USA > Washington > History of Washington the evergreen state : from early dawn to daylight with portraits and biographies Vol. II > Part 14
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case one of those exceptions which prove the rule, " a good Ind- ian," more difficult to find than an uncut Kohinoor.
KING COUNTY
very properly comes in after our passing allusion to this gallant "son of York ;" and well may it be called King, for even though uncrowned in itself, which it is not, it possesses a fair spouse in the metropolis of Seattle, who, with much show of reason, delights to call herself the " Queen City of the Sound," upon whose beauties and excellencies we propose to dilate far- ther on, confining ourselves at present, despite the temptation to do otherwise, to what journalists call " mere mention." Mildly mountainous on its eastern border, the county of King kisses the sound, with gentler pine-clad hills and sandy beaches on its western boundary. Its charming fresh-water Lake Washington is the pride and pleasure resort of the Seattleites. It is em- phatically one of the great, if not the greatest, counties of the Northwest, well dotted with villages, the anchorage of many ships, the site of large industries, and the possessor of incalcu- lable reserves of coal and lumber. Organized into a county in 1852, it was received into Washington two years later. At first glance it might be supposed, remembering the long sufferance of indirect British rule in Washington, to have been named for her potentates ; in reality, however, one of the sovereign people, no less a personage than that Republican lord, Rufus King, a for- mer Vice-president, was responsible for its origin. Its area is 1944 square miles ; its population at least 70,000 ; its wealth- well, we don't dare to quote its millions, lest we appear to rival the sailor whose mother discredited his story of the flying fish, but implicitly believed his narrative of the recovery of one of Pharaoh's long-buried chariot wheels, which came home with his anchor while cruising in the Red Sea. There is still another reason for our hesitancy in this respect, and we will interpolate the suggestion here that we use the census of 1890 for our data as to area and population throughout, while for taxable wealth we have based our calculations on Evans' figures, all of which, though reliable in their day-some three years ago-must now be received cum grano salis. Indeed, it is simply impossible to make correct figures in a State like Washington, where the ample bounds of to-day prove too limited on the morrow ; where
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cities spring up as if beneath the magician's wand ; and the as- sessor, liberal as he is inclined to be in his valuations, is eter- nally underestimating his totals. Then, too, there is that ever- present Western factor, the "boom," occasionally, like Jonah's gourd. springing up in a night to wither in the sunshine ; but in Washington they seem to be born of more enduring stock, for they come to stay. We cannot better conclude our eulogium upon this county than by quoting from Evans, who dismisses it with the following benediction :
" There are two facts especially worthy of notice in connec- tion with this whole county ; the first and most important of these is the wonderful pluck and cohesiveness of its people. The second is the remarkable facilities for communication which exist here. The means of traffic by railroad and steamboat are not surpassed, if they are equalled, by those of any place in our whole country. And it is by the energy and self-sacrifice of the people of Seattle themselves that these most desirable results have been secured. No powerful outside corporation has taken them under its wing."
Aside from Seattle, the chief towns of this county are Squak (whose English should certainly be the cry of the wild goose), Houghton, Newcastle, and Snoqualmie.
KITSAP COUNTY
comes next to be mentally manipulated in our descriptive mill. Of the name of this county we have already most inadequately expressed our disgust. To void the appellation of Slaughter, selected by the territorial Legislature, and given in honor of that gallant soldier and gentleman shot down by the savage enemies of the settler in the performance of his duty, and then by a popular vote, at a general election of its citizens, to change it to Kitsap, in memory of a drunken Indian chief, the avowed enemy and murderer of the whites, even then in arms against them, was an act both disreputable and extraordinary. This same Kitsap was twice a prisoner, escaping the white man's justice to fall a victim, as is elsewhere described, to his stupidity in play- ing the " medicine man," being butchered by his fellows while in a state of intoxication for his professional "taking off" of their friends. Organized in January of 1857, it is so seamed, cut into, and intruded on by the bays and indentations of the
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sound that it reminds one of the irreverent remark made by some unregenerate soul upon a similar state of things in Wiscon- sin, this profane individual declaring that "when the Lord divided the land from the water He forgot Wisconsin." Kitsap County would seem to have been overlooked also. It has a marine flavor. moreover, on its western boundary from the in- troduction of Hood's Canal. Little bays look in as if to see how the interior was getting on, and indentations of wave-worn meander lines gridiron the eastern shores. Its strong growth of pines, shooting up thick and stately and massing their dark battalions as they extend their serried lines from inland camps to outposts on the strand, attract and reward the lumbermen. The buzz of the busy saw and the stroke of the invading axe seem eternally present, and gradually eat into forest depths which must one day disappear to give place to the sunny lawns, trim hedges, and ornate seaside villas which the luxurious civilization of a century to come will undoubtedly plant upon its hill-slopes. At present Port Gamble, Blakeley, and Madi- son boast colossal mills, whose daily aggregate runs into the hun- dreds of thousands of feet. Seabeck, on the western shore, is also a place of some trade. Port Madison is the county-seat. Its assessment-we refer to the county -- over three years ago ex- ceeded a million ; it has but 392 square miles of territory, but the census of 1890 gives it a population of 4624.
KITTITAS COUNTY.
The origin of this name is too evidently Indian to require an interpreter. It is only surpassed by King County in the rich- ness of its developed coal mines, whose deep veins, seaming the beautiful valley of the Kittitas, promise an unlimited supply of this carbonaceous fuel for centuries to come ; yet this is but a tithe of the many good gifts which stand ready to be profitably utilized, only waiting a unity of capital and labor for their de- velopment. It is rich in minerals ; the mountain region offers timber ; the sweet grasses of the foothills, with the pure waters of their numerous streams, cry to the grazier for herds to taste their richness and offer abundant pasture to the innumerable cattle who should range and browse upon their uplands. Its more level valleys need but irrigation to excellently reward the tool of the husbandman with fruits Brobdingnagian in size, with
Jesse & Cochran
Howard Tilton
Los . Wenng
John Senny.
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cereals and " garden truck," whose selected specimens already take front rank at the industrial expositions. Nestled in the lap of this teeming abundance both of fruition and promise sits its county-seat. Ellensburg, once flame-scorched, but now more than recovered from her disaster, is its legislative centre and lo- cated on the Yakima. This county was erected in November of 1883. Mountainous on the north, with grand Mount Howard lifting its majestic peak above its fellows to crown its extreme upper corner with its neighbor, Mount Stuart, till lower down, Kittitas broadens out to an eastern boundary of sixty miles on the Columbia, having the Yakima to meander through its centre till it joins with the county of that name on its southern base. It has 3344 square miles of area and a population of 8777 souls ; its money valuation reached three millions some time ago, and is now doubtless largely increased. In scenery it offers a natural studio to the artist, uniting the. Alpine beauties of the Swiss mountain-passes with the Arcadian softness of its southern vales. Frowning mountains, snow-capped, and hiding the secrets of the centuries beneath their cloud shadows, rough and rugged with the savagery of uncounted years, look down upon smiling fields gemmed with those flowers which the poet of the Rhine tells us are " stars that in earth's firmament doth shine," and offer- ing to the less æsthetic eye, as we have already hinted, the more seducing charms of sweet grass and good water. Roslyn, Cle- Elum, and Kittitas are numbered among its towns.
KLIKITAT COUNTY,
organized in December of 1859, presents itself next in due order of reception. It is, of course, also a name of Indian origin. Reported fertile and beautiful, it finds a convenient and unmis- takable boundary in the Chehalis, which, occupying, as it does, the extreme south centre of the State, also separates it from Oregon. Skamania draws its perpendicular on the west, while an unbroken straight line divides it on the north from its neigh- bor, Yakima, with an Indian reservation between. Like many of her sisters, Klikitat is strong in her still undeveloped resources -mines waiting the pick and shovel of the prospector, virgin soil praying to be broken, and beautiful building sites on which homes are yet to appear. It is, moreover, one of the great stock counties, while its valleys teem with fertility. Its needs are
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greater facilities for transportation and the development of in- dustries, which capital can alone supply. To counterbalance this, it finds some advantage from a frontage of great extent on the Columbia, which is, moreover, below its worst rapids. Its metropolis, Goldendale, is also its legal centre. Bickleton, Luna, Columbus, Fulda, Lyle, and White Salmon are also notice- able places. In area it reaches 2176 square miles ; its popula- tion numbers 5167 ; its financial strength upward of two millions.
LEWIS COUNTY.
Again almost a perfect parallelogram in form save for a saucy turn up at its right-hand upper corner, as if it could not bear to be cut off from taking in a share of the spurs of thrice glorious Mount Tacoma (Seattle's Rainier), but had broken out of bounds and gone up to meet them. Sierra-barred by the Cascades in their greatest immensity on the west, it falls away more gently, as though repenting of its former sternness, to meet the valley of the Cowlitz and the vicinity of the sound, from which, how- ever, it is separated by the county of Pacific. Lewis, too, is par ex- cellence an old settler, and may if it please put on airs of seniority, as old pioneers are sometimes apt to do, with its younger " ten- der feet"' sisters, for it once belonged to Oregon and dates back to 1845. Its name, a most appropriate one, is derived from that of the ranking officer of that famous expedition of Lewis and Clarke, which did more to open the pathway to settlers and prove the real value of this Far Western land than almost any other agency. It owes much, if not all, to that wonderful triumph of modern engineering, the Northern Pacific Railroad, which pro- vided the means, hitherto lacking, whereby the inmate of its heretofore almost untraversed wilds could find a market and turn its forests to profitable account. Avoiding as it does the great northern gravel belt of the sound county, its soil is of the fertile character of the Columbia and Willamette River regions. It is, however, difficult to clear, for amid all the tangle of heavy upper and even denser undergrowth closely clinging and luxu- riantly growing in so favorable a soil, it is no easy matter to let in the daylight upon the centuries-gathered rich vegetable mould beneath. It pays in the end, nevertheless, and the thriving farmers whose homes dot the valleys of the Chehalis and Upper Cowlitz are beginning to find it out. The wild regions of the
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Cascades, which occupy more than half of this county, lifting their jagged peaks and huge pinnacles to the skies, may well be deemed God's own reservations for the storing of His harvests of the winter snows, that they may give verdure to the valleys through the myriad streams that sluice their river water- ways or break into foam clouds as they precipitate them- selves from the higher cliffs. These are the threads of silver, so beautiful when seen from afar, that delight the eye of the travel- ler and link the brown Sierras, steep and bare, with smiling fields verdant with various grasses and perfumed with the pres- ence of the fragrant pine and rose. The same beneficent Hand has planted iron and coal beneath the foothills-localities which will one day respond bravely to corporate improvement. This county measures 2308 square miles in extent, boasts a popula- tion of 11,499, and collects taxes on an assessed value of over two million of dollars. Its county-seat is Chehalis, a lively and rapidly improving town. Other points of interest are Toledo, the head of navigation and steamboat communication with Port- land ; on the Cowlitz side, Winlock is a place of note, as also are Napavine, Centralia, and Newaukum on the Chehalis side of the county.
LINCOLN COUNTY
brings to mind both sweet and sombre memories of the great and good man whose honored name it bears-the man of tender heart, but, in the pursuit of duty, iron will, who never spared himself, but often forgave others-the Moses of our years of wandering in the wilderness of disunion and fratricidal strife. It was indeed well done to link our dead President's martyr fame with that of the leader who stood eminently " first in the hearts of his coun- trymen." It was well, too, the days of their political conflicts being forever ended, that these two giants, the " little" and the great, who wrestled so oft in the arenas of argument or the dis- putations of oratorical antagonism, should here lie peacefully side by side embalmed in the counties of Douglas and Lincoln.
In the order of its organization, Lincoln County preceded its neighbor by four days, only being admitted in November of 1883. In character it resembles its mate, but though less than half the size of Douglas (which again reverses the precedents of their originals) it is more thickly settled with towns and shows thrice the population of its neighbor, having an aggregate of
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nearly ten thousand. The little city of Sprague, its county-seat, is the leading town between Spokane and Yakima, and bids fair to retain its supremacy. Well provided with railroads, Lincoln offers special inducements to the incomer, and will amply repay an inspection by those who may be " prospecting" for a location among new homes and a strange people. Other places of im- portance are Crab Creek, Harrington, Davenport, and Sedalia. Its property valuation already reaches nearly three millions.
MASON COUNTY,
the next to engage our attention, derives its name from one most truly honored and respected by all who personally knew him or "were acquainted with his private and public history, Governor Mason, whose official acts and words of wise counsel and admoni- tion are inseparably connected with the early struggles of the infant Territory in the dark days of its greatest discouragement. Filling with dignity the ofttimes long-vacated gubernatorial chair, he performed its arduous duties with credit to himself and infinite advantage to his fellow-citizens. When first organ- ized, in March of 1854, it bore the name of Sawamish until Janu- ary of 1846, when the Indian was very properly obliged to give way to honor the pale-face chief. Comparatively small at the best, having less than a thousand square miles of area, it is so cut up and invaded by the ramifications of the sound and the incursion of Hood's Canal that it almost rivals Kitsap in the ex- tent of its territory under water. Heavily wooded with magnifi- cent pine, its industries find remunerative employment in lum- bering. With a population of nearly 3000 and over a million of dollars of taxable wealth, it makes an excellent showing for its size and opportunities. Its " shire town" is Skelton. It has two others, Skohomish, signifying in the Indian tongue "river people" (the termination "mish," often found in Indian words, meaning " people"), and Oakland, which has yet to reach the dimensions of its Californian namesake.
OKANAGON COUNTY.
It is well for our readers that the space required to describe this overgrown region, a State in itself, is not equal to its size, for it is the largest of all, having an area of no less than 7258 square miles, a vast extent of territory, yet almost uninhabited,
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its total population footing up an aggregate of only 1487 souls- less than one quarter of a man to a mile. Fancy loves to anchor hope most strongly upon the mysterious and unknown. If this be true of Okanagon it must be a perfect treasure-house of ex- pectation, with no limit to pleasant possibilities. Its moun tains, rude and rugged in the extreme, may prove the rock- ribbed roofs to stores of hidden gold ; coal may crop out of its foothills and iron furnish raw material for other smiths than the ghostly, bow-legged Vulcans of its Titanic steeps. It costs no more to believe this than to imagine them as inhospitable as their frowning brows would suggest.
It was the last created of the counties of Washington, being erected in 1888, and was borrowed from its almost equally over- grown neighbor, Stevens, whose immense limits could well afford to lose so unprofitable a portion. Their carving will probably not stop here, for as settlers flow in convenience will probably suggest further divisions in both. Okanagon, however, is not all moun- tain, having a large fertile tract well adapted to agriculture in the vicinity of the Wenachee River. The map shows it well watered with many creeks and greater river-courses, all of which finally go to swell the volume of the Columbia, though some reach it by way of the Wenachee, its tributary. It has, too, a magnificent lake-Chelan-which is the largest body of fresh water in the State, being forty miles in length, with a width at the broadest of over five miles. This great sheet of water, fed from the Cascades, finds its outlet in the Columbia through Downing's Rapids. The memory of Bonaparte is also revived in a mountain which bears his name, probably given by some old soldier of the empire whose broken fortunes made him a wanderer in these inhospitable wilds. Ruby City is Okanagon's law centre-a gem of a place we doubt not from the name ; but then " all is not gold that glitters."
PACIFIC COUNTY
wafts us, as if seated on the fabled carpet of the Arabian magi- cian, from the lakes and mountains of Washington's far north- eastern boundaries to the shores where the Pacific thunders on the strand, christening its namesake with eternal drenchings of its billows. This, too, is an old Oregonian county, a creation of February, 1851. It has a bay of which, considering the shrewd-
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ness of the natives, its people at first sight would seem to be un- duly proud. Shoalwater Bay is not an attractive name-at least to the mariner-but like every other locality in Washington, Shoalwater Bay has its hidden merits, which when brought to light improve on closer acquaintance. It is indeed well that it is no deeper, for is it not the home of that succulent and widely appreciated bivalve, the oyster, and do not its inhabitants find compensation in the raking and reaping of these submarine fields which more fertile inland pastures might fail to supply ? To all of which we answer, " They do indeed." Then, too, there are the clams-such clams as Rockaway and Cohasset never even dreamed of-one of which would almost fill a bucket, of which the " old settler" sings :
" No longer a slave to ambition, I langh at the world and its shams ; Then envy my happy condition, Surrounded by acres of clams."
Coming back to grander roll, with which the historic tide should ever flow to meet its termination, we will endeavor to do Shoalwater justice in soberer prose as we find it described in the " Pacific Northwest." It says :
" Shoalwater Bay, another arm of the Pacific Ocean reaching into Pacific County, is navigable for a lighter draft of vessels. Here the lumber trade is large again and permanently estab- lished. The fishing industry, too, is flourishing, and the oyster and the clam beds are the finest on the coast, and a good export business is done and steadily increasing in this line. The sur- rounding country is generally heavily timbered ; but there are some rich river bottoms, and agriculture there is lucrative and offers good opportunities. Here, on the southwestern corner of Washington, Shoalwater Bay, the Pacific Ocean, and Baker's Bay, an estuary of the Columbia River at its mouth, form a long peninsula, called by the Indians 'Tee-choots.' The ex- treme southern point of this is Cape Disappointment (strange, is it not, that our western Washington shore should begin in Disappointment and end in Flattery ? Perhaps a moral might be deduced from reversing their order, for who does not know that flattery often ends in disappointment ?) The lofty cliffs surmounted by towering firs present a scene of picturesque grandeur. North of the cape the shore slopes to a charming
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sandy beach, back of which is located on the upland, Sea View, a most delightful summer resort. Thousands dwell or visit here in summer. The famous large crabs for which the coast is cele- brated are taken here in any quantity." Oysters, good society, and clams-what more could Newport, Long Branch, or Coney Island itself give to life's wayfarer ?
Oysterville, most unromantic, but in this case appropriate name, is the county-town, and Knapton, Ilwaco, and Bay Cen- tre are also worthy to be named. It has an area of 896 square miles with a population of 4358.
PIERCE COUNTY.
Good neighbor, yet chronic rival of King, at least where Sis- ter Pierce claims that Seattle is in any respect superior to her own Tacoma, for the " Queen City" and she of the "City of Des- tiny," like jealous beauties, are eternally pulling caps for pre- eminence. It is a large and possibly for any dweller in that region of Puget Sound a dangerous subject to treat one-sidedly. There is, by the way, one universal touchstone through which the curious inquirer can instantly discover from which of these an- tagonistic locations a stranger, if to the manor born, hails. If from Seattle, he calls the great snow mountain whose twin bosoms, cold with the snows of centuries, look down upon them both, " Mount Rainier ;" while he of the "City of Destiny" would die the death sooner than recognize it by any other name than " Mount Tacoma." Indeed, we have sometimes wondered if its good people had not come to believe that this mother of rivulets was named after their own city, now growing venerable in the beginning of its second decade of existence. As may well be imagined, this slight difference of opinion leads to many a wordy war, and as to the merits of which the author, being a peace lover, does not propose to express an opinion-no, not even in type.
" Poor Pierce," as he used to be called in the political con- troversies of his day, sometimes regretfully or, yet again, in deri- sion, as the speaker happened to accord or disagree with the party of the President-and then, too, the alliteration was a tempting one-is responsible for the name of this wealthy and flourishing county of the State of Washington. Like some of its neighbors, it stretches from the rocky barriers of the Cascades to the waters
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of the sound, growing topographically more amiable, and with added sweetness fairer favored as it descends, showing that decadence in circumstance sometimes brings out better qualities. It was also one of Washington's original " old settlers," being transferred from Oregon, where it was organized in 1852, to Washington in 1854. It may claim agricultural excellence in the fertile valleys of the Puyallup, White, and Stuck River regions. We have ourselves seen vegetables and fruit grown in these localities of so unusual a size that one would hardly dare to describe them truthfully among the " doubting Thomases" of the East, lest he should be set down as a near relation of the late Mr. and Mrs. Ananias. It is the land of hops, of which the Indian brave and his squaw -- particularly the squaw-are the industrious and well-paid pickers. In this connection it is worth recording as a curious fact that one of the first invest- ments which the brave in question makes with the money so earned is in the purchase of a trunk, though for what particular reason the author has never been able to discover, as an Indian's belongings, like the goods of a Parisian shop, are generally all on view. It is a sight worth pausing to contemplate on the streets of Tacoma or Seattle to watch the Indian with his family- squaw, papoose, and minor bare-footed responsibilities-as they plod the streets " doing their trading" on their return from the hop-picking .. The buck loads the squaw with their purchases till she resembles an overweighted express wagon rather than a female. She is simply extinguished with his selections, while he, in all the dignity of forest manhood, leads the little proces- sion, gallantly carrying a blanket if there is no place left to hang it on the submissive concentration of ugliness who plods patient- ly in his rear. But to return to the hops of Pierce County. Their exportation is large and constantly increasing ; the qual- ity is so fine they command the best prices and go beyond the seas to give zest to the mirth of the German " beer garden" and the. song which finds its stimulus in the Englishman's " 'alf and 'alf."
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