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Bondurant Tidbits

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 11 months ago

Bondurant Tidbits

 

By Judi Myers, 2005

 

With winters that can see 7 feet of snow and summers that have an official growing season of 13 days homesteaders did not settle the Fall River Basin until the late 1890s. Jack Pfisterer said, “Old-timers all call this Fall River or Fall River Basin. Then the Forest Service decided to name it for an old trapper named Hoback.” By either name, the area made the headlines. In 1895 there was an encounter over hunting rights between the Bannock Indians and white settlers from Jackson Hole. The drama was played out in the Hoback Basin and Battle Mountain area. A New York newspaper ran this headline, “All Residents of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Massacred”.

 

At this time Daniel and Clara Faler and their family had a ranch and trading post near Fish Creek. With news of the unrest, they built a log structure named “Faler Fort” on a hill behind their place. The threat was soon over, and the bottom logs of this structure are still visible on the Pfisterer Ranch. Maps label this ridge “Fortress Hill”. (For the complete story of the Battle Mountain incident see the Roundup 2-16-89 or Sublette Examiner 7-17-98)

 

About this same time (according to Faren Faler), the Faler boys, Vint and Arthur, were looking for some missing saddle horses. They were suddenly surrounded by Indians and tied to a tree. Branches were gathered for a fire. One of the Indians was Vint’s friend and argued for the release of the prisoners. Arthur was not as well liked. The Indians held a grudge against Arthur because when they’d had horse races with him, he would be insulting when he lost or gloating when he won. It was decided to turn Vint loose but not Arthur. Vint refused to leave without his brother. Finally both men were allowed to go. Arthur always gave Vint credit for saving his life.

 

Another story, this one told by Mrs. P.O. Bondurant, is that the Faler ranch was bothered by Indians who would come and pilfer. Rat poison was put in some whiskey and left out for the intruders. An old trapper and one of the Faler boys came by and drank it instead. The trapper died and the son was very ill.

 

In 1898 the Basin was again in the news when the Wyoming Press of Evanston reported the death of D.P. Faler. He had been shot by his son, Arthur, who was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense.

 

This was the same year that the Bondurants arrived. B.F. (Benjamin Franklin) and Sara Bondurant settled on the Hoback River with their children Pearl, Rolla (Rollie?), Claire, Essie (Ellie?) and Herschel. Mr. Bondurant started a store and established a post office there in 1903. The first postmistress was Ellie Bondurant. The Roundup reported that the area was so isolated in the early part of the 1900s that they often forgot to vote and had “donated the ballot box to the judge’s wife for use as a bread box”. Mrs. P.O. Bondurant wrote that they had to carry the mail for the first 2 years without pay.

 

The mail for Bondurant came from Daniel or Merna. The only means of winter travel in the early days was skis, webs or dog team. One year the contract ran out in early fall and no mail was received all winter except for one trip Shelton Baker made before Christmas. Jake Pfisterer remembered when his dad had the mail contract. “They carried it twice a week. My dad would ski over to Merna and stay the night. They couldn’t get the mail before 7 in the morning and had to deliver it to Bondurant by 7 that evening. Sometimes the skis were sticking and the only grease they had was pitch and tallow. If they didn’t make it on time, the postmaster would report ‘em and they’d never get paid for that trip. Time and again they couldn’t make it and didn’t get paid. In the winter they’d let the parcels pile up and wait until spring when they could bring them by wagon.”

 

In 1935 Mr. Hiatt took over the post office and changed the name to Triangle F. It changed back to Bondurant in 1938.

 

Manuel and Lydia Bowlsby arrived in 1898 with 4 sons: Phi, John, William A and Perry. William C and Millie Bowlsby arrived the next year. They had 3 children: Arthur, Sylvia, and Della. William C. moved the Sandy Marshall sawmill from Kendall to Dell Creek and operated it until 1945. Shelton Baker and several of the Campbells homesteaded Jack Creek flat in 1910. Orin Robinson, a government trapper, settled on Fisherman Creek in 1915. Robinson Butte was named for him. Hearley and Jennie Fronk arrived in 1919.

 

William Techumseh Faris came to the Basin with his mother in 1913. They homesteaded on lower Jack Creek and Dell Creek. In 1921 he married Jessie McMaster and they had 3 children: Lois, Wilma and Donald. They ranched for almost 60 years, selling in 1972.

 

Jessie Faris remembered why the Roundup called the area ‘Battle Valley’ in 1924. “The school was on skids and would be at different places around the Basin. Each spring – we only had school for 4 months in the summer and it was considered a full year - we’d go to the school meetings and get into fights over where the school would be. Nobody wanted their kids to have to travel so far. We’d do battle. Two women had a fistfight. You can’t imagine! One woman took her high heel shoe and pounded Buck Baker. I was in it too. I’d mouth off and my old man would elbow me and say, ‘Keep your mouth shut, Jessie’.

 

“One time I went to the school meeting and got in a fight with Jake Pfisterer. They were gonna send the kids down through our place but they wouldn’t give us a school by our place. I said to him, ‘Well, if you’re gonna do that, how are you gonna get through our ranch?’ I can’t shut up. I was gonna have my say and I did.” Bondurant retained a one-room schoolhouse until 1987. The new school is no long ‘one’ room, but is still the one teacher for grades K-5 concept.

 

Jessie Faris said “We didn’t just fight at school meetings. There was a free-for-all at one of the dances, too. I think it was 1941. Oh, it was a donnybrook. One man threw a block of stove wood at someone. I got a broken finger just as a by-stander. Another time there was hair pulling and they even took the piece of hair to court. I also remember the time Mr. E was going to force a road through our property. I took a fence post to him and says, ‘You’re not going through here!’ They didn’t fool with old lady Faris!

 

“Some things were funny too. Old Charlie Bellin used to tease Mrs. P. She was a great talker and if she ever stopped, he’d get behind her and make motions like starting up a car. But don’t let an outsider come in and talk about us. We were all just like family.”

 

After 20 years of being part of the Basin family, a person earned a nickname. Bill Bowlsby coined the name “Chokecherry” for them. Jack Pfisterer said that everybody else was just a ‘Prairie Dog’.

 

The Faris’s were ‘Chokecherries’. They had the first electricity in the Basin with the power source outside in a shed. Jessie said, “Will put on a bathrobe and went out to shut off the power one night. He’d just gotten back in bed and a mouse ran over the switch. He had to get up, go outside and shut it off again.” She also remembers the time her husband found some gold, got so excited trying to melt it down that he blew it all over the kitchen. In the fall they’d buy a half a ton of flour and cases of canned goods to last the winter. They would use the flour sacks to make bloomers. Across the bottoms it would say, “Yellowstone”. Their children ran traplines and hauled manure out of the barn to earn money.

 

Professors used to visit the Faris ranch when they came to the Basin looking for fossils and archaeological artifacts. Two of the professors, Dr. Killan and Dr. Frison, stopped by one day and Will announced, ‘Kill ‘em and Freeze ‘em are here!’ One of the items of historical interest was an inscribed rock found on the Faris ranch in the 1950s. Although worn, it appears to say “MF 1791”. Signal pots, charred wood and bear claws were found on the hill behind the Faris ranch.

 

Other professors also studied the area. In 1914, A.R. Schultz wrote, “Near the lower end of Fall River, where the…eroded sandstone and shale produce riffles in the stream, several flakes or scales of gold were found in the sands accumulated near the water’s edge.” The geology of the Basin has been studied. In the early 1950s Dr. Jack Dorr of the University of Michigan studied the rock layers and found a variety of fossils including alligators, lizards, squirrel-like, shrew-like, raccoon-like, and hippopotamus-like animals as well as first horses, fish and carnivores.

 

Further down the Hoback Canyon is Granite Hot Springs. George Parody opened it as a tourist camp in 1924. Another unique place is the Episcopal Church. It was dedicated in 1941 with a free barbeque. This annual barbeque has become a fund-raiser for the little log church. Bondurant, and the Hoback Basin, from fights to fossils, has a delightful history.

 

Sources: Study of Resources, People…p8. WPA File #1326. Wyoming Press 6-25-1898, 7-2-1898. Faren Faler stories, 1985. History of Bondurant by Mrs. P.O. Bondurant. Shel. E. Baker & the Hoback Basin, by Josephine Baker Holt, 1959. Postmaster Appointments by Dele Ball. Jessie Faris personal files. US Geological Survey Bulletin 543 by A.R. Schultz, 1914, p123. Vertebrate Paleontologist At Work by John Dorr, Carnegie Magazine, Feb,1952. Dr G.F. Gunnell, University of Michigan, personal letter, 1987. Roundups: 11-26-1914, 5-1-1924, 5-12-1988, 6-26-1924.

 

Interviews: Jake Pfisterer, 1987. Jessie Faris and Wilma Farwell, 1987 & 1988.

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