On the Banks of Spring Creek

April 25, 1999 Grand Forks N.D.

Dear classmates and friends,

April came in like a lion this year but is going out like a lamb, and once again we are reminded that spring can be one of the best times of the year in North Dakota. The days are mild, the sun is warm and the mosquitoes haven’t hatched yet. Sometimes our fine spring weather only lasts about five minutes, but it is a good five minutes.

This, too, is how I remember the springs on the farm when I was growing up 12 miles north of Eureka. The good spring days were all too brief, but what wonderful days they were. What fun it was to go out in the evenings after school to help feed the cattle and to watch all the new calves bounding across the pasture, some so little they still wobbled, others running as fast as they could with their tails straight out, chasing each other. I also remember going to the Eureka Post Office and hearing the cheep, cheep, cheep from the boxes of baby chicks that came from the hatchery in Linton, N.D. Sometimes, the fluffy yellow chicks were delivered right to our farmyard, hundreds and hundreds of them in cardboard boxes, with holes poked in them. Sometimes Mother even kept them in a special brooder box in the basement until they were big enough and it was warm enough for them to go out to the chicken coop.

Another unforgettable part of spring was watching Spring Creek rise up and overflow its banks, some years growing into a torrent a half mile across. The water came from the east and when the creek was really high, it came right across the fields and through our tree plot until it came within a stone’s throw of our house, then veered sharply to the north and around our farm buildings, flowing over the bottom lands that had never been plowed and then over the section line to our neighbor’s land. Sometimes the big rush of water only lasted a day, sometimes it was three days. One year my mother let my brother David and me play in the creek by ourselves all day long. We were little and if we hunched down a bit, the water was up to our necks. Neither one of us could swim but we had so much fun we went back for more the next day. Unfortunately the creek had gone down so much overnight that it wasn’t nearly as much fun so we went home disappointed.

Spring Creek was a little more than a quarter mile from our house and most of the time it ranged from a dry bed to a trickle to a stream a few feet deep and about six or eight feet across. It looped through unbroken prairie land that my Dad cut and stacked for hay each year and through our pasture. We spent so much time playing in the creek as kids, both at our house and at my cousin Cindy Beck’s, whose home was just three or four miles downstream. We caught frogs, found bird nests, skipped rocks and, when the water was low, played in the culverts. I loved the native flowers that grew on the prairie around the creek: coneflowers, meadow anemone, gumweed, ox-eye, goldenrod, common comandra, dame’s rocket, scarlet globemallow, tiny violets and more. When I was very little I picked so many flowers that Mother sometimes ran out of old cans and jelly jars to put them in.

Spring Creek has a big place in my family history as three of the main branches of my family tree - the Haupts, the Becks and the Wolffs – all farmed on Spring Creek. When I was in Eureka last week Mom and I got out the township maps and traced the creek from where it originates near the state line in Bergdorf township all the way through McPherson County. >From its headwaters it winds south and west to Wolff Dam, which was built in 1939 on land my great-grandfather, Jacob Wolff, sold to the state for $1. I’m not sure why the dam was built but it was a WPA project and it kept a lot of men busy and put money in their pockets during the Depression. The land around there passed from Jacob to his son Ferdinand, to Ferdinand’s son and grandson, Quentin and Dennis, who still farm there today.

>From there the creek continues westward through land that used to be the Benny Nies (Al’s dad) and John Nies farms, then through an area that used to be three Ladner farms and where Glenn and Sandy (Krein) Opp now live. The creek then runs past what used to be the Christ Janke and Milbert Joachim farms, through Weisenberger and Merkel land, and then through what used to be our farm and is now the home of Joel and Margie Sayler.

From there it crosses near the farm where Joel grew up, then on to where Edmund Dohns (Duane’s parents) and the Walter Joachims lived: to where the Alvin B. Bertschs lived, to where Bruce and Candace Kusler still live (and where Deb Kusler grew up), to the place where Uncle Gideon and Aunt Lorraine Beck farmed until they retired a few years ago. Gideon and Lorraine sold the house and farmstead to a couple whose name I can’t think of now. Jacob Wolff, who was Gideon’s grandfather, built that house in about 1910, and four generations of Wolffs are buried in a family cemetery nearby. From there the creek turns southward to flow near the Beck place where my mother grew up and then to the Beck place where her grandparents lived and where her cousin, Waldie Beck, still farms today. Before it leaves McPherson County Spring Creek passes through land that was home to Fischers, Sterns, Permans, Gruebeles, Ottmars and Stuckles before it flows into Campbell County, past more Beck farms and past Artas and south of Herreid and then northwest again to enter Lake Pocasse on the Oahe Reservoir.

According to the book "South Dakota Geographic Names," Spring Creek has another name, Stone Idol Creek, which it was given by Lewis and Clark during their expedition to the Pacific coast in 1804. The two explorers gave it that name because of a story told them by an Arikara chief. According to the story, an Indian youth was in love with a girl whose parents refused to consent to their marriage. He went out to the prairie with his faithful dog to bewail his fate when a kindred feeling led his beloved to the same spot. The couple wandered for a long time with nothing to live on but wild grapes. Gradually they changed into stone and nothing remained of their original appearance except a bunch of grapes.

While paddling up the Missouri Lewis and Clark passed the mouth of the creek and saw in the distance three stones, which they believed were the sad couple and their dog, so they named the waterway Stone Idol Creek. If there ever were three such stones, they are probably under a few hundred feet of the Oahe Reservoir today.

A couple of years ago one of Jacob Wolff’s daughters, my great-aunt Frieda, asked me to write her obituary for her. I decided to do a little research and Arlo Mehlhaff, the editor of the Northwest Blade, let me spend an afternoon paging through newspapers from the early ‘30s. In those days the editor was a Mr. Froh, and times being tough, he and his wife would sometimes get in their car and drive from farm to farm to sell subscriptions. Sometimes they even accepted poultry and other farm produce in lieu of cash. Mr. Froh then wrote folksy stories about these trips, telling about the sights they had seen and the people they had met. In one story Froh mentioned that they had crossed Spring Creek 14 times in one day.

One of those stories, published on Nov. 19, 1931, especially caught my eye because Mr. and Mrs. Froh had stopped at a place that turned out to be the home of my aforementioned great-grandfather, Jacob Wolff. Mr. Froh said they were eight miles north of town and about to head back to Eureka when he spotted a farm with many buildings and a big house and decided to check it out. This is what Froh wrote (and he wrote about himself in the third person): "At the home he was greeted by the smiling face of Mrs. Jacob Wolff and then by Mr. Wolff, who had seen the car drive up and came from the barn to find what’s what. Needless to say, the Wolff farm is a very modern one, with electricity and other conveniences. For the first time since the editor began making these trips, a supper invitation was accepted. The callers met the other members of the Wolff family, including the newlyweds, Mr. and Mrs. Otto Wolff, and spent a very pleasant two hours at this place. A friendly congenial atmosphere prevails in this really Christian home, which sets forth a fine example of true family harmony. The editor and his wife would have liked to spend more time at the Wolff farm, but it was getting late and they finally left for home, ending Monday’s trip." I’ve been in the newspaper business for 20 years and this kind of a glowing report from an editor can only mean one thing. Grandpa Wolff must have taken a two-year subscription, and he must have paid in cash, not chickens.

Hope you are all enjoying a beautiful spring. Your friend, Paulette