AMERICAN FEVER

Two other land hunters, Charles and Lever Fiering, joined their party.   They followed an abandoned military road located north of Jameson Lake.  This road, which followed along Foster Creek, led them towards Old Fort Okanogan located at the confluence of the Columbia and Okanogan River, or to Lake Chelan.  Both of these military posts had been abandoned by the soldiers two or three years earlier, according to Ole’s journal.

Progressing over the abandoned road, they passed through the Upper Moses Coulee.  However, they found it so steep that they had to double-team the wagons.  They followed the long road running adjacent to the winding Foster Creek until it turned off to Lake Chelan.  Looking southwest, Ole wrote, we could then see the timbered top of Badger Mountain about 20 miles to the southwest so we set our course in that direction, picking our way as best we could.

To travel southwest, it is surmised that Banneck, the Fierings, and Ole left the Foster Creek military road and made their way overland.  Without a road or trail, they slowly traveled westward, passing by what is now the town of Withrow, Washington.  By traveling in that direction, the party would have a full view of the green timbered land on Badger Mountain, the snow-capped Cascades in the distant west, and the bunchgrass plains later to be known as the Waterville Plateau.

On the 8^th of May 1883, when he was 35½, Ole arrived with his party at a small dip in the terrain.  At a kvickenasp (quaking aspen) grove near the foot of the mountain, later to be called Fitches Grove, we made a temporary camp. This grove, located where the families of Bob Hedges and Eno Daling later farmed, remains today, displaying a unique patch of aspen surrounded by the dusty wheat fields.

We spent four days surveying and looking over the country which we found was unsurveyed.  We found a few notices of location bearing the date of April 8^th, 1883 and noted the names of Platt M. Corbaley, Al Pierpoint, Mrs. Mary Jefferson and others.  No people or improvements were found, but we respected the notices and looked for other locations, although we knew that only actual residence could hold down a claim on unsurveyed land. We liked this country so much better that we decided to abandon our former locations.  On the 16^th of May, 1883, I stuck up my notice and plowed a small patch of land in Section 4, Township 24 N. Range 22 E.W.M.  This, I believe was the first time sod was turned in the vicinity of Badger Mountain and the present town of Waterville.

It was only a short distance (about one mile) from Fitches Grove, in a southwesterly direction that Ole would stake out his squatter’s claim at the foot of Badger Mountain.  At this appealing location displaying an abundance of full-bloomed sunflowers, he felt at peace.  He climbed to the top of the hill adjacent to his claim, deeply inhaling the fresh air at that 3400 ft. altitude.  The flowing creek from the canyon filled with willow and aspen trees, an encompassing view of the grassy plains to the east and north, a continuance of the panorama including the majestic snowcapped Cascade Mountains to the west, filled him with the satisfaction he had yearned for since arriving in America.  He was struck by the surrou