Q. What is your name?
A. Ferman Warnock

Q. How long have you lived in this area?
A. Well, I was born here. I'd say I lived here about 75 years.

Q. Did you come here with your family?
A. I was born here.

Q. How long has your family lived in this area?
A. The Warnock family I suppose came here about 1880.

Q. What do you like about living here?
A. Everything. The people, the climate, and everything.

Q. How many people lived here when you first came?
A. I counted up this morning, and what I knew, there was about 150, in the whole canyon, that's counting kids and everyone.

Q. What was life like then?
A. Pretty good. We didn't know anything different. Q. Was life much the same as it is now?
A. No, it has changed alot. It was pretty primitive. We didn't have any power,refrigerators, indoor toilets and we drank water out of the river. The river water was pretty pure then.

Q. Was most things run by horse?
A. All of it by horse.

Q. What changes have taken place since then?
A. At that time we didn't have any motorized equipment. We have power now and we have had telephone for quite awhile now. My mother had the motel in around 1904 or 1905 and it was along about that time because when the guys were here building the telephone line. We stole some of Mothers forks and used them for spurs to be like the telephone man. Lou was my older brother. There were two hotels then. One was where Keith Wortman lives now and the other about where John Bales barn is. That was the Hamilton Hotel and several different people had it, we had it at one time. But it was in the Hamilton family for a long time. Boswells had it in the early thirties. My Dad had the Hotel across the street from the store, I don't think he owned it, I think somebody else had it. We put up the mail coach and the stage drivers. There were no cars in here until 1912. The stage was just a wagon, open wagon and a sled like they used to run around here. They were pulled by two horses and they changed horses at halfway of Midway. Duckett could tell you all about that, he drove it there one winter.

Q. Where were you born?
A. I was born across the river from where Gladys and Wayne Marks live now in a log cabin. I don't even think we had a floor in that cabin. Q. How many brothers and sisters did you have?
A. Just one brother and sister. Lou was my brother and my sister was Maude.

Q. How did the changes affect you and why?
A. Actually they didn't as they came pretty slow and we just worked into them. The main change was when we got the automobiles. Billy Warnock and Albert Morgan had the first two automobiles. In about 1918 they began to get more automobiles. I was still a child then, I learned to drive when I was about 17.

Q. What changes affected you the most?
A. The most was when the Depression came and had to work for one dollar a day. I worked for a sheep outfit for three years, with only 9 days off for one dollar a day. You had to work then too, if something happened to the stock or something, you might work 20 hours a day, now it is from 8 to 5 most jobs, when 5 o'clock comes everything closes down.

Q. What changes do you think will come in this community in the near future?
A. I had an old guy tell me awhile back that hte way things have changed in the last few years with big ranches buying out the little places, it might become a retirement layout. You see what has happened down below here and at the Imnaha River Woods. It could be all big ranches and little retirement places for the Social Security people, like me. It used to be all small farms with a lot of people living on them, I wish it was back that way now.

Q. What was school like when you went to school?
A. Pretty rough in a way. We had a one room school house and we drank out of the river or maybe get water out of College Creek up there where I went to school. All the kids drank out of one water bucket and the same dipper and everything. I went to the freezeout School there at College Creek. we walked to school. from clear up at Freezeout down to about Grant Warnocks the kids all walked together to school. It was pretty rough there because that building was built out of green lumber and a single box house and a lot of times when it would get real cold, the teacher and the kids would huddle up next to the stove to keep warm then move back. I remember we didn't have any paper tablets like they have now, if they get something the district would buy it and divide it among the kids. They had these slates, you could hear the screeching all over the place. All the desks in school were the same, for first graders through eighth grade, the little kids feet were way off the floor. They had hand made double desks. When the new school was built all those desks went out. I had one for a long time but I don't know what happened to it. It looked more like a chicken coop than anything else.

Q. Was the teacher allowed to whip you?
A. Yes, but the worst of it was that the big kids wouldn't let her whip the little kids. The teachers had atime cause the big kids protected the little ones.

Q. Did you ever play any pranks on them?
A. That was going on all the time. I went to school there for four years. Joe Marks was going to school there then and Lloyd Thompson and all those kids. There were about 24 kids going there at that time, I know with one teacher. They had one girl, her name was Reams. She went to the school at the Park one year and graduated. Then she went to Normal School out to LaGrande that summer, came back that fall and taught at the Freezeout School.

Q. What did you study?
A. The three R's. How to read, add and subtract and writing. When I took the eighth grade examination, I didn't pass grammar. I had to go back, Bessie Lloyd was the teacher, I sat there most of the day right there in the schoolhouse. I thought maybe she would break down and help me but she didn't.

Q. Where did your family get their food from? A. Well, they raised most of it. they a had a store up here and they would get supplies and stuff there. In those days what most people did was buy a years supply of groceries cause they couldn't go over the top in the snow. The guys from Snake River would come over and stay at Marks' and Bailey would order the supplies but never take them off the wagon. They would take them right on up there to that little shed built up there at Kid and Mary's place, sets on the left side of the road as you go up. They build that for Hibbs and the Marks boys that lived on Snake River then. They would go there to stay and pack their stuff back, a years supply at a time. Baileys ran the store at Imnaha then.

Q. What did you do for fun when you were little?
A. Just like any kids, I guess. My Dad always used to say that as long as the kids were hollering and yelling around you didn't need to worry, but if you couldn't hear them hollering you better worry because they would be into something.

Q. Are there any other interesting facts you would like to share?
A. There are alot of things I could tell. I'll tell you a story about my brother. He and Duckett used to job one another so Duckett told Lou, who was running the Robinson outfit, that when he went to Horse Creek to bring him out some fish. Lou said allright, so he got over there. In the meantime Lou broke all that country over there out in a car, while he was working for Robinson. He pioneered out the whole thing. In the meantime, Duckett went and cut a tree across the road. When Lou came out in his pickup or his little Ford he couldn't get out. Lou thought he would job Duckett, so he caught a big rattlesnake. He told Duckett he had a tire to fix and pulled up in front of the old garage, told him there was a tire to fix and he had brought him some fish in a sack. He had put the live rattlesnake in a gunnysack and put on hte spare tire on the back of the rig. So Duckett went out there and started takeing the sack off and the snake rattled. He didn't get any fish, he got a rattlesnake.

Q. What is your name?
A. Hazel Maxwell Warnock

Q. How long have you lived in this area?
A. 65 years

Q. Did you come here with your family?
A. No, my family never lived here. I just come to visit. My family lived at Wallowa. I came to visit my Aunt and Uncle that lived down here.

Q. What do you like about it here?
A. The quiet, that is it used to be,it isn't so much anymore. Easy living.

Q. How many people lived here when you first came?
A. About the same number as there are now here in town, maybe 30 or 35.

Q. What was life like then?
A. Very good. Everybody lived and were good friends and visited every day or two. We don't have many people that visit now.

Q. What was farming like?
A. I don't know much about farming. It was alot like it is now except they used horses to pull the machinery around. Q. What kind of equipment was used?
A. They had rakes, mowers but all horse drawn.

Q. What changes have taken place since then?
A. Not very many. Look at the store and it looks the same as when I came here. it has had a little paint put on it, but it is real old.

Q. How did the changes affect you?
A. Not very much. Things don't affect me very much. New people come, old people left or died and we just stayed.

Q. What changes do you think will come to this community in the near future?
A. I don't think there will be too much more right around here close. Just this part right around here is all I'm interested in. Q. What was the school like when you came?
A. Just a one room school, one teacher in one room. I have pictures of all the kids.

Q. How did you get to school?
A. I walked on foot all my school life.

Q. What subjects did you study?
A. Reading, writing and arithmetic, mostly. We had a few other things like Algebra, but they didn't have the things they do now. I went to school in Wallowa until I started High School then I went to Enterprise.

Q. Where did your family get its food?
A. Most of it was raised. My Dad was a butcher, so we got our meat from the butcher shop.

Q. What did you do for fun?
A. We played, went to movies, went to parties, that was about all. We took care of ourselves pretty much. At home we could do what ever we wanted to do and got along fine. We had lots of company, lots of people came then.

Q. Is there any other interesting facts you would like to share with us?
A. My Aunt and Uncle had the store at one time. Two or three people had it before they did. After Aunt Anna had it, Bailey Maxwell had it. They run it for awhile. Then my husband, Jess, came down and worked for awhile and bought it. Jess bought it in 1926. We lived there for several years. Our first daughter was born during the time we lived there. We built this house in 1928 and moved in in 1929 and have lived here ever since. When we sold the store, the Post Office was in the store. At that time we built the present Post Office. There used to be a big dance hall where the Post Office is now. Jess tore down the dance hall and used the material to build the Post Office. We moved the Post Office then. I was Postmaster from 1943 to 1963. Jess was Postmaster for 17 years before that. The Postmaster job was in the family for 50 years all together. Inez Meyers took over after I quit.

My Dad came into the Paradise area "the Promised Land" in 1880. My Mother was raised in Oregon at Prairie City. Her family came to the county in the 1880's. Finally they moved on to Wallowa, the whole family lived there or at least all the older ones. I met Jess down here at a Fourth of July dance, then that fall we both went to High School in Enterprise is how I got to know him. I didn't like him at first, I don't know how we got together. He passed away in 1968 from Lung cancer caused from smoking, so don't smoke. We went on three long trips, to Chicago, Indiana, and Ohio and visited some of the family. Also where the Warnock family started, visited the old cemeteries. That's what got me interested in finding out family history.

Q. What is your name?
A. Thornton Grant Warnock

Q. How long have you lived in this area?
A. About 57 years.

Q. Did you come here with your family?
A. No, I was born here.

Q. How long has your family lived here?
A. My Dad came in about 1918. My Mother was here a little before he was, but about the same time.

Q. What do you like about living here?
A. Oh, you are kind of off by yourself and city traffic don't bother you, clean air, and lots of hills to roam around in. It is a good place to live, a hard place to make a living but a good place to live.
A. Lots of people, more people than there is now.

Q. What was life like then?
A. It was quite a bit different. Most people had Model t Fords for cars, lots of people still rode horseback. They didn't have any big trucks. Everybody when they moved cattle they drove them, they didn't haul them. They rode horseback everywhere they wanted to go if they didn't have a car.

Q. What was farming like?
A. It was slow. Everything was done with horses, they used teams of horses nad it took a long time with teams.

Q. What was farming like?
A. Horse drawn equipment, mowing machines, dump rakes, and pole derricks.

Q. What changes have taken place since then?
A. Well, at that time everybody had gas lanterns or kerosene lamps and we have electricity now. All the tools are run by electricity now, at that time any welding had to be done with a forge and everything was done manually the hard way.

Q. How did these changes affect you?
A. They made things easier but more expensive.

Q. Which changes affected you the most?
A. Probably the electricity.

Q. What changes do you think will come to this community in the near future?
A. I really hadn't thought about that too much.

Q. What was school like when you came here?
A. When I started school there was probably eight or ten going to school like this all eight grades, first grade to eighth grade. One school teacher.

Q. What subjects did you study in school?
A. Reading, writing, arithmetic, history, spelling, lots of spelling.

Q. Where did your family get its food?
A. They raised a lot of it, what they didn't raise they bought.

Q. What did you do for fun when you were little?
A. Run around thru the rocks and rims and chased wild animals and fished and played games just like you do. We played the same games that you play out here on the school yard.

Q. Why were there more people then?
A. There were more people here because the families were larger. There were more children per family some of then had 10 or 12 children in a family. There was people living on alot of the homesteads that now have been consolidated into bigger ranches. Above the Palette Place, we refer to it as the Palette Place but actually it was a townsite called Fruita. There was a Post Office there at one time. Then there were homesteads and people living all the way up the river from there to Gumboot. The Keeners, Neimans, Butlers, Puderbaughs. There is nobody living there now. The same way all the way down the river, there were homesteads up on the benches, people living on them and they all had families. I went to school at Freezeout School, which is 8 miles up river, South of the Imnaha School. It was a one room school that's still standing right by College Creek Ranger Station beside the road.

Q. How did your family make a living?
A. My family made a living on mostly cattle. But to start with my Dad worked for the Forest Service, started in about 1918 and worked until about 1929 or 1930 for the Forest Service. He repaired telephone lines, worked roads, built trails, during that time they built the present Snake River Trail from Saddle Creek down the river to the Johnson Place.

Q. Did your family eat wild game?
A. We did quite a bit of hunting during hunting season. We didn't depend entirely on wild meat but partially we did. At that time you could kill two bucks and hunting season ran for a month or 30 days. You could kill two deer on one tag. Most of our food was probably purchased at Imnaha. The present store that is over there, the whole back side of the store was a warehouse. In the fall of the year the store owner shipped in big quantities of stuff, like barrels and barrels of flour and all the staple type foods, enough to do all the people all winter. Because if they had to go to town, the only way they could get there was by sled in the winter. They could take a wagon up to the head of Trail Creek, then take a sled to O.K. Gulch which is in the edge of the valley. Then they would take a team and wagon on into town.