Every region throughout time has various colorful characters—some passing through, others become part of a community’s fabric. One such notable was the famed Midwest Farmer Artist, Alfred Montgomery (1857-1922). According to folklore, it was attributed that Montgomery’s painting of corn was so realistic that birds would swoop down and peck at his canvass.
In the Midwest, Montgomery, like many a struggling artist, travelled around a lot. In 1911, when traveling back home to his family in Illinois, he was accompanied by a lady friend. His. wife, not pleased with the surprised guest, filed for divorce. All of sudden, Montgomery packed his bags and relocated to Los Angeles. Before he was settled in Southern California, he was looking at a homesite on the east side of Honey Lake. In the fall of 1911, Montgomery did two things in Lassen County—he located a desert land claim south of Amedee, and he held a lecture series at Lassen High School, which he had display of paintings worth $10,000 as part of an exhibit. There was a twenty-five cent admission, with all the proceeds going to the school to establish an art department.
In the spring of 1912, Montgomery hired local contractor Fred Rummel to construct a home on his place he dubbed Nowhere. Montgomery, like in his days in the Midwest, would come and go as he saw fit. However, on June 6, 1919, the Lassen Mail reported: “A. Montgomery, ‘the painter who farms and the farmer who paints’ arrived recently from Los Angeles and will spend the summer at his claim south of Amedee. He is now conducting a series of experiments to determine the kind of vegetables best adapted to the soil in that locality. He is firmly convinced that peas, brans, Soudan grass, pumpkins and barley will prove successful, but admits with regret. that is old favorite, pie plant, cannot be raised there on the amount of the mineral salts in the soil.”
After this there is no record of Montgomery returning. When he passed away in 1922, a number of accounts referred to his place at death at Nowhere, which confused a lot of people, when in fact he died in Los Angeles.