Merritt Field Built a Grand Hotel – 7/25/2024

Photo caption: The Field Hotel in Stehekin was a destination resort from the 1890s until 1926, when it had to be dismantled prior to the raising of Lake Chelan’s water level. Source: Photo by Lawrence Lindsley. Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center #99-3-116.

Written by Chris Rader

The tiny town of Stehekin, at the far western end of Lake Chelan in eastern Washington state, has been a destination resort for well over a century. Today its permanent residents number fewer than 100, but it draws tens of thousands of visitors in spring, summer and fall. There are no roads from Chelan to Stehekin, but the Lake Chelan Boat Company offers passenger service year-round on the 55-mile-long lake. The Stehekin area offers tourist businesses, spectacular mountain scenery
with a combination of eastern and western Cascades vegetation (cedar, fir, maple, ferns), and recreation such as fishing, hunting, hiking, and bicycling on approximately 14 miles of mostly dirt roads.

The first surveyors, trappers and prospectors to reach Stehekin in the 19th century arrived via Cascade Pass from the upper Skagit Valley. Indigenous Chelan and Skagit people used this pass as a trade route through the mountains. They called it Stehekin, “the way through.” The Upper Skagit people reportedly cached canoes at the head of Lake Chelan to use in their southeasterly trips down the lake (1). For a time, Cascade Pass was under consideration for a road linking western and eastern Washington; that plan never materialized.

In the Stehekin Valley, prospectors found silver, gold, copper and zinc around Horseshoe Pass and Bridge Creek. Small-scale mining continued there into the 1910s, though copper mining continued on a grander scale at nearby Holden through 1957.

Col. John W. Horton was the first Caucasian to establish permanent residence in Stehekin, in 1887. He built a cabin near the mouth of the Stehekin River. Enchanted with the surroundings and optimistic about the mining possibilities, he talked his daughter and son-in-law, the George Halls, into leaving Minneapolis and settling in Stehekin. In 1889, when the wood-powered steamboat Belle of Chelan began carrying prospectors and sightseers from Chelan to Stehekin, George Hall saw the need for visitor lodging and began building the Argonaut Hotel.

Between 1889 and 1893, several homesteaders arrived who would become the founding fathers of the vibrant Stehekin community. Dan Devore bought a string of horses and started a packing service to help prospectors set up their mining claims. Prospector Bill Buzzard claimed 160 acres about two miles from the lake and built a log cabin that still stands today. Frank Keller focused on growing crops. John Merritt brought his wife and five children, developed his homestead claim (as required by law) and operated a small sawmill. And in 1892, a chance meeting on Colockum Pass brought Merritt Eugene Field to Stehekin.

Field (who was usually called M.E.) and his family were on their way to the mineral-rich town of Conconully when his covered wagon broke down on the rough, steep pass between Ellensburg and Wenatchee. Devore happened to come by. While helping Field repair the wagon’s reach (the shaft connecting the front and rear axles), Devore sang the praises of Stehekin. Field was captivated by the description and decided to try his luck in the Stehekin mining country.

Merritt Eugene “M.E.” Field

Field was born in Washington County, Iowa on June 15, 1862. He was the youngest of four children. At 17 he and his brother Wayne accompanied their father to the silver mines of Colorado where they intended to strike it rich. Failing that, Merritt got a job in a hotel in Rico where he met the Ohlhausens. This family had come to Rico from St. Louis with their nine children, also intending to make their fortune in mining.

By the late 1880s Wayne and Merritt Field, Mrs. Ohlhausen, and her younger children had moved to Ellensburg, Wash. Merritt and Olive Ohlhausen married there on July 21, 1888. Their daughter was born there in January 1892 but died of scarlet fever at three weeks old. Olive also succumbed to the disease. The grief-stricken Mr. Field sold his house and headed north with his mother-in-law and Olive’s younger siblings for the Conconully mining district. The chance meeting with Dan Devore sent them to the shores of Lake Chelan instead.

The Field entourage, whose possessions included a piano, arrived in Stehekin in June 1892. M.E. took over management of the Argonaut Hotel. He then purchased the hotel from George Hall. According to Belle Laroux, Hall’s daughter, the negotiations went something like this:

Field said Hall’s price was too high and Hall replied “That or nothing.” Field said, “All right, then, nothing!” Hall answered with “I know plenty who will give me my price!” and Field retorted, “All right then, get them!”

Then, Belle says, her father went home, dressed in his best clothes and, taking an empty suitcase, got into his boat and began to row away as though to fi nd a buyer downlake. Mr. Field watched him until he was nearly out of hearing, then called “George, hoo hoo, George, come back – I’ll give you your price!” So Papa whipped around, landed and settled the deal (2).

M.E. spent the next several years making improvements to the hotel, which he renamed the Field Hotel (sometimes called Hotel Field). He would cut timber up the Stehekin River, float the logs down to the lake, gather them into large rafts of logs, and have them towed to Chelan for milling. The finished lumber would return to Stehekin by steamboat.

M.E. Field married Martha “Mattie” Ohlhausen, the sister of his deceased wife, in October 1893, a few weeks after her 18th birthday. He was 31. They had a long and happy marriage.

Field Hotel becomes posh destination resort

A steady stream of miners and tourists arrived in Stehekin in the 1890s and early 1900s. These included railroad excursion guests seeking unusual experiences; some came from as far away as New York. They would ride the Great Northern Railway to Wenatchee and then take a steamboat up the Columbia River to Chelan Falls, where a stagecoach would carry them to the dock on Lake Chelan. Here they would board another steamboat for Stehekin.

Great Northern publicity literature raised the profile of Stehekin as a destination resort all across the United States. Field capitalized on the visitors’ lodging needs. His hotel was right on the lake, directly in front of the boat dock. At that time a steamboat trip from Chelan took a full day, so visitors were practically forced to stay at the Field Hotel for at least one night.

The Argonaut had been a simple two-story lumber structure with a wide wrap-around porch. Field transformed it into an elegant hotel with handsome furniture, soft carpets and fine works of art. He enlarged the facility to 25 rooms by building a two-and-a-half story unattached structure nearby. A series of additions in the next few years resulted in a T-shaped hotel marked by a six-story tower.

Despite these alterations that increased the size of the original building threefold, the Field Hotel remained an unassuming edifice architecturally. A series of cross gables punctuated the roof of the otherwise simple building. Verandas on the two main floors enwrapped the building, creating light and airy passageways between sections of the hotel and rooms, all of which had electric (sic) lights and most of which had plumbing….

An annex was built in a similar style and sited adjacent to the main hotel, providing additional rooms for tourists. The hotel facility was self-sufficient in every manner. A barn, woodshed, chicken house, ice house, and laundry building were all sited on the property. Land was cleared to grow hay for Field’s pack horses, and fruit trees and vegetables were raised to supply hotel guests with the freshest produce available (3).

By 1905 the hotel could accommodate 100 people. Each room had acetylene gas lights (the Field Hotel’s gas plant was the largest in Chelan County)(4), and most had lavatories. Candelabras in the lobby, a large parlor with a piano, a ballroom with a huge stone fireplace, two spacious porches around the main building, a steam laundry, a large kitchen and fine menu made the Field Hotel a worthy destination resort indeed. It offered good food, boating on the lake, backcountry guide service and horse pack trains.

An Aug. 25, 1905 article in The Chelan Leader gushed, “The building has 60 guest chambers, besides a capacious parlor and ballroom, offices and a dining room…. The Kitchen is perfect in its appointments and the tables afford among the best spreads and appetite provokers to be found in the Northwest…. One can be lazy as they like, in cozy armchairs or hammocks, with all the latest papers and literature.”

Fields were gracious hosts

M.E. and Mattie Field made their guests feel at home. (It is likely that Mrs. Ohlhausen oversaw the day to-day operations of the hotel in its early years.) They were friendly, likeable people who often attended social gatherings downlake. An avid hunter, M.E. enjoyed taking his guests into the mountains after deer, elk, cougar or bear. He also liked to fish.

“He was a marvelous host!” his granddaughter Elizabeth “Bucky” Buckner Gans recalled. “Every
Thanksgiving he would arrange for a special boat to bring his Chelan friends, and some folks from back east, to the hotel. They’d have a big shindig and dance all night” (5). Of course these downlake friends reciprocated this hospitality when the Fields were in town.

The Leader reported in 1908 that the Fields had invited some 100 of their Lake Chelan friends, young and old, to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with them at the Hotel Field. “This yearly informal house party at the head of the lake is one of the big events of the winter season here….”(6). In 1910 the paper noted that 60 people rode the Lady of the Lake to Stehekin to stay for four days as guests of Mr. and Mrs. Field.

Summer business was brisk at the Field Hotel for three decades, often filling the place to capacity. Imagine cooking for 100 people! Field granddaughter Irene Buckner Sargo described what Mattie had to oversee:

All cooking would be done on wood stoves, all lighting by kerosene lamp. There was a large garden, and canning to be done to preserve the excess produce, also by wood stove. Heating would have been with wood. Chickens provided both eggs and meat, and there would have been beef and hogs to butcher. Here too the excess was canned to preserve it. Their own cows provided milk, butter, and cottage cheese. An abundance of trout in the lake and river, along with probably an occasional deer, augmented other food sources (7).

At Christmastime Mattie would make many boxes of candy to give to friends. She created a fondant from a mashed potato base, coloring some of it green and some pink and flavoring some of it with peppermint. Some of the fondant would be used to stuff dates. She also made divinity and penuche (peanut butter) fudge to give away (8).

M.E. Field was always interested in mining and worked several small but unproductive claims above Stehekin. He welcomed prospectors to the hotel and befriended virtually everyone involved in Stehekin area mining.

When Nels Roos, of Seattle, went up to his cabin on Bridge Creek and didn’t return when expected, Field became concerned. He, Dan Devore and another man went to look for him and found he had apparently become exhausted getting to the cabin and had laid down on his bed and died before he could build a fire. The men had to bury him in the snow until his family could be notified and his body brought out (9).

In late 1905 Field sold some of his Stehekin homestead (retaining the hotel) and purchased a ranch at Deer Point, on the north shore of the lake about 20 miles west of Chelan and accessible by road. Here he grew apples, with the help of a summer foreman and crew. He, Mattie, their children and their horses would move to the Deer Point home in December and spend the winter there, returning to Stehekin in late April to open the hotel for the summer season.

Field enters politics

M.E. Field was so well regarded by the voters of Chelan and Wenatchee that he was elected to the state legislature in 1898, representing Okanogan County. At that time the Wenatchee River was the boundary between Okanogan and Kittitas counties. Rep. Field introduced a bill in the legislature to create a new county, to be called Wenatchee County. It passed the House and went to the Senate, where it also passed on March 13, 1899 – but not before a senator from Okanogan changed the name to Chelan County. This bill earned Field the nickname “Father of Chelan County.”

A Republican, Field was re-elected to the House in 1902. He served on four committees: education, mines and mining, water rights and irrigation, and game and fish (which he chaired). He introduced several successful bills to benefit North Central Washington, including one to establish a trout hatchery on Lake Chelan and one to appropriate $50,000 toward construction of a bridge across the Columbia River at Wenatchee (10). In 1903 he was a member of the Washington State Game and Fish Protective Association, which cooperated with game wardens in enforcing laws.

The Chelan Leader, Wenatchee Daily World and other NCW newspapers praised Field on numerous occasions for his representation of the region and for acting consistently with the platform on which he had run. The Leader ran a feature article on the Field Hotel in November 1903 that highlighted the nearby fishing, moonlight canoe rides, mining, hunting, Rainbow Falls and other activities. “Its genial proprietor is Hon. M.E. Field, Chelan County’s popular and efficient representative in the state legislature. During the summer months the hotel is crowded with tourists, health and pleasure seekers, and all speak in the highest praise of it and its surroundings” (11).

In 1904 Field ran for state lieutenant governor on the McBride ticket, but the two were defeated. He entered the race for U.S. Congress in May 1908, again with the support of virtually all NCW newspapers. The Loomis Prospector declared that Okanogan County appreciated his views on forest reserves, irrigation, the “Indian lands question” and improvement of inland waterways – all matters of vital interest to the region. “As a member of Congress it is safe to say that Mr. Field could accomplish more good for the people of eastern Washington than any (other) man aspiring to the position” (12).

The loyal Chelan Leader was even more effusive.

Mr. Field is qualified in every respect, is a good public speaker, and has served this county with signal ability and credit twice in the legislature. He is a substantial property holder and the proprietor of the leading scenic resort in the northwest. He is clean, capable and popular, a loyal republican, thoroughly in line with the (Roosevelt) administration.… He is a gentleman of large brain and reserve force (13).

Field liked Roosevelt but disagreed with him on one subject: the forest reserves (later called national forests). Like other Stehekin residents, he felt that these federal lands should be managed by a commission and that some should remain open for settlement. He lost the election to Miles Poindexter, 867 to 808.

Governor M.E. Hay appointed Merritt Field to the state game commission in 1910. Field also represented Chelan County on the state Good Roads committee and served as an officer of the Chelan Commercial Club. A popular speaker, he was invited to address many gatherings of the Old Settlers Association (pioneers who had come to the area before 1901) in Chelan, Leavenworth and Wenatchee, including a three-day picnic and encampment drawing 500 people in June 1908 (14).

Field sells hotel

In 1915 the Great Northern Railway completed its line up the Columbia River from Wenatchee to Oroville. The railway announced its intention to build a larger dam at the foot of Lake Chelan to produce electric power, which would raise the lake level several feet and inundate buildings such as the Field Hotel. Field decided to sell out to the Great Northern. He, Mattie and their four children – Olive, Hal, Joy and Walter – left Stehekin for Deer Point, or sometimes to another home they had purchased in Manson. In 1925 they sold those homes and bought the “Gaines place,” a ranch/orchard near Twenty-five Mile Creek on the south side of the lake, about 15 miles from Chelan. This became known as Field’s Point.

Olive married Harry Buckner of Stehekin in 1917, so the Fields always had a place to stay when they visited their beloved town at the head of the lake.

The GNRR continued to advertise the “Hotel Field” as “a resort with quality in the heart of the mountains.” In 1919, eighteen dollars could buy a week of hunting, fishing, bathing, boating, and dancing at the hotel. Every Saturday night a grand dance was held, supplemented by weekday evening dances. Autos were available for hire to take tourists to Rainbow Falls and other nearby points of interest. Indeed, there was “something doing all the time at Hotel Field” (15).

The last proprietor of the hotel was Jack Blankenship, an early Forest Service ranger. When the dam was completed and the lake level about to rise, he dismantled the structure and used its large timbers, beams, moldings, windows, stone fi replace and staircase to build a new hotel above the water level. The Golden West Lodge operated from 1927 to 1971 and now serves as a National Park Service visitor center.

M.E. and Mattie Field spent the rest of their lives at Field’s Point. They were active in the Lake Chelan Grange (of which they were charter members) and in Chelan society. M.E. was a member of the Chelan Valley Masonic Lodge and served several terms as president of the Chelan Chamber of Commerce and the Four County Council.

Their Buckner granddaughters lived with them at Field’s Point during the school year to attend high school in Chelan, as the Stehekin school only went through eighth grade. Bucky Gans said her grandfather was a “real nice guy” who was warm and loved kids. She described her grandmother as loving, positive and a great cook. “She was tiny! Her wedding dress had a big bustle. None of her descendants could fit into it.” Bucky’s wedding veil was made from the skirt of Mattie’s dress; several other relatives subsequently wore that historic veil (16).

Mattie died in 1944 following a long illness. Merritt married Beulah Morehead of Manson a year and a half later. He died on March 10, 1949, but his reputation as “Father of Chelan County” lives on.

Field Hotel Described in 1903

DeWitt Britt, editor of The Chelan Leader, took his family to stay at the Field Hotel in July 1903. He described the trip in glowing terms in the July 19 edition of the newspaper.

“Honorable M.E. Field and his estimable wife have a wide and well deserved fame as entertainers of the people, and their new and elegant hostelry is always well filled with tourists, health and pleasure seekers as well as capitalists in search of profitable mining investment. The building is three stories high and is elegantly finished and furnished throughout, and is an ideal place in which to spend the summer months.

“It is destined to be, if it is not already, the most popular resort in the state. It is surrounded by towering mountains, some of them over 9,000 feet high, and it is but three miles from Rainbow Falls, a 300 feet perpendicular fall where hundreds of tons of water come down with a mighty roar like thunder, a sight worth going many miles to see. Field’s is also the outfitting point to the far-famed Horseshoe Basin and a number of important mining camps.”

ENDNOTES
1. Gretchen A. Luxenberg, North Cascades Historic Resource Study, 1986. (www.nps.gov)
2. “The Stehekin Choice, History Edition,” stehekinheritage.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-field-hotel.html
3. Ibid.
4. Wenatchee Daily World, May 10, 1906.
5. Chris Rader interview with Bucky Gans July 17, 2018.
6. World, Nov. 13, 1908.
7. Resorts on Upper Lake Chelan, Annette Byrd, 1995.
8. Notes by Field descendant Harriet “Hobbie” Buckner Morehead, courtesy of Elizabeth “Bucky” Buckner Gans.
9. Byrd, op. cit.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. World, Aug. 24, 1908.
13. World, Feb. 22, 1908.
14. World, June 22, 1908.
15. Luxenberg, op. cit.
16. July 17, 2018 interview.

This story was originally published in Confluence Magazine in the Winter edition of 2018-19. In an effort to preserve these stories, the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center will be posting these stories on the museum’s official blog.

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