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Lewiston-Clarkston Improvement Company Records, 1888-1963

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Lewiston-Clarkston Improvement Company
Title
Lewiston-Clarkston Improvement Company Records
Dates
1888-1963 (inclusive)
Quantity
177 Linear feet of shelf space, (418 Boxes)
Collection Number
Cage 311 (collection)
Summary
Correspondence, business records, drawings, maps, and photographs of the corporate firms which established Clarkston, Washington and an adjacent fruit-land project; developed electrical power for the project and surrounding Washington and Idaho areas and operated a toll bridge across the Snake River to Lewiston, Idaho.
Repository
Washington State University Libraries' Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections
Terrell Library Suite 12
Pullman, WA
99164-5610
Telephone: 509-335-6691
mascref@wsu.edu
Access Restrictions

This collection is open and available for research use.

Languages
English
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Historical Note

The Lewiston-Clarkston Improvement Company (LCIC), the third and best-known corporate name of one of the more prominent business organizations active in southeastern Washington and northern Idaho in the early 20th Century, also operated as the Lewiston Water and Power Company (1896-1905), as the Lewiston-Clarkston Company (1905-1910) and as the Clarkston Community Corporation (1940-1971). The earliest direct predecessor of the LCIC, the Lewiston Water and Power Co., was organized in 1896 by the first President and General Manager of the company, Edgar H. Libby, a local resident. However, control of the firm lay in the hands of a group of Boston investors headed by Charles Francis Adams, who had considerable previous experience in western real estate, and by William and Elbert Wheeler, who were experienced in hydrological and irrigation projects.

The founders of the company proposed to build a headworks dam on Asotin Creek, a mountain stream emptying into the Snake River in Southeastern Washington, divert its waters through a canal for about fifteen miles and deliver it to five-to-ten acre fruitland plots that the company proposed to sell. The company designated the irrigation project "Vineland" and located it at the base of a 2000 foot canyon, on a "bench" inside a bend of the Snake River opposite Lewiston, Idaho. Near the center of the project, laid out on land acquired by Adams in 1895, the company located a new town, at first known as Lewiston, then as Concord after Concord, Massachusetts, and finally and permanently as Clarkston in 1900. Additionally, the promoters intended to use the waters of Asotin Creek to generate electricity to sell in the new project and in the older city of Lewiston.

In the summer of 1896, the company began work on the project. The "bench" was surveyed and divided into the Vineland irrigation tracts, with one section platted as a town. In this same summer, the company built the headworks, or diversion dam, on Asotin Creek and the "low-line" canal to Vineland. The company's canal followed a path down Asotin Canyon to the Snake, then turned north along the river for about a mile, then inland across the lower edge of a second "bench" which marked the far or upperside of the irrigation project. The path of this canal crossed gulches and ravines, bored through rock, or hung on the side of Asotin Creek canyon; in yet other places it was built as an "inverted siphon" and mounted on trestles, and only in its lower reaches was it actually an open-ditch canal. In building such a facility, the company's engineers overcame formidable topographical limitations, but did so at the cost of efficiency. Consequently, once operative, it was found that there was almost no means of regulating the flow of water to the irrigation project. Yet the company did manage to deliver not only the irrigation water, but also water for domestic use in the new town.

In opting for the "low-line" design of the first canal, the company also sacrificed the water power possibilities of Asotin Creek and the related electric generating station, as nowhere along the line was there enough head to develop much power. In any case, electricity was forgone for a few years and the company surrendered most of its electric power ambitions to a group of Lewiston business men who had organized a competitive firm, the Lewiston Light Company, Limited, in 1896.

In 1897, Edgar H. Libby, manager of Lewiston Water and Power Company, and George Bailey, a lawyer from Asotin, Washington, formed the Lewiston-Concord Bridge Company for the purpose of building a toll bridge that would connect the Vineland area with Lewiston, Idaho. The bridge company, though legally separate from the Lewiston Water and Power Company, was fully interlocked with the overall project. Charles Francis Adams and the trustees for the power company, in fact, shortly became the principal stockholders of the bridge company through a financial arrangement whereby the stock was transferred for the funds to construct the bridge. In 1899, the bridge company contracted a Pennsylvania bridge-building firm to construct a steel bridge designed to carry foot and wagon traffic, gas, electricity, and water transmission lines, and a street railroad. Although the bridge sometimes carried considerable traffic, the company apparently rarely made enough money to pay even the debt service expenses, and losses were absorbed by the Boston investors as necessary for the development of the Clarkston/Vineland project.

The bridge company remained a separate corporation through the various reorganizations of the parent company until the sale of the bridge to the states of Washington and Idaho in 1913, after which the bridge company was liquidated. The steel bridge was maintained by the two states as an automobile bridge until the mid-1930's, when it was replaced by the four-lane structure that presently connects the two states.

The Boston-based management often found success or failure, or even the general direction of operations in the West, difficult matters to appraise. Distrusting Libby, but unable to do without him, the Boston group placed in his office a series of agents known as the assistant treasurer or auditor who had to countersign many of Libby's documents, report to the east and act as a spy on Libby. Adams dispatched a succession of people westward for these purposes, but ultimately most of this responsibility fell to his son, Henry Adams 2nd. Even so, Libby persisted in his projects for street railroads, other electric railroad connections to Clarkston and the development of navigation of the Snake, none of which particularly interested the Adams group.

While keeping some control over Libby's ambitious visions, by 1900 the Eastern management did come to support one ambitious project by attempting to consolidate the various businesses using the water of Asotin Creek. Though there were a number of disputants for the stream, the power company's principal competitors were the Asotin Land and Water Company and the Lewiston Light Company, Ltd. The first had a small irrigation project on a "bench" several miles above Clarkston, but its principal business was delivering water for use in the town of Asotin. The second was a more serious competitor, possessing a diversion dam, water power flume, generating station, and a transmission line to Lewiston. Competition for the stream was partly resolved around 1902 when the power company arranged to acquire control of the other two companies.

Having assumed a much broader role because of the absorption of these other companies and recognizing that its facilities were still not very efficiently organized, the management decided to reorganize the whole firm, raise additional capital and rebuild much of the water and electric systems. As a result a new corporation, the Lewiston-Clarkston Company was formed in 1905. It absorbed the Lewiston Water and Power Company and the Lewiston Light Company, Ltd., served as a holding company for the Asotin Land and Water Company and the newly-formed Clarkston Water Works Company, and continued to manage the separate, but interlocked, bridge company. Additionally a large bond issue was authorized, partially marketed and the construction of new facilities along Asotin Creek were begun.

Construction of a new "high-line" canal in 1906 marked the beginning of a new phase in the history of the company. In contrast to earlier arrangements, the company now possessed facilities of a sophisticated design. The new "flume" consisted of a closed wooden pipe for its upper reaches and, although it followed the same path down Asotin Creek canyon as the original "canal," it was located much higher on the canyon wall; both features which greatly increased the flow and regulatory capacity of the system. As the new "canal" came near the mouth of Asotin Creek canyon, it was tapped and a penstock from it dropped water several hundred feet to a new electric generating station at the foot of the canyon. Another discharge port took off the water needed by the city of Asotin. Then as the pipe headed north, it was tapped again for irrigation water to be used at "Clemen's Addition," a small irrigation project between Asotin and Clarkston. At the far end of the pipe, water discharged into another electric generating plant, the "Pomeroy Station," and was then impounded behind a dam built in a gulch on the edge of the second "bench." From there irrigation water was distributed to the Vineland project located below the reservoir.

The new flume delivered water under sufficient pressure and in such places that it was possible to distribute irrigation water above Vineland and on the second "bench." Consequently the irrigation project was extended there and an additional area of fruitland plots, called Clarkston Heights, was laid out and offered for sale. The new area doubled the size of the original irrigation project. However, Clarkston Heights did not develop into a fruit raising region as quickly as the original Vineland project. Moreover, the company found itself more and more involved in its electricity business, somewhat at the expense of attention to the irrigation project.

After 1906, the electrical department of the Lewiston-Clarkston Company dominated the company as it entered into the competition for the electrification of the eastern Washington-northern Idaho area. Along with two Spokane corporations, the Washington Water Power Company, in which Adams was also an influential stockholder, and the Inland Light and Power Company, the Lewiston-Clarkston Company began to expand outward, taking up the operations of small electric firms and developing water power sites. By 1907, the company owned two hydro-electric stations, a steam plant at Clarkston, the distribution systems in Lewiston and Clarkston, transmission lines to the north and east, and distribution facilities in Lapwai, Idaho and in several small cities of the Palouse country, a northward farming area located above the Snake River canyon. The company also acquired power sites on the Grande Ronde River, located about forty miles to the south of Clarkston; on the Clearwater River, located to the east and even considered damming the Snake River.

The company never built the projected hydro-electric power stations, even though the demand for electricity increased tremendously each year. Instead, it met its customers' needs by buying power from the Washington Water Power Company, while trying to strengthen itself financially. This proved to be an almost insurmountable obstacle. The 1905 bonds had sold at so great a discount that a portion of the authorized bonds were withheld from sale. As a substitute, a patchwork of finances was established by using the unsold bonds to secure commercial paper that was sold to a number of eastern banks. The financial situation finally became so serious that by 1910 another reorganization became necessary.

In some ways the 1910 reorganization was more drastic than the previous one. This time the company could not be re-financed through Adams and his Boston associates, but had to go through Spencer Trask and Co., a New York investment bank. Cecil Barrett, a representative of Spencer Trask, became titular head of the new corporation, the Lewiston-Clarkston Improvement Company, as part of the price of re-financing. E. H. Libby severed his connections with the firm and management was placed into the hands of persons more familiar with electricity than with irrigated land projects.

Differences between the Adams group and the New York group seem to have existed from the start of their relationship. Moreover, the increasing age of many of the Boston investors caused them to think of withdrawing from the enterprise. As a result, just as the company reached its height in the 1910 reorganization, it also began to be taken apart. In a few years, the northern transmission lines and electric franchises were turned over to the Washington Water Power Company. Then the bridge was sold to the public. A half-hearted financing scheme for the Grande Ronde project was begun, then halted. Finally, in 1916, a year after the death of Charles Francis Adams, the electric and water facilities were sold to New York investors who formed a new corporation named the Washington-Idaho Water, Light and Power Company. The Lewiston-Clarkston Improvement Company retained the land holdings in the two irrigation projects, in the city of Clarkston and some unsubdivided land. The Spencer Trask interests then withdrew from the company and Henry Adams 2nd became the most important eastern figure.

The Washington-Idaho Company operated the water and electric system on Asotin Creek only a few years. In 1921, after becoming financially intertwined with two electric companies in southwestern Washington, it became insolvent and was put into receivership. The system was then operated jointly by the Inland Power and Light Company and the Pacific Power and Light Company until 1930 when the Washington Water Power Company acquired the facilities and franchises. The Washington Water Power Company continued to operate the water and irrigation works for a number of years, but finally abandoned them when Clarkston adopted a municipal water system and the demand for irrigation water fell off due to the decline in fruit culture in the valley.

After 1916, the LCIC became a more vigorous real estate sales organization than it had previously been. From about 1918 to the late 1920's it entered into land contract agreements with greater numbers of buyers than at any time since the "boom" at the turn of the century. In this later period its land sales consisted more of residential property than of irrigated land, a result of the appearance of the "automobile suburb" in the Snake River valley. This change in land use was reflected by the company's policy of selling land from the irrigation project area to subdividers and of platting and selling lots in new subdivisions organized by the company. Real estate sales, however, dropped off abruptly in the late 1920's. During the depression years of the 1930's almost no lots were sold and the company's operations became restricted almost totally to commercial farming on unsold land.

By 1940, the company was insolvent and its eastern ownership sold their control to a group of Clarkston people headed by E. A. White, the head of a local fruit warehouse and commission firm. Western interests had increasingly dominated the company since the early 1920s and the reorganization of the company into the Clarkston Community Corporation in 1940 meant no particularly abrupt changes. The Clarkston Community Corporation, in fact, continued the earlier policy of commercial farming and holding land in anticipation of a rise in its value. By the 1950s the demand for land had strengthened and White began to sell the company's holdings. After White's death in 1961, his widow assumed management of the firm, continuing to sell property, usually in large tracts, until 1971 when the remaining land holdings were sold to real estate developers and the firm that had founded the city of Clarkston 75 years earlier wound up its affairs. Subsequently, Mrs. White made arrangements, through the Asotin County Historical Society, to turn over the archives of the company to the Washington State University Library as a permanent record of the company's activities and influence on the history of the two cities at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers.

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Content Description

The records of the Lewiston-Clarkston Improvement Company consist of approximately 150,000 items of correspondence and business records pertaining to real estate, irrigation, water power, transportation, and electricity in the far west.

About one third of the collection consists of Correspondence (Series 1), both incoming and outgoing, reflecting the varying managerial, technical, and financial operations of the company. Much of it relates to efforts at coordinating the intentions of the Boston-based ownership of the company with the operations of the western managers, who often had opposing ideas. The correspondence also contains considerable discussion of technical matters associated with irrigation, electricity, and real estate. In addition this correspondence is of interest as members of the famous Adams family figure so predominantly in it. The correspondence dates from 1893 to 1940, with the bulk of it being from the year 1896 to 1915. Most items for 1917, 1918, 1924, and all for 1933, have been lost. The principal correspondents are Charles Francis Adams, Henry Adams 2nd, Grafton St. L. Abbott, George Bailey, Horace Bowker, Robert Foster, Edgar H. Libby, Bernard Schermerhorn, Elbert Wheeler, and William Wheeler The correspondence series was rearranged upon receipt by the library, due to considerable disruption of the original order.

A second series of records document the "formal" history of the firm (Series 2: Document Files Records). Consisting of incorporation papers, by-laws, minutes, contracts, deeds to property, title abstracts, franchises, legal rulings, reports to public officials, and so forth; these are records of the public and official acts of the company. Called the "document file" by the company, these records were those which were considered the most important of all company records at the time of their creation.

Financial and fiscal records comprise almost one fourth of the total collection (Series 3: Financial Records). A large part of these records is made up of the vouchers which were necessary to keep the eastern and western halves of the company informed of each other's doings. These vouchers, along with the attached bills, receipts, and statements, document an almost day-by-day account of the company's activities, as well as identifying clients, patrons, and other connections made by the company. Unfortunately, the vouchers mainly record expenditures and give little indication of company income. The account books contain records of income, along with most of the expenditures documented in the vouchers, although in the abbreviated form employed in accounting. The financial, or long-term money matters, of the company are documented by the contracts, mortgages, bonding arrangements, and trust agreements included in this series. Records of taxes paid from 1899 to 1906 and during the 1920's and 1930's are also included. An entire sub-series of cancelled checks (1910-1955) was withdrawn as they merely recorded the transference of funds, an activity more thoroughly presented in the vouchers and account books.

The collection features two types of records which document aspects of the social conditions in Washington and Idaho, as well as the history of the company. One, Property Disposal Records (Series 4), records sales of land and water and provides a demographic picture of the population which moved onto the Vineland/Clarkston project. This series is the longest among the records, in terms of time span, ranging from 1896 to 1963. Personnel and Payroll Records (Series 5), similarly contains much gross social data about the area in which the company operated.

Four types of records, each a small proportion of the total, round out the collection. One type, Technical Records (Series 6), contains many descriptions, specifications, and operating instruction for company facilities, as well as a sample of the reports of day-by-day operations. Included is a "partial series" of daily electric generating records that was retained only to illustrate the basis of the summaries and statistical totals. Another type of records are those emanating from promotional and public relations efforts of the company and consist mainly of photographs and descriptive brochures (Series 7: Publicity). Bound Volumes (Series 8) have been separated and cover a variety of subjects, including the myriad of related companies, financial registers, and sales ledgers. Lastly, the records contain a number of maps and engineering drawings describing the land development schemes, plats, bridge, hydrological works, and electric facilities of the Company (Series 9: Maps and Drawings).

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

Copyright restrictions may apply.

Preferred Citation

[Item description]

Lewiston-Clarkston Improvement Company Records, 1888-1963 (Cage 311)

Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

The records are arranged in nine series by record type. Within the major series, the material has been further divided by form and function into sub-series. Within each sub-series the material is in alphabetical, subject or chronological order, as dictated by the nature of the material and the company's previous practices. In general, the arrangement of the material is a refinement of the practices maintained by the company in managing its records.

Custodial History

The Asotin County Historical Society, received the records from Mrs. E. A. White of Clarkston, the last manager of the corporation.

Acquisition Information

The records were donated to the Washington State University Library in July and November, 1973, by the Asotin County Historical Society.

Processing Note

The records were arranged and processed between August and December, 1973, by Lawrence Stark, with assistance from Robert Catale and Jan Brzoska. In conjunction with a major preservation treatment project in 2005, Amy Canfield and Katrina Paxton added descriptive information to the container list for Series 1 and 2 (Correspondence and Document Files).

Bibliography

The Lewiston-Clarkston Improvement Company: a Register of Its Records, 1888-1963, in the Washington State University Library. Pullman, Washington: Washington State University, 1975.

Related Materials

Asotin Land and Water Company Records, 1910-1939 (Cage 163)

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Detailed Description of the Collection

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

  • Electric utilities -- Idaho -- Lewiston -- Records and correspondence.
  • Electric utilities -- Washington (State) -- Asotin County -- Records and correspondence.
  • Electric utilities -- Washington (State) -- Clarkston -- Records and correspondence.
  • Irrigation -- Washington (State) -- Asotin County.
  • Real estate business -- Washington (State) -- Clarkston -- Records and correspondence.

Personal Names

  • White, E. A., -1961.

Corporate Names

  • Lewiston-Clarkston Improvement Company -- Records and correspondence.

Other Creators

  • Personal Names

    • Abbott, Grafton St. L. (creator)
    • Adams, Charles Francis, 1835-1915. (creator)
    • Adams, Henry, 1875-1951. (creator)
    • Bowker, Horace. (creator)
    • Foster, Robert. (creator)
    • Libby, Edgar H. (creator)
    • Schermerhorn, Bernard. (creator)
    • Wheeler, Elbert. (creator)
    • Wheeler, William. (creator)

Finding aid prepared by Finding aid prepared by Lawrence Stark, Robert Catale, Jan Brzoska, Amy Canfield, and Katrina Paxton.
2022

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