History Corner

The April 13, 1934 Adams County Leader headline blared in bold across the front page: “Mesa Orchard Goes to Receiver - Difficulties of Depression Preclude Possibility of Satisfying Creditors”

On April 14, 1934 Horace Woodmansee filed a “First Report and Petition as Receiver,” which meant that the company was going into foreclosure. Part of the problem was that Chaney & Rowell was suing the company over nonpayment of the $200,000 mortgage taken out in 1931.

A balance sheet, dated February 28, 1934, evidently formulated as part of the companies foreclosure evidence, listed assets worth $734,926.48. Somehow the liabilities equaled exactly that same amount.

It must have been about this time that a paper titled “Exhibit A” prepared by Weiser attorney George Donart listed legal descriptions of Mesa properties and assets. Among these were 80,000 orchard picking boxes, 18 work horses; 180 orchard ladders, each with picking sack.

The legal proceedings rambled on for the rest of 1934. Meanwhile, Horace Woodmansee continued to manage the orchards. In November of that year (1934) he wrote a letter to R.J. Wood in Boise in which Woodmansee described a ditch that was dug from Fall Creek that took water to the east end of the Fall Creek wood-pipe siphon. This is the first indication I’ve found that the flume trestle across Fall Creek had been replaced with a big wooden pipe to siphon water across the canyon.

The new ditch was a permanent addition that increased the amount of water available for the flume. The contractor for this ditch encountered a rocky area through which he had to place “a short piece of flume, which required about 3,700 feet of additional lumber.” Woodmansee stated, “The Fall Creek ditch is now supplying the water for the Mesa tract.” A new lining was put into parts of the “old flume.” The new liner saved a significant amount of water (about 15%) from being lost where the flume had been leaking.

Woodmansee’s letter said, “The Mesa tract consists of about 3,000 acres, 1,600 of which are irrigated and about 1,250 acres in bearing fruit trees.”

In spite of the company’s dire straits, Woodmansee painted a positive picture, writing, “During the last two years of the depression, the Mesa tract has been able to make a much better financial showing than other commercial sections.” And: “There are between twenty and thirty families owning property in the Mesa tract outside of the Mesa Orchard Company. Several of them are widows and people well along in years who have their life savings invested here. A Sept. 1933 statement said 413 acres were owned by individuals.

“Many of the dry ranchers in this county and adjoining counties depend on working here in the fall during the harvest to make a grub stake to carry them through the winter. And as there are no other enterprises in this district that spend any appreciable amount of money for labor, the Mesa project affords the only opportunity to earn any cash. When we started our harvest this fall, the relief expenditures in the county decreased about $3,500 per month. In a normal crop year there are about five hundred people employed during the harvest season, and the tract furnishes employment to from thirty to forty families living here throughout the year. As you know, the Mesa project runs a general merchandise store which markets from thirty to forty thousand dollars per year of general merchandise, principally groceries.”

In spite of all the positive content, Woodmansee signed his letter “H.J. Woodmanssee – Receiver – Mesa Orchard Company,” indicating the company was still in the foreclosure process.

The Mesa tramway stopped being used about 1934. After the North - South Highway was built and paved down the hill to the railroad, trucks were used to haul the apples to the tracks. Hugh Addington told Roy Mocaby that parts of the tram were taken to Sun Valley and used for the first ski lift there.

Next week: Mesa Orchards gets a new owner.