Sorrow on the Range

Written by Judy Davis

at Dalles Mountain Ranch

I was waylaid by the family cemetery with its three monuments. The first was large, gray, and roughly hewed on the back and sides. It was for the family patriarch, W. A. Crawford, who died at age 78 in 1907.

It was the second gray one that gripped me with sadness. The perfectly symmetrical marker told of children dying in the winter of 1880-81, just two years after the Crawford family took up ranching on this lonesome place. James, a seven-month old infant, died in December. His sister Pearl, age four-and-a-half, died one month and four days later. I thought of the grieving mother and wondered what happened.

What disease could have struck this family in the deep of winter? What was it like to live out here in the rolling hills so many miles and a river from The Dalles, probably the location of the closest doctor? I wondered if there were neighbors who came with pots of beans, loaves of bread, apple pies, and words of consolation. Or did an infectious disease, winter weather, and distance keep people away as first one and then another child died?

A third monument told of more sadness. A white marble stone encrusted with lichen has a lamb resting on top (now missing its head). It marks the grave of Darcy who lived for less than three months in 1895.

There was some joy for the Crawfords. At least one child lived to adulthood. A display by the buildings tells about John’s innovations on the ranch and his terms in the Washington State legislature. The ranch stayed in the family until 1935.

But I am stilled by the young deaths. I wonder why Father Crawford is here and Mother Crawford is not. I leave filled with questions about the early years on this ranch and the sorrows of the first white woman who lived here.