Payette County ID Archives History - Letters .....Story Of Payette’s First Flag 1935
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Patty Theurer seymour784@yahoo.com December 29, 2005, 9:26 pm

Book Title: 

Story of Payette’s First Flag.
1935

This is a story of Payette’s first flag taken by Dora McKinney in notes from an 
address given by Mrs. D. C. Chase before the Portia Club, Jan. 22, 1935.  Forty-
five years after the event had taken place, Mrs. Chase described her 
experiences in making the first flag ever flown in Payette, on the occasion of 
Idaho being admitted into the Union of States, July 3rd, 1890.

After the Oregon Short line Railroad was built thru Idaho, it was the custom of 
officials of the road to make frequent trips over the line, carefully noting 
settlers trails near their right-of-way, and where conditions in such places 
were promising, they ordered side-tracks built.  Such a side-track was ordered 
built on the south side of the Payette River, near the site of the present 
alfalfa mill.  David Gorrie had taken up a desert claim of 160 acres where the 
town of Payette now stands, and with an eye to the future, he offered the 
railroad a free building site if they would come across the north side of the 
river, which they eventually did.

As the story continues, Mr. Chase, who with his family resided in Pocatello, 
had accompanied the officials on several inspection trips thru western Idaho 
and was so favorably impressed with the future possibilities of this section 
that he asked to be sent to Payette as an agent when the station should be 
completed.  This was done and the Chases came to Payette in 1886.  

On July 3rd, 1890, the news came over the telegraph wires to the lonely 
railroad stations scattered thru the territory that Idaho had been admitted 
into the great Union of States.  It seemed to the family living in the tiny 
station at Payette that this event called for a patriotic observance of some 
kind.  Mrs. Chase tells how her husband came in saying, “Do you suppose we can 
find a flag in town?  We must celebrate!”  She then went over to A. B. Moss & 
Bro.’s store and also to the store of D. S. Lamme which stood in the old part 
of town called Boomerang (so named because of a boom in the river for holding 
railroad ties) looking for a flag, but she was unsuccessful.  There was no flag 
in Payette.

Deciding they would have to make a flag if they had one they searched high and 
low for a picture to be used as a guide and finally Mr. Chase found one in a 
small pocket dictionary.  Mrs. Chase then returned to Moss Brothers store and 
purchased one and a half yards of bleached muslin, one and a half yards of 
turkey red calico, and three fourths of a yard of heavy blue flannel, as she 
was unable to get any plain blue calico.  She was then ready to go to work.  
Mrs. Chase spoke of the difficulty of making five pointed stars, which she made 
after a pattern cut from paper.  She stitched the red and white strips 
together, turning them over and double stitching them so there would be no 
rough seams.  She then placed the blue flannel field of the flag on the floor, 
and fitted the forty-three bleached muslin stars—the forty-third being Idaho—
onto it, basted them down, and then stitched them on the sewing machine on both 
sides.  After adding the red and white stripes to the blue field, Mrs. Chase 
took the scissors and snipped away the blue flannel from behind each star so 
that they showed white on both sides.  Mr. Chase found a timber in the station 
freight room which he dressed down into a flag pole about ten feet in length 
and mounted the flag, which when completed, measured thirty-six by fifty-four 
inches with a blue field twenty-two by twenty-four inches.  

The Chases had worked until three o’clock in the morning before the flag was 
finished, and Mrs. Chase states that tho worn and weary, she has never made 
anything which she surveyed with such pride and satisfaction as she did that 
flag on July 4th, 1890.  It might be imagined that the heavy flannel combined 
with calico and muslin, would have looked rough and bulky, but Mrs. Chase 
stated that when the flag was mounted on the station and fluttering in the 
breeze, the difference in the materials could never be detected. 

Later the Chases purchased a flag, and they then loaned their old flag to the 
school for entertainments, celebrations, etc., and it was following an 
entertainment in Lamme’s Hall, that the old flag must have been thrown out by 
mistake and burned with the trash as it was never returned to them and all 
trace of it was lost.  


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