Episode 3 : Legends of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness: an interview with Jean Carroll [transcript]

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:01 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Welcome to the Sawai Bitterroot Wilderness History Project, which is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Idaho and Washington State University. Part of the project’s mission is to collect, preserve, and make public oral histories documenting the history and people of the Solway Bitterroot Wilderness. For more information, please visit our website at SPW lib argue idaho.edu.

00:00:29:03 - 00:00:54:01 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: And then I think people, I think people get so much out of being in a wilderness setting. Once you take away cars and money and telephone lines, people are different and they are different to each other, I think. And, and, and then they draw on things in themselves that maybe are a little rusty from our crazy life out here.

00:00:54:01 - 00:01:24:28 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Now, I think the ways that people get along when they’re isolated in a place like that, that they place that they want to be family is a wonderful thing.

00:01:25:00 - 00:01:49:10 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Thank you for joining us for the third episode of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness History Project. In this episode, titled legends of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness, Jean Carroll recalls stories and legends that populate the backcountry, taking on a life of their own as they pass from campfire to campfire and are retold on the front porches of log cabins or during breaks along the Long trail.

00:01:49:12 - 00:02:27:10 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Jean Renshaw Carroll is the author of the book. I Never Felt Poor except in Town Selway saga, 1932 to 1948. In her stirring history and memoir, Jean shares about her experiences growing up at Selway Lodge near the mouth of Bear Creek. She tells lively tales of exploits with her siblings, living deep in the wilderness of the hunters, pilots, trappers, fishermen and guests from all over the country who visited her family’s home and of the work she did helping her father Alvin Renshaw, with various duties around the ranch and later cooking for her brother Jim’s fishing parties.

00:02:27:13 - 00:02:50:10 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: This paragraph is an excerpt from Jean’s book each year as we rode along the trail. I felt all my senses coming alive to the earthy smells and varied, vivid greens of the trees and undergrowth, to the bright yellow patches of balsam root, and to the song of the river roaring through canyons, or tinkling and murmuring along the deep holes.

00:02:50:12 - 00:03:14:16 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Always two. I breathed in that familiar smell of the horses, and listen to the creak of the saddle leather wheel clop, clop of hooves hitting rock or plopping through mud, spring runoff all along the watershed would be sending cascades of water off the mountains so that we rode by numerous waterfalls, not present any other time of year as we rode toward our ranch home, and simple life on the subway.

00:03:14:19 - 00:03:26:28 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: I rejoiced again in the fact that I never felt poor except in town on the Selway. I felt rich, rich in freedom and rich in experience.

00:03:27:00 - 00:03:43:18 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: So Jean has written a book called I never felt poor except in town. And, I was just interested. Jane, if you can talk about your first memories of being back in the wilderness back at Solway Lodge.

00:03:43:20 - 00:03:53:14 Speaker 4 I was sitting in front of dad in the saddle and going up the trail and feeling very, very tired.

00:03:53:16 - 00:04:06:10 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: You talked in your book about that. There’s certain places like The Salmon Hole and Archer’s Grave and an elevator mountain that kind of held a mystery. Can you talk about that elevator map? Yeah.

00:04:06:13 - 00:04:36:19 Speaker 4 Has a cave that you can see from the subway trail. Well, the story was that the Magruder party, when they were killed, that the murders took some of the gold, and they hid it in their cave. But it never looked to me like it could get to it. And yet, when, Park opened, Berger’s wife died. He took her ashes into the cave, and then he died in June.

00:04:36:22 - 00:04:46:27 Speaker 4 And they have taken his ashes to the cave. So. And from the plane, it did look like there was a sort of a trail there that you could make.

00:04:46:29 - 00:04:55:24 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Yeah. Do you, remember the story? The Magruder story? I don’t mind telling it on tape.

00:04:55:26 - 00:05:29:06 Speaker 4 Well, Helbig and Magruder were really good friends and lost and and, Magruder was a merchant, you know, back to write a hotel. Magruder used to go to Virginia City, which I don’t even know where that is. And he would take groceries and bring back gold from there. he picked up, some guys to come back with him because they didn’t have packs, drinks.

00:05:29:06 - 00:05:55:05 Speaker 4 They just had big bunches of mules that they herded. And so it took more than 1 or 2 people to do it. and then, around the head of the Selway, these people that he had picked up had decided that they were going to murder the tiger. And his his people. And so they did and took the gold.

00:05:55:08 - 00:06:34:11 Speaker 4 And I guess they you know, I’ve heard several stories that mules followed or tried to. And so they shot the mules. And I don’t know whether that’s a true story or not. And I don’t know what they did with all the gold. Maybe someone in the cave, maybe not. But anyway, they went back to Lewiston and the, murder thing guy, for some reason, was riding Magruder horse, and that was the stupidest thing to do, because of course, Hill didn’t.

00:06:34:11 - 00:07:09:19 Speaker 4 You recognize it? And besides that, one of the stories is that Hill, because he had a dream where he saw Magruder killed with an ax. So if that was true, or maybe it wasn’t true, you’re still just the fact that the guy was riding the horse and Magruder didn’t come back, made him suspicious. And so he was so suspicious that when these guys left on the road to go to Portland, Or wherever, California, I guess he followed them.

00:07:09:21 - 00:07:43:19 Speaker 4 And somehow he got a, sheriff at that place to, arrest them. And he brought them back here, and you brought him back, and one guy told him about it, and he wasn’t real smart. And so they they hung all the rest of them. And, and Lawson and, the other guy that had, turned evidence, he was dead within a year from drinking or something.

00:07:43:21 - 00:07:51:03 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Yeah. Well, yeah, that’s not right. Yeah. I’ve read I’ve read the story, but it it just sounds, coming from a local.

00:07:51:09 - 00:08:15:08 Speaker 4 And then, up, a Bear Creek. There’s a place we call Salmon Hole, and I guess there’s salmon holes up moose Creek. Also. but this one I haven’t been. I was correct to say, just one up. Bear Creek had what dad called an oven and he says if the Indians use it, they used to go through there and catch salmon.

00:08:15:08 - 00:08:39:28 Speaker 4 They used the a lot of salmon that there’s a picture as he came back as they returned. Because there for a long time there weren’t any salmon. When I was little, because they built a dam that was done. Anyway, I guess they, dried or baked the salmon. And that one.

00:08:40:01 - 00:08:44:20 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Did you ever find. Did you guys go up to the salmon hole very often?

00:08:44:23 - 00:08:45:15 Speaker 4 Yeah.

00:08:45:18 - 00:08:48:07 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Did you ever find any, like, arrowheads or anything?

00:08:48:08 - 00:08:59:24 Speaker 4 I never did, but other people said they did. But of course, I was never looking for arrowheads, but they were just fishing. Yeah, yeah.

00:08:59:27 - 00:09:03:02 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: what about Archer’s grave? Did you.

00:09:03:05 - 00:09:29:29 Speaker 4 See? That’s a private creek? And then, of course, the story is said Poppy. Somebody found it and said Poppy, I guess was the one that that, made a cross and said, look, before you leave on it and why? because he had been and I can’t remember what he had been doing in the winter time. he was skiing off of there.

00:09:30:01 - 00:09:43:02 Speaker 4 Maybe he was trapping and, he, ski the wrong place and went over a black. Killed him.

00:09:43:04 - 00:10:07:19 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness History Project, which has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The University of Idaho, and Washington State University. The project coordinator is Debbie Lee, recorded and produced by Aaron Jepson.