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Bill Gulick - The Greatest Inventor in the West

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Just as the big trees of the Pacific Northwest inspired the legend of Paul Bunyan, so did the Palouse Hills of southeastern Washington--where fantastic yields of wheat were raised on incredibly steep slopes--spawn tall tales about farmers, steamboat men, and the ingenious methods they used to get their grain to market. Though thirty-three-mule hitches and headers (whose downhill wheels were three times larger than the uphill ones) solved the harvesting problems, transporting the sacked grain two thousand vertical feet down to the steamboat landings took sheer genius. The Greatest Inventor in the West tells the story of one Joseph Malone, who possessed just the kind of ingenuity necessary for such a feat and whose creations, though they might succeed later, often failed spectacularly the first time they were tried. When the handsome young inventor falls in love with the beautiful, mute Mary Burke, whose wealthy banker father is financing Malones new invention, he is forced to put all his talents to use--with rather surprising results. Based on local legends of the Walla Walla area of Washington, this lively, humorous tale will appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of the Pacific Northwest. Adept at reshaping tall tales, Bill Gulick has given us such stories as Hallelujah Trail, which was adapted into the award-winning film critics call the funniest Western ever made. A longtime resident of the Northwest, Bill Gulick has written numerous books, both fiction and nonfiction, on the Northwest.

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Page iii
The Greatest Inventor in the West
by Bill Gulick
Page iv
Copyright 2000 by Bill Gulick
International Standard Book Number 0-87081-520-2
Published by the University Press of Colorado
5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C
Boulder, CO 80303
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College, Metropolitan State College of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, University of Southern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1984
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gulick, Bill, 1916
The greatest inventor in the West / by Bill Gulick.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-87081-520-2 (alk. paper)
I. Title.
PS3557.U43G74 1999
813'.54dc21 99-41473
CIP
09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Page 1
Prologue
Perceptive historians agree that it was not the gun that won the West. It was the inventive genius of imaginative, daring, clever young men who devised new ways to transport people, freight, water, ore, and grain. Young men like Joseph Malone, for instance.
Admittedly, the efforts of these clever young men were not always unqualified successes. As a matter of fact, if the financial backers who felt they had been conned out of substantial amounts of money by the occasional spectacular failureand they invariably felt they had been connedthe clever young inventors might not have survived long enough to make their second, third, or fourth tries, which they felt would surely succeed, bringing them fame, wealth, the love of a beautiful woman, and happiness to the end of their days.
Fortunately for Progress and the eventual Winning of the West, however, most of these inventive young men were nimble enough on their feet to survive their early disasters, make hasty exits from the scene of their alleged crimes, and seek new territory in which to try, try, try again.
Like Joseph Malone, for instance.
The written record of his life prior to his thirtieth year is sketchy. Most of it, in fact, has been gleaned by regional researchers from frontier accounts of his escapades, which often were colored by personal bias. That is to say, the stories either were
Page 2
written while the reporter was in a state of euphoria as he boasted about the great things Joseph Malone had promised to do or in a state of shock as he related the calamitous things Joseph Malone had actually done.
Under such circumstances, the historical chronicler finds it difficult to discern the undiluted truth.
Still, he is obliged to try.
This, then, is the saga of Joseph Malone, whose inventive genius helped win the West.
Page 3
1
Painted on the side of the light, closed, wood-paneled wagon being drawn by a pair of dappled gray horses along the dusty, sun-drenched Main Street of Goldtown, Wyoming, that late summer day, was the legend:
JOSEPH MALONE
INVENTOR & CONSULTING ENGINEER
HYDRAULICS
CHEMICAL PROCESSES
CONVEYOR SYSTEMS
REASONABLE RATES
Driving the team, the darkly handsome, well-dressed young man perched on the seat appeared to be as happy and pleased with the world as the dour-faced, wrinkled, middle-aged citizen sitting on a wooden bench in front of the Goldtown Gazette printing office looked to be unhappy and soured with it. Wearing a green eyeshield, long black sleeve protectors, and chewing on a half-smoked cigar stub, Editor Lafe Perkins gazed at the wagon and its driver with jaundiced eyes, his tin ear for music pained by the sentimental Irish ballad that the young man was singing.
Picture 2Picture 3
"She was sweet as the dew-drops,
Upon a spring mornin';
So lovely was Molly,
My Molly Malone..."
Page 4
Joseph Malone smiled, reined in the team, lifted his hat, and said cheerfully, "Good afternoon, sir. A beautiful day, isn't it?"
Lafe Perkins gave the rhetorical question a moment of thoughtful deliberation, removed the cigar from his mouth, spat out a shred of tobacco, and then grudgingly nodded.
"Could be. For some people."
"This looks like a nice town."
"Used to be. 'Til it lay down and died."
Joseph Malone frowned. "Why on earth did it do that?"
"For a lot of reasons," the editor said testily, "which I see no point in telling you, since there ain't a damn thing you can do about it."
"Did the gold peter out?"
"Nope. Still lots of rich ore in the hills outside of town. But without water, hydraulic mining has to shut down. And water is something we ain't got."
"With all the snowfall in the mountains above town during the winter, I should think you would have water enough to carry on a great deal of hydraulic mining the year `round. Don't you store water in high-country reservoirs so that you can draw on it during the dry months?"
"The miners tried that, in a half-baked sort of way. Got the voters to pass a big bond issue to pay for the project. But the dam busted, half the town got washed away, and the taxpayers said damned if they'd go through that again."
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