The first non-native people to arrive in the Kittitas Valley thought they had found a garden of Eden. One of those pioneers, A.J. Splawn, later said: “We came to the beautiful Kittitas Valley. This valley, as it looked that day to me, a boy of sixteen, was the loveliest spot I had ever seen.”
Similarly, in her 1946 book, The Trail Leads West, Clareta Olmstead Smith wrote that the early pioneers “topped the last hill and saw the abundance nature had spread before them. The rich grass lands, the creeks lined with wild berries and willows, the meadows sweet with wild flowers, unlimited pasture on low hills, the splendor of the mountains with the blue evergreens promising timber for the taking.”
And early valley resident Clarence J. Houser said it most concisely when he simply wrote, “In 1868, my father, Tillman Houser, rode over the Snoqualmie Pass and looked on what is now Ellensburg. It looked good to him.”
It was clear those early settlers believed they found a special place in the Kittitas Valley. Among those drawn to the valley, were Clareta Smith’s grandparents, Samuel and Sarah Olmstead. In 1875, they homesteaded a 160-acre claim [later expanded to 480 acres] intersected by a small creek (Coleman Creek) southeast of the present-day town of Ellensburg.
This particular spread remained in the Olmstead-Smith family for the next 93 years. In 1968, the two surviving members of the family, Clareta Smith and her sister, Leta May Smith, donated most of the ranch to the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission for a park. The two sisters, who had never married, retained a life estate, which permitted them to continue residing on the property until their deaths. In 1971, the site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Today, the 217-acre ranch and its buildings make up the Olmstead Place Historical State Park, a site that captures life in Central Washington during an earlier time. Because it was an operational family ranch for nearly a century, its preserved buildings, equipment, and surroundings serve as vivid reminders of the Kittitas Valley’s deep agricultural roots.
Who Were the Olmsteads?
Samuel Olmstead had been born in New York in 1831 and, at the age of 18, had traveled west to join the California Gold Rush. After not getting rich in the gold fields, in 1861 he traveled to Illinois, where his family had moved. There, he married Sarah Gale, and enlisted in the Illinois Infantry, fighting on behalf of the Union forces during the Civil War. Following the war’s end, he and Sarah, who now had two children, Clara (born 1861) and Philip (born 1865), traveled by rail west to find a new home. After four years in Oregon, they spent a short time in Seattle with relatives but found the damp environment had a negative effect on Samuel’s health. Seeking a more agreeable climate, in 1875, the family headed east, over Snoqualmie Pass, and arrived in the Kittitas Valley, where they would make their home.
According to Smith, her grandparents spent a week journeying over the Cascade Mountains from Seattle. After staying with another pioneer family for a few days, she recounted that her grandfather “decided on the location of his ranch and he began to build his home.
“The cottonwood logs were cut in the Yakima River Canyon,” she explained in The Trail Leads West. “The lumber for the roof, ceiling and floor, was whipped sawed at the Jordan Mill [located in Naneum Canyon, north of Ellensburg]. The windows and the square iron nails were freighted to Kittitas from The Dalles, and except for two of the panes that were broken long years ago, the glass has never been replaced. The sandstone for the hearth of the fireplace was cut from the sandstone quarry near Thrall.”
In her book, Smith noted that the log cabin originally had a porch on one side, but it had been removed years before. She said the cabin—which remains standing—measured 24 by 24 feet and had two bedrooms and a large living room (the kitchen was in a lean-to added later to the structure). While cozy, it lacked running water and electricity.
Samuel and Sarah Olmstead, along with their children, Clara, Philip, and Jack, born in 1871, lived in the cabin for the next few years. In the early years, Samuel, assisted by the children, worked the farm, growing wheat, vegetables such as corn, peas, and rhubarb, and fruits including apples, cherries, pears, and mulberries. According to Washington State Parks, Sara supplemented the family income by working for Samuel’s half-brother, John, at his trading post about two miles away.
In December 1881, Clara, then 19 years old, married George Washington Smith, who was eight years her senior. Smith was a native of Placer County, California, who had come to the Kittitas Valley in 1877 and become a farmer. Only a month later, Samuel Olmstead succumbed to a liver ailment at the age of 50. He had long suffered health problems as a result of his military service during the Civil War.
His death left Sarah and her two sons to run the family farm. In subsequent years, they expanded the farm to include a barn and granary (built in 1892), a wagon shed (in 1894), and a much larger house with conveniences like electricity and running water (in 1908). The improvements allowed the family to convert their farm from raising cattle for beef to a dairy farm, which served customers throughout the county and, later after the Northern Pacific Railroad was completed, into the Seattle area.
Meanwhile, George and Clara, who lived on their own place nearby, would have three daughters, Leta, Clareta, and Ruby. Tragedy struck the Smith family, however, in May 1892 when Clara died during an influenza outbreak at the age of 30. Two months later, one-year-old Ruby also died. At this point, three-year-old Leta and two-year-old Clareta, who was known as “Birdie,” went to live with their grandmother, Sarah, because at the time it was considered unusual for a single father to raise two young daughters. With Sarah busy raising the girls, Phil and Jack took over operations of the farm. The work was hard and the hours were long, and neither son ever married.
Both Leta and Clareta attended the Seaton Cabin Schoolhouse, a one-room log cabin structure located a few miles from the Olmstead farm. In 1980, the schoolhouse was relocated to a site on the north end of the farm, and restored. It can still be seen there today.
The sisters pursued careers as teachers in Ellensburg. Leta, who earned a degree in 1918 from Washington State University Normal School (now Central Washington University), taught in the local middle school and, later, was a history professor at Central Washington College. Clareta was hired to teach at Washington School, an imposing brick facility on the block between East 5th Avenue and East 6th Avenue, and bordered by North Street and North Anderson. That structure also served as home of the Normal School (on its fourth floor) for a couple of years before the opening of Barge Hall in 1893.
In September 1907, Leta and Clareta’s Uncle Jack, died of typhoid fever at the age of 36. In his obituary in the Ellensburg Dawn newspaper, Jack was described as a “sober, industrious, frugal, and highly-respected gentleman, and a man who had the esteem of all who knew him.”
With Jack’s death, Phil continued to manage the family dairy farm, while his mother, Sarah, and nieces, continued to reside in the family home on the property. In September 1918, Sarah Olmstead, then 76 years old, died in her home and was buried alongside her husband, son, and daughter in the Olmstead family plot in the Brick Road Memorial Park in Ellensburg.
In late March 1938, Phil was at the farm, finishing up a conversation with a local auctioneer, D.W. Brunson, regarding a sale he was considering, when he experienced a fatal heart attack. He was 73 years old and had been contemplating retiring from active farming at the time. His obituary in the Ellensburg Capital noted that as a young man he had worked as a freighter and transported goods along the Squaw Creek [now known as Lmuma Creek] Trail from The Dalles to Ellensburg founder John Shoudy’s store in Ellensburg.
The Sisters Take Over
With his death, the homestead came under the ownership of Leta May and Clareta Smith. The two sisters retired from teaching and took over the farm’s operations. In 1946, Clareta wrote “The Trail Leads West,” which was a collection of her memories about early Kittitas County life. The book was illustrated by Leta May. The two also collaborated on a second book, “Campfires in the Valley,” a history of the Olmstead place, which was published in 1976, and Leta May published a posthumous memoir, “The End of the Trail.”
In addition to running the farm and writing, the two sisters maintained an impressive home garden and Clareta was a founding member of the Kittitas County Historical Society in 1961. The sisters’ devotion to local history, in fact, resulted in them deciding to donate a generous portion of the farm and all of its historic buildings to Washington State Parks. The rest of the place was sold, according to Clareta, as three 80-acre tracts.
On May 19, 1974, Leta May died in the Kittitas Valley Community Hospital at the age of 85. Her obituary noted she was active with the local Presbyterian Church and was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Daughters of Pioneers of Washington, and the Daughters and Founders of the Colonies organizations.
About seven years later, on June 27, 1981, Clarita died in the hospital at the age of 91. Perhaps not surprisingly, she crafted an appropriate ending to her story in “Campfires in the Valley” when she wrote:
“One hundred years ago the dusty wagons topped the last hill, and we saw the beautiful Kittitas Valley, round and deep. Mighty mountains with snow-capped peaks and tall timber were to the far north. Cold mountain streams, with flower bordered banks, flowed across the grassy plain and met the swift river on its way to the Pacific sea. A few white tepees with a curl of smoke nestled under the cottonwood trees. The ponies straightened the traces, and we came down the winding trail into the land of our dreams . . . We had reached the end of the trail.”
For More Information:
Olmstead Place Historical State Park is located at 921 N Ferguson Road, about six miles east of Ellensburg via the Kittitas Highway. During the summer months, the park is open 6:30 a.m. to Dusk; 8 a.m. to Dusk in the winter. A one-day pass to the park is $10 or visitors can purchase a Washington State Parks Discover Pass for $45, which allows entry to all state parks. The park offers picnic tables, drinking water, and restroom facilities. There are also hiking trails and indoor tours can be scheduled to view the barn, the 1875 cabin, and the Smith House Museum. To schedule a tour or to find out more, call 509-856-4121. https://parks.wa.gov/find-parks/state-parks/olmstead-place-historical-state-park
