4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL JULY 5, 2017
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History: Annie Oakley with an edge
By Finn JD John
For The Sentinel
I
n the summer of 1936,
when Edith Mona Bell
Hill moved into her
cozy hunting cabin on
the shore of Dunbar Lake in
north-central Minnesota, the
neighbors didn’t really know
what to make of her.
In fact, they didn’t really
know who she was — although
she’d owned and occasionally
visited the cabin off and on for a
decade or so. It was said that she
was a distant relative of railroad
baron James J. Hill. She cer-
tainly had money; although she
dressed very simply, she drove a
great expensive beast of a lux-
ury car.
She was a single woman
living alone with her eight-
year-old son, Sam. But within
a few days of her moving in,
any neighborhood crooks knew
better than to think she’d make
a tempting burglary or robbery
victim. She took the opportuni-
ty to make a little demonstration
when a neighbor, Art Schimans-
ki, came to see her.
“They talked for a few min-
utes,” recalled David Adams,
whose family bought the prop-
erty after Mona Bell moved
away, in an interview with au-
thor John Harrison. “And then
Mona said, ‘Stay right there, I
want to show you something.’
Art said she went into the cabin
and came out wearing a gun belt
with two six-shooters. She then
turned and shot the clothespins
off her clothesline at a distance
of about 25 yards, fi ring one gun
after the other — left, right, left,
right. Art said it was like bang-
bang-bang-bang in rapid suc-
cession. He said he was aghast.
Then she said to Art, ‘You tell
the boys there’s a woman back
here who knows how to shoot,
and will shoot.’ He did.”
Mona Bell was one of the
most interesting people ever to
live in Oregon. Yet she’s most-
ly remembered, when she’s re-
membered at all, as the mistress
of quirky railroad executive
Samuel Hill (not to be confused
with James J. Hill, his father-
in-law, for whom he worked).
Samuel is in turn best known
for his pet public-service proj-
ect, the Columbia Gorge Scenic
Highway; the Maryhill Muse-
um and its adjacent Stonehenge
replica; and the Peace Arch at
the Canadian border.
But, interesting and colorful
a character as Sam Hill was, he
was thoroughly outclassed in
that regard by Mona. To be fair,
everyone was.
Mona Bell fi rst arrived in
Oregon in the 1910s; she left
in 1936 after the federal gov-
ernment seized her home for
the Bonneville Dam project.
Throughout her life, people who
knew her always compared her
to movie stars: devil-may-care
Myrna Loy in “The Thin Man,”
Katharine Hepburn in “The Af-
rican Queen” — and, of course,
Annie Oakley.
The Annie Oakley compar-
ison is particularly apropos,
because it’s entirely likely
that Mona Bell knew her. As a
young woman, Mona was in the
same business. While a student
at the University of North Da-
kota, where she was studying to
be a teacher, she dropped out to
join a wild-west show — either
Buffalo Bill Cody’s original
Wild West Show (featuring An-
nie Oakley) or one of the many
competing ones that had sprung
up to tour the country.
Like Oakley, Mona did trick
shooting; she also could sing;
she did bareback riding; and she
even did bronco busting, usual-
ly dressed in men’s clothes so as
not to shock her Edwardian-age
audience.
The Wild West show rack-
et was one of four occupations
Mona Bell pursued in her early
years while relentlessly trav-
eling as much as possible. The
other three were teaching, ad-
vertising, and journalism. She’d
take a teaching job in a town,
work it for a year, move on
to another and get a job at the
newspaper, work that for a few
months, then quit that job to join
a wild-west show, and so on.
But journalism soon became
her primary line, particularly as
slowly changing societal norms,
along with her growing reputa-
tion as a skilled and fearless re-
porter, allowed her to leave the
boring, frumpy society pages
behind. Mona Bell was, in fact,
the fi rst female crime-beat re-
porter in the country.
And it was through journal-
ism that she met the love of her
life: Samuel Hill. It happened in
1910, after she interviewed him
for a story.
Hill, of course, found the
dashing red-haired bearcat fas-
cinating; it’s hard to imagine
what man would not. And un-
like most men, he was not in-
timidated by her prowess and
competence, having plenty of
his own. Hill was still nominal-
ly married to his Catholic wife,
from whom he was completely
estranged; but for religious rea-
sons they could not divorce.
Hill and Bell soon were en-
meshed in a torrid, decades-long
love affair. Throughout it, Bell
remained utterly faithful to Hill;
but Hill strayed a good deal.
The cruelest cut, though, came
when she learned that although
he loved her, he loved another
woman more — he had been
carrying the torch for the queen
of Romania since he’d fi rst
met her in 1893 when she was
a 17-year-old princess and he
a 36-year-old lawyer lobbying
her royal parents to invest in the
Great Northern Railroad.
But Mona Bell loved Sam
Hill enough that she was will-
ing to tolerate being number 2.
She fi rst came to Portland to be
close to him; at the time, he was
working with legendary high-
way engineer Samuel Lancaster
on the Columbia Gorge High-
way.
Throughout the 1910s and
early 1920s, Bell continued her
career as an itinerant journal-
ist, keeping as near to Sam as
she could so that they could be
together as much as possible.
Then in 1927, she turned up
pregnant with his son.
Sam professed himself de-
lighted and promptly called in
a marker with his cousin, Edgar
Hill, who traveled to Portland
to “make an honest woman”
of Mona. Their marriage was a
charade that seems laughable to
modern eyes: Edgar and Mona
were married in the style (but
very much not the spirit) of
Quaker practice, with Sam of-
fi ciating as minister. Then, fol-
lowing a few photographs of the
happy couple posing on a beach
as if honeymooning (in which
Edgar glares into the camera
like a trapped gorilla) the happy
couple fi nished the day with a
trip across the river to Vancou-
ver for a quick divorce, and pre-
sumably the groom was thereaf-
ter left to his own devices whilst
the bride and the minister galli-
vanted off on the honeymoon.
Motherhood didn’t change
Mona much. Most sources
agree she was not very good
at it. Samuel gave her a hilltop
mansion overlooking the Co-
lumbia River at Bonneville, but
she didn’t stay in it as much as
most new mothers would. Baby
Sam was left with relatives
many times while she traveled
off on the rodeo circuit or to
travel overseas.
Then, in February 1931, Sam-
uel Hill developed the infection
that would shortly kill him.
Mona traveled to the hospital
to see him one last time. Re-
fused entry, she fi rst disguised
herself as a nurse and tried to
slip in; this didn’t work, and she
was recognized and ejected. Re-
alizing that all the nurses knew
one another, she tried again,
dressing as a janitor. This time,
it worked, and she got to say
Mona Bell and Edgar Hill pose for a photograph at the beach shortly after
their “marriage.” Photo courtesy Finn JD John.
goodbye to him before he
slipped away.
Perhaps as a tonic to her bro-
ken heart, Mona left shortly
thereafter for a tour with the
Schell Bros. Circus, with which
she was billed as a cowgirl radio
singer doing old-time and cow-
boy songs.
She was getting older, though,
and the wild pleasures of bronco
busting and trick shooting were
starting to give way to the more
contemplative pleasures of gar-
dening. In her later years, Mo-
na’s great passion was fl owers
and gardens. By 1936, her Bon-
neville mansion was a spectacu-
lar showplace.
And that may be why, when
the government started con-
struction of the Bonneville
Dam, it was so very insistent
on including the house in its
eminent-domain proceedings. It
needed 14 acres of Mona Bell’s
land at the foot of the bluff for
the construction; but the house
on the bluff was not in the way.
Mona was convinced the gov-
ernment was determined to take
it because the project manager
wanted the house for himself.
If so, she had the last laugh, if
a bitter one; the manager was
transferred back east just after
the house was handed over.
Mona Bell asked for about
$100,000 in compensation for
the property. The government
laughed and offered about
$25,000. And there the battle
lines were drawn as the case
headed off to court.
Nearly a year and two tri-
als later, the government was
forced to pay Mona roughly
$80,000 for the place. It paid up
only after being directly threat-
ened by the judge. With much
bitterness despite her courtroom
victory (which had cost her
nearly half the amount she won
in legal fees), Mona shook the
dust of the Beaver State from
her feet and moved back to that
lakeside cabin in Minnesota.
In Minnesota, the aging Mona
carried on, living very frugally
to pay for the extensive world
traveling that she still loved and
keeping a magnifi cent garden.
She later moved to Riverside,
Calif., where, on June 1, 1981,
she died at age 91.
In a playful song about a Vi-
ennese composer named Alma
Mahler Gropius Werfel, sing-
er-satirist Tom Lehrer ends his
fi nal verse with the words, “The
body that reached her embalm-
ment was one that had known
how to live!” The same, and
then some, can certainly be said
of Edith Mona Bell Hill.
Dr. Fuhrman: Getting enough zinc on a plant-centered diet
Z
inc is a mineral essen-
tial for immune func-
tion, growth, wound
healing, reproduction, protein
structure, neurotransmitter re-
lease in the brain and insulin
secretion, and it supports hun-
dreds of chemical reactions.
C ottage G rove
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Zinc-rich foods include beef,
oysters, crab, veal, lamb, pump-
kin and sesame seeds, pine nuts,
peanuts, soybeans, cashews,
wild rice, oats and mushrooms.
However, zinc-rich plant foods
also contain substances that in-
hibit zinc absorption, phytate
in particular. It is important to
note, however that phytate has
benefi cial health effects despite
its tendency to lower zinc ab-
sorption. Phytate is a storage
form of phosphorus and min-
erals in plant seeds. Originally
viewed as an “anti-nutrient,”
eventually benefi cial actions of
phytate were discovered, such
as antioxidant and anti-cancer
effects. The presence of phytate
also reduces glycemic effects
of the foods it is present in, and
may bind toxic metals, reducing
our absorption of these harm-
ful substances. Preliminary re-
search has also suggested that
phytate could help to prevent
kidney stones and vascular cal-
cifi cation. Grains, beans, seeds
and nuts are the foods highest in
phytate. In addition to phytate, a
number of other factors reduce
zinc absorption, including older
age, iron, calcium, protein qual-
ity, protein intake and folic acid.
Zinc status in vegetarians and
vegans: A 2013 review of 34
studies concluded that zinc sta-
tus is lower in vegetarians than
omnivores; in particular in fe-
males and vegans. Zinc require-
ments for those on a completely
plant-based diet are estimated to
be about 50 percent higher than
the standard recommendations
of 12 mg/day for females, 16.5
mg/day for males. Therefore, in
addition to eating natural foods
containing zinc it is reasonable
to take extra supplemental zinc
to assure adequacy on a vegan
or near-vegan diet.
Zinc may protect against
depression. Zinc is a crucial
nutrient for the brain; as men-
tioned above, zinc is needed for
neurotransmitter release. Zinc
may also act to reduce oxida-
tive stress in the brain. Low zinc
levels could potentially lead to a
tendency toward anxiety and de-
pression. I have observed some
female vegans, in my medical
practice, who developed de-
pression and anxiety which re-
solved after supplementing with
additional zinc. Some people
may have higher requirements.
In scientifi c studies, blood zinc
concentrations are consistently
lower in depressed vs. control
subjects. Furthermore, the se-
verity of depression was found
to increase with the magnitude
of the zinc defi ciency. Because
of these fi ndings, zinc supple-
mentation is being investigat-
ed as an adjunct treatment for
depression, with promising re-
sults. The association between
low zinc and depression appears
to be stronger in women com-
pared to men.
Zinc and the prostate: Normal
prostate cells contain very high
levels of zinc, higher than any
other body tissue. However, if
prostate cells become cancer-
ous, they lose their ability to
accumulate zinc. There is evi-
dence that zinc has anti-cancer
effects in the prostate, how-
ever, the relationship between
zinc and prostate cancer risk is
somewhat unclear. Some stud-
ies have reported increased risk,
some have reported decreased
risk and others found no rela-
tionship at all.
One study, which placed
mice on one of three different
diets—zinc-defi cient, normal,
and supplemented, suggested
that optimal levels of zinc are
protective, but defi ciency or
excess promotes prostate tumor
growth.
This is apparently valid in
humans too. The VITAL study
followed over 35,000 men for
3.5 years, who completed a
questionnaire asking about their
supplement use over the pre-
vious 10 years. Men who had
been supplementing with 15 mg
or more zinc per day had a 66
percent decrease in the risk of
advanced prostate cancer com-
pared to men who didn’t supple-
ment. There was no association
between zinc supplements and
overall prostate cancer—except
in men who ate more vegeta-
bles. Importantly, the authors
found that men who both sup-
plemented 15 mg or more of
zinc per day and had a higher
intake of vegetables did have a
reduced risk of overall prostate
cancer. However, men taking
the same amount of supplemen-
tal zinc with a lower intake of
vegetables did not reduce their
risk. Another study found that
long-term (10 or more years)
supplementation with zinc was
associated with a 53 percent
reduction in breast cancer risk.
This research suggests supple-
menting with zinc most likely is
of signifi cant benefi t, especially
in those that eat a healthful veg-
an or near-vegan diet.
Dr. Fuhrman is a #1 New
York Times best-selling author
and a family physician special-
izing in lifestyle and nutritional
medicine. Visit his informative
website at DrFuhrman.com.
Submit your questions and com-
ments about this column direct-
ly to newsquestions@drfuhr-
man.com. The full reference list
for this article can be found at
DrFuhrman.com.
*Note: This column fi rst ap-
peared in The Sentinel on July
8, 2015.
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