Idaho Collector's Basement Is Store Of Military History

RIGGINS, Idaho - Ace Barton has been collecting things since he was a boy growing up on his mother's isolated ranch in Hells Canyon. He calls himself a pack rat, but that doesn't begin to cover it.

Barton, 74, is the sort of person people have in mind when they talk about colorful Idaho characters.

Riggins mayor for 12 years, Barton knows more about Hells Canyon history than most historians.

"He's a very significant source of Snake River history, particularly in the stretch of canyon where he was raised," said Idaho author Cort Conley. "He's collected history and materials that are invaluable."

Barton grew up in the then-remote canyon, at the family cattle ranch on Sheep Creek Junction Bar, before the Snake River dams were built. Half a year would pass without mail deliveries or visitors from "the outside."

It was a walled world of long silences and solitary eccentrics. Barton knew "Wheelbarrow Annie," the canyon's famous recluse.

The collecting bug bit him early and never let go. He started by digging up rifle cartridges on the family ranch.

Then he started collecting arrowheads. When the United States entered World War II, he "thought I had to get into that fracas," and spent three years in the South Pacific. That led to a lifelong interest in things military.

"He has almost 6,000 cartridges, and he has uniforms I don't think anyone has," Conley said. "I don't know what its disposition will be after he's gone, but it ought to be in a museum."

Smell of leather and mothballs

Most of the collection is in a basement room.

Step inside. The room smells of old leather and mothballed clothes. In the dim light, the first thing to catch the eye is a fiberglass horse. It's a life-sized replica, resplendent in a vintage halter, bridle and a 1938 Phillips pack saddle.

"I got it from a friend in Missoula, Mont.," he said. `The only way it would fit in my truck was upside down with the legs sticking up. Some people followed me 60 miles to a cafe in Lochsa to find out what I was doing with a horse belly up in the back of my pickup."

He has military uniforms from the Civil War through Vietnam - not reproductions but the real thing.

He has a rare Idaho Regiment uniform from the Spanish American War.

"See the Idaho (he calls it Idee-ho) motif on the collar and buttons. This is one I'm particularly proud of. If you go to the trade shows and gun shows, you don't see this kind of stuff anymore. Eccentrics like me have ratholed all of it."

Drawer upon drawer is filled with military cartridges, neatly filed according to caliber and vintage.

He has ammo belts, cartridge pouches, machine-gun shells and cannonballs.

He has pistols, rifles, muskets, daggers, bayonets, sabers and Samurai swords.

He has bits and bridles, saddles and stirrups, hats and helmets. He has canteens, lanterns, mess kits, powder horns, ropes, picks, axes and shovels.

He has a dress helmet that looks like it could have belonged to a Prussian general. It's from the Fort Lapwai Parade Grounds, circa 1870.

His oldest military artifact: a stirrup used by a Revolutionary War dragoon.

All this and the CCC, too

In historical circles, Barton's collection is well known.

"I've never seen it, but I'm jealous of anyone who has," Idaho Historical Museum Director Ken Swanson said. "I've heard for years that it's an absolutely wonderful collection of military and ranch artifacts, but I never seem to have the time to stop and check it out. When people come back from Riggins and tell me about it, I'm always envious."

Upstairs in a living room festooned with Civil War muskets and framed arrowhead collections are historical photographs, Indian tools and jewelry, crossed sabers and a Civil War bugle.

Standing in the corner, easily overlooked, is a life-sized manikin in a Civilian Conservation Corps uniform.

"The corps built most of these mountain roads around here back in the '30s," Barton said. "It's one of the better programs the government ever coughed up."

Retired since his last term as mayor ended in 1993, Barton spent his working years in Riggins as a U.S. Forest Service ranger. Hanging from a wall of his house is a 1932 telephone from the Barton ranch in Hells Canyon and a list of Forest Service numbers - three short rings and one long one to the Riggins Ranger District, three short to Heaven's Gate, two long to Rat Point . . .

Another wall is lined with civic honors, certificates of appreciation from his neighbors, medals from his years in the war.

Enough to fill a large frame, they cover the spectrum from the Good Conduct Medal to the Bronze Start and Purple Heart.

"The good conduct is questionable," he said.

His reputation as a collector has reached the point that people call him when they find something they think Barton would like.

"They call from all over," he said. "They give stuff to me, and some I buy. I've gotten most of it in Idaho and Montana, and a little of it back East. Other people travel to see things. I go to collect things."

Why?

"I don't know," he said. "I guess it's a form of insanity."