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John H. Somsen Jr.
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In 1872, at the age of twenty-two, Henry John Somsen resigned a school teaching position in Omaha, Nebraska, to go West to work as time-keeper for Coe and Carter, a co-partnership which was under contract to furnish ties for the construction of the Oregon Short Line Railroad from Granger, Wyoming to Huntington, Oregon.
He came West in the early 1870’s to take up his duties and soon was advanced to the position of General Manager and Tie Receiver. His responsibilities included inspection of the timber to be cut for ties, establishment of sites for camps and receiving and paying for ties. It was essential that these camps be situated on waterways, for it was necessary to transport the ties via water from the heavily wooded areas where the timber was cut, since there was no other means of transportation. Therefore, the first tie camp was located on the Weber River at Echo,Utah.
It was while stationed here that Mr. Somsen met, and married in 1877, Miss Emily Elizabeth Gentry (1857-1902) at Coalville, Utah, a small town a short distance from Echo.
Ties were shipped from this camp to Granger via the Union Pacific Railroad. When ties and rails had been laid westward for approximately fifty miles, a second camp was established on Ham’s Fork River in Wyoming. This point, known as Ham’s Fork Railroad Station, later became one of the largest coal camps of the West. It is now known as Kemerer, Wyoming.
Continuing westward another distance of fifty miles, they established another camp on Smith’s Fork River, now named Cokeville,Wyoming. This area became one of the largest sheep and cattle raising centers of the West.
A few years later, No. 4 Camp was established on the Wood River in the Territory of Idaho at the point now known as Shoshone. In the late 1870’s or early 1880’s, due to the development of a great mining industry in the Wood River Valley, the Oregon Short Line Railroad built a branch line about seventy-five miles north of Shoshone to a terminal point named Ketchum. Ketchum was once recorded as the largest individual stock loading point in the West.
During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, several mines, including the famous Minnie Moore at Bradford near Bellevue and the North Star near Hailey, produced millions of dollars worth of lead and silver ores. Wood River also won renown for its sheep and cattle industry and its farming.
The fifth and last tie camp was established on the Payette River in the Territory of Idaho near the Oregon border. The Oregon Short Line, approximately 550 miles long, was completed nine years after its beginning. This would seem a long time in construction, but it must be remembered that the methods of construction in those days were restricted to hand and team work.
During the nine year period while the Oregon Short Line was being built, Mr. Somsen encountered the pleasures of pioneering through the western slopes of the region, as well as the grave dangers of the hostile Indians in war paint who inhabited the West at that time. In his latter years, Mr. Somsen enjoyed relating incidents from that period. Though he often rode horseback, most of his travel was done by buckboard and team. His job necessitating his moving between tie camps to inspect timber and to give and receive payment for ties, he came in contact with many Indians, some friendly, some hostile.
One time while inspecting timber on the Payette River, he rode his horse to the top of a ridge and looked down on a beautiful stream that ran through a wide, green meadow. Solidly encamped within this clearing was a large band of Indians, complete with teepees and numerous horses. As he watched, two young Indian bucks, equipped with bows and arrows, mounted the same pony and rode in his direction. Belatedly, he realized that he was the object of their onslaught. Wheeling his horse, he gave it the reins and urged it to full speed. The horse responded obediently but a hasty glances behind him confirmed his apprehension. The Indian pony, in spite of its double burden, was gaining steadily. As if his fears were instinctively perceived by the horse, the animal produced a new burst of speed, which gradually put distance between Mr. Somsen and his pursuers. His last glance revealed the two Indians reining to a halt and giving up the chase. He and his horse, however, continued to widen the area between them and the offensive before relaxing to a more leisurely retreat. Rejecting any credit for having saved his own scalp, Mr. Somsen gratefully gave the horse full credit for that singular accomplishment.
In journeying between his tie camps, he took a route by way of Boise, Idaho Territory, through Camas Prairie to Wood River and, following the foothills, he skirted the lava beds to Arco and Blackfoot. After leaving Little Wood River, there was no water until he reached Lost River. Between Lost River and Snake River there was no water, except at Lost River Butte, where it could be had for one dollar a barrel.
He described Camas as a huge, fertile prairie of lush, green meadows, lying at the foot of high mountains, fed by large streams of water. This was summer camping grounds for the Indians, who went there to dig camas root and other herbs, which they used for food and medicine, and which grew in abundance there on the prairie. The bears, as well as the Indians, were fond of the root. Mr. Somsen said he saw them there in large numbers, digging as industriously as the human natives.
Mr. Somsen was accompanied by his wife as the new tie camps were established along the Oregon Short Line route and, during the last years of the construction, they lived in Boise, Idaho Territory. There were four children, three boys and one girl, Henry Samuel (Harry, 1878-1959), Olive Emily (1880-1976), Franklin Milton (Frank, 1882-1955), and John Boise (1883-1949), born to them during these first nine years of their marriage.
After the completion of the railroad, Mr. Somsen, with his family, returned to Cokeville, Wyoming, to make his home and in the years following, another three children, Maud Elisabeth (1885-1886), Alma Edwin (1890-1911) and Garrett William (1892-1972) were born to them.
He filed with the government for 160 acres of land under the Desert, Pre-emption, and Timber Culture Claims. He made early water-right filings, seeded the land mostly to redtop timothy and bluegrass and, applying water, he developed a very valuable ranch to furnish hay and pasture for his livestock during the severe Wyoming winters.
During the 1880’s, Mr. Somsen built up a fine stock ranch. The number of his cattle was increased to 1800 head and his horses to 300 head, but the ravaging wither of 1888-89 nearly effaced his stock business. Over 1200 head of cattle and all except a few head of his horses, which he kept at the ranch,were destroyed.
A disheartened and discouraged man, he continued to work but never again seemed to have the same desire and ambition for large scale stock raising.
Very much interested in politics and an enthusiastic Republican, he served in numerous public offices. He was the Cokeville Postmaster for many years. He served as Justice of the Peace as well as Police Judge and at one time served in those capacities simultaneously. He represented Uintah County, which is now Lincoln County, as a Representative to Wyoming’s State Legislature for one or two terms.
In at least one of the many political meetings he addressed, he predicted an inevitable fight between Labor and Capital and said, "I fear Labor will get the upper hand and if it does, we will find ourselves in a predicament." He didn’t live to see that conflict manifested, though; he died at the age of eighty-four.
He was preceded in death by his wife, who passed away while still in her forties. Both are buried at the cemetery in Cokeville, Wyoming. Beside them rest their deceased children: Maud, Alma (n.b. Evelyn Gilmore, Harry’s daughter, added this note in 1960) and Henry, better known as Harry, who died March 13th, 1959, and Frank, who died several years before Harry.
Henry J. Somsen was my most unforgettable character. He was completely different from anyone else I have ever met. He was alert and dynamic in nature and expected everyone around him to possess these same characteristics. In the many positions he held, political and otherwise, he always gave the other fellow the benefit of the doubt.
He was born in Sheboygan,Wisconsin on February 18, 1852, five months after his parents, Johanna and Hendrick Jan Somsen arrived in America from Aalten, Holland. He was the youngest of three boys and one girl and did not attend school, nor speak the English language until he was nine.
When both his parents died, his oldest brother, Garrett, who lived in Detroit, took care of him for some time. He drifted from one brother to the other until he was twenty, when he left to teach school in Omaha.
From there he went West with a railroad construction company to help build the Oregon Short Line from Granger, Wyoming to Huntington Oregon. In the early 1870’s he had charge over two hundred men, supplying the ties for the Coe and Carter Company. He stayed in this position from start to finish, which took nine years.
Having charge of that many men who were getting out ties for that length of time made him very officious... possibly too officious, because he expected everyone under him to “learn and obey orders,” one of his favorite phrases.
While working on the railroad, he was literally a walking bank as he traveled about on foot, horseback and in a buckboard, carrying large sums of money to pay the men who were working under him. Often, he said, he just made his bed on the ground and lay down with thousands of dollars, feeling safer in those times with that sum than he felt in later years with $25 in his pockets.
One thing to his credit was that he never touched liquor and was very much against it. He often said that a man could make a big enough fool of himself sober without getting aid from whiskey. He often told his sons---which were five--- that if they ever drank, they could never hold a responsible position and anyone who drank did not have the “sense God gave wild geese.”
While working on the railroad, he selected Cokeville, Wyoming, as the most suitable place for a large cattle ranch and as soon as the railroad was completed in the early 1880’s, he settled there. But, you must remember that he saw much and did plenty in the wild timber regions of Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Oregon before settling down. Indians were plentiful as were wild animals of almost every kind, and all sorts of men under his supervision. With all these, he had plenty to deal with and many stories to tell.
He found his wife, Emily Gentry, a beautiful girl who came from England with her parents in 1866 in Coalville, Utah. When asked why she married a man from the East instead of a local boy, she always said it was because he was so different.
Soon after they settled in Cokeville, a terrible commotion broke out in the Indian camp just above the town. They were shouting and beating drums and setting up quite a disturbance with their cries. The residents of Cokeville became alarmed, fearing the Indians were preparing to attack and massacre all of them. The townspeople met and selected three men to go up and find out what the commotion was about. Somsen said he preferred to go alone, since he spoke and understood their language and had been with them so much in the past ten years. When he returned, he reported that there was a sick child in the camp who was dying and they were frightening away the evils spirits. He hastened to point out to the townspeople their kinship with Indians’, since both called on a Supreme Being when in sickness and distress in spite of Indians’ additional belief in “evil spirits.” The following day, the Indians all rode away with the body of the child bound on the back of one of the ponies taking it home to one of their burial grounds. The townspeople credited Somsen’s language skills and gift for understanding human nature with keeping a long, good relationship with the Indians.
Soon, another tragedy occurred known as “The Tragedy of the Button Boys.” Two young men came to Cokeville from the East. The townspeople called Easterners “greenhorns” as they blundered around haphazardly. Walking into an old, abandoned coal mine tunnel, one of the two Button boys was overcome by gas. The other managed to get out and run for help. Many men tried to go into that mine, but it was Somsen who tied a long rope around his waist and made it to the stricken boy, giving a certain pull on the rope that signaled the other men to pull him out. He recovered the boy’s body but was ill for a long time thereafter, as a result of having breathed so much of the poisoned air. For months he had to sleep out in the open air to get the poison out of his lungs.
Somsen was a great sportsman and dearly loved horses and horse races and whenever there was a celebration, he was called upon to be the supervisor of the event. He was in demand to perform this function for other communities as well. They sent for him from Evanston, Montpelier and many other places and wherever he performed as “Master of Ceremonies”, he put on a worthwhile show. He trained three of his sons as jockeys and two as foot racers and people knew that when these boys entered a race, “They were there to win or know the reason why!”
In earlier days when with the railroad company, he used to gather the Indians and hold sporting events. they generally met near, Camas, Utah, and had a three day meet. Indians would come from every direction to attend those meetings. Somsen would bet money against their furs, buffalo robes, buckskins or whatever they had. When he lost, he paid his money and smiled and they took his money gleefully, but let them lose and what a wailing they would put up! Nonetheless, amid groans and gutturals, they paid their debts. For many years after he was married, he had many sacks of valuable marten, wolverine and beaver furs.
After settling in Cokeville, he stocked his ranch with a large herd of Durham cattle, which he brought out from the East. He was elected Justice of the Peace and appointed Postmaster of Cokeville in 1884 and was still serving as Justice of the Peace, Probate Judge and City Commissioner at the time of his death in 1936, having been elected by both Republicans and Democrats twice to the Wyoming State Legislature, and once to the legislative body when Wyoming was still a Territory.
Whenever a stack of hay was to be measured to ascertain its tonnage, Somsen was the man who did the measuring. Whenever fence lines were disputed or water troubles came up, he was the man selected to settle all such matters. In those days of the Wild West, he was much in demand to make these determinations and never had a dull moment as a frontier arbitrator.
Somsen did not like sheep, but he did like goats and had about 300 head of the Angora breed, which he dearly loved. They were very pretty, especially the kids, with their soft, curly hair. He said they were more intelligent than sheep and would fight any coyote on the range and had sense enough to come home at night. He said he made more from his 300 head of goats than most men could make from a full herd of sheep, for at this time, wool was worth twelve cents a pound, while goat hair was worth forty cents. The greater production of young of the goats and the little care they needed was proof to him of his good investment.
Ever the entrepreneur, he found a large salt spring in the mountains not far from his ranch and had all the family busy filling sacks that held five, ten, twenty and fifty pounds of “finished salt,” and found ready sale for all he could produce.
One day, when he and his wife were away from home, leaving Harry, twelve, Olive, ten and Frank, eight, to look after the place, some Indians camped near their home came to the house. One of the Indians said that a certain horse in their pasture belonged to him and when he left, he was going to take it with him. The children knew that their father had traded another Indian for the horse a few days earlier and were determined not to let the horse be taken. Frank mounted the horse and went up to river and hid in some willows. The girl hid in the basement while the older boy, Harry, mounted another horse and lit out for Cokeville, where his parents were (for now they were living about ten miles north of that settlement). The main bunch of Indians took the main road to Cokeville, while two others took off up river in search of the eight-year-old boy on the horse. They found him and, with bows and arrows ready to shoot, marched him along the road.
The older boy made good time to Cokeville and soon Somsen and a number of armed men were on their way back towards the ranch. When they met up with the Indians, they saw that they had Frank riding along in front of them. In fact, they had him riding in front of the whole tribe.
The men stopped the Indians and listened to their story. Possibly, the Indian who had traded the horse to Somsen had stolen it from another Indian who now claimed it, but Somsen arrested the whole bunch--- possibly on a kidnap charge--- and took them to Cokeville. The following day, when their trial came up, the Indian who had stolen the horse to trade to Somsen was fined a horse and saddle (to give to the rightful owner of the horse that was now in Somsen’s possession) and Somsen kept his trading animal. Had a fighting lawyer taken that case, he undoubtedly would have disqualified Somsen as acting judge, but since there were few lawyers, Somsen meeted out his own justice, much, in this instance, to his own advantage.
He arrested his best friend for fishing out of season. He put the limit fine on six Salt Lakers who were shooting some sage chickens out of season. One of the men tried to excuse the act by pointing out that they were each allowed, by law, five wild chickens, but Somsen said that even though he was seventy-five years old, he could count up to thirty and didn’t propose for any Salt Lakers to come up there who could not count correctly, for they had considerably more than that---in fact, they had, between them, seventy-five.
All during his career as judge, he did not seem to make any enemies. People admired him for doing what he considered to be his duty.
J. W. Stoner, the wealthiest man in that part of the country, built a large, general merchandise store with his office in the back. He had an artist come from the East and paint some pictures in the panels. Most of the scenes depicted Somsen in some pose, in a stream or with his favorite horse. One depicted him laying down the law to some other men.
Although Somsen was American born, he was true to his Dutch heritage pertaining to scholastic standards. He was a devout student and scholar and always had a lamp in his bedroom and would read for hours at a time before going to sleep. He also followed the tradition of his Dutch heritage by speaking several languages fluently and this, no doubt, carried considerable weight among his wide acquaintances.
Stoner had a habit of saying, “I’m God, Somsen, so-and-so is up the river putting brands on calves that are not his.” Somsen would reply, “Holy Hell, again?” as he would mount his horse and ride out to investigate.
Neighbors Maw and Stoner had both built along the canal. After awhile, each got to accusing the other of stealing the water; so, ditch-rider after ditch-rider was hired first by the one man and then the other. One day, Stoner hired Somsen to walk the ditch. The previous ditch-rider had recently quit because he claimed that either Maw or Stoner had taken a shot at him. As Somsen took over, Stoner warned him of the danger. A short time later, some men saw Somsen lying on the ditch bank. When they approached him, he groaned that Maw had shot him., but upon close inspection the men found that Somsen had no wound, no blood, no nothing and accused him of sleeping on the job. But Somsen insisted that as he was walking along the bank, he heard a shot and felt the bullet strike him. They laughed and told him that the shot he thought he heard was the report of a blast that had gone off at the mine some distance away, and the fact was that he was so sure Maw was going to shoot him that his imaginary fears turned into just another example of mind over matter.
Another time, Somsen and a neighbor named Wheelock go into a fist fight. They fought on and on and finally, Somsen said, “I’m getting winded. Let’s stop long enough for me to take my boots off.” They did and when they started fighting again, it took Somsen only a few minutes to whip Wheelock because he always said he never had a pair of shoes or boots until he was ten years old, and could get along better without them and in this instance, that proved to be true.
He was quite a veterinarian and always carried a bottle of carbolic acid in his back pocket. One day the bottle broke and Somsen literally had his pants burned off him, along with some mighty precious flesh.
When the Somsen family was still living at the bend in the river, ten miles north of town, three boys from over Bear Lake way went over to Cokeville and got drunk. Those young men came along, shooting up some of the ranches, calling some of the ranchers out, and then shooting around their feet to make them dance.
They stopped at the Somsen place and called for him to come out. He told his wife to tell them to ride along and mind their business. They started away but, shortly thereafter, began shooting at the house. Somsen grabbed a rifle and ran out the back way. He could only see the outline of one of them on a white horse, for it was night. He shot and away they went. A few days later, he learned that a certain young man had been taken to Montpelier to be doctored for a bullet wound. It was said that he had been shot in the stomach. No vital organs had been harmed, the intestines had not been ruptures, but that a silk handkerchief could be pushed right through the wound..
However, a few years later, Garrett and Alma were over at Bear Lake. A chum asked how they would like to have a large lake trout to eat. They reckoned they would; so, they went out and followed a gill net and soon came to a beauty, which they took. However, the owner of the net came over and said considerable and what he was going to do with those two thieving boys. A man who was with him asked the fisherman if he didn’t know whose boys they were and he did not. The man said, “These are Somsen’s boys. He shot you once and he’s likely to do it again,” and they rode away.
He surely died with his boots on, if anyone did. He was found on his doorstep, unconscious and died there, suffering from Pneumonia at the age of eighty-four.
Another incident occurred the same summer as the “Sage Hen Incident” (Olive Somsen’s biography of Henry John).
One of the ranchers around Cokeville had a horse that none of his men could break; so they took him to Leo, Harry Somsen’s oldest son, who was foreman of the Stoner Ranch, to try his hand a breaking “Dynamite," a big, beautiful sorrel quarterhorse. Leo, who had a good reputation for breaking animals, broke the horse so he could ride him just about anywhere and gave him back to the rancher.
A few days later, the rancher brought the horse back to Leo, since no one at his ranch seemed to be able to handle him. Everyone admired the horse, but no one could get near him, except Leo.
One night, Leo was in the saloon and someone bet him he could not ride Dynamite into the candy store. Leo, who did not know how to turn down a challenge, accepted the bet.
The candy store was part of the local hotel, with only a wall separating the lobby and the store. There was an aisle about four or five feet wide between the glass counters that displayed the candy. Leo rode the horse in and those who were on the spot said that they expected Dynamite to jump straight up. His eyes were wide, ears pressed back flat against his head, nostrils and entire body quivering. But he did not disturb as much as the dust on the glass candy cases. Leo backed him out of the store without any trouble and who was waiting for him outside? Who else but “The Judge," Leo’s grandfather, who put him in the "brig." It took $100, a lot of money in those days, to buy his way out the next morning.
The judge was a good sized man, and when he would tell his stories, he would close his eyes and flail his arms about. Listeners who got to know his procedure, would always step back out of his reach. Those who didn’t know his procedure learned quickly. He was a great man, just the person for law and order in the West. Many loved him. Everyone respected him.