The Man Who Gave Away Mountains

In my trip around Idaho I saw some beautiful country. Since I don't have my laptop to download and upload my pictures (its in California with the rest of my stuff) I researched some of the places I visted and came across Virgil McCroskey.

by Andrea Vogt

The requisite scenic drive up to the top of Steptoe Butte is a ritual for students and their families arriving for the start of school or football games, for foreign students eager for a bird's eye view of their new home, for couples searching for the most romantic sunset, for paragliders learning to take flight, for professional photographers from all over the world.

The pool is shaded by maidenhair ferns and thirsty red cedars, but his initials, “VTM 1964,” are still visible, etched in shaky script at the bottom of the concrete basin that captures spring water off the mountainside.

Virgil Talmadge McCroskey, a Colfax pharmacist from one of eastern Washington’s most prominent pioneering families, carved his initials into the bottom of this concrete basin at age 88.

Though he passed away a quarter of a century ago, the spring and the forested ridge from which it bubbles up are part of the legacy of land left by a man ahead his time: The wheeling, dealing Whitman County bachelor—one the first graduates of Washington State University—spent his life and fortune amassing thousands of acres for the rest of us to enjoy.

In the beginning, the odds were overwhelmingly against him—state legislators repeatedly refused his gifts, locals gossiped about his eccentric ways, family members were convinced he was squandering their wealth, and there was no end to the red tape and backbreaking labor the parks would require. But by the time he died in 1970, McCroskey’s visionary conservation efforts had made headlines in Life magazine, which heralded him by the nickname locals had been calling him for years: The Man Who Gave Away Mountains.

Today, most residents of the Palouse have benefited at least once from McCroskey’s gift of Steptoe Butte. A narrow road winds several times around the naked peak, which rises abruptly from the soft folds of farmland between Colfax and Spokane. The view from the top spans 360 degrees—from the Palouse Country’s gentle hills, quilted in a colourful patchwork, to the mountains beyond. The requisite scenic drive up to the top of the butte is a ritual for students and their families arriving for the start of school or football games, for foreign students eager for a bird’s-eye view of their new home, for couples searching for the most romantic sunset, for paragliders learning to take flight, for professional photographers from all over the world.

“Steptoe Butte could be developed. There could be houses on top and at the base of it, says heir Lauren McCroskey, who works as an architectural historian for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Center for Expertise for the Preservation of Historic Buildings and Structures. “Instead it is something for everybody to enjoy.”

For the whole story and pictures go here to Washingston State Magazine.
http://washington-state-magazine.wsu.edu/stories/2006/August/McCroskey.html