This is a tribute to "Dick's Cabin", one of several cabins that you will find along the Whipsaw Run. From Here you can hike for about 45 minutes and access Marmot City. To reach this location you will need a 4x4 or Quad that is capable with a bit of clearance. The information & pictures below have been obtained from 2 sources. The first being Glen Stromquist, the other Princeton History Book Committee, 2000, p. 383. The cache is titled Let's Shack Up #3 - Dicks Cabin.
Dick was born at Sedro Wooley, Washington in 1901. Dicks’ mother was born in Ireland and his father was an Australian. The family first lived in Fort Langley, BC, then in Oregon and Washington for five or six years. They came back to Langley when Dick was four or five. Dick's fathers name was Henry Proctor Holding, his mothers name was Jesse Maria Jane Wilkie, who was a direct relative of Otway Wilkie (niece it is believed), a well know figure in BC law enforcement history.
The Holding and Wilkie families were some of the original settlers of the Ft Langley area, many descendants still live in the area. Dick's brother, Arthur(Art) Holding, founded the Holding Lumber Company in Chase BC, the local ice arena is named after him. Dicks brother, Fred Holding, lived in the Hope area, moving there in the 30's and many of his family still live in the area. Dick also had an older brother named Henry (Harry), who lived in Alaska most of his life, his sisters Jesse & Isobel stayed in the Fraser Valley area. There is a additional information on the Holding and Wilkie familes on the Ft Langley website as well as in the local museum.
In August of 1920, Dick married Margaret at Princeton, BC. Margaret was an Indian woman from Summerland, BC. Dick and Margaret had one son,at this time his name was and his whereabouts & history are unknown. Dick came into the Princeton area with Burns and Company, driving cattle up from Yale. He went to work for Ernie Willis at the Willis/Kickbush Sawmill on the Wolfe Creek Ranch in about 1928. He worked at the sawmill for three years until the sawmill was sold.
By 1932, Dick and Margaret lived in a small cabin on the Five-Mile Creek. That was their home base and Dick had another cabin up Siwash Creek that he used as his trapping cabin. He hunted and ran a trap-line at TeePee Lake and Hawtheume area. Dick homesteaded 160 acres where he was trapping in the Hawtheume area. About 1940, Dick sold his trap-line to Robin Gold. The property now is where Elkhart Lodge is on the Coquihalla Connector.
During his trapping days, Dick worked part time for Douglas Lake Cattle Company. The weekends would find Dick off to a Rodeo. Bill Triplet was Dick’s partner some of the time in his trapping days. It was during these trapping days that Margaret left Dick.
Dick went to work for Ernie and Hanna Willis on their ranch. Dick’s main job was looking after the cattle. In 1948 a range cabin was built up the Whipsaw Summit and Dick lived his summers at the cabin. O one could pass Dick’s cabin without having a cup of coffee – which had been brewing all day! Today the cabin is still referred to as “Dick’s Cabin”.
In 1951, when Ernie and Hanna purchased the Nine-Mile property on the Hope Princeton Highway, Dick moved over to the Nine-Mile, spending his winters in a cabin at Nine-Mile and his summers at the cabin in Whipsaw. Dick retired sometime during the late 60’s. When Dick retired, he moved to a cabin in Bromley Creek on the Lowry property, Sam and Tsiki Tollefson now live on the Lowry property. One morning in 1976 when Sam went to check on Dick, he found Dick dead in his cabin. His ashes are at the Whipsaw Summit near Dick’s Cabin. Dick had a unique love for nature and will always be remembered. Sam remembers when Dick saw someone with a tailor-made cigarette, Dick would ask, “Can I have a paper pipe?”
In words from Glen -
I vaguely remember visiting him at his place on the Willis Ranch, (I was born in '57) and visited his place on Bromley Creek many times. I remember walking down to the creek to get water for coffee in a billy-can when we visited, as he had no running water. I still remember the 4 horses he had at his place, and their names, Babe, Bill, Buck and Shorty. Babe was a mare and used to follow him around like a dog and was quite attached to him. Whenever we visited we would talk hunting and gun's, my favorite subjects. The subject was always which calibre was best for which game, and I could listen to the conversations for hours. He had a target and rest set up right outside his door, where I spent many hours honing my shooting skills. My two cousins and I would usually each get handed a .22 at some point, with a tobacco tin full of ammo and off we'd go - shooting targets and basically anything small that moved. For boys in their early teens it just didn't get any better than that! When I started to get a little older he usually gave me one of his guns on each visit, the first being a long barreled .22 that I use to this day.
In the later years he had another woman staying with him, we only knew her first name, which was Shirley, I remember the time we met her, we had gone up for a visit and he introduced us by gesturing to her and saying "this is my cook". They had no transportation and she used to walk into town, when we visited we usually offered to drive her in for supplies etc. She moved back into town not long before he died I think.
I was unaware that the people that still live on the property there knew him or I would have knocked on the door and said hello when I stopped in with my two son's a few years ago to look at the site where his cabin used to be. I named my oldest son Richard, after his great-great uncle. My mom, aunt's & uncles were very fond of Uncle Dick, as was my grandfather, and visit's and camping trips to his place were always looked forward to. On occasion he used to come and stay at my grandparents ( Fred & Clara) place in Hope as well, I remember him visiting the local Dentist there and he referred to the dentist office as "jail".