CLARA MAE ROSS | The Book of Ross

CLARA MAE ROSS A-904

Female, Born

in Nebraska on 10/23/1900

Parents

Siblings

Spouses / Children

Husband:

Roy
A.
NELSON

Their Children:

Born October 23, 1900, of George Granville ROSS and Olive A. MILLION. Clara was one of 12 children, and was probably born in Nebraska.

Clara married Roy A. NELSON, and they had at least two children, Wendell and Louise. (I'm curious about the name Wendell, since it is unusual and was also used as the middle name of Henry Wendell ROSS (Chart A901)).

The photograph below was explained to be by Cousin Barney (Bernard Wilbur ROSS). Clara was his aunt, and he had actually been to Pavillion, Wyoming. (Look it up sometime... it's the real "boonies"!) At the conclusion of a 16-year effort completed in 1920, the federal government bought back part of the Wind River Indian Reservation for the purpose of "reclaiming" the land. Over time, two significant reservoirs (Bull Lake and Ocean Lake) were constructed, along with canals to facilitate irrigation to the area. The following excerpt from Bureau of Reclamation files gives a bureaucrat's view of the area:

In the late summer of 1928, George C. Kreutzer, the Bureau of Reclamation's director of economics left the confines of his office in the Department of Interior building in Washington, D.C. for the wilds of Wyoming. In his four years as economics director, Kreutzer visited most of the irrigated west, and like most of his assignments, this one came directly from his friend and boss, Reclamation Commissioner Elwood Mead. This time, Kreutzer would canvass the scattering of settlers eking out a living producing alfalfa and forage on the Riverton Project, for many years one of Reclamation's most perplexing ventures. Making his way through the cutting wind and over the hard ground of west-central Wyoming, Kreutzer found and spoke with all 16 settlers of the Riverton Project. Back in Washington that November, in a memo to Secretary Mead, Kreutzer reported none of the structures on the project were "suitable to house a family," and apologized he could not further illustrate the hardship he found with photographs of barns as "there weren't any to take."

Barney remembered that Roy and Clara had taken out a homestead in that inhospitable area – and gave me this photo of their homestead home.

Roy and Clara’s homestead was located about 2 miles south of Pavillion, Wyoming, near the southeast corner of the intersection of State Highways 133 and 134 – about 3 miles from what is now Ocean Lake. His patent was issued January 24, 1941, making his actual purchase 1-3 years earlier. The coordinates of that property are approximately 43.2075°N, 108.6856°W. A copy of his patent is shown below:

2 Photos

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