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From Broad Axe to Clay Chinking
Pilot Mountain
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Quite a piece up the Pilot Mountain Road is an old homestead. This was the home of Englishman, Bill Winterton. He had worked at the coal mines in England, then came to North America, working at Winnipeg during a flu epidemic, then going down to North Dakota, and finally to Southern B.C. where he once more worked in the coal mines. Then he and a buddy came to Prince George, coming down from Tete Jeune Cache on a raft they had made. It was a very wild ride and they almost drowned in the Giscome Rapids. They started cutting ties for the railroad and cordwood for the steam boilers.
In 1913 he homesteaded the quarter out on Pilot Mountain Road. At first he just made hay, hauling it loose. There were many loggers around and they needed hay for their horses. In 1928 he bought a carload of cattle. He got them in town and drove them out to the ranch, getting help from the Allen boys at Nukko Lake. The depression started and he never sold an animal, but by 1935 or ‘36, he sold some five-year old steers.
When he cleared land, he dug around the roots, chopping off the big roots and then waiting for a big wind to blow them over. This way the stumps were out too. Then he would skid the trees out with the horses and burn them. He had help building the big barns.
When he got old he sold the farm and went to live in Pineview where he got pneumonia and died, on a Christmas Eve.
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