From Copenhagen to Okanogan

Book review by Joel
This account of pioneer life in Eastern Washington State was written by Ulrich when he was 75 in 1949. I found the book at a book fair in Leavenworth and got it for a buck. It has taken me a while to get to it. I was going to give it away but I am glad I waited and read it. I like historic books and this one is a first hand account of what it was like to be born in Denmark, become a citizen of the U.S., and grow up in the West.

He was born into a Lutheran minister’s family, the fifteenth child. They were poor but not destitute. His father was a disciplinarian, but did not beat him. He recounts a time when he was sent to his father’s office. His father got a stick out of his desk drawer and walked over to him and said that he had been a bad boy but that his sister said he’d been good lately so he gave the stick to him to do with as he saw fit. He went out and buried it.

When old enough to decide what he wanted to do he chose farming and was sent to apprentice on other farms in Denmark. He received only room and board. When he was seventeen he left Denmark for the States. He landed in New York and was soon on his way to Chicago. From there he worked at different farms to earn his keep and when he heard that land was being given away in the West he headed to Walla Walla, Washington. He ran into characters all along the way--some dangerous and some down on their luck, hardly any that seemed to look to the future. There were many men working mines and cattle and just traveling the land. He was a hobo with a friend he met on the way to find work in Eastern Washington and they slept under the stars as they walked the miles to logging camps and road building sites, sometimes hitching rides on trains.

After a time he found where the government was giving away land for homesteads and he made his way to the Okanogan Valley. He worked as a mail deliverer and cattleman while building a ranch out of the virgin land. He got to know a lot of characters [I think everyone out West were characters in those days] and the indigenous Indians as well. He describes how they slowly built a civil society out of nothing. He explained how some people were fair and some were criminal. For instance, when the battle erupted over cattlemen versus sheep farmers, the cattlemen hired known criminals to kill their sheep. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

This book is not well written and is not favorable to some races or ethnicities. But it is an interesting account of pioneer life in Eastern Washington State--especially a first hand account, honestly told.
Joel.