Valley History Saved In Pages Of Her Book

Peggy Cunningham grew up north of Newman Lake, in a log cabin her father built in 1916.

The icy cold Thompson Creek cut across her family’s property. As a young girl, Cunningham splashed and played in its cool waters. She searched for arrowheads, hiked to Ragged Mountain, climbed on the lumber piles owned by nearby mills.

“I wish I could just click my fingers and make it so you could see how it was,” the 78-year-old Valley woman said. “It was a time nobody will ever experience again.”

Unless they read her book.

It’s a book she’s been preparing for since she was a child, back when she started collecting letters, photos and newspaper clippings in a scrapbook.

She now has binders filled with old photos of the people and places in Newman Lake’s past. She has a file cabinet filled with the names and stories of the families who once lived there.

“A good share of these people are dead,” said Cunningham, standing in a room filled with black-and-white photos and family genealogies. “I just want to preserve the story of their lives.”

Cunningham plans to call her book “Pioneer Families of Moab, Newman Lake and Thompson Creek: 1880 to 1950.”

Her goal is to finish it within the next few years. And publish it on her own if necessary.

It’s important, she said, because the pioneers are dying, their descendents are scattering and memories are being lost.

She admits she’s never written a book before. And she’s not a professional writer.

But if she doesn’t do it, there’s a chance the stories will be lost.

They’re stories about people and events, which show how much life has changed in the Spokane Valley. Cunningham, for example, can remember neighbors coming over to deliver her baby sister because the doctor was too busy “sewing up a lumberjack.”

“Mrs. Platter,” she remembered, “cut the cord way too long.”

Digging up the old stories and facts has been a challenge, even with her scrapbooks and memories of her 105-year-old mother. Her mother settled in the Thompson Creek area as a teenager in about 1907. Cunningham’s father owned a piece of land not far to the south.

Sandwiched between her mother’s and father’s homesteads was a tract of land where George Cunningham - her future husband - lived. She and George remained there until 1949, when they moved to Otis Orchards so their children could be closer to school and friends.

In a way, Cunningham said, it’s ironic that she’s the one who has decided to undertake this journey back in time.

Even as a child, she dreamed of leaving Newman Lake behind and going to the big city, where life didn’t involve hauling water, chopping wood and walking miles to find the nearest neighbor.

But it never happened, and now she’s starting to appreciate how special her life has been.

Similar books already had been published about Otis Orchards and Green Bluff, but Cunningham couldn’t find any written history of the Newman Lake area.

So she got some old plat maps and started compiling the names of former property owners. She interviewed about two dozen of them: Everyone she could find who was still living.

She continues to look for friends and descendents who can contribute information about those who are gone.

The project forced Cunningham to buy a computer, scanner and printer, and start teaching herself how to use word-processing and genealogy software.

“I really had a bad time with it at first,” she admitted.

But to record history, she realized she would have to move into the future.

Cunningham says she’s looking forward to the future, even as she works to preserve the stories of the past. The memories she’s dug up through the project, even the very good ones, haven’t made her yearn for the old days.

“I wouldn’t want to go back to those days,” she said, fingering an old photo of her grandmother’s stark wooden house on the Thompson Creek homestead.

“I like my heat. I like my running water. I really like my microwave,” she said.

Cunningham continues to look for friends and descendants of the pioneer families who lived near Thompson Creek, Newman Lake and Moab between 1880 and 1950. She can be reached at 926-5024.