Earl & Eliza Halls
(Earl) We packed our goods. George said to leave them in the house and go down to see Frank, then come back to work. But if I decided to stay down there, to write and he would haul the furniture six miles to the station and ship it and it wouldn’t cost me a thing. So, leaving my wife and Glenn in Huntsville, I left for Monticello. I went by train to Thompson Springs and then by stage to Moab. Another man and I hired Dave Parrott to take us to Monticello. The road at that time went by way of LaSal and was about sixty-eight miles. Parrott had a stripped-down Model-T car with no body at all, just two wagon spring seats, no top, and about fifty sacks to spread down in the sandy spots to get across when we got stalled. That trip cost us fifteen dollars each with the pushing thrown in. Well, I stayed in Monticello. It cost too much to get out.
I wrote to my dear uncle to ship my furniture. This was September 15, 1915. About November 20, the furniture came. Uncle George was mad because I didn’t come back. He sold the main part of our furniture, held out twenty-five dollars for hauling the balance six miles, also fifteen dollars for prepaid freight, and sent a check for sixty dollars for the balance which he said he got out of the furniture. I had paid sixty-five dollars for the stove alone when I had gone to Idaho. Our table, chairs, cooking utensils, cases of canned goods, and several other things, were sold.
Eliza came in November and I got a four-horse team from Henry Wood and went to Thompson Springs to meet her and bring back the few belongings that were left. She and Glenn rode on the load of freight with me. The trip took ten days – four days out and six days back. At LaSal, the night we camped there, it snowed six inches. We stretched a canvas from the wagon to the ground and built our bed under it. It was a little tough for Glenn, just past one year old. Roy Wood was with me on that trip. He also had a four-horse outfit and a hayrack, and was loaded with freight. On the way out, one of my horses fell and went under the wheel, and the leaders broke the chain and ran away. So Roy loaned me one of his teams, which was more gentle, to keep Eliza and Glenn from getting killed on the way home.
(Eliza) As Frank had been writing to Earl to come to Monticello, and go in with him in a shop, that is where we headed. Since we weren’t sure of a landing place, we left our furniture at the ranch. I think Uncle George expected us back, but he said he would ship our furniture when we settled. Glenn and I stayed with the folks in Huntsville until Earl decided what he’d do. It must have been the latter part of September that I got word to take the train to Thompson Springs where he would meet us. He was there with a four-horse freight wagon to take our furniture and some freight also, as all of Monticello’s supplies were hauled in like that, over sand and dirt roads. It was a long road and country that I never thought existed. I was surprised when we crossed the Colorado River and came out around the mountain and there was Moab. Another bridge has now been built farther down the river. The first was narrow, and farther upstream on a narrow place with a good rock footage on both sides. Things change a great deal over the years. I have never seen so much country with so little in it. Earl pointed out a big hole in the rock which now has been made into a home where people live.
Earl had wanted Glenn and me to go to Monticello with the mail carrier, but I wanted to stay with him as Glenn seemed to be taking it all right, so I stayed with the wagon. The weather wasn’t cold, though we did have snow one night. We strung a canvas over us and slept like logs. There were places to eat along the way. It seemed they were ready to feed the freighters and people traveling through.
In the fall of 1915, we arrived at Frank’s in Monticello, met his wife, Elizabeth, and her mother, who was living with them at the time. They were all so nice. They made us feel right at home.
(Earl) That winter we lived in the back of a house in two rooms, and only a cookstove for heat. The house was drafty. We would almost be blown out from the other side at times. We burned cedar and pinion wood, and we had to take wood on blacksmithing bills.
(Eliza) We got two rooms that were built on the back of a Mr. and Mrs. Backer’s house. The inside was okay, but the outside cover was metal slats and when the wind blew, which was quite often in Monticello, it came in without invitation. The room with the cook stove was a large square room with a board floor which had a knot hole in it, and where some of my knives, forks, and spoons got through with Glenn’s help. Here we put the kitchen cabinet, table and chairs which didn’t fill the room very much. The other room was only half as wide, but just as long. There was a heating stove in this room, and here is where we spent most of our time on cold days. I do not remember what happened to Grandma’s rag carpet, but we must have had it with us as this room had a carpet in it and was real comfortable. We were getting our water from an irrigation ditch that ran by the back yard. We filled up in the early morning before the cows got thirsty. It was good water, fresh from a mountain spring. Uncle George did not send the stove that I liked so well, nor my ironing board, nor the cases of canned goods we had him get for us where he got his supplies on discount. We could have used them. I don’t know why, but he only paid for the stove. Guess he thought we owed him something for the inconvenience we put him to, or it could have been an oversight, but I will say he was the loser. He couldn’t find another man as capable for that job as Earl was. He knew all the angles, from horseshoing to fixing machinery to irrigating.
(Earl) That fall after I arrived in Monticello, Adams decided he didn’t want me to go in with them, so I went out on a big ranch and drove six horses on a gang plow most of the fall. After it froze up, I hauled lumber from a sawmill with our four horses, and had some close calls, as the road was icy and the brake did no good. I would have to let the horses outrun the wagon. Some thrill to stand up on a load of lumber and drive four horses down a hill at full speed and wonder if at the next hill you would tip over.
After I left Barton’s, I helped Frank in the shop some, and we bought a water-cooled single cylinder gas engine and a cord wood saw. I would go from wood pile to wood pile sawing wood. We had an outfit on skids, and each guy had to bring his team and pull it to his place. Sure was slim pickings that winter. We had to take flour, spuds, or whatever we could get for pay. There was no money in the country. Someone, generally a cowman, would write out a check, possibly for five dollars and the check would pass around, for change, until it was worn out. Then someone would take it back to him and he would make out a fresh one. That was the way they had to make change. There was no change, very little money.
(Eliza) We made it through the winter. One night we went to the movie, and while there, a storm came up. When we got out, the snow was so high and drifted, it was almost impossible to get through. Earl waded through with Glenn. I had to crawl in places on my dress to get through. One little short man called, “Somebody come and get me,” but I think he was crawling over just like the rest of us. In the morning there was a drift in front of the shop about fifteen feet high. They had to go around it to get in. I still remember that pile of snow. It was there for awhile.
(Earl) One night we went to a picture show which was held in a barn-like place made of lumber and covered with tin. The snow would drift in, and the wind howled. But that didn’t matter as they were silent pictures. The electricity was generated with a steam engine. The steam engine broke a piston and Mr. Hibbs, local carpenter and undertaker, made a piston out of wood. In a very exciting place in the show the piston swelled up and stuck, and left the audience in suspense. On the way home that night, walking down Main Street, there was a big snowdrift across the street about five feet deep. Eliza crawled across on her dress, and I wallowed through carrying Glenn. After we were through, a little fellow about five feet tall, a full-grown man, started across, but sank in all over, and he started to shout, “Somebody come and help me!” Makes me laugh every time I think of it. Mr. Hibbs, a grand old man, made all the caskets for the people who died. No embalming then. But they always had funerals, and tried to find something good to say about the dead one.
In late February or early March 1916, my wife and I borrowed a team and bobsled and drove out to Lockerby to look at a homestead site that some people had told us about. Things went well until we had to leave the main road, and some people gave us directions as to how to get to the Doyle’s place. They were the people who had told us to come out. There was snow two feet deep on the road. It was four miles from the main road to their place. After the first mile, we had to leave the wagon box and the back bob of the sled. We tied a bail of hay on the front bob, and Eliza, Glenn, and I rode on it until almost dark. After crossing a canyon, we arrived at the Doyle’s place and stayed overnight with them. Next morning, Mr. Doyle and I went out to the land he had told me about. It was nice and smooth – no rocks or anything in sight, buried under two feet of snow.
Later that spring after the snow had gone, I filed on 320 acres of land. After going to New Mexico to buy horses, wagon, and harness, we bought a tent and moved to the homestead. We planted a little garden that didn’t amount to much, and cleared twenty acres that first year. We plowed it and got it ready for the crop the next year.
(Eliza) People were very friendly and we began to feel at home. When spring came in 1916, we got a large tent and headed for the homestead we had picked out under the snow eighteen miles east of Monticello. It was all right with one exception; there was a big canyon that split the homestead in the middle. Most of it could have been cultivated with the removal of some cedar trees, only we didn’t get that far. With the removal of a few of the trees there was plenty to cultivate. We put up the tent and set up housekeeping on the west side of the canyon close to a family by the name of Doyle. In fact, we camped on their place so we wouldn’t be so far from water, as we now hauled it in barrels from a spring in the bottom of the canyon. There were some rocks put around in several places like they might be the graves of Indians as there was evidence all around in the canyon that Indians had been there for some time. We were always going to dig one up to see what was there, but we never did.