Welcome to the memorial page for
Lena Nash Rice
May 15, 1917 ~ January 31, 2017 (age 99) 99 Years Old Light a Candle
Leave a Condolence
A Designers Choice was sent on February 28, 2017
We have fond memories of Lena. She was always so gracious and kind. No doubt, she's wrangled St. Peter into a card game or two by now. We're sending much love to the Rice/Nash family. JoAnn, Tom, Ryan and Katie Ambrose
Message from Clark and Sandi Ballard
February 7, 2017 2:40 PM
Many here have attested to Lena's sweet spirit and wonderful demonstration of Christ's love. I can only say "Amen". From the time I was a kid enjoying her wonderful cinnamon rolls through every chance I had to see her, she brightened my life. What a great legacy she has left for all of us. I can only add this poem which I hope will be an encouragement to all of her family and all of us who will always miss this wonderful lady.
Angels stood at attention when she was called away,
For she’d held the hand of Jesus every day.
Heaven’s choir played her anthem as they welcomed one so rare,
Heaven knows she is the prettiest flower there.
With Love, Clark and Sandi Ballard
Angels stood at attention when she was called away,
For she’d held the hand of Jesus every day.
Heaven’s choir played her anthem as they welcomed one so rare,
Heaven knows she is the prettiest flower there.
With Love, Clark and Sandi Ballard
Message from Jim Kevan
February 7, 2017 8:19 AM
Lena was the most perfect example of a true Christian that I have ever had the honor of knowing. He totally practiced what she preached. She is, without a doubt, the most faultless person I have ever known. She will be missed, but she will forever be alive in my heart as well as countless others.
Message from Beverly Gaskill and Roxane Gaskill Olson
February 6, 2017 1:47 PM
So sorry to hear about Lena. There are a lot of people who "talk the talk" in this world. Lena was one of a very select crowd who actually "walked the talk" as well. We are grateful that our paths were able to cross hers in this life. Love to Lena's entire family with gratitude for sharing such a special woman with the rest of the world.
Message from LeAnn Nash Beebe
February 6, 2017 10:30 AM
As a child and teenager I loved visiting Lena's a Hill City home. What stands out in my memory is Lena's lovely welcome. Her beautiful smiles drew everyone in and even though I was a child I felt just as important and welcome as the adults. She always had some special activity to interest us children and I remember a fun fashion show where she let me try on some clothes that she handed down to me. Her sunny outlook was infectious! She was such a lovely woman and special auntie. I am so grateful to have had her part of my life and only wish I could have seen her more regularly. My love to all of you dear immediate family members.
Message from Dean & Dee Sangrey
February 5, 2017 3:09 PM
Jim, Tina, and the Rice Family
It was always such an inspiration and joy to visit with Lena & Gwinn during our years in Camas County. Lena was an absolute treasure and constant source for wonderful memories. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and the family.
Best wishes -
It was always such an inspiration and joy to visit with Lena & Gwinn during our years in Camas County. Lena was an absolute treasure and constant source for wonderful memories. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and the family.
Best wishes -
Message from Vickie Bennett
February 4, 2017 8:47 AM
Lena was such a wonderful part of our Hill City community. She was Emma's best friend and everyone s grandma. You never heard a bad feeling from her or a bad feeling about her. We had a lot of laughs and your heart felt warm when you left. I'm not sad because I know where she is. Our condolences to the whole Rice family from the Bennett family, her memory will last forever. Pat and Vickie Bennett
Message from Norma Odiaga (Daughter)
February 3, 2017 10:15 PM
This is a great story of how my mom came to live in Hill City. My cousin's daughter wrote it after interviewing Mom's older brother, Merritt. I think you will enjoy it. Times were certainly different then. Enjoy the glimpse into the past and understand why my mom's generation had to be hardy souls.
____________________________________________________________________________________
"Camas Prairie visitor recalls the high times of Hill City."
Taken from The Tumbleweed Press, Volume 1, Issue 4, 4th Quarter 1993
Gina Johnson, Editor
by Merritt Nash
Special Correspondent
The Tumbleweed Press
_____________________________________________________________________________________
It was early in the year of 1931. My parents, Ray and Grace Nash, had traded a farm they owned in Oregon for a general merchandise store in Hill City. and therein lies a story.
A cryptic message from my dad had simply said, "I bought a store in Hill City Idaho. Get on the train as soon as your school is out. You and Lena will run the store this summer. Your mom and I -- with Pearl, Lee and Little Ray -- will be there this fall in time for you to get back to school."
The store dad mentioned was the Jones & Mosier Merchandise Store in Hill City. It had been an institution on Camas Prairie for many years.
At the time of dad's letter, I was finishing my sophomore year at then Oregon State College. I had been wondering what I would do that summer after school finished. The message from dad settled that.
Slim Mosier owned the store when dad traded for it. He had dissolved his partnership with Ray Jones, who then started up a store in Fairfield.
I always thought Slim euchred my dad on that deal. What! A 500 acre farm 10 miles out of Salem, in the gentle foothills of the Willamette Valley for a country store, a few sagebrush acres and a little brown house, all on the remote Camas Prairie of central Idaho!!??
The day I finished my final exams I grabbed my suitcases and hitchhiked from Corvallis to Portland, bought a ticket on the Union Pacific Railroad for Hill City, and settled back for the two day trip.
The Oregon Short Line RR
It was a raw spring day in May -- 62 years ago now --when I climbed down the steps of the lone passenger car on the Oregon Short Line Railroad and landed in Hill City. I was the lone passenger. The train consisted of the engine, passenger car, one freight car, several empty sheep cars, and a caboose.
We had left the main line of the U.P. Railroad at Shoshone, where the Oregon Short Line branched off to Fairfield, Corral, and Hill City. another branch went up to Bellevue, Hailey, and Ketchum. In those days there was no Sun Valley.
The sign on the railway depot said: Hill City, Idaho. Elevation 5208 feet. Wow! Almost a mile high. I shivered a bit in the chill of the high country air of Camas Prairie. After all, two days before I had been in Corvallis, several thousand feet lower in the middle of the Willamette Valley, on a balmy day, in a town where the streets were paved and buildings painted.
Hill City was the end of that branch of the Oregon Short Line Railroad. The tracks ended a few hundred yards on past the grain elevators, the loading pens, and the sheep corrals.
At the very end of the track a bulk oil tank car was spotted. Mel Hughes delivered gasoline from this tank car to farmers on the upper Camas Prairie, who had mostly converted to farming with tractors.
I didn't know it then, but I came to know there was a great difference, in those days, between the upper Camas Prairie and the flatlands of Camas Prairie down around Fairfield. On the upper Camas Prairie only the fit survived, and not all of those.
I looked around. Sort of dazed by the expanse of things. I waited for Mr. Wilcox, the depot agent, to say something, maybe greet me with a question. But he was more interested in the freight car.
Finally I said, "I'm looking for the Jones & Mosier store. My dad bought it."
"Oh," said Mr. Wilcox, jerking a thumb due west, "Up that way. You can't miss it."
First Impressions
Warmed by such an enthusiastic greeting, I picked up my battered bamboo reed suitcase and entered out onto the main and only street of Hill City.
The street was plain dirt. No gravel. The wind kicked up little whirly gigs of the rich Camas Prairie dust. It sifted under my shirt collar. I shrugged uncomfortably and pretended not to notice.
The north side of the street sported a hotel, Mrs. Keener's drug store and the post office, a building with a dance hall above, and a larger hotel with dining room beyond that. The south side consisted of Harlan Hutchinson's "soda" parlor and card room, the George Skyles garage and gas station, next to which was a barber shop run by Ray Mosier.
Across from all this on the west end of the street was the Jones & Mosier General Merchandise Store. It had a high false front across which the sign was emblazoned. A low wooden porch ran across the front. There were faint signs of paint on the building, the only paint visible in town save for the railway station depot.
So here it was, the store dad had bought. It may have been, in years past, one of the highlights of upper Camas Prairie, but you could have fooled me.
Sheep: Camas Prairie's Bread and Butter
I soon learned, however, that Hill City was not just a dusty stop at the end of the Oregon short Line Railroad. It had a proud history. For decades it had been the point from which more sheep were shipped to markets in the Midwest and East than from any other shipping point in the United States.
Those were the days when the narrow, twisting, dirt roads in the outlying country could not accommodate large trucks for hauling sheep. the railroads reached out to where the sheep were.
The big sheep outfits wintered and lambed their sheep in the lower country. In the spring they trailed their bands up through Camas Prairie and on into the high country summer ranges.
Hill City was the centrally located point, between the high country mountain ranges and the lower Snake River country. It was the logical place to gather sheep after they had fattened on the summer ranges and load them into rail cars for shipment to market. All the big sheep outfits used Hill City as their main shipping point to market.
And it was used by the upper Camas Prairie wheat farmers for their purpose of shipping wheat to market. As a consequence, the stores and grain elevators sprang into being. Hotels were built to house the many eastern buyers, the sheep men, and the other related industry people. Hill City became a thriving town. Perhaps most important of all to the development of Hill City as the premier sheep shipping point was its bountiful water supply. Water poured continuously from a big spring on the hillside above the great corrals and loading pens. Pure, cold water for the thousands of sheep.
Later, in the fall of the year, when the sheep bands came down from the high country, they were turned onto the newly harvested wheat fields. This yielded welcome rental income for Camas Prairie wheat growers.
The foregoing were things I didn't know when I first stood in front of the old Jones & Mosier store. The store had three front entrances, two in use. The first brought you into the grocery department, at the back of which was the hardware section and a hand-operated elevator that took you to the basement storage area.
The Store
The middle entrance, with its glass windows to each side, introduced you to the "dry goods" department. In those days -- for the benefit of you of more tender years -- clothing and related items were called dry goods.
I entered the first door and there was my dad. He greeted me with, "Well, you finally got here. I'm leaving tonight. Lena is here to help you. I've got to get things settled on the Coos River farm before I can come back. I'll be back up here this fall with the rest of the family, in time for you to get back to school."
Then came a two-hour crash training session. Dad told me what wholesale houses to deal with in Boise, the bank I was to deal with in Glenns Ferry, the credit policy for local ranchers and residents. "And," he said, "there may be some sheep outfits that will come in. If they do, give unlimited credit to all of them."
After those two hours of rapid fire instructions, he climbed in his old pickup and headed for south Coos River, down on the Oregon coast, where he had a dairy farm and where the rest of our family was still living.
My sister, Lena, and I ran that store for three months until the folks arrived in the fall. It was a truly memorable summer. We dealt with many wonderful people and became friends with most of them. We worked hard and were gratified to be accepted by the folks on upper Camas Prairie.
As I mentioned earlier, the store came accompanied by a nice little brown house up the lane north of the store. Lena bunked there, and I had a cot in the store where I slept with a rifle at my side just in case some outlander broke in.
Usually I could keep the store well stocked by calling the wholesale houses in Boise and having merchandise shipped by rail to Hill City. But as business increased, we would run short of important items in stock.
In those cases I would turn the store over to Lena, climb in the old Model T Ford pickup and head out in the early morning on the 90-mile trip to Boise. The round trip took six hours of travel time and I never spared the horses in that old pickup, skidding around most of the many turns.
There wasn't anything between Mountain Home and Hill City in those days except dirt roads, Toll Gate, Little Camas Reservoir, and Cat Creek Bob Hill, with scattered ranches along the way.
With a full load of merchandise, I never drew a relaxed breath until I had got that old pickup over that last steep pitch above Cat Creek Bob's old cabin. Then it settled into a series of so-called roads that wound their way through upper Camas Prairie to Hill City.
The turns were mostly 90 degrees at section corners. I made them all on two wheels. Getting back to help Lena in the store with badly needed goods was a high priority.
The road from Mountain Home to Boise wasn't all that good in those days either. Coming back I always gave myself a special treat and stopped at a little stand on the outskirts of Mountain Home where they served delicious cold buttermilk for 5 cents a glass.
Epilogue
In the fall of 1931, my family completed their move from Oregon and arrived in Hill City in time for me to return to school.
The old Jones & Mosier store was renamed the Nash store and it remained thus for many years.
My father, Ray Nash, was accidentally drowned in 1936 while he was back down on south Coos River visiting and helping my brother Norman on the old family dairy farm.
My mother, Grace Nash, ran the Nash general merchandise store in Hill City for many years until her retirement. She was a very competent business manager, but was especially remembered for her cheerfulness and compassion. She was the friend of many, and never betrayed a confidence. There were few who did not admire, respect, and love her. Her progeny are well represented in many communities in Idaho, and elsewhere.
None of the buildings of the old business part of the town proper are now standing in Hill City. Mostly, they burned down over the years and were never rebuilt.
There are ranches and a store and post office there now, but no stop light to slow down the traffic on Highway 20 as it zooms by the town.
Too bad, because it will always be more than a spot by the side of the road in my memory.
______________________________________
Background to the Story
(Gina Johnson)
I felt like a historian who had stumbled upon a valuable scroll when I first met my great-Uncle Merritt Nash in Spokane my senior year at Whitworth College. So much has changed since the early part of this century and Merritt has the talent to make every detail of his early life seem fascinating.
Now Merritt is 82 years old. He remembers with clarity the summer of '31 when he was heading into his junior year at Oregon State College. That summer Merritt and his younger sister Lena were left with the task of running the Nash family's newly-acquired General Store in Hill City.
Uncle Merritt agreed with some reluctance to be my special correspondent. Aunt Lena Rice, the young teenage sister Merritt writes about, still lives in Hill City and helped weave some of the background to his article. At 76 years old, Lena still has the striking dark hair and bright eyes that intrigued the Basque sheepherders all those years ago.
The result is a story that should make its readers look twice the next time they drive through gone-in-the-blink-of-an-eye Hill City. I know I did.
______________________________________
Hill City, Idaho:
Where the Railroad Ends
by Gina Johnson, Editor
The Tumbleweed Press
Lena Rice was the 14-year-old sister of Merritt Nash back in 1931. I interviewed Lena at her home, which is the original "little brown house" Merritt writes about in his article. While the home has been remodeled, added upon, and now has indoor plumbing, it is still a cornerstone of Camas Prairie history.
Lena remembered that first summer when she left the lush greenery of western Oregon for the wide open desert of south-central Idaho.
She laughed at Merritt's initial worries that their father got the short end of the stick in the dairy-store trade.
"The younger kids saw the move as a big adventure," she said.
Lena said she was overwhelmed by the wide-open skies of Idaho after living in the densely forested Willamette Valley.
"I remember thinking how funny it was that you could see it raining in the distance, but it wasn't raining on you... I never had trouble adjusting to the desert."
She was also overwhelmed by the warm reception the people of Camas Prairie gave to her family. In 1931 there were somewhere around 72 families living in Hill City, and as Lena pointed out, "they had big families back then."
One family was particularly known for their hospitality. "The Rice's knew Merritt and I were there on our own and always made a point to have us over for Sunday dinner." Lena went on to marry Gwinn Rice and has carried on the tradition of hospitality on the Prairie.
The siblings took running the Jones & Mosier General Merchandise store in stride. Lena said working with the Basque sheepherders was a pleasure and both she and Merritt made every attempt to overcome the language barrier.
"We had the only long-distance telephone in town at the store and I placed calls for some of the sheepherders with more broken English," she said.
Being a 14-year-old shopkeeper wasn't always easy. Once while Merritt was making an emergency run to Boise for supplies, a band of gypsies visited the store. "They wore big pockets and they were busy filling them up, " Lena said.
"I could see they were bringing some items up to me in order to 'bless the till,' a term Lena says was a ploy to get her to open the cash register. "Just then, Harlan Hutchinson (the owner of the pool hall) came in the store because he knew I needed help. Harlan saved the day!"
Hill City is a far cry from the boom times of the early 1900s, The 72 families have melted into somewhere around 16 permanent residents. the railroad no longer hustles and bustles with businessmen and sheep.
But the girl who always gave "good measure" at the Jones & Mosier General Merchandise Store back in 1931 still lives up the lane, and if you ask her, I bet she'd tell you about the way things used to be.
The brown house, but with white shingles.
____________________________________________________________________________________
"Camas Prairie visitor recalls the high times of Hill City."
Taken from The Tumbleweed Press, Volume 1, Issue 4, 4th Quarter 1993
Gina Johnson, Editor
by Merritt Nash
Special Correspondent
The Tumbleweed Press
_____________________________________________________________________________________
It was early in the year of 1931. My parents, Ray and Grace Nash, had traded a farm they owned in Oregon for a general merchandise store in Hill City. and therein lies a story.
A cryptic message from my dad had simply said, "I bought a store in Hill City Idaho. Get on the train as soon as your school is out. You and Lena will run the store this summer. Your mom and I -- with Pearl, Lee and Little Ray -- will be there this fall in time for you to get back to school."
The store dad mentioned was the Jones & Mosier Merchandise Store in Hill City. It had been an institution on Camas Prairie for many years.
At the time of dad's letter, I was finishing my sophomore year at then Oregon State College. I had been wondering what I would do that summer after school finished. The message from dad settled that.
Slim Mosier owned the store when dad traded for it. He had dissolved his partnership with Ray Jones, who then started up a store in Fairfield.
I always thought Slim euchred my dad on that deal. What! A 500 acre farm 10 miles out of Salem, in the gentle foothills of the Willamette Valley for a country store, a few sagebrush acres and a little brown house, all on the remote Camas Prairie of central Idaho!!??
The day I finished my final exams I grabbed my suitcases and hitchhiked from Corvallis to Portland, bought a ticket on the Union Pacific Railroad for Hill City, and settled back for the two day trip.
The Oregon Short Line RR
It was a raw spring day in May -- 62 years ago now --when I climbed down the steps of the lone passenger car on the Oregon Short Line Railroad and landed in Hill City. I was the lone passenger. The train consisted of the engine, passenger car, one freight car, several empty sheep cars, and a caboose.
We had left the main line of the U.P. Railroad at Shoshone, where the Oregon Short Line branched off to Fairfield, Corral, and Hill City. another branch went up to Bellevue, Hailey, and Ketchum. In those days there was no Sun Valley.
The sign on the railway depot said: Hill City, Idaho. Elevation 5208 feet. Wow! Almost a mile high. I shivered a bit in the chill of the high country air of Camas Prairie. After all, two days before I had been in Corvallis, several thousand feet lower in the middle of the Willamette Valley, on a balmy day, in a town where the streets were paved and buildings painted.
Hill City was the end of that branch of the Oregon Short Line Railroad. The tracks ended a few hundred yards on past the grain elevators, the loading pens, and the sheep corrals.
At the very end of the track a bulk oil tank car was spotted. Mel Hughes delivered gasoline from this tank car to farmers on the upper Camas Prairie, who had mostly converted to farming with tractors.
I didn't know it then, but I came to know there was a great difference, in those days, between the upper Camas Prairie and the flatlands of Camas Prairie down around Fairfield. On the upper Camas Prairie only the fit survived, and not all of those.
I looked around. Sort of dazed by the expanse of things. I waited for Mr. Wilcox, the depot agent, to say something, maybe greet me with a question. But he was more interested in the freight car.
Finally I said, "I'm looking for the Jones & Mosier store. My dad bought it."
"Oh," said Mr. Wilcox, jerking a thumb due west, "Up that way. You can't miss it."
First Impressions
Warmed by such an enthusiastic greeting, I picked up my battered bamboo reed suitcase and entered out onto the main and only street of Hill City.
The street was plain dirt. No gravel. The wind kicked up little whirly gigs of the rich Camas Prairie dust. It sifted under my shirt collar. I shrugged uncomfortably and pretended not to notice.
The north side of the street sported a hotel, Mrs. Keener's drug store and the post office, a building with a dance hall above, and a larger hotel with dining room beyond that. The south side consisted of Harlan Hutchinson's "soda" parlor and card room, the George Skyles garage and gas station, next to which was a barber shop run by Ray Mosier.
Across from all this on the west end of the street was the Jones & Mosier General Merchandise Store. It had a high false front across which the sign was emblazoned. A low wooden porch ran across the front. There were faint signs of paint on the building, the only paint visible in town save for the railway station depot.
So here it was, the store dad had bought. It may have been, in years past, one of the highlights of upper Camas Prairie, but you could have fooled me.
Sheep: Camas Prairie's Bread and Butter
I soon learned, however, that Hill City was not just a dusty stop at the end of the Oregon short Line Railroad. It had a proud history. For decades it had been the point from which more sheep were shipped to markets in the Midwest and East than from any other shipping point in the United States.
Those were the days when the narrow, twisting, dirt roads in the outlying country could not accommodate large trucks for hauling sheep. the railroads reached out to where the sheep were.
The big sheep outfits wintered and lambed their sheep in the lower country. In the spring they trailed their bands up through Camas Prairie and on into the high country summer ranges.
Hill City was the centrally located point, between the high country mountain ranges and the lower Snake River country. It was the logical place to gather sheep after they had fattened on the summer ranges and load them into rail cars for shipment to market. All the big sheep outfits used Hill City as their main shipping point to market.
And it was used by the upper Camas Prairie wheat farmers for their purpose of shipping wheat to market. As a consequence, the stores and grain elevators sprang into being. Hotels were built to house the many eastern buyers, the sheep men, and the other related industry people. Hill City became a thriving town. Perhaps most important of all to the development of Hill City as the premier sheep shipping point was its bountiful water supply. Water poured continuously from a big spring on the hillside above the great corrals and loading pens. Pure, cold water for the thousands of sheep.
Later, in the fall of the year, when the sheep bands came down from the high country, they were turned onto the newly harvested wheat fields. This yielded welcome rental income for Camas Prairie wheat growers.
The foregoing were things I didn't know when I first stood in front of the old Jones & Mosier store. The store had three front entrances, two in use. The first brought you into the grocery department, at the back of which was the hardware section and a hand-operated elevator that took you to the basement storage area.
The Store
The middle entrance, with its glass windows to each side, introduced you to the "dry goods" department. In those days -- for the benefit of you of more tender years -- clothing and related items were called dry goods.
I entered the first door and there was my dad. He greeted me with, "Well, you finally got here. I'm leaving tonight. Lena is here to help you. I've got to get things settled on the Coos River farm before I can come back. I'll be back up here this fall with the rest of the family, in time for you to get back to school."
Then came a two-hour crash training session. Dad told me what wholesale houses to deal with in Boise, the bank I was to deal with in Glenns Ferry, the credit policy for local ranchers and residents. "And," he said, "there may be some sheep outfits that will come in. If they do, give unlimited credit to all of them."
After those two hours of rapid fire instructions, he climbed in his old pickup and headed for south Coos River, down on the Oregon coast, where he had a dairy farm and where the rest of our family was still living.
My sister, Lena, and I ran that store for three months until the folks arrived in the fall. It was a truly memorable summer. We dealt with many wonderful people and became friends with most of them. We worked hard and were gratified to be accepted by the folks on upper Camas Prairie.
As I mentioned earlier, the store came accompanied by a nice little brown house up the lane north of the store. Lena bunked there, and I had a cot in the store where I slept with a rifle at my side just in case some outlander broke in.
Usually I could keep the store well stocked by calling the wholesale houses in Boise and having merchandise shipped by rail to Hill City. But as business increased, we would run short of important items in stock.
In those cases I would turn the store over to Lena, climb in the old Model T Ford pickup and head out in the early morning on the 90-mile trip to Boise. The round trip took six hours of travel time and I never spared the horses in that old pickup, skidding around most of the many turns.
There wasn't anything between Mountain Home and Hill City in those days except dirt roads, Toll Gate, Little Camas Reservoir, and Cat Creek Bob Hill, with scattered ranches along the way.
With a full load of merchandise, I never drew a relaxed breath until I had got that old pickup over that last steep pitch above Cat Creek Bob's old cabin. Then it settled into a series of so-called roads that wound their way through upper Camas Prairie to Hill City.
The turns were mostly 90 degrees at section corners. I made them all on two wheels. Getting back to help Lena in the store with badly needed goods was a high priority.
The road from Mountain Home to Boise wasn't all that good in those days either. Coming back I always gave myself a special treat and stopped at a little stand on the outskirts of Mountain Home where they served delicious cold buttermilk for 5 cents a glass.
Epilogue
In the fall of 1931, my family completed their move from Oregon and arrived in Hill City in time for me to return to school.
The old Jones & Mosier store was renamed the Nash store and it remained thus for many years.
My father, Ray Nash, was accidentally drowned in 1936 while he was back down on south Coos River visiting and helping my brother Norman on the old family dairy farm.
My mother, Grace Nash, ran the Nash general merchandise store in Hill City for many years until her retirement. She was a very competent business manager, but was especially remembered for her cheerfulness and compassion. She was the friend of many, and never betrayed a confidence. There were few who did not admire, respect, and love her. Her progeny are well represented in many communities in Idaho, and elsewhere.
None of the buildings of the old business part of the town proper are now standing in Hill City. Mostly, they burned down over the years and were never rebuilt.
There are ranches and a store and post office there now, but no stop light to slow down the traffic on Highway 20 as it zooms by the town.
Too bad, because it will always be more than a spot by the side of the road in my memory.
______________________________________
Background to the Story
(Gina Johnson)
I felt like a historian who had stumbled upon a valuable scroll when I first met my great-Uncle Merritt Nash in Spokane my senior year at Whitworth College. So much has changed since the early part of this century and Merritt has the talent to make every detail of his early life seem fascinating.
Now Merritt is 82 years old. He remembers with clarity the summer of '31 when he was heading into his junior year at Oregon State College. That summer Merritt and his younger sister Lena were left with the task of running the Nash family's newly-acquired General Store in Hill City.
Uncle Merritt agreed with some reluctance to be my special correspondent. Aunt Lena Rice, the young teenage sister Merritt writes about, still lives in Hill City and helped weave some of the background to his article. At 76 years old, Lena still has the striking dark hair and bright eyes that intrigued the Basque sheepherders all those years ago.
The result is a story that should make its readers look twice the next time they drive through gone-in-the-blink-of-an-eye Hill City. I know I did.
______________________________________
Hill City, Idaho:
Where the Railroad Ends
by Gina Johnson, Editor
The Tumbleweed Press
Lena Rice was the 14-year-old sister of Merritt Nash back in 1931. I interviewed Lena at her home, which is the original "little brown house" Merritt writes about in his article. While the home has been remodeled, added upon, and now has indoor plumbing, it is still a cornerstone of Camas Prairie history.
Lena remembered that first summer when she left the lush greenery of western Oregon for the wide open desert of south-central Idaho.
She laughed at Merritt's initial worries that their father got the short end of the stick in the dairy-store trade.
"The younger kids saw the move as a big adventure," she said.
Lena said she was overwhelmed by the wide-open skies of Idaho after living in the densely forested Willamette Valley.
"I remember thinking how funny it was that you could see it raining in the distance, but it wasn't raining on you... I never had trouble adjusting to the desert."
She was also overwhelmed by the warm reception the people of Camas Prairie gave to her family. In 1931 there were somewhere around 72 families living in Hill City, and as Lena pointed out, "they had big families back then."
One family was particularly known for their hospitality. "The Rice's knew Merritt and I were there on our own and always made a point to have us over for Sunday dinner." Lena went on to marry Gwinn Rice and has carried on the tradition of hospitality on the Prairie.
The siblings took running the Jones & Mosier General Merchandise store in stride. Lena said working with the Basque sheepherders was a pleasure and both she and Merritt made every attempt to overcome the language barrier.
"We had the only long-distance telephone in town at the store and I placed calls for some of the sheepherders with more broken English," she said.
Being a 14-year-old shopkeeper wasn't always easy. Once while Merritt was making an emergency run to Boise for supplies, a band of gypsies visited the store. "They wore big pockets and they were busy filling them up, " Lena said.
"I could see they were bringing some items up to me in order to 'bless the till,' a term Lena says was a ploy to get her to open the cash register. "Just then, Harlan Hutchinson (the owner of the pool hall) came in the store because he knew I needed help. Harlan saved the day!"
Hill City is a far cry from the boom times of the early 1900s, The 72 families have melted into somewhere around 16 permanent residents. the railroad no longer hustles and bustles with businessmen and sheep.
But the girl who always gave "good measure" at the Jones & Mosier General Merchandise Store back in 1931 still lives up the lane, and if you ask her, I bet she'd tell you about the way things used to be.
The brown house, but with white shingles.
Message from Munro Family
February 3, 2017 2:39 PM
I am incredibly sorry for your loss of Lena. Even when our loved ones seem to have lived a good full life, our time with them always seems to be cut short of our hearts desire. One thing that has helped me find comfort is God’s promise at Revelation 21:3-5, it says “God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.” May the hope God gives of a brighter future ahead, when death is no more and we are reunited with our loved ones by means of the resurrection, bring you comfort and help carry you through the difficult mourning process in the days ahead! With deep sorrow!
Message from Layne and Judy Osborne
February 3, 2017 2:38 PM
SO many GREAT memories of Lena. Sending LOVE and PRAYERS to the family.
A candle was lit by Layne and Judy Osborne
on February 3, 2017 2:37 PM
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