An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 32

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.)
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1172

USA > Washington > Skagit County > An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 32
USA > Washington > Snohomish County > An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 32

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Railroads and rumors of railroads continued to be in the air. Senator Canfield would by no means admit that his road was dead, and is reported in the Seattle Enterprise as saying that he expected to build from Seattle to Lowell on the Snohomish river, thence to the Skagit at a point half-way be- tween Mount Vernon and Sterling, and from there in a straight line to Whatcom. Another company, the Puget Sound, Skagit & Eastern, was incor- porated and the articles of incorporation were filed in the auditor's office on September 16, 1888, the incorporators and trustees being John Campbell. of England, and II. W. Wheeler, J. M. Moore, and W. E. McMillan, of Seattle. The aim of the com- pany was to build a road from Burrow's bay in Skagit county to Camp Spokane on the Columbia river in Lincoln county. Like many another great enterprise of that excited time, this remained a paper proposition.

The Skagit News of December 10, 1888, quotes

from the Washington Farmer an article which gives so clear a view of the logging interests of Skagit county that it seems worthy of reproduction in part. Among other things the writer describes the floating wharf in Samish bay as follows: "It is at this float that one of the most extensive log- ging camps in Washington territory receives its supplies. This float is two miles from the end of the logging road known as the Blanchard railway and the road is two miles from the village of Edison. The track is four miles long, a standard gauge, with steel rails and a full-fledged steam loco- motive and thirty logging cars. The camp works an average of ninety men, who get out seventy-five thousand feet of logs per day, working about eight months in the year, making the annual output eighteen million feet, sold at seven dollars per thousand, or a total of one hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars per annum. The pay-roll of the camp is about one hundred and eighty dollars per clay. For moving logs in places too rough for cattle, two stationary donkey engines are used. The company is now having made a steam skidder, such as it uses in Michigan and California. The contrivance costs about ten thousand dollars. It consists of a twenty horse-power engine, set near a marsh or deep ravine, and from it is run a large cable stretched tightly from tree to tree. On this cable there are three metal carriages, and from them drop prongs or grappling hooks which clutch the logs and hoist them clear of the ground and then they are run to the dumping-place."

The writer then enumerates eleven camps in the vicinity of Edison and Bayview which employ two hundred and twenty men and get out thirty- eight million feet of logs annually. Upon the Ska- git river he found nineteen camps employing four hundred men and getting out eighty million feet a year. He says that the average logging camp con- tains sixteen men and one team of seven yoke of oxen. The total expense of a. camp, he says, was sixty dollars per day, and the value of the output a hundred and fifty dollars per day. Thus the pro- prietor woukl make a profit of ninety dollars per day upon his investment if he owned the timber. If he did not own the timber stumpage would cost him seventy-five cents per thousand.

Inasmuch as the close of the year 1888 marks the end of the period of territorial history and 1889 witnessed the inauguration of statehood, it will be found of interest to preserve a record here of the increase in the value of property for the years 1883 to 1888 inclusive.

1883

Value of lands. $ 155,215.00

Value of improvements. 27,946.00

Value of personal property. 126,151.00

Value of all property $ 309,918.00

Total amount of taxes. 6,815.91

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1884

Acres assessed 123,168

Acres improved 9,202

Value of lands. $ 515,907.00

Value of improvements.

95,842.00

Value of personal property

291,121.00

Value of all property.

$ 902,870.00

Total amount of taxes.

16,233.41

1885

Acres assessed. 149,548

Acres improved. 11,375

Value of lands. $ 520,610.00

Value of improvements.

148,477.00

Value of personal property.

284,669.00

Value of all property. $ 954,056.00

Total amount of taxes.

19,040.43

1886

Acres assessed. 182,553

Acres improved ..

12,772

Value of lands. $ 664,457.00

Value of improvements. 174,212.00

Value of personal property. 356,651.00

Value of all property $1,195,380.00

Total amount of taxes. 25,461.51

1887

Acres assessed. 188,436

Acres improved. 14,576

Value of lands. $ 682,412.00

Value of improvements.

183,304.00

Value of personal property.

319,197.00

Value of all property. $1,245,573.00

Total amount of taxes. 25,213.24

1888

Value of all property $1.460,601.00

From the available census returns it appears that the population in 1885, was 2,816; in 1887, 3,686; in 1889, 6,111. The immense preponder- ance of males over females in the last year is ob- servable, there being 4,408 of the former and 1,703 of the latter.

The great event of the year 1889 for both the territory of Washington and the county of Skagit was the acquisition of statehood and the constitu- tional convention leading thereto. For the purpose of electing delegates to the convention the territory was divided into districts. The wrath of many peo- ple in Skagit county was aroused by the fact that it was divided between Whatcom and Snohomish

counties, thirteen precincts being assigned to the former and ten to the latter. Skagit people seem to have anticipated evil consequences for them- selves, as they were also disposed to attribute sinis- ter motives to somebody in thus smothering their identity with their neighbors of the north and south. Their fears, however, were unfounded, for at the general election held on May 14th, three Skagit county men were chosen: Harrison Clothier and Thomas Hayton from the district comprising Sno- homish and southern Skagit, and James Power from the district comprising Whatcom and northern Skagit.

Mr. Power became somewhat distinguished in the constitutional convention for the provision which he introduced for a confirmation of all United States patent titles to tide and overflowed lands. The general practice of the government had been hitherto to yield such lands to the states upon their admission, therefore many considered the confirma- tion of these titles to be in the interest of land-grab- bers upon the sound. Eastern Washington dele- gates, headed by George Turner, opposed the Power provision on that ground but Mr. Power succeeded in convincing the convention that the claimants to those tide lands were worthy citizens, that the lands had in many cases already been re- claimed, and that to jeopardize title to them would work a great injustice to the settlers. Snohomish and Skagit counties were the ones chiefly affected by this provision and the lands under consideration constituted some of the fairest and most productive portions of those counties.

A brief glance at the resources of Skagit county, as manifested in 1889, may be fitting at this point. Already, probably, sufficient attention has been given to the vast lumbering developments of the decade then closing. They were well known to the world. But the latent possibilities of the coal and iron deposits upon the Skagit river were little known at that time. The facts in relation to this feature of Skagit county were brought out in a very interesting manner in the form of a printed report by Muir Picken, a mining engineer, and by him submitted to a senatorial committee consisting of Senators Allison, Hoar, Dolph, Hale and Pugh, which met in Seattle, June 1, 1889. This report states that at Conner's on the Skagit river there are three distinct measures of bituminous coal which are upon the same line passing through Naniamo, British Columbia, and belonging to the cretaceous epoch, being a first-class bituminous coking coal. Below the coal measures, the report continues, are iron measures of a good quality of brown hematite iron ore, carrying from forty-five to fifty per cent. of metallic iron. There were four of these iron lodes which, by their claimants, were styled re- spectively the Tyee, the Mabel, the Last Chance and the Tacoma. Mr. Picken said that the coal and iron region was eighty miles in length by

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twenty-four miles in breadth. The Conner mine was subsequently bonded by the Skagit-Cumberland Coal Company of San Francisco, which sent W. A. Jones about the 1st of May to enter upon the work of development on a large scale. He built at once a flume six hundred feet long with a seventy-foot head, carrying a volume of water sufficient to fill a thirty-inch pipe, which carried the water from the head to the "Knight's" wheel of the compressor. The compressor was sufficiently large to furnish four hundred and fifty horse-power, by which the manager expected to run three 31/2-inch Rix & Furth drills. The steamer Bailey delivered three loads of machinery which they at once began to use in the sinking of a tunnel three thousand feet deep. The supply of coal lay in such a position that it could be very cheaply and rapidly brought to the surface and placed within reach of transpor- tation. For some reason, however, the Cumberland Coal Company did not remain permanently in the business of developing these properties, and they have been idle for many years. With rapidly in- creasing wealth, population and productions, and with brightening hopes for the future, Skagit county, with her sister counties, joined the tri- umphant march into statehood. The event of en- trance upon statehood was one of so great impor- tance that it requires a brief account at this point in our history. The possibilities of the territory of Washington were obviously so vast to the people living within it that they could not understand the comparative indifference with which the law-mak- ers in Washington had viewed for a number of years their eager demands to be admitted to the union, but the fact of the case was that the great majority of people east of the Rocky mountains were then in gross ignorance of the possibilities of the Pacific states. Some of them are not much better at the present time. With increasing popu- lation, however, the pressure became too great to be resisted and on February 22, 1889, a bill grant- ing statehood to Washington, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota became a law.

Under the enabling act seventy-five delegates were to be chosen from the different portions of the territory who should meet in the capital on the 4th of July for the purpose of adopting a state consti- tution. The enabling act specified that this consti- tution must be republican in form and must make no distinction in civil or political rights on account of race or color, and must be in harmony with the Constitution of the United States and the Declara- tion of Independence. The act also specified that the state constitution must provide for complete religious toleration, disclaim all right and title to all unappropriated publie lands and to all Indian tribal lands, provide for the assumption and pay- ment of the debts and liabilities of the territory.

and establish and maintain a system of public schools open to all children of the state and free from sectarian control. The act also provided that a constitution should be submitted to the voters at an election to be held on the first Tuesday in Octo- ber, and that if adopted it should be forwarded to the president of the United States and if satisfac- tory that he should then issue a proclamation de- claring the state admitted into the Union. The enabling act also provided for the transfer to the state of all the unappropriated sixteenth and thirty- sixth sections in each township for the maintenance of common schools ; granted fifty sections of unap- propriated lands for the erection of public buildings at the capital ; provided that five per cent. of the proceeds of the sale of public lands which should be sold by the United States subsequent to the ad- mission of Washington into the Union should be paid to the state as a permanent school fund; granted seventy-two sections of land for mainte- nance of a university ; granted ninety thousand acres for the support of an agricultural college, and one hundred thousand acres each for a scientific school, a state normal school, and for a capitol building ; and granted to the state charitable, edu- cational, penal and reformatory institutions which should be established, two hundred thousand acres. The foregoing were the important provisions of the enabling act, though there were a number of others naturally involved in them.

In accordance with the provisions of the enab- ling act the constitutional convention having been duly chosen, met as specified on the 4th of July and continued in session till the 24th of August. They then submitted the results of their work to the voters for acceptance or rejection. Two sep- arate articles, one providing for female suffrage and one for prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors, were also submitted with the constitution. The constitution was accepted by the voters of the territory by a vote of thirty-eight thousand, three hundred and ninety-four to eleven thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five. It was a general matter of surprise that the vote against acceptance was so large. Both the woman suffrage and prohibition clauses were rejected.

At twenty-seven minutes past five o'clock on the 11th day of December, 1889, President Harrison signed his proclamation announcing that Washing- ton had become a state of the Federal Union. The name of President Harrison and that of Secretary of State James G. Blaine were signed to this proc- lamation with a pen made from Washington gold in a holder of ebonized laurel made within the state of Washington itself for that special purpose ; and the great commonwealth of Washington received its just recognition as being worthy of a place in the bright constellation of states.

CHAPTER IV

SKAGIT COUNTY, 1889-97

The winter of 1889-90 was a very cold and severe one in Skagit county, more so than at most other points on the coast. "Dad" Patterson, a well-known citizen of Mount Vernon, is authority for the statement that for twenty-seven days that city was cut off from all communication with the outside world. Steamboat navigation was entirely blockaded by the masses of ice in the river, and as for railroads, there were none in Mount Vernon at that time.

With the closing of the decade of the eighties and the opening of the succeeding one and with the entrance of Washington into statehood, began a period in Skagit county the most active and the most excited that that part of the world has ever witnessed. This activity and excitement were man- ifested in many ways; by the rapid growth of towns, the soaring of land above prices that were normal or even reasonable, the inauguration of all sorts of industrial enterprises, the unprecedented rush of immigrants. Concerning the last point we observe the following item in the Skagit News of March 18, 1889: "At no time in the past has Skagit county received the number of immigrants that are now pouring in. Every boat comes loaded with home seekers. A year from now good available government land will be scarce. The prospective opening of several railroads will assist materially in the settlement of the county." In fact, the activ- ity in railroad enterprises was the most noticeable indication of the general activity. Throughout the county rights of way were being surveyed and graded, companies formed and plans for railroads drawn up, many of which roads were built only on paper, though several of them actually materialized. at least in part. One of the latter was the Seattle & Northern. The company projecting this road had been incorporated in Seattle in November, 1888. the incorporators being W. H. Holcomb, of Portland, Elijah Smith, J. H. Benedict, Charles F. Tagg. J. T. Tilney, Prof. W. Smith. E. L. Frank and E. S. Hooley, of New York, T. J. Milner and T. C. Haines, of Seattle, and 11. L. Tibballs, Jr., of Port Townsend. The capital stock of the company was five million dollars, its object to build a rail- road from Seattle via Whatcom to the Canadian boundary line and branches from the Skagit river cast up that river and the Sauk to Spokane and from the Skagit river west via Fidalgo island to Ship harbor and Admiralty Head on Whidby

island. Only a small part of these extensive plans were eventually executed. Active work was begun in June, 1889, under the management of Captain F. Hill and by the 1st of August twenty miles of the road from Ship harbor to the Skagit valley were graded and bridged. This much was required to fulfill the terms of a contract by which a large amount of land on the islands was to be acquired ; then the work was suspended until the spring of the following year. Many of the contracts for bridges, trestles, telegraph lines, cars, etc., were let to the Oregon Improvement Company, the real financial backer of the enterprise; others to the San Fran- cisco Bridge Company and to Tatum & Bowen of Portland. Two thousand rails which had been lying on Ballast island were shipped north and laid as fast as possible and another consignment was ordered from the East. On August 5th the road was put in the hands of the operating department and regular trains commenced running daily be- tween Anacortes and Sedro, at the latter of which places junction was made with the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern railroad. The Seattle & North- ern continued to within six miles of Hamilton, where it suddenly ceased, to the great distress of the people of that place, the reason for the suspen- sion being that the Oregon Improvement Company was financially embarrassed and unable to continue the work of construction. In the early part of Jan- uary. 1891, however, work was resumed under the direction of a receiver : about two months later the track was laid as far as Hamilton and soon after trains were running to that place. The service on the new road was excellent and was duly appre- ciated by the people of the county.

The Seattle. Lake Shore & Eastern was pro- gressing rapidly during this period. In December, 1889, a number of contracts were let for the clear- ing and grading of fifteen miles immediately south of the Skagit river and thirty miles north of it. Nearly two thousand men were put to work on these sections.

Another railroad that was quite active in the Skagit valley at this time was the Fairhaven & Southern. There was considerable rivalry between this road and the Seattle & Northern, also the Seat- tle, Lake Shore & Eastern or West Coast, as this branch of it was generally designated. In Decem- ber, 1889. the Fairhaven & Southern and the West Coast were both fighting for the possession of a nar-

144

"LOGGING" AND "CLEARING"

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOP. LENOX TILDE: "SITIONS

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SKAGIT COUNTY, 1889-97

row pass around McMurray lake. The crew of the foriner road was encamped near and was expect- ing to go to work on the pass the next day before the other crew could get to it, but during the night a force of men under Earle & McLeod came up by pack train from Fir, went into camp in the vicinity of the pass without making any demonstration and the next morning before sunrise made their way through the woods to the pass and were in full possession fifteen minutes before the Fairliaven & Southern crew arrived. By this coup the Fair- haven & Southern or Bennett road, as it was some- times named, was deprived of this route, which it was obliged to leave to the West Coast. The first train on the Fairhaven & Southern into Sedro was on the 24th of December. 1889. This railroad was sold the following year to the Great Northern, which was beginning to spread its mighty arm over the county. The formal transfer occurred on the 20th of February, 1891. The western branch of the Great Northern, which was being built at this time, was commonly known as the Seattle & Mon- tana railroad. It extended from Seattle along the coast through Mount Vernon to New Westminster in British Columbia. To secure its construction through their city the citizens of Mount Vernon granted it a right of way and one hundred acres of land. In September, 1890, new camps were estab- lished all along the line, so that there was scarcely a mile between Seattle and the Skagit river upon which work was not being done. In September. 1891, the track-laying machine began laying track between the Skagit and Stillaguamish rivers, the only unfinished section at the time, and it was com- pleted and the last spike driven on the 12tli of Oc- tober at a point one mile south of Stanwood, though there were still about twenty-one iniles to be bal- lasted before trains could be run over the line. This was finished in November. The Seattle Chamber of Commerce held an excursion on the 2îth of that month on the occasion of the formal opening of the road, in a train of nine coaches and a dining-car. all gayly decorated. Music was fir- nished by the First Regiment band of Seattle. The excursion proceeded through Mount Vernon, where Judge J. T. Ronald of Seattle delivered a short address, and then on to the end of the line at New Westminster. Thus was celebrated the opening of an important branch of one of the greatest rail- roads on the continent, a railroad which has done as much, perhaps, as any other one agency to develop the resources and stimulate the growth of the Northwest. Skagit county, while disappointed in in the hope that the main transcontinental line of the Great Northern would traverse her territory, was nevertheless benefited to a very great degree by its close proximity and by the branch line con- necting with it. The Great Northern was com- pleted on the 6th of January, 1893, the last spike

being driven at a point thirteen miles west of Stev- ens pass in the Cascades.

Besides the substantial railroads which have been mentioned, there was a multitude of others which, as a result of the general excitement of the times, were projected, but most of which did not materialize. One of these was known as the Samish, Skagit Valley & Spokane Railroad Com- pany, incorporated in April, 1889, with a capital stock of three million dollars. On April 8, 1890, the Ship Harbor & Spokane Falls Railroad Com- pany was incorporated, with a capital stock of six hundred thousand dollars, its object to build a rail- road from Puget sound to Spokane. The trustees were J. M. Buckley, William H. Holcomb and J. E. Buckley. About the same time a company known as the San Juan de Fuca Ship Canal & Railroad Company was incorporated by H. C. Walters, John Marshall, Theodore Wygant. F. K. Arnold, Lee Hoffman and William A. Bantz, with a capital of two million dollars. This was a boom scheme and never materialized into anything substantial. An- other of the same character was the Northwestern Railroad Company, of which the principal promotor was Richard Nevins, Jr. This company proposed to build a railroad about one hundred miles long with Mount Vernon as the center and extending east from that point to the Hamilton coal mines, and west to La Conner, to Edison and to a connec- tion with the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern. Still another boom scheme was the La Conner, Mount Vernon, & Eastern Railroad Company, incorporated by Leonard C. Whitfield, Milton Van Dyke and Richard Hussey, of Seattle, with a capital stock of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Its pur- pose as set forth was to construct a railroad from La Conner through the Cascades to the Columbia river.

By the number and magnitude of these schemes one can gain some idea of the eager excitement into which the entire region was thrown, an excitement equaled at no other time in the history of the county. But it was not confined to railroads. Every interest and every industry partook of tlie general fever. The price of land rose to unex- ampled heights and the number of real estate trans- fers was greater than ever before. This was par- ticularly the case with town property. In this con- nection we note the following in the Skagit News of January 13, 1890: "At no time in the history of the state has there been such a boom in town lots as at present. The boom is not confined to one locality, but the whole sound country is flooded with embryo towns and additions to towns already es- tablished. This property is held by active real estate agents, who, in flaming advertisements, paint the glowing future of their particular locality and enumerate railroads by the score which are partic- ularly anxious to build in their town. Of course, in some instances, their statements are warranted

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by the facts, but in a great many cases the boom originated in the fertile mind of the real estate shark who is anxious to unload his property at an enor- mous profit. It seems that so long as there are suckers the real estate men will continue to hook them. In fact, they bite with such rapidity that they fall over each other in their attempt to get at the bait. There will be a crash in the real estate market one of these days and many a victim will suffer from the effects of this wildcat speculation. The history of the California boom seems to have conveyed no lesson to Washington investors."

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An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 32

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.) Publication date: 1906 Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1172

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.)
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1172