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BENTON COUNTY, WASHINGTON
in the heart of the Columbia Basin

page 28 Tri-City Herald, August 7, 1960

Old Timer Recalls

Young, Old Pioneers Went Partners To 
Ferry Horses

By BURTON 0. LUM
Tri-City Pioneer
Jade and Charley were two pioneers. Jade was a real pioneer who came by pack horse from Ken-
tucky to the Oregon country in 1842.  Charley was much younger and came from Comanche, 
Iowa, to Omaha and from Omaha by rail to San Francisco, then by boat to Salem, Ore., in 1873.  
His forefathers were pioneers of Connecticut, settling in Derby, when it was founded about 1639.  
Jade's last name was Switzler.  Charley's was Lum.  Jade was a "Reb" and Charley a "Bluebellied 
Yank".  Jade was about six-foot-four-inches in height and lean.  Charley was about five-foot-
nine-inches and very powerfully built.  Jade was old.  Charley was young.  They were opposite 
physically and their backgrounds were opposite also, but they were attached to each other by 
esteem, respect and affection.  Jade would joke Charley about the "wooden nutmegs" they made 
in Connecticut and Charley would twit Jade about the "moonshine" of Kentucky.  The problem 
they were now considering was a serious one.  How to power a ferryboat without a sail and wind, 
and with the materials they could afford during the hard times of the early 1890's.  (Horses were 
selling for a dollar and a half a head.)  A group of eastern capitalists claimed that they had 
secured a contract with the French Army to furnish 10,000 horse hams and had built a processing 
plant at Linten, a suburb of Portland.  A large roundup was instigated.  The buckaroos furnished 
five-riding horses, their own saddles, bridles, hobbles, lariats and other equipment and rode from 
sunrise to sunset for the munificent sum of $15 a month.  The horses were to be rounded up and 
driven down the Washington  side of the Columbia to a point opposite Arlington.  They were to 
swim across to the Oregon side of the Columbia and then to be driven to the processing plant.  
Because so many horses were drowned in swimming the river at Arlington, the processing 
company offered Jade Switzler seven cents a head to ferry them across Columbia at Umatilla.  
There they could be driven down the Oregon side to the processing plant.
Well, charley came up with something as Jade "knowed" he would.  Charley said to Jade, "I tell 
you what we can do.  I can take the guts out of your horsepower hay bailer and by a little fixen' 
here, and there, install it in a scow, attaching the sweeps to driveshaft under the dunnage that will 
turn a paddle wheel on each side of the scow.  Have the scow built wide and at least 45 feet long.  
The gunnels should not be less than four-inches thick.  Build a corral that will hold 30-head of 
horses.  Make a circular walk way at top gunnel height around the corral and paddle wheels, 
having it movable at each end of the scow to load and unload.  The sweeps would go above the 
top of the corral.  There will be a horse hitched to each end of the sweeps and the scow would 
always be in trim.  A couple of kids can drive the horses and when more power is needed, the 
horses can trot or run.
"Now, Jade, I have a fine place to build it on my horse spread at Kennewick right where the 
steamboat 'City of Ellensburg,' the steamboat 'H.  M. Nixon,' and the steam ferryboat 'Frederick 
K. Billings' were built.  I know I can get the gunnel planks and other lumber cut at Enumclaw 
and shipped by the Northern Pacific to Kennewick."  The horsepower ferryboat was built and 
launched at Kennewick and taken to Switzler's without accident over Humley Rapids and the 
other rough waters of the Columbia.  The writer was one of the kids who drove one of the horses, 
Big Bill Switzler, a nephew of Jade's from Pendleton, drove the other horse. Bill was only 16 but 
he stood well over six-feet and weighed about two-hundred pounds.  Years later he became 
famous as the  “Impresario" of the Pendleton and other roundups, which were the grand-daddies 
of the present “rodeos."  The ferry plied from New Plymouth to Umatilla.  It took wild horses 
across to Umatilla and brought back to the Washington side whatever traffic that wished to cross.  
Charley Lum was the helmsman and captain of the ferryboat which had been nicknamed the 
"Coffee Mill Ferry." Charley got all the bugs ironed out of the craft and it was quite a success.  
The sheepmen who drove their flocks to summer range in the mountains engaged Charley to 
build them a couple of the "Coffee Mill Horsepower Ferry Boats." One	 was stationed at 
Wahluke, near Priest Rapids. Looking back over the years, I cannot remember the location of the 
other ferryboat.

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