Orson Clark-12/14/81 - Pg 2

after the war he just figured that things were going to go to pieces. They had done that in the '20's. So he put this farm up for sale and the wife's brother bought it. He was a truck farmer and he went ahead and farmed it for a couple of years and this Clarence Lee was so sorry that he sold his farm that he came and begged to get it back. I don't know what he charged him, but I know he had to pay him more than what he paid for it.

Interviewer: Well, with all that work.

Orson Clark: He got it and farmed it a few more years and decided he would retire. He had made the stake. I saw him here just a while ago. He's just a young fellow. I say young, he would still be in his 50's. He retired. Then there was Chick Taylor who went up about the same time. He did the same thing, that is he went in and bought some of their best land. He raised it, he was a row cropper.

Interviewer: Those earlier farmers, what did they grow anyway?

Orson Clark: Hay and grain.

Interviewer: There was plenty of water for them at the time?

Orson Clark: Yes. The Owyhee Dam went in in 1920 as I remember. That was the water that fed that project.

Interviewer: That was on what river?

Orson Clark: The Owyhee River?

Ruth Knowlton: How do you spell that, Orson?

Orson Clark: O-W-H-E-E, I think.

Ruth Knowlton: It's an Indian word, I remember, but I don't know how to spell it.

Interviewer: Were the irrigation assessments on the land very heavy at all?

Orson Clark: Not too heavy, it was about normal.

Interviewer: It wasn't a burden to anyone then?

Orson Clark: No. Where I was located on the farm that I had, we got our water from the Malheur River. While we were there they put in a dam about a mile above the roadway.

Interviewer: After this group from Utah demonstrated that row cropping was more profitable, did most of the old farmers all shift over?