Show The Swale: An answer to a lifelong puzzle by AJ Simmonds There ii on our farm at Black Jack in Cornish and Trenton a curious little depression which cuts diagonally across the fields and under the track grade of the Union Pacific All my life — and I suspect for the lives of my father and my uncle Lloyd — we have known this area as “The Swale" It is some four or five feet below the level of the surrounding land — which in northwest Cache County on the Trenton Flats is very flat indeed The Swale was the reason the farm was here in the first place Since Trenton wasn’t irrigated until 1905 the earliest profitable use for the land was for grazing Since it was lower than the surrounding land The Swale was a shallow pond for much of the year On its margins was rich grass Great-grandgot the land in 1883 but sold The Swale the same year Eventually the area came into the possession of the family of Black Jack Nelson Cache Valley's premier nineteenth century outlaw Jack used the Swale to graze cattle stolen in Cache and Bos Elder valleys until he could trail the rustled animals to market in the Montana and Idaho mining towns A nearby log cabin provided Jack's accommodations in those halcyon days Grandpa Simmonds bought the land from Black Jack for 8500 (ten $50 gold pieces) in December 1897 But since Grandpa was a farmer rather than a rustler the Swale was a detriment rather than a boon For most years it was an unfarm able m arsh In the 1930s Grandpa drained it using wooden-stave- d pipe bound with wire which had previously been used by Hyde Park as a water main He laid a quarter mile of the pipe from the Swale to the Bear River Drained the Swale became richly productive land Over the years the wooden pipe decayed and the pond at the Swale grew again In the late '40s and early '50s it was an exciting place for a kid with some interest In natural history A kid like me It was at the ponds at The Swale that my cousin Bruce Simmonds told me of the mysteries of pollywogs and frogs and where we two watched Killdeers make their nests on the ground and hatch their young And we were explored the secret way of muskrats (those furry little enemies of Uncle Lloyd's ditch banks) Sometime in the early 1960s we replaced the wooden line with a tile drain all neatly laid in gravel bed and the ponds at The Swale were drained away to the Bear The fields are much cleaner now and my cousin Jerry Charles farms productive land where once we looked at pollywogs swimming between the cattails The Swale as must be obvious has always intrigued me Why this lowland? I always suspected that it must represent some old stream channel from the thousands of years ago that silt and water action of the Bear River created Cornish and Trenton and Lewiston That’s what I always thought But the US Geological Survey map of Trenton wasn’t drawn to a fine enough scale to enable me to confirm my suspicion that all the little vales and valleys in Trenton and Cornish may be the remnants of old riverbeds Then last week while sorting a collection of old maps we had received in the USU Library I found a September 1921 map of Cornish and northern Trenton drawn by LR Humphreys for the supervisors of Cache County Drainage District No 1: Melvin H Buttars RE Butler and Lorenzo Sorensen The map showed contour lines for every foot of elevation It’s beautiful and just looking at it shows very clearly what seems to be various places across the Cornish and Trenton Flats where some 10000 years ago (when Lake Bonneville was retreating) the Bear River must have flowed And one of those places was The Swale I don't know what a geologist or hydrologist would make of my findings But then I don't know any geologists or hydrologists who might be Interested in my Swale Candy standard better than gold by Sue Van Alfen store the I was at my favorite penny-candother day frying to decide whether to buy five cinnamon bears for a dime or a candy ring and baseball card for 158 I was complaining to my friend Bob who owns the store about how hard It is to live on my allowance “We’re all feeling the same plncbl said Bob “The dollar Is barely worth the paper It's printed on Nobody trusts the old American dollar any more" It was right then with one eye on the candy case and oae eye on Bob counting out money in the cash register that I got my Great Idea for Saving the Dollar Bill You see In the old days infllis country gold was used for real money It was a to use though because It was so heavy But most people didn't complain because they were poor and thought It felt good once In a while to have that old drag in the money bag It was finally a politician worn out from hauling bis pay home from Washington who y eame up with the idea of paper money When he brought up his idea at the Capitol all the other lawmakers loved It — all except this one suspicious chsracter He said he'd go along with the paper money plan but he wanted some gold stashed away Just in case he decided to turn his bills in for the real thing Anyway a vote was taken and It was decided to build a place called Fort Knox to hold the gold which stood for the paper dollars the presses started cranking out The whole system worked pretty well for about 200 years Most people were so busy collecting the paper money that they forgot all about the gold Then one day a few years ago In another country another politician was walking through a bookstore when be saw a book about America He picked the book up started to read and found out about Fort Knox The very next lime our ships went to that man's country to pick up the things we always bought there the men at the docks shrugged their shoulders rolled their eyes and said In sad voices that they still wanted to sell their beans to back up our dollar even the dumbest kid on the block after just one bile could tell whether or not paper money was still worth anything Everybody knows good jelly beans have that sugary crunchy crust and have the same color on the inside that to on the outside and bad jelly beans don’t But nobody can tell anything about gold So we did But that was of course just what Fake gold like my sister and her friends buy those guys In that other country had wanted at the five and dime looks Just like real gold all along So they acted nervous about our For an anyone In America knows some dollar bills the next time we went calling and smart crook filled Fort Knox with fake gold we hauled out the gold again and they bought and stole the good stuff years ago K again So I say forget gold back up the dollar with When the word got around In America that jelly beans and everyone will begin to trust Fort Knox was nearly empty even paper money again Americans began to worry about the dollar This great plan wiU surprise the heck out of Some even decided that if the dollar wasn’t all those countries who bought those bags of worth much any more it would be OK to that stupid worthless gold charge kids 10 cents for five little cinnamon Best of an after Congress passes a la in bears saying that every man woman and child So that's where we are today And the way every beans of America has to eat a bag jelly I see It we've got to do something fast We day we can all quit worrying whether Fort have to make the dollar worth something Knox can back our dollars or not ana again and we have to fix those hot shots who Right there between our adam's apples our belly buttons we'U each have our own bought up all the gold The answer to jelly beans If we used jelly little piece of the Knox The Herald JournalValley Monday October 20 1979—3 stuff to us but that they weren't too sure that they wanted to be paid with our paper money When our politicians in Washington heard about this they said that we should take a Ultle gold out of Fort Knox and sell It to prove to everyone that we had plenty of the stuff to back up our dollars |