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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Landmarks: West Plains homesteader’s barn still standing 117 years later

When Henry Allice homesteaded land out on the West Plains west of what would later become Riverside State Park, he and his father cut large trees on-site and let them cure for a year before hauling them with his horses to a sawmill about a mile away.

A crew came in to help him use the milled beams to frame a barn that stands 40 by 60 by 30 feet using only notches and pegs. This took place in 1896-97. Allice lived in a shed for the next few years as he completed the barn with just some occasional help from his father, and while working the land and curing additional trees he cut for the farmhouse that would come later.

In 1900 the gable-on-hip roof barn at 9003 N. Garfield Road, now on the Washington State Heritage Barn Register, was completed. Allice moved into a loft near the top of the barn while he worked to build his house – a spacious farm home that the lifetime bachelor would occupy by himself.

In the years he lived high up in the barn, he cut out magazine photos of horses, which he apparently cared deeply about, and kept a journal of sorts. Some of the photos remain today.

The journal was more just notes he wrote down on pieces of wood, telling of his activities, most of which are now faded and difficult to read. One such note recalls with some pleasure the shoeing of a team of horses on Christmas Day.

Larry Busse and his wife, Bonnie, now own the 270 acres on which the old barn sits. Larry Busse tells a series of stories about Allice, stories handed down from neighbors, one of which recounts how on his own Allice hand-dug a well in sandy soil 92 feet deep, lining the sides with tile and putting in a 3-foot-wide cement base.

“He had to have been a tough man,” said Busse, who began the special education programs in the Mead and Spokane’s East Valley school districts and was also assistant superintendent of the Mead School District. Bonnie Busse is a retired teacher from Salk Middle School in Spokane.

Allice sold the property in 1917 to the Wottlin family, and the Wottlins and their son, Tom, lived there until it was purchased by the Busses in 1976. Sometime in the 1950s the Wottlins brought in dairy cows and modified the barn to accommodate them. Some of the old dairy stanchions are still in place in the dairy shed inside the barn today.

The Busse family lived in Allice’s old farmhouse for 12 years before building a more modern home close by in 1988. They had hoped to refurbish the old home, which is sinking and cracking, but it appears too far gone for sensible restoration and remains now near the barn as a remnant of a long-ago life and time.

The location of the property, which has Coulee Creek running through it, was attractive to the Busses, who wanted their children to live in the country and be able to attend rural schools yet needed to remain close to Spokane for their own work. Although the land is just 10 miles from downtown Spokane and 25 miles from Reardan, it is in the Reardan School District.

They raised grain, cattle and hay there. They still have a few cattle, but much of the land is now leased out for hay.

The historic Henry Allice Barn has a metal roof, put on by Larry Busse and his father some years back, reminiscent of how Allice worked with his own father more than 100 years ago. The rock and mortar foundation needed shoring up, so Busse cut trees from the property and used the logs as supports under the original beams. But much of the barn is as it was long ago.

Today it houses the family’s old 1948 Chevy steel-bed hoist truck, which still runs and is still used a few times a year to haul things. There are a few miscellaneous items stored inside the barn, but back in the day, they filled the barn near to the roof with bales of hay.

Largely empty, the barn is prime exploration grounds for JJ, the family cat, but Busse said it is mostly kept and valued as an artifact from Spokane’s pioneer years and the people who worked so hard to build it and work the land.