The Mosier House

Jefferson Mosier built his home in 1904 on a hill overlooking Mosier. The Queen Anne Victorian style "bungalow" was of a type similar to those sold by Sears-Roebuck. Features of the house included a cupolo peak roof, leaded glass windows, a curving wooden staircase, 10 foot high ceilings in the front parlour and living area, and upstairs bedrooms that took in a lovely view of the Columbia River.

Jane Mosier Lynch recalls when her family left the Mosier House it was a sad time. Her brother and father had both recently died, as had her grandmother. Her mother was so overcome with grief that she walked away from everything, leaving the house and most of their possesions behind. Jane, who was a young girl at the time, remembers that when they moved she was only allowed to take along one doll.

Jane Mosier Lynch views the Wasco County Pioneer Association's photo display of the Mosier Community.

The house was purchased in the 1930's by Jack Buce, Sr. after sitting vacant for several years. Buce was an civil employee of the United States Dept. of Aeronautics, and tended the beacons in the Columbia Gorge from Pasco to Corbett, including the one on Beacon Rock (located in Washington). Buce was a highly intelligent man, an inventor, an electrician, and skilled as a foundry worker as well. He suffered a mental breakdown and in November of 1944 Buce shot and killed himself in the pantry. The current owners of the house say that they sometimes suspect his ghost still inhabits his old workshop in back of the house. Buce's widow, Ethel, remarried John Kerr and lived in the house for another 40+ years. All are buried in the Mosier Cemetery.

In the late 1980's the house, which had been exposed to years of neglect, was purchased. After several years of extensive remodeling and restoration, the house is now a bed and breakfast known as the Mosier House Bed and Breakfast. Today the Mosier House Bed and Breakfast sits amidst gardens, a creek and a pond that overlook the town.

For a little look at what life was like in the 1930's living in the Mosier House, here is an exerpt from the autobiography of Margaret June Buce:

"My dad, Jack Buce, constructed the first power plant providing the first electricity for the Trout Lake Valley. After it was running but not taking in enough money dad had to declare bankruptcy. After the power plant was a thing of the past, dad got a job in Maxville, Montana building another power plant. During world war two it was dismantled and shipped somewhere over seas. He went off to work and find us a place to live.

We moved to Butte, Montana as my father had a job in the copper mine there. My dad was a "boss electrician" in the mine and he would sometimes take we three older children to the mine with him and down the shaft on the elevator. We would each have our carbide lamp to carry and we felt like big stuff. We would fill our pockets with carbide and after we got home we'd go sit on the sidewalk and throw chunks of the stuff into the mud puddles to watch the water boil.

Cleaning the beacons of the Columbia Gorge

Dad applied for and got a job with the civil service and had to report to headquarters in Portland, Oregon.There used to be a beacon on Rocky Butte and dad would take us along up there to service it and I would use the Bon Ami to clean the lenses and the reflector. After I learned to do that so no powder or lint remained I had a job for many years. One day we climbed Beacon Rock on the Columbia, not only to the top of the rock but to the top of the tower on top of the rock. There I performed my cleaning duties. At that time there were beacons on both sides of the river spaced ten miles apart. For some of them we would park the car on the highway and then pack all the supplies up a trail to the beacon. I'm sure we kids were a great help! The beacons that were located at airports had green side light and the ones located on the mountains had red side lights and it goes without saying the red lights warned the pilots that here was great danger. There was a code each side light blinked that told the pilot how far he was from the airport or at least his position on the map. For my cleaning duties I used rags. Dad used to get great bales of rags from the government for this cleaning chore and when he got a new bale we used to scope the rags out. Sometimes there would be usable things in there and sometimes remnants of new material which I would confiscate. Some times there was nothing interesting at all! The government wanted him to live more in the center of his route and so our next move was to Cascade Locks. While we lived there preparations for the building of Bonneville Dam were begun. At Cascade Locks there were many big rocks in the river causing rapids at that point. The locks had been built to bypass the rapids but for ocean going vessels to be able to navigate the river after the dam was built it was necessary to do a lot of blasting. Dad was excited about the coming of the dam and all the electricity it would produce. He drew pictures to explain to us how the fish ladders would work. He kept close watch on the progress at the dam-site.

On May 6, 1934 we moved to Mosier to be even more centrally located as dad's route by that time extended to Pasco, Washington. Before the move dad found a house; this time one that was for sale. It was the old Mosier house and at that time it wasn't so old...only 30 years but we loved it and still do. The house was the largest one we ever lived in. At first the long back room was locked and we used to peer through the keyhole to see what was in there as Mrs. Mosier had some things stored there. So until we got to use that room, the boys slept in the front bedroom upstairs. Ruth and I had the bedroom on the first floor and mom and dad slept in the front room..which worked out o.k. because we didn't have front room furniture anyhow and the den served us just fine as a front room.

The house hadn't been lived in for several years and I can just picture the ropes of spider webs that extended from the ceiling to the floor all over the house. I'm talking about ten foot ceilings too. When we first moved to Mosier the grass was grown up around the house quite tall. Dad had a scythe that you swung standing up, by that I mean it was a big haying scythe.In the yard, the grass and weeds had grown to tremendous heights even that early in the spring. The first day we were there mom killed a huge rattler just a few feet from the back porch...as much as I know, the only one we ever saw on the place as long as we lived there.

When we bought the place in Mosier we bought all of block nine. We eventually had a couple of pigs, chickens and at one time a total of ten cows and calves. Every fall we would butcher a calf or yearling and a pig for meat for the winter. Mom was really handy with making hams and bacon and we used to can around five hundred jars of stuff, fruits, vegetables, salmon, jams and pickles..just anything that came our way. We had black walnut trees in the yard. This was during the depression and before we got our own livestock going we would purchase a pound of hamburger or sausage or pork chops or roundsteak and that had to do for six children and our parents.We all had our chores to do and it was quite a hustle on school mornings to get up, feed the animals, milk and deliver the papers. We had to do the dishes before we went to school but we made our bed when we came home and sometimes just crawled in as was! On Saturday we cleaned house and the three of us each took our section. The kitchen, pantry and bathroom was one job..the dining room, den and front room was another and the upstairs was yet another. We would sing as we worked and when we were done with our allotted section we were done and things were always ship shape by noon on Saturday.

I turned twelve the year we moved to Mosier and that year I learned to swim in Mosier Creek.Mosier, Oregon was a fun place to live. In the winter we would haul the bobsled out of Camp's barn and up on the mountain road. I don't know if that was the proper name or just what we called it. Seven or eight of us would pile on and down we would go. At the bottom was a cement wall and also a curve in the street and we were fortunate that a car never arrived at that corner the same time a sled full of kids did. We would slide for hours and when we went home mom would stuff us with Chili and hot cocoa. The year Monopoly came out or rather our first introduction to the game was one Christmas vacation when Mick got the game for his Christmas present. A lot of the kids in town would come every night during Christmas vacation to play. When they would come up the path mom would mix up dough and after we played till about eleven or so she would start frying raised doughnuts and make a big canning kettle full of cocoa and we would have whipped cream. What wonderful refreshments! Mom was such a good sport to go to all that work for our entertainment."

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