An illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas counties; with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 76

Author: Interstate publishing co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate publishing company
Number of Pages: 1146

USA > Washington > Kittitas County > An illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas counties; with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 76
USA > Washington > Yakima County > An illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas counties; with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 76
USA > Washington > Klickitat County > An illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas counties; with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 76

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Of course, the same conditions which encourage the rearing of cattle and sheep make the raising of horses and mules also profitable, while the hog is a necessity to the dairy man who would get the largest profit out of his business. According to the last report of the county assessor, Kittitas has 4.584 horses and mules, valued at $115,475; 16,000 cattle, valued at $292,000; 59,000 sheep, valued at $119,000 ; 2,000 hogs, valued at $6,920; the aggre- gate value of lands and improvements was fixed at $1,788,115; the assessment of personal property, $1,520,552 ; total assessment of the county, $4,336,- 542.

An agricultural industry which has grown enor- mously during the past few years under the stimu- lus furnished it by a strong demand and high price is the culture of hay. The Kleinberg Brothers, who are large shippers of this commodity, estimate the product of the valley at 60,000 tons, all harvested from irrigated acres, except a small amount pro- duced on bottom lands. Timothy, clover and al- falfa are all raised, though the first mentioned is the principal crop for export. It is in great demand in the Alaska market, and not a little of it goes to the Philippine Islands, and to China and Japan. The Kittitas product is considered excellent in qual-

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ity and commands the highest price. At this writ- ing it is quoted at twenty dollars a ton, F. O. B., at Ellensburg.

The high price of hay lias not only caused a decline in the dairy industry, but it has doubtless affected also the production of wheat and other cereals. The Kittitas valley lands long since demon- strated their power to produce the cereals in great abundance. In the Spokane Times of May 22, 1880, is an article by D. Thomas in which he said :

"The largest and richest body of vacant land is near Kittitas postoffice, in the southeast part of the valley. It would have all been occupied before this time but for the lack of water to irrigate it, but the postmaster at the above place, an experienced farmer, raised there last year a good crop without irrigation. Wheat averaged last year about forty bushels to the acre and some went up even as high as eighty bushels to the acre."

The raising of cereal crops increased as time went on until in 1899, according to the statement of the Ellensburg Dawn, "fully 20,000 acres of wheat were harvested in the county, which averaged (by estimate) thirty bushels per acre. There were 3,200 acres of oats harvested, which was estimated at for- ty-five bushels per acre." No statistics of the pro- ductions of recent years are available, but it is quite probable that if such were at hand, they would show a marked decline in cereal raising, owing to the development of other and more profitable in- dustries.

There are, however, four flouring mills in the county. Of these perhaps the largest and best equipped is that of R. P. Tjossem & Son, at Holmes Siding, two and a half miles south of Ellensburg on Wilson creek. It was built in 1900 to take the place of a very old one of about the same capacity, one hundred barrels, which was burned. The mill is operated by water power from an immense reservoir and dam. The City Mills, Ellensburg, owned by the City Milling & Realty Company, are likewise capable of producing a hundred barrels daily, but they are not in operation more than three-fourths of the time. The mill, which is also run by water power, was built during the years 1887 and 1888. Kendall & Mack are owners of a forty-barrel water power mill at Thorp, built during the seventies. It runs about half the year. The Spring Brook Mills, of which W. T. Morrison is proprietor, have been shut down for the past twelvemonth. When in oper- ation, they utilize the water of Wilson creek to generate power and manufacture a brand of flour known as the "Valley Patent."

These mills use annually about 300,000 bushels of wheat, three-fourths of which, however, is im- ported, as the Kittitas product gives a yellowish flour, fit only for the Oriental trade. They also use 600 tons of barley, half of it being the product of Kittitas farms. Of the $200,000 received annu- ally by these mill owners, one-fourth comes from

resident consumers and the rest from China, Japan, and Puget sound points.

The climate and soil of Kittitas valley render it especially adapted to the raising of all kinds of hardy vegetables. Potatoes, onions, turnips, beets. etc., all prove wonderfully prolific, and usually com- mand prices which give their cultivator an abundant reward for his labor. The potato is especially profitable at present, the current quotation being twenty dollars a ton, though of course this is greatly in excess of the usual price. It has been claimed that during the year 1902, the shipments of pota- toes by the three principal shippers of Ellensburg returned more than $161,000 to the pockets of the producers.

Fruit tree culture in the Kittitas valley is al- most coeval with settlement, but though its practi- cability has long since been established, it has not been carried on extensively heretofore, owing to the dominance of other industries. One of the first or- chards, perhaps the first, in the valley was that of Charles P. Cooke, who transplanted twelve or fif- teen trees from the Moxee valley to his Kittitas farm twelve and a half miles northeast of Ellens- burg, when he first came there in 1870. These trees are still bearing. Another orchard was planted by William Lyen in 1871 and about that time or a little later F. M. Thorp set out a few trees. In 1874 Thomas Goodwin set out between two and three acres of apple and peach trees on his place six miles west of Ellensburg, and there were a number of other orchards planted during the early seventies. But no fruit was raised for ex- port until recent years, and then very little. How- ever, the success of experimenters has led to the set- ting out of larger orchards, and we may safely as- sume that the acreage devoted to fruit culture will rapidly extend. The construction of large irriga- tion ditches will surely have a tendency to cause an expansion in this industry, as in all other forms of intensive agriculture.

S. W. Maxey estimates the number of fruit trees in full bearing in Kittitas county at present at about 50,000, eighty per cent. of them being apple trees, the rest pear, cherry, plum and prune, with a few early peach trees. Many of the bearing orchards are still young, but Kittitas county has nevertheless made a few shipments of their products, perhaps the largest being in 1902, when three cars of Tran- scendent crab apples were sent to Montreal. This fruit proved perfectly satisfactory to its consumers.

Mr. Maxey tells us that Washington's fruit ex- hibit at the World's Fair in 1893, of which he was in charge, was contiguous to that of Canada, and that fruit men who compared the late keepers grown in Washington with those from Ontario were unanimous in the opinion that the former were fully the equal of the latter in every respect, and much superior in point of size. The significance of this is apparent when we remember that Ontario has a world-wide reputation for hardy apples, capable of

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being shipped to great distances from their native soil.

As a result of the success of experiments many Kittitas people are beginning to take a deep interest in fruit culture. Two large fruit enterprises are now under way in the county, one a 100-acre apple or- chard east of Ellensburg; the other a forty-acre or- chard, likewise devoted exclusively to apples. It seems to the writer that the people of Kittitas are to be congratulated on the fact that the adaptability of their section in soil and climate to the production of fruits and vegetables has been demonstrated. It means that when the time shall come, the division of the land into small tracts for intensive cultivation and the support of a large population will prove entirely feasible and that therefore their county is in a position to enjoy an almost limitless develop- ment as the increasing needs of the expanding west, with its ever widening trade relationships, shall call for it.

Another important resource of Kittitas county is its timber. According to the report of Henry Gannet, of the United States geological survey, the merchantable timber area of the county is 2,000 square miles; the logged area sixty-seven, and the burned area ten. His estimate of timber on these forest lands is as follows: Yellow pine, 504,000,-' 000 board feet ; fir, 504,000,000 ; larch, 252,000,000; total, 1,260,000,000. The logged area, Mr. Gannet informs us, is west of Ellensburg and in patches in the mountains in the neighborhood of the North- ern Pacific railway. Of course, much of this timber is in the reserve.

At present there are nine sawmills in the county. Those of Fred Musser, Wright Brothers and Wright Brothers & Miller are in and around Cle- Elum. They are said to have daily capacities of 8,000 feet, 10,000 feet and 10,000 feet respectively. The Northwestern Improvement Company's mill at Roslyn has a capacity of 20,000 feet per day, but its output is for the exclusive use of its own- ers in their mining operations. At Thorp are the mills of Louis Ellison and J. L. Mills & Son, each having a capacity of 8,000 feet per day, while in El- lensburg is the mill of the Ellensburg Lumber Com- pany, of which Orrin W. Sinclair is manager. Its capacity is 15,000 feet. Albert Emerson's mill in the valley is not in operation at present and that of John Blomquist, on Swauk creek, runs only part of the time, but each is capable of turning out 8,000 feet per diem. All the sawmills of Kittitas county use steam power.

The progress of our review of the Kittitas county of today has brought us now to one of its major industries, and one which directly lends sup- port to all the others, namely, mining. The search for the buried treasures of the earth was begun early and has been prosecuted with considerable persis- tency and zeal and not without substantial results, chiefest among which so far is the uncovering and development of a vast coal bearing area. The early

history of the coal mines may be found elsewhere in this volume, but a few words are here in place re- garding the mines in their present state of develop- ment. Mention has been made of the interest taken by the Northern Pacific Railway Company in the prospecting of the Roslyn country during the eight- ies. Later exploration and development have estab- lished the fact that the coal field then discovered is the most extensive and valuable in the state. It occupies the valley of the Yakima near the conflu- ence of that river with the Cle-Elum. Its two most important veins are known as the Roslyn and Cle- Elum. "It is still an open question," says the an- nual report of the state geologist for 1902, "whether or not the two veins are identical, and this problem has a most important bearing on the future of the field. It is generally believed, however, that the Cle-Elum vein is a different one from the Roslyn and lies several hundred feet higher in the series. The strata dip to the southwest at an angle varying from ten to fifteen degrees. The outcrop of the Roslyn vein makes an exceedingly tortuous line along the moun- tain side northeast of the two towns of Roslyn and Cle-Elum. Its general direction, however, is south- east and northwest. The rocks have not been greatly folded or faulted and the coal has been but little disturbed. It is quite hard and compact and nearly all of it reaches the market as lump coal. It is used very largely as a steam coal for locomotives and steamships and supplies very much of the market of eastern Washington, Idaho and Oregon for steam and domestic coal. Large quantities are shipped to Puget sound, Portland, San Francisco and even Honolulu. The Northern Pacific Railway uses it exclusively in its locomotives as far east as Helena, Montana. The Great Northern Railway heretofore has had a large standing order for Roslyn coal, but within the past few months it has completed a line of its own to the Crow's Nest coal field, of British Columbia, and is now using that coal chiefly on all its lines in Washington, Idaho and Montana."

Practically the entire coal basin of Kittitas county is under the control of the Northwestern Im- provement Company, successors to the Northern Pacific Coal Company, which owns the Roslyn mine and has the Cle-Elum under lease. There are, however, several small, independent companies in the area, one of which, the Ellensburg Coal Com- pany, supplies, in part at least, the local market.

The Roslyn mine, the king of the district, em- ploys approximately 1,500 men and produces at present 90,000 tons a month. Slavs and Italians form the majority of the miners, receiving for their labor eighty-five cents per long ton. Drivers re- ceive $2.35 to $2.50 a day of ten hours, and timber- men, $3.00. Five mines exist on the Roslyn vein : No. I, abandoned; No. 2, the principal one worked; No. 3, at Ronald, abandoned; No. 4, in operation ; No. 5. between Cle-Elum and Roslyn, now being opened.

The pillar and room system of extracting the

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coal is in use. According to C. F. Brenn, chief civil engineer, there are now about seven miles of mule haul, four of electric haul and three of wire rope haul, and the latest improvements are used in all the mines. Three electric and two steam fans, with what is known as the "double entry" system, make them the best ventilated in the state. The output of the Roslyn mines from December 1, 1902, to December I, 1903, was 1,032,070 tons.

At the Cle-Elum mine, four hundred men are employed and the output at present approximates 30,000 tons a month. From December 1, 1902, to December 1, 1903, it produced 320,726 tons. Being under the same management as the Roslyn mine, it is operated on the same general principles. Speak- ing of it and its situation in 1902, Henry Landes, state geologist, said :

"The town of Cle-Elum is on the main line of the Northern Pacific Railway and has an elevation of 1,900 feet above sea level. A branch line three and a half miles long runs to Roslyn, which is about 300 feet higher than Cle-Elum. On the north side of the valley a ridge of sandstone parallels the river and rises about 1,900 feet above the stream. On the south side of the valley a ridge of basalt rises 2,500 feet above the valley floor. Several clearly marked gravel terraces occur on each side of the river, rising by steps to the base of the moun- tains. These heavy gravel deposits cover the coal bearing rocks and serve to obscure the outlines of the coal basin.

"The Cle-Elum mine is opened by a shaft and a tunnel at the base of the mountain on the north- ern outskirts of the town. The shaft is 250 feet deep. The vein is four feet six inches wide and is practically all clean coal. The dip of the vein varies from twelve to twenty-three degrees to the south- ward. From the bottom of the slope four levels have been run, the longest of which is about 5,000 feet. Only one fault has been encountered in the mine, a small overthrust between the first and second levels. The daily production at present is seven or eight hundred tons, and the mine is rapidly being put in shape for a more extensive output. The mine was opened in 1896. In 1902 the amount of coal mined was 212,584 tons."

Naturally the question of the permanence of the mines of the Roslyn-Cle-Elum district is fraught with great interest to the people of Kittitas county and, indeed, of central Washington generally. Upon this subject C. F. Brenn, chief civil engineer for the Northwestern Improvement Company, wrote as fol- lows in the Ellensburg Dawn of December 27, 1902:

The only veins that are considered valuable, at pres- ent, are the Roslyn vein, which is about five feet thick, and a vein which is known as the "Big Dirty," nineteen feet thick. The "Big Dirty" is not mined at present, on account of the cheaper Roslyn vein, but before the Roslyn vein is exhausted washeries will be installed which will make the "Big Dirty" vein an exceedingly valuable one. The Luhrig coal washers on the market at the present day are wonderful machines and are al-

most perfect in operation, removing over ninety per cent. of rock, bone and dirt, without losing a particle of coal and at an almost insignificant cost per ton of coal washed.

As the price of coal rises, other of the five remain- ing veins may be worked but they are disregarded as valuable now only because there is such a great quantity in sight in the other two veins. The five remaining veins aggregate about fifteen feet of coal, three veins of about three feet each, one of two and one of four feet of coal. The total thickness of coal bearing formation is two thousand five hundred feet, with all the known valuable veins in the upper one thousand feet.

In order to estimate the value and importance of Kittitas county as a coal producer, we will consider only the two veins mentioned above, i. e., the Roslyn vein and the Big Dirty vein. The total thickness of coal in these two veins is twenty-four feet, and, assuming this thickness over one hundred square miles of country, will give us one billion five hundred million tons as available for the market. This amount, at the present rate of ex- tracting five thousand tons per day or one million five hundred thousand tons per year of three hundred work- ing days, will last one thousand years. The work that has been done in this field in the last sixteen years, since systematic operation was in force, is but a scratch in this immense storage house, for the total number of tons mined since it was discovered amounts to but six million six hundred thousand tons in round numbers. This tre- mendous supply of coal places the Roslyn coal field, and therefore Kittitas county, easily in front rank of rich and permanent coal producers. The lay of the measures with its moderate pitch makes every ton available, as the veins probably will nowhere be deeper than fifteen hundred or two thousand feet, which combined with the light pitch, of only about sixteen degrees, will make it possible to reclaim every ton of coal.

The firm hold this coal has in the markets of the world will assure Kittitas county a permanent place in the industrial activity of the state. A county that has a coal supply which will last a thousand years and which ships its coal to almost every city on the coast and to the Hawaiian Islands, as well as supplying almost all of the large Asiatic and coastwise steamers, besides many of our war vessels, will of necessity take a leading place in the state.

CLE-ELUM DISTRICT.

The greater portion of the county's mineral region is embraced in the Cle-Elum district, wherein discoveries of gold, silver, copper and iron ledges have been made that must lead to the conclusion that this district is one of the richest in the Cascade range. Owing to its refractory ores and its lack of good transportation facilities, however, the mines of this region are nearly all in a prospective condi- tion. The presence of superior ore bodies has been indisputably proven, but their exploitation has hardly yet commenced. This year it is expected that more will be done than ever before toward uncov- ering these rich ledges to the world and organizing for their development.

For more than two decades prospecting and de- velopment work on a small scale has been going on in the Cle-Elum region. Of course, the discovery of coal in the region for a long time absorbed all interest, but its ultimate effect was to encourage rather than discourage the search for other minerals.

The district lies within easy reach of both Cle- Elum and Roslyn, good wagon roads leading from

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both cities into it. Regarding this district "Mining in the Pacific Northwest," edited by L. K. Hodges of Seattle and issued in 1897, says :

"The great belt of copper and gold ledges which runs through the backbone of the Cascade range crops with great strength on the mountains drained by the Cle-Elum river and extends north- eastward across the Teanaway to the base of Mount Stuart and west to Lake Kachess. In the same belt are many ledges of quartz carrying free gold and sulphurets, with galena in its various forms. Far- ther southeast, down the course of the river, is a belt of pyrites ledges capped with hematite and mag- netic iron, which have caused them for years to be miscalled the Cle-Elum iron mines. The district has been legally organized and extends from the head- waters of the river to Cle-Elum lake and from Lake Kachess on the west to the Teanaway divide on the east. Recent discoveries have, however, extended beyond the latter line to a connection with the Negro Creek unorganized district among the foothills of Mount Stuart.

"The country rock of the district is granite, sye- nite, porphyry and slate, with dykes of serpentine, and the mineral ledges cut in a generally northwest and southeast direction, with some cross ledges run- ning east and west. Discoveries in this district began about 1881, when A. P. Boyls, the present venerable but vigorous mining recorder, in com- pany with S. S. Hawkins and Moses Splawn, trav- eled up. Camp creek and on Hawkins mountain traced three parallel ledges carrying iron sul- phurets. From that time forward prospecting traced the belt twenty miles down the Cle-Elum from its head and east and west for fifteen miles, as already outlined."

Undoubtedly the best developed property in the district is the Aurora group of five claims on Mammoth mountain, owned by John and Timothy Lynch, which carry high-grade gold and silver ore. Mammoth mountain is composed mainly of metamorphic rock, cut diagonally by dikes of gran- ite in which are fissure ledges of quartz running east and west. Lynch Brothers, in 1896, erected a mill of four 320-pound stamps and one four-foot con- centrator. This mill is used principally for sam- pling purposes. A 1,000-foot tunnel has been driven to strike the ledge under an old shaft, which will give the mine a depth of 600 feet and is expected to tap some very rich ore. A crew of men is working upon the property continually.

The King Solomon is another valuable property upon which steady development is taking place. This mine lies on a sharp granite peak at the head of one of the forks of the Icicle, but is reached by a trail branching off for three miles from the Cle- Elum road, and is owned by James Grieve, K. W. Dunlap and August Sasse. The ledge cuts through this peak in a north and south course and is of white quartz, fully eight feet wide. It carries ga- lena, antimonial silver and gold with a trace of cop-

per and will assay an average of more that $125 in gold. A water jacket smelter was erected on this property several years ago, but failed in its object. The King Solomon has been well developed by several hundred feet of tunnel and many open cuts and this year will be further developed.

Another company in the district that is bending its energies toward placing the mines upon a work- ing basis is the Fortune Mining & Smelting Com- pany of Spokane, organized April 5, 1899, with a capitalization of 2,100,000 shares of which 2,000,- 000 are being sold for development purposes. The company's officers are all well known Spokane bus- iness and professional men: President, Dr. R. N. Jackson; vice president, Judge William E. Rich- ardson ; secretary, M. A. Dehuff ; treasurer and gen- eral manager, George W. Daines. The company owns three large mines, two of which are in eastern Oregon and the other, consisting of nineteen claims, in the Cle-Elum and Leavenworth Mining districts, Kittitas and Chelan counties, Washington. The property lies on the divide at the head of Fortune creek. The mineral zone in which it lies is from five to twelve miles wide and extends through the Index country up into British Columbia; in this zone are some of the best prospects in the state. The company's mine will be opened by tunnels, good tun- nel sites being the rule rather than the exception in the region, owing to the precipitous mountains there, and water power will be used, of which there is an almost inexhaustible supply. To the east of this mineral zone is Mount Stuart and to the west the Goat mountains, between which the general forma- tion seems to be a Laurentian granite. There are eleven distinct veins on the Fortune property, sev- eral of which are from one to three hundred feet wide, and have the appearance of true fissure or contact veins. The Fortune lode is an immense quartz cropping fully 5,000 feet long and from 100 to 300 feet wide, carrying values in gold, silver and copper; the Golden Chariot's croppings are over 3,000 feet long and from 40 to 150 feet in width; the Jackson lode has been traced for nearly 2,800 feet, and is exceedingly rich in copper and gold; the Silver Tip is from four to eight feet wide and 500 feet long. Besides numerous prospect tunnels to prove the value of the ledges, the company has run a tunnel 1,400 feet long, which cuts the For- tune lode at a depth of between 700 and 800 feet. In its course this tunnel cuts seven distinct veins from two to thirty feet wide, one of which is exceedingly rich in gold, assaying as high as $1,750 per ton. Stoping levels in this tunnel have been run on the sixteen and thirty foot ledges. The Jackson lode has been opened by five different tun- nels for a distance of 600 feet, and wherever cut the same rich ore body has been found, averaging from $10 to $88 in gold and copper. On the Silver Tip ledge a tunnel has been run 650 feet in length, reaching a depth of between 300 and 400 feet and giving values from $3 to $60 per ton. The com-

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An illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas counties; with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 76

Author: Interstate publishing co., Chicago, pub Publication date: 1904 Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate publishing company Number of Pages: 1146

Author: Interstate publishing co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate publishing company
Number of Pages: 1146