History of Wheeler Hill (from "History of North Washington")

PETER WHEELER, stock-raiser and diversified farmer, living six miles from Wenatchee, Chelan county, was born in Pennsylvania February 16, 1834.  His name, Peter, is still legible on an old monument erected on the battlefield to commemorate the heroism of those who there fought and died.  The mother of our subject, Alethia (Bull) Wheeler, was a native of Pennsylvania, of Dutch ancestry.  She died when our subject was two years old.
     In 1843 the father and step-mother of our subject removed to Illinois, and here he was educated in the public schools.  At the opening of the Civil war he attempted to enlist, but was unable to pass the medical examination.  Three years he passed in Iowa.  Going thence to Nebraska he pre-empted land in Platte county, which at that period was very thinly settled.  In 1883 he went to Idaho, remaining one year, and thence to Washington, where he was engaged in railroad construction.  In 1885 he came to what is known as Wheeler Hill, six miles from Wenatchee, and settled on a homestead, his son Clarence, doing the same.  To this property he has since added railroad land, and now owns, with his son, about four thousand acres.  They cultivate one hundred acres, have fifteen acres in orchard, put up one hundred to one hundred and fifty tons of alfalfa annually, and last season sold two thousand boxes of apples.  Their timothy hay yields four tons to the acre.  Much of this property is fine grazing land, although about a section is broken, and more is tillable.  He winters one hundred head or more of cattle.