J.. Schneider's House

Bob Zybach: Is that house still there?

Charlie Olson: No, they were starting to leak and when they started to leak, why of course the water went down and went through the floor and the foundation began to give way and the last time I that I was up there, the house was almost down. It had started to fall down.

Bob Zybach: When was the last time you were up there?

Charlie Olson: About fifteen years ago [1975].

Bob Zybach: How long would it take to walk up there from here? Not today of course, but.

Charlie Olson: I don't think I would want to tackle that, I'd go up the road.

Bob Zybach: This road here goes all the way up?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: This road does?

Charlie Olson: Yes. But you're going to run into something when you get over to this Matthews place. When you get into that Matthews place, he had built a house right on a pinnacle and it was pretty steep on the right hand side, it's cut into those rocks. It's just nothing but rocks there. And it is pretty steep on this side and narrow, but they have started to go around the other way and then go on up, that also was steep, but a car would make it if the car was good.

Bob Zybach: We've got afour wheel drive, let's go for it. Want to drive up there now?

Charlie Olson: I don't think we could get there now, because I don't think that that's open.

Bob Zybach: Let's give it a shot and see how close we can get so we know where it's going.

Charlie Olson: You can get, I think you can get to this Matthews place.

Bob Zybach: Okay.

J. Schneider's House

Bob Zybach: Who's homestead did you say this was, you said this was Junk Matthews' homestead here? I thought we just visited his homestead on the other side? Wasn't that Matthews' place we visited right before the. .

Charlie Olson: He had two places.

Bob Zybach: Okay. That makes sense.

Charlie Olson: He had two places, and the one house that he had here was right on that pinnacle up

Charlie Olson: there.

Bob Zybach: So right on the pinnacle in front of us along this old road bed here.

Charlie Olson: I don't know what that old road is there, but that's where the road would have gone if I would have continued to own that place up there, I would have put the road right up this canyon.

Bob Zybach: I see.

Charlie Olson: I wouldn't have climbed this knoll here, you know, and then climb and then go clear up there and get on the level and then go back down a little bit to go into that draw up there where the house is.

Bob Zybach: But his house was right up here on the pinnacle?

Charlie Olson: Right here.

Bob Zybach: Let's see, I'm not sure we're looking at the right. . . same place here. From all the building they have there.

Charlie Olson: There's something up there, I could see it. There's something up there on that pinnacle, I don't know if it a house or what. . . it looks like a house to me, but. I don't know, there is a lot.

Bob Zybach: And that was Junk Matthews' homestead and one of the families would sta-y out here or one would stay out at his other place there.

Charlie Olson: He had only one family.

Bob Zybach: The Schneiders.

Charlie Olson: These two families that I was telling you about, they were people that he had brought in here. Schneider was the name of one of them. But I can't remember the name of this other one.

Bob Zybach: But the Schneiders would like live here and he'd live out at the other place.

Charlie Olson: The Schneiders lived right there in that house .

Bob Zybach: Oh, on the pinnacle?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Was there another house right here?

Charlie Olson: No.

Bob Zybach: And then Junk Matthews lived on the other side of the stream?

Charlie Olson: He lived over yonder, yeah. He lived over in that house as long as they . . . as

Charlie Olson: Schneiders lived here.

Bob Zybach: And so you'd go past the Schneiders on the way to and from school evety day.

Charlie Olson: I went right by them all the time.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Let's say right behind us where his horses bolted [we had just passed the area where Cook had found Matthews' body], was that crossing a creek or a gate down there? It's probably worth mentioning that Mary Bowman just said your house blew over in 1977, and she's the person living here now, so that would be over fifteen years ago, so that sounds about right. Can you think of anything else to add here? Do you know about how many trees were in that orchard? Just roughly.

Charlie Olson: Our orchard up there?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Charlie Olson: There was probably five apple trees, there were three cherry trees. And there was a walnut tree, that didn't grow very fast. That was about all, there was a. . . good gravenstein tree, and an apple bracket, but there's one. . . of the cherries, there's one Royal Anne, one Black Republican, and a pie cherry tree.

Bob Zybach: Did Longfellow have any orchards beyond there?

Charlie Olson: On the Longfellow place?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Charlie Olson: There was a gravenstein tree there, and there was several other apple trees there, but the fir had grown up and choked a lot of the others, but the gravenstein tree was up where there wasn't anything else took over. It stayed there quite a while.

Bob Zybach: And then on the Longfellow place, how far beyond your place was it?

Charlie Olson: Well, our line fence . . . western line fence joined that place and I would say a mile between our house and where the buildings had been. There was a building there yet, a house, about a mile apart.

Bob Zybach: But nobody was living at the Longfellow place when you grew up?

Charlie Olson: No.

Bob Zybach: So that was an old place.

Charlie Olson: That was an old place and they had a log cabin there that had rotted down, but there was a house there that was still all right to live in, the door was locked, but that

Charlie Olson: didn't stay locked too long. Somebody breaks the lock, you know, and then everybody could come or go, rats would go in there. Coons.

Bob Zybach: So yours was the only place between the Schneiders and Kings Valley?

Charlie Olson: Yeah, when Schneiders lived here, they didn't live here very long.

Bob Zybach: Okay, so when they did live here, yours was the only place between here and Kings Valley?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Okay, so there'd only be the two orchards and the one orchard was pretty well eaten by fir trees; it might have a gravenstein left.

Charlie Olson: The one orchard on the Longfellow place?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Charlie Olson: The other apple trees below there, fir trees had choked them out, they didn't amount to anything, but there was a big silver maple.

Bob Zybach: Did they plant it? They must have.

Charlie Olson: It would have had to. It started to sprout, there was oodles and oodles of silver maples out from it.

Bob Zybach: So there's be silver maple and gravenstein to look for in that area.

Charlie Olson: I think probably that the fir trees had crowded the silver maple out by now.

Charlie Olson: That [road] goes up to the Pete Frank place. There used to be a place there a fellow by the name of Pete Frank that had a place there, but he left it. And it became a timber claim, Southern Pacific.

Bob Zybach: So on Pete Frank's place any old houses or orchards or anything associated with that?

Charlie Olson: Nothing but a big house.

Bob Zybach: A big house.

Charlie Olson: There was just a big house, and my mother told me that he carried that lumber in there on his back to built it.

Bob Zybach: Who built this house right here?

Charlie Olson: Johan son.

Bob Zybach: Johanson?

Charlie Olson: Johan son.

Bob Zybach: Do you recall about when?