Although not the first house built along Union Flat in southern Whitman County, the Boone Homestead House is one of the oldest still standing in that area. It was built in 1878 by Daniel Wright Boone (1855-1936), who left Illinois in 1876 at the age of 21 with his older brother Reuben and wife Jane (nee Williams) to live in Oregon. Dan moved to Washington Territory a year later, where he lived for two years on Union Flat with his sister Sarah Jane Farnsworth, her husband Volney and their three children.
In 1879, at his sister’s urging, Dan filed a timber culture claim on 160 acres a few miles down the road from the Farnsworth place. Two years later, he purchased an additional 160 acres for $200 under the Preemption Act. He also acquired 80 acres under the Homestead Act, for a total of 400 acres.
He improved his land by growing wheat, planting a large orchard, raising cattle, building a barn and fences, and constructing a board-and-batten homestead house that measured 24 by 16 feet — 384 square feet. He “proved up” his homestead on Sept. 11, 1884.
Five years later, Dan briefly returned to Illinois to find a wife. He immediately began courting Amelia Fernanders Williams (1870-1963), his brother Reuben’s 18-year-old sister-in-law. They were married in January of 1889.
In March, along with another of Dan’s brothers, George Washington Boone, and his new bride Georgia Brummet, they headed west on an “immigrant train.” Not long after the newlyweds’ arrival on Union.