I recently typed The End on my latest historical western romance, Her Clear Creek Cowboy. The story takes place in the fictional town of Clear Creek, Oregon, in 1906.
While Hessie Whitcomb is trying to decide whether she belongs in Clear Creek or back in Davenport, Iowa, cowboy Colt Turner is busy helping her inexperienced-farmer father mend fences, rescue livestock, control escaped chickens, and grow what might be the most troublesome patch of potatoes in Oregon.
Naturally, all this made me curious about what was happening elsewhere in the American West during 1906.
As it turns out, quite a lot!
The West was still filled with cowboys, ranches, gold mines, and small towns, but the modern world was rapidly pushing its way in. Electric railways were being planned, public libraries were opening, women were fighting for the vote, and some of our greatest natural and historical treasures were being protected for the first time.
San Francisco Was Devastated
The biggest western news story of 1906 occurred on April 18, when a powerful earthquake struck San Francisco at 5:12 in the morning.
The earthquake lasted less than a minute, but the fires it started burned for three days. More than five hundred city blocks were destroyed, and over half of San Francisco’s population was left homeless. The broken water lines made fighting the fires nearly impossible, and thousands of people are now believed to have died.
News of the disaster spread throughout the country. For people living in western towns—even remote
ones—it must have been a sobering reminder of how quickly life could change.
Suddenly, Colt Turner’s troublesome fences and escaped chickens don’t seem quite so terrible.
America Began Protecting Its Western Treasures
The year 1906 was enormous for historic preservation.
On June 8, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act. The law protected historic and prehistoric sites on federal land and gave presidents the authority to establish national monuments.
Just a few weeks later, Mesa Verde in Colorado became a national park.
Then, on September 24, Devils Tower in Wyoming became America’s first national monument. In December, Roosevelt also established El Morro in New Mexico and Montezuma Castle and Petrified Forest in Arizona as national monuments.
Imagine living through the year when all those extraordinary western places first came under federal protection!
Oregon Women Fought for the Vote
Women in Oregon were also working for change.
The state’s 1906 woman suffrage campaign was one of the first to use what we would recognize as modern campaign methods. Suffragists organized local groups, held meetings, gave speeches, distributed literature, and advertised their cause.
The movement had gained national attention after Susan B. Anthony, Anna Howard Shaw, and other suffrage leaders attended a convention in Portland during the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition.
Unfortunately, the 1906 measure was defeated. It received 44 percent of the vote, with 36,902 voting in favor and 47,075 opposed. Oregon women continued fighting and finally won the vote in 1912.
I have a feeling some of the women of Clear Creek would have had very definite opinions on the matter!
Oregon’s First Carnegie Library Opened
Here’s an event especially dear to the hearts of book lovers.
In August 1906, the first Carnegie-funded library in Oregon opened in Eugene. A local women’s organization called the Fortnightly Club had already established a subscription library and helped create Eugene’s first tax-supported public library. Their work led to the Carnegie grant and a permanent library building.
An annual membership in the club’s earlier subscription library had cost one dollar and allowed a member to borrow one book or magazine each week.
I suspect most of us would have gotten our dollar’s worth.
Electric Railways Were Coming
The West might still have belonged to horses, wagons, and steam locomotives, but electric transportation was on the way.
The Oregon Electric Railway was incorporated on May 14, 1906. Its planned route would eventually run south from Portland through the Willamette Valley, providing electric interurban passenger service to growing Oregon communities.
I can only imagine what Clear Creek’s residents would have made of that.
Colt would probably have studied the machinery. Hessie would have appreciated the easier travel. Zeldee would have tried to drive it.
Farming Was Changing Too
In southern Oregon, the newly established federal Reclamation Service began the Klamath Project in 1906.
The goal was to drain lakes and wetlands and redirect water so more land could be cultivated by farmers and ranchers. At the time, large reclamation projects were viewed as a way to transform supposedly unusable western land into productive farms.
Charles Whitcomb, Hessie’s father, would undoubtedly have found the entire undertaking fascinating. He would have drawn up plans, made several lists, and delivered a lengthy lecture on drainage.
Whether any potatoes survived would be another matter.
Nevada Was Experiencing Another Mining Boom
The gold-rush days weren’t entirely over.
From 1906 to 1910, Goldfield was the largest city in Nevada, with more than twenty thousand residents at the height of its boom. It became one of the state’s leading economic and political centers, and for a time both Wyatt and Virgil Earp lived there.
In September 1906, Goldfield hosted a heavily promoted championship boxing match between Joe Gans and Battling Nelson. The contest helped draw national attention to the booming mining town.
Meanwhile, the discovery of copper created the new settlement of Greenwater near Death Valley. Within a year, the surrounding valley had four towns, dozens of mining companies, hotels, stores, restaurants, corrals, and a post office.
Unfortunately, Greenwater’s boom was spectacularly short-lived. Water had to be hauled from twenty-five miles away, and despite the town’s name, there wasn’t much green—or water—to be found.
An Explorer Reached Alaska Through the Northwest Passage
On August 31, 1906, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and the crew of the Gjøa reached Nome, Alaska.
Their arrival marked the first successful navigation of the Northwest Passage. The expedition had begun in 1903, and the small crew spent three winters in the Arctic before finally completing the journey.
After everything he endured during that voyage, I’m sure Amundsen would have considered Charles Whitcomb’s potato troubles very small potatoes indeed.
The Old West Meets the New
That is one of the things I love most about setting stories in the early twentieth-century West.
In 1906, people still traveled on horseback and lived in towns where everyone knew everyone else’s business. At the same time, electric railways were coming, women were organizing sophisticated political campaigns, libraries were opening, new farming projects were transforming the land, and the country was beginning to preserve the places that would later become some of our most beloved national treasures.
It was an age of cowboys, automobiles, gold mines, telephones, afternoon teas, and escaped chickens—all existing at the same time.
And in my fictional town of Clear Creek, Colt Turner was falling in love with Hessie Whitcomb while attempting to keep her family’s farm from falling apart.
Some historical events never make it into the history books.
Until Next Time,
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