Queets hired a Teacher...

Ingeborg Lundgren
m. Jan 14,1903 Grays Harbor County
Spouse: Albert A. Roblan (Axel Albert Roblan)

"Twas in the fall month of October, year 1900. Winter rains had already set in. There was only one school vacancy in the county - in the lower Queets valley. No teacher seemed to want it because of the trouble, inconvenience and difficulties of such a trip into the far back-woods. Besides the pay was only $40.00 per month. Not very appealing."
I wrote to Mr. Eldridge Wheeler, of Montesano, my summer Normal school instructor, for advice. A sentence in his reply struck my fancy. "The happiest time of a teacher's life is sometimes spent in the far back-woods." I took the school. Mrs. McKinnon, school clerk of the district, made all arrangements for my trip, and sent Ray Northup, of Clearwater, to meet me at the Indian Agency, now called Taholah. A trip to the Hoh and back in 85 minutes by air recently, suggested this story of a one-way trip that took nearly a week.
My father accompanied me to Oyehut. There he turned me over to an Indian who had come with a wagon from the Agency (Taholah). It took us the rest of the day to get to the Agency. It was a lonely drive along the north beach coast. Just an occasional house to pass. It was dark before we reached Taholah. There were high cliffs to the right, and the ocean waters right under the wagon wheels. The tide was up high. Seemed as though the ocean was going to take us. I was deathly scared. The driver hurried his horses for all they were worth and presently we saw lights from the village.
There I was taken to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Reader. The Readers, the Indian Agent, and the Schoolmaster, were the only white people in the village. Reader kept a store. I met Ray Northup. He decided we better stay over a day, hoping the weather would be better for our journey on foot from the Quinault River to the Queets, along the beach, a distance of fourteen miles. Next day I visited the Indian School and looked over the village.
On the third day in the morning we started our tip northward. Ray carried a heavy pack. We just "mushed on" in the soft sand all day long. The ocean wind was cold and it rained, too. Every once in a while we came to big creeks, swollen from heavy rains. Hand in hand we plunged right in. The currens were strong. At the Raft River we couldn't plunge in. Ray constructed a raft, somehow, and we crossed safely on it. This is a dangerous crossing for inexperienced hands. Before this, we came to a tunnel through the high cliffs whose points extended out into the sea. The water was so high we couldn't get through it, so had to take a long round-about way, by trail, over the bluffs. Somewhere on top we ate our lunch. A thermos bottle of hot coffee (as we have now) wouldn't have been so bad. But we didn't have one.
We didn't follow the trail clear down, but to make the trip shorter, Ray picked his way down a steep water-fall in the cliffs. He tested every foothold carefully, all the while holding onto me. Safely down we proceeded northward and by evening arrived at an Indian Inn, cold, drenched, and tired out. (This was probably Dick Sharp's hotel.)
Had to stay with the Indians several days, as the Queets River wasn't in the right condition for poling a canoe upstream. The Indians were good to me, and were very fond of handling my little gold watch. But I was uneasy. Besides, their religious ceremony didn't appeal to me. While going up river in a canoe I saw Indian graves along the banks.
The forests and natural scenery are unsurpassed. There are rapids in the river and canoes have to be handled with skill.
The first white settlers we came to were McKinnons. Here Ray Northup left me for his own home on the Clearwater. Mrs. McKinnon kept me there several days before taking me to Donaldson's ranch, further up river, some nine miles from the mouth of the Queets.
Mrs. Donaldson with her Scotch brogue welcomed me. She had a boy and two girls near my own age. I met other young folks here, and right away made friendships that lasted through the years. I taught there three months, boarding with Donaldsons, then went six months to another district further up river. In this district were pupils from Streators, Glovers, Newmans and Sorensens. I boarded with Sorensens.
No teacher ever had nicer or more scholarly pupils than I had in the little school cabins on the Queets. They provided the wood for the schoolrooms in all kinds of bad weather, never even expecting the teacher to build the fire. The hospitality of these settlers couldn't be beaten. I had delicious Johnny cake, deer meat, strawberries and cream, and everything good to eat.
At that time there were no roads on the Queets - just trails. The primeval forest and beautiful scenery were wondrous. A wonderful country, shut out from the rest of the world, it was - an Arcadia of the Northwest."