Early Long Valley History
by Dr. G. E. Noggle1 and appearing in the "Cascade News" in 1922
A party of prospectors led by H.K. Plowman and James Edwards of Yellow Pine Basin orginally prospected the Squaw Creek area and are credited with naming several places, including Tripod Hill, where where they found a surveyor's tripod; Jump Creek, a small creek that jumped over a number of boulders; Bogus Creek, where what they thought was pay dirt soon played out; Fawn Creek, where they ran short of grub and shot a fawn.
There they found gold in paying quantities - old workings, known as the old Plowman diggins, are still to be seen there.
Among other early Long Valley mines were the Claire Foltz works, southwest of what is now McCall, and the old workings now crossed by the railroad. Another was at the head of Lake Fork Creek, another on Piersol Creek, east of Cascade on the Knox road, at which the last propectors met their end at the hands of Indians. There were also the Jacobs works on Coyote Creek, which, with the Plowman diggins, have been worked sporadically and are now being prospected for ledges of quartz.
Of Indian raids, there was but one. Sheepeater Indians stole a team of horses from George Mundy (Monday) in Indian Valley country, crossed the mountain into this valley, followed by Mundy (Monday), Joseph Groseclose, Thomas Haley and a man called Three-fingered Smith. When they had followed the horses and Indians to a canyon on the river above Cascade, the Indians lay waiting for them, killing Mundy (Monday) and Groseclose (Grosclose) and wounding Smith, who made his escape and died afterward in Warrens. Haley (Healy) hid in the rocks, but was finally killed.2
Smith reportedly made his way to Payette Lake to the Meadows-Warren mail line trail and was picked up unconscious with a broken arm and gunshot wound in the thigh. The mail carrier took him to Meadows, where he told the soldiers stationed there what had happened. They set out for the scene, buried the bodies and marked the grave, but not so anyone can tell how they lie in the grave.
After killing these three men, the Indians went on to Piersol Creek and killed two miners, named Wilhelm and Cook, there, and then make their escape into the mountains.
Up to this time, August 20, 1878, this valley was an open meadow only visited by roving bands of Indians, a few pack trains in summer and an occasional trapper in winter. The valley was covered with a luxurient growth of grass, furnishing feed for countless numbers of deer and elk, the streams were full of fish and the low ground and marshes the home of ducks, geese and other wild fowl and of beaver.
The first bona fida settler was James Horner, a single man who settled on Clear Creek on what is now known as the old Pinkston place, or where the whitewashed log house owned by non-residents now stands. The original Horner cabin still stands, although in a bad state of decay, and will soon be gone.
Mr. Horner settled there in 1881 and made it his home until his last sickness, dying at the home of L.S. Kimball at Van Wyck and buried in Crown Point Cemetery. Having no known relatives, he divided his property equally between the Emmett GAR post of which was a member, and the IOOF Lodge at Van Wyck, as a starter for a lodge hall. He was never a member but had strong regard for the order. His request was fulfilled and the hall, which burned last summer, started.
The next settler was Mr. S. M. Sisk, familiarly known as Uncle Steve, a native of New York who came west in his early youth, first to California and then to the Boise Basin in the early '60's. The Boise Statesman, in a history of events over 50 years several years ago, spoke of S.M. Sick, a popular young miner of the Basin. He settled in what is now Crawford Nook in 1883, living for a year about half a mile south of where the wagon road now crosses the Boise Payette logging road, at a place now marked by some large cottonwood trees on the farm now owned by Mr. D.W. Patterson.
The following year, he moved across the ridge, where he lived for a number of years until moving to Boise, where he died several years ago. The old Sisk homestead is now owned by Dr. F.A. Pittinger of Boise and is rented from year to year by sheep and cattle men for pasture. S.M. Sisk was always prominent in anything for the good community. In Long Valley he seldom missed a meeting of the IOOF and was a long-time MasOn, belonging to the Blue Lodge and Royal Arch at Placerville.
The next settler was L. S. Kimball, a native of Illinois who first came to Tamarack Swamp to cut trees with A.B. Moss, who in later years lived at and took a prominent part in building the town of Payette. The following year, about 1884, Kimball moved his family to Van VVyck, where he raised a large family and is now spending his declining years. He always took a great interest in the development of the country, being first connected with the building of the U.P. Railroad as a locomotive engineer in Iowa, then into Nebraska and on as the railroad was built, until he landed in Long Valley, where he started the first blacksmith shop and farmed.
He always took a prominent part in the building of the country, doing things doing things that were almost impossible such as carrying mail into and out of the valley. When Valley County was formed, Kimball was appointed, and later elected, probate judge. He was a faithful attendant of the Odd Fellows Lodge and orresponding secretary for many years. He was the only man in the county to wear a five-star pin during the World War, as he had five sons in service.
After this came other settlers - W.D. Patterson, T.L. Worthington, L.M. Gorton, John DeHaas, E.A. Smith, the Blankenship family, J.N. Jasper, W.B. Boydstun, Thomas McCall, the Warners the Cantralls and many others. The first of the Finnish people to come was John Harala, who was soon followed by many other families, who have made good homes and, above all, good citizens.
1G. E. NOGGLE, M. D.
Dr. G. E. Noggle is a recent acquisition to the medical profession of Caldwell, although well known as a physician and surgeon of Idaho for a number of years. He was born in Bloomington, Illinois, May 13, 1872, and in 1874 went to Council Grove, Kansas, with his parents. 0n attaining school age he began his education there and supplemented his public school training by study in the University of Kansas, where he pursued a medical course, being graduated in 1895 with the M. D. degree. Thus qualified for his profession, he entered upon active practice in Kansas, where he remained for eight years, and in 1903 he established an office in Valley county, Idaho, where he continued until 1919, when he sought the broader fields offered at Caldwell. He has offices in the Commercial Bank building and already is building up a good practice. He is personally acquainted with many of the old settlers here and there is no one more familiar with the old landmarks and the old Packer trail in Valley county than Dr. Noggle. He is a particular friend of John Hailey, Idaho's famous stage driver and operator,'who is known throughout the west, Dr. Noggle assisting him to locate many of the old landmarks and places of historical interest when Mr. Hailey was gathering historical data in that section. He is also familiar with the resting places of those three old-timers who were killed by the Indians on August 20, 1878,—Grosclose, Tom Hailey (Healy) and George Monday.
Before removing to Caldwell, Dr. Noggle served as coroner of Boise and Valley counties and was also county physician. He is an active worker in the democratic party, laboring earnestly for its best interests and giving unfaltering support to every project which he deems of benefit and value to the community in which he makes his home.
In 1898 Dr. Noggle was married to Miss Madien Hodson, of Kansas, and to them have been born two children: Warren G., eighteen years of age, now a high school pupil; and Francis M., also in school. Dr. Noggle and his family are fast forming an extensive acquaintance in Caldwell, and his professional ability is bringing him prominently to the front in that connection. He keeps in close touch with the trend of modern professional thought and progress through wide reading, study and investigation, and while he does not easily discard old and time-tried methods, he is ever ready to take up a new idea which his judgment sanctions as of value in medical or surgical practice.
—page 810, History of Idaho: The Gem of the Mountains, Volume 3, edited by James Henry Hawley. The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co. Chicago, 1920. On-line at google books
2Now known as the "Long Valley Ambush" or "Cascade Falls Indian Battle of August 1878." See also Duane Petersen's Valley County, The Way it Was, D & D Books, Cascade, Idaho. 2002; and Nellie Ireton Mills' All Along the River/Territorial and Pioneer Days on the Payette Payette Radio Limited, 1963. Long Valley Ambush, at Valley County ID GenWeb.
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