1959 Rose Moon Story

This page is part of the Reardan History 1959 booklet that was written by the Washington State History class of 1958-1959 

By Nick Hein

The earliest arrivals were John Wickham, a bachelor, and Henry Harder, with his wife and three children, who came overland from California in 1878.

In the fall of 1879, Gus Lutzhoft, his brother, Jake, and Fred Mahrt came from Wisconsin. Mr. Lutzhoft settled on the Henry Mahrt farm; his brother northeast of Peter Tramm’s; Fred Mahrt, [southwest] of town. Very soon the following arrived: Tom Stevenson, Andrew Gray, Peter Heack [Haak], John Mahrt, John Davidson–south of the Edwall Road–Peter Wiese and Peter Tramm, Fleulling–on the Kemp place– G. L. Buckman, Ed Ensor–west of town–and Chris Seeman. All these people and more arrived until this was a busy community within 10 short years.

Coming from Ohio Mr. Buckman was on his way to the coast. However, on the train he became acquainted with Mr. Ensor, who induced him to stop at Spokane. And so they both came to Reardan in 1885 and took land, since occupied by Emil Koeller. There business was raising cattle. Wile Mr. Buckman was building the home, which was the most pretentious to be found in miles, he built it two stories high. It was plastered and green shuttered.

The first settlers were obligated to go to Colfax for supplies. Earlier settlers packed their supplies from Walla Walla. Soon a store was opened by Mr. Eads and the Perkins brothers at Deep Creek, but this store for a time did not carry large stocks, and so Colfax was still visited.

The first building in Reardan, however, was the North Pacific elevator that burned 50 years ago. Then the depot was built and the agent Pearce, built the first residence, later occupied by Mr. Schaeffer. The same fall, 1889, James Grand built the store building vacated by the Telephone Company. Ed Childs opened the first drugstore and A. Lutzhoft, an implement house. John Wichman [Wickham?] and James Warren followed with general stores, then a harness shop, a furniture shop, two hotels and a barber shop. All this and the town was only two years old. From that time until the bumper crop in 1897, there was and era of hard times throughout the Big Bend. Finally a period of great prosperity which continued until the outbreak of World War I.

In 1889 the Washington Grain and Milling Company erected the flour mill. Under the supervision of Mr. Moriarity, an expert mill man, who mange it successfully until his death in 1911. Its original capacity was one-hundred-twenty-five barrels, soon increased to four-hundred a day. In the same year the Reardan Exchange Bank was established, a private concern, with Mr. Olson as president and his wife as cashier. Reardan was incorporated in 1903. Mr. Moriarity was elected as the first mayor.

The earliest form of education was a very small building known as a schoolhouse, which was built by Henry Harder and a few other settlers in 1879, on what was known as the Pete Walsh ranch. When Fairweather was built, this was abandoned as a schoolhouse and purchased by Mr. Huston, who moved it to the east side of the road between the Harder and Serman farms. The first teacher of this schoolhouse was Miss Snieder, who came from farther west in the Big Bend. Besides the few children from this vicinity who attended, four Stroup boys came from the ranch later occupied by M. W. Ahern, first Deep Creek settler. Schools were not plentiful here 70 years ago [about 1889].

The Fairweather school served the dual purpose of church and school for some years. Among the teachers who taught were Anna Watehouse, Lila Miller (who afterward married Mr. Runner, and then continued to teach), Miss Bowman, Miss Hall, Marshall Hall, and Mr. Beck. At one time there were 35 pupils attending. Thirty-two girls and three boys.

As the community grew, so did the schools. The Reardan school district was organized in 1884. For many years the elementary grades were taught in frame houses scattered over the area. At last a grade school building was built in Reardan, and adjacent to it in 1904 the first high school was built.

Covered Wagon Pioneer Came to Reardan in 1878

One who has seen Reardan grow from its very beginning is Mrs. Rose Harder Moon, who came as a child from California with her parents, the late Mr. and Mrs. Henry Harder, in a covered wagon.

Those first years on the farm two miles east of present-day Reardan were lonely. There was no settlement of any kind, only a few scattered homesteaders like themselves. At the time of their arrival, no other white woman for miles around lived here. They built their home of lumber that had been hauled from Colfax. Winter closed in before they could erect a stable or a shed. Total assets were a team of horses and a plow. Later they built a barn and sheds from logs. Soon they acquired two cows from Rosalia. The next spring Harder planted a vegetable garden and a small lot of wheat. In the fall he flailed the grain by hand on canvas and saved the precious kernels for seed.

The Harder children–three sons and six daughters–had no playmates. How well they remembered that day when Rose was about five an as usual they took their mother’s homemade bread and buttermilk to Jake Lutzhoff, then a bachelor, and saw the four children of Peter Klaus and Mary Tramm. The became fast friends.

First Thrasher Arrives

Three years later [?] Sawyer and Lightpan brought the first horse-powered threshing machine to the region. All the neighbors helped one another with the big job of harvesting. Because so much of the work was done by hand and with teams, harvest extended well into November or even December.

Like those countless other farmers, the Harder’s first home consisted of two rooms–a kitchen and a bedroom for the parents and an attic as sleeping quarters for the children. Soon they built a “lean-to” for the increasing size of the family. Foundation for a new and spacious house was also being laid.

Peter [Haak], an uncle of Henry Brommer, came in a windfall when he bought a quarter of land from Harder for $100.

Since the Harder’s house was located on the old government road, the Colville Trail, they did not lack for visitors–soldiers on their way to Fort Spokane, freighters with heavily loaded wagons, and wayfarers. Usually a group of them or a family would spend the night at the Harder’s, the women an children slept on the floor of the kitchen and the men in the barn.

Indians Would Stop

Often large bands of Indians passed by, some with 50 or more ponies. Naturally they stopped for food–the squaws asking for bread for their papooses. Most impressive was old Chief Moses flanked by five or six tall braves. Mother Harder was afraid of them, yet they never harmed her or her family.

Once a week the Harder children went after mail to Capp’s Post Office. In the early days mail was carried by a rider.

The settlers went twice a year to Colfax for their provisions. Then as towns sprang up, they journeyed to Cheney and finally to Deep Creek. They required two days to make the trip by wagon.

The first schoolhouse was constructed on the Welch quarter, afterward owned by John Rake. The parents built the house, benches and desks. When the building became too small for the expanding population, they built a new schoolhouse on the site of the present cemetery. Maymie Snyder was the first teacher. To care for the overflow, classes were held in the old hotel of Fairweather under the supervision of Gertrude (Tramm) Buckman. Classes in reading, writing, arithmetic, and spelling were given only three months a year. Not until the coming of William Padley in 1904 were high school subjects taught.

In the early days the school term was from three to five months. The teachers were paid $35 a month. They boarded with patrons of the school spending a few weeks at a home. Nearly everyone walked, road horseback or traveled in farm wagons to school and staked their horses nearby. Not until the consolidated school system was formed were buses provided for transportation. Even as late as 1920, it was customary for farm boys to miss a month of school in the spring and fall, since they were needed to work in the fields.

Reardan flourished from 1889 to 1920. Local men worked for the Washington Grain and Milling Company, which later sold to the Central Milling Company. Fire destroyed the building five years ago [in 1952]. When Long Lake Dam and Little Falls Dam wee constructed on the Spokane River from 1910 to 1912, many of those employed by the Washington Water Power Company found lodging in Reardan.

Ed. W. Childs founded the Pioneer Drug Store about 1893. It was bought in 1904 by Alois Hanel, who operated it continually from then to now. For a time W. H. McCoy was also a local druggist.

Another early day firm still in business is Raymer’s Hardware Store stared in 1890 by John Raymer and O. A. Menger. Four years later Mr. Raymer became sole proprietor and added furniture to his stock. In 1910 he opened a garage and automobile agency about the same time George Schultz had another garage. Nelson Raymer is now owner of the hardware business started by his father.

Other merchants of the time were S. S. Bently, James C. Driscoll, E. K. Finrow. Conrad Scharman was proprietor of a thriving meat market for many years until at last he sold out to William Hopkins.

Walter S. Bliss conducted a bakery and restaurant from 1904 to 1916. Mr. Haye ran a harness shop. Walter King was one of the town’s blacksmiths and Hugh Smith had a livery stable. J. A. Hansen owned a lumber yard, feed and planing mill. Later he went into the Concrete Building Block business with James Moorehouse as his partner, and afterwards owned a hardware store. He sold his lumber interests to H. J. Mattes.

For a number of summers the Indians pitched their teepees on the eastern outskirts of town for a few weeks or less. From farmers they received fruit which they dried for food. Often on their return trip they would camp overnight.

Rosa Harder Moon, my [Nick Hein’s] grandmother, is the daughter of the same Henry Harder who settled on a farm east of the site of Fairweather in 1878. She is the wife of Nathan Gould Moon and the other of six children and in the point of continuous residence is the oldest living citizen of the community.

A few shelves in Mr. Hanel’s store was at first for books owned by the town library. Then it was moved to its present location, the building given to the city especially for that purpose by Emil Deuber. Since about 1927, it has grown and been maintained by the city. Mrs. J. C. Driscoll was the librarian for a long time.

Two fires caused setbacks to the business district. The first fire in 1914 started in a barn. In addition to it, two saloons, a hotel, a watch repair shop, a restaurant, and W. A. Hard’s Undertaking Company were destroyed. On August 3, 1926, fire wiped out an old hotel, the Bowie Building, Finrow’s Store, Hanel’s Drug Store and it spared only the Farmer’s State Building. It was generally believed that someone had deliberately set the blaze.

Mule Day celebration in Reardan from 1904 to about 1918, was the community’s local gathering point and outstanding event. Its originator was John W. Mann. He was grand marshal of the parade and led the line of march. Featured were bands, special floats, six mule teams, and occasionally even twenty mule teams, spans of work horses, driving teams, single drivers, mounted saddle horses, pedigreed horses and colts, and registered cows. There was a rodeo together with a carnival, concessions, and dancing. The purpose of the day was not primarily money making, but good fellowship.

–As told to Nick Hein by Mrs. Rosa Moon.

In 1985 came a newcomer, Nathan Gould Moon, from Springfield, Pa., whom Rose Harder married. They farmed the Gerard place south of Reardan. Their children were Raymond Moon, who now lives in Salem, Oregon; Jennie (Tregay) at San Francisco; Lelia (deceased); May (Tayor), at Astoria, Oregon; Florence (Hein) at Davenport, Washington; Wilhelmina (Peterson), at San Bruno, California. At the present, five generations are represented in the Harder family, including eight grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.

For many years Mrs. Moon has taken an active interest in this community. She is a member of the Presbyterian church, Ladies’ Aid, and Three-Link Rebekah Lodge.