also jumbled, gives his home as Arbon Valley and appears to call him a World War I veteran and a fire warden there for the Bureau of Land Management.
When Earl was 85 he sold the ranch to his son and daughter, Dale and Kathie Tubbs. In 2020 they ran about 250 cattle on dry-land pasture, with the ranch's cropland in the federal Conservation Reserve Program.
Where the accounts differ
- The Journal dates Walter's arrival to 1913; the site's Summit history dates the Fredrich brothers' arrival in Bull Canyon to 1914. The earliest Press mention found is from October 1915.
- The Summit history's timeline lists a "Walter Fredrick" water claim of June 1894. This Walter was born in June 1893, so the claim was not his; whether the date is a misprint or the claimant another man is not known.
- The papers spell the name Fredrich, Frederich and Fredrick. Nothing found connects this family with the Fredricksons of Pauline.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, October 5, 2020 (web edition, no page number). The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
ARBON VALLEY — The Idaho Century Ranch designation has gone to Bull Canyon Ranch, the cattle ranch the Tubbs family has worked in Arbon Valley for a hundred years.
On Saturday Jim Johnston presented the designation to Dale Tubbs, with Tubbs's nearest family members on hand. In applying, Tubbs included an account he had written of the ranch's past. He said most of his grandchildren have grown up away from farm life, and he wanted the recognition to teach them about agriculture and where their family came from. The family gathers on the ranch for a reunion every year, an event COVID-19 disrupted this summer.
Timber, livestock and many kinds of crops have all come off the place in the last hundred years. Along the way the family has weathered fire, disease, hard winters and bad growing years.
The ranch dates to 1913, when Walter Fredrich, Tubbs's grandfather, arrived in Malad from Washington at age 19 in search of a homestead. Others had got to the choice land first, so he took up 160 acres high in Bull Canyon, where a spring supplied water. He built himself a one-room cabin there and lived in it through a winter so severe that, come spring, he relocated the homestead lower in the canyon.
Wheat was his crop until the World War I draft took him. He served in California as a veterinarian tending U.S. Army horses, and while there he caught the Spanish flu. Once he was well and the war was over, he came home to Bull Canyon and put more land under crops. His bride was Rachel Fryer, a woman from California who had come north after hearing that Idaho schools needed teachers.
Crickets, rodents, hail, frost and fire all hit the farm, Tubbs's account says, but the family held on. Whenever a neighbor quit homesteading, the family purchased the claim, until the ranch covered 2,200 acres. Fredrich also acquired a sawmill in a canyon close by, and Tubbs wrote that it produced most of the lumber in Arbon Valley. Besides cattle, his animals included sheep, pigs and greyhounds, which he taught to kill coyotes. Over time his herd of cattle grew, and he went on raising oats, barley and wheat on unirrigated ground.
Fredrich was 72 when Betty, his daughter, and Earl Tubbs, her husband, bought the ranch from him. After fire destroyed their home, Earl and Betty built again. Their herd got bigger, and the cattle spent summers up the canyon. Earl in turn sold the place at age 85 to Kathie and Dale Tubbs, his daughter and son.
Today the brother and sister keep a herd of 250 on unirrigated pasture. Their crop ground is enrolled in the federal Conservation Reserve Program, where a mix of plant species is kept on it to help wildlife and check erosion.
Sources
- Idaho State Journal, October 5, 2020
- American Falls Press, October 7, 1915, page 1
- American Falls Press, October 21, 1915, page 7
- American Falls Press, July 20, 1916, page 6
- Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1917
- Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1918, Part III
- American Falls Press, December 7, 1922, page 5
- American Falls Press, December 21, 1922, page 4
- American Falls Press, November 29, 1923, page 4
- Writer's Digest, June 1927
- Popular Mechanics, June 1927
- American Kennel Club Stud Book Register, August 1, 1929
- Writer's Digest, July 1946
- Salt Lake Tribune, December 13, 1957, page 57
- Deseret News, March 23, 1970, page 31
- Salt Lake Tribune, March 23, 1970, page 27