George M. Tomer stands under a tree his father planted in Latah County, Idaho

Mr. George M. Tomer stands under the tree, the only surviving son of Mr. George W. Tomer, one of Moscow's earliest pioneers. Mr. Tomer was born in Nevada City, California, where his father, a California forty-niner, had mined placer gold for twenty-one years. Hearing through his maternal grandmother, Mr. and Mrs. Mathew Montgomery, who came to Moscow in 1870, of the rich and beautiful country in Nez Perce County, Idaho Territory, his parents decided to establish a squatter's claim here. Mr. Tomer's parents and his little family of four children left San Francisco in the early spring of 1871, and came by a leaky ocean boat to Portland. This craft, so Mr. Tomer relates, sank about a year later. [C.J. Brosnan may have written this text.] From Portland, they came by boat up the Columbia River to Lewiston. During their brief stay the family stopped at the famous old hostelry known as the DeFrance Hotel. While in Lewiston, Mr. Tomer's father, a tree lover, purchased the little sapling which has grown into the huge tree near with Mr. Tomer stands. Mr. Tomer states that he did not come to Moscow in a covered wagon, but in a plain lumber wagon. His grandfather and grandmother, Mr. and Mrs. Mathew Montgomery, according to Mr. Tomer, died shortly after his family reached Moscow. Her grave stone, inscribed with an appropriate inscription, reads that her death occurred in 1873. Mrs. Montgomery was the first white person buried in the old Moscow cemetery. This grave-stone stands within a half-mile of the old Nez Perces Trail. The Tomers were not able, at first, to file a hundred and sixty acres land claim under the provisions of the Homestead Act of 1862, because their arrival antedated the land surveys in this region. The land office was not opened in Lewiston until the year of 1875. The Tomer squatter's claim is situated near the feet of Tomer's Butte, an exceedingly ancient granite butte. This butte was one a tall mountain before the floor of the valley, now occupied by the city of Moscow, was filled by lava flows and deposits of wind-blown soil from what is now the State of Washington. [C.J. Brosnan may have written this text.