He taught school in Norwegian around Christiana for a winter, worked the harvest, and cut cordwood near St. Louis with his brother.

In 1850 the brothers and three Scandinavian partners headed west across the plains with three yoke of oxen for the gold fields of California, a trip which Onon later described as "hungry horrors."

He built a store and log cabin there, and set up a private service to bring the mail in seven miles from the post office at Blue Mounds once a week.

[3] Behind the house is a one-story bank barn which Dahle had built around 1870, with walls of vertical board and batten.

Onon and Betsy's son, Herman, would become a member of the United States House of Representatives.