Ed Krumpe
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Ed Krumpe: Hello, I'm Ed Krumpe. I'm a retired professor from the College of Natural Resources. I came to the University of Idaho in 1979 to teach the wilderness management course. And that first season I was here, because I had been a park superintendent and had been a carpenter before that, I was tasked with going in and looking at this University facility they called Taylor Ranch. It had 64 acres that had been homesteaded by Jess Taylor, who was a famous outfitter and then later became a site for research for Professor Maurice Hornocker. He was the first person in the world to radio collar cougars. And so for 27 years there were cougars radio collared in there. But they flew me in and of course Taylor Ranch is what you hear them call it, and I was expecting a ranch. And it's not. It's 64 acres on Big Creek, a beautiful creek. It's a small river that is the primary tributary to the Middle Fork, seven miles up from the from the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. And there were several log cabins, some historic, and there were a couple of newer structures. Things weren't in very good repair. And there were seasonal interns that would work on science projects in there. But the University had retained an outfitter that actually took care of and was the caretaker of the place in exchange for hunting privileges.
Ed Krumpe: And then the students would would come and go, but it was in rough condition. And so I mean, when I first saw it, I gotta tell you my first surprise was this isn't a ranch. It's in a steep canyon river valley. But there's something special about that piece of landscape, I guess I call it a sense of place you feel when you step out of the plane, or even if you're hiking and cross the pack bridge onto the property. And you look around, there's just, it's like there's everything you'd need to survive there. You have a view to the north of the grass covered south-facong mountain benches. There's three, three levels of benches, where the elk and bighorn sheep and deer come in the winter to graze, when there's snow everywhere else, they can still browse there. We've counted up to 64 animals at a time of elk, bighorn and deer on the slopes. The stream is a primary tributary to the Middle Fork of the Salmon River and there's salmon that run up it some 750 miles from the west coast. There's lots of native cutthroat and bull trout. And then there are two small streams. One very small stream, Pioneer Creek, comes right through the complex where some of the cabins are. And at the west end of the property is Rush Creek. And that also crosses our property. And that's a fair sized stream. And there's a lot of anadromous fish that still go up yearly. And so you have this combination of open spaces facing to the south, and others that are north facing. And you have two streams plus the major Big Creek and it's wide open. You get the sun in the summer. It's just it's just a special place when you look at it. And before long you start hiking around and pretty soon you find signs that someone else has been here. Like you go downstream less than a mile and there's these depressions in the ground, which people used to speculate was where trees fell over and that the depression was from the root ball? Or was that from miners scratching and digging holes looking for something? Well, they were from ancient pit houses. Pioneers called them the Sheep Eater Indians, but there were indigenous people there a long time prior to that.
Ed Krumpe: Yeah, ancient ancient houses that finally were excavated. So one of the archaeologists from the University of Idaho, Dr. Frank Leonhardy, came in, he had a grant from the National Geographic Society, and started an archeological dig. He discovered those pit houses were dug into the ground. And then there would be dark colored circular holes along each side where the inhabitants anchored tree limbs and made like Quonset huts and covered that with bark and skins and brush and stuff. And there'd be a firepit in one end of each house. And these excavations by the archaeologists revealed the house pits were quite deep. Because they were sunken in like that the inhabitants could survive the super hot summer, but they could also survive in winter because they had some of the insulating temperature from the ground to help protect them. And then there's lots of bones and things they excavated in the fire pits. But you look around, I mean, and elsewhere closer to the Taylor Ranch there's some nice flat spots by the stream to make a camp on. And you just kind of look around and there's everything you need. There's some shade, there's some open vistas there. There's the water, there's places to graze stock if you had stock or horses, it's just, it's just a special place.
Ed Krumpe: And I've noticed for years, because I've been going in since 1979, that people come in to walk around and they're just, they're quiet. They just look around and they say, Holy cow, this is a huge valley. I mean, that's from their view of the benches across the stream. They rise almost 2000 feet. So there's, there's just something special. Old David Lewis that homesteaded this property picked a great spot. And then after that, Jess Taylor and a great scientist Maurice Honocker saw the value of it. And we're just blessed the University at the time was willing to put up about $100,000 to eventually buy it, which was a steal. So yeah, that's, that's my first impressions. But I still feel that it's a special place, you have a sense of place. And many others have mentioned the same thing.
Jack Kredell: And it sounds like the mountain leaders also knew it was a great spot.
Ed Krumpe: Well, the archaeologists showed us a little better place than perhaps at Taylor, because it's just downstream a little bit but its flat and had the stream. There was forage, places to fish. And we actually found some of these implements that were stones that had a little bit of an indentation around their sides. Well, those were net anchors used for getting salmon, and the primary bones in the fire pits were from salmon. And, and also bighorn sheep, but not hardly any elk. But if you look at it, what an advantage of that spot was that there was a narrow approach on either end of this flat area. And just one person on each end could have protected it by standing guard. So it was easy to protect and defend. And so that's something we don't think about choosing a campsite today.h
Ed Krumpe: But everything else that we like in a campsite, availability of firewood, flat spot, access to water, some shade, some sun, some forage, everything else, I'm sure it was the same close to 3,000 years ago when that was occupied. So it's yeah, it's pretty amazing. I should mention, there's actually a third stream on on the Taylor property. We have water rights for three streams. Just across Big Creek from where the the facilities are there's Cliff Creek, which is a steep creek that comes down of out of the lambing cliffs. And so there's an area that's almost like a mountain cirque that's very steep and rocky and inaccessible. And bighorn sheep will only lamb on those cliffs that are just totally inaccessible. So Cliff Creek comes tumbling down there, too. So we actually had three streams. So that's a pretty special spot. You tell a realtor, I want a place in the mountains that has flat and open land and a major stream and three minor streams and yeah, it has a lot of neat attributes.
Jack Kredell: It's amazing. I have a friend who's a Ph.D. in Water Resources, and I think she's studying Pioneer Creek or another one of those creeks around there, it could even be Cliff Creek. But she's, she's looking at springs and that's fantastic. And you actually asked her to three of my classes.
Jack Kredell: I was going to ask you to describe the geography around Taylor for somebody who's never been. But you basically did that. And then you also kind of described the kind of deeper historical scenario with this. Yeah, that was really fantastic.
Ed Krumpe: You know, I'd like to mention though some of the more modern history. You know, different people came through and stayed there after Dave Lewis. Dave Lewis, what's amazing about the guy that first settled there, was a guide for Colonel Custer in the army. And in the Sheep Eater War, which wasn't a war, was when the army came through and tried to chase the natives out. He (Dave Lewis) saw that country for the first time. I believe he was a guide, and I think he packed ammunition too. But anyway, he came back once he was out of the military and settled there. But then there's been some others, you know, that occupied that place. And now we have a landing strip. It's, I can't remember, I think it's 2600 feet long, and has a bit of a curve to it. So it's not an easy landing strip, it's one of the more difficult ones in the wilderness. But that was carved out with just Jess Taylor and and his mules kusing what they call a slip scoop, which is kind of a metal pan you drag behind, I mean, it's unbelievable work done all by hand to get straightened out and make flat for a landing strip. And so you know, they started landing planes back in I think it was in the 40s.
Ed Krumpe: So, there's been a lot, a lot of time invested into Taylor Ranch. And then the other thing, you can still see some signs of this is, so we have some nice big open meadows and pasture. And so for years, when we had stock in there, horses and mules, we would put up 14 ton of hay a year. But if you'd look out across the pasture after it was mowed, or say, early in the spring, before the grasses started growing, you'd see a series of spiderweb like ditches. And what that was, it's from the old timers who would divert water from Pioneer Creek. And they had these little trickle ditches that they would dam up and then let water go down that one, and then stop that one so water would go down another one so they could cover quite a few acres, with water as they needed to spread out the water. And so those small ditches still remain. Now we have some hoses and some pivot sprinklers, which can help things green up. But but then for many, many years, we did everything by hand because we had no electricity in there. And we did everything with with stock. And the way we would do haying was you'd have to bring people in to holp. So we'd call in all the researchers and students that had worked there or on some project in the area. And usually near the Fourth of July, they'd come in and we'd have 12 to 16 people helping. And in the morning, we'd hitch up the team and cut with a 1948 McCormick sickle bar mower.
Ed Krumpe: It was a 1948 sickle bar mower and I was able to get parts for that clear up into the mid 1980s. And when we couldn't get parts anymore, we found one in Oregon at an old horse farm and we took the wheels off because they're heavy. And we flew it in and we cannibalized it for other pieces. But we would cut the hay in the morning. You'd go over it with a dump rake which is pulled behind the mules. It was a rake that had tines that would rake and dump the hay in rows to dry. And so you'd make wind rows of hay. And then in the evening, you go flip it into into piles about 30 inches high. And the next day, you'd hitch up a big wagon to the to the mules and you'd go out and you have a student with a pitchfork on either side of each pile. They get down and just throw the pile up on the wagon. You'd have three people up on the wagon, stomping it in. And, you had a number of students on each side and the horses would just weave through these piles of hay so that everyone could throw it up. And we'd get I can't remember, maybe up to two tons per load.
Ed Krumpe: Just on a wagon, no bales. Then we'd just stacking up a huge hay pile. And then eventually we built a pole barn to keep it out of the weather. We were losing too much by just putting a piece of canvas over it and horses can't eat, eat moldy hay. So eventually we build a pole barn. It's all wood, and even with wood shakes. And we could put 14 to 16 tons of hay in that pole barn. We did that for years to feed the stock. And then the stock were used to support the researchers. So researchers would have spike camps, that people tracking mountain lions used. You do that in the winter. And so they go out with permission from the forest service and set up camps about six or seven miles apart. They'd set up a big old canvas wall tent, cut some firewood. And then in the winter, the researchers would take somebody with mountain lion hunting dogs and go out and track the cougars. All night come across a track dogs would treat them and then they dart them and do the radio collar and things. So there's a yeah, there's quite a history of people using Taylor Ranch had to do it using it using primitive skills beause we were in a designated Wilderness. And we just always cut our firewood with a cross cut saws. Our students learn that elsewhere you might run a chainsaw but in here you'd learn how to pull a crosscut and they'd say I can't do that. And by golly by the end of summer they'd put up three or four cords just with a crosscut so it's been quite a place to learn new skills.