Lockley, Fred. "History of the Columbia River Valley, From The Dalles to the Sea." Vol. 3. S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1928. p. 24. LOWELL MASON HIDDEN Migrating to Clark county before the close of the Civil war, Lowell Mason Hidden witnessed Vancouver's growth from a village of three hundred to a city of twenty thousand left the indelible impress of his individuality upon the history of its development, directing his energies into those channels through which flows the greatest and most permanent good to the largest number. A native of Vermont, he was born December 16, 1839, and at the age of six years was bound out to a farmer who agreed to rear and educate him. Being denied the privilege of attending school, he ran away when he was thirteen and obtained employment at another place, where he remained for four years. With his savings he purchased a tract of eighty acres and cleared and developed fifty acres of the farm, on which he raised grain and hay. Mr. Hidden's activities in the west are described as follows by Fred Lockley in the Oregon Journal of January 11, 1924: "A few months before his death I had an interesting talk with L. M. Hidden, who told me of his long residence in Vancouver and of his early experiences in the west. He said: 'I am a native of Orleans county, Vermont, and the only one now living of our family of six children. I left my home in Vermont, November 17, 1863, for San Francisco by way of the isthmus. Yes, the Civil war was going on then, and getting worse all the time, so I thought I would come out west. There were four of us young chaps from Vermont who traveled together. I was twenty-four and the others were about my age. Within a day or so of our landing in San Francisco one of my chums took smallpox and died. I had been there but a week when I came down with the measles. I belonged to a fraternal order back in Vermont, so I sent word to the local lodge. Wadhams, the master of the lodge, came to see me. He visited me every day. Later he was a partner in the firm of Wadhams & Sneath of Portland but at that time he was a member of the firm of Knapp, Wadhams & Grant of San Francisco. They had a commission house at Eighth and Brandon streets, near the gold refinery. "'When I was able J. B. Knapp put me to work at his home. I painted his house and papered it and after that he had me do a lot of work fixing up the grounds. I worked from January 1 until May. Mr. Knapp was later a member of the firm of Knapp & Burrell of Portland. He had a farm on the Columbia river at what is now known as Knappton. He gave me a letter of credit and bought me a ticket for Portland on the steamer St. Louis. The ship was bound for Victoria, so the captain didn't put me off on the trip up, but took me on to Victoria and told me he would land me at Vancouver, Washington, on the down trip. In 1864 hay was selling for sixty dollars a ton. Labor was scarce, owing to the fact that so many able-bodied men were in the army and engaged in killing each other. I was to cut hay, bale it and see that it was shipped to San Francisco. The Columbia I found was at flood stage and all of Mr. Knapp's hay was under water except ten acres. "'I came to Vancouver and landed a job with Gay Hayden, who owned most of Hayden island at that time. He put me to work cutting hay. Mr. Stabler, his son-in-law, had a tract of one hundred and sixty acres on the island and the rest of it was owned by Mr. Hayden. I learned of a fourteen-acre piece of property here in Vancouver that I could buy for twenty-four dollars an acre on account of there being a cloud on the title and later I removed this cloud by paying the Short heirs four hundred dollars to give me a clear title. The property ran north from Thirteenth street to Nineteenth and the city library on Sixteenth street stands just across from it. The property ran about six lots to the acre when the streets were taken out. It is now worth not less than one thousand dollars a lot, so that is not a bad bargain. "'In the spring of 1865 I built a dock where the Spokane, Portland & Seattle railroad bridge is now located. The city hired me to build the dock and Mr. Ginder helped me with the work. When the Fourteenth Regiment reached Vancouver along about 1865 or 1866, the men were landed on the wharf I built. This was about the only use it was ever put to, for before long it rotted away. In the summer of 1865 I went to work putting up hay on Hayden island. In those days people were as honest as they had to be. For example, when a man wanted to fence his place he usually cut his fence rails--by mistake of course--on the land of somebody else, or on government land. I cut four hundred cords of wood that winter and I also got out twenty-seven thousand fence rails. I cut the-rails on a homestead claimed by Mrs. Shockley. She was not living up to the homestead requirements, so my brother, Arthur W. Hidden, later jumped the place. He knew all about fruit growing, which he had studied in Vermont, and decided to raise prunes because they could be shipped dry. On the Shockley homestead he set out a fine orchard in the spring of 1876 and this was probably the first prune ranch in the state of Washington. He had three and a half acres of Italian prunes at what is now the corner of Twenty-sixth and Main streets, a valuable piece of property. "'Late in 1866 I went into the contracting business. I took the contract to put in Vancouver's first water system. I dug a ditch two miles long which passed through the Nye tract. We brought the water from a spring on the Leese place to a reservoir near the garrison. Louie Myers bored the logs that served as water pipes for the city water system. He used sharpened iron rings to connect the ends of the logs. He cut twelve-inch logs into ten-foot lengths and bored them by hand, making a four-inch hole through each log. This primitive water system was used for many years. "'In 1867 I went to the Umpqua valley, where I bought up a lot of oxen at one hundred and fifty dollars a yoke and drove them up to Puget sound, where I sold them in the logging camps for three hundred dollars a yoke. I made big money that season. I sold a good many of them on the streets of Olympia, as the loggers would come in to look for oxen there. At Scottsburg, Oregon, I found a lot of the big steers which were offered at seventy dollars apiece. I could have sold them at four hundred dollars a yoke on the sound, but they were wild as deer and I couldn't drive them away from their home range. "'In 1869 I went back to my old home in Vermont by way of the Central Pacific Railroad. The whole western country was alive with buffalo and antelope. At the little stations I saw wagonloads of antelope brought in by the hunters. They asked a dollar a head for them, if bought singly, and ninety cents if you took the whole wagonload. In the '60s I used to hunt game for the Vancouver and Portland markets in company with my friend, Mr. Lancaster, who was a surveyor. There were large herds of elk and deer east of Vancouver on Fourth plain and thereabouts when the snow was deep in the hills. One winter Lancaster and I went out to kill a wagonload of deer around Battle Ground. I had a muzzle-loading gun that I was very fond of. I shot and killed a deer and tipped up my powder horn to load my gun but found that I had forgotten to fill the powder horn. Lancaster had struck out in one direction and I in another, so when we finally came together at the end of the day he said, "I killed thirteen. How many did you kill?" I said, "Only one." At first he wouldn't believe me, and then I confessed that I had come out with an empty powder horn. "'As I said before, I went back to Craftsbury, Vermont, and on December 22, 1869, I was married to Mary S. Eastman. We came back by way of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific to San Francisco, and from there by steamer to Vancouver. We reached this city in January, 1870, and I at once leased the Pacific Hotel, which we ran for a year. With the money we made in the hotel I bought a place on Main street between Eighth and Ninth streets. The next summer I purchased a two-hundred-acre farm just above the military reservation. It was situated on the Columbia and about one and a half miles from Vancouver. I paid twenty-five hundred dollars for the two hundred acres, which means that the farm cost me twelve and a half dollars an acre. In 1872 Marshall Hathaway bought five acres of my fourteen-acre tract in Vancouver, paying me one thousand dollars for what is today worth over thirty thousand dollars. For over twenty years I ran a brickyard on the first land which I acquired here and made over forty million bricks from this ground. Most of the early-day brick buildings in Vancouver are built from bricks I made. Later I let people dump earth into the holes I had scooped out in making brick, so the land was all filled in again. In the winter of 1886 I took a contract to build the Vancouver, Klickitat & Yakima Railroad and constructed a six-mile stretch running from the St. Johns road to the plank road this side of Battle Ground. Gerlinger was the man who gave me the contract."' Mr. Hidden became president of the road and established it upon a paying basis. He assisted in organizing the Columbia Land & Improvement Company and was chosen as its executive head. This corporation established the Vancouver race track and the first street car line, building it to Vancouver Heights and also to the garrison. Acquiring the city water works plant, the company installed a new system and likewise donated ten acres of land for a creamery site. Mr. Hidden was likewise instrumental in inducing a large machine shop and a pork packing plant to locate in Vancouver, doing everything in his power to "boost" the city and increase its prosperity. He was one of the founders and directors as well as vice president of the First National Bank of Vancouver, which failed during the widespread financial panic of 1893. Later he aided in organizing the United States National Bank of Vancouver and at his death in December, 1923, was serving as its president. His capacity for detail was supplemented by executive ability of a high order, and his energies were focused in directions where fruition was certain. For nearly forty-four years Mr. and Mrs. Hidden journeyed together through life and on October 24, 1913, death deprived him of his beloved wife. She had become the mother of four children : W. Foster and Oliver M., who are successfully conducting the brick manufacturing business established by their father; Mabel Lucy; and Julia, who is Mrs. John W. Todd, of Vancouver, and has a family of four children, John W., Jr., Lowell Mason, Margaret and Mary. In Masonry, Mr. Hidden was connected with the lodge, chapter, commandery and Shrine. He was the recipient of many public trusts and in every instance acquitted himself with dignity, fidelity and efficiency. During the early days he was city surveyor and one of the first things he did after his election was to place monuments at street intersections. For eight years he was a member of the city council÷a period marked by the accomplishment of much constructive work÷and for two years he was one of Clark county's commissioners. His generosity and public spirit prompted him to donate a lot ninety by one hundred feet on Main street as a site for the public library, and he was chosen chairman of the committee of five who erected the library building at a cost of ten thousand dollars. Mr. Hidden had a kindly nature and a clear outlook upon life. To a strong intellect, a resolute will and tireless energy he added modesty, unselfishness, gentleness and true nobility of spirit÷a combination found only in the best and finest natures. His influence for good deepened as he advanced in years and of him it may truly be said: "The world was better for his having lived in it." His funeral services were held in the First Methodist church of Vancouver and were largely attended, the sermon being preached by the Rev. T. E. Elliott, D. D., of Portland. As some of his outstanding characteristics, Dr. Elliott spoke of his industrious habits, his strict economy, his rugged honesty and his simple life, saying that these things combined to make him a valuable citizen; also that he left a record of sixty years of active, useful service to Vancouver, his life being an open book whose influence will be felt for the good of many generations. ******************* Submitted to the Oregon Bios. Project in June 2007 by Diana Smith. Submitter has no additional information about the person(s) or family mentioned above.