MONSE – On a sunny Thursday morning, April 8, passers-by on State Route 97 could see three people working on the south side of the entrance to the Fort Okanogan Cemetery resetting landscape blocks in the small planting area that welcomes visitors. Next week they will add new flowers to the site as they have done every two years in the past.
Cindy (Baker) Hoke, Coulee City, her sister, Ann (Baker) Rogers, Okanogan, and Richard Henry, Electric City, were volunteering their time to honor family members buried there and one in particular, Tom Baker, who served as the site’s long-time caretaker.
The trio will return next mid-month for the cemetery’s annual cleanup day from 9 a.m. to noon on the third Saturday in May. Then grass is mowed, weeds removed, and wear-and-tear on the site is addressed. Volunteers are welcome – and wanted – especially anyone with a riding mower or battery-powered trimming tools, and a willingness to help maintain a historic place.
“Due to COVID 19 we will be bringing our own lunches and drinks,” Hoke said.
The Fort Okanogan Cemetery boasts a rich - and transient - history that includes relocation from its original site near the mouth of the Okanogan River and the Fort Okanogan fur trade outpost. It was relocated to its present site during the construction of Wells Dam that threatened the burial site when it became operational in 1967.
“The new location land was donated by the Timentwa family and the Corps of Engineers moved the remains,” wrote Hoke in her recollection notes. “During the reburial they had begun burying individuals with their heads toward the west; Indian custom is to bury toward the east.”
Hoke said the error was never corrected which accounts for the inconsistency of headstone placements seen today.
A 2002 survey completed by Maggie Rail and available online at mrail.net notes that “most of the original families are related, one of the main branches being the Timentwa family.”
At the time of Mail’s survey, the cemetery included two dozen Timentwa grave sites along with numbers of Cardens, Clevelands, Dicks, Gorrs, Jims, Marchands, Moomaws, and Smiths, among other multiple family members.
The late Tom and Pearl Baker, whose ranch property on the Colville reservation plateau east of State Route 97 overlooks the cemetery, were among early caretakers of the site until 1974 when the Ed Marchand family assumed those responsibilities.
“In 1974 Tom Baker with some assistance by his family, voluntarily took over maintenance of the cemetery once again for 19 years,” Hoke wrote.
With the passing of 92-year-old Baker in 2012 the decades he devoted to the cemetery’s care came to end. During his tenure Baker provided his own equipment from own lawn mowers to tractor and bucket, and supplies ranging from replacement pipe and sprinkler heads to electrical components and fuel.
Hoke said the Colville Tribe covers the cost of electricity to run and repair the irrigation pump.
In 2017 Edwin Marchand presented a request to the Colville Business Council (CBC) for appropriations to install a new in-ground sprinkler system that was installed in September that year. The approved funds also included purchase of a new riding lawnmower, but Hoke said project costs left no funds for a mower.
Along with a new lawnmower the cemetery has a substantial list of deferred repairs and maintenance projects. These range from a new outhouse and fence repair to weed spraying and more gravel in the parking lot. Like many a community site the Fort Okanogan Memorial Cemetery needs regular TLC to keep the site functional and the grounds attractive.
The Fort Okanogan Cemetery is not only an historic landmark and resting place, but also a refuge as well. Last September when the Cole Spring wildfire was laying waste to everything before it, members of the Timentwa family living nearby sought safety there for themselves and their vehicles as the flames blew through.
The annual clean-up on May 15 will help keep the place in shape for its next resident. One never knows when - or even how - it might be needed.
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