Palouse offers relaxation, education

“My father and mother, William and Williamina (Bunge) Buth, left Germany in 1867, hoping to find peace and opportunities in America to care for their family. I was born in South Dakota in 1883, the youngest of 10 children. Hail storms, wind and drought ruined our crops year after year, but when our home was struck by lightning I decided it was time to find greener pastures. … It was cold and foggy that January 8, 1908, when I stepped off the train in Fairfield.”

Those are the words of Martin Buth, who submitted a first-person account of the pioneer days in Fairfield to a history book collected by Fairfield’s history committee in 1960. The spiral-bound “Early History of Fairfield: Glimpses of Life in a Pioneer Farming Town” can still be purchased at the Fairfield Museum, and it’s an excellent example of the rich local history available at museums and collections in small towns on the Palouse.

Travel a few miles south on Palouse Highway and you’ll find yourself surrounded by farmland, pastures and the occasional orchard in between manicured farms. Horses graze next to old barns that lean into the wind. Yet many of the small towns have been reduced from bustling trade centers with busy railroads, banks and grain elevators to thoroughfares for commuters headed south to Pullman or north to Spokane.

Hopefully this road trip will encourage you to take a little more time, stop and get out of the car the next time you traverse the Palouse.

The first stop on this tour was unplanned – in Freeman, where sisters Robin Foutch and Kari Pearson opened the store Bertha and Brambles in April.

“It’s named after the pig and the lamb we had growing up,” said Foutch, giving a tour of the store. “My sister has collected vintage stuff for 20 years, so we have some of that, and we feature local artists who make all kinds of things.” In the store, which is just off Highway 27 behind the Freeman store, you’ll find candles and soaps, crafts and handmade jewelry, handmade dolls and new and old glass and housewares.

Foutch makes jewelry, some of which incorporates beads she inherited from her grandmother.

Nieces and other family members contribute to the store as well.

“I guess we are just creative, I don’t know,” said Foutch, laughing. The store is planning an official grand opening in September, and by then Foutch hopes it will have a kitchen and a reading area ready.

From Freeman, follow Highway 27 south to Fairfield and you are in the heart of farming and pioneer country.

The town of Fairfield got its first post office in 1889, making the name official. The Bank of Fairfield incorporated in 1905, and in those early years the town had the typical merchants and businesses: a blacksmith and a butcher, a drugstore and a mercantile, a general store and hardware store and, of course, grain elevators.

People like Martin Buth came from all over this continent and Europe to cultivate prairie land and settle the area. Horses pulled plows, pigs were raised for slaughter, and plums were grown and dried to prunes. Women worked around the clock to feed their families and the hired help during harvest time in kitchens where everything from the butter and the bread to the Sunday roast was homemade.

As modern household and farm equipment gradually replaced it, the old pioneer equipment ended up stowed away in outbuildings and attics.

Later generations found the “old stuff,” and today a large collection of housewares, clothing, books and toys can be found at the Fairfield Museum displayed in a beautiful and approachable manner.

“It all comes from the families around here,” said Emmalyn Gerhauser, who’s lived all her life in and around Fairfield. “We look around and see the things here and we see the people it came from.”

Gerhauser said it was a women’s work club that got the museum started back in the early ’70s.

“The building here turned 100 years old last year,” Gerhauser said. “It was a fire station and it was city hall at some point. Everything you see has been donated to us.” In 2000, a donation of $200,000 from Elden and Elizabeth Felgenhauer made it possible to expand the museum building to its current size.

“We have lots of records here. High school yearbooks, newspaper articles, archives, school records,” said curator Barb Neil. “People often come here looking for their roots, looking for their families and their relatives.”

All family history is labeled by town and by family name, Neil said, so it’s easy to access for people who don’t have a lot of experience in genealogy.

“We have a lot of wonderful reading material, old books, old magazines, but no one sits down and reads it,” Neil said, adding that the museum desperately needs younger people interested in keeping it going. “It’s the same here as everywhere else – we need young people to get involved.”

The museum also features a bank exhibit, including a safe that’s been blown up, and several exhibits dedicated to local veterans.

“I guess I don’t understand young people,” said Gerhauser with a friendly smile. “I’d think you’d need to know what was here before to understand your life here today. I just wish we’d get some younger folks and some families in here.”

Continuing south on Highway 27, you’ll come through Latah, where the old hardware store – a big-boned red brick building just off the highway – has come back to life as the Latah Creek Merchant. It’s been around for about a year and is the perfect pit stop for a cup of hot coffee or a cold drink. The Merchant features a selection of soaps and lotions, crafts and vintage items such as glassware and porcelain.

Before you reach Kamiak Butte – the second-highest point in Whitman County – you’ll hit the town of Palouse.

On the corner of Bridge and Main streets, you’ll find the Bank Left Gallery, which features fine art by area artists and is attached to a great little bistro. Main Street also features a tavern and a few other restaurants as well as a couple of secondhand and vintage stores. Get there around noon or early afternoon and lunch is easy to find.

Just a few miles south of Palouse sits the Kamiak Butte, easily identifiable from a distance: it’s one of the few places in Whitman County that has dense forest. Kamiak Butte features the 3.5-mile Pine Ridge Trail and is 3,641 above sea level. Birds and other wildlife thrive there, and it’s a great place to take a little rest before you head back home. The lower parking area has restrooms and a nice playground with plenty of picnic tables. Campsites are also available.