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Note: BURIAL: Stone in Prairie View Cemetery, Grangeville ID: McALLISTER Robert 1896 1958 4 12 N end Double stone with Lola McALLISTER ---------- It appears that Robert McAllister adopted this name, and presumably was running from something. None of his stories of "family being killed in a great marine disaster", or being born in San Francisco and having his birth records burn in the 1906 earthquake aftermath seem to check out. We have found that there is a McAllister, Montana, and it is possible that he had some association with it or the people there, where there are a number of McAllisters. He seems to have been trained as a geologist and was familiar with mining. He had many stories of adventures, which taken in the whole would make him a super Jim Bridger-type explorer/adventurer. Nevertheless, there may be truth to them, or at least pieces, as he seemed to be an energetic, ambitious man until rheumatoid arthritis slowed him down.
He shows up in Stanley Basin, Idaho, about 1923 and homesteads 160 acres there, now a square out of the National Forest about 10 miles northwest of Stanley townsite, in the Cape Horn area, on the north side of Marsh Creek valley, north of the highway just before it turns south to go towards Lowman.
He gets to know the Oscar Mullins family from King Hill, Idaho when they come to escape the heat of the Snake River Valley (way south, where they have a farm growing produce shipped to Boise on the railroad) and take summer vacations in the cool of the Stanley Basin.
During the five years to prove up his homestead in Stanley Basin he named two local creeks and some glacial moraine-dammed lakes for the two Mullins girls. For Lola (later his wife) is "Lola Creek" that comes down out of the Lola Lakes (a series of about 4 as I recall, beautiful high/clean lakes trapped by glacial moraines, having some fish if the winter ice didn't kill them, a good hike up but well worth it). For Esther Hazel is "Collie Creek," just to the north of Lola Creek, coming down from a larger lake way up, Collie Lake. You will find these on the USGS quadrangle map Cape Horn Lakes, Idaho, at about 115o 12' 30" west longitude, 44o 23' 30" to 26' north latitude.
We visited this and were guided by Auntie Collie--Hazel Mullins Strehle, in ca 1987. I have marked on my map also three different placer mine test holes that he dug, and the site of a cabin, now completely rotted away There was also a large distinctive split granite rock on the side of the river there that they used to play on and called "The Rock of Ages." Hazel could not remember any cabin on the homestead site, and we could find no evidence left. After he proved it up and got title, he immediately sold to a sheepman we were told, and it is likely that the new owner then burned down whatever shack had been built to meet the "house" requirement for homesteading.
He takes to one of the girls, Lola, and eventually marries her, and ends up living at McAllister Bar on the South Fork of the Clearwater River, in Idaho County, Idaho.
The home at McAllister Bar was situated on a mining claim that he made which unfortunately was never patented, as he did not want to have to pay property taxes on it. It was a former Indian campsite, and they had a tremendous arrowhead collection that was found there. Excellent fishing too. At the death of Lola, it reverted back to the NezPerce National Forest to the family's great chagrin. The house was bulldozed and burned, garden of rich sandy-soil paved-over and turned into a picnic area. There are still remnants of the huge amount of work they did there to establish it as their home, a concrete wall and bench and native rock steps. Up the canyon across the road is a cistern that supplied water to the garden through galvanized-steel pipe. In the hill to the SE of that cistern, and up higher, is a cavern cut into the mountain's granite that was their source of drinking water, also supplied through a galvanized-steel pipe. In the garden water cistern's cement wall you will see pebbles embedded that give the date of its construction (1954?) and the names of Lewis (Crea; Roberta's husband), Randy and Don (McAllister; permemeory--check on photo of this). --DACrea, June 2000.
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