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Colorado Homesteaders Walked Pass in Waist-Deep Snow

My brother-in-law and his wife were traveling with us when we took out for Price Creek, Colorado, my husband having found a better place to farm there. Our belongings had been shipped earlier by train, but my brother-in-law had a cow and a calf to trail.

Within five miles of our new home, a storm hit, and we had to camp for three days in our wagons. When the weather cleared the snow was about three feet deep in the pass we had yet to cross.

The men emptied what they could from the wagons and doubled up the teams to get them to the top of the rise. Taking turns carrying my four-month-old baby and pushing or carrying the calf, we waded those five miles in waist-deep snow.

We stopped at the first house we saw, and the people there gave us warm clothing and dried ours in the oven.

The men didn’t get in for seven more hours. 

Mrs. Ethel McAlary Lasater
Myrtle Creek, Oregon


Back in 1955 a call went out from the editors of the then Capper’s Weekly asking for readers to send in articles on true pioneers. Hundreds of letters came pouring in from early settlers and their children, many now in their 80s and 90s, and from grandchildren of settlers, all with tales to tell. So many articles were received that a decision was made to create a book, and in 1956, the first My Folks title – My Folks Came in a Covered Wagon – hit the shelves. Nine other books have since been published in the My Folks series, all filled to the brim with true tales from Capper’s readers, and we are proud to make those stories available to our growing online community.