Sanders County Ledger - Your Best Source For Sanders County News

40 YEARS AGO • OCTOBER 20, 1977

AT 90, RANCHER STILL GOING STRONG

Ninety years old and still going strong! That’s how you can describe one of Sanders County’s oldest living pioneers – Joe Garrison, who resides alone at his ranch at Belknap. Joe celebrated his 90th birthday Sept. 15 at a big family party staged by his three daughters and attended by about 35 relatives and friends.

A horse trader throughout most of his ranching career, Joe has given up the horseflesh but still deals in saddles.

Born Sept. 15, 1887 in Hamilton County, Ill., he left there when he was 18 and stepped off the old Northern Pacific passenger train at Belknap Jan., 1905. Except for a brief period spent in Missoula, Garrison has resided in Belknap since. At the time Sanders County was still a part of Missoula County although the plans were underway to slice off a portion and create this county.

When Joe came to Belknap it had two railroad crews and a section house.

“How did you choose Belknap,” Joe was asked?

“My younger sister, Gertrude, had married Webb Frazier, who had a homestead in Section 4, just east of Guy Hall’s place. They said this was a pretty good country and I was young and looking for something new,” recalled Joe.

One of his first jobs was to help move a sawmill from the place now owned by Ben Cox for George and Nelson Grandchamp. Joe worked for about a year as the mill was transported to a location at Cedar Spur near the Idaho line and set up again.

Then he purchased 160 acres from the N.P. for $1,280 - $8 per acre. The land was “just jungle” then, but over the years Garrison and his family cleared much of the land and built their ranch.

It was one night at a dance in Missoula that Joe met Clara Moen. They were married Oct. 20, 1909 in Coeur d’Alene. “All of the young couples went to Idaho in those days to get hitched—too many inspections and red tape in Montana,” the pioneer rancher explained.

In Missoula, he had as many as four teams of horses working and until recently horses have always been a part of his life. For years he hauled for ties at five cents per log.

He recalls that in December 1941, he bought nine teams and expected to trade or sell them to local loggers. Melt Sutherland, Paul Harlow and the late Billy Munson trucked them from Washington to Belknap. Two days later the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

With that turn of events he found he had a few more horses on his hands than he wanted.

The horses were used by loggers who cut timber in the bottom lands and floated them down the Clark Fork River in large drives. There were no Noxon Rapids or Cabinet Gorge dams to restrict river traffic then.

As the bottom lands became logged over, the logging operations headed into the hills, loggers turned to trucks and the river drives came to an end.

Through the years, Garrison raised a lot of cattle. “But horses were my long suit,” Joe emphasized.

Asked about wildlife populations when he came to Belknap, Joe said there were no elk in the area. A few whitetail deer were seen in the meadows. The elk that hunters seek each fall were shipped into the area by railroad cars and planted later in the Cherry, Big Beaver and Prospect creek drainages.

In addition to his work horses, Joe and his younger brother, Tom, of Thompson Falls, had a string of race horses. Tom rode until he was 16 and became too big. They raced the horses at the fair at Plains on the Fourth of July and down Thompson Falls’ Main Street – a regular affair.

Joe recalled that a friend, Fred Butte, enjoyed racing too. He was what Garrison described as a “cayuse man.” Every time he went riding Fred wanted to race.

While Joe lives in his ranch home by himself, Doug Raye lives in a travel trailer near the ranch house. Joe’s brother, Tom comes out to visit frequently. And Joe’s three daughters, Mrs. Marian (Walter) Roe; Mrs. Stella (Freeman) Fulks and Mrs. Evelyn (Ray) Aldrich, keep a close check on him and help him with the house cleaning and bring food.

Asked about his meals, Joe says he prepares his own breakfast and eats hot cakes, bacon and eggs. He says he usually succeeds in “mooching” supper. “I get a lot of grub. They pack it into me. I’ve really got good neighbors.”

In addition to his daughter, Joe has one son, Jim Garrison of the Seattle area.

His other son, Charley, died earlier this year, and two daughters, Audrey, a school teacher and Florence, who died when she was three.

He leases his ranch for pasture and has reduced his “livestock” to three white hens, a rooster and a cat.

His main diversion is reading. He enjoys that and does a lot of reading because his eyesight is still good.