Kentuck Trail

July 29, 1951 Spokesman-Review Page 51:

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KENTUCK TRAIL named for a ferryman

Here is the third in a series of articles on pioneer roads of the Inland Empire. The first was on the Mullan Road, the second on the Colville Road. The fourth, on the Texas road, will run in the August 12 issue, to be followed by articles on the White Bluff road and the Old Territorial Road. The author is professor emeritus of history at Eastern Washington and dean of region historians.

-By Dr. C. S. Kingston

Of the pioneer roads in the Inland Empire, the Kentuck trail is least known. On the monument near Hangman creek, where Colonel Wright hung seven Indians in 1858, one of the inscriptions reads as follows:

515 Feet South-West Kentuck Ford.

This is the only evidence in lasting granite to the existence of this one time, well traveled road and most direct route between Walla Walla and Spokane Bridge.

This Hangman creek crossing was usually called "Smythe's Ford" by the old-timers, from the fact that a man by that name in the vicinity. Very little is known about him and after a time he drifted away and disappeared. He left his buckskin riding pony to roam around the countryside until it too disappeared. Smythe's place was half a mile to the east of the ford, and traces of the old building and stubs of dead apple trees could still be seen a few years ago. He is a shadowy figure who happened to supply a name for a long unused ford on a well nigh forgotten pioneer trail.

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The Kentuck trail can be easily followed on the survey plats of Spokane county, but in Whitman county the plats give little assistance. One must depend on the recollections of travelers. Knowlton's field notes when he laid out the Old Territorial road. On ferry advertisements directing people to the ferry where the Kentuck trail crossed the Snake river, and to the session laws of the territory.

J. M. Kennedy, one of the very early settlers of northern Whitman county, told the late Sam Glasgow what he knew about the trail.

"In the spring of 1872 I was a boy of 17 years of age, my father and I drove from the Willamette valley, Ore., with covered wagon driving about 50 head of cattle to his part of the country. "When we left Walla Walla we drove to Angel's ferry on the Snake river. On the south side of the river it was called Angel Ferry road but across the river it was called the Kentuck trail.

"The route was very straight. We crossed Union flat, then Rebel flat--crossed the Palouse river about 14 miles below Colfax then Pleasant valley and Cottonwood. We crossed Thorn creek about a mile below Thornton. From there to near Rosalia the Spokane-Colfax road follows the trails. Near where the Milwaukee railroad crosses Pine creek the trail goes straight ahead about a mile east of Rosalia, going in a northeast direction north of Spring Valley on through Bull flat to Smythe's crossing of Hangman creek about mile south of where Wright hung the Indians. I have always been of the opinion that the trails went by the way of the California Ranch, which is a direct route to the Spokane bridge--the only bridge across the Spokane river."

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In 1872, A. L. Knowlton, in his survey of the Old Territorial road came to the Kentuck trail south of Thorn creek and followed it from Thorn creek to Pine creek. Here the road and the trail separated--the Territorial road to go to the falls on the Spokane river and the Kentuck trail to Spokane Bridge. People riding today in their automobiles on the fine concrete highway between Rosalia and Thornton are traveling over these two old historic routes.

In the Territorial assembly of 1864-1865, Thomas W. Davidson was authorized to establish a ferry on the Snake river at a point "known by the Indian name of Y-Youks-ber-nets crossing or camp, being on a direct line between the town of Walla Walla and the bridge that is being constructed above the Indian ferry (Plante's ferry) on the Spokane river." Exclusive rights were granted over a two-mile strip on the river and the license period was to run six years. The usual fees charged on the river were specified. Davidson later formed a partnership with Joseph F. Ruark to develop his ferry rights. Ruark is the "Old Kentuck" of Snake river legend.

On October 6, 1865, the Walla Walla Statesman carried an advertisement signed by Ruark and Davidson with the heading "Blackfoot Ferry on Snake River on the Direct Route to Blackfoot." The name Blackfoot was used because the placer gold mines on the Little Blackfoot river in western Montana were attracting great numbers of eager prospectors and miners in 1865 and 1866. This is the Only Snake river ferry that called itself the "Blackfoot ferry" in its advertising. although there are numerous instances of other ferries claiming that they offered a convenient way of reaching the Blackfoot mines.

The ferry business was profitable, particularly so when large numbers of men were on their way to the mines; but it was necessary to have roads or trails on both sides of the river and to make the directions known to the public. The advertisement reads: "The road leading to this Ferry from Walla Walla, goes by Walt's mill (Waitsburg) on Touchet, or by McKay & Dobson's ranch. The road is marked by finger-boards and plow furrows, so that no one can go astray. The travel now is mostly on this road, and the road is well beaten."

The announcement goes on to describe the equipment of the ferry and the fact that it was the shortest route to the Spokane river, to the Coeur d'Alenes, and to Lake Pend Oreille. A comparison of the Kentuck with the Mullan road to Spokane Bridge shows that the former was about 15 miles shorter. It was stated that wood, water. and grass, the three requisites for camping, were to be found at every camp site; and that there were no difficulties attending travel in the Palouse prairie country.

The final paragraph reads as follows: "One of the proprietors, J. F. Ruark, alias 'Kentuck, is an old mountaineer, and knows the route to be the most direct one. He can also give any information that may be desired in regard to the entire upper country."

As a matter of fact, Ruark was not a Kentuckian by birth: in the census returns of 1860 he gave Pennsylvania as his birthplace; and how he got the name of Kentuck is not known. It is possible that his people may have moved to Kentucky when he was a child. He is described as an "old mountaineer," but this evidently refers to a long experience in the west; he was only 30 years old at the time of the census and 35 at the time of his partnership with Thomas Davidson.

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Following the advertisement was a list of 10 men appended to a statement they had traveled the road and that it was exactly as represented. Three signed as cargadores (packers) and another was Hiram Stills, later associated with Herring and Lee at Spokane Bridge, whose name together with his wife, Nancy, appeared in the 1870, census of the Spokane Plains precinct.

J. M. Kennedy stated that the road from Walla Walla to Snake river was called the Angel Ferry road; but when the road was marked out in 1865, the ferry was owned by Ruark and Davidson, and the road carried the nickname of colorful Joe Ruark.

As shown on a-map by John R. White, Waitsburg, who has devoted much time to the study of the old roads and historic sites of the Walla Walla country, the Kentuck trail or road ran very directly from Walla Walla to the Snake river ferry with direction change only to take advantage of the irregular terrain. It crossed the Touchet at Waitsburg and the Tucannon and Pataha near their confluence.

The only person who traveled the Kentuck trail and left a day-by-day record of his experiences is Henry Lueg, whose manuscript journal tells the experiences of a party which, in 1867, came by the North Overland route from Minnesota to the Northwest. The party came by the Mullan road from Fort Benton, Montana, to Spokane Bridge. Here they were told that the Kentuck road, as Lueg has it, was shorter than the Mullan: and they decided to go that way. From the California Ranch near present-day Mica to the Snake river. Lueg writes that there was only one settled place a ranch at the Palouse river crossing. It is likely that this was Kentuck's ranch mentioned in a letter by W. W. Johnson, dated June 25, 1865, and printed in the Walla Walla Statesman.

This leg of their journey, a distance of 97 miles, lay through the Palouse country, a region of great rolling hills "soft hills" as Lueg describes their gentle slopes. With the exception of places where the fires had burned the grass, cattle feed was abundant, but in many places both wood and water were scarce.

Lueg identifies by name the streams that they crossed--Hangman, Pine, Cottonwood, Union Flat, Willow creeks, and the Palouse river. All were forded without difficulty and on the sixth day after leaving Spokane Bridge, the caravan approached the deep valley of the Snake river. They had traveled under the dark November skies of the Palouse uplands and were soon to see beyond the mighty channel of the river the high grass-covered hills of the Walla Walla country.

This land with its rich soil and mild climate seemed to welcome the newcomers, and some of the descendants of these people, who had traveled more than 600 miles of their long journey from Minnesota over the Mullen road and Kentuck trail, are living today in Walla Walla and Columbia counties.

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Looking north across the Snake' river at the site of Ruark and Davidson's Blackfoot ferry where the Kentuck trail crossed. Later this became Angell's ferry and later still Brown's ferry. An old hotel once stood in center of foreground. Picture is by J. R. White of Waitsburg, authority on southeastern Washington history.