The Diary of William Heitman
William Henry Heitman was the son of local miller Peter Heitman and his wife, Louise [Sarman] Heitman, born in Gardnerville, Nevada in 1888. You may remember our recent story about his father and the Heitman/Sarman flour mill.
In June, 1958, William wrote a fascinating account of his long and adventuresome life. His granddaughter, Gretchen Heizer Dermody, kindly reached out and shared this fabulous handwritten diary with us. Many of William’s adventures took place here in Nevada, but he also describes ranching in Idaho, visiting San Francisco shortly after the earthquake, and selling bootleg moonshine from the Carson City brewery.
We are grateful to Gretchen for allowing us to share this shortened version of William’s incredible diary with you, and precious photos of her grandfather! Here’s William Heitman, in his own words!
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William Heitman’s Diary
I shall reminisce here and write some of [the] story of my life & experiences throughout the years.
Naturally [I was] born at Gardnerville by the [Heitman] ranch at headwaters [of the] Carson River May 31, 1888. Therefore I remember many events before [the] turn of Century. As a small child I fell into [an] irrigation ditch and was pulled out by Fritz Sarman, who saw the accident or I would not be telling about it now.
Our early childhood days were spent out doors and [with] Indian playmates; we fished, went swimming, ice skating, snow and everything as we had no playthings, only those of our own creation. We practically were raised in the wilderness and had many accidents, sickness, and etc.
At that early date there were no bridges, and streams & rivers were forded horseback and wagons [were] very dangerous also, as horses many times swam at crossings.We always forded treacherous streams going to school, 4-1/2 miles from home through sagebrush and country uninhabited and not [a] living being in sight. We used horse & cart, sometimes horseback or rather bareback as we had no saddle.
[We] always had chores before and after school. Milking 5 cows, feeding calves and helping clean cow barn and feed chickens too. This was a must, and playtime only on Saturday or Sunday, but usually we were put hauling rocks, straightening nails or any job to keep us out of mischief.
Our school years were spent the real hard way and we got many whippings in school, also at home, as we did play many mean, malicious, dirty tricks and deserved them. As I remember I got into the 7th grade, but no high school, for there wasn’t any.
Our father [Peter Heitman] built a 50-barrel Flour Mill in [1895] and started milling in April or May 1896. This was one of [the] very earliest mills at that time. Charles Nelson, now of Reno Valley, Cook’s dad, hauled the machinery from Reno with [a] team of 16 animals. I still remember this. We had two 10-horse teams hauling Mill products to far-away places — Virginia City; Dayton; Mina; Hawthorne; Tonopah; Bodie; Mono Lake; Bridgeport, etc. I drove [a] 6-horse team to Bridgeport [hauling flour] when 16 years of age, slept out at station houses when we stopped over night. Slept with [the] horses in barns, generally, in [the] hay mow.
We had 30 milk cows, 100 stock cattle, many horses, wagons, buggies, carts etc. but no automobile as [they] were unknown then. Also had 160 acres hay and crop land, also mountain range, including [the] famous Horseshoe Bend Ranch in [the] wilderness along Carson River, full of rattlesnakes too. . . . .
[Immediately after the 1906 earthquake,] I managed getting across [the] bay to S.F. on [a] Ferry, and what terrible scenes; people frantic, scared and separated, no food or water, and whole city burning from Golden Gate to Butchertown, now about where Cow Palace is. We slept under [the] stars in [the] Berkeley hills, where Claremont Hotel now is, and watched San Francisco burn for 3 days and nights. The fire was stopped at Van Ness Ave. by dynamiting all [the] houses and businesses for a very large area.
How well I recall old China Town and Barbary Coast. Very few now living have had [the] experience and seen the Opium Dens, mostly underground, with the many and various expressions on their faces, mostly dreaming they were in paradise, laying in tiers of bunks two or three high. Some very well-dressed people.
I cannot for several reasons go into the denizens frequenting these terrible homes of prostitution, filth, smell mixed with the many fish markets, blind alleys, where we could and many did get shanghied, finding themselves on a whaling ship in the Bay, unable [to get] off or ever returning.
San Francisco really was wicked then. It never was [a] safe place for tourist[s] without [a] bodyguard. Many hundreds were trapped in these flimsy buildings [during the fire], some two stories underground, building collapsed and burned. As all water mains and gas mains broke and people looted liquor stores for drink and got drunk, making bad condition[s] even worse. Looting the dead, even cutting fingers off for jewelry, the horror is undescribable.
[He took various jobs, including working for for Southern Pacific in San Francisco and rooming near the old Barbary Coast, then tried unsuccessfully to go into business for himself.] After that, I returned to James Canyon ranch. During spring and summer we flumed 7,000 cords of wood from [the] top of mountain for five miles through an open V-type flume and dumped [it] above [the] house to be hauled by team to Carson during cold winter.
I also recall and was in Genoa when fire destroyed half of Genoa [in 1910], including [the] Court House, store, school, hotels, saloons, etc. No fire trucks then, only buckets.
I had a girl, Ivy Lewis, at Jacks Valley. We rode horseback (no auto), and at nights we listened to the old Edison cylinder record machine. Had a big horn on it. Ivy committed suicide later.
[He moved to Lovelock, and met and eventually married Coralynn Gunnell, daughter of Frank Gunnell, founder of a Lovelock bank, who put him in charge of a sheep ranch in Idaho.] I went to Idaho at starting salary of $25.00/mo. including living. Little did I realize what climate conditions were until I got there and [was] stuck. Anyway I finally invested $2,500.00 in this venture.
This Idaho ranch eventually grew until we had four different ranches widely separated. Took all day with [a] team from one to another, which wasn’t an economical operation. We grew such crops [as] wheat, barley, oats, rye, field peas and hay and eventually increased our livestock to 7,000 sheep, 150 cattle, several hundred hogs. In conjunction with our sheep operations we had extensive grazing permits in several national forests very widely separated, as much as 100 miles apart.
One Forest permit bordered famous Jackson Hole country, very rugged and scenic. I had various experiences as we had no cars or trucks. All traveling was by the hard way, wagons and saddle and always pack animals in rough country. No improved roads anywhere and I rode many times distance as far as 65 miles, daylight to dusk, through uninhabited, unsettled wild country.
Numbers of times we had grizzly bears get into sheep at nights and kill as many as 20. Also riding through forest trails very frequently I would have [my] horse scared by [the] smell of bear, and then a wild ride. Horses can easily smell a bear in brush and [they] bolt every time.
On one occasion we had a sheep herder abandon his flock of 3,000 sheep and skip with all camp equipment, 2 pack horses, dogs, guns and turned [the] sheep loose. I was notified by [a] Ranger after [the] sheep were unattended for 4 days. So after 75-mile trip we finally rounded up the herd and [there] were 400 missing, none of which we ever found. We never did locate [the] herder or horses and equipment. Our supposition was he sold the sheep somewhere in Wyoming, also horses and etc. . . .
Winters were terrible cold and snow, lots of it. . . . Every day was bitter cold, windy, roads blocked by deep drifts, horses floundering & sleighs with loads tipping over, men quitting, sheep dying some winters for lack of feed, etc. During [the] winter of 1917-1918 I saw hundreds of sheep dead standing on their feet, starved and snowed-in dead. . . .
During 1917-1918, Mr. Friedman, who was Mr. Gunnell’s trusted close friend, unexpectedly sold control of this Idaho ranch property to a Mr. Matson of Ogden, Utah. Mr. Gunnell and myself being minority stockholders, we [were] voted out as managers. Also there developed extreme bad feelings between Mr. Matson and ourselves about property being mismanaged and robbed of cash. [One daughter, Margaret, was born in 1918.]
During this time for self-protection we located homesteads blocking use of water and important range lands. We each took 160-acre homestead and built homes on them, where we lived during summer. I had [the] misfortune [of] having my house catch fire from [a] bad stovepipe and we lost everything. . . .
[Describes homesteading in Idaho, five miles from Pocatello.] This operation expanded and prospered during [the] boom First World War years and we developed good bank credits and kept adding to our holdings and livestock to [the] extent where we owed about $65,000, a lot of money at that time to owe. We extended our operations up as far as West Yellowstone or 150 miles, and also went and bought about 1,400 acres [of] land 14 miles from Yellowstone on which we grazed cattle, beautiful country, very primitive then and few settlers.
Terrible long, hard winters, deep snow and terrible cold. I was snowed in one late October and after days of blinding snow, finally rounded up cattle and drove them 5 miles through two feet of snow to [the] Railroad, and we had a special cattle train come with snow plow to clear [the] track to take them out.
Real hardship, one now wonders how I ever stood it, but there we were and no turning back. Just face it, cold, hungry & wet. However in summer we could catch a dozen big trout in minutes. We had deer, buffalo, elk and grizzly bear too. . . .
During a period of three years we raised 16,000 sacks [of] potatoes each year which we stored in big underground cellars, but prices were so low we couldn’t sell and lost [the] entire crop for each year. I hauled potatoes 12 miles with team and wagon in cold winter for 40 cents for 100# bag, used for stock feeding.
[But eventually, he and his partner went broke. ] Our going broke came from one cause , which was too much credit and getting very badly over-extended with loans, mortgages and installment payments. I always tried discouraging that practice, but Mr. Gunnell, an experienced banker, should have avoided getting into this situation as we gambled for big stakes and [got] caught in a depression & lost. . . .
Our homestead experiences were very disheartening as moving into an unoccupied piece of land and starting from scratch with very little money and worst of all no neighbors, no water which had to be hauled in barrels about one mile and grub out sagebrush to plow and raise crops which was required, and all with horses, no tractors at that time. Boy, what unending hard work, surely wasn’t worth the effort.
But that’s a situation one gets into and can’t quit. All this 3 years was wasted. . . . In connection with homesteading, I must recall the long, lonely snowy winters. At times we staked each side of [the] road with small poles 6 ft. long to mark [the] roadway, as this would keep [the] team on solid packed snow, otherwise horses would get mired in deep snow floundering and unable [to get] going. Also we had a hay & feed problem, as hay had to be stored before winter set in. Our homesteads were about 6,000 ft. elevation and temperatures go as low as 30 degrees below zero. We also dug a tunnel through snow between [the] house and cellar, which was dug into [a] hillside to prevent freezing. . . .We always were up at 6:00 A.M. or before, and no laying in bed like guys now do.
My experiences in Yellowstone Park area also ended up with me doing all the hard work and driving also, as that was a large meadow area, about half size of Carson Valley, high contry with terrible winters and much water in spring. Consequently full of mosquitoes & grey horse flies. During many days horse files swarmed on stock and man too, then at nightfall mosquitoes came in swarms. Horses couldn’t be worked unless covered with netting or burlap. We built miles of fence, all of hard labor and later abandoned, at that time no improved roads and log houses to live in. . . . After our failure at livestock and farming, I decided [on] quitting and going to greener pastures to make a new start on my own.
Coralynn and [daughter] Margaret, who was only 3 years old, left Pocatello before me and came to Carson to visit, also Yerington. While at Yerington, August persuaded her going dancing, which was OK. However, unfortunately in January about 1921 she, while dancing and meeting and sitting by open window caught [a] bad cold which turned into pneumonia and later into tuberculosis very bad. . . .Her condition grew steadily worse and [there was] practically no known cure then. Eventually I took her on [the] train to [the] Sanitarium at Banning near Palm Springs on [the] desert. . . . Her coughing and generally weakening condition continued [and] eventually she passed away [in 1924].
[Bill Heitman moved to Carson City about 1925.] August and I were managing the Carson Brewery for Mr. Stenz and I never had this kind of experience, as I had charge of money and kept books for the concern. Also I traveled over the entire state as [a] salesman selling the products and had many and various experiences. As this was in [the] years of 1925 and 1926 or during Prohibition period and our selling was mostly in connection with this illegal business such as moonshiners making illegal whiskey, also bootleggers selling behind closed locked doors, where they had peep holes in doors about 1-1/2 inches wide to look one over before removing the bars to let one in, as this was [the] only protection from Federal prohibition officers. Most of these operators of so-called bootleg joints were of foreign descent who had no regard for law anyway.
As I remember I called on 26 of these joints in Virginia City, Gold Hill & Silver City and what experiences within and with their people, drinking parties and everything in the book: wine, women and song, big eats, and I also [had] many headaches as a result of this. Bootleg whiskey sold at 50c [a] drink and being I represented a brewery, I always had to treat everyone in the joint, which was very costly; however I sold very well. I had at times large sums of money, as I also collected on these trips, and could have been waylaid and rolled easily.
As time wore on and I got better acquainted in this business, we eventually got to bottling real beer, which I loaded in my car and sold readily for 75c pint bottle. Also Gus and I finally got mixed up in a big moonshining operation in [the] Brewery. This involved Mr. Stenz, the owner, and one fine December morning while [the] operation was going full blast, in came two Prohibition officers to inspect the plant, which was operated under a federal permit.
[Sadly for those of us who’d love to read the rest of this fabulous tale, the diary ends here. William Heitman spent his later years living at the Minden Inn, with daughter Margaret. William died at a Reno hospital on May 15, 1977 at the ripe old age of 88. He is buried at the Garden Cemetery in Gardnerville.]
Grateful thanks to granddaughter Gretchen Heizer Dermody, for allowing us to share William’s incredible life!