James A. Walters came across the plains on a wagon train the first time when he was about 19. He worked in a flour mill in Portland, Ore. The next summer he went back across the plains; then he came back west in 1876 by train. He homesteaded in Whitman Co., Wash. Terr. in 1876. The James A. Walters house was built in 1893. Told to Barbara Buchholz by "Eddie" Walters in about 1977.
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From Virginia Walters:
MAKES FORTUNE IN PALOUSE

James Walters Arrived There With Mule Team and Farm Wagon

Garfield, Wash., Dec 16---James Walters, a pioneer farmer, has just brought into the office of the Garfield Land company 38 potatoes weighing 61 pounds. Mr. Walters raised this season on 1 1/8 acres of land 13 3/4 tons of choice potatoes, which at one cent a pound were worth $375. Mr. Walters considers this good returns from a small piece of farm l and and says he can make all kinds of money raising potatoes in the Palouse country.

Mr. Walters came to Whitman County from Oregon 29 years ago. He had a span of mules and a farm wagon, but no money. He located on a homestead four miles east of what is now Garfield and farmed there for seven years before he had a market for his wheat. He hauled wheat to Spokane with his mule team and sold it for 25 cents a bushel before the advent of a railroad. For seven years, Mr. Walters paid $1 a gallon for coal oil.

"I paid," said Mr. Walters, "thirty-five dollars for the first 14 inch breaking plow that came into this part of the Palouse Country. I was here several years before I was able to buy an overcoat, for which I paid $16. My first two wheat crops I harvested with the old grapevine cradle. The first twine binder that was owned in this district cost $480. I saw the Palouse country in its wild and wooly days. My nearest neighbor for some time after I settled here lived about half way between Farmington and Colfax. The first railroad land I purchased here cost me $2 an acre. That same land is now worth $50 an acre."

Mr. Walters still lives on the land on which he settled in 1877 and had risen from a condition of poverty to one of affluence. He now owns hundreds of acres of choice Palouse land.