United States

Department of

Agriculture

Forest Service

Pacific Northwest

Research Station

General Technical

Report

PNW-GTR-657

February 2006

A Social History of Wild

Huckleberry Harvesting

in the Pacific Northwest

Rebecca T. Richards and Susan J. Alexander
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and employer.

Authors

Rebecca T. Richards is a professor, Department of Sociology, University

of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, and Susan J. Alexander is a research

forester, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest

Research Station, Forestry Sciences Laboratory, 3200 SW Jefferson Way,

Corvallis, OR 97331.

This report contains language and terminology from historical documents

that do not reflect the views or opinion of the USDA Forest Service nor

the authors.

Cover

Woman harvesting huckleberries on the Kootenai National Forest, circa 1940.

Photo by K.D. Swan, USDA Forest Service Northern Region Archives.
Abstract

Richards, Rebecca T.; Alexander, Susan J. 2006. A social history of wild

huckleberry harvesting in the Pacific Northwest. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNWGTR-657. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,

Pacific Northwest Research Station. 113 p.

Once gathered only for subsistence and cultural purposes, wild huckleberries

are now also harvested commercially. Drawing on archival research as well as

harvester and producer interview and survey data, an inventory of North

American wild huckleberry plant genera is presented, and the wild huckleberry harvesting patterns of early Native Americans and nonindigenous

settlers are described. The social, technological, and environmental changes

that gave rise to the commercial industry in the Pacific Northwest by the 1920s

and the industry’s demise after World War II are explained. The resurgence of

the commercial wild huckleberry industry in the mid-1980s and national forest

management issues related to the industry are presented as are possible strategies that land managers could develop to ensure wild huckleberry, wildlife,

and cultural sustainability.

Keywords: Northwest Forest Plan, huckleberry, Vaccinium, berry picking,

Pacific Northwest.
Preface

Support for data collection was provided by the McIntire Stennis Forestry

Research Program through the University of Montana (UM) College of Forestry and Conservation and the National Science Foundation MONTS program

from 1996 to 1998. Additional support for synthesizing these research findings

was provided through the USDA FS Pacific Northwest Forest Research Station

from 2002 to 2004.

We thank the following people for their assistance: Tracy Summerfield,

former UM graduate student, for conducting field interviews; Daniel

Wichman, former UM Bureau of Business Research researcher and Greg

McNally, UM graduate student, for administering the telephone surveys;

Greg McNally for enthusiastic survey data analysis and his ongoing interest

in the project; and Joseph Armetta of the UM Information Technology Office

for digitally reproducing the photographs in this report.

We are especially grateful to Professor Robert Pfister who directed the

Montana Forest and Conservation Experiment Station, and was instrumental

in the initiation of the original project, and to Dean Perry Brown of the University of Montana College of Forestry and Conservation for his support. We also

appreciate the survey administrative and research dissemination support of the

UM Bureau of Business Research. Technical reviews by Don Minore, retired

USFS plant ecologist, Danny Barney, superintendent of the University of

Idaho Research and Extension Center in Sandpoint, Idaho, and Marla Emery,

USFS research geographer of the Northeastern Research Station in Burlington,

Vermont are greatly appreciated. We have incorporated their thoughtful

comments wherever possible and note that the final report reflects our perspectives and not necessarily those of our technical reviewers.

Finally, our heartfelt thanks to all those individuals who have participated

in field interviews and surveys and provided their tools and wisdom over the

last decade. We dedicate this report to those of them who have since joined

the pickers and land managers who have passed on from this life while leaving us their enduring, multicultural legacy of the Pacific Northwest huckleberry patch.
Huckleberry Pie

2 tablespoons flour

3⁄4 cup sugar

3 cups huckleberries, washed carefully

Sift flour and sugar together, add berries and mix well. Pour

into pastry-lined pie tin, moisten edge of dough with water,

cover with top crust and make openings for steam to excape.

Press pastry well over edge and trim. Bake in moderately hot

oven for about 45 minutes or until crust is brown. (If canned

berries are used, measure a scant 1⁄2 cup sugar.)

USDA Forest Service 1954:40 The Lookout Cookbook

Region One.
Contents

1 Chapter 1: What Are Wild Huckleberries?

5 Chapter 2: Early American Wild Huckleberry Gathering

1 1 Chapter 3: The Rise of the Wild Huckleberry Commercial Industry

2 3 Chapter 4: The Great Depression and the Commercial Wild

Huckleberry Industry

4 7 Chapter 5: World War II and the Commercial Wild Huckleberry

Industry Decline

5 7 Chapter 6: Regional Rebound and Commercial Wild Huckleberry

Industry Change

7 3 Chapter 7: Technology and Commercial Wild Huckleberry Industry

Change

8 1 Chapter 8: National Forest Management Issues and the Commercial

Wild Huckleberry Industry

9 4 Metric Equivalents

9 4 References

100 Appendix
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

1

Chapter 1: What Are Wild

Huckleberries?

Wild huckleberries in the Pacific Northwest are members of the Ericaceous

family’s Vaccinium genus. The word “huckleberry” originally referred to the

circumboreal species, Vaccinium myrtillus, which occurs in England, Europe,

and as far north and east as Siberia. According to Henry David Thoreau,

huckleberry appears to be an American word derived originally from “hurtleberry,” a corruption of the Saxon heart-berg or “the hart’s berry.” It was first

used by John Lawson in 1709 to describe berry use in North Carolina where

the hurts, huckleberries or blues of this country are four

sorts.... The Indians get many bushels, and dry them on mats,

whereof they make plumb bread, and many other eatables.

(Thoreau in Dean 2001: 41)

In North America, there are approximately 35 species of Vaccinium, many

of which are known as huckleberries, blueberries, or cranberries. The most

comprehensive taxonomic analysis of the Vaccinium genus in North America

is that of Vander Kloet (1988), whose work serves as the botanical basis for

this report (see app. table 1). The Vaccinium nomenclature has been complicated by the taxonomic difficulty of distinguishing one species from another,

and multiple scientific synonyms for species and hybrids are common. Practically speaking, however, all Vaccinium berries in North America are edible

and pass the Universal Edibility Test of wilderness survival guides. Only V.

arboreum or “farkleberry” is known as “inedible” because of its bitter berries.1

In the East and South, huckleberry often refers to plants in the genus

Gaylussacia, of which at least four species produce edible berries. Gaylussacia

is also an Ericaceous genus; it comprises over 50 species, most of which occur

in mountainous regions of South America.2 Six Gaylussacia species are native

to the Southern and Eastern United States (see app. table 1).

East of the Mississippi River, the confusion created by the number of

Vaccinium species and the related genus of Gaylussacia has complicated

huckleberry terminology, but in the Pacific Northwest, all huckleberries are

1

 “Former Arkansas governor, Frank White, earned the nickname, ‘Governor Farkleberry,’

after emphasizing how as a child, his family was so poor they had to eat farkleberries. Extracts

from the roots, bark and leaves have been used to treat diarrhea.” Flori-Data.

http://www.floridata.com/ref/V/vacc_arb.cfm. (4 August 2003).

2

 NatureServe Explorer Species Index. http://www.natureserve.org/explorer/speciesIndex/

Genus_GAYLUSSACIA_109538_1.htm. (24 July 2003).
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

2

members of the Vaccinium genus (app. table 2). Nevertheless, Vaccinium

taxonomy is complex, and to minimize ambiguity, we refer the reader to the

taxonomy followed by the USDA Germ Plasm Resources Information Network, namely, Vander Kloet’s (1988) The Genus Vaccinium in North America.

According to Vander Kloet’s (1988) classification system, V. globulare cannot

be taxonomically distinguished from V. membranaceum; hence, plants referred

to by others as V. globulare are considered V. membranaceum (Syn. Vander

Kloet 1988). Similarly, V. alaskaense and V. occidentale cannot be taxonomically distinguished from V. ovalifolium and V. uliginosum, respectively (Syn.

Vander Kloet 1988). Given that scientific advances are rapidly occurring at the

molecular level,3

 and taxonomic debate regarding this genus continues, we

review the following historical ecological literature for the various Pacific

Northwest Vaccinium species as cited in the original sources.

Turner (1997) documents that the berries of eight Vaccinium species were

used by the First Nations people in the southern and central regions of the

interior Pacific Northwest British Columbia. Turner’s (1997) list includes V.

caespitosum, V. membranaceum (Syn. Vander Kloet 1988 V. globulare), V.

myrtilloides, V. myrtillus, V. oxycoccus, V. scoparium, V. uliginosum (Syn.

Vander Kloet 1988 V. occindentale), and V. vitis-idaea spp. minor (Syn. Vander

Kloet 1988 V. vitis-idaea) (see app. table 2). Turner notes three additional

Vaccinium species for common edible berries of First Nations people on the

British Columbia coast. These three species include V. ovalifolium (Syn.

Vander Kloet 1988 V. alaskaense),4 V. ovatum, and V. parvifolium. Don Minore

(1972), who has conducted extensive studies of huckleberry ecology in the

Pacific Northwest, has reported that all of these British Columbia species,

minus two species (V. oxycoccus and V. vitis-idaea) plus an additional species

(V. deliciosum),5 are common Vaccinium species in Oregon and Washington

(see app. table 3).

3

 Daniel L. Barney of the University of Idaho claims that he has successfully crossed V.

membranaceum only with V. ovalifolium, V. corymbosum, and V. angustifolium and even then,

only with difficulty and occasional genetic anomalies. In contrast, Barney notes that crosses

within the V. membranaceum “complex” regularly produce viable seed; however, until genetic

fingerprinting can be accomplished, questions regarding Vaccinium taxonomy will remain.

4

V. ovalifolium is found in northern Idaho as well as southern British Columbia but not in

Montana (Martin 1979, Stickney 1972).

5

 According to Szczawinski (1962), V. deliciosum does occur in the subalpine and alpine

zones of the Coastal Range in British Columbia but that “it is a rather problematic species of

intermediate character, and in the opinion of the present author should be treated as a variety

or subspecies of V. caespitosum,” p. 163.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

3

The diversity of Vaccinium species is more limited in western Montana.

Stickney’s (1972) extensive field observations indicate that three species, V.

globulare (which he treats as a separate species from the Syn. Vander Kloet

1988 V. membranaceum),6 V. scoparium, and V. caespitosum, are common and

account for most of the Vaccinium vegetation in western Montana. Daniel L.

Barney reports that the alpine or bog bilberry (V. uliginosum Syn. Vander Kloet

1988 V. occindentale) is also common in northwest Montana and was, and is,

often used by Native Americans (Barney 2004).

Typically, V. membranaceum has been the most important huckleberry

species harvested throughout the Pacific Northwest, although in Oregon and

Washington, V. ovatum berries have been commercially shipped in vast quantities since at least 1948.7

 Typically V. membranaceum or “mountain huckleberry” was the most significant Vaccinium food source for the prehistoric and

historical peoples of southern Oregon, where it grows at altitudes ranging from

1,8008 to 6,000 feet.9 According to both Stickney (1972) and Stark and Baker

6

 Stickney claims that V. membranaceum is a species name “originally used to designate a

Vaccinium from the Cascade Range in the vicinity of the Columbia River Gorge. This name

was applied to a shrub that had flowers that were longer than broad, leaves that were widest

below their midlength with long narrow tapering leaf tips, and had heights up to 6 feet. In

contrast, the name V. globulare was used to designate a Vaccinium in the Northern Rocky

Mountains at Spanish Creek, Montana [note: in the Spanish Peaks area near Bozeman,

Montana]. The distinctive features of this Vaccinium were flowers that were as broad as long,

leaves that were widest above their midlength with bluntly pointed leaf tips, and had heights

up to only 4 feet. Extensive experience in the field indicates that the population of this complex

in western Montana is different from and does not fit the description of the original V.

membranaceum of the Cascade Range... Flowering material that fits the description for V.

membranaceum has yet to be secured from western Montana. ... the overlap in described leaf

characters between these two species is enough to raise uncertainties about verification of V.

membranaceum on a vegetative basis alone. Therefore, I believe that V. membranaceum in

western Montana is scarce and will be found restricted to the more mesic forest stands

probably becoming more frequent in northern Idaho” (Stickney 1972: 3-4).

7

 Kerns et al. (2004) note that “in 1948, the M.E. Mercer Co. shipped more than 350 tons

of V. ovatum berries from the Puget Sound area. By 1959, they were shipping 500 tons

per year, with production in some years as high as 1,000 tons.”

8

 Powell claims that mountain huckleberry are most abundant from 3,000 to 6,000 feet; Daniel

L. Barney reports that he has collected berries in central Oregon at 1,800 feet, and they

commonly fruit in Idaho at 2,000 feet (Barney 2004).

9

“The most significant berry patches in the Rogue Basin occurred east of Butte Falls at Twin

Ponds and north along the western crest of the Cascade Range at Robinson Butte, at Parker

Meadows, at Blue Rock near Gypsy Springs camp and on the headwaters of Wickiup Creek.

The extensive patches at Huckleberry Mountain are the best-known, and once drew Klamath

and the mysterious mountain-dwelling Molala in great numbers. Native Americans have

continued to use the patch to this day. Important patches also thrived at Huckleberry Gap and

Huckleberry Lake on the Rogue-Umpqua Divide, patches which at times may have been

shared with Upper Umpqua tribes spilling over the divide from the South Umpqua drainage”

(Powell 1988: 5).
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

4

(1992), V. globulare (Syn. Vander Kloet 1988 V. membranaceum) is the

most commercially valuable species in western Montana. Thus, the V.

membranaceum/V. globulare complex composes the most important edible

berry species in the Pacific Northwest region, including northern Idaho.10 The

emerging commercial huckleberry industry in British Columbia may well

incorporate other species given the richer diversity of Vaccinium species

throughout that province (Szczawinski 1962, Turner 1997).

10 To add to the Vaccinium species complexity are credible reports of “albino” or white

huckleberries. In 1935, Anderson noted, “this summer I found a small patch of white

huckleberries on Elk Mountain, about ten miles east of Headquarters, Idaho. The patch was

pointed out to me by the lookout, Hub Aiken of Orofino. He told me that he knew of one

other small patch about a quarter of a mile northeast of the lookout and another large patch

near Deadhorse Lookout several miles north of Elk Mountain. Aiken, Bill Walsh, and Bob

Crowe occupied Deadhorse Lookout for approximately twelve consecutive years. Aiken

informed me that it was part of their summer’s routine to can a quart each of white, red, and

blue huckleberries for display purposes at Orofino. Walsh has at least one pint jar of white

huckleberries in his possession. Aiken and Walsh, by the way, are the same men whose names

appeared in Ripley’s ‘Believe It or Not’ feature as having played something over 15,000

games of pinochle against various teams. Their scores at the end of the fifteen thousandth

game was exactly equal the scores of their opponents. There may be some question as to the

authenticity of the pinochle score, but the albino huckleberries do occur on Elk and Deadhorse

Mountains. E.C. Rettig of Potlatch Forest, Inc., told me there are a few bushes near Eureka

Meadows about four miles west of Headquarters. I sent specimens to Dr. Gail, head of the

Botany Department at the University of Idaho. They were the first he had secured for record

and said they were not listed in any of the botanical treatises on Northeastern flora. The

bushes I examined are scattered among those of the red variety. In no case did albino and red

huckleberries occur on the same bush. They were a bit sweeter to the taste perhaps than either

the red or blue variety” Anderson 1935.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

5

Chapter 2: Early American Wild

Huckleberry Gathering

Early New England settlers acquired dried huckleberries and blueberries in

trade from Native American tribes and subsequently learned where, when,

and how to pick them. The most extensive history of huckleberry picking was

first compiled by Henry David Thoreau, who wished to establish that Native

Americans “did not learn the use of these berries from us whites” (Thoreau in

Dean 2001: 46). Thoreau believed that the earliest observation by Whites of

Native American huckleberry use was in 1615 by the explorer Samuel de

Champlain who noticed the Algonquins collecting and drying a small berry

that he called “blue” for winter use. A decade later, in 1624, Gabriel Sagard,

a Franciscan friar, visited the Hurons and wrote:

There is so great a quantity of bluës, which the hurgon call

Ohentaqué...that the savages regularly dry them for the

winter, as we do prunes in the sun, and that serves them for

comfits for the sick. (Thoreau in Dean 2001: 46-47)

Farther south, in New England, the Puritan, Roger Williams, observed in 1643:

Sautaash are these currants [grapes and whortleberries] dried

by the natives, and so preserved all the year, which they beat

to powder and mingle it with their parched meal, and make a

delicious dish which they call Sautauthig, which is as sweet

to them as plum or spice cake is to the English. (Thoreau in

Dean 2001: 47)

A few years later, in 1672, John Josselyn also noted the native use:

...bill berries, two kinds, black and sky colored, which is

more frequent.... The Indians dry them in the sun and sell

them to the English by the bushel, who make use of them

instead of currence, putting them into puddens, both boyled

and baked, and into water gruel. (Thoreau in Dean 2001: 48)

In 1676, according to Thoreau, a certain Captain Church1 encountered a large

group of Native Americans, mostly women, who were gathering “whortleberries” on a plain near what is now New Bedford, Massachusetts. Many of the

1

 Probably Benjamin Church, later a colonel, who, sadly, has been described as “the most

daring and bravest leader among the Colonists in the days of Indian warfare.” Seaconk/

Wampanoag virtual museum. http://www.inphone.com/wampanoag/museum18.html.

(9 August 2003).

Thoreau believed that

the earliest observation by Whites of

Native American

huckleberry use was

in 1615 by the explorer

Samuel de Champlain

who noticed the

Algonquins collecting and drying a small

berry that he called

“blue” for winter use.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

6

women fled, some throwing away their baskets and berries, as Church killed

some and took prisoner 66 of them (Thoreau 2001: 48).

In New France, Father Rasles, who compiled a dictionary of the Abenaki

Language in 1691,2

 reported that one Abenaki word referred to fresh blueberries (Satar) and another to dry ones (Sakisatar), and the words for July translated as “when the blueberries are ripe.” Farther west, Father Hennepin3 wrote

in 1697 that the Naudowessi near the falls of St. Anthony, Minnesota, enjoyed

wild rice seasoned with blueberries that “they dry in the sun during the summer, and which are as good as raisins of Corinth” (Thoreau in Dean 2001: 48).

Later, in 1743, while traveling through the wilds of Pennyslvania and New

York to Lake Ontario, the naturalist John Bartram reported how he

...found an Indian squaw drying huckleberries. This is done

by setting four forked sticks in the ground, about three or four

feet high, then others across, over them the stalks of our

common Facea or Sarantula, on these lie the berries, as malt

is spread on the hair cloth over the kiln. Underneath she had

kindled a smoke fire, which one of her children was tending.

(Thoreau in Dean 2001: 49)

By 1852, noted Thoreau, Owens had published his Geological Survey of

Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota,4 in which he noted the species Vaccinium

pennsylvanicum (Lam.)5 and its distribution in the

...barrens on the upper St. Croix. This is the common Huckleberry, associated with the characteristic growth of the Pinus

banksiana, covering its sandy ridges with a verdant under

2

 Father Sebastien Rasles, an early Jesuit priest among the Abenakis in early Canada’s “New

France.” Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook-Abenaki people. http://www.cowasuck.org/

missions.htm. (9 August 2003).

3

 Father Louis Hennepin, a Reformed Franciscan priest and the historian of LaSalle’s first

expedition to find the source of the Mississippi in 1678. University of Virginia’s library

exhibition of maps and navigational instruments. http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/

lewis_clark/exploring/ch2-8.html. (9 August 2003).

4

 David Dale Owen was a geologist with the Indiana Geological Survey who conducted a

survey of the Chippewa Land District of Wisconsin in 1847. American Philosophical Society

William Stanton’s American scientific exploration, 1803-1860. http://www.amphilsoc.org/

library/guides/stanton/4549.htm. (9 August 2003).

5

 Syn. Vander Kloet (1988) for V. angustifolium.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

7

growth, and an unsurpassed luxuriance of fruit. By the

Indians these are collected and smoke-dried in great quantities, and in this form constitute an agreeable article of food.

(Thoreau in Dean 2001: 49)

From his research, Thoreau thus concluded that

...from time immemorial down to the present day, all over the

northern part of America, (Indians) have made far more

extensive use of the whortleberry at all seasons and in various ways than we, and that they were far more important to

them than to us. (Thoreau in Dean 2001: 49)

Poignantly, Thoreau also noted that

...the last Indian of Nantucket, who died a few years ago,

was very properly represented in a painting which I saw there

with a basket full of huckleberries in his hand, as if to hint at

the employment of his last days. I trust that I may not outlive

the last of the huckleberries. (Thoreau in Dean 2001: 50)

Thoreau’s claims about the primacy of huckleberries and blueberries as a

major Native American food source are substantiated in the journals of Lewis

and Clark who found tribes west of the Rocky Mountains using dried berries

extensively in 1805 and 1806:

This morning I arose very early and as hungry as a wolf. I

had eaten nothing yesterday except one scant meal of the

flour and berries, except the dried cakes of berries, which

did not appear to satisfy my appetite as they appeared to do

those of my Indian friends. I found on inquiry of McNeal that

we had only about two pounds of flour remaining. This I

directed him to divide into two equal parts and to cook the

one half this morning in a kind of pudding with the berries

as he had done yesterday, and reserve the balance for the

evening. On this new-fashioned pudding four of us breakfasted, giving a pretty good allowance also to the chief, who

declared it the best thing he had tasted for a long time.6

6

 Captain Meriwether Lewis on reaching the Shoshone Tribe and the Great Divide,

15 August 1805 (cited in Bakeless 1964).
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

8

Northwest tribes made special combs of wood or salmon backbones to

strip huckleberries and blueberries off the bushes (Derig and Fuller 2001,

Turner 1997). They dried the berries in the sun or smoked them and then

mashed them into cakes and wrapped these in leaves or bark for storage. In

1868, Robert Brown wrote that great numbers of huckleberry cakes would be

drying on roofs and platforms “supervised by some ancient hag, whose hands

and arms are dyed pink with them” (Derig and Fuller 2001: 68). Women or

their families often “owned” the berry grounds, and all the fields were named

with trails connecting them (Derig and Fuller 2001).7

 One of the four seasonal

first fruits celebrations for the Nez Perce and Chinook tribes was September,

which was berry month.

Fisher (1997) recounts the Yakama first-foods, berry celebration that

preceded the harvesting of huckleberries. Special people were selected for the

first gathering of berries based on their unique skills and intimate knowledge

of the plant. These ceremonial leaders prayed and fasted to ensure the tribe’s

success in the year’s huckleberry harvest. Once the group had returned, a feast

was held for the first picking and only after this feast of thanks could the rest

of the tribe begin their family’s berry gathering (Fisher 1997). Tribal people

would then leave for the berry fields,8

 where they stayed as late as midOctober, much to the chagrin of the early missionaries. Henry Brewer of the

Mount Adams Mission in Washington reported that

...the absence of our Indian converts so long a time during

the berry season being surrounded as they are by every

possible bad example, and separated from the watchful care

of their teachers, in many cases proves very injurious to their

piety. (Derig and Fuller 2001: 68-69)

7

 Powell (1988) cites the ethnographer Leslie Spier’s observations in 1925-26 that “the

huckleberry patch some fifteen miles southwest of Crater Lake (called iwumkani, huckleberry

place, iwum, huckleberry) is a favorite camping place. Here, Molala from west of the Cascade

Range join them (the Klamath). Williamson River people (aukckni) on Klamath marsh cross

directly westward to this spot afoot.” Located at the headwaters of Union Creek, Huckleberry

Mountain was reached by a “deeply rutted trail worn by generations of Native Americans, as

they dragged their families and possessions up the hill,” p. 5.

8

 Similar traditional wi’wnu’ or big huckleberry ceremonial practices are described for today’s

Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in the Shaw and Jensen 1997 video.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

9

This was echoed in 1843 by Methodist missionary Henry Perkins who

described berry season as

...one great holy-day for the Indians, who preferred to spend

their summer Sundays in the meadows of “Indian Heaven”

instead of listening to sermons that promised a Christian

paradise. (Fisher 1997: 191)

Despite the labor of berry picking, the Mid-Columbia tribes viewed berry

season as the “ideal season” when they could relax before fall fishing and

winterizing their villages. The weather was cooler and food was abundant;

moreover, the “huckleberry harvest provided opportunities to visit with

relatives and other people from a wide variety of tribes” (Fisher 1997: 191).

Fisher (2002) recounts that Native Americans throughout the midColumbia plateau moved in response to the shift in prime picking locations,

but that the Twin Buttes area near Mount Adams historically remained a

central berry-picking and gathering spot for people from many different

villages and linguistic groups. Huckleberries and other traditional foods were

valued so highly that the four plateau treaties contained virtually identical

clauses guaranteeing tribes “the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places, in common with the citizens of the Territory... together with

the privilege of hunting, gathering roots and berries, and pasturing their horses

and cattle upon open and unclaimed lands” (Fisher 2002: 294).

Early settlers in the West also came to rely on huckleberries, especially in

northern Idaho and western Montana where the winters are long and the

gardening season short (fig. 1). Madeline Rost Utter recalls her father’s early

homesteading days along the Swan River in western Montana in the 1890s as

...having to scrabble a living by hunting the timbered area

and fishing the nearby stream. Gardening was limited...

potatoes to go with fish and to make lefse; rutabagas for a

venison mulligan. Fruit was scarce, just wild berries to

supplement a monotonous diet. (Utter 1993: 31)

...Native Americans

throughout the midColumbia plateau

moved in response

to the shift in prime

picking locations,...

the Twin Buttes area

near Mount Adams

historically remained

a central berry-picking

and gathering spot for

people from many

different villages and

linguistic groups.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

10

However, whereas the Native Americans traditionally dried their berries for

storage, White settlers typically canned them,9

 first for home use and later, in

large camps for commercial sale. By the end of the 19th century, huckleberry

picking was about to fundamentally change in both social practice and social

meaning. As Fisher (1997) noted, where the dried berries of the Native Americans created a raisin-like product that transported easily and kept indefinitely,

by the late 1930s, the gradual adoption of canning with White settlement

combined to end traditional berry gathering and drying on public land (Fisher

1997: 190).

9

 “Mollie,” who was about 88 when interviewed in 1996, recalls growing up in Evaro,

Montana, when her family relied solely on huckleberries as their only fruit. They could not

afford the amounts of sugar necessary to can the berries so they dried them “like raisins.”

When she went out to pick, she would take bread with butter and a little sugar as her lunch

and then fill the empty “sandwich” with huckleberries. “Mollie” interview notes, 1996.

Figure 1—On the Kaniksu National Forest, circa 1940. “Mother and daughter picking

huckleberries, Priest Lake District.”

 J. Russell Dahl, USDA Forest Service, Northern Region Archives
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

11

Chapter 3: The Rise of the Wild

Huckleberry Commercial Industry

As a food preservation process, canning was critical to the socioeconomic

shift in wild huckleberry gathering from a household and tribal subsistence

activity at the end of the 19th century to a large-scale commercial industry by

the mid-1920s. Understanding this shift in the 20th century thus depends on

appreciating the rapid and unprecedented evolution of canning technology in

the 19th century.

Canning first developed in the late 1700s when Emperor Napoleon

Bonaparte was faced with feeding the emaciated French soldiers in retreat

from his disastrous winter Russian invasion. Napoleon offered a cash prize

to the person who could develop a reliable method of food preservation

quickly. A French confectioner, Nicholas Appert, had envisioned a method

of preserving food, like wine, in bottles. Within 14 years, he had developed

an oenophilically (the study of wines) inspired process by which food was

cooked in open kettles, packed into glass jars, and enclosed with corks and

wire. The jars were then submerged in boiling water to seal them. Without

realizing it, Appert was sterilizing the jar contents and inhibiting bacterial

spoilage.1

An Englishman, Peter Durand, advanced Appert’s process by developing a

transit-safe method of sealing food in unbreakable tin-plated steel containers.

Durand’s process was refined by Bryan Dorkin and John Hall, who established

the first commercial canning factory in England in 1813. People in Britain

soon began eating “embalmed meat.” The emerging canning industry rapidly

expanded with the European colonial empires and industrialization. Canned

food meant that global armies could now be supplied with reliable rations and

growing cities could predictably feed a new urban workforce (see footnote 1).

With the rapid expansion of the American frontier, safe and convenient

preservation of food became increasingly important. An English immigrant,

Thomas Kensett, established the first U.S. canning facility for oysters, meats,

fruits, and vegetables in New York in 1812. He was followed by William

Underwood, who established a canning plant in Boston in 1828 for vegetables, fruits, and condiments.2

 The Civil War soon established a significant

1

 Food Reference Website. http://www.foodreference.com/html/artcanninghistory.html.

(21 July 2003).

2

 National Food Processors Association. http://www.safefood.org/history.html.

(4 August 2003).

Canning first developed in the late

1700s when Emperor

Napoleon Bonaparte

was faced with feeding the emaciated

French soldiers in

retreat from his

disastrous winter

Russian invasion.

...Bryan Dorkin

and John Hall,...

established the first

commercial canning

factory in England

in 1813.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

12

commercial canning industry in supplying army food requisitions. By 1875,

industry improvements in canning foods allowed Gustavus Swift and P.D.

Armour to establish Chicago meatpacking plants, a key development in

accelerating the settlement of the American West (Harper and LeBeau 2003).

However, commercially canned goods were difficult to transport and

expensive to buy, particularly for remote rural settlers. Moreover, 19th-century

American household demand outstripped the industry’s ability to supply

canned goods. For example, canned condensed milk did not receive a patent

until 1856; sardines were not packed in cans until 1875; and because of

corrosion problems, canned citrus juice was not shipped from Florida until

as late as 1921.3

The technological and logistic constraints of the commercial canning

industry made developing a reliable and inexpensive means of home canning

a major business opportunity. The winter supply of fruits and vegetables in a

rural household depended on preserving what the family could grow or gather,

and existing preservation methods such as drying or salting were subject to

bacterial contamination. The soldered metal tops developed for commercial

canning inhibited spoilage, but soldering tops was not a feasible means of

preventing spoilage for the homemaker at the household level. The American

tinsmith, John Landis Mason, solved this sealing problem by creating a glass

canning jar with a threaded top. The threaded-top jar allowed a zinc cap with

porcelain lining to be screwed down on a rubber gasket to form an airtight

seal. On November 30, 1858, Mason received a patent for his “Mason jar”

mold. The date of that patent appeared on canning jars for the next threequarters of a century.4

Mason eventually sold his canning jar patent rights to the Consolidated

Fruit Jar Company, which soon monopolized the market. However, Consolidated relied on individual glassblowers to produce the jars from Mason’s mold

and other companies to produce the porcelain-lined lid. In 1888, the Ball

Brothers Corporation entered the market by not only making their own lids but

also by producing a fully automatic machine for making the canning jars. Ball

quickly came to dominate the home canning market. Consolidated went out of

business, and Mason eventually died a charity patient in New York having

earned nothing from his jar patent since the 1880s (see footnote 4).

3

 History of the can. http://www.qbyv.com/history_of_can.htm. (21 July 2003).

4

 American National Biography online. http://www.anb.org/articles/10/10-02258-article.html.

(21 July 2003).

The technological and

logistic constraints

of the commercial

canning industry

made developing

a reliable and

inexpensive means of

home canning a major

business opportunity.

November 30, 1858,

Mason received a

patent for his “Mason

jar” mold. The date

of that patent appeared on canning

jars for the next threequarters of a century.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

13

With the invention of the Mason jar and the efficiency of the Ball Corporation’s jar and lid distribution system, home canning rapidly expanded because

of the pressing need of rural families to preserve their own food safely and

cheaply. Because Mason canning jars could be reused, the method was

relatively inexpensive since an initial investment in jars, lids, and rubber

gaskets would be repaid over a period of successive canning seasons.5 However, it was not a fool-proof method, and bacterial contamination remained a

common problem.6 7 8

As Madeline Rost Utter recalls, home canning was an important household survival strategy for rural families in the Swan River Valley of western

Montana by the early 1900s:

Mother counted on canning hundreds of quarts to have

enough food to last over the winter. We all helped. My

specialty seemed to be washing jars! The produce was picked

early in the morning then prepared for canning in a hot water

bath. I remember a “boiler” full of jars on the Home Comfort

cook stove all afternoon on a hot day. The wood stove was

5

 Powell (1988) records that at southern Oregon’s Huckleberry Mountain, each campsite

grew busy with caring for the berries after dinner: “After they were washed and cleaned,

campers would boil the berries in kettles over a campfire before hot-packing them in heatsterilized Mason jars. Garrett says her mother always canned at least three cases of quarts

and a case of jelly each season. Hollenbeak recalls his mother canning up to seventy-five

half-gallon Ball jars with the screw-on lid and separate rubber gasket,” p. 8.

6

 The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Cooperative Extension Service began promoting safe

home canning methods and issued its first formal instructions in Farmer’s Bulletin 359

“Canning Vegetables in the Home” in 1909. National Center for Home Food Preservation.

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/usda/review/content.htm. (21 July 2003).

7 Habits of two western Montana women of this period. Edna Cox McCann claims that she

never canned “garden stuff” because her husband “didn’t trust that home-canned garden

stuff... And I don’t know as I trusted it too much either, because there was too much talk

along about then, about people getting that poisoning. And a lot of them did do their canning,

but were a lot that didn’t...(T)here was (educational programs) and you could get booklets on

it (canning safety). But we really didn’t have these pressure cookers and that kind of thing,

you know. We used a boiler and put your jars in a boiler and all that. We had a lot of fruit

canned all the time. Jellies and jams and syrup and we always had plenty to eat.” Edna G. Cox

McCann interview transcript, 1983. Montana Historical Society. This is in sharp contrast to

Dorris Huffine, who was born in Iowa in 1901 and began working in Glacier Park in 1925.

According to Dorris’ friends, “Some of her clothes were older than she was. She served wine

that she made from huckleberries picked fifty years earlier. And some of the mold-covered,

home-canned food in her root cellar belonged in her museum... ‘We’ve got huckleberries on

hand now that we dried in the ‘30s,’ Doris would say. ‘Any dried fruit if it doesn’t mold or if

the bugs don’t get into it too bad is good forever.’” (Fraley 1998).

8

 Powell (1988) notes that huckleberry pickers in southern Oregon also found that “in the

earlier days, canning jars were harder to come by and settlers used old tin cans, beer bottles

and other miscellaneous containers in which to preserve what they’d picked, sealing the

containers with wax,” p. 8.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

14

stoked with long sticks jutting out into the room that had

been brought from the back pasture as we were all out of cut

firewood. As they burned, the sticks were pushed in. (Utter

1993: 35)

Store records of the Browning Mercantile Company in Montana reflect

the extent to which rural settlers in the area relied on home canning for

winter survival. Records show the purchase of “2 dozen Economy Fruit Jars

Quarts, 2 dozen Economy Fruit Jars, Pints, and 3 Dozen Tops for Same” from

the Kalispell Mercantile Company on 30 June 1914. On 18 October 1923, the

Kalispell Mercantile Company asked if they could substitute “the Ball Mason

jars with the zinc caps” for “one-quarter gross regular Kerr quart jars” since

they “were out.” 9

Historical records indicate that early settlers did not gather huckleberries

exclusively for home use but also sold them both fresh and canned. Ruth

McKay recalls growing up in a ranger station in the Cabinet Mountains of

western Montana. In 1918, she said:

There was no indoor plumbing and we carried the water to

the ranger station from a creek on the north... The stove may

have been a Monarch. It had a water reservoir on the right

end as you faced it; the firebox, on the left. On washdays,

mother heated water in the boiler on top of the stove. This

boiler also served as a canner...My brother, Stanley, and

sometimes my father, hunted. Dad had a 30-30 they used to

kill deer. Mother canned the venison in quart jars, processing

for several hours a boiler full of jars, immersed in water.

Vegetables, too, were canned this way. The kitchen stove

kept the headquarters hot on summer days...We had a big

garden and we all worked in it. A lot of the produce was

canned and what wasn’t was stored in the root cellar or

buried... In summertime, we went berrying. We picked

raspberries and blackcaps for eating fresh and for jam. We

raised strawberries, and there were wild ones, too. Huckleberries were plentiful. Mother picked and canned gallons of

them. Using them for pies, sauce, and other ways. We sold

what we could.... (Vanek 1991a: 143-144)

 9 Browning Mercantile Company Correspondence. Montana Historical Society.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

15

Long-time Flathead Valley resident Ethel Beller remembers that “from

1900 and for several years after people were allowed three deer apiece.

Pioneers camped in the mountains and canned and sold all the mountain

huckleberries they wished” (Beller 1956: 23).10 This reflects the common

practice of residents taking lengthy berry-picking “working vacations” in the

mountains of northwestern Montana during the huckleberry season, especially

during the period from 1900 through 1925. In 1920, a social announcement in

the Sanders County Independent Ledger proclaimed that:

Mrs. J.H. Bauer and the Lux family went on a huckleberry

picking excursion on Bull River last week where they picked

32 gallons of huckleberries. Huckleberries are plentiful this

year and several Thompson (Falls) parties will spend next

week in the mountains to secure their share of these delicious

berries. (Sanders County Independent Ledger 1920: 7)

During the pre-1926 period, huckleberry outings not only provided settlers

with easily available, nutritious,11 and cheap fruit that they could preserve for

winter, but they also offered young people a legitimate courting opportunity.

10 Alice Hamilton traveled the Huckleberry Mountain trail from Klamath Falls to the headwaters of Union Creek in southern Oregon in 1890 at age 7 and subsequently each year for 77

years. In 1908, a local paper estimated that “40,000 gallons had been picked that season at

Huckleberry Mountain.” The “Huckleberry Patch” there was estimated as covering over

46,000 acres and by 1916, William (Bill) Sims had established a camp at the top of Huckleberry Mountain with 30 saddle horses and pack mules to meet “all parties” at the foot of the

mountain, which was about 4 miles from the berries. Sims also employed men to “stay at the

foot of the mountain to repair and guard automobiles of all parties picking huckleberries”

(Helfrich 1968).

11 The nutritional importance of western huckleberry has been reinforced by a 2001 USDA

Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems grant entitled “Western Vaccinium Species

as Sources of Functional Foods in Managed Cropping Systems Project (Grant Number:

2001-52102-11294) at the University of Idaho and Washington State University that notes:

“Vaccinium species (blueberries, cranberries, and bilberries) are sources of anthocyanins and

other bioactive compounds. Most research has focused on species native to Europe and

eastern North America. Because they often grow in rugged, isolated areas, most species native

to western North America have received scant research. While the species are not presently

endangered, the extent and productivity of some have been adversely affected by fire and

forest management practices. As logging and road building on public land decreased, access to

some species became restricted. Pending federal policies have the potential to further impede

access to millions of acres of prime Vaccinium habitat, thereby endangering opportunities to

conduct research in the future. This project will evaluate 12 western Vaccinium species for the

presence of bioactive compounds. The species will also be evaluated for their potential as

crops in managed naturally occurring stands and cultivated fields. The information from this

project will be packaged for easy distribution to food processors, farmers, forest managers,

and regulatory agencies. Application of the data will enhance economic development in rural

areas dependent on forest resources by serving as a model for evaluating and developing

sustainable non-timber forest products.” USDA Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food

Systems. http://www.csrees.usda.gov/ifafs/2001/program12_01.htm. (9 August 2003).
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

16

Mona Vanek’s (1991a) history of the Cabinet Mountain region is liberally

illustrated with old family photographs of huckleberry “picnics” from the

1920s with such captions as:

Millard Easter, Mary Easter and sweetheart, Al Younker, take a

lunch break during fishing and huckleberrying trip on the

North Fork near Cabinet Idaho. Combining work and pleasure was a popular form of courting in western Montana and

Idaho (p 108).

and

Lunch time. Mary Easter and sweetheart, Al Younker, and her

brother on huckleberrying and fishing party on the North

Fork near Cabinet Idaho (p 108).

Moreover, huckleberry gathering provided a unique opportunity for White

settlers to interact with local tribal people (fig. 2). As early settler Edna

McCann of Trout Creek recalls from this era:

And then huckleberry season we always would put in, well,

we’d make a kind of picnic out of it. We’d take three or four

days, get enough huckleberries for winter and make it kind of

a picnic out of it, too... We’d go to Silver Butte, that was a

good place for huckleberries then or go up Trout Creek, either

place. You know, the Indians that’d come down from the

Figure 2—On the Kaniksu National Forest, 1939. “Keno Creek, Bonners

Ferry District; typical Indian family camp for the huckleberry picker.”

J. Russell Dahl in 1939. USDA Forest Service, NorthernRegion Archives
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

17

(Flathead) Reservation, there’d be a whole big bunch of

them’d come at a time and camp for a week. Up on Silver

Butte picking huckleberries. I always talked to ‘em. Always

did and I always got along good with them. Always got along

good—some of them I would even recognize when they’d

come back the next year... They had their favorite spots and

they camped and no one ever bothered anyone else, but the

mountains were full of them ... and that’s something you

never see anymore. I don’t know if they even come down

after huckleberries anymore, I never see ‘em. 12

Similarly, early Trout Creek resident Charlie Knutson recalls:

Children were fascinated by the Indians traveling through.

Indians camped east of Pilgrim Creek. There’s a little flat spot

in there and that’s where they used to camp. They always had

a big herd of horses when they came in there. Us small kids

used to go up there and watch them ride in that left over

orchard there. They come during huckleberry season and

picked huckleberries and killed game there too. ...(Vanek

1991a: 167)

Lanky Jamison, who was about 15 years younger than Charlie, also recalls the

arrival of Native Americans in the Cabinets during the huckleberry season:

During the early 1920s, up until about 1925, bands of up to

100 Indians came through Noxon, traveling from Washington

to Arlee and back. They’d camp behind the Noxon railroad

depot on the flats between the railroad track and Marion’s

island. Along where Ethel Bartholomew later had her pig

pens. Squaws put two poles behind the horses to form a

travois. They moved early in the morning, stopping to make

camp during the heat of the day. (Vanek 1991a: 167)

According to a long-time Heron, Montana, resident, “Nels,” who was

interviewed in 1996, tribal people would “follow the old Pend‘Oreille Indian

trail” and only camp in the area because they “wouldn’t stay in this country.

They called it ‘fever country.’”13

12 Edna G. Cox McCann interview transcript, 1983. Montana Historical Society.

13 Presumably they were referring to Rocky Mountain tick fever, which is endemic to western

Montana. “Nels” interview notes, 1996.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

18

Thus, early huckleberry picking was not only an important subsistence

activity for Western settlers but also one that provided significant sociocultural

encounters with Native American residents. In addition, several of these

accounts also note that settlers “sold what berries they could.” The earliest

record of the commercial sale of huckleberries in Montana is a response to the

Browning Mercantile Company’s inquiry about huckleberries on August 11,

1926, by the Kalispell Mercantile Company:

Replying to your inquiry of the 10th. In regard to huckleberries, all say that we have been getting in huckleberries every

few days and the quality has been very good. We can not say

how long they will last but if you see fit to give us an order

we will do our best to take care of it. For your information

will say that the price has been 23¢ per lb. F.O.B. Kalispell.

(see footnote 9)

The commercial sale of huckleberries in western Montana was thus clearly

occurring by the mid-1920s. It is not surprising given the exceptionally

unpredictable and short gardening season that made growing domesticated

fruit difficult.

Home canning was limited to household gathering and processing. However, the new Napoleonic canning technology now made fruit mass processing

possible—and hence the opportunity for mass production or harvesting. Mass

processing of cultivated fruit was already well-established in the Pacific

Northwest thanks to the fruit canneries, but mass processing of wild huckleberries was an unlikely enterprise. Who would invest in a crop that was

unpredictable, had no clear market “brand,” and no labor force ready to

harvest it? By the early 1920s, those risks were about to change and the

commercial huckleberry industry would be first established, surprisingly

given market distance, not west but east of the Cascades in Montana.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

19

In Montana, even more so than in the balmier regions of the Pacific

Northwest, fruit production on a commercial scale was limited to strawberries

in the Swan River Valley (Utter 1993), apples in the Bitterroot Valley,14 and

cherries in the Flathead Valley.15 The development of the fruit industry in

Montana was a historical precondition for the subsequent development of

the commercial huckleberry industry because a cannery infrastructure was

a necessary prerequisite for processing wild harvested berries. Two canneries

in the region, one in Hamilton and the other in Kalispell, had been built to

process apples and cherries, respectively. Because their supplies were very

seasonally limited and their shipping costs were high, it is likely that the two

canneries seized on wild huckleberries as an additional product that they could

process and market. The competitiveness of the industry for huckleberries is

revealed in an August 29, 1938, letter from Ora A. Miller, manager of the

Flathead Canning Company in Kalispell, to Harrison J. Freebourn, the Montana Attorney General in Helena. Miller had visited the Attorney General’s

office in Helena earlier on August 19 for advice on

...the proper course of action to take in obtaining the necessary evidence to prosecute a case of apparent violation of

the “Unfair Trades Practices Act” regarding the sale of Glacier

Park Brand huckleberries made by the Kalispell Wholesale

Grocery Company to a local Kalispell merchant. Invoice from

that sale was dated July 19 and quoted Glacier Park Brand

14 Between 1900 and 1925, land promoters in the Bitterroot Valley created a real estate “apple

boom” scheme to sell valley land to out-of-the-area settlers. At the time, the demand for fresh

apples exceeded supply, and at one point, the apple boom was so great that growers had

trouble getting enough railroad cars to ship the apples out of the valley. The Bitterroot apples

also developed scale, and blight sometimes killed the trees. When the last apples were sent

East they were rejected, and the shipping bill had to be paid by the grower. Other localities,

especially Wenatchee, found they could grow apples of an equal or better quality than those of

the Bitterroot. By 1930, most of the orchards went out of business. Some Bitterroot Memories

1860-1930: A Homey Account of the Florence Community:

12-13.

15 In 1929, the Robbin brothers of Kalispell planted 700 sweet cherry trees on land west of

Flathead Lake. The next year eight Polson men further established the Flathead cherry

industry when they planted several hundred more cherry trees along the east shore of Flathead

Lake. By 1960, there were two marketing organizations for the sweet cherries grown in the

area: The Flathead Lake Cherry Growers, Inc. at Kalispell and the Flathead Sweet Cherries

Association at Polson. Of the annual cherry crop, 80 percent was marketed through the

Kalispell plant and 20 percent through the Polson plant. By 1960, during the latter part of

July, when the packing season is at its peak, 150 people were employed at the Polson plant

and warehouse, and 400 people were employed in the orchards. Unlike the Bitterroot apple

boom that went “bust,” the Flathead cherry industry has continued successfully. See The

Reservation Pioneers, Inc., 1962 and Fugelberg 1997.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

20

Huckleberries at $2.10 per dozen #2 cans or $.30 below the

actual price of $2.40 paid to the Flathead Canning Company

by the Kalispell Wholesale Grocery Company.16

The advantages of huckleberries for the local canning industry were

considerable. Huckleberries ripened between the cherry and apple seasons

so they could be used to sustain the summer cannery operations with fewer

interruptions. They were also freely available since they grew largely on

national forests where they could be picked under the Forest Service’s freeuse policy rather than being produced on privately owned and operated

orchards.17 Huckleberries preserved well and only required sugar for sweetening. In short, they were a cheap and readily available commodity. Moreover, several centuries of American familiarity with huckleberries made them

marketable to a wide range of consumers, particularly as the berries were

increasingly associated with Glacier National Park.18

16 Central Trades and Labor Council correspondence. Montana Historical Society.

17 In 1933, Helmers observed: “All of the many highways, road, and trails radiating from

Kellogg, Osburn, Wallace, and Mullan, regardless of the progress of construction and

maintenance, are deep with dust during the huckleberry season. This economic activity is not

confined to local residents, but hundreds from Spokane and vicinity have made berry picking

a Sunday outing, as well as a business during the week. I have had the pleasure of seeing cars

loaded with crates, pails, and particularly 5-gallon oil cans, come rattling into their favorite

camps and in a few days return, loaded with the finest wild fruit that grows in our locality.

Many get their supplies for home consumption; to others the berries bring a few extra dollars.

Spirits are high with anticipation upon entering, and all return the same way. Garden truckers

from Spokane and vicinity often barter their produce for berries and load both ways. What

free use or public service offers as much? The fisherman enters all hopped up, but ah! How

different he may return! Fisherman’s luck! The hunter annually oils his gun. His hopes, like

those of the fisherman, are keyed to a high pitch. The thrill for him is the first sight, or

possible shot, at big game. Time (often valuable) and, during inclement weather, a heavy cash

outlay are always involved. If he is fortunate he may bring home a few pounds of meat. The

heads, of course, are more highly prized by those who go mainly for the sport of it. I have a

reason to believe each big game animal is worth $50.00 per head in any locality, for the

business man, the packer, guide, gas and oil sales, et cetera. The deer estimate for 1932 on this

district was 125, or a total asset of $6,250. Our annual huckleberry crop requires practically

no other investment than that usually available, and brings large returns. Wild life, free use

wood, or what have you, is no comparison with the berry crop.”

18 “Our townspeople and surrounding farmers are perhaps the heaviest users as fisherman,

picnickers, hunters and berrypickers. Completion of the Roosevelt Highway, and of the

Going-to-the-Sun Highway through Glacier Park has very greatly increased the travel through

the north end of the Forest. A noticeable increase is also apparent in the number

of out of-the-State repeaters who visit the lodges or resorts” (Wiles 1936).
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

21

Commercially canning huckleberries profitably, however, was not without

costs. Huckleberry gathering is a labor-intensive process that requires long

and tedious hours. In addition, the most productive patches are typically

located on the very physically demanding terrain of steep, northeastern slopes

at subalpine elevations (see Abbott 1933, Martin 1979). To maximize production over the course of the berry season, pickers would have to pay transportation and camping costs in order to gather enough berries to make commercial

harvesting profitable. Thousands of pounds of berries had to be found, picked,

processed, and delivered efficiently to make commercial production viable.

Finally, commercially canning huckleberries, especially many miles away, was

a viable, but not necessarily the only, processing means for the self-sufficient

population of the region. Berries could also be shipped for resale fresh and

then bought and canned or used at home. By the early 1930s, unique factors

conjoined to make huckleberry harvesting a new forest industry with a diverse

market in the inland Pacific Northwest.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

22
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

23

Chapter 4: The Great Depression

and the Commercial Wild Huckleberry

Industry

For commercial wild huckleberry production to prove profitable in the Pacific

Northwest, huckleberries had to be first located and then gathered in large

quantities. In general, huckleberry distribution and productivity are influenced

by the occurrence and frequency of wildfire. In Oregon and Washington,

Minore (1972) found that large fields of huckleberries were once maintained

by repeated natural and Native American-induced fires, and in the absence of

those fires, other plant species became dominant. Fisher (1997) describes this

use of fire as integral to the Yakama people’s reverence for, and dependence

on, the huckleberry:

Before returning to the river valleys for the winter, Yakama

women periodically fired the subalpine meadows to prevent

the growth of trees. The precise methods and patterns of

aboriginal burning remain poorly understood, but ethnographic research has clearly established the aims of anthropogenic fire. In addition to creating open areas conducive to

early successional plants like huckleberry, intentional burning

and natural fires produced zones of increased natural productivity (ecotones) that drew deer and elk within range and

furnished fresh pasture for Indian horses. Without regular

burning, the berry fields would gradually shrink as subalpine

forest recolonized the clearings. Setting fire to the meadows

thus became one of the Yakamas’ obligations to wiwnu. As

Shaikut Nie explained in 1929, “This is what makes berries...

While our forefathers were here they took care of everything.” Fifty years later, Yakama elder Hazel Miller still

remembered the wisdom of her ancestors. “God told people

to burn the forest and the huckleberries would grow,” she

declared, “so people has [sic] been doing this ever since. This

is what my old people told me.” (Fisher 1997: 192)

In Montana, Miller (1977) found that spring fires increased huckleberry

stem numbers as high duff and soil moisture protected the rhizomes from heat.

The eastern species of lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) quickly

multiplies after fire primarily because of the stimulative effects of the nutrients
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

24

released in the ash. In general, however, western Vaccinium species do not

recover from fire as quickly as their eastern counterparts. They generally

benefit more from the later increase in light and decrease in other plant competition as a result of wildfires than from changes in nutrient levels (Martin

1979). For these reasons, the massive wildfires in the region in 1910 initially

curtailed huckleberry production. However, two decades later, the 1910 fires

had produced the open canopy and deep humus on which the berries thrive.

Thus, by 1928, hundreds of new, highly productive huckleberry acres had

been created by the Great Burn of 1910, especially on the Cabinet, Kootenai,

Kaniksu, Coeur d’Alene, and Flathead National Forests of the Northern

Region.1

Moreover, new Forest Service roads constructed for fire prevention after

1910 made transportation to the most productive subalpine huckleberry

patches feasible:

In 1930 the road was started up Jack’s Gulch south of Heron.

This road was constructed primarily for fire protection, but

has considerably more than paid for itself in benefits to the

local community. In 1933 County Agent Armeling, figuring

huckleberries at 25¢ a gallon, estimated that the road had

more than paid for itself in 1931 and 1932 through huckleberries brought over it. ...In 1933 the Minton Peak road was

built up to the Idaho-Montana line. Since them [sic] the Coeur

d’Alene Forest Service has constructed roads so that it is

entirely practical to drive this way from Huckleberry Mines

on Rock Creek has been freighted over this road which is

heavily used in summer by berry pickers [sic]. (Cited in

Kujath 1976)

By 1928, the stock market had collapsed and with it, the region’s timber

and mining industries. Suddenly, experienced huckleberry pickers were

1

 “Huckleberries are playing a part in the Kootenai activities, especially in the West Fisher

drainage. This area is a 1910 burn with much reproduction and down timber and huckleberry

brush abounding with huckleberries in season” (Bealey 1936; see also Martin 1979). The

Northern Region comprises 25 million acres including forests and grasslands in Washington,

Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

By 1928, the stock

market had collapsed

and with it, the region’s timber and

mining industries.

Suddenly, experienced huckleberry

pickers were available

because of the Great

Depression and a

shortage of jobs.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

25

available because of the Great Depression and a shortage of jobs.2 Having

grown up picnicking and courting on huckleberry campouts, unemployed

men as well as women and children were now willing to pick huckleberries

throughout the region on a commercial basis.3

 A.H. Abbott (1933), a district

ranger on the Cabinet National Forest, noted the rapid growth in commercial

berry harvesting:

Huckleberries are getting to be a major crop. The existing

depression has stimulated this local industry, which by reason

of extension of motorways, has been increasing rapidly in

size. The value of huckleberries gathered on the Cabinet last

year alone considerably exceeded the total grazing, special

use and timber receipts for several years past. A conservative

estimate based on Ranger Duvendack’s knowledge, plus

shipping reports, plus local merchants’ statements, plus statements of men engaged in the work, places the 1932 harvested crop on the Noxon District alone of the Cabinet and

adjoining territory along the Cabinet-Coeur d’Alene boundary in excess of fifty thousand gallons. And that does not

include the large amounts gathered from other favored spots

as for example, Vermillion River, or along the Cabinet-St. Joe

boundary, heads of Beaver Creek, White Pine, Prospect

Creek, etc.

The new road up Jack’s Gulch and along the Cabinet-Coeur

d’Alene boundary is a fair sample of what the situation now

is. Actual count showed over 100 cars one day and it is

estimated that from 30 to 40 cars per day were parked along

the road. Similar use may be expected along the new road

2

 Fisher (1997: 200-201) explains that before the stock market crash, only a few hundred

non-Native American local residents or recreationists visited the Twin Buttes country near

Mount Adams every huckleberry season as a holiday focused on fruit for home consumption.

However, from 1931 to 1934, this “trickle of tourists became a torrent of” nearly seven

thousand jobless whites who “poured” into the mountains during the 1931 huckleberry

season... Most were “transients” from across the West who had flocked to the Yakima Valley

in search of work in the fruit orchards, but not having found work available and lacking the

money to return home, began picking huckleberries in the mountains. In 1931, these transient

pickers gathered over 60,000 gallons that were generally sold for $.50 a gallon.

3

 A retired Forest Service ranger, “Paul,” interviewed in 1996, recalled that many people who

picked huckleberries commercially in the Swan River region were farmers who had lost their

eastern Montana farms. “Paul” interview notes, 1996.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

26

between the Cabinet and St. Joe, for this road is readily

accessible to Mullan, Wallace, and numerous small towns.

Huckleberries from the Cabinet sold in Missoula for prices

from 60¢ to $1.00 per gallon and were peddled locally for

50¢ up. The price paid by wholesale merchants dropped to as

low as 22¢ per gallon, which price, however, made a fair

day’s wages. Many people engaged in the work to earn

money, many more for home use. (Abbott 1933)

Abbott went on to emphasize that the monetary scale of the industry

merited more Forest Service attention to managing the harvest, at least on the

Cabinet National Forest:

The huckleberry crop also opens up a field of inquiry as to

values involved. Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure. Let’s

figure. Assuming the conservative estimate of a sixty-thousand gallon crop for the Forest valued at 40¢ per gallon

equals a crop of $24,000, capitalized at 6 percent gives a

$400,000 value for berries only. Practically all the huckleberry area is in alpine or Zone 3—(See S-Management Plans

Forest Zoning 1-11-33). Add your recreation values and

watershed values and the “despised and rejected of man”

Zone 5 may take on values warranting a high degree of fire

protection. Huckleberry areas seemingly would warrant

inclusion in the so-called “Master Land Use Plan” predominant priority. Better stop before Moyer Wolff wants Special

Use fees. (Abbott 1933)

Not to be outdone, E.F. Helmers responded with figures from the

Coeur d’Alene National Forest:

Abbott, in his article of March 21, says figures don’t lie, but

liars can figure. We will not be outclassed, so here goes. The

combined population in this district, comprising Kellogg,

Osburn, Wallace, Burke, and Mullan, is approximately

16,000. It is also reasonable that 500 Washington cars entered

during the 20 to 30-day harvest, with an average of four

people, or a total of approximately 2,000. It seems conservative to state that one-third of the local 16,000 harvested

berries, while all Washingtonians entered with a single purpose. This would cause a grand total of approximately 7500
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

27

in round numbers. That total number surely averaged

two gallons per person for the season, or a total of 15,000

gallons.

I know of one family living on a ranch in Bear Creek that

harvested over 200 gallons, and, in addition, made 20 gallons

of wine (not over 3.2, so I am told).4

 Many, of course, went

for the pleasure of the trip and only to meet their immediate

need. There were hundreds of young men, as well as the

more mature, picking up this available pin money.

The highest market value noted was 75¢ and the lowest 30¢.

Many made very satisfactory wages in the early season; later,

competition became keen. Assuming an average of 50¢ per

gallon would give a yield of $7,500.00.

Our free use business in 1932 on this district was estimated at

5,000 cords at 25¢ or a total of $1,250.00. The free use is an

estimate as well as the number of people picking and the

number of gallons harvested. If it is possible to accept one

estimate you are obliged to accept the other.

There were no closed roads on this district last year. During

1931 permits were required for approximately one month.

Two lightning fires were reported to us by berry pickers

during that year. In both instances the parties returned and

helped in the suppression. Last year one picker left a camp

fire. Costs were $2.40 with a fine of $15.00. One smoker’s

fire was unquestionably caused by a berry harvester.

We have loudly acclaimed our free use business in the press,

over Station KHQ, and in other ways. The value of huckleberries was not overlooked and received notable attention.

Abbott and Hammatt have caused us to see this new deal. We

are now eagerly awaiting a new and better crop, when a more

intensive study will be made than in the past. It seems to be

good business to herald such discoveries, particularly at the

present time, because forestry in general is now getting the

4

 Presumably this is a reference to Prohibition and limitations on home-brewed alcohol.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

28

greatest boost in its history from our President. We can and

should make the most of it while the opportunity exists.

(Helmers 1933)

Indeed, the regional assistant forester, R.F. Hammatt strongly supported

maximizing huckleberry free use and supporting the new commercial

industry:

Abbott, Fitting, and Helmers have sent us some interesting

and rather startling information about huckleberries. It seems

that this delectable berry provides a source of income that can

hardly be overlooked (particularly in these days), by our local

communities or by the Forest Service.

Just how startling this huckleberry business is (for it is a

business), we do not yet know, with certainty. But in an

attempt to find out, in part and approximately, the writer

presents a few figures. These figures, compiled by various

Supervisors, are estimates. But they are estimates based on

facts; estimates which the field men say are decidedly conservative.

Figures of yield are for a few Forests only; they refer to what

might be termed the “concentration” areas only; they do not

in any sense represent an attempt even to approximate the

total yield of huckleberries from the Forests listed. Values are

figured at 25¢ per gallon, the lowest recorded price paid to

pickers in 1932.5

Forest Picked Value to picker6

 Gallons Dollars

Cabinet 60,000 15,000

Pend Oreille 90,000 22,500

Kaniksu 33,000 8,250

Kootenai 48,000 12,000

Flathead 20,000 5,000

Total 251,000 62,750

5

We calculate this rate to be equivalent to $3.36 adjusted to 2003 dollars.

6

 We calculate the forest value to picker to be equivalent to $201,460, $302,190, $110,800,

$161,170, and $67,150 adjusted to 2003 dollars, respectively—as Don Minore notes, “a

fortune” for the time albeit collective.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

29

It is interesting to compare value (to the picker, not the

wholesale or retail market value) of the berry crop with gross

receipts. Here is that comparison for three Forests. (This is

being written from Washington and figures of gross receipts

from other Forests are not before me.)

Huckleberries Gross receipts

Forest Picked Value to Picker F.Y. 19327

Gallons – – – – – – Dollars – – – – – –

Cabinet 60,000 15,000 2,766.55

Pend Oreille 90,000 22,500 4,252.71

Kaniksu 33,000 8,250 17,222.49

Totals 183,000 45,750 24,241.75

Several interesting bits of information have come to light for

example:

The “high land” huckleberry sells on the market at very

nearly twice the price of the Pacific Coast berry. Labor-saving

devices have already made their appearance. Witness the new

“beater” by means of which there are gathered 50 gallons per

day (as against 5 gallons by hand, and 12 to 15 gallons by

use of the “scoop”), when berries are ripe. The lowly blanket,

by means of which berries formerly were cleaned, is superseded in modern usage by a series of wire bottomed (parallel

pieces of stove wire) troughs set on an incline, by means of

which berries may be graded for size while they are being

cleaned.

Then there is the stump rancher who quit one of our road

crews when the berry season began and “cleaned up”

$400.00 in two months8

; the storekeeper who (in 1931) sold

4,200 cases of fresh berries for cash which totaled $9,450.00

(prices were higher than in 1932)9; the cold storage outfit in

Spokane which has available a “four-and-one” combination

of berries and sugar, frozen, which makes a pie infinitely

superior to the canned berries from the Coast.

7

 We calculate the gross receipts to be equivalent to $37,149, $59,121, $231,280, and

$325,550 adjusted to 2003 dollars, respectively.

8

 $400 in 2 months or $5,372 adjusted to 2003 dollars.

9

 $9,450 or $125,920 adjusted to 2003 dollars.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

30

Getting into the realm of speculation, one might wonder if on

these “concentration” areas our policy of land management

should lay stress on the growing of timber or if huckleberries

may be the more profitable crop. In fact there are so many

interesting angles that it might be well, before another season

rolls around, to get a better basis than we now have for

figures on yield (from “concentration” areas), on the number

of people who harvest this Forest crop and a more definite

check, perhaps, on the fact (or what now seems to be a fact)

that huckleberry areas are not, despite the human concentration, a serious fire hazard. (Hammatt 1933a)

The “labor saving devices” that Hammatt referred to were essential to the

industry’s efficiency. To make labor-intensive harvesting profitable, huckleberry pickers and contractors had developed specialized huckleberry harvesting technology. Historical records indicate that the first commercial huckleberry contractor as well as the “father” of this new technology was the gyppo

logger in Noxon, Montana, Clifford Weare.

Weare was a long-time resident of Noxon and a logging camp operator in

the Bull River valley. According to Weare’s papers, in 1925, he and John

McKay (another long-time resident of the area) began selling huckleberries

by advertising them in the Butte Miner newspaper at $1.10 a gallon delivered

rail express in a 4-gallon, 30-pound box.10 According to his papers, Weare had

apparently designed mechanical huckleberry pickers and a simple but effective method to clean them by the gallons, but patenting fees had kept him

from securing a patent on these inventions (Vanek 1991b: 187-193) (fig. 3).

He records that 1926 was a “fairly good year” for berries because he had

shipped 134 boxes totaling 4,530 pounds of fresh picked and cleaned huckleberries to 37 customers. Weare had purchased readymade 30-pound boxes

from the Coeur d’Alene Box and Manufacturing Company for shipping

berries.11 These individual shipments ranged from a single 30-pound box

to a shipment of 565 pounds that was bought by Inland Products, Spokane,

a major buyer that purchased a total of 2,292 pounds in 1 month. Most

10 Heron buyer “Nels” also remembered the then-populous mining city of Butte as a large

market for his rail shipment of huckleberries. “Nels” interview notes, 1996.

11 “Nels” also remembers buying readymade berry crates from Coeur d’Alene.

Historical records

indicate that the first

commercial huckleberry contractor as

well as the “father” of

this new technology

was the gyppo logger

in Noxon, Montana,

Clifford Weare.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

31

individual berry orders to Weare were from Montana buyers in Butte as wellas

in Helena, Bozeman, Livingston, Missoula, and Whitehall (Vanek 1991b: 187-

193).12

Weare’s success did not go unnoticed by other huckleberry industry

promoters in the region. In 1926, a certain A. Holstein sent Weare a business

proposition to “hit the huckleberry game for every cent there is in it this year.”

His scheme was to

...maybe fix up a road up Dry Creek, throw up a log cabin or

two on the mountain. There are lots of good looking laborers

here at all times and if there is a bumper crop of berries in

prospect, I would like to help connect the laborers with the

berries and the berries with the market until we sell that whole

mountain. We can give the laborers the best paying job they

ever had and the merchants the best fruit they ever handled

and still have something left for our trouble. What do you

say? (Vanek 1991b: 187-193)

12 “Nels” and Joe Dobravek both remember large shipments of Heron huckleberries made to

White Sulphur Springs as well. “Nels” interview notes, 1996; Joe Dobravek interview tape,

1983. Montana Historical Society.

Figure 3—Handmade huckleberry “pickers” circa 1932 in the Libby Museum Collection, Libby, Montana.

Rebecca T. Richards in 1996
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

32

Weare apparently did not need encouraging since he remained a major

huckleberry labor contractor and operator throughout the 1930s as a Depression era berry camp photograph caption indicates:

Elmer Kurwitz (shown), another member of the Minton

Peak huckleberry camp, 1938-39. Berries were hauled to

Weare’s Station where they were cleaned and packaged for

shipment.13

Weare was undoubtedly the earliest but not the only huckleberry industry

innovator. By the early 1930s, mechanical berry picking and cleaning technology was common in the commercial camps. The picking technology first

involved canvas “beaters” that were broomsticks and a hoop covered with

canvas as noted by forester W.W. Larson:

Commercial huckleberry picking on the Coeur d’Alene Forest

has developed into a sizable business each summer. We consider it of sufficient importance that range allotments do not

allow stock to drive or graze in the recognized berry patches.

A number of crude, improvised pickers are used to gather the

berries. Some strip the berries from the bushes, others beat

them off into canvas aprons. Some thrash the berries from the

brush into blankets and a little hand picking is done. The

most common method is beating. A wire baton covered with

canvas or heavy cloth, changed frequently, is used to beat the

berries from the brush into a canvas apron, fashioned into the

shape of a huge scoop. There always is a large amount of

leaves and fine twigs gathered with the berries. In most

instances, the berries, leaves, and twigs are carried to camp,

where they are cleaned by various methods. (Larson 1936)

“Beater berries” often produced more juice than berries and were ultimately more difficult to clean and to market.14 In the late 1930s, a Heron,

Montana, buyer named Ralph Fleming developed improved picking technology. Fleming was a Montana huckleberry operator who contracted pickers and

operated a processing and shipping “house” for huckleberries at the Northern

Pacific Railroad’s Heron siding.15 His new “picker” was created from an oil

can.16 These cans had welded tines that allowed the picker to rake berries off

13 Loren “Lanky” Jamison photographs in Vanek 1991b: 198.

14 “Carl and Nora” interview notes, 1996.

15 Joe Dobravek interview tape, 1983. Montana Historical Society.

16 “Nels” interview notes, 1996.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

33

the bush from where they rolled directly into the can. Fleming’s “picker” may

have been modeled on earlier Native American combs such as those described

by Turner (1997). The newly invented picker yielded a firmer, cleaner berry,

but in general, it was viewed as less efficient than the previous “beater”

technology:

In 1932, the Flathead National Forest (not including the

Blackfeet) estimated that 20,000 gallons of huckleberries

were picked on the Forest. At that time there was a debate

over whether or not huckleberries in some areas of the Forest

might be a more profitable use of the land than timber. By the

early 1930s labor-saving devices for commercial huckleberry

picking had been developed, such as a beater that gathered

50 gallons a day versus 5 (gallons a day) by hand or 12-15

(gallons a day) by scooper, and a new cleaner that used wirebottom troughs, replacing the blanket. (McKay 1994)

The last segment of this observation indicates how huckleberry processing

technology had evolved from Weare’s original but unpatented berry cleaner, a

sluice-box like chute or trough that allowed the berries to roll down an incline,

thereby dislodging leaves, stems, and twigs (fig. 4). By 1933, huckleberry

technology was in full use in the huckleberry camps as W.W. Larson reported:

Figure 4—Fleming-style huckleberry cleaner, Libby, Montana.

Rebecca T. Richards in 1996
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

34

One man made a table, similar to the agitators used in the

mines, the table top approximately five-feet-by-eight-feet,

with thin strips about six inches apart laid lengthwise, and

guards on three edges. The table slopes two ways. Berries

are poured on the table at the upper corner and run over the

ripples, which catch the crushed berries, leaves and twigs.

The firm, round berries go over into the container. One of the

best cleaners and graders is the chute. A long strip of canvas

or carpet is strung on poles and set on an incline. A catch

basin is placed to allow about 16 inches to two feet between

the canvas and the basin. The berries are poured in at the top

of the chute and the incline regulates the speed at which they

roll, the largest and firmest berries rolling the farthest, with the

leaves twigs and crushed berries just making the space

between the chute and the catch basin.

The berries are graded for size, quality, cleanliness and

ripeness, the large berries being classed as No. 1. In practice,

the No. 1 are supposed to be hand-picked and sorted, although some pickers can run their berries over the chute and

defy the layman to tell the difference. Only the best berries

are picked. Very little time is spent in patches that most of us

would consider very good.

The berries are put on the market in pint-size paper containers

and in various sized crates. The price paid for picking ranges

from 25¢ to 60¢ per gallon. The market price reaches $1.00

per gallon.

Coolers are provided by some of the pickers to protect the

berries until they go to market and the marketing truck has

especially constructed ice boxes.

The average person thinks of berries in terms of gallons; the

berry contractor uses the term “tons.” I was asked by one

picker where he could find a good berry patch. He said he

had to have ten tons to fill his contract. I tried not to look

too simple. Within an hour another picker told me he was

shipping 1,500 pounds twice a week, and he had to average

21 gallons per picker to make money. A little mental figuring

proved both of them were within reason.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

35

One day’s check in 1934 showed 84 cars parked along a tenmile stretch of the divide road, all belonging to berrypickers.

One day’s check in 1935 showed 92 cars in 17 miles of the

divide road.

A beginning has been made to provide campgrounds for the

pickers’ use. However this has it’s [its] drawback, since the

berry camps move with the available supplies of berries.

(Larson 1936)

The original Weare cleaner that Larson describes was perfected a few

years later by Ralph Fleming. Fleming substituted very fine wire for the

canvas, burlap, or planks in the original Weare cleaner trough (see footnote

16). Long-time Bull River Valley resident, John Pilik, recalled that during the

Depression

... there were about 300 berry pickers on the mountain

behind (my) home in the Bull River valley. Most picking was

done by hand and with home made mechanical pickers. It

took 14 hours to pick five gallons by hand but when the

Weare picker-cleaner was invented, five gallons could be

picked in about 30 minutes... some berries were squeezed

and their juice sold to customers back east. (Miss 1994)

Other observers also commented on the degree to which the new, emerging huckleberry industry depended on harvesting and processing technology:

Huckleberries are the number 1 forest crop in this group of

minor products... Sometimes they are harvested on a commercial basis. On the main divide south of Thompson Falls,

Montana, I saw an operator with a special machine for sorting

and fanning. A crew of pickers gathered the berries and

brought them to the sorter in backpack cans. A power blower

fanned out the leaves, the berries were sorted and sized on

screen shakers and then put into wooden crates or flats and

loaded in a covered, iced truck for hauling to the city.

(Simpson and Jackman 1967: 215-217)

The new technology was not only increasing the efficiency and yield of

harvesting and processing berries but also becoming a cultural icon for regional identity as a Depression era huckleberry picker, “Carl,” recalled in an

interview in 1996:
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

36

People in the camp used pickers. Claude Sterner’s grandfather, Tom Appleby, made a picker out of knitting needles

which had a spring to them (better than the ones used today, I

think). When my brother died recently, they buried him with

flowers on top of his casket in the picker.

Carl then brought out an old picker carved from wood, including tines,

attached to a tin-snipped oil can. On the back of the picker was an inscription

that read that it had been made by Carl’s father in 1937.17

Despite the advances in technological efficiency, the remoteness of the

most productive huckleberry patches continued to make transportation of

berries to market a challenge. Once picked, huckleberries had to be transported, usually for processing and always for shipping or delivery. Often, the

berries were trucked directly to urban markets, mainly Spokane, Washington,

or Missoula, Montana, for resale or for processing. Frequently, however, berries were directly trucked or shipped by rail to the canneries in Hamilton18 19

or Kalispell.

20 21 In the Noxon and Heron areas in the Cabinet Mountains,

direct rail links made it possible to ship berries to markets outside the region.

Berries were reportedly shipped by rail as far away as Saint Paul, Minnesota.

22

A long-time Heron resident, “Nels,” was born in 1912 and worked as

a commercial huckleberry picker at the beginning of the Depression era.

Initially, he would pick 25 gallons a day and sometimes sell to the neighbors

at 50 cents a gallon. Subsequently, he became a buyer and shipper. Nels

described a typical day of commercial picking during the 1930s:

17 “Carl and Nora” interview notes, 1996.

18 “Each August, the Wayletts would move up to Lake Creek on the West Fisher River. There

the Indians would gather to pick huckleberries. There would be as many as 400 Indians,

including children. The Wayletts bought the huckleberries for $.39 a gallon, and with their

cousins, loaded them on an old truck, and took them to a cannery in Hamilton” (Libby

Montana Institute of the Arts Writers Group, Inc. 1985).

19 In 1937 and 1938, “Carl and Nora” were paid $.35 per gallon for huckleberries they picked

from the West Fisher River camps on the Kootenai National Forest. The buyer was Robert

Burtch from Dixon, Montana. Burtch bought berries directly from the camps and then sold

them to the cannery in Hamilton. It appears that several buyers were actively competing for

pickers’ berries, but the primary market for them was the Hamilton cannery

(“Carl and Nora” interview notes, 1996).

20 Correspondence of the Central Trades and Labor Council. Montana Historical Society.

21 Hutchinson 1942.

22 Joe Dobravek interview tape, 1983. Montana Historical Society.

Despite the advances

in technological efficiency, the remoteness of the most

productive huckleberry patches

continued to make

transportation of

berries to market a

challenge.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

37

In the morning, the pickers would attach berry boxes, which

were plywood frames with partitions and pack straps, to their

backs. They would then hike up the mountains with the

frames, pick berries, dump them into the box frames, and then

haul the berries back to camp. From camp, the pickers would

then set the berries along the road with their nametags. I

would then make my daily run up the mountain, collect the

boxes, haul them back down the mountain to the processing

house where the berries would then be cleaned. I hired people

to clean the berries and used a trough with a burlap covered

bottom through which the berries would roll. Once the berries

had been cleaned, I weighed them and paid the pickers the

next day or later. The cleaned berries were then packed by

workers into lined paper flats or crates that held 2 to 2 1/2

gallons of berries. I estimate that each crate was worth about

$5. These crates, which I bought in Coeur d’Alene, were then

placed in express carts in the rail mail car for the daily pickup.

I shipped about 3 mail carts of huckleberry crates out of

Heron every day. Pickers in the mountain camp worked seven

days a week (see footnote 16).

Market demands, job shortages, long hours, and the general isolation and

mountain environment made huckleberry camps difficult work places (fig. 5).

Nels noted that

The huckleberry season would start around the Fourth of July

and go until the snow fell. Water had to be packed in and

food was scarce on the Divide. We ate a lot of blue grouse.

We used rocks or clubs to kill them and then we skin and fry

them.

Forest Service rangers also noticed the harsh huckleberry camp conditions,

none perhaps more vivid than A.H. Abbott:

The berry picking is contract work. The pickers sell their

berries to market contractors, who set the picking price and

berry grades. The gyppo pickers are usually family groups of

one or two older people and several youngsters. The largest

group last season was 23 colored people, seven adults and the

rest under 18 years. Generally speaking, the pickers are folks
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

38

in hard straits. They come up to the berry patches in automobile “wrecks” and one marvels that they maneuvered them to

the top of the mountain. The gasoline supply is figured out, so

many miles per gallon, without respect for Old Man Mountain, and it is quite common to find pickers walking back to

camp, out of gas.

Their camps, set up near the best available berry patches are

open-air, dusty, wind-blown affairs, and cooking is done over

open fires. One exception is the camp of the colored people.

They built huts of pinegrass and beargrass woven between

willows, wire and small poles, with rooms partitioned off.

They add a building to the camp each year.

Camp sanitation is bad. Water is hauled either by the pickers

themselves, or by the main gyppo at the time he collects the

berries for market.

The pickers wear nearly worn-out clothes. The brush is dirty,

the road dusty. The berries stain and the open camps add to

the cause, and some of the pickers look like tough customers

as they come in from the berry patches. (Abbott 1933)

Figure 5—Huckleberry camp at Keno Creek, Bonners Ferry District, Kaniksu National

Forest. “Typical Indian Family Camp for the Huckleberry Pickers,” circa 1940.

J. Russell Dahl. USDA, Forest Service, Northern Region Archives
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

39

Despite the harsh conditions, records indicate that payoffs for huckleberry

pickers and buyers were considerable for the time. The local McKay clan in

the Cabinet Mountain region were active and creative buyers, as a photograph

of Bob McKay in an area huckleberry camp attests:

Maurice McKay paid his way through four years of college

during the great depression with funds earned from picking

and marketing huckleberries. He devised transportation to

Spokane customers in an old car. Coupled with his unique

marketing strategy of picking up all unsold berries from the

merchants he dealt with as soon as they lost freshness, he

then sold them at a discount to pie companies.23

The entrepreneurial huckleberry spirit was not confined to local residents

only. In August 1935, the Sanders County Independent Ledger observed:

The huckleberry grounds of Sanders county are so rich and

prolific that every year hundreds from outside points camp

and pick berries in the forest, besides giving employment to a

great many local people who also desire to pick berries.

However, this year a large group of colored people coming all

the way from Seattle, estimated at about 25 in number, are

camped on the Montana-Idaho divide picking huckleberries.

This area embraces partly the Kaniksu, Coeur d’Alene and

Cabinet forests. They are about 12 miles out of Heron, where

they have erected brush huts for shelter.24

By the 1930s, the commercial huckleberry industry was a major, if not the

major, national forest “free use” of the time. Forest managers of the time also

believed that the industry was creating forest management problems, especially wildfire hazards. Reflecting the perspective of Forest Service personnel

at the time, R.F. Hammatt observed:

23 Ruth McKay Tauscher photographs in Vanek 1991b: 199.

24 According to observers, this unusual occurrence had a logical regional explanation: “In the

same general area (the main divide south of Thompson Falls, Montana), a group of twenty or

more Negroes were picking huckleberries for delivery to the Dining Car Service of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Many of them were dining car employees, their families and friends

combining a mountain vacation with an income” (Simpson and Jackman 1967: 215-217).
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

40

Art Abbott’s article “Huckleberry Pie and Closed Roads”

reminds me that on another Forest, not so far removed from

the Cabinet, is said to have closed its motorways into some of

the best of the huckleberry country last year. Repercussions

from this action were heard from many quarters. Rumors

have been heard of the vast huckleberry crop that was left to

rot, “on the vine,” as it were.

In view of Abbott’s experiences in 1932, are we justified in

closing motorways (in a season that is, admittedly, not a bad

fire season) to keep out huckleberry pickers? Should we,

except under serious fire conditions, perhaps, deliberately

deprive local people and communities from a source of

revenue (and recreation) such as that which Art calls forcibly

to our attention? Is there another side to the picture? If so,

let’s have it. (Hammatt 1933b)

B.A. Bealey responded with a somewhat more tempered view that on the

Kootenai National Forest:

Huckleberries are playing a part in the Kootenai activities,

especially in the West Fisher drainage. This area is a 1910

burn with much reproduction and down timber and huckleberry brush abounding with huckleberries in season.

A few figures were gathered during the past season [note:

1935] and are presented here. An average of 175 people used

the area for a period of 3,903 man-days. This does not

include those who came in only for a day’s picking or small

picnic parties, but represents those who camped in the area.

Many family groups camp in the area for extended periods

and pick berries by contract for the buyers. The rate paid last

year was 50 cents per gallon at the patch. This activity usually

extends for a period of from six to eight weeks. The commercial pickers, by the use of various devices for picking, gather

from eight to twelve gallons of berries per day. These they

sort, clean, and grade in the evenings. In addition to the

commercial pickers, there are many who come in for a day’s

picking for their own use or make week-end parties, picking

for the family use only. From these we have no check as to

quantities picked. However, assuming that the average day’s
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

41

picking would be five gallons per person for all concerned,

which is a conservative estimate, there would be 19,515

gallons of berries picked at 50 cents per gallon at the patch,

which would make $9,747.50 earned by this group of people.

Sheep grazing in this area has been restricted so as to maintain the berry crop.

For the most part, the people who pick berries are those of

“hard-up” circumstances. They come in all kinds of old cars.

Some bring burros to carry the berries from the patches to

the camp, where they are sorted, graded, cleaned and packed.

Most of the pickers sell to buyers who come to the camp for

the purpose of buying up the berries and hauling them to

town markets. Last fall two buyers experimented with canning the berries right at the camp. The Lake Creek Camp is

the central point, where about 100 people stay. Towards the

end of the season, when the berries became too soft to stand

transportation well, these two buyers set up an improvised

cannery, cooking the berries in large open kettles over an

open fire and then sealing them in regulation tin cans. The

buyers reported that they made more on the berries by

having them already canned for the consumer. The experiment seemed to work well, and I expect to receive application

for a special-use permit to establish a small cannery. Others

have talked of making application for permit to put up a small

store and bakery to supply the pickers.

In all, it is a lively little industry while it lasts and presents its

problems in the way of fire hazards, campground improvements, sanitation, etc. All manner of gambling goes on in the

camps, from the old stand-by of craps and stud poker to the

Indian game “Monty,” in which the bucks and squaws both

take very active parts, betting everything they have even to

the clothes they are wearing.

The men have shown a willingness to cooperate very well

in suppressing any fires which may start in the area or adjacent to it and do a very good job of keeping the area free of

mancaused fires. No trouble has been experienced from

campfires for the last five years, but the smoker still presents
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

42

his problem and is extremely difficult to handle. The majority

smoke, especially the Indians. The men, squaws, and the little

Indian boys and girls down to ten or twelve years old all have

the tobacco craving and in general are not so willing to

restrict themselves as the whites are. (Bealey 1936)

By 1937, Kootenai National Forest Supervisor K.A. Klehm believed that

the huckleberry industry should be regulated and “was no more recreational

than timber cutting camps” (cited in Miss 1994). During the berry season,

entire campgrounds in the Kootenai National Forest were taken over by

pickers. This was especially problematic on the Kootenai National Forest

where Forest Service campgrounds were limited in number because Klehm

had tried to minimize federal competition with private campground owners

by building as few campgrounds as possible. Klehm believed that the best

type of campground for berry pickers would be an “open field with sanitation

facilities.” Plans were made for a huckleberry camp at Lake Creek to accommodate 400 people on about 11 acres. The camp design created a 5-foot-wide

fire trench around the camp perimeter and inside the trench, a 60-foot-wide

fire strip. Immediately inside the strip were the campsites with a road and

“enclosed strip” in the middle. The enclosed strip not only screened latrines

and garbage pits from view but separated the Native American from the White

berry pickers (cited in Miss 1994) (fig. 6).

As the Kootenai National Forest reports and campground designs illustrate,

the commercialization of huckleberry picking was changing the sociocultural

interaction of White settlers and Native Americans in the region. No longer did

tribal people camp apart from non-Native American huckleberry pickers;

rather, they joined the commercial camps as active participants but in segregated zones (Fisher 1997, Powell 1988). Depression-era pickers, Carl and

Nora, recalled that for years they went regularly to the Great Northern Mountain area on a tributary creek of the Fisher River. “The Indians were on one

side, and we were on the other,” said Nora.

Carl and Nora, who were both children during the 1930s, would pick with

their separate families in the West Fisher camps. Nora said that her family

would leave every summer from their sheep ranch at Kila, just southwest of

Kalispell, on horseback. They brought a sheep wagon with them, which they

lived out of for the 6 weeks they spent huckleberrying. They left around the

first of August, and Nora said they always missed the first week of school.

They rode their horses 75 miles from Kila to the West Fisher huckleberry

camps. Carl’s brother had bought a brand new truck, and he would haul

...the commercialization of huckleberry

picking was changing

the sociocultural

interaction of White

settlers and Native

Americans in the region. No longer did

tribal people camp

apart from non-Native

American huckleberry

pickers; rather, they

joined the commercial

camps as active

participants but in

segregated zones.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

43

pickers up to the patch for $0.25 ride. The adults generally picked 10 to 12

gallons a day, and the children always tried to pick 5 gallons each. Nora said

that when the buyer stopped buying, they still kept picking. They would then

peddle their huckleberries back in Kalispell from door to door, in the richer

areas of town. “Once a woman wearing a monocle answered the door, and

scared the life out of me,” Nora recalled. “I’d never seen anything like a monocle.” She sold her berries for $0.50 per gallon when they went door to door.

At the camps, Nora said she “made friends with the White kids and played

with the Indian kids.” She recalled a large White man

... with a big belly, so big that it rubbed sore from the saddle

horn on his horse. He would always play the stick game with

the Indians, and he always lost. He might as well have given

them his money. They loved to see him coming. His name

was Applebin but the Indians called him “White Man Big

Apple.”

Nora’s recollections reflect the degree to which commercial huckleberry

picking had apparently increased interaction between Native and non-Native

Americans during the berry season even though each group remained segregated in the camp.

Figure 6—Berry picking, Kaniksu National Forest. “Keno Creek, Bonners Ferry

District; Huckleberries picked by Indians camping in area. Indians come from

Montana each year to pick berries and sell them.”

J.Russell Dahl circa 1940
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

44

Not all such interaction with Native Americans was as cooperative as that

in the West Fisher drainage. Powell (1988) vividly recounts the commercialization of the traditional Klamath gathering site at Huckleberry Mountain near

Crater Lake and the subsequent shifts in Native and non-Native American

interaction:

In 1916, Klamath Falls packer and rodeo show promoter Bill

Sims headquartered a string of mules at Wagon Camp to ferry

pickers’ gear to the top... As many as 500 campers a season

(and perhaps as many as 1,500 in an outstanding berry year)

had their choice of sites scattered in several areas. The site

later known as Huckleberry City was called Brandenburg

Camp after a wealthy eastern Oregon family, while Huckleberry City was further down the slope.... By the 1920s, the

scene at Huckleberry Mountain was beginning to change. Ed

Becleheimer built the Union Creek gas station and restaurant

in 1923-24, and a road passable by automobile to Huckleberry Camp was completed about the same time, as was a

thirty- by forty-foot wooden dance platform at the campground. Music had always been an important part of pioneer

society, and so was dancing.... The dance platform didn’t last

long, though. With the dancing came behavioral problems

that marred otherwise cordial human relations on the mountain. Some of the problems likely resulted from boredom and

smuggled quantities of “White Mule” moonshine... much of

the friction stemmed, however, from resentments that grew

between the young white and Native American men. “The

white fellows would dance with the Indian girls but the white

girls weren’t as anxious to dance with the Indian boys. After a

while, the Indians would get to feeling that ‘they were using

up our girls but they won’t lend us any of theirs.’” Campers

would call on the forest ranger stationed at Huckleberry

Guard Station to maintain order, but the dance platform soon

was torn down. (Powell 1988: 7-8)

Similarly, in the Mount Adams area of Washington, Fisher (1997) notes

how the invasion of non-Native American huckleberry pickers created unprecedented, competitive pressure for berries while augmenting concerns that the

commercialization of the sacred huckleberry that had been created for the
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

45

Yakama’s survival was no longer being respected. He recounts how one

elderly Yakama woman

... had her basket behind her and put her berries in there.

Then she heard berries go tinkle, tinkle. She looked around

and [saw that] a white woman was holding her pail [so that

the] squaw [sic] dropped berries in white woman’s pail.

(Fisher 1997: 202)

By the end of the 1930s, the commercial huckleberry industry had matured. Regular huckleberry camps with an experienced workforce were

established near highly productive huckleberry “patches” season after season.

An innovative technology had been created to maximize harvesting efficiency

and processing, and marketing and shipping systems were in place. However,

World War II and the social events accompanying it would quickly shift

market demand and labor supply. In 1942, Blair Hutchinson produced the first

social assessment of a national forest, a report on the Kootenai National

Forest’s socioeconomic role in Lincoln County, Montana. In his analysis,

Hutchinson noted that the commercial huckleberry industry was beginning to

change on the eve of World War II

Of the forest enterprises, the huckleberry industry deserves

mention more because of its uniqueness than its size.

Huckleberrying is an old pastime in Lincoln County, but since

the depression it has reached the status of an industry. For a

two-month period, beginning sometime in July, 250 to 300

adults and many children have camped in the 35,000-acre

huckleberry patch in the south end of the county. During the

good seasons 20,000 gallons of berries have been gathered

by hand and by various home-made mechanical pickers in

the two-month period. The fruit, worth about $8,000, has

been mainly purchased by the canneries at Hamilton and

Kalispell, Montana. About half of the berry pickers are

Indians from Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Canada. For

many of these Indians, and some of the whites, berry harvesting has been attractive mainly as an opportunity for a selffinancing forest outing. The berry crop was short in 1941; it is

possible that the next few seasons will continue to see few

pickers in the “patch” because of improved economic conditions. (Hutchinson 1942: 9)

By the end of the

1930s, the commercial

huckleberry industry

had matured. Regular

huckleberry camps

with an experienced

workforce were

established near

highly productive

huckleberry “patches”

season after season.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

46
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

47

Chapter 5: World War II and the

Commercial Wild Huckleberry

Industry Decline

By 1944, over 70 percent of American households preserved fruits and vegetables at home primarily by canning. World War II had prompted the federal

government’s campaign to revive the successful World War I Victory Garden

program, and by the fall of 1943, there were 20 million victory gardens

producing 40 percent of the Nation’s vegetables in backyards, in vacant lots,

and along factories. The majority of households canned 100 to 200 quarts of

food, and many canned as much as 200 to 500 quarts.1

 Home canning was a

mixed blessing to war food shortages, however, because:

The War Production Board diverted steel from the munitions

industry to pressure-cooker production. Department stores ran

films and displays on canning, society ladies enrolled in

classes on it, home economists lectured on it to ladies’ clubs,

extension agents demonstrated it to farmers’ wives, and

charities taught it in the slums. Never before in the nation’s

history had such huge quantities of food been preserved at

home. Three-quarters of America’s families put up an astounding average of 165 jars a year. Novice canners using

shoddy wartime equipment also produced a record number of

disasters. The files of state Victory Garden committees were

full of stories of “Victory Model” pressure cookers with faulty

gauges, leaky valves, and a frightening tendency to erupt, as

well as of exploding jars, rusted jar bands, and defective lids.

Innumerable stoves were ruined, kitchens were splattered,

and victims were hospitalized with severe burns, cuts, and

botulism. At war’s end a grocery industry analyst concluded

that so many women had had “such unhappy experiences”

1

 National Center for Home Food Preservation. http://www.fcs.uga.edu/pubs/current/

intro.htm. (21 July 2003).
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

48

with home canning that a decline was certain. (Levenstein

1993: 85)2

One of the few descriptions of the commercial huckleberry industry during

World War II is provided by Powell (1988: 8) who noted that at Oregon’s

Huckleberry Mountain, berry picking was already beginning to decline:

[T]he advent of World War II [had] made a difference in the

rhythm of the berry camp. With gas rationing coupons scarce,

it was essential to plan for needed provisions to avoid gaswasting restocking trips. People still went, but they stayed

longer. The war also provided some old-fashioned excitement

for pickers. Because of wartime scarcities, tourism at Crater

Lake National Park fell off and the park service virtually

closed the park, along with the park’s garbage dump. This left

a number of the park’s black bears at a loss as to where to

find food, and many of the dislocated bears ended up attempting to share the campground and berry patches at Huckleberry Mountain.3

The grocery industry’s prediction that home canning would begin to

sharply decline following the war proved true. By 1973, only one in three

American households canned fruits or vegetables (see footnote 1). In western Montana, freezing was becoming the preferred home food preservation

technology of choice. As “Darla” of Trout Creek recalls, “I used to can huckleberries when it was so hot I just wore my brassiere! I was thrilled when I got

my first freezer and didn’t have to can anymore.”4

2

 In a 1996 interview, 78-year-old “Velma” complained about a recent canning article in the

local Libby, Montana, newspaper because it was “discouraging people from gardens and

canning by making it all too complicated. Like paraffin. The only way you get mold in jelly

from paraffin is if you use the same knife. He (the local extension agent) doesn’t know s...

from apple butter! You learn by trial and error, not from books. When they do things like that,

it’s worse than if they hadn’t done anything at all. I have had just as much breakage from

using mayonnaise jars as using Mason jars, and it is all in how you do things. They discourage people that way! People don’t want to grow gardens, but grass. Then they end up taking

care of grass instead of gardens. I just don’t understand it. They could be growing food.

Think of it, people on welfare growing grass!” “Velma” interview notes, 1996. Velma’s

experience illustrates how different women responded to the risks of canning depending on

their level of experience and food dependency.

3

 Don Minore, however, notes that “although World War II and its accompanying sociological factors must have reduced the harvest at Huckleberry Mountain, I think that natural

succession probably also played a decisive role. Many formerly productive Cascade berry

fields are now overgrown and unproductive” (Don Minore, technical review comments

30 August 2004).

4

 “Darla” interview notes, 1996.

The grocery industry’s prediction that

home canning would

begin to sharply

decline following the

war proved true...only

one in three American

households canned

fruits or vegetables
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

49

The home food preservation shift from the pantry to the home chest

freezer was made possible by rural electrification. In 1916, the first electrical

home refrigerator went on the market to compete with the household ice box.5

However, the refrigerator was expensive and required electric service to

operate. With the passage of the Rural Electrification Act in 1933, many rural

households became members of a local rural electric cooperative, and by the

end of World War II, most rural homes could operate not only a refrigerator

but also a home freezer.

Home freezers proliferated largely because of their convenience in storing

meat carcasses cheaply and easily. Meat was difficult to safely can and the

quality suffered. Alternatives to canning a butchered animal were to use it all

immediately fresh or rent freezer space in a locker plant often miles away in

town. With home freezers, households could freeze their own meat and save

the trip to town.6

By the 1950s, both home and commercially canned fruit were slowly

giving way to retail frozen fruit as well as refrigerated fresh fruit transported

long distances. In 1933, only 500 stores nationwide were equipped with

freezers that featured the new frozen food products.7

 By 1940, 15,000 stores

nationwide had such freezer space (see footnote 5). During the 1950s, frozen

food sales exceeded $1 billion. Frozen convenience foods such as “TV dinners” and in-flight airline meals were becoming commonplace.8

 American

self-sufficiency through home food preservation was giving way to American

dependency on retail frozen products and the processed food industry.

5

 Bryant College’s History of American Technology. http://web.bryant.edu/~history/

h364material/wmn_chr/wmn-o_30.htm. (16 August 2003).

6

 The role of meat preservation in the proliferation of home freezers is illustrated in the history

of the Richardson Ranch in Tlell, British Columbia: “In 1952, Doug Richardson, Francis’s

oldest son, with wife Alice, took over the ranch. They initially sold fresh beef, door to door,

until power and deep freezers allowed them to sell by the side cut and wrap-ped.” Richardson

Ranch. http://www.qcislands.net/docdon/history.html. (16 August 2003).

7

Frozen foods were “invented” by Clarence Birdseye, who was on an American Geographic

Society expedition in Labrador in 1914. He noticed that fish caught through the ice froze stiff

the instant they were exposed to the air, and they tasted almost fresh when defrosted and

cooked weeks later. Knowing that mere freezing and cold storage would not preserve the

quality and taste of the food, he concluded that the secret lay in rapid freezing at extremely low

temperatures. For several years, he tried to commercialize his food-freezing discoveries by

first freezing cabbages in barrels of seawater. By 1925, Birdseye and Charles Seabrook

developed a deep-freezing process for cooked foods. Their first products were frozen fish

fillets, and Birdseye then applied his quick-freezing principle to meats, poultry, fruits, and

vegetables. National Food Processors Association. http://safefood.org/history.html. (4 August

2003); National Academy of Engineering. http://www.greatachievements.org/

greatachievements/ga_10_2.html. (16 August 2003).

8

 American Frozen Food Institute. http://www.affi.com/factstat%2Dhistory.asp.

(16 August 2003).
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

50

By the 1960s, the canneries in Hamilton and Kalispell had closed. With

the demise of canning, market demand for huckleberries not only changed but

so did the labor supply. In the Montana and Idaho divide country, the post

World War II era had brought a surge of new jobs in the timber industry and at

the federally sponsored Libby and Hungry Horse dam projects. These were

jobs with wages that logarithmically surpassed the berry prices that huckleberry buyers could offer as Carl observed:

The industry’s decline was because of the better economy

and jobs. There were logging jobs. We had two sawmills

going making ties (railroad) for China. And there were jobs

with the (Libby) dam. And eventually, the buyers just quit.

9 10

A 1996 interviewee of Trout Creek, “George,” who once had picked

huckle-berries at the old commercial site of Minton Peak on the Montana/

Idaho Divide, noted that

Since the 1940s, there’s not been a lot of commercial picking.

We just picked for the freezer in the store. They had little

compartments that we could rent as lockers. Mostly, it was

locals [picking] in the 1940s. Commercial picking died out

when logging started full bore in the 1950s.11

However, the industry did not completely disappear. Native American

pickers continued to gather berries as they always had. For the tribes of the

region, “huckleberries were used for ceremonial feasts and even before the

advent of the whiteman, were used as a bartering means” (Matt, n.d.). Moreover, Native Americans were less likely to be hired for the better paying jobs

in the region so commercial picking provided income. Many commercial

tribal berry pickers used their huckleberry earnings to help support their

family-based post and pole harvesting operations. As one Confederated Salish

and Kootenai tribal member noted that on the Flathead Reservation:

Most post/pole individuals instinctively plan ahead for

huckleberry harvest by observing the weather patterns and

trying to predict when the early frost will occur. This will give

9

 “Carl and Nora” interview notes, 1996.

10 A picker, “Ed,” interviewed on the North Fork of the Flathead in 1996 claimed that he had

picked huckleberries for 50 years and that in the early 1940s, he sold his berries for

$3 per gallon. “Ed” interview notes, 1996.

11 “George” interview notes, 1996.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

51

them an indication when to cease their wood operation and

begin the berry harvest. Camps are established in areas where

families traditionally harvested huckleberries....The main

market outlets for huckleberries are usually bought by roadside vendors or by a distributor... usually the capital made in

huckleberry harvesting is invested back into truck repairs or

chainsaw purchase to begin the post/pole operation again.

(Matt, n.d.)

Native Americans’ introduction to commercial picking in the 1930s had

also become integrated into their traditional huckleberry harvesting practices

in the “divide” country of western Montana and northern Idaho. K.D. Swan

and J. Russell Dahl photographed numerous Native American pickers picking

commercially in the Bonners Ferry area of northern Idaho in 1939 and noted

that “many came from Montana”12 (fig. 7). Native American pickers are

remembered as the ones who continued to sell huckleberries at the close of

World War II. The granddaughter of the original owner of the oldest huckleberry jam business in Montana, “Jane,” recalls that by the 1950s, “lots of

berries were brought in by Native Americans as that was who picked. Most of

the whites picked for their own use, but lots of Indian families used to bring

berries into sell.”13 Conversations with Ktunaxa (Kootenai) tribal members

since 1996 have revealed that many Ktunaxa adults in both Montana and

British Columbia remember picking huckleberries in various traditional tribal

huckleberry patches in drainages between Libby, Montana, and Bonners Ferry

and Sandpoint, Idaho during the 1950s for their own use and to sell for

supplemental income (fig. 8).

Most of the commercial outlets during this period were local roadside

stands and a few small processors that made jam in Bigfork and manufactured

huckleberry syrup for ice cream in nearby Somers.14 The lack of ready buyers

in a shrinking industry brought with it the disappearance of the formerly

12 J. Russell Dahl photograph No. 505140, USFS Region 1 archives.

13 “Jane” interview notes, 1996.

14 In 1988, Claude Sterner claimed to be the largest commercial buyer of huckleberries in

Montana. He said that he had started out picking huckleberries to get his “school money”

in 1942. By 1988, he was selling “canned huckleberry pie mix, jelly, syrup, preserves, topping, and the syrup for Meadow Gold’s huckleberry ice cream.” According to Sterner, in

1988, he was expecting to buy 25,000 gallons and estimated that the state’s commercial

buyers would purchase a total of around 30,000 gallons. Prices ranged from $18 per gallon

and more in 1990 but dropped to $12 and $13 for small quantities in 1991. Commercial

buyers were paying around $10 per gallon for bulk orders (Schwennesen 1988).
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

52

Figure 7—Huckleberry camp. “Indian Huckleberry Picker at Forest Service

Camp on West Fisher River, Kootenai National Forest, 1939.

J. Russell Dahl, USDA Forest Service, Northern RegionArchives

Figure 8—Berry picking, Kaniksu National Forest. “Keno Creek, Bonners

Ferry District; Boxing huckleberries picked by Indians,” circa 1940.

J. Russell Dahl, USDA Forest Service, Northern RegionArchives
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

53

centralized labor contracting, berry processing, and shipping system of the

Great Depression. Pickers now had to find their own buyer and bear the cost

of getting their berries directly to him or her. This reinforced the buyer/picker

personal trust relationship. Pickers needed to rely on buyers to purchase their

berries or they would lose not only their investment in gathering but also their

costs in processing and transporting the berries. Buyers, on the other hand,

required a dependable supply of berries to ensure that they remained supplied

in poor berry seasons. As Jane noted:

The business has always depended on Libby pickers. Libby

pickers’ grandfathers brought berries to us. I had a picker in

the other day, and we figured that we were now into the

fourth generation as his grandchildren were picking and my

grandchildren were working in our business as well (see

footnote 13).

By the end of World War II, the shrinking huckleberry industry had changed

and with it the summer camps of pickers. At Oregon’s Huckleberry Mountain

...within twenty years of the war’s end, the ambiance

...seemed to have vanished. Families grew older and

changed, like the succession stages of a maturing forest.

“You’d go up there and you didn’t know anybody anymore,”

Garrett says. “And part of it was that people didn’t camp like

they used to. We were talking about a time when there

weren’t many jobs, when it was hard to get work... People

would stay at the mountain until the first storms of September—or until Labor Day if they had children who had to get

back to school. Nowadays, you talk about taking two weeks

off to pick berries and people would think you were crazy.”

(Powell 1988: 8-9)

By the 1960s, the Montana and Idaho divide region had experienced a

shift in commercial pickers’ ethnicity as well as changes in their gender and

age. Non-Native American women and their children had either joined or

displaced Native American commercial pickers. Since the war, these women

and children had continued to pick for household needs. “Colleen” recalled

that she first started picking huckleberries in the Troy area in 1957. Her fourmember family (not counting her baby sister) would pick 20 to 30 gallons,

which would carry the family through the whole year. They would can berries

in quart jars as fruit for the winter:
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54

We would pick them, lay them in a beer flat and stack them

near a creek to keep them cool. Now I do the same, but I

freeze them in the flats so I have individual frozen berries to

use in small batches.15

Gradually, non-Native American women and children also became commercial pickers, a domain that had once been occupied by male contracted

workers in the 1920s and 1930s as well as “gyppo” family pickers. “Abby”

of Martin City recalls her family moving into the area in 1946 for work on

the Hungry Horse dam:

When we were young, we used to pick right near the entrance

to the reservoir. We picked for our own use, but some of the

kids picked to sell to go the fair. They got $.50 a gallon.16

Similarly, “Lettie” recalls picking in the Hungry Horse area with a friend

and their children because:

Our husbands didn’t want us working. We used the money to

go to the State Fair and so we could buy things for the kids

without asking our husbands for money. We would get going

and pick from 7 to 11:30 in the morning, and we could pick 4

gallons a day. We would pick 4 to 5, usually 4, days a week

starting around the Fourth of July on Lid Creek and then on

into early September. We would easily get $1,000 a season.17

Lettie sold her berries for $4 to $5 a gallon in 1965 to Byrd’s Grocery

Store in Martin City. Soon, however, she discovered that she could double her

income to $10 a gallon by selling directly from her home:

Once I got an order from a woman in Hamilton, who called

me. She and her friends wanted 32 gallons. I took my husbands, kids, and Melanie (her picking friend) and we managed to pick the 32 gallons in a day (see footnote 17).

Despite ethnic, gender, and age shifts, social class continued to remain a

constant characteristic of the commercial huckleberry industry since pickers

and observers have consistently described commercial huckleberry gathering

as a “supplemental” economic activity for “pin money” or “something extra”

15 “Colleen” interview notes, 1996.

16 “Abby” interview notes, 1996.

17 “Lettie” interview notes, 1996.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

55

and commercial pickers as “tough customers” or “in hard-up circumstances.”

Most of the harvesters who engaged in 6 to 8 weeks of summer camping in

the mountains picking berries day in and day out did not hold “regular jobs.”

When asked how best to describe the commercial huckleberry industry between 1950 and 1980, George noted that not many people picked commercially, and those who did were mostly “poor people who were not involved in

the logging” (see footnote 11). Thus, by the 1980s, huckleberry pickers had

remained marginal participants in the region’s formal economy, a fact that has

since remained a consistent characteristic of the industry throughout its boom

and bust cycles since the mid-1920s.18

18 Priscilla Dauble recalls huckleberry harvesting in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon

near Weston in the 1940s and 1950s as “only seasonal and usually self pick with some

seasonal selling by people who lived in the Blue Mountains and advertised with a sign along

side the road.” Her daughter, Darcy, recalls that she was told that “Weston Mountain was

primarily settled with people from the Appalachian area who stayed there after following the

migrant trail during the Depression” (Dauble and Dauble 2003. See also Carroll et al. 2003).
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

56
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

57

Chapter 6: Regional Rebound and

Commercial Wild Huckleberry Industry

Change

By the end of the 1970s, the regional economy in western Montana had again

begun to change. In 1996, George had noted that in the previous 15 years, the

country had “really boomed. People are finding the area and subdividing.”1

George’s observations in 1996 about the “boom” in his local area are supported by the U.S. census. Between 1960 and 1970, the population of his

home county, Sanders County, had grown only 3.1 percent. However, between

1970 and 1980, the county population increased an astounding 22.3 percent.

Similar population gains occurred throughout western Montana between 1970

and 2000. A slow revitalization of the commercial huckleberry industry

coincided with this population growth. By the 1980s, commercial berry

picking had once again become a viable economic option for those people

who remained marginalized on the edge of the formal economy—an economy

that in turn had shifted sharply from reliance on the region’s traditional extractive industries to the new service sector.

The Huckleberry Industry During the 1980s

In 1949, a western Montana homemaker had made too many preserves from

her garden and told her husband that she wished she could sell some.2

 Her

husband took them into the local bars where they were offered as pinball

prizes. “My grandfather,” according to the woman’s granddaughter Jane, “was

one of those people who could sell anybody anything.” The next year, Jane’s

grandmother had produced five other flavors from local fruit including blackcap, raspberry, cherry, apple, and, most importantly, huckleberry. Jane’s

grandfather would load the station wagon with preserves and drive around the

state selling them to stores. For years, the business remained wholesale as a

result of her grandfather’s marketing. “It has only been in the last 15 years

with the growth of the tourist industry that we have been retail,” said Jane.

The family had always been a solid business not only because of Jane’s

grandfather’s marketing talent but because its home, Bigfork, had always

had a tourist industry. Tourists would stop and buy preserves at the family’s

house, and

1

 “George” interview notes, 1996.

2

 “Jane” interview notes, 1996.
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I don’t know at what point huckleberry became “mystic” but

huckleberry is one of those things that people either really,

really like or they don’t like at all. You could make a

barbeque sauce and for those who like it, they would say,

“Oh, huckleberry. I’ll have to taste it.” Those raised in Montana who have moved away are particularly prone to buying

huckleberry products.

Although the reality of homemade jam from wild berries canned by

grandma was disappearing, Western residents’ nostalgic connection to this

family jam of the past was creating a market for commercial jam.

As Jane, then the proprietor of the family business, wryly noted, “Grandma

is no longer staying home, baking cookies, and making jam. Grandma is out

working and playing golf” (see footnote 2).

Hence, the “new” huckleberry industry was no longer one primarily based

on a widely available, cheap wild fruit product that was gathered for processing as a commodity but on marketing a new commercial jam commodity by

using the wild huckleberry as a cultural icon. By the 1980s, huckleberries

were a nostalgic symbol for people, especially those who grew up in the

region during the post World War II era, of a berry picking memory that they

could no longer directly experience but were nonetheless loathe to relinquish.

In 1978, a Missoulian reporter captured the strength of the huckleberry as a

regional cultural symbol:

“It’s [huckleberry picking] a tradition here in Montana,” said

Reese, a thin, blond man—a grown man, mind you, who

slips back to childhood at the mere mention of huckleberries.

“You haven’t lived until you’ve had huckleberry pie, jam,

pancakes, muffins. And ice cream! They’re fantastic on

ice cream!”...Unless you prefer to pay $10 for a gallon

of huckleberries at a roadside stand, you might consider

a family huckleberry-picking outing. (Johnson 1978)

Thirteen years later, a Missoulian article described the revitalized growth

of the huckleberry industry and described a leading huckleberry

manufacturer’s production:

 [T[he commercial demand for huckleberries has grown.

Local ice cream shops feature huckleberry milkshakes,

restaurants offer a variety of huckleberry desserts, and local

cottage industries buy thousands of gallons. Huckleberries

Although the reality of

homemade jam from

wild berries canned

by grandma was disappearing, Western

residents’ nostalgic

connection to this

family jam of the past

was creating a market

for commercial jam.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

59

bring $12 to $15 a gallon. “We buy about 3,000 gallons a

season,” said... [the] owner. (Missoulian 1991)

By the 1980s, huckleberry products were not only marketed as a local

cultural symbol but as a tourist souvenir for visitors and new residents who

had no previous association with the icon (fig. 9). Huckleberries were increasingly being processed into nontraditional items like chocolates and fudge.

Moreover, they were often being manufactured outside the traditional western

Montana “huckleberry country” in places to the east like Bozeman or Billings,

Montana, and to the south like Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

These new developments are illustrated in the establishment of a candy

company near Bozeman that shipped between $500,000 and $1 million worth

of huckleberry chocolates wholesale in 1984. The owner bought $50,000

worth of huckleberries at $1.75 per pound for a total of 28,571 pounds of

berries. The company’s success was similar to those of other small candy

shops throughout the state, so much so that the state Department of

Commerce’s business assistance division’s manufacturing directory had

become “obsolete” in 4 years (Sullivan 1985). In Polson, Montana, the coowner of a candy shop commented that she had not yet run out of huckleberries for her huckleberry chocolate fudge because she “live[d] on the reservation so I buy a good portion of my berries from independents.” The huckleberry fudge sells extremely well to tourists, she said, because: Rebecca T. Richards, 1996.

Figure 9—18th annual huckleberry festival, Trout Creek, Montana.

By the 1980s, huckleberry products were

not only marketed

as a local cultural

symbol but as a

tourist souvenir for

visitors and new residents who had no

previous association

with the icon
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60

I think people here are huckleberry eaters, but most of them

buy it because it’s a wild berry, grown in Montana, and send

it on to friends or relatives somewhere else. They buy it, but

not for their own personal consumption. (Sullivan 1985)

The revitalization of the commercial huckleberry industry in the mid1980s was accompanied by the same entrepreneurial spirit and use of technology as its birth in the late 1920s. This is illustrated in the success of a

huckleberry chocolate candy enterprise in Libby, Montana, begun by

Depression-era huckleberry pickers Carl and Nora in 1980.3

Nora claimed that she had established the business in 1980 because she

and Carl were picking so many huckleberries every year, and she had tried a

Missoula-made huckleberry chocolate and decided that she could do better.

Her son-in-law in Spokane was experienced in small business development,

and he had helped his parents set business goals so that they doubled the

business every year after 1980.

Initially, Nora and her daughter went to Spokane to a well-known store

where

We were both afraid to go in and so we finally agreed to go

together. We figured if we could sell to [them] we could sell to

anyone. They were really nice to us there [and bought some

chocolates]. We left and came back a week later, and didn’t

see any chocolates. We thought, “Oh, no! They were so bad

that they threw them all out!” When we came in, they said,

“Oh there you are. You didn’t leave us your name or address.

We’ve been looking all over for you. We sold out the day

after you left.”

The couple said the Spokane account helped:

They had a gift catalog and put us on the back cover, and

they gave us help with our box. In the beginning it was just a

white box with a ribbon [on] it. They sent us down to Seattle

to Stone Container and we got a fancier box.

They owned the business for 8 years and Nora said that the success of

the business was in having:

3

 “Carl and Nora” interview notes, 1996.
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... really good sales people, the distributors who called us. I

particularly liked the Long Island distributor’s accent... The

chocolates became popular, especially at the Virginia Beach

naval base where someone called me and said the service

men were so happy to have “a taste of home”... Customers

were from all over. One was a country music singer who

found one of our chocolates on her hotel pillow, and she

called the number on the address and ordered more—including her entire Christmas list one year. Willie Nelson was even

on the list!

The couple worked 18 hours a day for 7 days a week. Every 2 months,

Carl would have to make the 12- to 14-hour drive to Salt Lake City for the

1,500 pounds of chocolate that the business required. In addition, Carl and

Nora would have to buy huckleberries:

We bought 80 to 100 gallons a year. One year, we had no

berries in Libby, probably because of the hail. A woman with

seven kids in Colville, Washington called us in response to an

ad we had saying we wanted to buy huckleberries. She said

she and her kids had 50 gallons. The price then was $8 a

gallon but we offered her $12 a gallon. Her husband was in

the penitentiary and when we gave her the $500, the kids

were just so excited that they could buy school clothes and

what they needed. It just makes you feel really good. She

called us regularly afterwards and asked us every year if we

wanted to buy berries but not to feel obligated because she

did have other buyers.

In 1988, the couple sold their business to a new owner “Lloyd,” who said

in a separate 1996 interview that the business was continuing to do well

thanks to its previous owners’ marketing skills:

They’ve [the chocolates] been a very good seller. [The

previous owner] went to the Salt Lake airport and asked to

see the gift store manager [about buying her chocolates]. The

manager said, no, that she bought huckleberry chocolates

from Jackson Hole. [The previous owner] noticed that the gift

store manager was pregnant, and so she sent her some of her
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62

huckleberry cordials wrapped in pink and blue foil wrappers.

The manager was so impressed that she dropped the Jackson

Hole account and took on hers [the previous owner’s].4

By 1996, Lloyd was buying 300 to 400 pounds of huckleberries for the

chocolates, which were actually one-berry-each cordials with a liquid filling.

He maintained a year and a half worth of huckleberries in the freezer. In 1995,

Lloyd paid pickers $12 to $16 a gallon. He said that the buyers regularly

called each other to check on prices. Although his biggest account was the

“Made in Montana” store in Great Falls, Lloyd had begun to use the Montana

Department of Commerce’s office to market to the Pacific Rim:

I have a big Taiwan account now. The Japan contact, a

department store, is good but you never know until an order

is final. The European market is too hard to crack because of

their chocolate expertise and supply (see footnote 5).

The Huckleberry Industry in the 1990s and 2000s

The Libby huckleberry chocolate company was only one of many Montana

huckleberry-based businesses that became established during the industry’s

revitalization in the 1980s. However, the economic impact of the industry was

not yet documented, so in 1997, we collaborated with the Bureau of Business

and Economic Research at the University of Montana in conducting a census

telephone survey of Montana’s commercial huckleberry product manufacturers. Restaurants and ice cream parlors that might incorporate huckleberries in

some of their products were excluded (Jahrig et al. 1997).

 In 2004, the 1997 telephone survey was replicated to ascertain the

changes in the industry in the intervening 7 years. The 1997 manufacturers

were contacted, and through snowball sampling, new manufacturers were

identified and contacted. In both the 1997 and 2004 surveys, the major manufacturers were asked to provide information on products produced, sales

value, market areas, volume of berries processed, geographic source of

berries, and employment involved in manufacturing huckleberry products for

the preceding year (1996 and 2003, respectively). Additional questions were

added in the 2004 survey asking manufacturers about berry supplies, pricing,

and quality.

4

 “Lloyd” interview notes, 1996.
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Changes in the Montana Wild Huckleberry Industry

Profile

In general, response rate to the initial survey was high. Of the 14 major

huckleberry manufacturers identified for inclusion in the 1997 survey, 13

(93 percent) agreed to participate. However, the response rate among the

1997 processors was lower in the 2004 survey. Of the original 13 manufacturers responding in 1997, 9 (69 percent) agreed to complete the survey in

2004 while 2 would not participate, 1 was no longer in business, and 1 could

not be contacted. In addition to the 9 processors who participated in the 1997

survey, 12 new processors were identified through snowball sampling during the course of survey administration. Of these 12 new manufacturers, 7

(58 percent) were successfully contacted and agreed to complete the survey

while 4 could not be contacted, 1 refused, and 1 was already out of business.

Thus, the total sample size for the 2004 survey comprised 16 huckleberry

processors.

Compared to 1997, 10 percent more huckleberry manufacturers were

operating in Flathead and Lake Counties in 2004 (table 1). Fewer processors

were operating in Lincoln and Sanders Counties than in 1997 while the number of manufacturers in counties outside the traditional strongholds of the

industry, the Flathead and Libby areas, remained relatively constant.

On average, manufacturers surveyed in 2004 had been in business almost

4 years longer than those surveyed in 1997 (table 2). This may reflect not only

the maturity of the industry but also the relatively high number of carryover

respondents from 1997. The mean number of years that a 2004 manufacturer

had been in operation was 12.5 with the oldest processor having been in

business 55 years and the newest processor having been in business 3 years.

In addition, the 2004 manufacturers had been the owner or operator of the

business about 3 years longer than the 1997 processors. However, the 2004

manufacturers on average had operated 129 fewer days than the 1997 processors. This reduction in operating days is reflected in the 46-percent reduction

in the number of full-time employees employed by the 2004 processors

compared to the 1997 manufacturers.

Huckleberry Products Produced and Sales Values

Although wild huckleberry product manufacturing continues to produce over

$1 million in sales annually in Montana, total sales by Montana huckleberry

processors for 2003 were 26 percent lower than the adjusted totals for 1996
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Table 1—Geographic concentration of Montana huckleberry manufacturers,

1997 and 2004

1997 manufacturers 2004 manufacturers

Area (n = 13) (n = 16)

Percent

Flathead and Lake Counties 46 56

Lincoln and Sanders Counties 31 19

Other 23 25

Total 100 100

Table 2—Profile of huckleberry manufacturing operations, 1997 and 2004

1997 2004

manufacturers manufacturers

(mean) (mean)

Years in business 11.7 15.4

(n = 12) (n = 16)

Years in ownership 10.4 13

(n = 12) (n = 15)

Days in operation in previous year 273 144

(n = 12) (n = 15)

Number of full-time employees 3.5 1.6

in previous year (n = 13) (n = 15)

Table 3—Reported sales value and market share of Montana huckleberry

products by Montana huckleberry product manufacturers in 1996 and 2003

1996a 2003

(n = 13) (n = 15)

Product Value Market share Value Market share

Dollars Percent Dollars Percent

Jams, jellies,

preserves 840,466 54 447,693 39

Chocolates, candies 314,149 20 263,040 23

Syrups, toppings,

honey 243,281 16 216,772 19

Beverages (including

beer, mead), vinegar,

lotions, raw berries 102,050 7 185,000 16

Ice cream 46,862 3 29,000 3

Baked goods 10,695 1 15,900 1

Total 1,557,503 100 1,157,405 100

a

 Prices adjusted to 2003 dollars.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

65

sales for the manufacturers surveyed in 1997 (table 3). In addition to an

overall decline in sales, the more traditional huckleberry products that had

dominated the market in 1996 lost market share in 2003. Where jams, jellies,

and preserves accounted for over half of the total sales of Montana huckleberry processors in 1996, they contributed only 39 percent in 2003. The

greatest change was the growth in nontraditional products such as beverages

(including beer, mead, and juice), vinegar, and lotions as well as the resale of

unprocessed berries.

Huckleberry Product Market Areas

Manufacturers were also asked to indicate market areas where products were

sold at the point of sale but not necessarily at the final destination. Local sales

were defined by the community where the manufacturing facility was located

or other communities within 50 miles of the facility. Processors were also

asked to provide information on regional sales, which were defined as those

sales outside the local market area including all of Montana, Idaho, and the

Spokane, Washington, area. The share of “other sales” regions were located

outside these local and regional market areas including mail-order sales

outside these markets.

In 1996, most huckleberry products were sold locally (table 4). In 2003,

the share of regional sales approached that of local sales and together, regional

and local markets accounted for more than three-quarters of processors’ total

sales. “Other” sales, consisting of national and international sales, remained

relatively constant over the 7-year period.

Volume of Berries Processed and Geographic Source

In 1997, Montana huckleberry manufacturers reported that they had processed

about 59,000 pounds of huckleberries into products in 1996. In 2004, manufacturers reported an 18-percent decrease in berries processed in 2003 (table

5). This decline is reflected in the decrease in total product sales over the 7

years. The smallest manufacturers processed 750 and 100 pounds in 1996

and 2003, respectively, and the largest manufacturers processed an estimated

20,000 pounds in both 1996 and 2003. The geographic source of berries

remained relatively constant as manufacturers reported in both years that

over 80 percent of the berries that they had processed had been harvested

in northwest Montana with the remainder gathered in north Idaho.
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Table 4—Sales value and market share of Montana huckleberry products by region for

1996 and 2003

1996a 2003

(n = 13) (n = 15)

Region Value Market share Value Market share

Dollars Percent Dollars Percent

Local 732,028 47 417,945 40

Regional 451,675 29 395,810 38

Other 373,800 24 218,990 22

Total 1,557,503 100 1,157,405 100

a

Prices adjusted to 2003 dollars.

Table 5—Source of berries received for processing by Montana’s huckleberry

product manufacturers in 1996 and 2003

1996 2003

(n = 13) (n=15)

Source Volume Volume Share Volume Volume Share

Pounds Percent Pounds Percent

Northwest Montana 49,950 85 45,452 94

North Idaho 9,100 15 2,700 6

Total 59,050 100 48,152 100

Table 6—Geographic locale of Montana’s huckleberry pickers in 2003

Harvesters

Area (n = 17 locales identified by 15 manufacturers)

Percent

Lincoln and Sanders

Counties (Troy, Libby,

Trego, Trout Creek) 47

Flathead and Lake

Counties (Kalispell,

Whitefish, “Flathead”) 24

Missoula 12

Other (Lewiston, transient,

unknown) 18

Total 100
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

67

Berry Suppliers in the Huckleberry Industry

Montana’s huckleberry processors continued to depend on wild berries because no manufacturer surveyed in either 1997 or 2004 reported buying

cultivated huckleberries. However, processors reported that they had bought

huckleberries from fewer pickers (mean = 24, n = 13, range = 1 to 100) in

2003 than they had in 1996 (mean = 28, n = 13, range = 1 to 130). About half

of Montana’s huckleberry product manufacturers surveyed in 1997 said that

they relied on the same core of pickers from year to year (Jahrig et al. 1997).

In contrast, 4 (31 percent, n = 13) of the 16 manufacturers surveyed in 2004

reported that they relied on a main core of pickers for their berry supply.

Manufacturers surveyed in 1997 reported that pickers supplying them with

huckleberries generally lived near the berry source in the northwestern Montana communities of Libby, Troy, Eureka, Kalispell, Hungry Horse, Bigfork,

St. Ignatius, and Missoula (Jahrig et al. 1997). This labor force generally

remained local in the 2004 survey with most of the manufacturers reporting

that the pickers who supplied them came from the Libby area of Lincoln and

Sanders Counties or the Flathead Valley including Flathead and Lake Counties

(table 6). However, 27 percent of the manufacturers responding to the 2004

survey (n = 15) reported that this “main core” of pickers had changed since

the 1997 survey, and all noted that fewer “old timers” were selling berries to

them. Reasons for this change included manufacturer observations that “locals

do not pick as much as they used to [and] kids no longer pick,” and “I used to

buy only from pickers but now I buy from contractors as well.”

The 1997 telephone survey did not ask respondents about contractors who

might supply them with berries. However, “contract crews” had become more

frequently mentioned as key berry suppliers in the intervening years so the

2004 survey included questions regarding the use of contractors as berry suppliers. Five of the processors responding in 2004 reported that they generally

relied on one to two contractors to supply them with berries (mean = 1.6, n =

15). Contractors were well-known to these manufacturers because on average,

those supplied by contractors had bought from the same individuals for almost

5 years (mean = 4.6 years, n = 5). However, not all contractors were local

since one manufacturer commented that “the contractors are transient but the

pickers are local.” Another noted that “contractors are buying large quantities

(of berries) on site and the sellers of raw berries are more organized. Pickers

are also becoming more attuned to the market.”
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Berry Supply, Pricing, and Quality

Huckleberry processors that were interviewed prior to the 1997 survey reported that they did not depend solely on annual purchases but on “holding

over” annual purchases from one season to the next by freezing berries (see

footnote 2). Freezing berries for several seasons buffered the buyers from

seasonal shortages and subsequent price increases to pickers. Manufacturers

responding to the 1997 survey reported that they “held over” 47,075 pounds

of berries with a mean of 3,621 (n = 13) pounds per processor. In 2004, manufacturers reported that they had held over one-fourth as much (11,861 pounds

total), and 22 percent as much per processor (mean = 791 pounds, n = 13,

and range = 0 to 8,500 pounds). This reduction in holdover reflects the higher

prices that processors were paying for berries and the reduction in berry

supply.

Huckleberry manufacturers surveyed in both 1997 and 2004 were asked

in which years they had paid their highest and lowest price per pound of

berries. In general, over half of the manufacturers who responded in both

1997 and 2004 reported that they had paid their lowest price between 1988

and 1994 (table 7).

Table 7—Years in which manufacturers surveyed in 1997 and 2004 reported paying the

highest and lowest price for huckleberries (unadjusted prices)

1997 manufacturers 2004 manufacturers

Year Lowest price Highest price Lowest price Highest price

paid (n = 7) paid (n = 7) paid (n = 13) paid (n = 15)

Percent

1988 14

1989 23

1990 14 8

1991

1992 14 14

1993 14 8

1994 14 14 15

1995 14

1996 43 43

1997 7

1998 8 7

1999

2000 8

2001 33

2002 15 13

2003 15 40

Total 100 100
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

69

For each year preceding the survey, processors reported that in 1996, the

average lowest price paid was $2.27 a pound with a range of $1.80 to $3.00

while in 2003, the average lowest price had risen to $2.97 a pound with an

even greater range of $1.60 to $5.00.

Over 80 percent of the processors surveyed in 2004 said that they had

paid their highest price between 2001 and 2003 (table 7). Where the manufacturers surveyed in 1997 reported an average highest price paid per pound of

berries of $3.11 (with a range of $2.55 to $3.40), the manufacturers surveyed

in 2004 reported an average highest price of $4.93 (with a range of $2.50 to

$6.00).5

 Forty percent of the manufacturers who responded in the 2004 survey

claimed that limited access to berries after the regional wildfires of 2000 and

2002 had reduced supply and hence increased prices. Other reasons that 2004

manufacturers cited for the recent peak in berry prices were supply reductions

from increased competition, especially from “big, out of state” businesses, and

poor weather.

Although many factors affect pricing for any given year, table 7 illustrates

that many manufacturers paid their highest prices in recent years (2001 to

2003) when supply was low. Moreover, in both the 1997 and 2004 surveys,

nearly all responding manufacturers emphasized in comments that cleanliness

of berries was critical to their buying decisions and pricing. The berries had to

be relatively free of stems and leaves, and most responding processors preferred that the berries not be washed but rather cleaned dry. Freshness was the

second most often mentioned criteria for buying berries. Generally manufacturers didn’t want berries that had been picked more than a couple of days

prior to buying them. Other criteria included plumpness and ripeness of

berries. To a few manufacturers, berry size was important (Jahrig et al. 1997).

In contrast, manufacturers surveyed in 2004 generally specified only two

major criteria that they sought in the berries they bought: 93 percent of 15

processors reported that they required cleaned and/or stemmed berries,

whereas only 50 percent required “ripe” berries. Many processors noted that

a “canrake” was often used for picking berries, and no processor stipulated

that the berries had to be exclusively hand picked.

5

 These prices reflect the observations of Daniel Barney, who has attempted to cultivate wild

huckleberries for commercial use, that the last “bumper crop” of wild huckleberries occurred

in 1994. See also Geranios 2003.
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Industry Prognosis and Change

In the 1997 survey, manufacturers identified four major factors that they

perceived as negatively impacting the Montana huckleberry product industry,

but did not rank these in order of significance. These four factors were (1)

berry picking restrictions and fees imposed by the public land management

agencies, (2) the closure of roads by public and private timberland managers

that restricted access to berry sites, (3) the harvest of huckleberries by out-ofstate pickers and shipment to out-of-state processors, and (4) reductions in

timber harvest and past fire suppression practices that reduced long-term berry

production (Jahrig et al. 1997).

When manufacturers surveyed in 2004 were asked about the future

outlook for the huckleberry processing industry in Montana, they expressed

similar concerns. They were somewhat divided on the future of the industry

with 54 percent reporting a positive prognosis and 46 percent a more negative

one (n = 13). Manufacturers’ positive views included the industry’s ability to

offer a quality, unique product to a healthy market with increasing demand,

the greater availability of berries, and more diverse products. One manufacturer noted that “more processors have been good for business as products

and labels are more competitive and help to promote business all around.”

However, this generally positive view was countered by other manufacturers

who complained about deteriorating product quality, declining supplies of

berries, and increasing manufacturing costs.

In addition to reduced berry production because of wildfires and drought,

other factors cited by manufacturers who viewed the industry pessimistically

included out-of-state competitive pressure, high manufacturing costs, the lack

of product regulation, and poor business practices within the industry as key

inhibiting factors. One manufacturer noted that “as a small operation, (we)

cannot compete against large operations and the cost of berries rising.”

Another noted that “out-of-state processors are putting pressure on local

markets.” Particularly problematic manufacturing costs mentioned included

Universal Product Code (UPC) labels, “colorful” product labels, and high

transportation expenses, especially in trying to expand a local business.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

71

The lack of product regulation and poor business factors were often-cited

industry problems. One manufacturer noted that “an increase in processors

and the limit (shortage) of huckleberries have led to increases in price. Producers may supplement with other fruits.” Other manufacturers claimed that “the

use of blueberries in products and calling them huckleberries has resulted in a

diluted market and a saturation of products,” and “nobody wants to regulate it

[the use of blueberries and calling them huckleberries].” Another manufacturer

commented that “increased demand has encouraged the use of blended berry

products” and another claimed that “growing demand has led to the use of

artificial flavoring due to the growing expense of the berry.” This was supported by another processor’s complaint about “the use of synthetic flavoring

and poor quality.”

In contrast to these comments about the lack of regulation, other manufacturers reported that they feared increased regulation as “new innovative products and inspection processes could drive up the price of hucks and

the Feds will require pickers to have a license.” Another commented on the

“rising Forest Service fees to pickers” and a third manufacturer worried about

“do-gooders closing up forests for bears” thereby reducing access to berries.

Manufacturers were also divided on the possible future use of cultivated

huckleberries in the industry’s products with some claiming that “domestication would be good” to relieve supply and demand pressure. In contrast, other

processors noted that a “cultivated berry will harm the industry by destroying

Montana’s uniqueness.” These latter comments could be construed to reflect

manufacturers’ recognition that although the numbers and demographic

profiles of pickers are changing, we cannot, as Don Minore (2004) emphasizes, put a value on “clear air, mountain scenery, and the satisfaction of a full

berry bucket.”
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

72
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

73

Chapter 7: Technology and Commercial

Wild Huckleberry Industry Change

The fears many manufacturers have about losing a unique, quality wild huckleberry product to artificial flavoring, dilution with other fruits and blueberries,

and the substitution of a cultivated huckleberry for the “real thing” reflect the

ambivalence in the industry toward the role of technology in altering production and supply and demand fluctuations. On one hand, the development of

berry picking and cleaning technological innovations ensure a more efficient

and hence cost-effective commercial industry. On the other hand, these technological innovations are often viewed as producing an inferior product and

jeopardizing sustainable wild berry production. More recently, processors have

reflected similarly ambivalent attitudes toward U.S. Department of Agriculture

extension efforts to cultivate the Vaccinium membranaceum plant for commercial berry production (see Geranios 2003).

According to Carl and Nora, quality control was critical to their early

huckleberry chocolate candy success in the 1980s as they recalled

...a business in Kalispell that would buy berries and freeze

them in big garbage bags. They were beater berries with lots

of juice and smashed. They didn’t wash or clean them or

anything, just froze them. Then they would take them out and

they would explode. You never saw such a mess. I told them

not to do that, but they wouldn’t listen. They eventually went

out of business and went to Alaska. But they gave the huckleberry business a bad name.1

Carl claimed that the 1930s-style mechanical “pickers” still in use were

hard on the huckleberry patches because they stripped the new foliage, but the

bushes nonetheless recovered after a year. However, the “beaters” were worse,

he claimed, because the gatherers would beat the bushes down to the ground.

He noted, however, that there was “a lot less beating than there used to be

because the buyers won’t buy beater berries.” His claim was substantiated in

the 1997 telephone survey of huckleberry manufacturers when some manufacturers reported that they required berries that were hand picked rather than

picked with mechanical devices because mechanical devices damaged the

berries (Jahrig et al. 1997). The processors who were surveyed in 2004,

1

“Carl and Nora” interview notes, 1996.
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however, expressed less concern about buying hand-picked huckleberries,

although clean, ripe, and stemmed berries are still generally required.

As in the 1930s, the revitalized commercial huckleberry industry of the

1980s depended heavily on the pickers’ ability to harvest thousands of pounds

of berries efficiently and cleanly. It also depended on the traditional “free use”

policy of the Forest Service, and the agency’s willingness to provide access to

the huckleberry patches during the season. The first factor, technology, has

proven to be a constant phenomenon as the industry has expanded; and it is

discussed here. The second factor, free use and forest access, has become

more problematic and is reviewed in chapter 8.

Commercial huckleberry pickers have relied on the initial, albeit improved, technology first developed by the pickers and buyers of the Depression era. In the 2004 huckleberry manufacturer survey, 78 percent (n = 9) of

responding processors who knew how the huckleberries that they bought had

been gathered claimed that some sort of picking technology had been used

either solely or in conjunction with handpicking. Of these manufacturers, 67

percent identified the key technological tool as the “canrake” or “picker”

discussed in chapter 4.

For example, Colleen, a long-time huckleberry picker in Troy, said in a

1996 interview that she had bought her picker from a local manufacturer in

Noxon (fig. 10):

I have [his] picker. He sells small pickers. Four of the small

pickers, about one quart size or coffee can size, equals a

gallon. The little ones are $25.2

In addition, Colleen had a Weare-style cleaner with a burlap bottom that

her husband, a carpenter, had made based on the instructions that they had

been given by a local buyer in Noxon. Colleen said that as the season progressed, the couple raised the cleaner’s incline higher and higher so the riper

berries that were juicer than the early season berries could roll with “less

mess.”

Ed, who was interviewed in 1996 on the North Fork of the Flathead also

said that he used a picker, but only later in the year because when he used the

picker too early, too many green berries were picked along with the ripe ones.

He used the picker later on when there were fewer leaves on the bushes and

when most of the berries were very ripe.3

2

 “Colleen” interview notes, 1996.

3

 “Ed” interview notes.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

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Not only has the commercial picking and processing technology remained

essentially the same since the 1930s, but the manufacturing of this technology

has remained a local, in-house operation. The hardware stores in Libby, for

example, do not sell huckleberry pickers or cleaners. A would-be buyer has to

know someone who manufactures them and buy one from that person directly.

One such local manufacturer in 1996 was the interviewee, “Bill,” who had

retired from the Forest Service and was living in Noxon, Montana. Bill had

been raised in Idaho and his wife, “Joan,” in nearby Heron, Montana. Both

Bill and Joan had picked huckleberries for years.4

 Joan always picked by

4

 Joan said she used to pick regularly and that the family sold their berries as well as used

them at home. Since they had retired, however, she hadn’t picked in the last 4 years. She said

as a family they used to pick 100 gallons a summer, and on a good day, they could pick 25 to

30 gallons collectively. They used to sell them frozen to Rocky’s Café in Spokane for pies.

Bill said that Rocky’s used to ask for them in quart-size plastic bags so they could just put

them in the pie shells directly from the freezer. Bill said Rocky’s had been sold and the new

owner called for huckleberries and asked him for some. Bill said, “How much?” and the new

owner said, “All you’ve got.” They took him 90 gallons and hadn’t heard from him since. In

general, Joan said they got about $10 per gallon. Her sister, she said, had made from $3,000

to $4,000 a summer picking huckleberries. However, 15 years ago, Joan thought that there

hadn’t been any market to speak of. Few local people picked commercially, and there weren’t

many migrant pickers.

Bill couldn’t remember how they got the restaurant contract, but he thought it was by

knowing a waitress there who got her boss to order berries. “Bill and Joan” interview notes,

1996.

Figure 10—Huckleberry “canrake” or “picker”

manufactured by “Bill” in Noxon, Montana. Rebecca T. Richards, 1996
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

76

hand, and she kept asking Bill to pick with her. He didn’t like picking huckleberries, especially picking them by hand. So he made a picker, and when Joan

discovered that Bill could pick more berries than she could, she started using a

picker too. Bill began making pickers commercially when other huckleberry

gatherers noticed his picker and started asking him to make them one. He had

based his picker design on “someone else’s picker” and had since continued

to innovate.

To make his pickers, Bill collected empty coffee cans, mostly standard

3-pound cans. MJB®5

 was his favorite because MJB was his favorite coffee,

and the cans were tall. The extra height allowed him to fit the picker handles

on the can with less bending. During winter, Bill tried to manufacture most of

his pickers. First he would cut the wires for the tines. He cut several thousand

tines at a time. Bill had discovered that he had to use tempered steel for the

tines or otherwise they wouldn’t maintain their shape. In the beginning, “Joan

had to straighten bed spring coils as that was the only supply of tempered wire

we could find” he said. “That didn’t last long!”

After he cut the wires, Bill bent each wire by hand by putting an angle

“mold” in a vise to hold it. Then he hammered the wire once. That set the

angle of the tine at about 45 degrees. Next, he sanded the oil off the base of

the tine and rounded the edges of the tip. He inserted the tines into a half disk

of galvanized tin with about 20 holes about 1⁄4 inch apart and then soldered the

disk onto the side of the coffee can at the top. This kept the berries in the can

as well as holding the tines.

Next Bill had to construct a galvanized tin bale or flange that he soldered

around the top edge of the can. This facilitated the berries going into the can

and helped keep them from falling out of the can. Bill had noticed that after he

had spent some time picking that his hand got sore, especially his thumb, from

holding the flange. Therefore, he had improved his flange design by cutting a

V-shaped groove in the back of the flange above the handle. This was a

resting place for the thumb.

Because he used acidic solder throughout this process, he then had to

prepare two finishing baths, one of baking soda to neutralize the solder and

another of ammonia, soap, and water to remove the first neutralizing bath

5

 The use of trade or firm names in this publication is for reader information and does not

imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture of any product or service.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

77

precipitate. Because this process left a rusty sort of residue, Bill then dried the

cans on the top of a wood stove in his garage. He said, “I’m probably the only

person in Noxon running his stove in August!”

To soften the thumb groove and relieve still further pressure on the thumb,

Bill then cut a piece of rubber. His current problem was trying to keep the

rubber firmly in the groove since he presently had to use three types of glue:

one to stick to the rubber, one to stick to the tin, and one to stick to each other.

He said, “If they can glue tiles onto the space shuttle, I should be able to find

a glue for my picker.”

Bill then attached the picker handle, which he bought “ready made.” Since

coffee cans had changed in size since he had bought his handles, he had to

bend each handle. This was particularly true for the smaller, 2-pound can

pickers, which he made only occasionally. He then riveted the bent handle

onto the can.

The next step was the recent innovation of puncturing a hole in the bottom

of the can to drain the water from berries picked in the rain. Bill said puncturing the hole was harder than it looked because there could not be any sharp

edges that would damage the berries protruding on either side of the puncture.

Therefore, he had to punch out each hole and then sand it.

Finally, Bill would paint each picker. He had several colors, but a few

years ago he had wanted a distinctive color for his picker so he had found a

huckleberry purple color. “Then,” he said, “everyone wanted that color, and

so that is now the most popular.” After the paint had dried, he would attach a

gold sticker with his and his wife’s names and their address and phone at

Noxon just above the handle.

In the last few years, Bill had decided to number his pickers. His numbering scheme was to use the last digit of the year, e.g., 6 for 1996, preceded by

the number of the picker, e.g., 296 would have been the 29th picker he made

in 1996. He did this because he wanted to know how many pickers he had

made. He also wanted to know how long they would last with both normal

and abnormal use.

Bill demonstrated how to use his picker. First, he put on a glove because

without a glove his hand became very sore holding the picker. Then he went

out into his yard and held the picker under a raspberry branch with his right

hand. He then pulled the branch through the tines, held the branch with his

left hand, and drew the picker towards him. As he did so, he jiggled it very

lightly. The analogy he made was to combing knots out of your hair: “Just do

it this way several times, gently from the top, going deeper each time.” Bill
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

78

then recounted a story about a man who had bought a picker from him and

returned it a week or two later with completely bent tines. He figured that the

man had been very aggressively pulling the picker through the branches.

Bill claimed that many people who came to him to buy a picker wanted to

pay him less than the $35 that he charged. “They didn’t want to pay $35 for

‘just a coffee can’,” he said, “so I had to tell them how much work it involved.” Sometime ago, he said, one buyer wanted to buy Bill’s pickers in

bulk for his crews. The buyer wanted a cut rate, but Bill wouldn’t give it to

him and always made him pay in cash as “he was quite a wheeler dealer.”

Bill had also made a huckleberry, Weare-style cleaner for his and Joan’s

use. It consisted of one chute with two angle irons at both ends from which he

had run wires over the bottom of the trough. Grooves in each angle iron held

the wires one-fourth of an inch apart. The wires were loose. At the top of the

chute were two handles that Bill turned to tighten the wires so they were taut:

“The first cleaner that I ever saw had a handle made from a crank for a Model

A Ford motor,” he said.

At the bottom of the chute was a large wooden box. This was the collection box for the berries as they came down the chute. The twigs and leaves

and green berries would fall through the wires, and the berries would go in

the box. In a corner of the box was a large, triangular flange from which the

berries could be poured back into buckets for washing.6

Bill said Joan washed all the berries in the sink in dishpans and removed

the stems. He said other more elaborate cleaners had burlap runs, which their

owners claimed would help remove the stems. Joan said she had tried the

wool blanket cleaning method once, but said “it didn’t work, and I would

rather stand at the sink all day cleaning berries instead.” Joan was appalled at a

pie that they had eaten once that had been full of huckleberry stems: “I can’t

understand why someone would buy stemmy berries. I never sold berries with

stems on them.”

Both Bill and Joan said they had often talked about giving up the huckleberry business altogether because of the amount of work involved. Bill wasn’t

interested in patenting his picker because of the cost. He thought patenting

would cost $10,000 and that he would never make that many pickers to cover

6

 According to Bill, he only had a one-time customer for a cleaner. They were a couple from

Helena who had bought his pickers and came to Noxon to pick huckleberries regularly. They

had seen Bill’s cleaner and had paid him $125 to make them one. Bob said he wouldn’t make

cleaners again because that one took him 5 days to make and then “the guy never used it

because he left it in Helena.” “Bill and Joan” interview notes, 1996.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

79

the fees. Moreover, Bill didn’t want his business to get any bigger. If someone

else wants to take my design, that’s fine,” he said. “Then it (patenting) becomes their problem.” He continued to make the pickers, he said, because he

wanted to give the local pickers an advantage over the growing number of

nonlocal crews of commercial pickers. He wondered, however, if his “pickers” were too efficient and if he wasn’t contributing to the picking pressure.

Both Bill and Joan said “migrant” pickers had increased in recent years—

with “migrant” being anyone from out of the local area. Joan said that while

picking huckleberries recently, she had seen Oregon, Washington, Idaho,

Kalispell (Montana) and other “out-of-area” plates. She said that they had

both heard shots fired before, but the incident that seemed to have upset

them both the most was when a local man’s dog had bitten Bill on a huckleberry trip:

We had gone picking and parked near the man’s rig. The dog

was underneath the car and when I walked by, the dog bit my

hand. We went into the patch anyway, and the dog came out

and began snarling at me. I picked up a large stick and said,

“Get out of here ... before I kill you.” The man then came up

and told me that the dog was like a member of the family. I

said “If he’s a member of the family, then teach him some

manners.” The man then said that the dog was just protecting

his (the man’s) huckleberry patch. This infuriated Joan. She

was so upset that he never apologized. When we got home,

we called the man to find out about the rabies shot, and Joan

blistered his ear for about an hour. I later called the sheriff

and said that we wanted to go back up Vermillion picking in

the morning. I told the sheriff to come down and talk to the

man. The sheriff told me just to take a gun and shoot the dog

if I had to. I said that might mean having to shoot the man as

well since he was so defensive about the dog. The sheriff

then said, “Well, then, shoot him, too.” I told him that I didn’t

think that the huckleberries were worth killing someone for

and convinced him to go talk to the man. Finally, the man

called us and apologized.

This incident illustrates the types of conflict that have been recounted and

publicized in the wake of the revitalized commercial huckleberry industry

since the 1980s. It also reflects the management dilemmas that have been
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80

confronting the Forest Service in addressing the commercial harvest of huckleberries, some of which are related to the controversial use of industry technology. These dilemmas include:

• Ecophysiological questions about harvesting methods on the long-term

viability of V. membranaceum/globulare sustainability.

• The long-term ecological effects of natural succession and the

disappearance of productive huckleberry fields associated with fire

suppression and plantation-oriented forest management.

• The potential competition of the commercial industry with grizzly bears

(Ursus americuus) for huckleberry supplies.

• Tribal concerns about the implications for traditional harvesting rights and

practices.

• Equity concerns of ensuring forest access for marginalized ethnic, gender,

and age groups of pickers.

In the next chapter, these huckleberry management issues and possible

management approaches to mitigate them are reviewed.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

81

Chapter 8: National Forest Management Issues and the Commercial Wild

Huckleberry Industry

During the 1930s, the Forest Service was encouraged to promote “free use” of

the natural resources of the national forests. To do so, the agency managed the

wild huckleberry commercial industry without picking fees and permits, as

described in chapter 4. Fifty years later, the same agency was increasingly

challenged to implement “fee use” and thereby charge harvesters for commercial permits. In response, huckleberry pickers claimed that if the Forest Service

was going to charge them for harvesting permits, the agency should start

ensuring access to the berry fields by opening roads that were seasonally

closed for wildlife protection and begin to manage the berry patch as a forest

resource in its own right.

These views are reflected in the comments of Bill, the huckleberry-picker

manufacturer in Noxon:

Burning would help clear out the brush. The fields are closing

in and the only good remaining areas are Chicago Peak

and Government Mountain where there is a clearcut on the

west side of the Rock Creek road. Vermillion had been good,

but it’s closed for grizzly protection and is on the other side

of the river. White Pine is only occasionally good. The

district recognizes that the Chicago/Government area is

popular picking and when it closed Vermillion, it kept Rock

Creek areas open. The district knows that if they close the

Chicago and/or Government picking areas, there will be

major objections.1

Because many of the most productive huckleberry fields historically have

been in prime grizzly bear habitat, especially in the Cabinet and North Fork of

the Flathead regions, road closures for grizzly bear protection in “huckleberry

country” are common. The huckleberry picker, Ed, was more sanguine about

national forest road closures:

I agree with the philosophy behind them [closures]. I realize

that you have to walk into areas where there are berries. But if

1

 “Bill and Joan” interview notes, 1996.
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82

there was no road closure, then the berries would not even

be there at all because someone would have picked them

already. So it’s better to be able to pick them even if you

have to walk than not have them at all.2

The problem of forest access to berries has also become a broader public

issue given consumer concerns that commercial huckleberry picking has overexploited the berries on which grizzly bears depend. As early as 1991, the

produce manager of the Good Food Store in Missoula was selling fresh

huckleberries in season and frozen berries year-round that she bought from

commercial pickers:

“Five years ago I had one picker who would bring in about

three gallons a week...,” [the manager] Page said. But for two

years running, beginning in mid-July, pickers have called

Page daily offering far more than the 50 pounds a week she

needs to keep berries on her stores shelves, Page said. One

caller last year had 300 pounds of huckleberries to sell and

this year, another had 150 pounds... Page expressed concern

that perhaps too many huckleberries are being harvested at

the expense of damaged plants and food shortages for wildlife. “For us as a staff it has begun to raise an issue of basically how ethical it is,” Page said. (Tuholske 1991)

Following the low huckleberry production years since 1994, more complaints began to surface in local letters to the editor:

On National Public Radio (Sept. 7) the plight of Montana’s

bears and the lack of food they have this year was the spotlight. Specifically, the huckleberry and other forest berry

crops are very low this year, and the bears are starving. To

add to their misery, commercial huckleberry pickers, vastly

more efficient than the bear, are getting what small crop there

is. I urge your readers to give huckleberry and other forest

berry products a miss this year and give the bears a better

chance.... (Missoulian 1998c)

I am writing on behalf of the bears since their pleas for help

seem to go unheeded, for the most part. I am referring to the

2

 “Ed” interview notes, 1996.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

83

huckleberry crops that are ravaged every summer. I fear that

few are left for the bears; please think of them. Gallons upon

gallons are sold to eating places; and individuals who may be

overlooking the fact that bears crave and need this delicacy

before winter and hibernation come need to refrain from

hoarding all the fruit. No wonder the bears raid man’s

domain. Could it be that missing the berries causes them to

seek help in the only way they know how, to come to

people’s yards?...( Missoulian 1998b)

In response, other readers wrote to defend the huckleberry industry:

I thought that (the) statement that we should “boycott”

huckleberries and huckleberry products because they are

rightfully for the bears was just ridiculous. I would like to

ask...if she has ever drunk milk, which was intended by

nature to be for newborn and nursing calves. Or, if she has

ever eaten an egg. Eggs were and are the beginning of life for

all birds and most reptiles. Without eggs, these animals would

become extinct. What about honey? Honey is made for bees

(painstakingly I must add) for their larvae, and to survive the

winter....If bears can’t find enough huckleberries, then they

will eat more fish, or more blue- or thimble- or goose- and all

the other kinds of berries that also grow in the woods that are

not harvested by humans. Either way, bears will still go for a

nice juicy llama, or a fat sheep once in awhile, and they will

still attack people whenever they feel like it. (Missoulian

1998a)

In the wake of the revitalized huckleberry industry, complaints about

“beaters” and other damaging harvesting methods were also being publicized:

There are reports of bushbeaters, picking “rakes” that comb

the berries and strip leaves from the plants, people who cut

or tear out bushes to harvest them, even one report of an

automatic picker... [Sterner]. also told of a crew from

Washington that uses a beating technique to harvest entire

hillsides, although the method breaks branches and damages

the plants. He said the crew had been reported in successive

years working around Noxon, Libby, the Yaak, and the North

Fork...(Schwennesen 1988)
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With the complaints about harvesting practices came rumors that pickers

were also going to try to secure “special use” permits for certain prime areas

and the implications of “competitive bidding for huckleberry patches that

might not yield a good crop every year” (Schwennesen 1988). Such questions

in turn brought:

...concern from the Salish-Kootenai tribes about the berry

harvest. The tribes have a potent interest because the Hellgate

Treaty of 1855 secured them “the privilege” of gathering

roots and berries on open and unclaimed land in western

Montana. (Schwennesen 1988)

By 1996, the Forest Service was only beginning to systematically address

the management issues involved in ensuring fee use for all the commercially

harvested nontimber forest products in the Northern Region. In 1995, the

Flathead National Forest had implemented recent “fee use” policy by offering

commercial huckleberry permits for $80 a season or daily permits for $4 a day

with an $8 (2-day) minimum requirement. That year, 16 commercial huckleberry permits were sold on the Flathead including one seasonal permit and 15

daily permits for a total of $208.3

 In contrast, the Kootenai National Forest,

which was the last national forest in the federal system to sell Christmas tree

permits, was continuing the historical agency policy orientation of “free use”

for huckleberry harvesting in the Libby area and did not yet require a huckleberry fee permit in 1996.4

Since 1996, the Northern Region has attempted to ensure more systematic

implementation of the “fee use” agency policy by requiring relatively consistent permit regulations across all the national forests within the region:

Recently, in the Northern Region of the Forest Service, new

regulations came into effect for huckleberries, mushrooms,

beargrass, and other non-timber forest products. For huckleberries, a permit is not required for recreational huckleberry

picking under 10 gallons per season. Commercial pickers

must obtain a commercial huckleberry permit from the

appropriate national forest ranger district.5

3

 Gary Dahlgren, Flathead National Forest interview, 1996.

4

 Bob Krebs, Kootenai National Forest interview, 1996.

5

 Lolo National Forest. http://www.fs.fed.us/rl/lolo/passes/other.htm. (24 June 2004).

By 1996, the Forest

Service was only

beginning to systematically address the

management issues

involved in ensuring

fee use for all the

commercially harvested nontimber

forest products in

the Northern Region.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

85

This shift has directly resulted from the part of Public Law 106-113

legislation passed by Congress in the 2000 Appropriations Act titled “Pilot

Program of Charges and Fees for Harvest of Forest Botanical Products” for the

National Forest System.6 This federal legislation defines forest botanical

products as “any naturally occurring mushrooms, fungi, flowers, seeds, roots,

bark, leaves, and other vegetation (or portion thereof) that grow on National

Forest System lands.” It directs the Secretary of Agriculture to develop and

implement a pilot program to charge for forest botanical products through the

establishment of appraisal methods and biding procedures. The legislation also

requires analysis regarding the sustainability of harvest levels and exempts

personal, but not commercial, use from fees. Language in the 2000 Appropriations Act further required that the fees collected from harvesters cover various

agency administrative costs. In 2003, Section 339 of Public Law 1006-113

was amended so that forest botanical product fees are not only set by an

appraisal process but also require that at least a portion of fair market value

and costs are recovered. Section 339 extended federal authority to collect fees

to September 30, 2009.7

In May 2004, the Forest Service announced the pending publication of the

interim final rule that implemented the forest botanical product pilot program

required by Public Law 106-113 in the Federal Register.8 Although the spring

2004 Federal Register stated that an interim final rule would be published in

July 2004 (with public comment to end in September 2004), the interim final

rule was not published in July, so the dates will be readjusted. Once the

interim final rule is published, it will be in effect and guide the sale of special

forest products and forest botanical products as well as establish the harvest

6

 U.S. Laws, Statutes, etc.; Public Law 106-113, div. B, Sec. 1000(a) (3)[title III, Sec. 339].

Pilot Program of Charges and Fees for Harvest of Forest Botanical Products. Act of Nov. 29,

1999. Page 113 Stat. 1535, 1501A-119-200; 16 U.S.C. 528.

7 U.S. Laws, Statutes, etc.; Public Law 108-108, Sec. 335. Act of Nov. 10, 2003. Page 117

Stat. 1312.

8 “The Forest Service is promulgating regulations for managing special forest products and

forest botanical products. The regulations will guide the Forest Service in the administration

of the broader category of special forest products. The interim final rule also implements

Public Law 106-113, which authorizes a pilot program of charges and fees for harvest of

forest botanical products (Appropriations Act H.R. 3423, section 339, Forest Botanical

Products). Forest Botanical Products include products, such as herbs, berries, seeds, and

wildflowers that are not wood products. The intended effect of this rule is to give guidance

and consistency for the sustainability and sale of special forest products including forest

botanical products.” Federal Register. Vol. 69, No. 123. Unified Agenda, Department of

Agriculture (USDA), Office of the Secretary. 7 CFR Subtitle A. Semiannual Regulatory

Agenda, Spring 2004. Part III. 69 FR 37173. Rin: 0596-AB81.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

86

fees to be collected by the Forest Service. Following the publication of the

interim rule, the public will have 60 days to respond with comments for the

Forest Service to consider in the development of the final rule (Weeks 2004).

In the meantime, draft Forest Service regulations to implement the pilot

program’s charges and fees are currently in review. The Pacific Northwest

Region (Oregon and Washington) and the Alaska Region have special forest product appraisal systems developed and posted on their Web sites,

and the Northern Region is still in the process of system development and

dissemination.

As the Northern Region has moved from the traditional free use to the

more recent fee-use policy for commercial special forest product use, huckleberry harvesting issues continue to make systematic and consistent resource

management difficult to implement. As noted in previous chapters, many

pickers and buyers have claimed that improperly applied mechanical harvesting methods damage the long-term sustainability of the berry bushes. Such

claims are particularly common regarding the “beaters” as well as pulling

bushes out of the ground and picking the berries off the branches conveniently

from the back of a pickup truck. Less objectionable, but ultimately much

more controversial, is allowing the use of the mechanical “canrake” picker.

Although many harvesters believe that careful use of the picker does not

significantly damage the berry patch, there has been limited scientific evidence

that indicates mechanical pickers may negatively impact huckleberry production in the wild. Stark and Baker (1992) claim that such pickers or “rakes”

damage the bushes since

Rakes can remove 20 percent to 30 percent of the foliage,

resulting in a 15 percent to 25 percent reduction in starch

storage. Reduced starch availability will reduce growth and in

some cases fruit production for the coming year. The leaves

normally remain on the bushes for one to two months after

the fruit ripen and store photosynthate for future energy

demands. (Stark and Baker 1992: 49)

In contrast, Daniel L. Barney has used berry rakes and finds that they can

be used so that less than 5 percent of the leaves are removed. He claims that

rakes are most effective on V. parvifolium and V. ovalifolium because of the

orientation of the fruits and and canes and moderately effective on V.

membranaceum and V. deliciosum. He notes the complex ecological factors

that may interact with raking and bush sustainability. These include the plants’

recovery potential from damage to foliage by other herbivores, pests, and
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

87

diseases. Additionally, by the time the fruits are harvested, particularly at

higher elevations, the leaves have already completed photosynthesis for the

season. Moreover, berries are borne on current season wood, that is, wood that

had started growing in the spring so that during late summer harvesting, the

wood that will bear next year’s fruit has not yet formed. However, actually

breaking or cutting canes off at the ground will severely damage bush viability

such that it may require 10 to 15 years for the plants to recover (Barney 2004).

Given the ubiquity of the “canrakes” that huckleberry processors surveyed

in 2004 reported pickers using, a complete prohibition on mechanical pickers

may not be realistic Forest Service management policy. Policy that emphasizes

careful and informed use of mechanical pickers may be more effective in

securing not only greater compliance with permit regulations but the long-term

sustainability of productive huckleberry areas. In 1996, the law enforcement

officer for the Hungry Horse Ranger District noted that at the time, huckleberry management policy on the Flathead National Forest did not prohibit

actual possession of the picker but rather use of the picker when using it had

clearly damaged the huckleberry resource. He noted that this policy was not

only enforceable but would often provide “teachable moments” as when he:

found a picker with his bucket half full of leaves and told him

[the harvester] that he couldn’t do that. The picker wasn’t

happy. But I told him if he did that, that the berries wouldn’t

come back and that the bushes needed the leaves to survive.9

Because huckleberry production has been poor in the years since 1994,

widespread concern has been expressed about the degree to which commercial huckleberry harvesting reduces the potential food supply of huckleberries

for bears, especially threatened grizzly bears. As early as 1992, Stark and

Baker noted that:

Unfortunately, continued interest in the wild fruit has placed

increasing pressure on wildlife, particularly bears that are

strongly dependent on summer huckleberries to provide the

energy needed to store fat for the long winter hibernation.

The most accessible areas are heavily picked by humans, and

many of these same areas are frequented by bears. While

there is occasional starvation among small populations of

juvenile bears, only a portion of the problem is related to

9

 Mark Stanley, Flathead National Forest, interview notes 1996.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

88

human use of bear habitat. The problem will increase, along

with human/bear conflicts, as humans enter more remote

areas in search of more and better fruit. Some areas will

decline in fruit production in the next 25 years or so because

of advanced development of the stand. (Stark and Baker

1992: 84)

The dependence of grizzly bears on huckleberries is very high in the

Northern Rockies since energy-dense foods such as salmon are not available.

Thus, regional wildlife studies have found an association between berry

abundance and bear reproductive success (e.g., Jonkel and Cowan 1971,

Young and Ruff 1982). This annual dependence on berries has more recently

been documented by Martinka and Kendall (1986) for grizzly bears in Glacier

National Park as shown in figure 11.

This annual dependence of grizzly bears on huckleberries is even more

pronounced during the huckleberry season from mid-July to mid-September

as shown in figure 12.

Because bears have such low reproductive rates, a small decline in the

annual number of cubs can be significant in the health of an overall population

(Craighead et al. 1974). Because successful reproduction is more likely among

female bears with higher body masses, the variables affecting prehibernation

body fat are critical to species as well as individual bear health (Jonkel and

Cowan 1971, Rogers 1976, Stringham 1990, Young and Ruff 1982).

Although the general dependence of bears on berry availability has been

well established, only recently have field studies begun to quantify the foraging constraints inherent in this dependence. These include the interaction

between berry size, density, and presentation that determines the bear’s bite

size, bite rate, and intake rate as well as other physiological factors. In a key

1997 study, Welch et al. (1997) found that the number of berries that a bear

can eat per minute is primarily constrained by two competing processes: the

search time required to locate berries dispersed among leaves and the time

required to mechanically take a bite (of berries). As berry density increases or

as berries became more clustered, the search time of the bears for forage is

reduced. Thus, one way that bears can maintain a high bite rate, and hence a

high intake rate, is to move constantly through the berry patch so that they

The dependence of

grizzly bears on

huckleberries is very

high in the Northern

Rockies since energydense foods such

as salmon are not

available.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

89

Figure 11—Proportionate contribution of major food classes to seasonal diet

volume of bears in Glacier National Park 1982-88. Source: Martinka and

Kendall 1986 as cited in USFS Grizzly Bear and Black Bear Ecology.

<http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/grizzlyb.htm>. (20 June 2004).

Figure 12—Bimonthly bear food habit in Glacier National Park

from May 1 through October 14, 1988. Source: Martinka and Kendall

1986 as cited in USFS Grizzly Bear and Black Bear Ecology.

<http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/grizzlyb.htm>. (20 June 2004).
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

90

feed only at the highest berry densities (i.e., high-grade). The researchers

concluded that the importance of this berry high-grading for successful bear

foraging

...may have implications in areas popular for wild berry

harvest, where humans, who also high-grade the most visually apparent berries, may directly compete with bears.

During years of poor berry production, human berry pickers

could be confined to specific locations where they would be

asked to harvest all berries on the shrub, leaving the most

visible berries in other locations for bears. (Welch et al. 1997)

However, the implications of this important study for bear survival should

not overshadow the economic and cultural needs of human harvesters. Prohibiting forest access to highly productive and well-known huckleberry areas

through road closures is already very controversial among huckleberry

pickers. Developing a geographically restrictive policy that protects bear

foraging while allowing picker access remains a management challenge,

especially since huckleberry production has declined over the last 10 years.

Nevertheless, picker attitudes, such as those of Ed, reflect potential widespread harvester support for wildlife protection. Huckleberry management

policy that includes educating harvesters on bear foraging behavior is likely to

result in more acceptable area restrictions than blanket rules that fail to explain

important bear foraging needs in the berry patch to the public.

Effective huckleberry management in the Northern Region will continue

to have to balance economic and cultural uses. In 1932, forest supervisor J.R.

Burkhardt of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest met in council with members

of the Yakama tribe in response to the thousands of non-Native American

pickers that flooded the area during the Great Depression. Burkhardt agreed to

set aside 2,800 acres and three campsites on the Mount Adams Ranger District

for exclusive tribal use during the huckleberry season. Known as the “Handshake Agreement,” the setaside could not legally be enforced, but Brukhardt’s

concession, which was primarily motivated to ensure huckleberry access to

Native American elderly women, has been honored ever since. In recent

years, the agreement has been written into the forest management plan for

the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and thereby guarantees tribal access even

beyond the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act. As a prototype

cultural use zone mechanism, the Handshake Agreement provides a unique

Effective huckleberry

management in the

Northern Region will

continue to have to

balance economic

and cultural uses.
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

91

example for other national forests to follow, especially where intense competition for a particular forest resource like huckleberries exists between Native

and non-Native Americans (Fisher 1997, 2002).

At present, no such setaside agreement between the national forests of the

Northern Region and the resident Native American tribes exists although tribal

concerns about the commercial huckleberry industry have been regularly

expressed. Between 1996 and 1998, several members of the Confederated

Salish and Kootenai tribes, including members of the elder councils, expressed

great opposition to any commercialization of the huckleberry resource at

meetings attended by one of the authors (Richards). Even greater concern was

voiced by members of the Ktunaxa (Kootenai) Nation in southeast British

Columbia because of the lack of significant reserve land and the tradition of

harvesting huckleberries across the Canadian border in northern Idaho and

northwestern Montana. Although their participation in the commercial huckleberry industry in earlier years was motivated by the lack of other income

opportunities, the tribes today are more concerned with preserving traditional

gathering and cultural significance. In some cases, they are also interested in

developing their own commercial industry as well. Forest Service huckleberry

management policy in the Northern Region will undoubtedly have to develop

ways to address regional tribal concerns and cross-border tribal/First Nations

rights in the future.

Since its inception in the late 1920s, the commercial wild huckleberry

industry has been characterized by a labor force that whether migrant or local

has typically lacked other wage options. As described in earlier chapters,

during the Great Depression, commercial huckleberry pickers were often, but

not exclusively, unemployed men. This demographic labor force largely

shifted to many Native American family pickers as well as non-Native American women and children during the 1940s through the 1970s. More recently,

commercial huckleberry pickers have included a large number of the elderly

dependent on social security and younger residents dependent on public

assistance as reflected in the comments of Jane, the Bigfork buyer:

I often see men pick and the women stay home with small

children and wash and clean the berries. One woman was in

here recently complaining that she had been up until 3 in the

morning cleaning berries. If you’ve got small children, you’re

going to have to stay home. Women do pick, and in general,

the families that I see do depend on the huckleberry since I’ll
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

92

ask them where so and so is, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, he has a

real job now’. The impression I get is that these people are

not working and huckleberries are an important income for

them. The people in Libby pick a lot. The impression I get is

that they use the money for extras, for things like school

clothes, the fair.10

Other commercial pickers include non-English speaking immigrants to the

region as noted by another buyer, “Liz”:

Before 1994, I had a contract with a Boise company to buy

7,000 lbs of huckleberries. They gave me the buckets and all.

This gave me the cash to buy my own huckleberries from the

pickers. But in 1994, [my ex-husband] and his Cambodians

started picking in northern Idaho around Sandpoint and

Bonner’s Ferry and sold their berries at $1.75/lb [to the Boise

company]. So I got no contract with Boise that year. I had

enough in the freezer for the season and then that was it.11

Since the 1990s, the summer farmer’s market in Missoula has included

numerous Hmong family stands that sell fresh huckleberries from early July

through August and often later into September.12 In 1996, the first author met

with many of the Hmong community at a meeting in Missoula to inquire if any

were interested in participating in interviews. Following lengthy discussion in

Hmong, leaders at the meeting indicated that they did not approve of participation. They expressed concerns that as Hmong, they were being harassed at

their picking spots, and some indicated that they were gathering huckleberries

primarily in Idaho to avoid such incidents.

Because commercial huckleberry pickers are very typically marginalized

from other wage-earning opportunities in the formal economy and may also

have language barriers, securing representative public participation in Forest

Service huckleberry management planning has been difficult for agency

10 “Jane” interview notes.

11 “Liz” interview notes.

12 Following the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Laos during the close of the Viet Nam war,

the U.S. government offered refugee asylum to the Hmong villagers who had assisted U.S.

special forces in fighting the North Vietnamese in Southeast Asia. Because a key special forces

officer, Jerry Daniels, was from Missoula, many of the Hmong families requested settlement

in Missoula in the late 1970s (Mary and Lue Yang, personal communication).
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

93

officials. As McClain (2002) notes, disseminating information and generating

widespread participation among pickers of wild mushrooms, who are similarly

marginalized, requires a much greater investment in time and human resources

than the Forest Service typically allocates to public involvement. The cost of

this exclusion is not only a loss of equity but a loss of opportunity to gain

important local ecological knowledge about resource production and

sustainability (McClain 2002).

The recent 2004 huckleberry processor survey findings indicate that

competition from “large, out-of-state buyers” for huckleberries with small,

local Montana-based enterprises may be increasing. If so, this competition

may parallel the consolidation of the wild floral green industry in western

Washington. There, a few larger companies now control most floral green

leases on private and state lands, and the labor market is dominated by Latinos,

many of whom lack legal work documents and thus occupy a precarious place

outside the formal economy (Lynch and McClain 2003). Future research is

needed to determine the extent to which the wild huckleberry industry in the

Pacific Northwest is part of this general trend. This is especially important

given the 7-year shift away from local sales to regional sales reported by the

Montana huckleberry manufacturing industry.

According to Alexander et al. (2002), exports of fresh wild blueberries

(V. angustifolium) from the Eastern United States have remained relatively

constant since 1993. However, international exports of frozen and canned wild

blueberries, especially to Japan, have risen. As the awareness of the high levels

of antioxidants for huckleberries and blueberries increases, demand for wild

Vaccinium leaves and berries may increase for medicinal and food uses in the

world market (Alexander et al. 2002). Additional studies are needed to determine the role of wild huckleberries from the inland Pacific Northwest in the

Vaccinium world market and global commodity chains. Given the historical

importance of the commercial huckleberry industry to rural households in the

region, especially during periods when other income earning opportunities are

reduced, such research will inform not only forest managers of the role that

commercial demand plays in sustaining the huckleberry resource but inform

rural development efforts to improve the lives of citizens who too often have

been marginalized from other economic opportunities.

As the awareness of

the high levels of antioxidants for huckleberries and blueberries increases,

demand for wild

Vaccinium leaves

and berries may increase for medicinal

and food uses in the

world market.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

94

Metric Equivalents

When you know: Multiply by: To find:

Inches 2.54 Centimeters

Inches 25.4 Millimeters

Feet .3048 Meters

Miles 1.604 Kilometers

Acres .405 Hectares

Quart .945 Liter

Gallons 3.78 Liters

Tons 907 Kilograms

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Szczawinski, A.F. 1962. The heather family (Ericaceae) of British Columbia.

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100Table 1—Distribution of Gaylussacia and Vaccinium species in the United Statesa

Genus/species Synonyms for species names Common namesb DistributioncGaylussacia spp.dG. baccata Huckleberry, black Upper Midwest, Appalachia, and New

huckleberry, England

G. brachycera Box huckleberry The Southeast to Pennsylvania

G. dumosa Dwarf huckleberry Upper Midwest, Appalachia, and New England

G. frondosa Dangleberry Appalachia and New EnglandG. mosieri Wooly berry The Southeast/AppalachiaG. ursina The Southeast/AppalachiaVaccinium spp.

e

Vaccinium sect. Cyanococcus

V. angustifolium V. pensylvanicum, V. pensylvanicum var. angustifolium, V. pensylvanicum Early blueberry, low bush Upper Midwest, New England, and northern

var. nigrum, V. nigrum, V. pensylvanicum f. leucocarpum, V. brittonii, V. blueberry, late lowbush Appalachia

angustifolium var. laevifolium, V. angustifolium var. nigrum, V. lamarckii, blueberry. 

V. angustifolium var. hypolasium, V. angustifolium f. nigrum, Cyanococcus

angustifolium

V. boreale V. pensylvanicum var. angustifolium, V. pensylvanicum var. alpinum Northern blueberry Upper New England, New York to Maine

V. corymbosum V. amoenum, V. fuscatum, V. virgatum, V. formosum, V. disomorphum, V. Highbush blueberry, New England to Texas

ligustrinum, V. myrtilloides, V. elongatum, V. grandiflorum, V. marianum, common blueberry, tall

V. albiflorum, V. corymbosum var. fuscatum, V. disocarpum, V. constablaei, blueberry, New Jersey

V. corymbosum var. amoenum, V. corymbosum var. glabrum, V. blueberry (V. caesariense),

corymbosum var. atrococcum, V. elliotti, V. corymbosum var. parvifolium, Southern blueberry (V.

V. atrococcum, V. corymbosum f. leucocarpum, V. autrale, V. simulatum, V. formosum), Elliott’s

caesariense, V. atlanticum, V. vicinum, V. carolinanum, V. corymbosum var. blueberry (V. elliottii),

ozarkenze, V. corymbosum var. speciosum, V. arkansanum, V. ashei, V. Thick-leaf blueberry, blackcorymbosum var. pullum, V. cuthbertii, V. holophyllum, V. corymbosum f. blueberry, black highbush

albiflorum, V. corymbosum f. caesariense, V. corymbosum f. glabrum, V. blueberry (V. fuscatum),

corymbosum f. typcium, V. corymbosum var. albiflorum, V. corymbosum f. Upland highbush blueberry

atrococcum, V. corymbosum f. corymbosum, V. corymbosum f. laeve, V. (V. simulatum), rabbit-eye,

corymbosum f. viride, Cyanococcos corymbosus, C. amoenus, C. blueberry, arandano sp.

atrococcus, C. cuthbertii, C. elliotti, C. fuscatus, C. holophyllus, C. (V. virgatum)

simulatus, C. virgatus

V. hirsutum Cyanococcus hirsutus Hairy blueberry North and South Carolina, Georgia

V. darrowi V. myrsinites var. glaucum Darrow’s blueberry, Deep South, Louisiana to Florida

Evergreen

V. myrsinites V. nitidum, V. nitidum var. decumbens, Cyanococcus myrsinites Ground blueberry, shiny South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida

blueberry

Appendix
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Table 1—Distribution of Gaylussacia and Vaccinium species in the United Statesa (continued)Genus/species Synonyms for species names Common namesb DistributioncV. myrtilloides V. canadense, V. pensylvancium var. myrtilloides, V. angustifolium var. Sour top, velvetleaf Washington, Montana (West Glacier National

myrtilloides, V. angustifolium var. integrifolium blueberry Park), Upper Midwest to New England,

Virginia, and North Carolina

V. pallidum V. vacillans, V. dobbini, V. vacillans var. crinitum, V. margarettae, V. Pale blueridge, early The East to Oklahoma

vacillans var. missouriense, V. viride, V. alto-montanum, V. missouriense, V. lowbush blueberry

vacillans var. columbianum, V. vacillans var. columbianum f. mollifolium, v.

liparum, V. subcordatum, V. tallapusae, V. torreyanum, Cyancoccusvacillans, C. liparis, C. margarettae, C. subcordatus, C. tallpusae

V. tenellum V. virgatum, V. galezans, V. virgatum var. tenellum, Cyanococcus tenellus Small black blueberry The South from Virginia to Louisiana

Vaccinium sect. Batodendron

V. arboreum V. arboreum var. glaucescens, V. diffusum, Arbutus obtusifolium, Farkleberry, sparkleberry, The Southeast to Oklahoma

Batodendron arboreum, B. andracheforme, B. glaucescens, B. speciosum Tree huckleberry,

gooseberry, winterhuckleberry, treesparkleberry

Vaccinium sect. Herpothamnus

V. crassifolium V. sempervirens, Herpothamnus crassifolius Creeping blueberry Piedmont (Virginia to Georgia)

Vaccinium sect. Myrtillus

V. caespitosum V. caespitosum var. cuneifolium, V. caespitosum var. angustifolium, V. Dwarf huckleberry, Pacific Northwest, Northern and Southern

caespitosum var. arbuscula, V. arbuscula, V. nivictum, V. paludicola dwarf blueberry, swamp Rockies, Upper Midwest, and Northern

blueberry, dwarf New Englandbilberry, Sierra bilberry,whortleberry, dwarfgrouseberry

V. deliciosum V. membranaceum var. rigidum Rainier blueberry, blue California, Oregon, and Washington

huckleberry, Cascadehuckleberry, Cascadebilberry

V. geminiflorum Mexican blueberry ArizonaV. myrtillus V. oreophilum, Myrtle whortleberry, The West except California

bilberry, buckleberry,whortleberry, bearhuckleberry, squawberry,hurtleberry, squawhuckleberry, Americanhuckleberry, deer berry,dwarf huckleberry
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102Table 1—Distribution of Gaylussacia and Vaccinium species in the United Statesa (continued)

Genus/species Synonyms for species names Common namesb DistributioncV. membranaceum V. myrtilloides, V. myrtilloides var. macrophyllum, V. globulare, V. Square-twig blueberry, Pacific Northwest, Montana, Wyoming,

 macrophyllum black huckleberry, California, Utah, Arizona, South

Dakota,

mountain bilberry, black Minnesota, and Michiganmountain huckleberry,thin-leaved huckleberry

V. ovalifolium V. chamissonis, V. alaskaense, V. oblatum, V. axillare, V. jesoense Oval-leaf blueberry, oval- Pacific Northwest 

leaved bilberry, Alaskablueberry

V. parvifolium Red blueberry, red Oregon, Washington, and California

huckleberry

V. scoparium V. myrtillus var. microphyllum, V. microphyllum, V. erthyrococcum Grouse whortleberry, The West north of Arizona including

grouseberry South Dakota

Vaccinium sect. Oxycoccoides

V. erythrocarpum Oxycoccus erectus, Hugeria erythrocarpa Southern mountain cranberry Appalachia

Vaccinium sect. Oxycoccus

V. macrocarpon V. propinquum, V. oxycoccus var. oblongifolium, V. oblongifolium, V. Cranberry, large cranberry New England to Appalachia, Upper

macrocarpum f. eburna, Oxycoccus macrocarpus Midwest, California, and Washington

V. oxycoccos V. palustre, V. oxycoccus var. ovalifolium, V. microcarpum, V. Small cranberry, wild Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Upper

oxycoccus var. intermedium, V. oxycoccus f. parvifolia, V. oxycoccus cranberry, moss Midwest to New England

var. microcarpum, V. oxycoccus var. microphylla, V. oxycoccus f. cranberry

obovatum, V. hagerupii, V. macroparon f. dahlei, Oxycoccus

quadripetala, O. europaeus, O. palustris, O. vulgaris, O. microcarpus,O. palustris f. microphylla, O. oxycoccus, O. palustris var. intermedius,

O. oxycoccus intermedius, O. intermedium, O. oxycoccus var.

intermedius, O. quadrpetala var. microphylla, O. ovalifolius, O.

palustris var. ovalifolius, O. hagerupii, O. palustris ssp. microphylla

Vaccinium sect. Polycodium

V. stamineum V. album, V. elevatum, V. kunthianum, V. caesium, V. melanocarpum, V. Deerberry, squaw East from Maine through the South

oblongum, V. stamineum var. melanocarpum, V. revolutum, V. huckleberry to Texas and Florida

melanocarpum var. candicans, V. melanocarpum var. sericeum, V.

siriceum, V. stamineum var. neglectum, V. stamineum var. interius, V.

arcuatum, V. bellum, V. candicans, V. concoloratum, V. depressum, V.
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Table 1—Distribution of Gaylussacia and Vaccinium species in the United Statesa (continued)Genus/species Synonyms for species names Common namesb Distributionc

depressum var. minus, V. floridanum, V. floridanum var. molle, V.

floridanum var. caesium, V. floridanum var. revolutum, V. glandulosum,

V. harbisonii, V. interius, V. interius var. commune, V. interius var.

subglandulosum, V. langlosii, V. latum, V. leptosepalum, V. macilentum,

V. neglectum var. harbisonii, V. parvum, V. quercinum, V. semipersistens,

V. semipersistens var. uniquum, V. siriceum f. chrysocarpon, V. siriceum

var. eburneum, V. siriceum var. elongatum, V. stamineum var. affine, V.

stamineum var. austro-montanum, V. stamineum var. virginianum,

Picrococcus elevatus, P. floridanus, Polycodium floridanum, P.

oblongum, P. stamineum, P. candicans, P. melanocarpum, P. neglectum,

P. kunthianum, P. langloisii, P. oliganthum, P. sericeum, P. interius, P.

quercinum, P. depressum, P. ashei, P. arcuatum, P. arenicola, P. bellum,

P. concoloratum, P. depressum var. minus, P. floridanum var. caesium, P.

floridanum var. molle, P. floridanum var. revolutum, P. glandulosum, P.interius var. commune, P. lautum, P. multifolum, P. multiflorum var.

uniquum, P. neglectum var. harbisonii, P. parvum, P. sericeum var.

eburneum, P. stamineum var. affine, P. stamineum var. austro-montanum,

P. stamineum var. virginianum, P. macilentum, P. leptosepalum.

Vaccinium sect. Pyxothamnus

V. ovatum V. lanceolatum, V. ovatum var. saporosum, V. sempervirens, Metagonia Evergreen huckleberry, Oregon, Washington, and California along

ovata shot huckleberry, the Pacific coast only

blackwinter huckleberry,evergreen blueberry

Vaccinium sect. Vaccinium

V. uliginosum V. obtusum, V. gaultherioides, V. pubsecens, V. uliginosum var. Alpine blueberry, western The Pacific Northwest, northern Rockies,

alpinum, V. uliginosum var. gaultherioides, V. salicinum, V. huckleberry, western bog intermountain West, Minnesota, Michigan,

uliginosum spp. pubescens, V. occidentale, V. uliginosum var. blueberry, and northern New England

microphyllum, V. uliginosum var. pedris, V. uliginosum var. westernbog blueberry,

langeanum, V. uliginosum var. salicinum, V. uliginosum f. langeanum, western blueberry, swamp

V. uliginosum f. pubescens, V. microphyllum, V. uliginosum var. huckleberry, swamp

occidentale, V. uliginosum ssp. gaultherioides, V. uliginosum ssp. blueberry, huckleberry

pedris, V. uliginosum ssp. pubescens

Vaccinium sect. Vitis-Idaea
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Table 1—Distribution of Gaylussacia and Vaccinium species in the United Statesa (continued)Genus/species Synonyms for species names Common namesb DistributioncV. vitis-idaea V. vitis-idaea var. minus, V. vitis-idaea spp. minor, V. jesoënse Cowberry, partridge- British Columbia, Minnesota, Michigan,

berry, lingonberry, rock northern New Englandcranberry, low-bushcranberry, foxberry, shoreberry, alpine berry, mossberry, dry ground berry,northern mountaincranberry

Bold: Indicates species native to the Pacific Northwest, including British Columbia, referenced by Turner (1997), Minore (1972), Martin (1979), Patterson et al. (1985), Stickney (1972), and Barney

(2004).

aSpecific authorities for the scientific species references are cited in chapter 1. Appendix 1 has been compiled from a great number of both taxonomic and nontaxonomic sources, and the information

included here is intended to indicate the wide variety of common names, taxonomic references, and general geographical distribution that may be encountered in not only the scientific literature but incommon “wild berry” or “wild foods” books. The authors have attempted to exhaustively review this literature but caution the reader that incomplete or inconsistent common names, taxonomicsynonyms, and geographic distribution, especially for the Vaccinium species, are commonly found. Moreover, taxonomic name assignments are continually changing with new advances in genetic

analysis, and all scientific classification is subject to some contention. Our intention here is to list the scientific names of plants as they are referenced in various sources as a social history of huckleberry plants in the United States rather than a definitive taxonomy.

bCommon names follow numerous sources cited in the “References.”c Distribution follows maps from Vaccinium Genetic Resources (www. Ars-grin.gov/ars/PacWest/Corvallis/) as well and other sources cited in the references. dGaylussacianomenclature and distribution follows NatureServe Explorer Species Index <http://www.natureserve.org/explorer/speciesIndex/Genus_GAYLUSSACIA_109538_1.htm>. eVacciniumnomenclature followsVander Kloet (1988).
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Table 2—Nomenclature and Use of Vaccinium Species in British Columbia by First Peoples

Interior People

Distribution in

Vaccinium sp. Common names British Columbia Use by First Nations

V. caespitosum Dwarf blueberry, Throughout the “Dwarf blueberries, though small and low-growing, are extremely popular among all interior First

mountain blueberry, province Peoples; many consider them the sweetest, best-flavoured kind of blueberries. Dwarf Blueberriesdwarf mountain ripen in August or September, depending on the elevation and latitude. People usually harvested

blueberry, lowbush them with a comb made of wood or salmon backbone, because they grow too close to the groundblueberry to be picked like other berries. Some people collected them by lying on the ground, putting one

hand under the branches and the other on top, then wriggling the fingers until the berries droppedoff into the lower hand. Dwarf Blueberries have to be thoroughly cleaned and sorted, because theyhave many twigs and leaves mixed in with them. People ate them fresh, as a treat, or mashed anddried in cakes. Some people freeze or can them nowadays, but many no longer use them becausethey are so difficult to pick. Many people have favourite local picking spots; Dwarf Blueberriesare often more plentiful a few years after a fire. They were a common trading item in the earlydays” (Turner 1997:116-117).

V. membranaceum Mountain bilberry, Throughout the “All interior aborginal people ate Mountain Bilberries when available. They harvested the large

(Syn. Vander Kloet black mountain province dark berries from July to September, depending on the elevation; as the season progressed, the1988 V. globulare) huckleberry, black women would venture higher into the mountains to get them. People ate the berries fresh, or they

huckleberry, twin- dried them in the sun, or if the weather was bad, over a small fire. Today, they freeze or can them,

leaved huckleberry or make jam with them. The Okanagan once sold large quantitites of Mountain Bilberries to

European settlers. In a narrative of the Lakes people, Mountain Bilberry was first introduced to theKettle Falls area as a gift from the Mountain Goat brothers. It was named ‘sweet berry’ by Eagle,who married the eldest brother in appreciation of the gift. Birds and other animals are also fond ofthese berries. Berries of a similar species, Vaccinium globulare, though rare in British Columbia,

were a major food of the Ktuanaxa and Flathead people of Montana” (Turner 1997: 117-118).

V. myrtilloides Canada blueberry, Mainly confined to the “The Ktunaxa, Carrier, and Sekani ate Canada Blueberries, and so did other groups within their

velvet-leaf blueberry, Kootenays and the range. They ate the berries fresh or dried them in cakes for winter, as they did other types ofsour-top blueberry central interior, but also blueberries” (Turner 1997:118-119).

common in the lowerFraser River valley andthe delta area where itwas apparentlyintroduced as acommercial crop plant

V. myrtillus Low bilberry, dwarf Confined to the “The Ktunaxa, Secwepemc, and Carrier gathered Low Bilberries from August to early autumn and

bilberry, whortleberry southeastern corner in ate them fresh or dried. Low Bilberries were popular and are still used today. To dry them, people

the Kootenays boiled the berries in a kettle, kneaded the pulp, and spread it over a small rack. Nowadays, people

make jam with Low Bilberries” (Turner 1997:119-120).
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Table 2—Nomenclature and Use of Vaccinium Species in British Columbia by First Peoples (continued)

Interior People

Distribution in

Vaccinium sp. Common names British Columbia Use by First Nations

V. ovalifolium Oval-leaved bilberry, Confined to southern “Many southern interior peoples ate oval-leaved blueberries, as did the Wet’suwet’en and other

(Vander Kloet 1988 mountain blueberry, and central British northern groups who had access to them. But in some areas, they were not as popular as other

Syn. V alaskaense) high-bush blueberry Columbia below 56o N types of blueberries and huckleberries because of their coarser seeds and tendency to rot easily.

latitude; common on Oval-leaved Blueberries are among the first berries to ripen, sometimes as early as the first part ofVancouver Island, July, but can be found later in the season at higher elevations. People eat them fresh or dried or inHaida Gwaii, and the jams. They usually gather them at the same time as Mountain Bilberries. Some people like themainland coast, and in Oval-leaved Blueberry better, while others prefer the bilberries. Sometimes, Secwepemc womenthe southeastern interior. cooked the berries over a small fire as they were picked, allowing them to soften so that they

would take up less room and require fewer baskets when carried home. Later, they recooked anddried them; if they left the berries after the preliminary cooking, they would go mouldy. Whenpeople cooked the berries, they collected the juice in birch-bark baskets and either added it a littleat a time to the berries as they dried or set it aside. When the juice cools, it has the consistency ofjelly and makes a delicious treat” (Turner 1997:120-121).

V. oxycoccus Bog cranberry, wild Throughout the “Bog cranberries are closely related to commercial cranberries. Aborginal peoples throughout the

cranberry, moss province but restricted interior ate these tart wild berries whenever they were available. They gathered Bog Cranberries

cranberry to muskegs and peat from late summer to late fall-those they harvested early were usually stored until they ripened.

bogs, always in People ate them raw or boiled with meat; some groups, such as the Lower Stl-atl-imx and Carrier,association with even dried them for winter. The Nisga’a preserved Bog Cranberries by boiling them and mixingsphagnum moss. them with oil; then, in winter, they served them as a dessert, whipped up with snow and Eulachon

grease. The Ktunaxa call them ‘fool’s hen berries’ because grouse like to eat them”(Turner 1997:121-122).

V. scoparium Grouseberry, red alpine Restricted to the “The Ktunaxa, Nlaka’pamax, Okanagan, and Secwepemc gathered the tiny red berries in later

huckleberry, dwarf red southern interior, south summer, at the same time as Dwarf Blueberries, and usually ate them fresh. Grouseberries are toowhortleberry, dwarf red of 52o N latitude, small to be picked efficiently with fingers, so most people harvested them in the same manner as

huckleberry, small- except in the Rocky they gathered Dwarf Blueberries, with combs of wood or bone. The Ktunaxa name forleaved huckleberry Mountains, where it Grouseberry means ‘comb’” (Turner 1997:122-123).

extends almost to 54o N.

V. uliginosum Bog blueberry, bog Abundant on the coast, “First Peoples of the northern interior—the Tahltan, Kaska, Dene-thah, and others—used Bog

(Syn. Vander Kloet bilberry, bog particularly on Haida Blueberry extensively. The people of the Great Slave Lake area in the Northwest Territories

1988 V. occindentale). huckleberry, Gwaii, and in the gathered the berries in large quantities during a two-week period toward the end of August; they

whortleberry northern interior; not ate them raw or boiled them in grease and stored them for winter. The Dene-thah apparently did

generally found in the not store them, but only ate them fresh. The Lower Stl’atl’imx also ate Bog Blueberries, but mostcentral and southern other southern interior groups did not have access to them” (Turner 1997:123-124).interior
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107

Table 2—Nomenclature and Use of Vaccinium Species in British Columbia by First Peoples (continued)

Interior People

Distribution in

Vaccinium sp. Common names British Columbia Use by First Nations

V. vitis-idaea spp. minor Low-bush cranberry, Common in the north; “The Nisga’a, Wet’suwet’en, Sekani, Tahltan, Dene-thah, and other Athapaskan peoples ate Low-

(Syn. Vander Kloet 1988 mountain cranberry, sporadic on the bush Cranberries. Like Bog Cranberries, Low-bush Cranberries are tart tasting and hard until theyV. vitis idaea) rock cranberry, lingon southern coast and in are exposed to frost. The Nisga’a gathered them in fall, along with Bog Cranberries, boiled them,

berry the southern Rocky and mixed them with oil for storage. In winter, people mixed Low-bush Cranberries with snow,

Mountains whipped them into a froth with Eulachon grease, and served this as a dessert” (Turner 1997:124).

Coastal People

V. alaskaense (Vander Alaska blueberry Coastal British “The range of Alaska Blueberry extends into the territories of the Lower Nlaka’pamux and Lower

Kloet 1988 Syn. Columbia Stl’atl’imx who ate the fruits, fresh or dried, as they did other types of blueberries” (Turner 1997:162).V. ovalifolium)V. ovatum Evergreen huckleberry Coastal British “According to E. Steedman in Ethnobotany of the Thompson Indians of British Columbia (1930),

Columbia the Nlaka’pamux gathered the sweet, reddish-black berries of the Evergreen Huckleberry. But the

range of this plant is generally restricted to the coast, so their availability to the Nlaka’pamux isdoubtful” (Turner 1997:163).

V. parvifolium Red huckleberry Coastal British “The Lower Nlaka’ pamux, Lower Stl’atl’mix, Nisga’a, eastern Secwepemc and possibly the

Columbia Ktunaxa ate Red Huckleberries fresh or dried. They prepared them in similar ways to blueberries

and Mountain Bilberry” (Turner 1997:163).

Source: Turner 1997.
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108Table 3—Nomenclature and description of Vaccinium species of Oregon and Washington

Vaccinium sp. Height Twigs Leaves Flowers Berries Description

Feet

V. alaskaense 1.5-4.0 Yellow-green; 1-2.5 in. long; Egg- As broad or Bluish-black Bears berries singly in the axils of the leaves.

(Syn. Vander somewhat angled; shaped to elliptical; broader than long; with bloom or Superficially similar to V. ovalifolium and may

Kloet 1988 smooth or with smooth or very slightly broadest just above purplish-black hybridize; grows in somewhat moister habitats than V.

V. ovalifolium) very short hairs toothed margins; waxy base; style slightly with bloom; ovalifolium along the coast and in the Cascades from

bloom on lower surface; longer than petal spherical to northwestern Oregon to Alaska. Both species often

sparse, gland-tipped tube; bronzy-pink; pear-shaped; grow together in moderately dry habitats. Has largerhairs on midnerve single borne on a leaves and is more shade tolerant than V. ovalifolium

straight stem and the berries are juicier and more acidic. Both speciesthat is are seedy, but has fewer seeds than V. ovalifolium.

a

somewhatenlarged justbelow theberry

V. caespitosum 0.5-1.0 Yellow-green to 0.4- 1.25 in long, longer Twice as long as Light blue to Bears berries singly in the axils of the leaves. Similar in

red; somewhat than broad; wider near broad; white to blue-black; appearance to V. deliciosum but less common in Oregonangled; usually the tip than at the base; pink; single with bloom; and Washington; grows in wet meadows and on moisthoary with tiny small teeth along the spherical rocky ridges throughout the Northwest. The leaves are

white curved hairs, upper margins; each smooth or glandular beneath whereas those of V.but sometimes tooth tipped with a deliciosum are glaucous.

smooth and shiny bristlelike hair

V. deliciosum 0.3-1.5 Greenish-brown; 0.5-2 in long; longer Nearly spherical; Blue-black; Bears berries singly in the axils of the leaves. Common

inconspicuously than broad; wider near pink; single with bloom; at elevations above 4,500 feet in the alpine meadows of

angled; smooth; the tip than at the base; spherical the Olympic and Cascade Mountains. A small plant

dense small teeth along the with deep blue, sweet berries that have a glaucous

upper margins; waxy bloom.bloom on lower surface

V. globulare (Syn. 1.5-4 Greenish-yellow; 0.75-1.75 in long; oval As broad as long; Dark purple; Bears berries singly in the axils of the leaves. Grows at

Vander Kloet slightly angled; or egg-shaped with rounded at the without lower and middle elevations east of the Cascade1988 V. smooth rounded or abruptly sides and more or bloom; Mountains in both Oregon and Washington. Its leaves

membranaceum) pointed tip; very small less flattened from spherical are globular in shape without long points at the apexes;

teeth along the margin above; pale its berries are bluish-purple.

pinkish-yellow;single

V. membranaceum 2-6 Yellow-green; 1-2.5 in long; egg- Longer than broad; Purplish- Bears berries singly in the axils of the leaves. Most(Syn. Vander Kloet slightly angled; shaped with tapering or pale yellowish- black, red, frequently picked huckleberry. Resembles V. globulare

 1988 V. globulare) smooth long-pointed tip; very pink; single maroon, but is a coarser shrub with larger leaves that have longsmall teeth along the purple, blue, pointed apexes. It grows at moderate to high elevations

margins black, rarely on both the eastern and western slopes of the Olympic
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Table 3—Nomenclature and description of Vaccinium species of Oregon and Washington (continued)Vaccinium sp. Height Twigs Leaves Flowers Berries Description

Feet

white; and Cascade Mountains, and it is also found in thewithout Wallowa and Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon andbloom; eastern Washington. Its fruits are subacid, aromatic,spherical and deliciously flavored. They are larger than most

other wild huckleberries in the region.

V. myrtillus 0.5-1.0 Greenish; strongly 0.4-1.25 in long. Egg- Length and breadth Dark red to Bears berries singly. Resembles V. scoparium but is

angled; with very shaped or oval; sharply approximately blue-black; slightly larger with a dark red berry that may also beshort hairs toothed margins; equal; pink; single without blue, purple, or black. It grows on the eastern slopes of

strongly veiny on the bloom; the Cascade Mountains.

lower surface spherical

V. occidentale 0.7- 2.0 Yellow-green; 0.4-1.0 in long; longer Longer than broad; Blue to black; Berries borne in clusters. Low shrub that bears small

(Syn. Vander round; smooth; than broad and wider pink or white; with bloom; clusters of 2 to 3 berries of poor quality. Occurs in Kloet 1988 rigid near the tip than at base; single or in spherical mountain swamps, mostly on the eastern slopes of theV. uligionosum) smooth margins; waxy clusters of 2-4 Cascade Mountains.

bloom often present onlower surface.

V. ovalifolium 3.0-10.0 Yellow-green; 0.75-2 in long; oval or Somewhat longer Bluish-black; Bears berries singly in the axils of the leaves. Tall shrub

(Syn. Vander conspicuously oblong; smooth or very than broad; with bloom; with entire or inconspicuously serrulate leaves. GrowsKloet 1988 angled; smooth slightly toothed broadest just below spherical; at middle altitudes throughout the Northwest (see V.

V. alaskaense) margins; waxy bloom mid-length; style borned on a alaskaense) from sea level to about 6,000 feet.

on lower surface; veins same length or curved stemprominent shorter than petal that is not

tube; pink; single enlarged

below theberry

V. ovatum 1.5- 10.0 Covered with very 0.75-2 in long; very Longer than broad; Shiny black; Berries borne in clusters. A tall shrub with glossy

short hairs numerous and leathery; pink; borne in usually evergreen leaves that grows along the coast from British

narrowly egg-shaped clusters of 3-10 without Columbia to California. Produces large clusters of

with pointed tips; bloom; rather strong-flavored berries that are less desirable than

sharply toothed spherical other huckleberries for fresh use. The leafy branches aremargins; shiny above used by florists as fillers and background foliage.

V. parvifolium 3.0–12.0 Green; very 0.25-1.25 in. long; oval As broad or Bright red; Bears berries singly. Common where moist shady

prominently to elliptical; smooth broader than long; spherical habitats occur in lowlands and mountain valleys fromangled (almost margins; thin waxy; yellowish- central California to Alaska. Becomes a large erectsquare); smooth pink; single shrub after spending 4 to 5 years as a trailing, vinelike

juvenile plant. Berries are palatable but rather sour andnot commercially important.b
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Table 3—Nomenclature and description of Vaccinium species of Oregon and Washington (continued)Vaccinium sp. Height Twigs Leaves Flowers Berries Description

Feet

V. scoparium 0.3-1.3 Bright green or 0.25-0.5 in long; Length and breadth Bright red, Bears berries singly. Berries are sweeter than those of

yellow-green; narrowly oval or lance- approximately occasionally V. parvifolium. Birds and animals harvest most of the

strongly angled; shaped; small teeth equal; pink; single blue; crop. A low-matted species that grows at high altitudes

smooth; broomy along the margins; spherical in the Cascade, Olympic, Siskiyou, Blue, and Wallowa

strongly veiny on the Mountains.lower surface

V. uliginosum 0.7-1.8 Yellow-green; 0.4 –1.25 in long; wider Longer than broad; Blue to black; Berries borne in clusters. A low shrub that bears small

(Syn. Vander round; covered near the rounded tip pink; single or in with bloom; clusters of two to three berries. Grows in swamps along

Kloet 1988 with very short than at the base; smooth clusters of 2-4 spherical the coast.

V. occindentae) hairs margins; thick; lower

surface veins

Source: Minore 1972, Barney 2004. See the “References”.1 See Turner 1997 (table 2) for First Nations limited use in British Columbia because of “their coarser seeds and tendency to rot easily.” 2 In contrast to Minore (1972), Szczawinski (1962: 182) notes of V. parvifolium in British Columbia that the fruit is “very palatable, refreshing, and has commercial possibilities”. He continues with

the note that Haskin (1934) wrote of an Alsea (Oregon) tribal myth: “Now since it was known to be bad luck the red huckleberries were not usually eaten. Whenever they were eaten, the reason of

that person would probably disappear, and he would attempt to go (wander) into the woods. Therefore they were not eaten because it was known that she (Asin, the monster girl of the woods) wasthe one that created the red huckleberries. She was held in fear very much because she always carried off the people” (cited in Szczawinski 1962).
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

111

Table 4—Nomenclature and Description of Vaccinium Species of Western Montana

Twigs and

Vaccinium sp. Height buds Leaves Flowers Berries Field recognition Habitat

(in/ft)

V. caespitosum 2-12 Rounded Oblanceolate Oval urn-shaped Glaucous blue Dwarf to low rhizomatose Forested floors of mountain valleys

(16) in yellow-green to (widest well above (L:W a 1.2-2.0) 5-8 mm broad sometimes mat-forming and wooded margins of mountain

reddish stems, their midlength); 5-6 mm long; pedicel shrub with rounded stems meadows and less frequently intosometimes 1-3 (5) cm long; 1.5-3 mm long and oblanceolate, serrate the mountains; generally distributed

weakly angled margin serrated leaves throughout western Montana but

but not more frequent in the northern,obviously moister portion of the areaangled orridged; budsvalvate

V. globulare (Syn. 1.5–4 ft Angled, often Obovate (widest Globose (L:W 0.9- Bluish-purple to Medium shrub, often General throughout the montaneVander Kloet sharply, stems above their 1.0) 6-7 mm long; purplish-red, reduced to low shrubs in forests, best developed and often an1988 V. that are midlength) and pedicel 5-10 mm rarely white; open sites and at higher understory dominant on the moister,

membranaceum) yellowish to tan blunt pointed long with or without elevations. Globular cooler forest sites at lower to mid

earlier, red in 2-4(5) cm long; bloom 6-8 mm flower, obovate blunt montate elevations (also oftenfall and winter; margin serrate broad pointed leaves and reddish approaching subalpine); widely

buds valvate angled stems distributed in western Montana and

the most common species; theprincipal source of huckleberries forpicking and eating

V. 1.5 –5 Somewhat Ovate (widest Elliptic urn-shaped Purple to dark Medium to tall shrub with See V. globulare above, which ismembranaceum (6.5) ft angled, yellow- below their (L:W 1.2-1.3) ca. 6 purplish- elliptic urn-shaped flowers considered to be V. membranaceum

(Syn. Vander green to straw midlength) with mm Long; pedicel reddish, rarely and large ovate, long-taper (Syn. Vander Kloet 1988)

Kloet 1988 V. colored to deep long tapering 5-10 mm long white; 7-9 mm pointed leavesglobulare) red stems; buds points, 2-5 cm broad

valvate long; margin

serrate

V. mytilloides 4-16 Round, Elliptic (widest at Borne in short Glaucous blue Low, erect shrub with Forested flat on glaciated valley

(20) in distinctly their midlength) clusters from floral with bloom obviously velvet hairy bottom; rare, one verified location

obvious hairy 2-5 cm long, buds located on 5-9 mm broad stem known for Montana near West

stem, green obviously hairy; last year’s wood Glacier in Glacier National Park.covered with margin entire from the first 1-3very small wart- buds at the tip of
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-657

112Table 4—Nomenclature and Description of Vaccinium Species of Western Montana (continued)

Twigs and

Vaccinium sp. Height buds Leaves Flowers Berries Field recognition Habitat

(in/ft)

like blisters; the stem; calyx 5-stems often lobed, persistent inreddish in fall fruit; sepals wellwith the blisters developed,remaining pointed; anthersgreen; buds without awns.paired oppositescales; floralbuds larger with4-5 pairs ofscales,vegetative budssmaller with 2-3pairs of scales;bud scalestapering to apointed awnlike tip

V. myrtillus 4-16 in Sharply angled Ovate (widest Globose (L:W 1.0) Dark red to Low to dwarf and Forested flats to upland slopes from

to ridged below their 4-5 mm long; bluish black 5-8 somewhat spreading shrub low to high montane elevations,(sometimes midlength) 1-3 cm pedicel 2-3 mm mm broad with divergent branchings frequently associated with lodgepole

winged) stems, long; margin long and stout, well ridged, pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. Ex.

stout (relative to serrate green stems and ovate Loud), and also subalpine fir (Abies

V. scoparium), leaves. Similar to V. lasiocarpa Hook. Nutt.) and

green but scoparium, but lacks the Englemann spruce (Picea

sometimes unique broom-like engelmanii Parry ex Engeln)

reddish or branching pattern of fine widely distributed but infrequent inorangish tinged twigs. western Montanaon plants in oldburns oropenings in fullsun; buds valvate

V. occidentale 8-24 in Round, light to Oblanceolate to Oval, urn-shaped Glaucous blue Low, stout stemmed and Most common and best developed in

(Syn. Vander deep orange- elliptic (widest at (L:W 1.0-1.3) 4-5 with bloom 4-7 sometimes dwarfed shrub subalpine wet meadows, less

Kloet 1988 V. brown, less or above their mm long; pedicels mm broad in open subalpine wet sites frequent in open, perennially moist

V. uliginosum) often grayish midlength) 1-3 cm 2-3 mm long; with hairless brown sites at high montane to upper

brown stout long; margine flowers borne in younger stems and entire subalpine elevations; known fromstems; buds entire groups of 1-4 from leaves. Similar to V. the high mountain ranges in the
A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest

113

Table 4—Nomenclature and Description of Vaccinium Species of Western Montana (continued)

Twigs and

Vaccinium sp. Height buds Leaves Flowers Berries Field recognition Habitat

(in/ft)

have paired floral buds located caespitosum but has entire southern portion of western

scales, 2-3 pairs on last year’s leaves and paired bud Montana and to be expected in theof opposite wood at the first 1- scales high mountains of the northern halfscales; floral 3 buds from the tip of our areabuds are slightly of the stem; clayxlarger and lobes persistent inspheroid-shape; fruit; sepals wellvegetative buds developed, pointedare flattened,occasionallyvery small budsare valvate; budscales keeled,glacous, andpersistent

V. scoparium 4-12 Sharply angled Narrowly elliptical Urn-shaped (L:W Bright red, Dwarf to occasionally low High montane and subalpine forest

(20) in or ridged fine to lanceolate 1.2) ca. 4 mm infrequently shrub with erect broom- elevations, occasionally lower; the

(relative to V. (widest at or long: pedicel 2.0 – darker red, 3-5 like branching of crowded, common and often the dominantmyrtillus) stems, slightly below their 2.5 mm long mm broad angled, green stems understory shrub of the subalpinebright green to midlength), 8-1.5 forest zone in western Montana;green; buds mm long; margin most frequently associated withvalvate. serrate lodgepole pine, also subalpine fir

and whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulisEngel.)

a Ratio of the width of the corolla to its length.

Source: Stickney 1972.; see the “References.” According to Vander Kloet 1988, V. globulare is the same species as V. membranaceum; V. alaskaense is the same species as V. ovalifolium, and

V. occidentale is the same species as V. uliginosum. Stickney’s classification is reported intact in this appendix because of the many references to these various species by sources quoted and cited in

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