The Man on the Mountain

By Liv Stecker

It takes eons of time, heat, and pressure beyond imagination, added to a swirling mix of minerals to form the intricate layers of a mountain. When Don Kelson chipped into the flaking outcrop of quartzite on the hillside of his property overlooking Lake Roosevelt, he dug into a rainbow of geological drama that tells the story of countless generations.

Kifer Quarry has been known for some time as a source of colorful, mica-rich quartzite slabs that have been used in paving and construction across this side of the state. Composed of the same multi-hued rocks that jut up from the valley floor and formed the once grand Kettle Falls, the quartzite up the hill from the river was quarried by the Kifer family for many years.  Don Kelson's stake in the quarry began when he purchased a piece of the hillside in 1995 and established Rainbow Rock.

Kelson was born in Montana, and spent his earliest years in an orphanage until he was adopted by the Kelson family when he was four. Shortly after his adoption, he suffered from a bout of Polio, which put him in the hospital for 10 days and permanently affected his left leg. As tough as they come, Don beat the disease and went on to become a hard working hand at the family dairy. He remembers the rugged conditions, negative 60 degree winters, living in a hand-hewn log cabin that is the oldest standing building in the State of Montana. As a young teenager, Don carved his initials into the square logs that were assembled in the mid 19^th century at Fort Cullah, on of the Hudson Bay Company’s earliest outposts in the fur trade of the west.

As an adult, an aunt finally filled in some of the missing pieces of his family history, telling Don that he had been born in the State Penitentiary to a native Blackfoot woman and a man with a reputation as a rustler. According to his adoptive aunt, Don was added to the family for another set of hands to help with the workload of a large dairy and farming operation. “When I became about 17 years old, I knew what the score was.” Kelson says. Already shouldering all of his own financial responsibilities, Don set out on his own.

Starting off as a young adult in central Washington, he worked harvesting grapes through the National Grape cooperative of owners, and picking corn and peas for CalPac. As a young man in Montana, Don says “I learned a lot. I learned how to work. If you really want something, you can do it if you work at it.” His grit and determination paid off, and before long, Kelson had established a reputation as a hard worker that won him the trust of a local banker, who helped him purchase his first 20 acres of grapes. Don became a master of the trade, and after nearly 50 years in the Yakima area, he owned or leased 90 acres of grapes, contracted the harvest for hundreds more, and had been the second farmer in the state to run a grape harvesting machine.

In 1984, Kelson bought property off of Kifer road in Ferry County, just north of Barney’s Junction. The Kifers had been quarrying the colorful quartzite for decades, but the piece of ground that Kelson purchase held a rich belt of the stuff that boasted dramatic shades of color and rich veins of mica. Quartzite is formed when sandstone, which is rich with quartz, is altered over time with intense pressure and heat, buried deep under ground near the edges of tectonic plates. As the plates move, the metamorphic rock is thrust upward into mountain ranges. Quartzite like the kind found in Kifer Quarry is heavily laced with mica, a sheet silicate that is composed of minerals with similar chemical composition. Layers of mica were compressed between the sandstone layers, buried deep in the earth, forming the glimmering surfaces of the super durable quartzite.

Kelson built a house up on the hillside overlooking the river, a view that stretches for miles up toward Kamloops Island and down south to Rice. In 1995, Don retired from farming in the Yakima Valley and moved to his property on Rainbow Rock Road permanently. He sold his farming operation to his oldest son, who maintained it for a couple of years before he too sold it and relocated to the Kettle Falls area.

Don is fiercely proud of his Rainbow Rock, and rightly so, as tons of the gorgeous slabs lay stacked carefully on pallets, and leaned up against trees around his property. Each piece chiseled by hand and moved around repeatedly until Don finds the spot that he wants it. All of the quarrying is done a piece at a time by hand with a mallet and a chisel. The pieces of quartzite that Don has for sale range from massive hunks several feet across to small cobbles of colorful pavers. It’s heartfelt work for Kelson, who sees the character in each rock.

The amount of heat and pressure over vast time periods that formed the rainbow rock that Don sells is a large-scale reflection of the story of his life. Shaped by hard work, determination, moved around by necessity and life changes, he became the colorful individual he is over a long and winding road. As the minerals that make up the sparkling quartzite from Kifer Quarry come out of their long buried resting place, they become the facing stone for many local businesses and homes. They represent a unique beauty forged by time and pressure that people like Don Kelson can relate to.