Gem County ID Archives Photo Place.....The Marsh-Ireton Ranch Part 1 Image 1 April 22, 1948
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Sharon McConnel gem.idgenweb@gmail.com November 19, 2022, 12:17 pm

Source:             Nellie Ireton Mills
Photo can be seen at:
http://www.usgwarchives.net/id/gem/photos/themarsh1646nph.jpg
Image file size: 283.3 Kb

The story of the Marsh and Ireton ranch on the Payette, is the story of one of
Idaho's best known pioneer ranches and "stopping places". It begins soon after gold
was discovered in Boise Basin and ends with the advent of the railroad.

By the spring of 1863 news of the discovery of gold in the summer of 1862 on Grimes
Creek in Idaho, then a part of Washington Territory had spread all over the West and
even to the states beyond the Rockies. 
Excitement ran high and a motley assortment of California miners, Willamette Valley
farmers, "green horns", and other adventurers crowded on the first boat up the
Columbia early in April. Anxiously they wondered if there would be any means of
transportation beyond the landing above Umatilla. Progressive pioneers however had
foreseen their needs and some saddle and pack horses were in readiness. The first
saddle train left Walla Walla April 10th and on April 18th, John Hailey, always
alert to transportation needs, left there for "the diggings" with sixteen California
miners as saddle passengers and with camp equipment on four pack horses. The fare
was $50.00.

Others followed in quick succession and stopping places were at a premium. Stage
stations for footmen and the pack strings sprung up all along the trail and one was
built by two men, by the names of Buoner and Reeves, ten miles above Emmett at the
lower end of a fertile little valley that eventually became the Marsh and Ireton
ranch.

Shacks of some sort, were put up by these men, not far from the river and near the
foothills, where a watchful eye could be kept on loose stock grazing on the luscious
waving grass, on the floor of the valley. 
A dugout stage barn was made in the side of the hill with thatched willows for a
roof and front. (The excavation for this barn could be seen for many years just
below the ranch house). A storm cellar that is still in use was also built in the
side of the hill at a very early date.

The first owners sold their squatters right and buildings to a man named Gray, who
so the story goes was something of a crook in his own right and paid for the ranch
in Bummer Hill sand, shining sand that looked like gold, and was the medium used in
many an unsavory deal of the early days. Gray in turn sold the place to a Mr. Reed
from Corvallis, Oregon.

This owner evidently developed his ranch business as well as the stopping place. On
delivering a drove of cattle to Pioneerville or "Hagem" (as it was generally called)
he met Hardin B. Martin, a butcher of that place, and pursuaded him to come down and
take charge of the ranch and station. Of Mr. Martin little is 
known, but down through the years has come the story of Mrs. Martin's ability and
orderliness and of her great love for reading.

Reed. soon sold the ranch to Martin who persuaded William S. Mitchell to go in with
him and the place became known as the Mitchell-Martin ranch.

About the middle of May, 1867, Mr. Mitchell persuaded Edson Marsh, who had been
working for a Mr. Warriner, a banker of Idaho City in a placer claim on what is now
the Wesley Cruickshank place, to come to the ranch and work. (The above mentioned
claim was located in 1865 by Dan Keefer, who found gold when he camped there on his
way to the Basin and returned to locate it, taking Mr. Warriner in as a partner). He
and Marsh cleaned up $10,000 in two months one season. As an added inducement to get
him to work at the ranch Mitchell told Marsh that he and Martin had ordered from
Salt Lake a Union Mower, the first mowing machine to be brought into the country and
he wanted a careful man to run it.

With the machine, working for $2.00 per day, Mr. Marsh cut the fields of wild hay
and some timothy that was baled and sold for $25.00 per ton. Driving five yoke of
Oxen for McKusick of Idaho City he hauled the baled hay to the Basin.

The round trip took just a week, four days up and three back. Indicative of his
steadiness and orderly habits Mrs. Martin, watching, said that Ed never failed to
come in sight within 15 minutes of the same time on each return trip.

Marsh soon became a partner in the place and he and Mitchell bought out the Martins.
For ten years the place was known as the Mitchell and Marsh ranch. During this time
they took up more land and built the fine private irrigation ditch taking water from
the river about 3 1/2 miles above the ranch. Their eye and a carpenter's level were
their surveying instruments, and they did a good job. Much fencing was also done and
the house and other buildings were improved and trees were set out.

When the mail route from Falk's Store to Placerville, the first post office in
Southwestern Idaho, was established the ranch was given an office called Squaw
Creek, and Mr. Marsh was made postmaster, a position he held as long as he lived on
the ranch. The real Squaw Creek was 2 or 3 miles away across the river and there was
no bridge, but because the settlers in both the lower and upper Squaw Creek valleys,
the latter 20 miles away, got their mail at the ranch, the office was called Squaw
Creek for many years. (Much later when the Sweet post 

Additional Comments:
Articles appeared in "The Emmett" newspaper April 22, 1948 written by 
Nellie Ireton Mills.
Images were previously submitted by Sharon McConnel in December 2005.

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/id/gem/photos/themarsh1646nph.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/idfiles/

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