Remember When?

PRESTON'S LIVERY STABLE was located where St. William's Catholic Church is today. In addition to renting horses and horse drawn rigs, Preston delivered drinking water and ice for icebox refrigerators. He would harvest the ice from the river and store it in a building located by the railroad tracks packing the ice blocks in sawdust to keep them from melting. And now my readers know how Preston Avenue and Ferry Street got their names.

70 YEARS AGO • MARCH 22, 1950

A.C. PRESTON DIES IN SPOKANE, FUNERAL HELD HERE

Arthur C. Preston, 68, who for nearly a half century was operator of a draying and transfer business here, died Wednesday at a hospital at Spokane.

Mr. Preston was born in 1881 at Rockland, N.Y., and came to Thompson Falls at the age of 5 years. He sold out of the transfer business in 1944 and moved to Spokane.

From Pioneers and Early Settlers of Thompson Falls by Anne Miller

Arthur C. Preston was born June 26, 1881 to Eugene Preston and Celia Ingraham.

In the 1900 federal census, Thompson Falls, Missoula, County, Arthur is living with his parents; working as a laborer in the sawmill and single.

The Sanders County Ledger, Friday, April 21, 1905 – Last Sunday while cutting down the trees in front of Dr. Peek's drug store, Mr. Polley and Arthur Preston made a novel discovery. The men started the saw into the tree about 3 feet above the ground and had nearly reached the middle when they struck something that made them stop. On felling the tree they found imbedded in the heart of the trunk a spike, head and all. Away back about the time Thompson was founded, someone must have driven that spike into the tree. Twenty-one rings had accumulated on the outside; each supposed to represent a year's growth in calculating the age of a tree. But at any event it was put there a good long time since, as the spike was one of the old fashioned wrought iron kind, long since out of the market. I'm sure those men were using a crosscut saw.

Eugene Preston (Arthur Preston's father), was born March 3, 1852 at Pallentine, New York. Eugene was nicknamed "Pee Wee."

Eugene and Celia came to Thompson Falls in 1886. This was also noted in the Pioneer list of 1935.

Proprietor of the Thompson Ferry, Livery, Boarding and sale stable – Rigs 1891.

(The Neil Fullerton papers, the State Historical Society, Helena, Montana) The first ferry built in Thompson Falls was built by Pat Harris who sold it to Eugene. Pee Wee owned the ferry at the time it washed away in the famous high water of 1894, after which he had to build a new one. Anyone wanting to use the ferry hollered for one of the Prestons to come and operate the ferry.

The Sanders County Ledger, Friday, Jan. 19, 1912 – E. Preston was rushing in the ice crop the first of the week and was fortunate enough to get the town people supplied before the chinook struck us.

The Sanders County Ledger, March 11, 1936 – The funeral of Eugene Preston was held at the Methodist Church (now the Community Congregational Church) Friday and was attended by many.

Mr. Preston was in the truest sense an old pioneer of this community. He helped to clear hundreds of acres in western Sanders County where he logged for a number of years. When he first came into this country the only way one could see the sky was to look straight up and that was right here in Thompson Falls, for the trees were all around them. Mr. Preston always had a story of the pioneer days to tell, which was always interesting as he was bright and quick of mind when reminiscent even in his later years.

One of the town's early problems was drinking water. During the first few years of the town's existence, water was hauled in barrels and tanks from a large spring at the bend of the river a mile east of town's center. This large cold spring is now beneath the surface of the backwater of the dam. Pullem, one of the first settlers and the local drayman, hauled water for the town, making daily trips to the spring. When he was thrown from his wagon one morning while crossing the railroad tracks, the result was his untimely death and the town was left temporarily without a drayman. A young man, Eugene Preston, who had recently moved to town with his family, bought Pullem's two horses and rig and was the new drayman. He built up quite a business, which included owning the ferry.