The Land of Lure: A Story of the Columbia River Basin — Themes and Context

The early March wind was blowing with its usual force, and white wisps of clouds were scurrying across the barren waste that lay between the rough canyon, through which the raging torrents of the Columbia River forced its way to the Pacific Ocean, and the range of hills thirty miles farther south. The clouds seemed to mount higher, and take on greater speed, while crossing this scene of desolation, and graveyard of buried hopes, as if anxious to leave behind them the glare of the desert sands, and the appealing eyes of the few unfortunate homesteaders, who were compelled to remain on their claims until they had complied with the demands made by a beneficient Government before they could become sole owners of the spot upon which many of them were now making their last efforts for a home of their own.

The ever present sage brush and tufts of scant bunch grass, dwaft by the ages of drouth and the pitiless glare of the hot sun's rays, bowed before each gust of the sand ladened wind and emitted weird and unearthly sounds, as if the deported denizens of the desert were warning the white man against the hopeless task of trying to wrest from the jack rabbit and coyote the haunts over which they had held undisputed sway for ages.

Deserted shacks, formerly the homes of earlier settlers, broken fences posts, with tangled strands of barbed wire, each told their story of a struggle for existence, defeat and departure, more pitiful than all the stories of Indian massacres ever written. Here was a battle field, the opposing forces being poverty, courage and determination, arrayed against the elements.

Reinforcements, in the way of hardy homesteaders, were being constantly drawn into this unequal contest, armed with no other weapon than the ever abiding hope that nature would so alter her laws as to conform to this particular locality, lured by the sound of those magic words: "A home of your own," were ready to come into this deserted territory and take up the legacies of blasted hopes, equipped with new ideas, and seemingly fortified by the unfortunate experiences of others who had made the trial, failed and gone their way to try and forget, if possible, the ordeal through which they had passed. Trusting that the touch of the magic wand, in the form of irrigation, would cause the crystal water to flow, and convert the region into a garden of untold wealth.

The winter preceding the March, during which our story opens, had been an exceptionally hard one in the Central and Middle Western states, floods and other unfortunate conditions having almost completely destroyed the crops and thereby entailing a loss that was keenly felt throughout the region, and causing a spirit of unrest among the poorer element; a desire for a chance to throw off the yoke of dependents, as wage earners, and to seek fields of greater opportunities. The newspapers and magazines were filled with articles lauding the "Back to the Soil" movement, and the country was flooded with pamphlets and folders, in which glowing descriptions of the opportunities afforded the homeseekers in the far Northwest was given.

The railroads whose lines reached this vast territory were making special rates to prospective home builders, and daily homeseekers' excursions were being run over these routes. Trains loaded with eager tourists, bound for the land of their dreams, the mecca of their hopes, the happy land of somewhere; firmly believing that they, at least, had within their reach the goal for which they, and many of their fathers, had striven for years. To some, and in fact to a great many, this dream was to become a reality, and to those whose hardy constitution and indomitable determination has made such a transformation possible, is due the development of an Empire in the far Northwest.