In 1909, rural Lewis County farm life was isolating. Imagine your nearest neighbor residing beyond earshot, each morning being greeted by the sound of birds and lowing cattle with an utter absence of the sound of automobiles and airplanes. It’s easy to see the beauty, but also the loneliness. It was no different for the farmers of Waunch Prairie and Hanaford Valley in northern Lewis County who came together to form Oakview Grange .
“A grange is an agricultural based organization to unify the farmers and give them a voice,” says Alice Coakley, Oakview Grange member and historian. “There used to be 37 or 39 granges in Lewis County alone, and Washington State has the largest number of granges nationwide. We had over 300, but now we are down into the high 200s.”
“They were very well organized back in the 1800 and 1900s,” she continues. “Very active in getting members to join and build a grange. That was a community center back then. Miles apart and what not, you look now and we’re not that far from Ford’s Prairie Grange and people ask why there are two granges, but at one time you came to grange in a horse and buggy or a buckboard or on horseback or some of them even walked to grange.”
A History of Change
Granges provided community hubs in remote areas, and served as a way for grassroots efforts to become legislature. It was through grange lobbying efforts that the United States Postal Service began to deliver mail to rural addresses. Previously a farmer, especially in the Midwest, might have to hitch his horse to a buckboard and drive 30 miles to the nearest town to collect mail, only to find out the mail hadn’t come yet. The granges gave regular citizens a voice in our government.
“From its very inception,” says Alice, “grange men and women have had an equal vote, way before women won the right to vote nationwide. It’s a grassroots organization and you can actually come to a meeting as a member and say I resolve to, or we need to—whether it’s a hunting rights issue, a clean water rights issue, or voting rights. Then the issue is voted on at a local (subordinate) level. Then if everyone agrees on the wording, it goes on to State Grange Convention. The resolutions can then go on to our representatives and become bills.”
Another benefit to being a member of grange in the early days was the excellent low cost and wide coverage insurance.
We can thank granges for helping to found Future Farmers of America. Oakview Grange has always been active in the community, working with the PTA very early on. Oakview in its time has been a polling place, a Red Cross shelter during floods, and was made available as an air raid shelter in 1942.
But Granges were also about fun. Potlucks, galas, traveling theater shows, dances and baseball teams have all been an integral part of Oakview history. Alice explains, “The fern pickers and salal gatherers would have a fall ball here in the grange hall. And when the kerosene lamps went out you went home.”
Partnering with the Community
Today, the local granges are struggling as the numbers have sunk to just 12 granges in Lewis County. “Granges were really strong in the 60s and 70s, then in the 80s we saw a change. People’s attitudes changed…belonging to an organization was not the ultimate thing to do. About five or six years ago, we started to struggle paying the light bill and water bills and this that and the other.”
But then the Prairie Steppers, a square dancing group, who had been using the hall 30 or 40 years came forward and said the hall was looking pretty shabby. They offered to clean, paint, and help maintain and refinish the hardwood floor in the hall.
“And it’s been the marriage from heaven,” says Alice. “I couldn’t ask for a better group of people.”
In 2008, Oakview members knew they were going to go ahead with a centennial, and commissioned a stone memorial with Tenino stonecutter Keith Phillips. The local AA group who meet in the hall stepped up and painted it in a weekend.
“In two days the entire hall was painted,” says Alice. “We would still be out there with paintbrushes if it had been up to us.”
As the conversation turns to other granges in the county, Alice shares Baw Faw’s comeback story. Like many granges, Baw Faw of Boistfort was struggling until the 2007 flood. “Baw Faw was the center for disaster recovery area for months and months,” explains Alice. “The only kitchen for miles around for cooking mass food. And the other granges took turns bringing soups and stews and breads and sandwiches because it was such a length of time for recovery out there. Once they did that, the people of the Boistfort Valley went, oh my goodness, we need to join grange, and we need to be a part of this kind of grassroots thing helping our neighbors recover.”
The Modern Grange
Oakview has 50 members right now, and is a very active grange. Although each grange is part of the National Grange, each local grange is managed by its own by-laws. Members fundraise year round to support scholarships that members’ children and grandchildren are eligible for.
Oakview Grange members put on two rummage sales a year, two craft bazaars, and they do limited catering. They have a Christmas party every year and create a display at Southwest Washington Fair. But in addition to this, they help out in the community in a number of ways by collecting used clothing and stuffed toys; they donate dictionaries for third graders at Lincoln-Jefferson, collect toiletries for the Battered Women’s Shelter, and food for the Gospel Mission or the Salvation Army food bank, just to name a few.
In addition to AA and Prairie Stepper using the hall, WAMA or Washington Acoustical Music Association is meeting the third Friday of every month. It’s for anyone who doesn’t play an electrical instrument, including beginners, intermediate and expert players.
Pomona (County) Grange also hosts contests every year for everyone including youth. “You name a craft or a skill, photography, basket weaving, baking, canning, candy making, quilting. There’s a contest within the grange that you can enter,” says Alice. “All those contests are usually in the early part of April. Anyone in the community can go to a local grange and say they want to enter.”
As Alice talks about Grange it’s clear she’s proud to be a 53-year member. In fact her father was a member of Oakview Grange for 70 years. And thanks to families like hers, Granges continue to be a legacy from the early farmers of Lewis County to the community today.
