An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 2

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1056

USA > Washington > An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens > Part 2

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).

179

Port Townsend

.145

Colman, J. M

333

Llewellyn, W. H.

909

Prather, L. H

237

Dawson, L. R.

813

Mackintosh, Angus 557

Thomas, C. W. 669

Day, B F ..

365

Maier, Christian 701

Washington State Building. 279

Weed, G. A ..

877

Fort Nisqually.

McDonald, J. R 429

Whitworth, G. F 257

Gordon, T. W.

511

McGilvra, J. J

284

Hill, W. L 621

Olympia and Harbor 227

Burleigh, A. F

First House in Jefferson County. 145

McBride, J. R. 239

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

CHAPTER I.

TOPOGRAPHY-CLIMATE -- PRODUCTIONS.

HIE State of Washington is, with the ex- ception of Alaska, the most northwestern of the political divisions of the United States. Its form is a broad parallelogram, fronting westward on the Pacific Ocean for a distance of 245 miles, and having a length from east to west of about 360 miles. On the north the magnificent straits of Juan de Fuca, separ- ating it from British Columbia, forms its boun- dary until it reaches the point where the 49thº of latitude strikes that strait, when the line follows that parallel eastward for a distance of 250 miles. Thence the line goes due south to the 46th° of latitude, then west until that de- gree strikes the Columbia river about 300 miles from the ocean, and then follows the channel of that river to the sea. On the whole, the outlines of the State are regular, but within these out- lines there is probably a topography more diver- sified in surface, and more varied by land and water than can be shown by any other State of the Union. It has an area of 69,994 square miles, of which 3,144 square miles are water. It is over three-fourths the size of New York and Pennsylvania combined. Compared with the Western States its area is about equal to that of Ohio and Indiana.

The most prominent feature of the topography of Washington is its immense extent of ocean and strait and sound and navigable river lines. The Pacific Ocean washes its entire western shore. In that extent are Shoalwater Bay and Gray's Harbor, cach a deep inlet sweeping many miles into the land, and each affording safe and

accessible harbors for a large commerce. The Straits of Fuca, from twenty to forty miles in width, and carrying the depth of the sea, de- scribes a semi-circle projecting into the north- east corner of the strait with an arc of nearly 200 miles in length. Breaking southward from the eastern center of this arc, about 100 miles from the ocean, Puget Sound, with its innumer- able bays, and inlets, and canals, extends more than a hundred miles, reaching the very center of the State, and furnishing in all a shore-line of not less than a thousand miles washed by the ebb and flow of the tide. Besides this, the Co- Inmbia river coming down from British Colum- bia on the north, enters the State a few miles west of its northeastern corner, and crosses its whole breadth diagonally to the southwest, swinging in great bends through its vast prairies east of the Cascade mountains, until it reaches the 46th° of latitude, when it flows along its southern line to the ocean. The Snake river, the great southern branch of the Columbia, comes into the State from the east near its sonthern border, and after flowing for nearly 200 miles within it joins the greater river about twenty miles north of the Oregon line.

These are great rivers,-among the greatest of the continent, and together furnish within the State and along its line well nigh a thousand miles of steamboat navigation. An almost in- numberable number of smaller rivers flow down from the great mountain ranges towards the Columbia and Snake rivers, and toward Puget Sound, some of which are navigable for small

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

steamers for many miles. East of the Cascade mountains the most important of these are the Spokane and the Yakima, both of which drain large valleys and immense mountain slopes, and empty into the Columbia. West of the Cas- cade the Skagit, the Snohomish, the Puyallup, the Chehalis, and the Cowlitz, are the chief, although there are many others approaching these in size and importance.

This brief and incomplete statement will suf- fice to show that there is no State of the Union so plentifully watered by rivers and smaller streams as is the State of Washington.

Topographically, Washington is divided into two very distinct departments, namely, the Puget Sound basin and the great valley of the Upper Columbia. Between these, running north and south through the entire State, is the great range of the Cascade Mountains. This mountain range is the grandest and most im- posing in North America. Commencing near the extreme southern portion of the continent, it grows mre and more imposing as we move northward until in Mount St. Elias, far np toward Behring's Straits, it reaches its highest altitude. It has more of the great, snow-capped volcanic cones that rise from 12,000 to 20,000 feet in height than any other range of North America, and has a breadth and rugged- ness that can scarcely be paralleled elsewhere among mountain ranges. In Washington the range is swelling toward its grandest dimen- sions, and several of its mightiest pinnacles are within the limits of this State.

Beginning near the southern line, Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens sentinel the mighty gates of the Columbia river. Further north and overlooking the upper region of Puget Sound, Mount Rainier lifts its broad shoulders and its hoary head clear against the sky, presenting one of the most remarkable expressions of physical majesty and power that the eye ever looked upon. Still to the north, and near the waters of the Straits of Fuca, Mount Baker almost rivals Ranier in majesty and grandeur. Between them are summits in-

numerable, that in any land but this would be famed for their sublimity; and, stretching away east and west the whole width of the range, not less than fifty miles in any place, and reaching a hundred in others, is in view of from the slopes or summits of these higher peaks. The gorges that cleave the sides and separate the bases of these mountains are as deep and awful as the mountains are high and sublime. Down them pour roaring rivers that rush madly away from the imprisonment of the mountain barriers as though eager to find their eternal freedom in the level of the sea. The great glaciers of the snowy mountains move slowly down the immense clefts of the icy pinnacles, grinding the granite to powder under their erush, and bearing great boulders on their white bosom until the sunshine of the plain unlocks their fetters of frost and leaves them miles and miles away from where the avalanche wrenched them from their gran- ite pedestals. Power, majesty, sublimity, eter- nity are all symboled by the vast ranges and mighty pinnacles, and no one can contemplate them without a feeling of overwhelming awe: a feeling that increases rather than diminishes as lie dwells in communion with them through the years and the decades.

West of Puget Sound and between it and the Pacific ocean is the Olympic range. This range terminates at the north against the Straits of Fnca, and extends southward a full hundred miles, well toward the Columbia river. Lower and narrower than the Cascade range, yet it is one that, seen from Puget Sound or from the ocean coast, presents many most striking and beautiful scenes. Indeed, true to its happily selected name, it presents much most alluring scenery, and charms the eye with its classic ruggedness and beauty. It rises in pinnacled abruptness on the one side from the sea and on the other from the Sound, and its clear outline is sharply ent against the summer sky, holding the imagination in a pleasing thrall, as the lights and shadows of the evening and morning play and troop along its

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

sides and over its alpine gorges and precipices. There is more of the sharp outline, the steep rugged grandeur, and the calm, reposeful strength of the Alps of Switzerland in it than in any other of the American ranges.

Between these two ranges,-the Cascades and Olympic,-Jies the basin of Puget Sound. The pinnacles of these ranges are probably nearly a hundred miles apart. More than half of this distance is taken up by the mountain slopes, and the remainder by the Sound itself and the rolling and heavily timbered uplands that stretchi away from its shores. The peculiar and dis- tingnishing characteristic of this basin is the body of water that gives it name -- Pnget Sound. Let us, in a few sentences, endeavor to give it some limning to the eye of the reader.

We will imagine ourselves sailing in from the ocean between the bold headlands of Cape Flattery and Point San Juan, and entering the vast system of inland seas constituted by the Straits of Fuca, the Gulf of Georgia and Puget Sound. We enter a passage nearly half a de- gree of latitude in width, which carries its full volume, with the depth and appearance of the ocean, eastward for a hundred miles, when the innumerable islands of the San Juan archipelago divide its broadened waters into as innumerable narrow channels, which swing and sway away among them in an infinitude of graceful curves and angles, always changing as the tides are pressed and turned by their bold precipices or their sloping shores. Just south of this, and breaking away from the main Straits, are many channels, also separated by many of the most beautiful islands that ever dimpled the face of a sea. Puget Sound stretches its sea-deep tides into the far recesses of the ever-frowning and embosoming mountains. Measured across all its surface, including the islands that everywhere stud its bosom, the Sound cannot average less than from ten to twenty miles in width. Pro- jecting into the rounded, wooded shores every- where, bays and harbors without number afford safe anchorage for vessels of any dratt. For a hundred and twenty miles southward, clear to

Olympia, the capital of the State, it also carries the depth and semblance of the sea, -- in fact, is the sea in all its characteristics of tides and pro- ductions of every kind. It is alive with sea- fish, and marine plants float everywhere upon its surface.

As to scenery, with all the possible combina- tions of land and water, of sea and island, of plain and mountain, of lake and river, it is doubtful whether a spot can be found on earth that rivals Puget Sound. Something more of of this will be noted when we come to speak of its cities, and so we shall pass it by with this slight notice at this place.

The country bordering the Sound, on both sides, and extending to the slopes of the mount- ains, with small exceptions, is very densely tim- bered. It bears the grandest growth of fir and cedar that can be found upon the continent. Untold thousands of these giant trees are from five to ten feet in diameter, and will reach from 200 to 300 feet in length. Their roots draw in marvelous support from the rich soil in which they are planted, and their leaves drink growing life from the moist and sea-salted atmosphere always breathed over them. The exceptions to this statement are found in the tide-flats that margin the lower portion of the Sound, and in the comparatively small prairies which island the great woodland that sweeps around its head. The tide-flats are exceedingly rich in soil, and, when dyked and cultivated, marvel- ously productive. The prairies are mostly of a liglit, gravelly soil, and are not of great worth for agriculture.

It will be obvious to the reader at once that the rivers entering the sound are generally small. So near are the mountain ranges on either hand that they must needs be so. For the most of their courses they are mountain torrents, and then they broaden, near the sound, into streams up which the tides push for some miles. Some of them are rated as navigable streams although some small steamers ply on their tide-waters for a few miles. They all water valleys, of greater or less widthi, of very

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

rich soil, which when the grand forests are cleared away are remarkably productive, es- pecially in vegetables and fruits and hops; and it is in this line mostly that the lands of Puget Sound basin can be set down as agricultural.

That portion of the State which lies directly on the Pacific coast is separated from that margining Puget Sound by the Olympic range, of which mention has already been made. These mountains crowd the sea so closely that there is comparatively little agricultural land between them. The streams that flow down from them either to the ocean or the sound are small and short. The first one from the straits of Fnca sonthward that cleaves the range is the Che- halis, which enters the head of Gray's Harbor, more than 100 miles south of the Straits. This river and its tributaries drain a very large region of rich, though mostly heavily timbered, coun- try, rather level for this portion of the coast, yet in places rising into ridges and hills that would be considered mountains in the Middle States. Its wealth of forest is incomputable. Of timber available for lumber it is not likely that any portion of the United States ever fur- nished such an abundant supply. C'edar, fir and spruce attain a size and quality that are re- markable. Along all the streams, np all the hill-slopes, over all the valleys, the tall spires of these evergreens climb skyward from 200 to 300 fect, often reaching a diameter, twenty feet from the ground, of from eight to twelve feet.

What is said of the region of the Chehalis and Gray's Harbor is alike true of that surround- ing Shoalwater Bay, a few miles further to the south. Indeed, Gray's Harbor and Shoalwater Bay really belong to one great indentation in the Coast range of mountains which continnes still to the south, and about fifteen miles from the Bay also receives the vast flood of the Columbia river. The great break in this range in which the Columbia, Shoalwater Bay and Gray's Harbor are found, is the only one from the straits of Fnca to the "Golden Gate." It is not less than fifty miles in width, and is the distinguishing

topographical feature of the coast within the State of Washington.

Our readers would not fully understand the topographical character of the western part of the State without some specific notice of that part of it that lies on the Columbia river, from the mouth of that mighty stream to the Cascade range,-a distance of 125 miles. The head of Puget Sound is separated from the Columbia by a stretch of heavily timbered country, inter- spersed with occasional small prairies, 100 miles in length. Half of that distance is traced by the Cowlitz river, a bold, dashing stream that comes down from the icy gorges of Mount St. Helen's westward, as though it had started for the sea at the head of Gray's Harbor, but meet- ing the obstruction of a lateral spur of hills that projects from the Cascade range between itself and the Chehalis river, concludes to turn to the south in its quest for the ocean, and finds the tidal level by the way of the Columbia. The valley of the Cowlitz strikes the Columbia from the north about half way from the mountains to the sea. Between this point and the ocean the country is very rough, even mountainons, and bears the characteristic growth of timber which distinguishes all Western Washington.

Immediately east of this point, and up the Columbia, the Cascades shoot down a lateral spur of mountains clear against the river. Still further east this range sweeps far back from the river to the north, then circles eastward and then southward again, forming a great valley, ap- proaehing a circle in form, of at least fifty miles in diameter. The southern arc of the circum- ference of the valley is formed by the Columbia river,-a vast tidal flood of from one to two miles in width, and deep enough for the largest ships; and the northern by the mountain range. This is not a level valley, but one of variable surface, traced by numerous small rivers and creeks, and in its natural growths repeats the topographical conditions of all Western Wash- ington. Its soil is very excellent, combining disintegrated basalt and granite with alluvial deposits and vegetable mold in fine proportions,

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

and making it remarkably productive for cereals and fruits. Enframed by the mountains on the north, thus securing a southern exposure, and margined by the river on the south, its climatic conditions could hardly be more perfect for the productions named.

Having thus, in general terms, given our readers some idea of the topography of Western Washington, we will now lead them across the Cascade range into the vaster area of the State that lies east of it.

When one has crossed the Cascade mount- ains from the low altitudes and moist climate of Puget Sound and the lower Columbia into the high altitudes and dry atmosphere of the great interior, he has entered a new world. Every form is changed, every condition modified and even transposed. The immense vegetable growths have given place to treeless plains. The green hills and mountain slopes are succeeded by brown or gray piles of basalt and sand. The rivers flow no longer through the great forests of fir and cedar, but wind down through sandy gorges, or swing across wide sage plains, with only here and there a clump of willows, or it may be a solitary cottonwood, to mark the course of their flow. The atmosphere is not softened by the touch of the sea wave, but is fervid with the heat of the shimmering plain, or cool from the breath of the snowy ranges. If the traveler has come suddenly into it, without previous knowledge of its peculiar characteristics, its strangeness steals on him like a vast, weird dream and he gazes upon it with a wonder quite akin to awe. Its skies are so deep and silent, its vistas so endless, its mysteries so unfathom- able, its surprises so frequent that he is inclined to move in the silence of a dreamer over it. These are the elements that render it difficult to give its common characteristics in words that will make it real to the mind of the reader. But we must try.

In area Eastern Washington comprises about two-thirds of the land surface of the State. Its chief topographical characteristics are connected with the fact that it is almost wholly within the

great valley of the upper Columbia. The waters of this majestic river and its tributaries drain its entire surface. There is not a drop of water from any plain or pinnacle of this great region that flows seaward through any other channel. Coming down from the north through British Columbia this stream enters the State near its north-eastern corner, flowing first south nearly a hundred miles, then westerly about the same distance, then south and southeasterly twice as far, and then southwesterly 150 miles on the southern boundary of the State before it enters the mighty gateway of the Cascade range. Com- ing into the State from the east about twenty five miles north of its south-eastern corner, Snake river, hardly smaller than the Columbia itself, swings its serpentine way through its basaltic gorge for more than a hundred miles, when it unites with the latter in the midst of a broad, open valley, about ten miles before it reaches the southern line of the State. On both sides of the main stream are countless tributaries, many of them large, though none are navigable, but all of which drain large areas of country and water vast tracts of land that else would be desert. Among these on the east, beginning at the north, are the Pend d'Oreille, the Colville, the Spokane, the Palouse, the Tukannon, the Touchet and the Walla Walla. On the north and west are the Okinagan, Chelan, Wenatche, Yakima and Klickitat. All these with the ex- ception of the Klickitat, flow towards the common center of the great valley of the Co- lumbia, where that and Snake river make their junction for their last great movement ont of the mighty basin which their myriad years of flow has washed out between the Rocky and Cas- cade ranges. A vaster, more concentrated, uni- fied, yet at the same time diversified, river basin does not mark the map of the world than is Eastern Washington, and through none does a more wonderful river pour its floods. It is from this one fact, as an initial point, that any writer must start if he would understand, or intelli- gently write of the topography, or even the climate of this part of the State.

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

The next fact is the system of mountain ranges that either hem in this vast valley, or else cut it into sections as their spurs push eastward from the Cascades or westward from the Rocky mountain system, and the numerons short ranges and isolated peaks that seem to have no connection with the great continental systems, that are scattered through it. With the size of this great basin, 200 miles each way, and these two great dominating topographical features in our minds, it will not be difficult, perhaps, for us to understand its more subordinate character- istics.

Although we have called this region a " basin " and a " valley," these words must be taken as relating only to the fact that it is drained by the single river course which we have named. Within the uppermost rim ot this "basin " there are mountains and hills innumerable. They swell into every form of rugged grandenr and snblimity. They soften into every outline of beauty and peace. They are rough and pin- nacled with jagged basaltic pillars, with great granite peaks, on which the pine trees nod and sigh to the mountain winds, or they are rounded into grassy knobs smooth and beautiful as though an artist's hand bad moulded them.

Below these are the plains and the valleys that touch the brink of the streams. The latter are generally narrow, but the former stretch away for miles, bordered at either side by some creek or river.

The soil of all this region is mineral in its composition, being composed mostly of granitic and basaltic sand, ground and worn out of the mountain sides by the abrasion of rivers, or dis- solved by frost and snow and rain from the faces of the precipices. There is little of vege- table sediment init. Even the great river bears little of this, as its flow for a thousand miles above is through the same open, treeless region, and between basaltie and granite walls. Such soils need only water to make them break forth into a very harvest of plenty.

Over a large portion of this vast area this can only be procured from irrigating ditches or

artesian wells, as, notably, in the Yakima val- ley and in the region known as " the Great Bend country." Still the reader must not sup- pose that this remark applies to the vast wheat- growing region in what has long been cele- brated as the " Palouse country," and, indeed, all the region east of the Great Bend country from the northern to the southern line of the State. This is an empire in extent, and is one of the finest wheat-producing regions of Amer- ica. Yet in even this abundant irrigation, would soon double the grain production and increase many fold its fruits and vegetables. And the millions of arid and semi-arid acres that now lie fallow under the cloudless skies of this sun- lit land will one day, and that day not far away, give its tens of millions of busbels into the garners of the world.

The climate of all this " Inland Empire" is as sui generis as its topography.

The seasons are pronounced, but they are not differentiated like those on the coast, nor like those of the Eastern States. There is little fall of moisture either in the form of rain or snow. Skies without a cloud bend over the vales and hills for months together. This is especially true of the center of the Columbia basin and of its western slope. On the eastern slope of the basin the conditions are different and the fall of moisture greater. This is easily accounted for. The winds from the western se i are drained of all their vapors by their contact with the cold summits of the Cascade range, and they pass on eastward absolutely without moisture. Hence the valleys of the eastern slope of that range receive but very little rain. Passing down these valleys and across and along the great Columbia, they take up some vapor and bear it onward until they touch the sides of the east- ern ranges, when they yield that up also, and it falls in showers on the plains, or in snow on the hills. Southerly winds, which west of the Cascades are the rain winds, here bring bnt little moisture. Eastern winds, which are not very frequent, are almost a consuming sirocco if long continned. The western and the north-

INDIAN CAMP.

INDIAN HOP PICKERS.

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

western are those that bear the most moisture. The causes are in the topography of the conn- try, especially in the trend of the mountain ranges. These causes are permanent, and their resultant conditions must be as permanent as the causes that produce them.

There is a wider range of the thermometer here than there is west of the Cascade mount- ains. The summers are hotter and the winters are colder. Probably the average seasons will register a variation of nearly 100 degrees in most parts of this region, and extreme seasons will increase that variation. Still the dryness of the atmosphere is such that this great varia- tion is not so obvious to the senses as a much smaller variation where there is more moisture. Then its altitude is such that the actual degree of heat or cold is considerably less than it would be with the same mercury registration on the seacoast. All these considerations enable ns to write down the climate of Eastern Washington as, on the whole, a desirable rather than an undesirable one, and it is one, certainly, that receives the most encomiums from those who have longest tested it,-which is no mean proof of its excellence.

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An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 2

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902 Publication date: 1893 Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company Number of Pages: 1056

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1056