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 73

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 73
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 73

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CICERO

One of the lumbering towns on the Darrington railroad is Cicero, in which the milling firm, known as the Heath-Morley Company, is the moving spirit. This firm has a saw-mill in the town and a store and hotel. Stephen Cicero also has a store, in which is the postoffice, Mrs. Cicero postmistress: Nain & Flemming keep a saloon and the O. M. Robertson Shingle Company operate a shingle mill.

MALTBY

The land upon which Maltby is located was homesteaded by a man named Dunlap in 188 ;. The fall of the ensuing year a postoffice named Yew was established, but at a later date the name was changed to Maltby. It has a mill with a capacity of ten thousand feet of lumber and thirty-five thousand shingles a day: two general stores, a hotel, a sa- loon, a cobbler's shop; a school, established about 1889, and a Congregational church; and it is the shipping point for the product of the Advance Shingle Company of Cathcart. There is some agri- cultural land in the vicinity, but the main support of the town is the lumbering and logging industry.

TIARTFORD

The junction point of the Bellingham and Monte Cristo divisions of the Northern Pacific, founded in 1891, at the time the first named division was being constructed. A year later the construction of the other branch made Hartford a junction point. James V. Vanhorn and wife Kate platted the town- site June 23, 1891, and soon thereafter a thriving village sprung into existence. Fire destroyed the place early in September, 1901, wiping out the four buildings constituting the business center, including J. W. Phillips' general store, B. E. Lee's saloon, and his hotel. However, new buildings soon replaced

those burned and to-day there are the usual business houses to be found in a village of perhaps seventy- five people. Lake Stevens, a growing summer re- sort, lies only half a mile away.

ROBE

Situated just west of tunnel No. six on the Monte Cristo branch of the Northern Pacific, a vil- lage of comparatively recent establishment, the home of the Cañon Lumber Company. This con- cern operates an extensive plant employing proba- bly a hundred men. The company's mills, store and a saloon constitute the business of the place. The name of the postoffice is taken from that of the town-site's pioneer settler. Granite Falls lics eight miles west along the same road.

SOBEY

A station on the Monte Cristo branch of the Northern Pacific, just west of Hartford. The life of the community is to be found in the Sobey Shingle Company's plant. A school and postoffice are maintained. -

GOLD BAR

Gold Bar is a thrifty saw-mill town of between two and three hundred people, in the Skykomish valley along the overland line of the Great Northern railway, twenty-nine miles east of Everett. Platted September 18, 1900, by the Gold Bar Improvement Company, it has grown very rapidly and is now among the substantial villages of the county. A two-story school-house has been erected in which forty-three pupils receive instruction, besides which the town enjoys good telephone, telegraph and transportation facilities. As the timber lands be- come available for agricultural purposes, many small farms are coming into cultivation, thus furnishing additional support for Gold Bar. Last year eight hundred and eighty-six cars of lumber and shingles were shipped from this point, which is indicative of the town's volume of business. The Gold Bar Lum- ber Company operates an extensive lumber and shingle plant therc.

MEADOWDALE

This is a newly settled community on the Great Northern coast line and Puget sound, between Mukilteo and Edmonds. It lias a station, a hand- some and unique log cabin hotel, a postoffice and a school with fifty pupils. It is beautifully situated at one of the most inviting points along the east shore of Puget sound and is rapidly developing berry, fruit and gardening industries.

Those commercial eenters, possessing postoffices, not fully described in the preceding portion of this chapter on the cities and towns of Snohomish county are: Cedarhome, Edgecomb, Fortson, Getchell, Goldbasin, Hazel, Jorden, Lochsloy, Norman, Pil- chuttck, Sisco, Three Lakes, Trafton and Tulalip.

PART IV

SUPPLEMENTARY

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX MILDEN FIAT

Scuk Kir

ish Hatchera

near M bas

Sub Station Baker Lake Fish Hatchery

FOREST, MOUNTAIN AND STREAM

PART IV SUPPLEMENTARY

CHAPTER I

DESCRIPTIVE

The Puget sound country is one of Nature's challenges to the children of the world. ʼTo aboriginal man it cried "Come in and subdue the land and possess it." He accepted its gratuities of fish and clams and game and berries, but failed to answer the challenge. The wealth of its forests might remain there forever for all of him. He lacked the strength to stretch forth his hand and possess it. The call of its rich valleys and tide marshes was inaudible to his savage ear. The treasures of its granite mountains made their appeal in vain. They were there for the man with granite in the fiber of his being. The iron in their depths was for a race with iron in its blood. Their hidden gold was for those with some of the golden in their characters, and he who would have their copper must have the virtues of copper and not its color only. The grand land-locked sea of water, the enticing crystal rivers, mirroring the wealth of foliage along their banks and stooping to meet them, failed utterly to incite the savage to the construction of nobler craft than his pigmy canoe. To this he clung until he, too, became a pigmy, dwarfed in stature, misshapen and dis- torted in body, deteriorated and disennobled. In no way commensurate with the prodigious country he called his own, he failed to see the opportunities she held out to him, much less to grasp them. The country has cast him out with the mark of unworthiness upon his brow. She has given her vineyards to the charge of other and worthier husbandmen. The graves of his people are the heritage of the stranger, and as he looks out over the vast Pacific upon the peclining sun he sees in it a type of the decline of his own race, never again to rise. Vanquished

and vanishing, he must take what satisfaction he can out of the traditional glories of the misty past, for the future holds for him no golden bow of promise.

To the pioneer navigator, the country sent its challenge. He came, he saw, but did not con- quer. He accepted the challenge as far as the waters were concerned. He threaded the innu- merable channels, sounded their depths, gave them names, wrested them from the domain of the unknown and added them to the domain of the known, then called his work good. The sea was his field of fame, and with the land hie would have naught.

To the fur trader, also, the challenge of the country came. He, like the Indian, was willing to accept gratuities, but not to make returns. He failed to meet the challenge. He did not measure up to the fullness of the stature of the men and women she desired for her chosen people, and she cast out him also as unworthy.

There is no place for the sluggard or the weakling in the sound basin. Its prizes are many and rich, but they are for the strong, the vigilant, the active, the stout of heart. They must be won by force or not at all. The country itself is a type of the men and women it will have for its own. Hemmed in between the Olympics on the west and the lofty Cascades on the east, it partakes of the ruggedness of its mountain boundaries, while almost everywhere over its surface is a dense growth of giant firs and cedars and hemlocks, in places excluding almost entirely from the soil the sun's light and warmth.

The mild climate, the long growing season, the abundance of rain cause vegetation to spring

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forth in almost tropical luxuriance. A tangled network of small trees and shrubs and vegetable growths made exploration exceedingly difficult to the pioneer. If he ventured away from the waters of the sound or the rivers and streams flowing into it, he must hew out his pathway with an axe. To the lumberman it offered its most obvious attractions but it placed in his way grave difficulties. The timber near the water could

be easily secured. When that was gone, he must face the problem of getting the giants over- land to water. The solution of this problem called for great natural skill in engineering and inuch ingenuity. Its practical working ont has placed the sound country at the head in all the United States in the perfection of logging rail- roads and scientific appliances for the transpor- tation of timber. Yet no appliances and no ingenuity can obviate the necessity for the hardest kind of physical labor. Let no weakling enter the lumber camps.

The barriers in the way of him who would earn his living by agriculture were even greater than those which confronted the logger. If he made his home on the tide marshes, he must build a breastwork against the sea; if in the river bottoms he must protect his crops from overflow: if on any lowlands he must drain. Wherever he went, he must remove the dense forest of towering conifers and the tangled net- work of variegated undergrowth, before he could begin to secure a return in crops and then he must continue the battle with stumps, stumps everywhere, stumps so small that the plowshare would overturn them and stumps so large that houses might be built upon them. He, too, might employ the forces of nature in his battle. Appli- ances might be invented and pressed into service. Powder and dynamite might give him the use of their illimitable power; but in no way could he avert from himself a full and abundant meas- ure of the curse pronounced upon Adam.

For the prospector, also, the country had its array of drawbacks. To him there were no terrors in its profound solitudes. He could hew through its interminable forest mazes a trail for himself and his pack horse, and he could find water in abundance wherever he might wan- der. But the difficulty came in the develop- ment of his prospects when discovered. The ores are for the most part refractory, requir- ing great capital. The barriers of isolation from the world without were hard indeed to break. The building of roads was nowhere fraught with greater difficulty. The wait for results was nowhere longer.

Rugged in aspect, replete with difficulties, the terror of the timid, the despair of the weak, the sound country yet held and still holds inspira- tion and hope unlimited for a people brave and sturdy and stalwart, like unto its own grand self. To such it opens wide its doorway; for such it

holds the richest treasures, the most abundant rewards.

With all its rigors, the aspect of this land is not a frowning and forbidding one. On the con- trary, it is more inviting than that of almost any other. For the richness and grandeur of its scenery, it might challenge comparison with the most famous of earth's resorts; in some respects it is without a peer.

A forest growth the like of which can nowhere else be found in North America supports itself upon its sturdy bosom, clothing it in colors most pleasing to the eye, softening its roughness, hiding away the unsightly. So deep and per- sistent is its verdure that it has won for the state the familiar name of "Evergreen," a fitting sobri- quet so far as the western part is concerned, for nowhere will one find more abundant green of every shade. Wherever you look there are vistas of verdure. Destroy the timber and shrubbery, burn them with fire, and presently Nature, hurrying to resent the injury and repair the damage, has again covered the blackened earth and the charred remains with her own favorite color. If a forest giant, too ambitious, rearing too lofty and too large a crown, is con- quered in a battle with the elements, she covers its carcass with lichen and moss. A blackened stump, or a heap of rubbish is speedily enfolded in verdure. Almost irresistible is this rush of green. Each unused nook, each sequestered spot, it claims for its very own. It will fight for possession in the streets of the towns and peep at pedestrians through the cracks in the walk.

Grand, indeed, is a view of this verdure-clad

region from a commanding eminence. It has been the writer's privilege to look upon some of the sublimest scenes in all this northwestern wonderland, but nowhere has he beheld anything more entrancing in its magnificence and pictur- esque beauty than the view which may be had on a clear evening from an elevated location in the little city of Snohomish. Far to the southward is grand old Mount Rainier, snow-clad, rose- tinted by the subdued touch of the evening sunlight, mightiest effort of the mountain Babel- builders to pierce the heavens with a spire. Away to the northward is old Mount Baker, indis- tinct in the distance and almost hidden from your sight, while uniting the two and passing far to eastward of your viewpoint is the first range of the Cascades, its outline broken and tattered with rugged protuberances, yet possessing withal a subdued, dreamlike beauty. To the westward, just over the tree-tops, is the blue crest of the classic Olympics, still more indistinct, still more dreamlike, much less rugged in aspect, while between the two ranges, forming the foreground of the picture, is one great sea of verdure over- flowing in its profusion and abundance. Match- less the scene, yet there is lacking from it, because wholly invisible from our viewpoint, the

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DESCRIPTIVE

region's most sublime, most characteristic fea- ture, that marvelous inland sea, wonder of the world, the far- famed Puget sound.

And those famous sunsets! "Tell me, " said one of the country's own poets, * "where is there a land in which the darkest day of winter flings her dull coverings at evening and lay's the pure flaming gold of her heart over the whole country, sea and mountains, as it does on Puget sound. Every land may occasionally have a gorgeous sunset; and then, when one does stray in unex- pectedly, how the whole country comes and stares at it, and how the newspapers rave over it, and how they look at each other and trot out that old, weary 'Talk about Italy,' until our own ears and eyes and nerves fairly tingle! But think- only think !- of a land where each evening from six o'clock until ten in summer, and from four until six in winter, the whole western sky and the sea that dances beneath are one flaming. tremulous, dazzling glow of blended and blend- ing gold, purple, scarlet, orange, green, blue, opal and pearl-shifting, fading, melting, burn- ing, until one's breath almost fails in a very ecstasy of passionate, admiration of it. Column on column of amethyst and pearl pile up and stand toppling ready to fall in the clouds; and in the far distance of the rainbow-tinted tunnel, one sees the sun-a great wheel of flaming gold -laying his trembling rim upon the low, grace- ful fir trees reaching upward quiet arms, until each fine, spicy needle stands out, clear and delicate, against the luminous background. And many and many a time, while the west is light with sunset fires into the clear blue east rises slowly the harvest moon-silver and cool and large-whitening and softening everything before her.

"Sometimes, too, when there is a mist brood- ing upon the bosom of these blue waters, all the tinted sun and cloud rays sinking through it, touch it to life and vivid color, till it seems one vast distance of trembling thistle-down, blown this way and that by the strong, salt sea-winds. The 'Sunset' state! There is temptation to the lover of beauty-and who does not love beauty ?- in the name. I have seen the laborer, toiling with bared breast and swelling muscles at the huge walls of rock cliffs with pick and mallet, pause and turn wondering, wistful eyes across the sparkling waves to the glory of the dying day; I have seen the true artist stand with dim eye and hushed breath-speechless-awed into insignificance before the painting that God has swung before His children, saving: 'Come the rich and the poor, the young and the old, the strong and the feeble, the saint and the sinner- come one and all!' Here is a painting traced on heaven such as no man can copy and no man can buy. The veriest beggar that crawls the earth may drink in the glory of this scene side by side *Ella Higginson.

with the king, if he only has the simple love of beauty and of Nature's God in his heart. It is free-for the gold of the earth cannot buy the gold of heaven! O! you who love this land-let it be our own 'Sunset' state!"'

Another of the powerful allurements of the sound, one which appeals most potently to the people of less-favored climes, is the mildness and equability of all its seasons. Damp and mild in winter, damp and mild in spring, dry and mild in summer; ideal in autumn; it never shocks by extremes of either heat or cold. No sunstrokes, no blizzards, no cyclones; plenty of special indulgences from the loving hand of Nature ; few diseases of climatic origin.

These are some of the inducements which the sound basin offered a people bold enough to undertake its conquest, -scenery magnificent, climate approaching the ideal, prizes rich and alluring, abundant rewards for abundant, well- directed industry, a future, limitless in its possi- bilities. With its billions of feet of timber awaiting the woodman's axe, the boundless Pacific sending its mighty arm and hand and multiplied fingers hundreds of miles inland, as if reaching for the commerce of a great state, and anxious to bear its natural wealth upon its own broad bosom .- with all these advantages the chal- lenge of the country could not long remain un- taken however great the labors and the sacrifices of the battle. For three score years now the con- flict has continued. Victory has attended the invading arms. The forest, the sea, the soil and the mountains have been forced to give up their treasure ; cities rich and populous have sprung up in the heart of the wilderness, and the achieve- ments of the past are as nothing compared with those yet to be.

The course of future development may be a matter of some uncertainty-the future is always uncertain-but it can hardly fail to pursue three separate lines, development of the maritime, development of manufacturing, development of intensive agriculture. The awakening of the Pacific is fraught with great interest and great meaning for the Puget sound country, the natural northern gateway to the Orient. Nature has endowed this country with a wide, deep and safe sea path, extending its entire length, ramifying through it, reaching to the very heart of a great state, furnishing abundant harbors everywhere. This is the first indication of a grand maritime destiny for the region tributary to the sound. The awakening of Alaska has meant much for this region. One great advantage of the posses- sion of that gold-bearing peninsula by the United States, one pregnant with meaning to Puget sound citizens, has but recently come to light. lt forms the second indication of a maritime destiny for our land. Within the last two years a voyage of discovery under the direction of the United States government has been completed.

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SUPPLEMENTARY

Its results were momentous. "In the opinion of naval experts, nothing in the explorations of the past hundred years equals it in importance."

"The discovery is that in the long chain of Aleutian islands, stretching westward from the Alaska mainland almost across the Pacific, there is a succession of harbors; that they are safe and open throughout the year; that they are unob- structed by rocks, and that the channel to some of them is so deep and commodious that half a dozen fleets could enter them simultaneously.

"In the event of war, should a squadron flying the flag of the United States start for Chinese waters, it could stop every night in a safe Amer- ican anchorage until it reached Attu island, nearly four thousand miles west of Puget sound. Steaming from that distant island outpost of the United States, our men of war could, within a short run, reach the center of the contested seas of Asia. The ownership of an archipelago reach- ing far outward toward Asia, and indented with many convenient harbors, is a national asset of incalculable future value.

"Without consulting a globe, or following the ocean track of trans-Pacific steamers, it is diffi- cult to comprehend the vast future importance of these re-discovered Aleutians. It is a shorter distance between Oriental and Pacific coast points by way of the great northern circle route, which skirts the southern shores of the Aleutian islands, than it is straight across the Pacific. All the American, British and Japanese vessels from . Puget sound to Yokohama, and some even from San Francisco, select the northern route. In fact the few inhabitants of the Aleutian islands, now harvesting the first fortunes from this archi- pelago, report that it is almost a daily occurrence to sight steamers moving between Japan and America.

"Maps issued by the hydrographic office of the United States reveal ,that a straight line drawn from San Francisco to Yokohama measures 4,791 miles, while just south of the Aleutian chain, is only 4,536 miles in length. A straight line from Port Townsend to Yokohama is 4,575 miles long, while the way by the Aleutian circle is only 4,240 miles. Similarly the trip from San Francisco to Manila, by way of Midway islands and Guam is 6,578, while the more northerly voyage under the Aleutian islands is 6,241 miles. "*

From this it will be seen that in the develop- ment of a great oriental commerce, to which the United States is impelled by every consideration of self-interest, every impulse toward the achieve- ment of its highest national greatness and to which it has unmistakably committed itself by the retention of the Philippines, the sound country is destined to have a part first in extent and importance. If China is to become a wheat- eating nation and the United States is to assist in

feeding her, the wheat must go out through the ports of the sound; if the awakened Orientals demand our manufactures the sound will furnish their ports of departure. It will do more; it will produce its full share of manufactured articles at home. Nowhere is there a country better suited to manufacturing than this. It has water power, and fuel in abundance. For the textile industries, its climate would seem to be ideal. Its transportation facilities are superior to those of any other port on the shores of the Pacific; its harbors for shipping are everywhere.

Long years ago, before Japan had begun her march toward civilization, before Russia had become a factor on the shores of the Pacific, while China was yet deep in the sleep of ages and our own coast was in its early morning of settle- ment, in a moment of inspiration William H. Seward uttered these words: "Henceforth European commerce, European politics, European thought and European activity, although actually gaining force, and European connections, al- though actually becoming more intimate, will nevertheless relatively sink in importance ; while the Pacific ocean, its shores, its islands and the vast region beyond, will become the chief theater of events in the world's great hereafter."

The day of the fulfillment of this prophecy is. at hand and in the grand unfoldment of the commercial destiny of the Pacific, Puget sound beholds its future, brilliant as one of its own summer sunsets. New Yorks, Chicagos, Phila- delphias and Baltimores of this new commerce there must be, and who is too blind to discern that the shores of this matchless inland sea must. have their share of these?

SKAGIT COUNTY

The necessity for the foregoing brief review is sufficiently apparent. While the two counties. which form the subject of this work are but a part of the sound basin they are an integral part with all the general characteristics of the whole, having the same physical aspects, possessing in common with several other counties the ranges. of the lordly Cascades, and in common with all the waters of Puget sound, traversed by the same railroads, linked to all by the closest ties. of trade relationship, rejoicing in a common hope, a common destiny. It is fitting, however, that more extended notice be given the immediate theme of the volume, and that the special fea- tures and special industries of these two counties of the sound be traced with some minuteness and detail. The more northerly of the twain and the larger in area is Skagit county, the mainland of which is bounded by the Eighth and Ninth standard parallels, north, the summit of the Cascades and the sound. The county also includes Fidalgo, Guemes, Cypress and a number of other islands, its total area being one thousand. eight hundred and seventy-four square miles.

*Harold Bolce in Booklovers for April, 1904.

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LINOX TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

" WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE"

"HOME SWEET HOME"

387

DESCRIPTIVE

Perhaps the most important feature in its topography is the Skagit, the largest stream flowing into Puget sound. The course of this noble river through the Cascade mountain region is marked by all the wildness and fierce- ness of flow characteristic of mountain streams, while its environs are grand indeed. Upon emerging from the mountains, the river at once lays aside its superfluous impetuosity and as- sumes an air of great dignity and calm, though it still presses onward to the sea at no sluggard's pace. Swelled by tribute from the majestic Sauk, the turbulent Baker and a number of other streams of less magnitude, it becomes a broad river, navigable by almost any kind of craft, with sufficient propelling power to overcome the force of its current. Naturally this river attracted the attention of the earliest visitors to what is now Skagit county. Some of the prospectors and adventurers who rushed into the Fraser river country in 1858, made superficial reconnoissances of the Skagit and its tributary streams. The old Northern Light, a newspaper published in Whatcom during the first boom on Bellingham bay, a few copies of which have come down to our time as slight relics of the past, describes at least one such exploration. It tells us that Milton F. Mounts and a company of prospectors, entered the month of what they called the Skat- skat in a canoe and navigated the river for seventy miles, making several portages on account of the accumulations of driftwood. They saw large droves of deer and elk on its banks, as well as an abundance of other game. They failed not to note that the lands in its valley were rich and well adapted to agriculture, nor did they fail in their quest for gold, for they informed the editor that they found it everywhere though the waters were high, preventing them from giving the bars a thorough test.

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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 73

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