Obituary: Colorful Pioneer Woman dies, Mollie Nichols, The Dalles, Wasco Co., Oregon

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Mollie Nichols

The Dalles Optimist Friday, January 28, 1938, Front page

Colorful Pioneer Woman Once Lived in Antelope.

Time marches on and "Aunt Moll" Nichols, once a dashing figure as she rode 
horses around Antelope (Oregon) and later Tumalo (Oregon), is dead at the age
of 90.

None of the younger generation will remember "Aunt Moll" but the name will
recall some of the pioneer figures of Central Oregon to those who have passed 
the bibical age of three score years and ten.

Daughter of roving pioneer parents, Miss Mollie Nichols was born at Dallas 
(Oregon) but moved to Wasco county while still a girl. She first lived in 
Antelope country, then in the heydey of its glory, and there she became known 
far and wide as a fine horsewoman. Her father, Frank Nichols, was a well known 
character and at one time was sheriff of old Wasco county when it took in all 
the country from the ridge of the Cascades on the west to the broken peaks of 
the Blue mountains on the east. It was he who, as a state representative, 
introduced a bill in the state legislature which carved Crook county out of what
was then all of Wasco county.

Later the Nichols, father and daughter, moved to Prineville (Oregon), where he 
established and operated the first drug store in that city. When fire destroyed 
the store, they moved on together to the new frontier at Tumalo (Oregon), then 
known as Laidlaw. Laidlaw, at that time was a booming western town, larger than 
Bend, due to the construction of the Deschutes County Municipal Improvement 
district, better known as Tumalo irrigation project.

Settlers were flocking into the town at that time, and the young city boasted 
of two stores, a meat market, restaurant, hotel, livery barn, and a nespaper, 
besides a hotel and other business.

Nichols and his daughter ran the hotel for some time. Later they bought one of 
the show places of the city, a huge residence which had been built in the boom 
days and was known as the James property. Here they made their home and here in 
the course of time occurred the death of the older Nichols.

After his death "Aunt Moll" continued to live in the big house, sharing it with 
a relative, Ed Dean, until his death about four years ago when she was persuaded
by relatives to give up living in the big house all alone and moved to Grant's 
Pass (Oregon) to be with her niece, Mrs. Fred N. Wallace.

And it was there, while "Aunt Noll" was busy making plans for a last visit to 
the scenes of her childhood, that she mounted her saddle and cantered out the 
long trail which takes all old pioneers, at the last, over the Great Divide.

END

Written permission to reprint given by The Dalles Chronicle, The Dalles, Oregon