Sagebrush Homesteads

Sagebrush Homesteads tells the story of a childhood spent on some of the last semi-arid acres claimed by homesteaders in the Columbia Basin. Laura Tice Lage opens her tale in 1906 when, as a child of ten, she arrives with her parents to begin a new life near the recently created town of Othello, Washingon. Like their neighbors, living no more than a mile apart in any direction, the Tice family invests far more in the shallow, unirrigated "blowdust" soil of Eastern Washington's Adams County than its precarious promise warrants. Although their life is hard and they do without (Laura has but one pair of badly scuffed shoes to wear), she finds much to be thankful for and her attitude is decidedly cheerful"???"even optimistic. The 1909 completion of the Milwaukee Railroad's western division gives some of the failing farmers new reason to stay. Meanwhile, young people from the region find employment in the Milwaukee's restaurant, roundhouse, and work gangs. Laura ends her narrative in 1914 when she realizes she must leave her father's farm to get a decent education and make her own living. Lage wrote her regional pioneer classic a half-century later, after she returned to the once-parched farm to see sprouting crops irrigated by the new Columbia Basin Project. The visit inspired her to record a wealth of homestead lore, humor, and pathos. The WSU Press edition is an unabridged reprint of the original 1967 text with an added introduction by the Othello Community Museum's Gladys C. Para.