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Title: Of Man, Time, and a River: The Skagit River, How Should It Be Used?
Date: 1977
Digital Collection: Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Occasional Papers
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Center for Pacific Northwest Studies
Local Identifier: cpnws_ops_010
Text preview (might not show all results): OF MAN, TIME, AND A RIVER: THE SKAGIT RIVER, HOW SHOULD IT BE USED? Edited By Roland L. De Lorme Occasional Paper # 1 O Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington State College 1977 OF MA
Show moreOF MAN, TIME, AND A RIVER: THE SKAGIT RIVER, HOW SHOULD IT BE USED? Edited By Roland L. De Lorme Occasional Paper # 1 O Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington State College 1977 OF MAN, TIME, AND A RIVER: THE SKAGIT RIVER, HOW SHOULD IT BE USED? Proceedings of a series of meetings held in the Skagit River Valley, September - October 1976 edited by Roland L. De Lorme Occasional Paper #10 Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Western Washington State College 1977 © Copyright Center for Pacific Northwest Studies Printed at Western Washington State College, Bellingham, WA May 1977 98225 / 1- 5 L., L.., I BAKER MATIOl'IAL , l., . '-·-' ,,,.,,.. ......, PARK / L... .• ,-·-, .--·-·-·- ,' / ' -- l.. . ..i r-·-·-·J CASCADES MATIOMAL ( - , MT MORT"H CASCADES NORTH PARK MAT!OMAL I i_ .•. - ·- r·J .. !"'·--··· _J r·-·1..._ ..~ I I I MT L1 ! L ._ c."t>E s"' C. p.. . ..J . BAKER -·--- ' I I MATIOMAL r -1 _j I ~ • I ~·~ . ,...- .., ! L.- --· __. •·.. ..... i.., ER ,.·-···- ·. ....... ' -.... \ ·.· GLACIER ''' ' I !I . L. i. I IV ' ., L.._j !l i s (J 1 PEAK WILDERNESS ' " ~"!._ r r LE ··--. .. I L.L_ . _ . _ , ' ·-.~ - - - · "·. . . . . _:.. ' '··-···-..... , . ,-·-· --iDarrlnglon r·-·_j .... '' nI i \_ ~ FOR EST I _.J ~ 1, rJ I. ·~ ,.... -- -·-:-· .J. ,--_, -., I ;' i. - __, .. '' '---, ( ' . -. ,, ............... . TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction - Roland L. De Lorme . . . vii The Upper Skagit Indians and the Skagit River June M. Collins . . . . . . . . . 1 Personal Perspectives on Indian History in the Skagit River Valley--! - Lawrence Boome . . . . . . . . 6 Personal Perspectives on Indian History in the Skagit River Valley--II - Raymond Charles 8 Indian Freighting on the River - Lawrence Joe 10 Early Days on the River - Charles Dwelley ll The Historical Role of the Army Corps of Engineers on the Skagit River - Barbara Werelius 16 Early Diking and Flood Control - Roland L. De Lorme . 18 Agricultural Labor in the Skagit Valley: A Personal Perspective - Trina Ozuna . . . . . 22 Effects of Flooding on the Farms and Farm Life Frank Easter . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Historical Perspectives on the History of the Upper Skagit Valley - Glee Davis . 25 Flood Control and Its Relation to the River as an Energy Source - Jack Wylie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Resources for the History of the River's Hydroelectric Development - Liisa Fagerlund . . . . . 28 Management of the Skagit Commercial and Sport Fisheries Mark Schuller . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Fishing in the Region--The Need for Cooperation Landy James . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Skagit Area Commercial Fishery--A Personal Perspective Dave Milholland ... . .. . 40 Changes in Sport Fishing on the River - Howard Miller 43 Boating on the River - Phyllis Bultmann 46 Bird Watching in the Valley - Tracy Tivel 50 Commercial Recreation Development on the River--! George Theodoratus . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Commercial Recreation Development on the River--II David Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 An Historical Overview of Logging in the Skagit Valley Margaret Willis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 The Development of Land Transportation in the Skagit Valley: A Brief Overview - Daniel E. Turbeville 62 Appendix - List of Meetings . . . . . . . . . 68 INTRODUCTION Winding south and west from its Canadian sources and gaining momentum and size as it goes, until it discharges over twelve million acre-feet of water into Puget Sound, the Skagit River is among the largest and most important rivers on the Pacific Slope . The river and its valley have al ways been a favored habitat for an abundance of fish and game, as well as wild berries and vegetables--a fact that apparently accounts for the first human settlements there between eleven and twelve thousand years ago. The river was a provider in other significant ways . Social organization was shaped by the seasonal nature of fish and plant supplies, by the floods that sometimes ravaged the valley, destroying any villages or boats too close to the river's banks, and by the river's obvious utility as a means for transportation and communication. Mythology and religious beliefs bore the imprint of the Skagit's central role in the lives of those first residents . For millenia, those early settles shared the Skagit's bounty, working hard but obtaining ample rewards, living in what one present-day Skagit Indian suggests must have been a near-utopia. That utopia was shattered soon after the initial European exploration of the area. Lieutenant Whidbey, exploring under the command of Captain George Vancouver in 1792, described the western lowlands of the Skagit Valley as "presenting a delightful prospect." As paraphrased by Vancouver, Whidbey reported that "nature had here provided the wellstocked park, and wanted only the assistance of art to constitute that desirable assemblage of surface, which is so much sought in other countries, and only to be acquired by an immoderate expense in manual labor." The Vancouver Expedition found evidence that the Indians of.the Skagit Valley already had commenced trade with white ship-masters. That trade continued through the early half of the nineteenth century. United States citizens interested in the agricultural possibilities of the area entered the valley in the 1860's. Their usually crude, individual attempts to control the river by constructing dikes were furthered, in the 1870's, by the diking and reclamation projects of a private company. County government assumed responsibility for maintaining and extending these early efforts soon thereafter, and state and federal assistance, long-sought, was obtained by the closing years of the nineteenth century. Since then, a complicated system of reclamation, diking, and damming has been developed, involving private and public groups, often with conflicting aims and always with imperfect results. Nonetheless, barely a century after organized farming had begun, the market value of the valley's agricultural production could be estimated at over twenty-six million dollars, with over 30,000 acres set aside for growing vegetables alone. The river had marked agriculture, business activities, and governmental structures and priorities as indelibly as it had the earlier Indian culture. It also left an imprint on white settlement patterns, for the river remained a chief means of communication and transportation. Towns were platted along the river, and steamboats and, later, railroads carried goods and people up and down the Valley . The white settlers, too, had folk tales derived from their dependence upon, and struggle with, the river. Descriptions of the removal of two ancient log jams, near presentday Mount Vernon, which freed the upper river for navigation, have taken on the drama of heroic legend . Contemporary story-tellers spin yarns vii depicting the river's unpredictable power and the human struggle to tame it: one steamboat captain, it is said, would only brave the river armed with a keg of whiskey; when the keg was half-empty, he would turn the vessel about and return to Seattle. As the Indians before them, the white settlers were awed by the river's beauty. The artistic expression of both cultures continues to reflect the Valley's significance as a place both inspiring and protecting such expression. The Skagit River Valley's beauty, particularly the upper reaches of the Valley, where few towns and industrial sites have trespassed on the wilderness, evidently always has lured those seeking recreational opportunities. A life-long resident and National Park Service employee, Marvin (Jim) Harris, recalls that, as children, he and many others, Indian and white, used the river bank as a playground. Harris also remembers the first "tourist"--a retired dentist who spent every summer in a riverside shanty , perched on a chair in the shade, enjoying the river and its lush surroundings. As late as 1938, the upper Skagit Valley had no commercial tourist facilities. Dr. Keith Murray, of Bellingham, visited the Marblemount area with his wife that year, staying in a private home, fishing ("without a license, I might observe!" Murray has noted) and hiking. "There were absolutely no accomodations, " according to Murray, "there was no boating of consequence . . . [and] the highway . . . went only about twelve miles past Marblemount. Commercial recreation was really unknown." Today, commercial developments compete with public campgrounds and parks maintained by local, state, and federal agencies, canoers and sports fishermen brave the river's hazardous waters, and at least one entrepreneur offers float trips on the Skagit. Valley opinion is divided over the issue of giving "Wild and Scenic River" status to the Skagit, a suggestion recently endorsed by President Carter. Besides serving thousands of people in search of recreation, the Skagit River has become a major supplier of hydroelectric energy. Initial attempts by private investors to develop the river's hydroelectric potential failed, but by 1919, under the determined leadership of J . D. Ross, Seattle City Light had launched an ambitious effort to harness the river for Seattle's electrical needs. Dams and generatingplants--Newhalem, Copper Creek , Ross, and Diablo--were constructed despite immense natural obstacles and financial difficulties. Ross Dam, with a generating capacity of 360,000 kilowatts, also provides some flood control protection. Yet the damming of the river has profoundly disturbed some who see such projects as dangerous to fish and game and to the natural environment. Puget Sound Power and Light's plans to construct a nuclear electrical generating complex in the Valley, near Sedro Woolley, and the invasion of tourism triggered by completion of the North Cascades cross - state highway have added to public concern about the future of the area. Just as the river has had a major influence upon the lives of the people of the Skagit Valley, then, it is obvious that the action of individuals and private and public groups can have a crucial effect on the life -giving river. In the fall of 1976, a series of eight public meetings were held to examine the many interrelationships between the Skagit River and the people of its Valley. The meetings were planned and sponsored by the Department of History of Western Washington State College, cosponsored by the Skagit County Historical Society and the Society's museum, and by Skagit Valley College. The project was funded, in part, by a grant from viii the Washington Commission for the Humanities, an agency of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Held in communities in the valley, each meeting included panel discussions and audience participation focusing upon aspects of the interrelationships of the river and the people-navigation, farming, energy resources, recreation--and the public policy questions these matters posed . The proceedings were tape-recorded and transcribed, and this occasional paper consists of selections from the public meetings. The resulting collection is a true reflection of the nature of those sessions: it is a rich harvest of expert interpretations, suggestions, opinions, and personal reminiscences, including formal papers read by professional scholars and comparatively less structured but nonetheless useful presentations by persons whose own lives are intertwined with the great river whose power and mysteries they seek to address. Acknowledgements of help in the organization of the project and preparation of this collection are due to many individuals, only a few of whom can be mentioned here. Elva Mary Giard, the Director of the Skagit County Historical Museum, freely offered ideas, museum collections and facilities, and her own untiring energy to the project. Museum Curator, Eunice Darvill, located suitable meeting places for the eight sessions and helped construct and set up, at each location, the display panels depicting the conference themes. Stanley Smith, President of the Skagit County Historical Society, made many excellent suggestions concerning possible topics and available local resource persons. William Weaver, National Park Services Administrator and Chairman of the Historical Society's Oral History Committee, also gave valuable help in finding panel participants and prepared a slide/oral history presentation that many considered an outstanding outcome of the project. Local historian Margaret Willis, Patrick McLatchy, Glen Turner, and Sidney Eaton of Skagit Valley College, Dr . June Collins, Professor of Anthropology, New York State University College at Buffalo, and Professors James Hitchman, Merrill Lewis, and Keith Murray, and Mr. Daniel Turbeville of Western Washington State College all made especially valuable contributions to the public meetings. Sea Magazine columnist Phyllis Bultmann gave a thorough, honest description of the possibilities for recreational boating on the river. President Norwood M. Cole of Skagit Valley College gave valued advice in the early stages of the project. Christopher Goldsmith of the Public Information Office of Western Sashington State College, Catherine Abbee, Skagit Valley College's Public Information Officer, Dick Fallis, publisher of the Puget Sound Mail, Editor Noel Johnson of the Skagit Valley Herald, and columnist George Boynton of the Bellingham Herald helped greatly to give the project the needed public attention . Western's Bureau of Faculty Research provided essential counsel and clerical support; Director Jane Clark, Bill Clement, and Geri Walker, who helped at the registration table at every meeting and with the transcription of the recordings, all deserve thanks . Pamela Cocker, History Department receptionist, uncomplainingly and expertly typed much of the taped proceedings . In most such projects, there is one person whose energies, expertise, and commitment become indispensable. This project's success is traceable in large measure to the History Departments admini strative secretary, Esther Harris, who helped prepare the initial grant proposal, accompanied the director to every meeting, carrying sound equipment and display panels, confirmed speakers, prepared program flyers, kept a watchful eye on the project budget, and reminded the director of ix unfinished tasks. Finally, the project itself succeeded only because of the enthusiastic support and participation of the people of the Skagit River Valley. Roland L. De Lorme Project Director x THE UPPER SKAGIT INDIANS AND THE SKAGIT RIVER Dr. June McCormick Collins Professor of Anthropology State University of New York College at Buffalo Because of my long , friendly association with the Upper Skagit Indians, I am very pleased to discuss their way of life in relation to the Skagit River. I will begin wi t h t he ceremonial greeting used in the past and sometimes still in addressing a gathering of Upper Skagit Indians, "Olee swawaylus da ayshed . " This means roughly in translation, "Oh, my noble, distinguished relatives." At a meeting the Indian people assumed that everyone present was a relative. Accordingly this was a respectful, courteous form of speech. Before going on to discuss Upper Skagit culture, I will explain briefly about my sources of knowledge. I attended high school in Mount Vernon and also Skagit Valley College in the days when it was Mount Vernon Junior College . Having lived in the Skagit Valley for some years, I am familiar with the countryside . Beginning in 1942, I have had the good fortune through the many years since to become acquainted with the Upper Skagit Indians and to be a serious student of their way of life. I will add that I have benefitted in my personal life from their wisdom and advice as well as in my studies . The late Reverend William Martin, Bishop of the Indian Shaker Church, and his wife, Agnes Martin, treated me as their own daughter and always made me feel at home . I often stayed with them and also with Gertrude and Oscar Washington, Jessie and Harry Moses, and Jessie and Jackson Harvey . I learned a great deal from all these people as well as from Mary Bobb, Charles Boome, Regina Boome , Alice Campbell, Emily Campbell, Joe Campbell, John Campbell, Emma Conrad, Alice Cuthbert, Pete Cuthbert, John Enich , Mike Fevem , John Fornsby, Jimmie Jones, William Moses, John Price, Agnes Williams, Lucy Williams , and Thomas Williams. Gertrude Martin Washington was my closest friend. In late years I have enjoyed the hospitality and help of June and Lawrence Boome, Marge Emmons, and Mildred Griffin. I listened carefully to what all these people told me, wrote down what they said, and have published the results in a book, The Valley of the Spirits (Collins : 1974) and several articles (Collins : 1949 , 1950a , 1950b, 1952, 1966) . Drawing on this background I will consider three subjects here: first, the economy of the Upper Skagit Indians; second, their social life; and third , their religion and mythology . The Indians earned their living primarily by fishing, second by hunting, and third by gathering different kinds of vegetable foods , including roots, berries, and green shoots . Their mainstay of life was the salmon with which nature has generously endowed this area in the annual fish runs . It was surely the existence of the Skagit River with its salmon which attracted the first human residents who were Indians . We don't know exactly when this happened . Very little archaeology has been done in the Skagit Valley . Some excavations have been made in the delta of the river near LaConner (Mattson: 1971) and on a tributary of the neighboring Stillaguamish (Butler : 1961). From what little we do know, it seems very likely that Indians were in the region about 11 , 000 1 to 12,000 years ago and have been living here continuously since that time. In recent times we know that they fished for salmon and steelhead, hunted deer, elk, and bear as well as some other animals, cultivated certain roots, including the wild carrot and tiger lily, and ate many different kinds of berries . They dried all of these foods for winter use. Much of their thinking and concerns were focused on the river and the bounty that it gave and still provides. Their villages were situated along the river at strategic points where the fish runs were particularly good at a certain time of the year. In order to get food and raw materials they had to move about somewhat during the year. They were not completely nomadic; they did have permanent winter houses of wood, made of planks which they split with wedges from cedar trees. After they cut down trees, they used the river to float them to their building sites. Most of our fellow Americans, when they hear of American Indians, think only of Plains Indians because of television, movies, and novels. People are often surprised to learn that there were actually many Indians, like the Upper Skagit, who led a quite different way of life. Each winter the Upper Skagit returned to the same villages. During the summer and fall, they travelled to different places in search of food. They went to visit relatives in several locations, one family, for example, going to Nookachamps Creek when the silver salmon began to run there in June, to the village on Sauk Prairie when roots became ripe in August, and to the mountains when huckleberries were ready for picking. Some of the Upper Skagit went to salt water in the summer to camp with relatives, dig clams, and get salt water fish and hunt sea mammals like porpoise. They might also stay at the great prairie on Whidbey Island where roots grew. Their main means of transportation was the canoe. Land travel was extremely difficult because of the dense vegetation . There were a few trails but none along the length of the river itself. Several of the trails that did exist were used for portage. One of these extended from the Skagit River near the present town of Sedro Woolley to the Samish River. This provided a shorter and easier route to salt water than the alternative, pulling a canoe around the two-mile log jam and proceeding on down the Skagit River. They also made portage from the Sauk River to the Stillaguamish . The canoe which they used almost exclusively on the river was the famous shovel nose, being so constructed that one could take it in to very shallow places . The river was not easy to navigate in the old days. Many of my Upper Skagit friends have told me of incidents when their canoes overturned and they had to swim to shore. There was the one log jam already mentioned and a shorter one also farther up the river. There were many snags, riffles, whirlpools, and other dangerous places in the river. These did present some hazards to travel but the water was much easier than any form of land travel. The Upper Skagit were able to trade by using the river. Through local specialization of economic activities , they had developed products to trade. Far up the river, the people emphasized hunting. They dried venison. If they were going to visit relatives on the salt water, they might take dried meat to them and possibly bring back dried clams in return. Men living in vi llages near the mountains specialized in hunting mountain goats. These were highly valued for their wool which women spun into yarn and, together with dog hair, wove i nto blankets and cloaks. In downriver villages near the marshes, women made mats of cattails. 2 Probably the most famous articles made by women were the coiled baskets. As I wrote in my book, The Valley of the Spirits (Collins: 1974, 4), there may be people somewhere iri the world who made more beautiful baskets than the Upper Skagit women did. If this is so, I have not seen them in the great museums of the world where there are large basketry collections from many countries. Some of the coiled baskets made for cooking were waterproof. Women put water in them and cooked by using heated rocks. They stirred their rocks with tongs to keep them from burning the sides and the bottoms of the baskets. Indian women have told me that by putting three heated rocks in a basket they could bring their water to a boil; it did depend upon what they were cooking, how large a basket they had, and how much stew they were making. It was usually the woman's husband who obtained the cedar roots from which she constructed these baskets. The most likely places to find these were along the river banks where the water had washed away soil from the trunk of the tree, exposing the roots. In addition to the coiled baskets, Upper Skagit women also made twilled and twined ones and still others by weaving them in a checkerboard design. Baskets then were one of the special products of the Upper Skagit which they exchanged for other items. The river influenced the social life of Indians in the past as it does the present-day population of the valley. (The highway which has been substituted for the river in transportation lies along the river bed.) The direction of the river flow from west to east has served to unite and to encourage the growth of social bonds among the people who live in the valley. Indians tended to see more of their neighbors in nearby communities strung out along the river than they did of relatives living on other drainage systems. The structure of the whole western slope of the Cascades with the river valleys separated by the ridges rising to the high mountains has meant that people within each valley are likely to have closer ties with one another than they are with those in the neighboring valleys. This does not mean that the Indian peoples never saw persons outside their valley but that their residence did give them special bonds which are reflected in the way of life. For example, in a study which I made of marriages among the Upper Skagit Indians over a period of about 100 years, two-thirds of these were between persons living in the Skagit Valley. Other examples are provided by the many occasions when the hosts gave presents to guests. The Upper Skagit, lacking written records, validated many events by inviting guests to a feast and asking them to serve as witnesses. Such ceremonies could be held for giving a name, announcing that a girl had reached puberty, celebrating a wedding, and honoring the dead. The most elaborate and expensive of these are called potlatches. The sponsors of such cermonies gained social prestige. Most of the guests invited to the majority of these cermonies were from other villages on the Skagit River. Only the largest ones drew heavily from the distant saltwater villages and neighboring river valleys. The sponsors had to send messengers whom he paid to invite honored guests in such affairs. Because of the time and expense involved, many families held small gatherings for these events, inviting mostly people from nearby villages. The third point of riverine influence concerns the religious life. Their belief in spiritual beings that populate the world was very important to the Upper Skagit. Like many other Indian people they snid that all good in life--health, longevity, strength, and special abilities and 3 talents--doe not come from man but from spirits. Accordingly they wanted each person to acquire the help of one or more such beings. To this end they encouraged young people to fast in isolation in1he woods. If the young person were successful in this venture, he would have a dream or vision in which a spiritual being would appear to him and confer a power upon him. Later in life this power would assist him in some particular way. Depending upon what the spirit might be, as an adult he sponsored a ceremony to which he invited other people. During this event, he sang the song of the spirit and performed its dance. John Fornsby, who lived as a child in the village located near the present town of Sedro Woolley, described the series of these ceremonies held by his relatives (Collins: 1949, 298 ff). Different persons, each in turn, sponsored them. Each event was attended by several canoe loads of people from other Upper Skagit villages in the valley. Much of the winter was spent in participating in one or another of these ceremonies. Some of the spiritual beings were associated directly with parts of the river. For example, one famous spirit lived in a deep place within the river where there is a kind of whirlpool near Concrete. A man or woman who obtained this spirit became wealthy. Another spirit, a woman, was in the form of a rock in the river above Marblemount. People starting out to fish asked her permission as they passed her. Numerous incidents involving the supernatural were linked to the river. One shaman or religious leader from Hamilton was told by his spirit to look for shells in the river. Because no shellfish lived there, he doubted his spirit. He had been ill and continued so until shells were discovered in the river. He then became convinced of the validity of his spirit and sponsored a ceremony of the appropriate kind. I should point out here that most of the spiritual beings were associated with the countryside and nature, including many species of animals, certain elements, and parts of the terrain such as mountains in addition to the river. Mythology consists of the tales of the early period before mankinq, animals, and the world in general assumed its present form. Upper Skagit myths included some concerned specifically with the river. One such had the mythical being named "Raven," a partly human, partly birdlike entity, a character found in many Northwest Coast Indian myths. The story is that the Skagit River had two directions of flow, one downstream and the other upstream. People then could paddle downriver and then go back up without fighting the current. Raven insisted that the water run only downstream and so the course of the river became what it is today. Since that time people have had to work hard to pull their canoes upriver. Raven in these myths has the role of what anthropologists call a "TricksterTransformer," that is, a being who altered the world to become what it is today. He is called a "trickster" because in making these changes he often deceived other myth figures and human beings. The Upper Skagit also had another type of Transformer, a "culture hero," who is noble rather than tricky and selfish. Among the Upper Skagit this mythological being, called Dukweebul, also altered animals and people. His name means "The Changer." Unlike Raven, he was seen as upright and benevolent, although he did punish people who did wrong. There are stories of his transforming two persons to become large boulders in the Skagit River. Folklore, compared to mythology, deals with recent times and with persons still alive and with individuals known to be ancestral to them. 4 Even more than mythology, the Upper Skagit folklore reflects the river and its immediate environment. For example, a spirit called Teeyolbahad was said to live in a house on the bottom of the river near Concrete. A blind man who had been abandoned by his wife lived alone with his daughter. The two were poor and had trouble getting enough food. The father dived into the river, seeking supernatural help. The spirit took pity on him, restored his sight, and made him wealthy . After his change in fortune, the father refused to take his wife back. She wept so much that her tears made permanent wrinkles or grooves in her face. In conclusion, I have stressed the close interrelationship between the traditional Upper Skagit Indian culture and nature, giving emphasis to the Skagit River as part of nature. The River influenced the location of villages, provided fish, the staple of diet, afforded the main means of travel and so of trade, and had considerable effect on the social and religious life, including mythology and folklore. REFERENCES Collins, June McCormick 1949 "John Fornsby: The Personal Document of a Coast Salish Indian," pp. 287-341 in Marian W. Smith (ed.), Indians of the Urban Northwest. New York: Columbia University Press. 1950a "Growth of Class Distinctions and Poli ti cal Authority among the Skagit Indians during the Contact Period," American Anthropologist, 52 (no. 3): 331-42. 1950b "The Indian Shaker Church: A Study of Continuity and Change in Religion," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 6 (no. 4): 399-411. 1952 "The Mythological Basis for Attitudes toward Animals among Salishspeaking Indians," Journal of American Folklore, 65 (no. 258): 353-60. 1966 "Naming, Continuity, and Social Inheritance among the Coast Salish of Western Washington, " Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, 51: 425-36. 1974 The Valley of the Spirits: The Upper Skagit Indians of Western Washington. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 5 PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES ON INDIAN HISTORY IN THE SKAGIT RIVER VALLEY--! Lawrence Boome Member, Upper Skagit Indian Tribe I want to thank my good and dear friend, June Collines, who has been close to us Indians on the Skagit for many a year. She has been very helpful towards our small tribe of Indians in various ways. I have read articles on the subject of the Indians and the way the Indians lived here before the coming of the Europeans. I think in the beginning we had a utopia in this valley. In early history our Skagit nation consisted of ten extended villages along the river, from Mount Vernon to Newhalem . This has been all common knowledge to me ever since I was a child. I grew up with my grandfather, Skagit Boome, on the river here. He was well over a hundred years old in 1927 when he died and according to the things that he told me, was a grown man when the treaties were concluded at Point Elliot . So a lot of the knowledge that I have acquired has been from my grandfather and my father, but my good friend June has written a book on the people up here; she has documented all the areas along the river where the Indians had their various villages. The first village on the delta of the river was the Nookachamps, we called it "deqw~C'ab?s." The Nookachamps had two houses up Nookachamps River . One they called "skikwigwilc" and the other "deqw;::/cab?s." Of course, they had a village near Mount Vernon and another village near the cemetary and up the river farther. Today's Mount Vernon was not one of the villages, but on up the river farther when you get around the area of Sedro Woolley, there is what they call "Big Rocks." People there had a village right at the confluence of Hansen Creek . The Indians then utilized all the sub-drainage systems of the Skagit River for their means of livelihood and that was one of the places there, on Hansen Creek, where the Steelhead Club is now in Sedro Woolley. The trail across to the head of the Samish, across from where Sterling is now, cut across into Thomas Creek. Then, farther up the river, was the village of "~uba?abs," which means, "people who climb the bank." I don't know what the significance of that is, but that was the name! That village was situated just about where Johns Creek is now. There was a lot of salmon in those little creeks. They had all their houses right there because salmon was readily available to them. Above Lyman was another extension close to where Cumberland Creek used to come out. That creek extended close to a mile down the river and ran up through the woods, but then, in later years when they built the highway there, they bulldozed out the creek from where the bridge crosses it now and they straightened it out and eliminated that long stretch of creek. But that was one of the prime fishing places of the Upper Skagit. Now, from there you run up into the biggest band of the Upper Skagit, situated approximately where the Cape Horn development is now. Then the next group up from there was located just before Rockport. From there was "sk'axaxucid," that's just around the neighborhood of Rockport. Below Marblemount was the village of "b8sq'{xWixw," that means, "the up-river people." In that area they had several different homes built at junctions of all the strange runnings of the Skagit River. Then from there on you go up to the portage. 6 They had houses in the portage that extended clear up to Newhalem, "dawaylib," which was the word for "thread;" they didn't mean , "thread an Indian!" Perhaps they did lots of weaving there because that was the main goat hunting area of the Upper Skagit people. The goats came right down to the river there . And then we had the band of the Sauk, as we call it today, and that's up the Sauk River . They used that area for hunting and that was also the natural garden for the Upper Skagits, where they gathered roots and their wapatoes . Since that time now we have become a federally recognized tribe under the Organization Act. The Upper Skagit tribe of Indians are a feder ally recognized band of Indians, meaning that the federal government r ecognizes them as an organized group of Indians. We operate under a constitution and by-laws approved by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. We have a chairman, we have business managers, we have secretaries and clerks, and I guess just about everything one needs to get by with in these times. I just wish we were back in the old days, so we didn't have to pay taxes and have so many bills to pay! 7 PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES ON INDIA."N' HISTOP.Y IN 'T'HE SKAGIT RIVER VALLEY--II Raymond Charles, Senator, Swinomish Tribal Conununity I went to an Indian school in Salem, Oregon. Every year they would their hirthday. They'd have a whole day of comnetition and various things, athletics, contests between the grades, the high school, from freshman to senior, oratory that concerned the school and each class would select somebody to make up a speech or make up a poem. They had boxing, basketball games, various things in competition that they could fit in a day at their celebration. My room-mate wrote an elaborate speech in regard to the school. He had written down about three or four pages, one of the longest, so he had it typed out, gave it to me, and was practicing his sneech day after day in the evening. As I prompted him, I learned the whole speech. About three or four in the afternoon of the celebration I was told that one of the orators was stricken and was in the hospital. He asked me if I could pinch hit to save the thing. On the spur of the moment, I decided I'd take it. So the time came for the oratorial speeches. I got up and I gave my room-mate's speech! When it was my room-mate's turn, he didn't know what to do. Tonight, much of my subject was spoken of by Lawrence Boome. However, I'll add some things, though it's practically on the same lines. I learned a lot of this in talking with my dad, my Uncle Charlie Boome (that's Lawrence's father), whom I remember in 1922 or 23 when I was about eight or nine years old, and the late Jimmy Jones, down in Coupeville, who my dad knew well. By the way, my dad is from the SaukSuiattle hand at Lyman, grandmother is from Sakwbixw, which is now combined with the Sauk--Suiattle. We lived up there until we were moved out. We were supposed to have that claim back, and BIA was supposed to take it up for us; they never did, and we never got it. We moved out when I was about seven years old. I went to the Indian School. Working in different industries, I spent most of my time in the logging industry. The Indian loggers were tops in their field. After going to school, I bucked a little bit, but I became a scaler. Because an Indian inherited a life, we had lived in a utopia, it's true, but nothing just came, the fish didn't swim up and barbecue themselves! You had to pick the berries. We made wonderful baskets, but there's a lot to making a basket. The Indian who dug roots didn't make it the same night that she dug them. They dug the roots; they skinned and peeled: the designs on the roots come from different species of tree, it comes from a wild cherry. Now, that had to be peeled and left for a while till they had the time. Just a simple canoe bailer comes to my mind: they don't make that in the winter time because the bark isn't peeling yet, cedar bark. You know, thev didn't have coffee cans to throw in the river; they had to make their own canoe bailer. That had to be prepared in the spring. The berries came, and like I said, you had to pick them, had to take care of them. The fish came about the same time as the berries. Just like water, if your're thirsty, it doesn't do you any good just lookin~ at it. You've got to drink it. Even as I said before, just to make a canoe bailer, they had to do that celebr~.te 8 in the spring when the sap was running. The roots were dug and weren't used immediately, but taken care of in between times, in between the seasonal rush. From early spring everything had to be prepared because when the winter came there was no grocery store if you ran out of groceries. You had to prepare everything. So from early in the spring till late in the fall, and even going into the winter time, the Indian had to rustle for his preparations to carry him over for the winter. They went down from the top of the mountains, picking berries, down to the river for the salmon, and it's not done over night. You don't smoke salmon in a few days as you do now. It takes about three weeks to get dried salmon. And then at the same time probably the tide is out down at the mouth of the river, so down the river they'd go. They had to go in canoes and dig their clams, dry them, pole back up the river, maybe go up to their fishing area where another species of salmon is running about that time. It wasn't a matter of just staying here or staying there. It's a preparation for their subsistence in the winter-time. Now, there had to be other amounts of food prenaration put away besides theCTselves because an Indian, even to this day, was brought up with thankfulness for his visitors. People never went away without gifts. It is their thanks and appreciation--baskets, a canoe, some dried salmon, or whatever they made. Any artifacts they TT1ade, they made it for use, or they made it 5_n token of giving to other people. It is a form of a trade because there was no money. My cousin gave me a paddle and I used it over in La Conner. When he came down to my place, maybe I gave him a couple of other articles, double the value of what he gave Me, as far as usefulness goes, not money-wise because there was no money. It's a medium of exchange, and it's called anpreciation. 9 INDIAN FREIGHTING ON THE RIVER Lawrence Joe Member, Upper Skagit Indian Tribe I don't know how I got into this . I guess by making a canoe up in Concrete and I was talking while I should have been listening, so here I am . To start out, I'll show you what my relatives used on the river long before the white man came. [Mr . Joe exhibited a model dug-out.] This looks more like a burned out dug-out canoe. Later on, when the white man came, they had axes, and when they started using axes everything became stream-lined. When I was a young boy, my grandfather, Jimmy Jones, who lived up near Sauk where Gorma Thompson used to live, used to haul freight in canoes from Milltown up to Marblemount. You had to learn how to build a good canoe if you wanted to stay in business, otherwise it would take a long time to get up the river . He made a living hauling freight . He told me when I was nine years old to go out and check the net and I was running from one end to the other trying to steer it. That's how I learned to power one of these things. This is called a river canoe . The big canoe is a salt water canoe. You use the salt water canoe where the water is not swift and the further you get up the river, you run into more of these. Now, you have canoe builders. It's just like buying a car: every canoe builder has a different model; he wants to get the most speed out of his canoe. It you ever found a canoe along the river, you could tell who made it. You could either tell it was from the Upper Skait or up the Sauk River or Marblemount of any of the canoe makers. They all had different models just like different model cars. In the freight buisness, there were the regular canoe and the freight canoe. You could haul more freight, but you had to have somebody helping you, and that was usually a family project. My grandfather would have somebody else go along with him to pull the canoe up. After a while, he became "modern" and started using pike poles so he wouldn't have to sharpen his poles so much from wearing out on the rocks. 10 EARLY DAYS ON THE RIVER Charles Dwelley Former Editor, Concrete Herald In my files, I have quite a collection of material first-hand from the old timers who paddled up the river, the ones who settled up there. I think from that, I can give you something of interest. In the history of Skagit County you have to remember that everything came by water ; that's the only way they got in here. They crune into the salt water, they came ashore and settled along the edges, they found the Skagit River, they came up that gradually. Everything was water. You look at the Skagit flats out here now and you think, "That's wonderful country, wouldn't that be great to drive up there or rather come up in your boat and get out along that beautiful farmland to work.'' Well, that was all big timber out there in those days. There were huge groves of cedar out there, huge groves of fir. My father used to tell about going from Mount Veri""n to La Conner in a buggy through miles of forest. He appreciated it especially because he was courting at the time; he took my mother along with him one time and just tied the reins onto the buggy, and they could spoon all the way to La Conner, because there was no place else to go, except on the road. So, in the development of the country, of course, they had to follow the river. And one bir, blockage was at Mount Vernon. It was about three miles through, and you can just about imagine what that did, because the logs had been in there for many, many years. They had piled up thirty feet high; there were logs in there up to six and eight feet through. The task of getting around them was something. There were two separate jams. One was smaller, about a mile to a mile and a half; then the other one was about two miles. They were separated by a little bit of free water. My grandfather, who was living on Whidbey Island at the time, came up in 1870 with Jasper Gates and they homesteaded where Mount Vernon is now. That was as far as they could come in a canoe. That's the way they got there. They came in a canoe, across from Coupeville, up the river as far as they could go, climbed out on the jam, went ashore, and each one of them staked a claim where Mount Vernon is now. It was quite some time before they discovered there was land up river ; a few people had been up there. There was one Anny man who went up there, looked around and did probably the most extensive work in findinp, out what was up there in the way of minerals, where the flats were, where the land was, what could be settled. He actually started the gold rush up there because from his explorations other ones went up there, got under a hir, creek, and the gold rush developed after that. As I said, a log iam was the most important thing and after a while it became aoparent that if they were ever going to develop the upper river, and ~et into that mining country, they were going to have to take that log jam out. So, about 1867, they started to raise some money to take that ;am out. They tried the government. Congress was asked for $25,000 and they investigated and found out that $100,000 wouldn't do the job so they did nothing, which was normal for those days. Now they could give them a million dollars and tell them to go ahead. In those days, money was pretty hard to come by. Finally, a group of seven decided that they 11 were going to take the log jam out and salvage the timber in the jam to make their way. They started in on it and worked on the first section for about six months, finally chopping a little hole in it. They decided that they weren't getting enough timber out of it because the logs were cracked and split from the pressure from the river. The ones they could salvage for timber were few and far between, but they still had to cut them up. They ran into financial problems, of course, and decided they had better ask for public subscriptions. So they raised quite a bit of money to carry on their work and went ahead with it. Actually the jam was an awful job to handle because the logs were jackstrawed in there. They didn't have dynamite, they weren't using dvn-amite at that time, and every log had to be sawed and kicked out of the way somewhere, sent do~m the river. On the first lower jam they were helped out by a flood that came along in 1877 and took out about five acres, all of it at one time. That speeded the work, but it took three years to get through the upper channel. The first channel they got through pretty well ; they put a 250 foot cut through there. The next one, they were getting tired, so they cut it down to 120 foot and the only trouble with that was that when they had the flood, the logs jammed up again. It took some time before they could get the thing cleared so that navigation was feasible on the river . Of course, below the jam and above the jam, there were lots of snags and the snag boat that Congress was going to build--they appropriated $20,000 for the snag boat and its operation--they took all the money to build the boat, and there was nothing to operate with, so mainly it was through the work of the volunteers and the loggers and the people on the river that the snags were cleared so that they could get the boats moving up there. The people wanted to settle up there, but anybody who has ever traveled along the· river bank of the Skagit in a place where there is no road knows that it's a mighty tough proposition. You're talking about jungles, and they have a jungle there that's just terrible to get through. There were no roads, no way to go. You had to go up the river and then if you come to a clearing or someplace to get off, you got off and staked a claim. So, the steamers came in, got sternwheelers, about a hundred tons capacity, and they started running up the river and it became a race to see how far they could go, who could go up the far-thest and the fastest. There were two boats there, the "Chehalis" and the ''Josephine", that were rivals and they used to battle all the time for passengers and cargo, and also who could get there first and get back first. I remember Paul Pressentine had some articles on that sometime ago in the Haunt Vernon Herald, in which he told of the various stories about these characters on the river in those days. There was a free-wheeling sort of a deal; one of the steam captains came to Mount Vernon from Seattle. He started in Seattle with a barrel of whiskey and came up as far as he could go with a half a barrel. When it got down to the half way mark he started hack, because he wouldn't have enough whiskey to get him back. He .i ust dumped them out on the river and took off again. Another time, they had a race between the two boats. They were going up the river and were sun]Josed to reach a certain landing at a certain time. So they got up there and thev were both stalled. They couldn't get any further. One of the captains had ~ car~o of hacon aboard, so he threw that in the boiler and that gave him all the steam 12 he needed to get ahead in that race. So, things like that, tales of the Upper Skagit, that I've written many times, are something that I think should be put down in a book. Those were free-wheeling days. They fought to see who was going to be the first one to get up to the gold claims and as far as they could go was Portage, which was just below Bloedell Creek, and one of them finally made it. It was the "Chehalis," I think, that made it the first time and the next day the other one made it. Rut the river up there was so narrow, they had an awful time turning around. hben the water was high you could get a boat up there, but it was narrow and the thing you had to do when you got up there in that narrow canyon was to let your nassengers out on the shore and then by use o·f cables and swinging the boat from one side to the other, you would gradually get the thing turned around so it would get pointed down stream , sometimes they had to back up for quite a ways and just with their paddle wheels try to keep the thing steered till they got down to an eddy where they could swing around and start back down. So, it was quite a project, and as the boats began to go up there, there were dozens of them in there for quite a few years. In fact, after the passenger service stopped, they were going up there and towing log booms down . Mr. Tingley and his family towed logs on the river for all the years I was up there. In fact, they just stopped a few years ago. There are still some tows coming down, I believe. Sometimes I see some in the river, I imagine somebody comes un and picks them up and takes them down. But the river, as far as I was concerned, was quite important in another way. We had to get across it. It wasn't going up and down stream that bothered us, it was getting across. On the south Skagit side, the road came up a short way and then it ran into steep bluffs and rough terrain where they couldn't build roads very easily, so the road went up the north side of the river and finally ended at Rockport. Still, the people who settled on the south side had to get across or else use the boats to go down the river, so that's when the first ferries were introduced. The first ferries were really primitive, usually a couple of canoes tied together or a large boat. Then they would sling a cable across. And some of them just swung a single cable across then they swung back on it. Finally they put a cable across with a pulley on it so they could go across and make a direct line. It was very primitive at that time and very dangerous, but some people didn't think anything of it. They tied a couple of big freight canoes together and started across the river with planks between them and cattle on them, tied so they wouldn't fall off, and pulled the things across to get on the other side. I've heard many of them tell about bringing their first lumber across that way, bringing it up to Concrete or Hamilton, or wherever. It was, of course, pioneering days. I\ typical ferry of twenty or thirty years ago was one with hand wheels to turn. The icleR was to turn the ferry at an angle so that when a current hit, it would push the ferry across, and then you would get over to the other sirle. You'd angle it the other way, and it would rush you hack. /\.very efficient way, and not very costly. The last one they had at Rockport had a gasoline engine on it which turned the wheels ;md changed the cables. It also had a stove and a bed for the ferry -men and it was a little bit larger. It would take three cars or one large logging 13 truck. A bridge, accordinr; to the Army Corps of Engineers, ha<l to he built so one of these river boats could go under it, and there was iust no way we could do it. That's why we didn't have any bridges for so many years, otherwise there would have been bridges at all these ferry crossings many years ago. But it was only recently that they chanp,ed the regulations and allowed the Rockport bridge to be built low on the water, because they didn't figure there'd be any more of the large steam wheelers corning up the river. Then the ferries began to disappear. At one time, there were eighteen ferries on the river operated by the county. The first county operated one was at Day Creek in 1880. Then, in Hamilton, they built one in 1889, when they had the big boom because of the minerals on the other side of the river, the coal and iron. Hamilton was going to be the Pittsburgh of the West! They nut in a ferry for them so they could get the men and material across and get the thing started. Rockport had to wait a while, but did the same thing in 1903. It was a public subscription. They had a carpenter build them a ferry, to r,et their kids across to schools. Lots of them started that way and later, of course, they were taken over by the county. At one time, the county had eighteen. I mentioned Hr. Tingley before. He and his brothers used to come across by canoe to go to school for quite a while before there was another way to get across. The bridges changed all that. The last Rockport ferry made its trip in 1961, at the time of the dedication of the bridge. The ferry-man made one last trip across, then he nulled it up on the bank, and now it is on display at the park. And that's the last ferry on the Skagit River, a steel barge. That brings us up to date, where I came on the scene. I watched the ferries grow. I worked quite a while to get the ferries eliminated so we could get the school kids across on bridges rather than on ferries. It was quite an experience to be on the river and watch the many things that were happening to it. I don't know what's going to haµpen from now on. Navigation on the Skagit is almost a thing of the past, except for maybe some logging tows. It's now fishing, that's the main thing. We get hundreds of fishermen up there every year for the Skagit salmon and the steelhead. And, lately, they've decided to start boat tours down the river. That may be all right, but I'm afraid they create the impression that the Skagit River is a quiet little stream, where you can get out there in rubber boats and little canoes or ten foot prams. That is one thing that I would hate to see. We've had several accidents out there. Quite a few people have been drowned or nearly drowned in the smaller boats. They get out there with little pa<ldles and start down over some of those ripples, get into some of those snags, and the snags tear the bottom out of the rubber boats. The little boats catch up on the snags and dump you out in the river, and the fact is, it's a recreation river, but it isn't that kind of recreation! Also, the river is very, very cold. And if you can stay in there five minutes without getting so stiff you can't help yourself, you're a pretty good man. We have had a lot of drownings up there iust for the simple reason that none of the people that were in those craft knew what they were getting into. Canoes have turned over because there were too many people in them and they didn't know how to handle it and they thought 14 they were on the lake, no problem, shoot the rapids, you know, hit a rock, and over they go. Once you get in that river, you'll have a heck of a time getting out, because it's a wide river and it's a fast river. But we will be usin~ the river from now on. It's going to be there for another million years or two and I'm sure that stu<lies of this kind will probably brin8 out something we can use the river for, for everybody , and I'm sure that a lot uf us will be around to see much greater development. 15 THE HISTORICAL ROLE OF THE ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS ON THE SKAGIT RIVER Barbara Werelius, Records Manager, C.ity of Bellevue, Washington I imagine you're all surprised to see someone like myself representing the Corps of Engineers, but I guess this is a day of equal opportunity, so here I am. I'll tell you how I came to be connected with investigating the older records of the Corps of Engineers. I have a degree in history from the University of Washington, I've done graduate work in history at Western Washington State College, and I am a graduate of the Archival Training Program. For six months of my training, I was in Seattle at the Federal Archives and Records Center, a storage area for historical records for Federal agencies. I spent those six months going through approximately four hundred cubic feet of the old records from the Seattle District of the Army Corps of Engineers. Those six months I spent shuffling the p::i.pers and refiling the files and writing a description and arranging those records into some sort of order so that anyone who does want to do further research into it would be able to go into them with greater ease than when I found them. The resources are available now; they are in the records for anyone wanting to know about the relationship between the Army Corps of Engineers and the Skagit River. The Skagit River records include correspondence from the early set tlers, requesting removal of snags and the many dredging operations, and it's interesting to see the various factions that come out in this correspondence and I'll talk about that later. There are reports from the area officer up here, who was a master of a snag boat, to the district office which was in Portland and a few years later was moved to Seattle. There are snag boat reports for the work that they actually did on the river. There are administrative records, the general dayto-day type of''housekeeping" up here. From field and survey notes, I gather that the Corps of Engineers was the first to survey the river. And there are some photographs , very few of the Skagit River, unfortunately, but those are all documented and listed. Now, to get to the Corps itself. In 1896 there was a River and Harbor Act approved by Congress which gave impetus to the Corps' activities here. Correspondence includes a letter from the Acting Secretary of War, for the Corps at that time was connected with the W<> ... Department. .And there is a report that the chief of engineers has written about, a survey of the Skagit River fro1'1 its mouth to Seifro, Washington. A quote: "This river is now beinp, inproved by the United States by reri.oving snags and etc. under appropriations for improving Puget Sound and its tributary waters, the chief obstruction to navir,ation being snags which accumulate with every freshet." Hell, at that time a flood was a freshet. They had quite a few problems with the flooding. There is also a map, the first map that people drew of the Skagit. The records that I fotmd to be most interesting from this area were petitions from the settlers t henselves, askin~ various things. For example , the citizens near Tom Moore Slour,h wanted a dam to be con16 structed to afford drainage of the surrounding land. This is dated 1894 and the petition is from the settlers. The names are typed: some of them have been signed, so I imagine there will be people here who are known in early Skagit County history. And then the report from the area officer, gives his opinion as to whether this should be done or not. The only thing that they've really done in the area is to construct a restraining wall on the Torn Moore Slough in 1911. Other than that, I guess that it was difficult to get all the forces involved together to do anything. Then also the other activities, of course , were removinp the snags. I came across another letter , dated 1900 , in which the master of the snag boat is complaining against the fishermen for placing piling and brush in the north fork of the Skagit. This time, it's a hand written document signed by the masters. Then I have the report from the official up here representing the Corps. This one was especially interesting because several people signed it, I guess seemingly under odd circumstances, because I don't know if they knew what they were signing or not. I'll read this letter: "Dear Sirs, The reason that I signed what Mr. Baxter has just spoken about, Mr. Tucker brought that petition to me saying that Mr. Baxter had been making his eddies by driving piles and filling them with brush and rock. If you find that his statement is not true I will withdraw my signature." I thought that that was amusing. I have another petition and it Is another hand- written example, this is dated, "City of Edison, 1896.'' It's from the residents and owners of land along the river asking that the court do something about the loggers who are blocking the stream. A renresentative from the Army Corps of Engineers has informed me that there was quite a bit of trouble with the log booms earlier . Log booms would hlock the river so that would create flooding and that's why the residents got a little bit 'up-tight' about the whole thing. He also told me ahout the steam boats and the fact that the draft at the mouth of the south fork is only two-and- a-half feet, so larger vessels couldn't get in. He also said that the passenger vessels were kind of a lost business after a while because there was no schedule. They had to depend on the tide to swish them across the sand-bar. Let me tell you what is available to those desiring to look further into several facets of the history of Skagit County. Of course, there's a multitude of f ederal influences. The Corps of Engineers records really don't contain that much specifically about Skagit County. The Bureau of Land Management has records that have to do with Skagit County; in the Bureau of Indian Affairs papers, you could look up individual tribes; the Department of Agriculture has records, but they are not at the Archives. The National Forest Service has some of the records down there. If you wished to look into the various ethnic groups, you could look in the 1900 Census. The homesteading files are kept in Washington, D.C. There are some lists of homesteaders rather than information about them at the Seattle Records Center. And the Records Center (I'm going to give them a plug.) is onen from eight o'clock to four thirty, five days a week, they're right on Sand11oint Way, and they will be more than happy to help you if you do have a desire to go down there. 17 EARLY DIKING AND FLOOD CONTROL Dr. Roland L. De Lorme Project Director and Chairman, History Department Western Washington State College The early history of diking and reclamation efforts in the Skagit River Valley is, in fact, the subject that first drew my attention to the historical significance of the Skagit River. Diking efforts began very early . The first halting efforts for the development of diking and reclamation began in the late 1860's--the work of such pioneers as Michael Sullivan and Samuel Calhoun. In the 1870's, a small company was formed in the valley by E. H. Sisson, Rienzi Whitney, and A. G. Tillinghast to dike and reclaim the land, and thereby encourage agricultural development. The company was successful on a small scale for some five years in the 1870's and continued to work, diking sections of land in the valley. By the mid-1870's, observers noted that the tide lands of the Swinomish were beginning to yield, for that day, immense crops. And of course those who had diked and drained their land were the ones who were obtaining these large yields. In 1874 those early settlers, however, began to look beyond their individual, voluntary efforts or even small scale private companies' efforts to dike the river, and a public petition was forwarded to the United States Congress in 1874 asking for federal appropriations. An initial appropriation of $25,000 was requested for the improvement of the Skagit River and the land along its banks. The reasons given for federal assistance are interesting. It was noted, first of all, that the river was filled with impediments to navigation, that already mining and logging attempts were being stymied up-river because of the log jams. The federal government, it was hoped, would provide needed money--perhaps even manpower and expertise--to clear out the river . It was argued that the river flooded and its periodic floodings worked immense damage to the low-lands. In order to encourage settlement up-river, to protect the already useful farmland inthe lower valley region, therefore, local residents wanted the federal government to provide assistance. The federal government did not, in fact, come through with the assistance for the residents of the valley; those who lived in the valley continued to be at the mercy of the floods. The flood of 1880, for example, which was the first large flood when there was a large settlement in the valley, remained at a high stage for over a month. This brought many residents to the conclusion, again, that they must do more to encourage the interest and the financial assistance of the federal government. Many of the farmers suffered disastrously from the flood of 1880, and they were hit again two years later, in 1882, by a great summer flood which destroyed many farms and homes in the valley. The dikes were broken in several places. The whole countryside, extending from the delta northward, presented the appearance, according to one observer, of a vast lake. Over twenty-five hundred cultivated acres were inundated in that flood. It is difficult to assess the value in current terms, but those who lived in the valley then, in the 1880's, a ssessed the cost of the flood damage at $100 ,000. It led to public protest meetings . Two results came from the public meetings. First, another attempt was made to interest Congress in helping farmers of the valley, and second, there was another 18 attempt to encourage the voluntary cooperation of the residents themselves. A committee of investigation was formed, presided over by Thomas P. Hastie. They decided, in looking over the damage, that the needed repairs of the existing dikes and the other work that should be undertaken would cost approximately $10,000. A footnote: in that time, very often the pioneers regarded surveyors as a luxury. The $10,000 suggested by the committee could not have included a large amount of surveying. It rested upon the assumption that the residents of the valley themselves would help in the construction of the dikes, and the $10,000 was primarily for construction materials for the dike. A public subscription campaign was undertaken, Approximately $2,500 was collected for dike construction and improvement efforts. Unfortunately, however, the members of the committee that had been charged with collecting the money began to dispute among themselves as to how the dikes should be constructed and who should lead in the project development. Finally, because of such dissension, the work was abandoned. Some of the damage wrought by the floods of 1880 and 1882 was noticeable until after the turn of the century. Even in the mid-1880's, the federal government took cognizance of the problems and the potential value of the Skagit River Valley. The United States Department of Agriculture, in its Annual Report for 1884, described what was taking place in the Skagit River Valley: 32,000 acres already under the plow, some 150 miles of dikes constructed by the residents themselves. Indeed, the Agriculture Department estimated the value of the dikes already constructed in the valley at over $175,000. The clearing and diking of the land continued, however, largely through the individual efforts of the farmers themselves. Also in the mid-1880's, cooperative diking efforts again went forward, a public fund was put together, and again it was Thomas Hastie who spearheaded the effort to gather the money. New drainage ditches were dug and new dikes were bui 1t. It was estimated that the main ditch built through the Joe Larry Slough and Olympia Marsh was worth about $1 per acre. Some five miles of draining ditches and dikes were constructed through this cooperative effort of the farmers themselves. By late 1887 Rienzi Whitney was back in the business of building dikes. This time he had bought a tract of salt marsh, some 700 acres, and spent $10,000 in an effort to recliam the lands, install as system of pumps, and dike and clear it. By the late 1880's, at long last, a government agency began to take an interest in the problems of the farmer, but it was not the federal government, it was the county government. In a special session of the County Commissioners for Skagit County in February, 1888, it was agreed that the Board would establish diking districts after studying the actual conditions of the valley. They planned to act under the terms of a law of the Washington Territorial Legislative Assembly that had been approved during the winter of 1888. The first diking district sponsored by the county was formed and construction began. This led of course, to other requests. Twenty-three other farmers in the valley came forward, asking the County Commissioners to establish a second diking district. This one was described as commencing on the west bank of the Skagit River near the confluence of the north and south forks of the Skagit River, running from there to the head of Fresh Water Slough, and following the bank of that slough to the south fork of the Skagit River, then up the mid fork to the point of origin. The County Commissioners accepted that request, also. By the close of the 1880's, the Skagit County Commissioners had 19 seen the wisdom in retaining a professional surveyor and had done so. The surveyor was charged with providing the necessary expert advice in the construction of future dikes and in the maintenance of those that had already been built. H. E. Wells was hired as surveyor and was told to review existing diking districts and locate the dikes and dams that would be necessary for the protection of the residents of the valley and for the cultivation of the land of the river valley. In following years, further petitions were presented to the Board of County Conunissioners and most such petitions were granted. Beginning in 1888 and through the 1890's, there was considerable activity sponsored by the county, much of the labor supplied by local residents, but materials purchased by the county. In 1889, for example, one diking district was appropriated $4,000 for the construction of dikes, another, $4,000, a third diking district, $2,000. The commissioners began to consider the possibility of levying special taxes on the residents to pay for the diking and reclamation projects that had been undertaken. A special dike tax was introduced. By the late fall of 1892, the diking and drainage projects were so numerous and extensive that there was great confusion as to district boundaries. For example, one diking district was called the "Olympia Marsh District," but no one was sure where it began or ended, so the Commissioners decided that they would end the confusion by simply numbering the diking districts. The result came as a surprise: when they were through surveying existing work, it was found that there were nine large diking districts. The following year, in early 1893, one diking project alone was appropriated $10,000. The dike taxes, meanwhile, were accumulating. In one district, $2,500 was collected through the tax. The Commissioners concluded that if there could be diking taxes, there also could be taxes levied on the ditches. So a ditch tax was introduced. The total taxes collected for all the diking districts in 1892 was over $43,000, not bad, since the following year the Commissioners apparently decided to balance their budget and spent only a little over $1,100 of the money thus collected to maintain the dikes and ditches. Hundreds of acres of land, however, were reclaimed in the early 1890's, and many of these reclamation projects were continued as individual or voluntary private projects. In the early 1890's, there was a rash of public meetings once more and, again, the residents were gathering to protest the lack of interest on the part of the federal government. They urged that Congress instruct the Army Corps of Engineers to do something about the river's condition and investigate the need for further diking in the valley. By 1894, the river was substantially diked, from its mouth to points beyond Sedro Woolley. Most of the drainage ditches, too, had been improved. But there were bad floods in the 1890's and in many cases the dikes did not hold. Floods in 1894 and again in 1897 drove many of the residents to, again, protest federal inaction. The Army Corps of Engineers, meanwhile, after the flood of 1894, made a careful survey, and estimated the cost of the damage caused in the flood of 1894 at over one and a half million dollars. The Corps launched no extensive anti-flood projects. Still, by the close of the 19th century, Sterling Dam was being constructed at the head of one slough, a tributary to the Skagit River, and this was thought by many to be a partial solution to the problem. A series of dams, some argued, would at last remedy the situation and tame the mighty Skagit River. Surveying the river valley at the close of the 19th century, one would see many miles of small dikes and 20 small drainage ditches, about 75 percent of them contolled and maintained by the county; the rest maintained by private residents. Had they solved their problem? There were experts who argued that building dikes raised the level of the river and actually increased the possibility of flooding in the future. There were many others, of course, who denied that argument. The debate continued into the 20th century, but in the meantime, those who had sponsored and constructed the dikes seemed to have proved one point: that if the river could be tamed, at least temporarily, the valley had great potential as a center for modern agriculture . 21 AGRICULTURAL LABOR IN THE SKAGIT VALLEY : A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE Trina Ozuna Skagit County resident and former field worker My mo ther and father were born in Mexico and came to the United States in the very early 1940's. In the early 1940's they were in Wyoming, working i n f i elds t here , and t hat ' s where I was born . My father wasn ' t an educated man and all he could do was field work . He heard that there were good jobs in Washington so he decided we were going to come here. My father started working in eastern Washington with the growers there who had hops, beets , tomatoes, cucumbers, and other crops. And in 1951, he decided that he would like to come to the coast to work in the strawberries . He had heard that strawberries were very good out here and a lot of hi s friends were coming here, so he decided he wanted to join them . Before we arrived, I married . My husband was a migrant worker; he traveled from one state to another. My father moved to Lynden, Washington, and bought a home . He did pretty well . My husband was traveling from state to stat e, work i ng i n cotton fields in California, working in the beets in eastern Washington and then coming over here to work in the strawberries, raspberries, cucumbers, and cauliflower. When my oldest child was born, my husband decided that we were going to keep traveling. When my child was about six years old, she started school here in Mount Vernon and had been there for two months when we had to take her out of school and go to eastern Washington to work in the beets. It was hard for him t o t ake her out of school because she liked it there. She liked the teachers and she liked the area. When we moved to eastern Washington I had to put her in school there . And I remember the first day she went, she started crying because she didn't want to go to that one, she wanted to go to the school here . So, my husband and I decided that we were going to stop traveling as migrant workers and settle down in one area, and we chose Skagit to settle down in. My husband found a steady job here and we've been here ever since . My children have all gone to schools here and to Skagit Valley College . I have helped run programs to help migrant children or migrant families to settle down and lead a life where their children can get an education . Many migrants have stopped traveling and are settling down. In Skagit , many of them now work in the welfare office, in the employment office , Skagit Valley College and Intalco Refinery, the oil refineri es, and in fishing. Fewer migrants work in the fields since machinery has begun taking over . Still , dur ing the summer , there's no reason for children to be wandering in the streets . There ' s a lot of work for them. They can help harvest the strawberries and raspberries or work in the cucumbers. That's one of the reasons why we have liked this area very much , because our children can work as well as get an education . 22 EFFECTS OF FLOODING ON THE FARMS AND FARM LIFE Frank Easter District Conservationist Soil Conservation Service The Soil Conservation Service .• which I represent , has been here for 32 years . It ' s interesting to learn about farmers trying to get federal assistance , even back in the 1890's . It took until 1932 to get a soil conservationist. That was as a result of larger commercial farms. Ours is a unique federal agency in that we report to Skagit conservationists, locally elected people who represent people in the Skagit County, not only farms, but everyone . In every flood we've had in Skagit County, you get debris covering the farmland . Now, there are many crops wintered over in the Skagit Valley and the damage that standing water causes on those crops is tremendous . This is just one of the problems farmers have. If it's not silt that covers crops , or standing water that covers crops, it's the debris of the river carried in . Incorporation of usually sandy material that was transported there by the flood waters really is a problem . I've heard several farmers recall that since the 1951 flood when the dike broke at Conway, even the incorporation of the material that far back is still seen in the soil now. So what they're really doing is incorp orating the sand into the material . I might mention that there is some argument as to the control of floods in the Skagit valley. Some say, why not let it flood , that's how the soil was enriched originally . That may be , but it took thousands of years to do that ; the material that is carried down by the river now is much different than what it was many years ago . It's a lot sandier material and a heavier silt that is deposited there now . It is much different. The kind of damage that is caused from Spring floods is, of course , much different than a winter flood . In 1967 there were crops in that were damaged , and farmers had to start all over again . South of Mount Vernon, we've got a highway now , so that if the river ever did top the dikes , we've got a highway that could change the pattern of the river . No one knows really just what direction the river would flow i f the dikes break. Interstate 5 near Burlington could really be damaging , because there are so many high fills . After every flood , people start to think about the river and we ' ve had attempts to stabilize the aggressiveness of the river. Some have been good , some have been not so good . We have made some real gains in stopping erosion of the stream bank . I think we're still learning the ways of stabilizing the river bank and not adversely affecting fisheries. Destruction of shade adjacent to the river is still a big problem . But we really think that by sacrificing the shade we are controlling probab l y the biggest source of sediment that the Skagit has by stabilizing the stream bank . And this in turn adds· to the population of the fish in the river . In stabilizing the stream banks, we encourage the use of cost - sharing money to develop conservation practices . We have a Stream Bank Protection Committee in Skagit County that is farily new . Because of the amount of permits and different agencies that are involved in stream bank work like this, the committee was formed of representatives of these different agencies so that we 23 could all sit down together and hash out our differences as to projects done every year in conjunction with local land owners. The connnittee is made up of the Soil Conservation Service, the Department of Fisheries, the Department of Game, the Department of Ecology, the County Planner, and the Agricultural Stabilization Conservation Service. The involvement of the farmer, which really is what I'm supposed to be talking about, can be seen almost everywhere you go around farms. It's become a practice now for dairy farmers to have storage tanks to store waste from the animals, which become a useful tool during high water. If the farm buildings become surrounded by water, a lot of this animal waste can still be put into tanks; of course, this applies to the river at its lower levels, also. One of our big jobs in Skagit County is drainage of our flat fertile agricultural lands. Things have changed a lot. Instead of putting in concrete tile, now we use plastic tile and polyester tubing. This can be put in a lot faster, and its durability is really improved. We are all the time changing and improving our technology. A present day tile machine digs the ditch, lays the plastic tubing, and covers it back up all in one operation. A tile machine can lay 3,500 feet a day depending on the conditions. More and more farmers are having their land drained because it gives them a bigger grain crop. Vegetable seed, which is a big crop here, has to have class A drainage. It has to have the best drainage that we can give it. A lot of time our tile or our drainage tubing in each basin is only a hundred feet apart. This gets to be quite expensive. The installation of tile is how we handle water when it comes into the fields. It really becomes a problem in this county because it's so flat; if the river is backed up and the ditches back up, there may be no place for the water to go. But now we have put in the drainage tiles. Water may stay in the fields a short period of time, but as soon as the water is down in the river, the water goes down in the fields. The newest tile machine is guided by a laser beam. We do the engineering for the farmer and give the information to the tiling operator. He sets his machine with the laser beam and follows the grade that we give. There are a lot of false hopes put on some river dams for flood control. We've been misled, really, because the total effects of flood control structures on the Skagit River and its tributaries only amount to 25 percent of the total valley. So, we must start thinking about something else. A lot of people live in the flood plain. This is a prime example of people living within a flood plain community in a danger situation. 24 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE HISTORY OF THE TJPPER SKAGIT VALLEY Glee Davis, long-time valley resident and historian Glee Davis' family came from Denver, Colorado, in July of 1890 to Harblemount, from Seattle to Mount Vernon by steamer, the steamer, "Henry Bailey,., on which Josuha Green was the purser. Next, from Hamilton on the steamer, ''Indiana." Next, they boarded the first stage over the new road to Sauk City, crossing Baker River on a ferry. For the following four years, the children attended the winter and spring terms in a school in Mount Vernon, going down river in a canoe. Canoe freighting was carried on in the district until 1896 and to Godell's Landing, to May, 1898, when Karl and Wade Bullers and Frank Davis brought the last load in. This nart of the river was rough and the portage eight miles long; the goods had to be carried along bouldery shores for about seven hundred feet, and a canoe had to be lined up over the rapids and reloaded. In 1890, Morgan Davies, at old Marblemount, made the first ferry by olacing two canoes in parallel, then planking oak, then p l acing lines up to a carriage that traveled on a cable crossing the river. Two other ferries were installed a year later dovm river a quarter mile. The first horse bridge to cross the Skagit was built in 1892, three miles above Godell 's Landing, built by miners and prospectors; it washe d away with the June, 1894 floods. The Skagit was bridged at the mouth of Ruby Creek in 1895 by miners. Regarding dams, in 1893, a wing dam was constructed along the east side of Skagit, about one half mile above where Ross Dam now stands. The dam was to shear the river awav from a gravel bed containing gold. About 1885, a canal was dug above Panther Creek on P.uby Creek so that the gold rich ground on Ruby could be worked. A bridge was built, but the dam was never completed. In 1898, a large hydraulic works was started at a cost of about $500,000. They built a saw mill un on the side of Ruby Mountain to cut lumber for a small town-site. A three mile flume five feet by eleven feet carried water from the dam across Ruby Creek to the gravel beds near the Skagit. From the pressure-box the water came down through large pipes to the nozzles. This lasted over a period of two and a half years. In 1905, Slate Creek was dammed and brought down to a hydroelectric generator through a flume. That year, also, R. 1'1, Biggs, J. S. HcCrystal, ~1. F. Patrick, ~nd Charles Freeman came through exploring: then, in 1908, began surveying for the Davis, Rocknoint, and Diahlo Dams. B. H. Biggs has credit for naming the Fox C:anyon Diahlo. These men were all from Colora<'lo and apparently worked for the Skar.it Power C:omµany. Statadle Creek Darn was constructed by Frank and Glee Davis to furnish the Davis ranch with irrigation anc electric µower. 25 FLOOD CONTROL A.~D ITS RELATIO~ THE RIVER AS AN ENERGY SOURCE TCl Jack Wylie, County Commissioner, Skagit County The earliest recorded discharr,e of a flood on the Skagit River was in 1815 . I t had 400,000 cuhic feet per second. To<lay, a similar flood would bring eight to ten feet of water into the town of Sedro Woolley and would cover the whole valley. The next recorded one was in 1856 and was 300,000 cuhic feet. In 1896 was 185,000 cuhic feet, in 1897 190,000 cubic feet, in 1906 180,000 cubic feet, in 1909 220,000 cubic feet. That's getting up to where my dad could tell me something about the floods . He was in Mount Vernon ;it that time in the river bend area, where the malls are now: there are still some of the old houses there, and they' re built prohahly four or five feet off the ground. He said they rescued people out of these houses by rowing the boat to the second story window . In 1917 there was a flood of 195,000 cubic feet. The one that I really remember, was in 1921. I was 7 years old and got my first pair of hin hoots, and I learned to row a boat. Everything from Burlington south was floode<l . The 1932 flood was not too big, but it r:lid break through in several areas. It registered 147,000 cubic feet of water. There were two floods in 1933, in February and in November. Then in 1935, we had 131,000 feet of water. In 1949 and 1951 were the next two big floods: one 140,000 cubic feet and one 144,000 cubic feet. Then, last December, which was really a small flood (we call it eightyear flood.) , 129,200 cubic feet per second passed bv Hount Vernon. Last yea r we were lucky. It reached the top of the dikes and created a lot of damage from Concrete on down. The ma.1 or part of the damage was in the area from Concrete to Sedro Woolley. Actually, below the Sedro Woolley area, there was not too much damap;e: it took rock out alonp, the hanks and washed away some dikes, but there wasn't any serious floodine except in the south end in the game range area. Now, we had a scare on Mount Baker. Upper Baker Lake was lower at the tiT'le that this flood carne , so we freed the flood storage of Baker Lake and I'm sure that if that had not been available, water would have been running over the dikes because I have pictures of the area near Burlington, where the river was at the top of the dikes. In other areas they were sand-hagging to keen it from running over. That small measure of flood control might have been the straw that saved us last winter. Now , the Unper Baker Dam proiect was tied in with ;mother pro;ect, recently approved , called the Lower Levy Improvement Project. The Army Corps of Engineers has received a hundred thous and dollars in appropriations this year to finish the engineering on the lower levy . That would include widening and raising the levies from the mouth of the river to Sedro Woolley and also widening the river in two or three locations between Sedro Woolley and the mouth. Thev hope to have that nro;ect done by 1981. That would give us fifteen year flood protection in the lower valley. But, that's not doing anything for the river from Se<lro Woollev up , the uppe r regions of the river. At one time in the thirties, a project called the Avon By-Pass was approved that was to channel the 26 water south of Burlington to Padilla Bay. It would have taken about three hundred acres of fannland; there would have been big dikes erected across the valley. It was not a very popular project with the people, so nothing has been done about it and I do not think there ever will he. The Skagit County Board of Commissioners, in the last few years, has really been working on flood control. Nonetheless, the valley is susceptible to a major flood that could cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. We had a meeting with Congressman Mee~. s and a representative of the Army Corps of Engineers recently. The Corps of Engineers would like to have a basin study of the Skagit River, especially on the Sauk, in conjunction with the Wild and Scenic River Study. The object of the Sauk study would be a dry daJT1 pro;ect. Despite the projected dam, the river would flow free at all times, excer>t when the river was flooding at its peak. You would close the door, you could back the water up for a couple days, later turn it loose, and the river would be free-flowing again. The cost of the dam is estimated now at anywhere from thirty five to fifty million dollars. The cost of the study would be about four hundred thousand dollars and it would take about four years to complete. The Skagit River is a beautiful river. They call it a wild and scenic river. I don't think any of those who are promoting a wild and scenic river ever saw one as wild. I think it can he used, the floods can be controlled, but I still think it is a wild and scenic river. 27 f?.ESOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF THE RIVER'S HYDROELECTRIC DEVELOPMENT Liisa Fagerlund, Curator of Manuscripts University of Washington Library I've always taken Seattle City Light for granted, and until I was preparing for coming up here tonight I hadn't realized to what extent Seattle is indebted to the Skagit River for our lights and oower. but we certainly are grateful, though maybe not grateful enough. Since the principle reason I was invited here tonight is the fact that the records of Seattle City Light are in the Manuscripts Collection at the University of Washington Library, I would like to tell you a little bit about the Manuscript Collection, about the Seattle City Light records, about manuscrirt: records as oooosed to book materials and about other related records that are in the Manuscripts Collection. Perhaps I should start by giving you some idea of the difference between manuscripts and typical library materials, that is published books, magazines, and newspapers. Most library materials are published materials, such as books that have been compiled by historians or other writers. But the materials we have in the Manuscripts Collection can be distinguished very easily because they are not published materials. They consist primarily of letters, correspondence, reports, unpublished minutes of meetings, legislation, legal documents, and contracts. They were usually not written or produced for wide distribution, but were written for the purpose of communicating with another individual or company, or for purposes of recording, documenting, providing statistics for every-day-operating of a company, or in this case the city government. I'll show you some examples of these and maybe it will become a little clearer. The University of Washington Manuscripts Collection actually began about 1919 when the library purchased Clarence Bagley's collection of historical materials. Clarence Bagley was a historian and, as was often the case in those days, historians had to collect their own materials. Libraries hadn't really become involved in manuscript collecting and in order for a historian to have sources to work with, he or she had to do the collecting. So when the library purchased this large collection of Clarence Bagley's, it formed the nucleus of the Manuscript Collection. It included many pioneer records and records of some of the early territorial administrators and the early settlers of this area, particularly the Seattle area. But from 1919 until 1950 these records were administered through the Reference Division in the library and it wasn't until the late 1950's when the Manuscripts Division in the library was set up, and a Curator of Manuscripts was apoointed. The Manuscripts Collection consists principally of primary source materials relating to Western Hashington with particular emphasis on the Seattle area. It is strong in records of oolitics and government such as pa~ers of governors and mayors, other legislators, political leaders, also city activists: people who were involved as private citizens in city government and in making their views known to the legislators. Also there are papers relating to urban affairs, policies and 28 problems of the urban environment. We have very strong holdings in forest products industries, and a number of timber companies and mill companies have their records with the Manuscript Collection. Records of cultural activitv in the city and in the area are included. One of the strongest sections concerns hydroelectric power. And that's where the records of Seattle City Light come in. In terms of volume, I think the records of Seattle City Light are about the largest in the collection concerning hydroelectric power. The first superintendant of Seattle City Light was James D. Ross who continued as superintendant until approximately 1939. The first and major accession of Seattle City Light records constituted primarily his papers, and his personal correspondence is very heavily mixed in with those early records. The first accession covers 1896 to 1939 and, of course, predates J. D. Ross. The records of Seattle City Light are all stored in these archival boxes. This is a very familiar type box in archival repositories. It's made in Virginia and one of it's primary features is that it does not have a high degree of acidity, so that, unlike newsprint and other papers which have a high acid content, will not break down, nor will it harm the papers that are stored in it. It acts as protection. We store most of our records in such boxes. When I speak of the number of boxes of incoming correspondence or outgoing correspondence, you can think in terms of these approximately fiveinch boxes. Included in these Seattle r.ity Light records are correspondence, business records, legal documents, le?,islative bills, reports, speeches and writings, general and financial statistics, technical data, and biographical material. The bulk of the collection consists of corres pondence that documents the growth of Seattle's municioal power system, the impact of public power on the economy and politics of the northwest and Nebraska as well as the U.S. in general, and the rapid sophistication of electrical systems and transmission techniques, natural resources, conservation, flood control, and multiple use of lands. Huch is critical correspondence with engineering firms, investment houses. electrical manufacturers, city, state, national and Canadian government bodies, railway companies, labor unions, newspapers, journals and others. Seattle City Light became probably the largest municipal utility company concerned with electrical power and it's prominence in the U.S. makes it one of the reasons why it is such a popular source of study. To give you some idea of what's in the collection, I have a couple of inventories here. Approximately the first forty boxes in the Seattle City Light records, the first group that goes through 1939, contain the outgoing correspondence of J. D. Ross. When you think that forty of these boxes are simply copies of all the letters he sent out, you begin to get an idea of the volume of work that he produced. I brought alonP, some of the contents, too. City Light was granted the rights to develop the Skagit Valley by the Department of Agriculture in neceMber of 1917 and they immediately had to face charges that they were really infringing on the territory or private power companies, particularly the Stone and Webster concern which had an earlier ootion on the river which they had not developed. In the outgoing correspondence for June 1918 we see a letter that J. D. Ross wrote to a 'Mr. D. Skinner who is chairman of the Citizens Committee for Investigation of the Skagit Power Site. 29 (That sounds like a conunittee you would find in the 1970's doesn't it?) He says, "Dear Sir, There is no doubt a feeling among some of the businessmen that the wresting of the Skagit River Site from the Stone and Webster concern after they had out considerable money into it, shows there was not a proper move on the part of my department and myself. I wish to correct this impression by a short statement to yourself as chairman of the committee." It takes him three pages to explain how he justifies his involvement, and he closes, "We assure you that our motive in developing the Skagit, is not one of competition simply for the purpose of competition, but to do the greatest good to the greatest number by the development of a great industrial center." And throughout J. D. Ross' correspondence there is a great emphasis unon city building--on the building of a great industrial area. He felt that this would bring prosperity to the whole Western Washington area and that was one of the reasons, perhaps, why he felt it was not infringing to become involved in the Skagit even though Seattle was some distance away. (This also points to one of the large areas of interest in the manuscript collection, this whole debate on public versus private power. I'll mention later some of the other record groups that we have that also orovide a great deal of source material for studying this controversy which has been going on for a long time in Washington state and is certainly not over.) You may remember that I said that the letter I was just reading from was to Mr. D. E. Skinner. I decided I would check the incoming correspondence, then, to see what the other side of this correspondence was·, what the citizen's committee had written to him, and how lively the debate had become. I found a letter to Mr. J. D. Ross from Hr. Skinner who was president of Skinner and Eddy Corporation, dated May, 1918. ·'My Dear Mr. Ross, Please remember that you and your staff are at all times more than welcome at all of our launchings. (Skinner and Eddy Corp. were ship builders). We should be pleased indeed if you would have someone call at this office and ascertain when the launchings are to be. We eniov as much having you there as you can possibly enjoy witnessing these events. Upon government instruction some time ago we were compelled to desist from sending out invitations. Yours very truly, D. E. Skinner." That certainly sounds very friendly. And then there's a cony of a letter that was sent to J. D. Roos of a letter that Mr. Skinner wrote to the Honorable Ole Hanson, who was at that time mayor of Seattle. He writes to the mayor, "When we inaup:urated this enterprise, (the development of the Skagit) two years ago, one of my associates made a tentative agreement with the city lighting department to serve us with light and power. In discussion with Hr. J. n. Ross, Superintendant of the Lighting Department, I advised him I was personally opposed to municipally conducted enterprises, and that I preferred not to be bound by the contract. He stated that he would have agreed with me three years before, but he was confident that I would be convin ced, as he had become, that the city could serve us to the best advantage. I wish to advise you that I have beco~e thoroughly convinced of this fact and the efficient service we have received with the abnormal increase in our demands in our ship-building industry have been met even beyond any anticipations we could have had .... " He goes on and on, explaining how wonderful his rates were and so on. Either 'Mr. Ross had been very persuasive with regard to the validity of their plan for 30 the Skagit or the Citizens' Connnittee for Investigation was not a very serious opposition to Ross in the first place. It's interesting, too, that the time when the Skagit plans were being developed was during the first World War when ship-building was very important and the power needs were very great. One of the debates with regard to the development of the Skagit was whether the fuel and energy should be diverted from war related industries into a project such as the Skagit. Ross said, "But it will produce so much more power that we really should go in to it." Other people, such as the Stone & Webster concerns who were the private power representatives said, "You should use the power COT1'1.Panies that you have now, which are adequate, and wait to develop the Skagit source until after the war when the energy won't be wasted." Another part of the City Light collection is the ~ollection of speeches and writings of J. D. Ross. Even as late as 1938, he was giving speeches explaining the advantages of the Skagit proposal. For example, "The principle advantage of the Skagit River for production of power are the high sustained river flows due to the generous rain-fall and large amounts of glacial area which holds the winter rain-fall until the snow and ice melts •..• " I found a rather curious item in this same folder which I brought to show you that there is a great deal of variety in primary source materials. This is a poem and while it is not a very good one, it is related to the topic, so I thought I would read a little of it. The subject deals with a controversy concerning the location of transmission lines to bring power from the Skagit to Seattle. One proposal was to bring the lines on the east side of Lake Washington and through the town of Renton on the way to Seattle. But Renton did not agree with the proposal: Now Renton and Seattle fight and show no signs of pity They make us detour City Light to bring it to the city. They fight without a hint of truce, I wouldn't bet a cent on the move To bring the Skagit's juice right through the town of Renton. The men of Renton stand on guard in sunshine and in showers We can't plant lightpoles in their yard amidst the lawn and flowers. The Cedar River's locked on course and is ready for all comers They'll fight it on this power line if it should take two sunnners. That's half of it, but I think it is enough! Before City Light could get approval to go ahead with their plan, they had to get it passed by the U.S. Federal Trade Corranission; principally by the Sub-Conunittee on Capital Issues. The Sub-r.ommittee on Capital Issues, meeting in San Francisco, wanted to know how feasible the plan was. J. D. Ross, of course, thought it was feasible and commissioned two people in his department, Bachelor and Gallant to write a report entitled "The Situation of Puget Sound District." (Incidently, we now have the papers of Willis T. Bachelor in the Manuscripts Callee31 tion as well.) It was countered by another report by R. H. Thomson who later became city engineer. A report was also submitted to the committee by a group hired by the private power concerns. It is no wonder the Capital Issues Sub-Committee was confused. We have the records of the Capital Issues Sub- Committee in the Manuscripts Collection. Here is a letter from the sub-committee records from Puget Sound Traction Light and Power Company dated Anril, 1918. They were ci. private power concern, of course, and didn't feel that City Light was j u1stified in this project. On the second page they say, "If the City of Seattle needs more power, and they will only need it hy taking business away from us at rates which are less than the cost of furnishing the service, the deficit being made up in one way or another by taxation, it seems to us that they should add to their steam plants and not attempt to undertake tremendous water power developments calling for material and labor withdrawn from the government needs in this emergency. The proposed Skagit development was held by us for several years and given up. It's a tremendous project and five million dollars will not begin to complete it as is planned." We also have a second accession of Seattle City Light records which carry through to 1960. It's an even larger group of materials, I think there are more than a hundred, not boxes of this size, but standard cartons. I regret to say that they're not quite as well organized or as processed as the earlier records, which is one reason why all my examples tonight come from the earlier years. The records of Seattle City Light have been used for research purposes. There have been three theses particularly which have used them. Some of you may have met some of the people who have written these theses, because they were undoubtedly in this area interviewing people. A man named Paul Pitzer wrote a history of the upper Skagit Valley from 1880-1924. Wesley Dick wrote a thesis entitled "The Genesis of Seattle City Light to 1917". Another man named William Sparks wrote a thesis entitled "J. D. Ross and Seattle City Light, 1917-1932." That last thesis by Sparks deals very extensively with the whole Skagit development and is very interesting reading. All three theses are in general circulation at the University of Washington and possibly other libraries too, certainly copies could be obtained from local libraries if anyone would be interested in seeing them. They make interesting reading, as well as being scholarly works. The whole field of hydroelectric power is very rich in thesis possibilities. I should also mention, as Dr. De Lorrne said, that J. D. Ross went on to work in the federal government - Bonneville Power Administration - and he had a pretty good relationship with F.D.R., partly because of his beliefs that the power generation should be publicly controlled. The papers of Seattle City Light and J. D. Ross have been used by historians writing on the 'New Deal'. Here's an example: "The Bonneville Power Administration and the New Deal," by Phillip Funigello. It's an article that relied very heavily on the records that we have. To quote from Wesley Dick, "The entire swashbuckling, dynamic electric power field is rich in research opportunities. The historian, the economist, political scientist, engineer, administrator, regulator, lawyer, student of business and consumer affairs or the student of 32 cormnunications will find a field of many facets and no lack of controversey and public debate." Because we have believed this to be true and also because of the fact that hydroelectric power and the public verses private power movements have been so important in the history of this area, the collecting of these materials has been a major focus of the Manuscripts Collection. The papers of governors and officials relate very heavily because they were deeply involved, such as Ole Hanson, whose correspondence I quoted earlier. We have the papers of Guy C. Meyers who was very active in the hydroelectric power development as a financier. He took the bonds to the east coast where he had offices on Wall Street, and sold the bonds in the eastern markets so that the PUDs could be funded. We have the papers of the Northwest Public Power Association, and of r.us Norwood, who was executive secretary of the Northwest Public Power Association. A number of electrical engineers, the Washington Public Utility Districts Association, the papers of Willis T. Bachelor and many others are included. To conclude, this bibliography is put out by the Smithsonian Institution, entitled "Manuscripts and U.S. Depositories Relating to the History of Electrical Science and Technology." It's interesting but not surprising to see the large concentration of manuscript sources in the northwest, considering that its so important in the history and development of this area. These records have been preserved and the sources are there for historians and concerned citizens to know what happened in the past and to learn from those events. 33 MANAGEMENT OF THE SKAGIT COMMERCIAL AND SPORT FISHERIES Mark Schuller Fisheries Biologist Washington Department of Fisheries The Skagit River has one of the largest basins in the Puget Sound. There is a total of 2,989 tributaries and streams connected to the Skagit system ; this includes the Skagit River and the Samish River. Of all the tributaries on the Puget Sound, the Skagit River has 49 percent of them. There are 4,539 miles of water, actual stream mileage in the Skagit system itself. This is 27 percent of that in Puget Sound. That gives a good idea of the size of the Skagit. In general, the Skagit River has about a fifth of the population of all salmon in Puget Sound . Let me give a brief description of the various fish here. In the order they come in to the river , the first you would see is the Chinook salmon . There are three races of Chinook salmon . The spring Chinook comes in earliest, anywhere from mid-April through June 15th are the arbitrary cut-off dates to separate the spring Chinook from summer or fall Chinook. The spring Chinook comes in early, holes up in deep pools in the river, and gets up to the highest tributaries· way up in the forest service land up in the Suiattle drainage and the upper Sauk, in some of our larger tributaries in the Skagit, like Dayton Creek. They like the cold, fast water. They'll spawn from early August to mid-September. They young will hatch out from late January through April. The spring Chinook, unlike summer or fall Chinook, generally spends one year in fresh water before going out to sea . Most Skagit Chinook are four years old, including the spring Chinook which spends one year in fresh water and three in salt water, whereas the summer or fall Chinook will hatch and stay in the river for two or three months and go out at a small size and come back four years later . In all spawning, the male has a hooked nose whereas the female doesn't show that characteristic, so you can easily tell the male from the female. In most of the other salmon there are other characteristics which separate the male from the female, but the Chinook are pretty much the same color, although the males are slightly darker. The next fish that enters the Skagit River is the sockeye salmon. Unlike most of the drainages in Puget Sound , the Skagit River has five species of salmon . Sockeye salmon generally have to have a lake in connection with the stream it enters for spawning and rearing. We have Baker Lake, and Skagit River has always had a sockeye population . The only other big sockeye population is down in Lake Washington. Our sockeye population here is probably only about five percent of what Lake Washington has. Those are the two major sockey runs in the Puget Sound . Most of the large river systems do have resident populations of sockeye that spawn in the rivers . For instance, on the Skagit River last summer, I counted eleven sockeye up towards Newhalem. That was one of the highest counts they had for the river sockeye. In 1972 we had 10,000 sockeye coming back to Baker Lake. Prior to the mid-twenties, before they built the lower Baker River dam, the sockeye had free access to Baker Lake. After they built the dam, the fish couldn't get around it. So there is 34 now an intricate system set up that will haul the sockeye up to an artificial spawning creek at the head end of Baker Lake. In 1959, they built the upper Baker dam also, and this has contributed to decreasing runs of sockeye. It's one thing to raise them in a hatchery, but another thing to get the small fish back through the turbines , through the dams, out to the ocean, and back in again. The sockeye, after it spawns in tributary streams, and the fish hatch out, spend one or two years in fresh water in a lake before going out to salt water. We have tried predicting returns of sockeye a couple of times and we never even come close to what we .feel really comes back. We can hold 4,500 sockeye in the spawning bases and we've only had one year when we've had that many up there. They are one of the prime commercial fish in the world. They are not a sport fish, although in Lake Washington they have developed ways of catching them in the lake. They don't catch too many on sport tackle. These are three and four year old fish when you count the first two years. in fresh water. The next fish to enter the river would be the pink salmon or hump salmon- -humpback, humpy, there are other names for them. They are not a very large fish, maybe eight pounds. It is one of the prime sports fish_1 and it's also a good commercial fish, especially when they come in big runs. In the last few years, however, the pink salmon run has gone way down. They are two year old fish when they come back as adults. They only come back on odd years. The fish enters the river in August, September, and spawns through September and October. The young hatch out and irrunediately go to sea. They are very small when they go out. The next one is the coho or silver salmon. Silver salmon probably have the widest extent of migration time of all the salmon. They may enter the river as early as June and continue entering the river until January, even February. They spawn from November to February. They are generally three year old fish, spending one year in freshwater and two years in salt water. This is one of the prime sport fish in the Puget Sound as well as commercial fish. The silver salmon like to spawn in small tributary streams. It's not uncommon to see them spawning alongside the highway in a drainage ditch. We have problems with various agencies and people with homes in the area who aren't aware that they have salmon in some of their ditching operations. It's probably the one that's affected by logging more than any other salmon. Thef' ll go up as high as they can swim and the time of year they come in they usually hit high water, so they can get up there pretty high. The last fish is the chum salmon. Chum salmon is not a sport fish and very rarely do we ever pick them up on sport gear . It's the last one to come in the river and generally the one that is hit worst by floods. Last year the chum salmon came in right at the peak of the flood. They enter the rivers in October, November and December, and spawn in November 1 December and January. Unlike other salmon, they prefer sluggish sidewater sloughs to spawn in. These are the type of fish that you might see spawning or trying to spawn in a farmer's field with high water during a flood. A number of them were taken out of fields here by Samish Hatchery. We had reports of these fish swimming up the road1 Chum salmon are drastically declining in numbers-. One reason could be stream degradation. The commercial fishery in Canada seems to take quite a few of our chum. Some salmon hatch out and stay in the river for two or three months, more or less like the summer or fall Chinook. They go out to sea 35 at a very small size, not over two inches long. The coho salmon, in the river for a year during its fresh water life, is one of the most voracious eaters, and they pick up the chum salmon when they hatch out. So we're looking at some of our areas where we have been planting coho and trying to draw a correlation between declining chum runs and increased coho plants. For that reason, there are a number of river sections where we aren't going to plant coho anymore. Also, if you get too many coho back from the hatcheries, they are more or less wasted fish. This year we are not going to take any coho eggs at the Samish hatchery. We are going to take them all at the Skagit hatchery. We're going to have reduced coho plants in the Skagit River. I don't believe we are going to plant any more fall Chinook salmon in the Skagit River. We are trying to increase the spring and summer run Chinook now. We'd like to build up the spring and summer runs and phase out the fall Chinooks. The fall run is basically a hatchery run in the first place and we would much rather have that come into the Samish River. Our main management tool as far as trying to make any kind of projection at all on how many fish are coming back are index areas set up on a number of streams and all the major river systems. So we get out every year at spawning time and make a weekly trip to each one of these index areas to count the number of fish that spawn there. Over the years we could get a relative idea of what size run we've got in that area just by these index counts. It's pretty difficult to estimate the number of fish that return, but we do list them as poor, fair, good, and above average. Coho salmon spend one year in fresh water after we have our index counts of all the eggs in the gravel when you look at your sununer flows. This sununer was a pretty wet summer; there should be a good return of coho from this egg hatch in two years. Whereas in a dry sununer, a lot of our coho streams completely dry up and we lose most of the fish that were reared in those streams throughout the year . So we get a fairly good idea of how many coho to expect back from that year class. For the Chinook, besides our index counts, we also take surveys by plane and helicopter flights. The Chinook is a little harder to count because they pick the main river to spawn in and you can't walk along the river and count them like you can on the coho or chum salmon. So the way this has been handled is to count the nests of Chinook salmon from the air. The Chinook scour off the algae and move the rocks around in the river, leaving white areas, called "redds," which you can spot from a plane. Over the years, we get an average of the abundance of salmon from that. We tried to make studies on the exact relationship between the number of redds and the returning adults, and to our amazement, we found that a lot of these redds are filled with eggs. Until the last couple of years there wasn't any work done on how many of these redds actually had eggs in them, and then we found out that about 90 percent did have eggs. It depends on the flows at the time of the year. The Chinook salmon will come in, especially summer Chinook, in July, August and September trying to spawn. At the same time, the dams are fluctuating the river up and down and we may have salmon spawn in a foot of water when it's high and by the next morning those eggs are out of water. Most of our studies have shown that fluctuating dams haven't hurt our egg deposition that much because there is always water down in the gravel where these eggs are. What it has hurt is when the fry emerge 36 from the eggs. They like to hug along the shorelines in two or three inches of water , and when the river drops down they haven't developed the ability to foresee this and swim out to deep water. They actually try to burrow down in the deep rocks and seek moisture . Consequently, we lose thousands of fry each year when they drop the river down. We've got City Light and Puget Power to drop their dams only down to a certain level. The only thing that we really don't have a handle on yet is how fast they can drop those down. They shut off the water pretty quickly. I f they could more gradually decrease the water, the fish could get outt but · when they drop it down suddenly , we lose a lot of fry. I would 1 ike to give you an idea of the economic importance of salmon. As you know, the Skagit Valley is a farming , logging , and fishing area. Logging and farming are the top industries here, and fisheries is right up there with them. According to our average counts over the years, it turns out that in Skagit Bay, where the Chinook and coho are harvested, about 38 percent of the fish taken are taken connnercially, and 62 percent are sport fish . Sports fishing takes a lot of fish. The average sports-caught salmon , regardless of species, is worth $28.00. Based on 1973 data, the total value for Chinook salmon would be about $3,400,000. These figures are based on the potential catch, and as you probably all . know, we may never hit those peak figures, and so these may be unrealistic estimates. But with the coho, we're look at 7 million, close to 8 million dollars worth of fish; pink salmon, as high as 11 million; chrnn salmon, about 2Yz million dollars. So the total value , using the potential figures, is 25 million dollars in just the Skagit system itself. In 1973 was our highest Chinook catch. That was valued at 1.9 million dolars. This is only Skagit Bay; it does not include Samish Bay or Bellingham Bay. The coho catch was 2.6 million. That was in 1974, our best year in the Skagit. And the pink salmon catch was 11 million in 1963, which was a record run. The chum salmon run of 1974 was also the best, valued at $827,000. Sockeye in 1972 was our best run. We had 10,000 fish come back, and that was worth $154,000. That includes the sport and commercial catch. Obviously, the salmon is one of our chief industries here. The management of salmon has been very difficult in the last couple of years. Besides the Boldt decision, management has also been handicapped by the commercial catch of our own trollers out of the Straits, as well as the Canadian catch. The Canadians take quite a few of our Puget Sound fish. A lot of gillnetters here realize some of the problems we're having with trying to have a gillnet season in Puget Sound and at the same time have troll fishery on the outside . Really, I don't know what we're going to do about it. The in- sound commercial f i shery is really taking a beating because by the time the fish get in here , with the allocations to the Indian catch, there's just not enough fish to allocate to in-sound commercial fishermen. It's going to be harder and harder to be able to fish because the Indians have to get their half of the fish. And by the time that they've gone through the trailers, we've lost quite a few fish in Puget Sound. 37 FISHING IN THE REGION--THE NEED FOR COOPERATION Landy James Member, Swinomish Tribal Community I am a history teacher, but I don't profess to know all the history. I have only put together some feelings that are very important to me and, I hope, to you. I hope that I can tie these thoughts together so that we can walk out of here with my theme today of being happy with each other. My topic is the "fisheries of the Skagit by the Indians." I want first of all to make it clear that I look at you as people of this earth. The native people that owned the coastal land in the Pacific coast were not an undeveloped aboriginal population. They had a very high culture which included institutional law and recognition of ownership. This is exemplified many times when they would get into meetings, and they would sit and iron out difficulties, which would take sometimes two days, a week, a month. They had to eat, and what did they eat? Usually it was from the sea; it was so easy to get around here in those days. This was sometimes recorded by our historians as potlatches. The second thought I'd like to leave with you is many written accounts of early settlement of an area included statements like this: "Olie Smith was the first one to eat a clam." That in itself excludes my great-great-grandfather as being a man, as well as others on the coast who were already here. The next thought. Through all of this one thing is maintained by the Indian-his integrity as a man, to understand and have patience with the ways of other men. An acquaintance of mine went fishing because he had to get food for his family; he didn't have enough food on the table, he was hungry, it was wintertime. He was arrested and lost his gear; he didn't demonstrate, he went home and felt sad. But he went home and hoped. · I see many things like this. Can we reach a point where everybody fishes together? The Indian of yesteryear was able to live with nature. I stress again, we were happy then, and I think there are a lot of Indians that are happy today. The final law of a high culture which you and I are a part of is to establish the feeling of working together in a relationship to nature as it exists. In the past, there has been acrimony, but today I feel that we can work together. Now we're at another point in history in which the Indians need to hypothetically say, "we 're at the Nisqually flats." Many tribes were supposed to go to their reservations; their homes were left, their way of life was altered. Many of the people who went together were like you and me today . They didn't know each other. These people found ways to live together. I'm thankful to the people that did save us that we're not totally removed from our culture. We do respect many of the people in our communities . These people waited on their reservations with patience, with many of their values taken away from them; they couldn't speak their language. They were taught the written word, and they were left. There are many books written. I don't want to burden any of you because I know that I've talked to many people since I have left my small reservation to go to other places. We've all struggled. We all have our reasons why we are struggling today. We can help our biologists. We can help our lawmakers do the right thing. There is a way that we can live together and enjoy the things that many of you and your families have 38 enjoyed since you've come to America . I hope that we can do this . In the treaties, we traded a huge resource and land base for a more limited land base. Forgive me, I have to say we don't want dollars, we look at land as being worthwhile. I'll take the hypothetical statement that many of you have probably heard, if you threw a dollar into eternity it comes back dust, if you throw land into eternity, it comes back land. I think there's enough fish to go around. Jl:ow, the Indian children have food, they have clothes, they have many thir.gs from fishing. Fishing isn't an easy job. You've got to work. You get out there and it's dark. You wonder if your net is going to be run over by a freighter, or if it will run into a whirlpool, or catch a bund. of moss and lose the whole thing. I want to thank those responsible for giving life back to my people, because nature gave us fish, nature gave us people. I'm afraid that I'm going to say something wrong, and you're going to go out and say "they're taking the fishing away from my people," or "you're going to take the fishing away from the commercial fisherman," or "you're going to take the fishing away from the man that's out there enjoying himself catching the fish." We must work together to solve problems. There's probably many reasons why we are not getting enough fish here. And if we listen to our biologists and other experts, we can solve such difficulties together. May God bless you. 39 SKAGIT AR!.':A COMHERCIAL FISHERY-A PERSONAL PF.RSPEr.TIVE Dave Milholland, commercial troller and gillnetter The Denartment of Fisheries, after twenty years of nroMises, has finally cataloged the streams in Puget Sound. You will find out that 85% of the streams in Puget Sound are not even named. It's a tremendous report. I certainly would like to recommend it to anybody who's interested at all in Puget Sound. Get this book and p,o through it. I think you will probably want to have it in your library. It has always been a nleasure to discuss the merits of the great Skagit River. The first thing that comes to mind, of course, is the river itself. It's the largest river in Puget Sound. It's also a river. unlike the greater Columbia~ that has all five species of salmon plus the steelhead trout. Citizens opposinp, the propose~ nuclear plant on the Skagit River have asked the cyuestion that no one can answer as it concerns the pink salmon, because no river in the world has a nuclear plant near or attached to a river that has all five species of salmon. Pink salmon in narticular must have three necessary requirements for their successful rehabilitation. One is proper flow on the river at the time the adults return. Number two is oroper temneratures on the spawning areas. And number three is proper temperatures in the estuary. Without all three of these, there will not be a reasonable run of pink salmon to any river. The Skagit River is also of Canadian origin. The river is 162 miles long, and it crosses the border seventy miles east of Blaine, flows south to a point J3 miles away at Newhalem. This stretch of river contains three dams. Below Newhalem the river turns southwest and continues for 16 miles to the community of Harblemount. The Skagit River continues over a broad valley in a southwest direction for aoprox··· iTTJ.ately 10 miles. Throughout this area, streams prevail that have ex-cellent !'Ools and snawning grounds for salmon. From .i us t below the toim of Rockport, the Skagit River flows anproximatelv 12 miles to Concrete where the Baker River flows in from the north. Below Concrete the river flows 31 miles to Sedro Woolley, where it then turns south for 2J miles, then enters the Skagit Ray near Conwav. This means that below the dam above Newhalem there is 96 miles of spawning ground available, and the main stream of the Skagit plus another 375 miles of naturally accessible stream areas. One s~ould not forp,et that there are alJ'llost J,000 (2,989 to be exact) streans of the Skagit Samish basin. They add up to 4,500 miles of stream miles. With this geography it would appear that salmon T>roduction on such a natural system would be healthy, and with modern scientific hreakthroughs there should he runs greater than any time in history. FroM the commercial fisherman's point of view, this is not true. Taken stream hy stream, and area by area, no facilities, projects or programs have been developed within this section to increase salmon production. 1fuy not? It is a position of Puget Sound Gillnetters that raisinr, salmon in wholesale quantities is a duty of the state of Washinp,ton. It is obvious that there can be a large harvest by commercial fishermen; there can also be 40 a successful sports fishery. It is only reasonable to project success year after year of both coho and Chinook salmon by net fishermen even after they've been caught largely by troll catch and sports catch : there is still a successful year on net fishing for coho and Chinook . Project what would happen if a like program was put on chum salmon, which return in their entirety because they will not bite a hook and line. I would be dishonest if I expressed p,reat hope for the immediate future place of salmon on the Skap,it River. I would hope we could get monies for rehabilitation programs from agencies such as the Department of F.conoJTiic Development. The latest program of this type ts being developed on the Columbia River and is set up to include hiring someone with a background in fishery culture, and hiring a working fisherman with knowledge of local fishery problems, a person to construct the rearing ponds, and a secretary. ~Y past exPerience with the Skagit River has been, for the most part, quite pleasant . Native king salmon, far larger than fall Chinook, used to make up a fine fishery on both West Beach, Whidbey Island, and Skagit Bay. Churn salmon, in years like the late fifties were plentiful. Churns return in October, November. The fishermen know exactly when they are going to be here , they know the last week in October is the last week you can gill. There's going to be a good run of salmon at West Beach because in the first two weeks in November, they are going to he in Skagit Bay. Everyone will remember 1963 and a return of pink salmon so large that escapement of 1,190,000 was returned to the river. This was almost three times the average catch of 400,000. Coho salmon are still surplus to the hatchery needs and this is probably the one ray of hope for the future of this great river. There can be no quest~on as to the river's potential . The Japanese, using techniques suggested by our O'l<m fisheries people, have returned chum salmon to the northern island of Akido in numbers ~reater than the dawn of history, planting one hillion eggs a year and returning over 15 million chum salmon a year on a continuing basis. The Canadians point to the Ska~it and say this is a perfect example of how not to treat a river. They are referring, of course, to the power dams that can kill over 100,000 small Chinook in 24 hours. Gravel reMoval and bad forest oractices and other problems have placed this river's nroduction in a less than desir::i.hle position. We must look at our position on the Skagit River production with an eye to Canada. Since 1967 we have included pink salmon under the administ-,..ation of the Sockeye Commission. Because we share equally in the harvest of convention waters with sockeye and pink salmon in odd years, it is important, imperative, I should say, that we do all we can in producing pink salmon, in as much as we do not have the potential with sockeye as they do on the Fraser. The Skagit River, under management of the State Fisheries Depart ment up until 1974, had not documented any failure of the runs to overfishin ?,. Very stringent regulations were the rule rather than the exception. Even thouR,h 450,000 returning pinks in 1961 returned over 10 million pinks in 1963 as catch, a very careful match has been nrogrammed on harvest and a far Ereater than necessary escapement was allotted. I mentioned 1,190,000 fish. And it's sad but true, however , 41 that there has been a flood condition in the areas of the spawning salmon every year since 1963. The fishermen think they have the answer. They feel that this Skagit River has been hurt by civilization and needs some help - spa-vming channels where the eggs could be protected until they hatch, and then transporting them to Skagit Bay. The Japanese timed their release of chum salmon on the temperature rise of the ocean, knowing that nutrients would be more available to the small fish at this time. I have a great love and respect for the Skagit River, and our association, The Puget Sound Gillnetters, have made repeated attem?ts to get funding from the federal government to the Pacific Harine Fisheries Commission. It will take money to do any job, even raising fish. Our members pay an unreasonable duty on imported gillnets of 35% of the value, plus 25¢ a pound. This amounts to over 2 million dollars a year just in Puget Sound. They have asked repeatedly for these monies to be used, along with foreign fines, for the rehabilitation program of salmon. It would seem that with these possibilities for funding, and breakthrough techniques, that the connnercial fisherman should be most happy and enthusiastic for the future. I'm sorry to say this is not the case. For the most part since the Boldt decision, which our members feel is most unfair, illegal, and unworkable, to be able to fish commercially on the Skagit River stocks would be to steal them. There is no time written for the non-Indian fisherman; if the Boldt decision is to stand, our fishermen fishing with nets will never fish from Skagit River stocks again. Rare exceptions might occur, rare exceptions of some stocks might occur, such as interceptions of some stocks such as pink salmon in the outer straits. As far as our fishermen fishing in their usual places, this has been impossible for the last three years. Our fishermen working under the present regulations will not be able to take or to harvest any coho or Chinooks because of the harvests of the trollers or the sportsmen, which is far greater than runs returning. Because of the inclusion of the Fraser River into the ambiguous Boldt decision, this one million or more sockeye salmon which we take yearly are destined for a foreign river, which means that the pink salmon will go to the Indians' catch in their entirety. I find it ironic that for twenty years I never knew there was any difference between Indians and non-Indian commercial fishermen. I was taught how to troll by an Indian, whom I treasure as a friend to this day. It's tragic from my point of view that we can't be more optimistic about the Skagit. We'll always, of course, think that we have some answers on bringing back the return, but there is no hope in the future for the Puget Sound Gillnetters except selling the boat, unless we can tum this Boldt decision around. 42 CHANGES IN SPORT FISHING ON THE RIVER Howard Mill er Skagit County Conunissioner and former steelhead guide I've fished steelhead for about fifty years, and I've guided about twenty-five, but in the last ten years since I've been County Commissioner I don't have much time to fish . Today, though, I took the morning off, and went out fishing in the Skagit . I got my boat out all alone, and just went fishing. I caught a nice cutthroat, around twelve or fourteen inches long. I had a beautiful day. In fact, I ate fried cutthroat tonight. I have fished the Skagit from Canada in the area of where Ross Lake is now. I've fished the Skagit at the mouth. I've fished from Oregon to Alaska. To me, sport fishing is one of the great relaxing things a person can do. I also worked in Alaska one year, and commercially fished, and enjoyed that . I have had one of the top fish executives of New England Fish Company out with me on the river. He's canned millions of salmon, but you should have seen him when he hooked a steelhead. That thing started jumping and leaping around and he just about fainted. He had never caught a fish before! He was amazed at what enjoyment there was to be out on the river. I still get the same thrill of hooking a steelhead that I did the first time I caught one . It's something you don't get over. It's the same way with the trout. I've fished for anything that will bite, just about. Not only is it great to catch the fish and to eat it, it's nice to be out along with nature, to live with nature and see other things around you . The Skagit River is one of the prettiest rivers in the world . I've traveled over about half the world, and I've seen rivers of other countries and on our east coast that are black. We have a beautiful river here. It's great for recreation, and it should be kept that way. I only guided for steelhead. I'd take off three months in the winter and fish; I was doing it most of the time anyway, and the wife got after me and said to quit all this fishing . I said that if I could get paid to go, maybe I could go. And she said that would be all right, so that's the reason I guided. I figured I'd get people from Seattle to pay for my equipment, and we'd have a big time . And we did have a big time, but it's a harder job than you've ever done . When I was fishing I was booked every day of the season , and you go out before daylight, and you're back after dark . It is a hard job, but it's a lot of fun. I remember one fellow who kept looking over the side of the boat . We were fishing up in the area of Rockport and Concrete, and the water was clear . We'd float from one hole to another and he kept looking over the side of the boat. I asked him what he was doing . He said, "I.'m looking at the bottom of the river." I said, "What's unusual about that?" He said, "I've never seen a bottom of a river before . " He had been on the east coast all his life, and he had just seen rivers that were polluted, muddy, and a mess . He had never seen the bottom of a river. He spent most of his day looking at the bottom of that river . It is beautiful going across the shallows, seeing the rocks and all the things . When we did catch a bunch of fish, he was really excited. In fact, he went with 43 me a number of times afterwards . People have come to this area to fish from all over the world . Pve. taken people from Alaska that come down here to steeJhea.d .. The Skagit River is considered the hest steelhead river in the United States . It's so accessible to other areas that there are just a lot of people that get here to fish it . I've had important people here . Most of my fisher -men are out of Seattle. I've had people that later hit the national headlines , like John Erlichman. John fished with me for a number of years, until he got involved in things back east. I've had the governor of the state out . I've had Ted Williams, the ball player. Lee Marvin's been out with me . I've had a lot of people . I remember Ted Williams , especially . Several years ago, we were up around the Marblemount~. Rockport area . We caught fish that day. He was lucky . We'd come to these nice holes and he'd say, "Who owns this pool here?'' I 1 d tell him that nobody owned it, anybody can fish here. He explained that where he'd fished in New Brunswick, where they have the Atlantic s.a lmon , certain people had owned the pools. You had to belong to a club in order to fish . He couldn't believe that it was all open for fishing. Steelhead guiding is not commercial fishing. You have one hook and one line for each person. All you do as a guide is row the boat up and down and let the people fish . The weather in the wintertime is real rough. I've kept a very detailed record over the years that I've fished-~ how many fish we took, the day, how many we landed, what we caught them on. I'd give talks at steelhead clubs in Seattle on my experiences , so my name has gone a bit further than around Sedro Woolley or Skagit County. Game Department people have fished with me. Now, as Commissioner , I have to deal wi th the Game Department and also the Fishery Department in work that we have to do along the streams . I've been acquainted with those people from years gone by, and it helps in what I'm doing now . One thing I might mention to you about a steelhead . It is different than the salmon to the extent it does not die when it spawns. A number of them get back to the salt water and return again . They are a cousin to the Atlantic salmon, which is a fish that does not die at spawning . The steelhead has not been commercially fished since the 1930's. Since steelhead was put on the sports classification, it was not commercially fished until the Boldt decision . In a decision made in the Supreme Court, Judge Douglas wrote before the Boldt decision that the Indians did have the right to commercially fish steelhead. Since that time the nets have gone in the river (I think that was about 1961) , the fishing has dropped down tremendously. It was down to the point that last year I didn't go out . I did get a few fish . I wasn't guiding; I would just go out for my own sport . I got some fish towards the end of April, and the end of March when the nets are out. I made three to four trips without getting a bite . I do know the holes , I can assure you of that . I know about every r ock that a steelhead's been behind, from my years of experience. I recall reading about the history of the floods on the Skagit River. At one time there was a study made, and an Indian was contacted who could remember that as a young boy he was in the flood of around 1815 , which was the largest flood recorded . His tribe was at the area by Rockport. The flood came up in the night very rapidly and drowned some of the people . They lost some of their winter supply of fish. They nearly starved to death . They barely made it through the winter . Now, supposedly, that should not have been a disaster at all, because the steelhead were 44 in the river . Why didn ' t they catch them? Because the s_teelhead is a rather hard fish to catch. They were never very plentiful like the salmon . The steelhead lives in the fresh water for perhaps a :year ~ a year and a half. He is around eight inches long before he migrates. Therefore , he must feed in the food chain in competition with tfte salmon . There are so many salmon in there , little ones growing up , kings- and silvers . But the steelhead had a ha~d time living thr6ugh all that . There never was a great number of steelhead. I had occasion to talk to Margaret Green from Bellingham . She ' s been in my office on two occasions, in 1972 , and the last time I talked with her, April 1, 1974 . I have some notes on this. She is- the chairman of the Samish tribe, so she informed me. She told me that the Indian did not view steelhead as a taboo fish, but they did not utilize the steelhead. Perhaps there is room on the Skagit for everybody to fis-h , The river needs more planning . In streams I had known as a youngster to be loaded with fish, the fish just gradually disappeared . A beaver dam or a log jam would get on it. These streams should be cleared out. I think something like this could be done . Perhaps, with good management , we can get the fishing back. It is a real asset to the valley to have the Skagit River as a sports fishing stream. As a small boy , -I fished with my dad about fifty years ago . Very few people fished salmon in those days . They didn't have the rigging to handle the king salmon . The steelhead, I can remember when I was quite small, was a fighter and if you hooked one you couldn ' t land it anyway. Now that we've got better gear, more and more people use it. The steelhead fishing really took off during the '30's, and after the war it became very popular. More people were guiding. I was the first guide out of Sedro Woolley. It was just more of a hobby with me, although it did turn into a business. Now there are very few guides on the river. The fish runs have dropped down to a very low point. I have spent a lifetime fishing the Skagit. It's a beautiful river, and I've floated it from one end to the other. I hope that I can last another twenty years, and do it that much more. 45 BOATING ON THE RIVER Dr. Phyllis Bultmann Writer and Columnist, Sea Magazine I've done more salt water boating, particularly in this area, than I have river boating. But I've done river boating on a number of rivers and after looking at the Skagit carefully this past weekend I'm quite sure they weren't like it . I'm only sorry that I haven't had a chance to do a lot of boating on the Skagit; I think it would be a very challenging experience . It seems to be one of those rivers that is going down hill with a good deal of persistence and if you don't watch the currents and if you don't know the river, you're in bad shape. I though that since my own personal experience in this area is from the outside . I would approach this subject from the outside; in other words, the river today is being used by pleasure boatmen primarily for a type of boating that is only one facet of the whole picture in pleasure boating. We might start by saying that the field of boating is growing so quickly that people can't keep up with it. There are something like two hundred thousand boats operating on the waters of the inland sea. That's a very conservative figure, there may be many more. That was a figure I came up with after talking with Coast Guard and county and state officials about six months ago, and it is changing very quickly. Some forty million Americans are eng~ged in some kind of boating every year, so it's a growing activity, a growing form of recreation. I think, therefore, that when you look at the Skagit River you might want to say, "Is this growth in pleasure boating going to affect it?" "Is it in the immediate or in the more distant future going to bring a different kind of pleasure boating in?" So my first approach to i t was to go and take a look at both the mouth and the North Fork, and the Dike Road from Phil's Boathouse down in the delta area up to Rockport, and I would have gone on up to Marblemount but the light failed me. A person can go on a main road and suddenly decide to see the river, and take the first road that goes in the direction of the river until the road brings you there, and it always does. The result is that you see it from many different places . Looking at it wasn't enough, and I asked a lot of people about it and one of the questions I raised was, "Is the river crowded by pleasure boatmen at any time?" The gentleman I asked was a sport fisherman who said, "Yes, it's crowded in the height of the steelhead season. Up around Rockport you've got crowding; you've got about as many boats as the river will hold in certain spots." Now this, of course, was not true when I was looking at it because , in fact, I don't suppose we could have chosen a time when the river was lower than it's been this week, and there were not many boats moving around on it. There were a great many of the scow-prowed river boats tied to moorings and there were a number of the little open aluminum boats that are using water jet propulsion, and that takes up four inches of water, so they can scoot pretty well over the top of everything, but I didn't see any actually moving around. The height of the river changes so much from season to season, from month to month, that anyone attempting to boat on it for pleasure is going to have to know it very, very well. And, I suppose, this is going to be the major factor I'll keep coming back to, because the people I know who boat in the San Juans or who go 46 down around Camano Island and into the Gulf Islands would know that it is a very different thing. The primary use of the river for pleasure now is for fishing, but there are a lot of different types of boating going on. There's a small amount of sight seeing, there's the paddlewheel deisel type boat that has been going up and down for over ten years from Conway to Mount Vernon. There are small boats. There are canoes and inflatables, but at present, the primary thing is the sport fisherman, and the interesting thing about this is that the sport fisherman in general is not moving around a lot. He puts his boat in the water, he moves it to a likely spot, anchors or drifts, and you have a quiet kind of use of the river. What about the possibility of other kinds of boating on the river? I thought of looking at it as a possibility and a problem without trying to come anywhere near the question of desirability. It's possible, so far as I can tell, for a trailerable boat, a power cruiser, anything 18 feet to 24 feet with a draft that's not much more than 2 feet deep (and we'll hope that the propeller does go much lower than that), to boat on the Skagit. There are ramps and there are at least half a dozen that I myself walked down and could tell are really excellent for the lauching of boats from a trailer. These are primarily Department of Game ramps, but there were at least two that were private. Phil's Boathouse has one, and there is one at the Steelhead Park in Sedro Woolley, and there are some county ones. I believe the one at Conway, which comes under the bridge from the east side of the river, is a county-maintained clearing place to leave your parked trailer, and then the Rockport one--half a dozen, not more. But there they are and they are approachable by road, and a car can pull a trailer there with a 20 foot boat on it and it can be put into the water. Any of these places which I looked at had adequate depth and you could go quite a little distance. You might go 20 to 25 miles up or down the river, that is, if you don't get stuck on a sand bar, or have a hole punched into the hull with a snag, or get the prop knocked off on one of the gravel bars up in the upper reaches of the river. Anyone who is going to do it that way is going to have to know the river, to learn to read the water surface, be able to tell what the eddies mean, what the different coloration means, be able to anticipate a sand bar or a rough bar and avoid trouble. And the other question was, "Could people come in from the Sound, this great crowd of two hundred thousand people, could some of them find their way into the Skagit for pleasure boating?" And again, it's possible; in fact, a larger boat than the trailer boat could, indeed, come in. Your river guides can bring in a really substantial boat. Some of the vessels that have been up on the river have been actually carrying burdens of logs and heavy cargo, by knowing depths, choosing a time when the river was at a good height, and being navigated by someone who knew how they can work. But I'm talking not about professionals nor about people who have lived on the river all their lives; I'm talking about people like myself who have the boat out on salt water and might decide they'd like to try. And again, it's possible, but they'll have to work at it. I wouldn't try it right now, but I'd like to! You know the feeling--wouldn't it just be beautiful! I know that at least half of the length as you go upstream, you'd be looking straight at Mount Baker, with the changing river on both sides, the beautiful variation of ground cover, trees, 47 shrubbery, the birds, everything--it would be great! But I'd be scared to death. The mouth of the river, as you all know far better than I do, is like an unravelled thread. It's got lots of little mouths. You could come in by the North Fork, you could enter the river over the bar down about the same place you enrer the Swinomish Channel, simply go to the other side of the bar which marks the entrance to the Swinomish Channel. I talked with Mr. Tronsdal about this and he said that his paddle-wheeler draws two feet of water and he wouldn't dream of bringing it in over less than eight feet at tidal surge. He'd come in on an incoming tide and someone else told me that incoming thrust lasts about half an hour, so if you make up your mind you're going to do it, you're going to do it then, and you can't sit out there and look at it and say to yourself, "Is this going to push me onto a sand bar or am I going to make it in around the curve?" If you get to Phil's Boathouse, I think you're in safe waters. Then, are you going up the river, and how are you going to determine where the channel is, or channels? I asked about the use of all the aids that pleasure boatmen rely upon. How about a fathometer? A river that is changing depths often not more than eight feet deep wouldn't register, but if it did register, by the time you knew that you were approaching a shallows you'd be on it, so wipe out the fathometer. What about a lead line? It takes too long; by the time you got it down there and you read the little tabs on it and it says it's four feet of water under you, you're already onto six inches, so that doesn't do it. What about navigational charts? Well, one fellow said his father had one, he thought. At Phil's Boathouse, I saw aerial photographs, .which are the biggest help; you can look and get an idea, but the point is that a navigational chart is useful when the floor of the water beneath you stays more or less constant--if the floor of the river shifts a great deal, and a river like the Skagit does shift, a navigational chart isn't going to help you much. I understand that there has been at various times different sets of guides to the channel which cease to be accurate because the channel shifts and it really is hardly worthwhile to try. Well, no depth finder, no chart, so the sort of person who might come in and do pleasure boating on that scale is going to be the one who likes a challenge. He is also going to be a fellow who can risk--can affort to risk--several thousand dollars of valuable machinery on the chance that he won't hit a sand bar. I think that while it is possible, it's not too likely. The type of pleasure boating that I think one can rule out almost entirely is the sailboat . The keel is going to rule it out. There is one exception and that is a very small, car-top type of sailboat. I was talking before this meeting began with a.gentleman here who said the only problem with the small one, the kind that has no keel and is only four feet or six feet, a dinghy with a sail, is that the river. is dangerous because it moves rapidly, and you can't control a boat that is so lightweight--you've got cold water, fast water, it's really not the best idea in the world. This brings us to other types of small boats, and I have deliberately been talking about the boat you own and operate yourself. Pleasure boating is often done with a guide, with someone who knows how and who helps you or does the actual navigating, and that is an entirely different thing. I'm talking about the kind of pleasure boating where a fellow thinks that he's reasonably good on water, and he comes in and tries it with his own equipment. Well, canoers have been doing it and probably 48 will continue to do so. There are inflatables of all sizes.. Some are safer than others. There's the whole problem of controlling the small light-weight boat after you get on the water. I had one conversation with a man at Rockport who said if you brougfit in a p0wer cruiser you'd probably have 150 horsepower or more at your disposal and I said, "Oh, but on a river like this you wouldn't want to go fast , would you?" And that was apparently a serious mistake, because he said, "What you need to do sometimes is go as fast as you can , to plane, to get your boat up so that it isn't going to go aground on something you see right ahead of you . " Now, what would this kind of pleasure boating do to the present pleasure boating? There isn't much question but what it would be a handicap to the sports fisherman . There is also the fact that there are a couple of months, particularly in the spring , when there aren't as many sport fishermen on the river, when the seasons are not as ideal for sport fishing. All of these things are question marks for the future. I come to my conclusion, the conclusion that I reached after all of the talking I have done and all of the looking and asking myself if I'd like to try it, which is that while it's possible for all sorts. of pleasure craft to come on to the Skagit and to bring people who would enjoy it, both people from the Skagit Valley and people from other parts of the state, I think it is not very probable that they'll do so in larger numbers, just because it's too hard to do, just because they'd have to study it quite a while. Now, that may happen and it may not, but that's the picture as well as I can put it. 49 BIRD WATCHING IN THE VALLEY Tracy Tivel, Biologist Washington State Department of Game Water fowl are very important in this county. The eagles are very dependent upon the river, and there are other birds of interest, too. The Game Department has published a map; I was the author and illustrator, and it was made for the public. It's not for someone who is an ornithological whiz. On one side it has a map of just about the whole county with three inserts on the other side. They are all numbered and they have the basic kind of birds that occur in that area. On the back is an illustration of the time, the location, and the things you can expect at these locations. It is a handy item to have. Also, it has a check list so that one can mark the birds found in the field. Hopefully, the people of Skagit County and other counties will enjoy and use the map. This is probably the best area to go bird watching in the United States. When you're bird watching, I suggest that you get one of these books: Birds of North America, by Robbins, or one by Roger Tory Peterson, A Field Guide to Western Birds. There are several kinds of birds in-the county, several groups. Our most important birds in the county as far as our recreation is concerned are our waterfowl, and that's our ducks, geese, swans. They're our moneymaking birds in terms of recreation. Last year 82,870 ducks were harvested out of this county, and 3,630 geese, so you can see there is a considerable amount of hunting that goes on in this area. This is a prime hunting area for the state. Trumpeter swans are very rare. They were on the endangered species list for quite some time, but they have come back in population. In 1968, the Game Department discovered whistler swans in the area by Barney Lake, but when one bird was accidentally shot by a hunter and was dissected (that's the crucial way of telling the swans apart; you have to actually destroy them to examine them), we realized that there are fortysix trumpeter swans in Skagit County. Now, swans are extrmeely dependent and traditional in their area. Barney Lake is right behind Skagit Valley College; it is in an area that has farmhouse surrounding it. These birds have been using the lake for years and are not adaptable enough to move to a new area, so if we continue to develop this area we're going to lose these swans completely from the county. This is one of the few areas in the United States in which there are trumpeter swans. It is really unique that they're here. The Bay Slough is used extensively when we get very cold periods here and Barney Lake freezes up. Trumpeter swans haven't made it in yet this year; they came in pretty early last year, October 20. Swans stay in family groups . They are ver dependent on one another. An adult male swan is called a cob, the female a pen, and the juvenile bird a cygnet. They stay in family groups, although they also are part of a big flock. They are a very distinct family group and are a monogamous bird, although if their mate dies they will find a new mate. The cygnets stay gray until they are almost a year old. When they are three years old they are sexually mature and will find a mate and start their own family group. Whistler swans can be found by the Skagit flats when they graze; they are typical grazing birds. We thought that the trumpeter swans were whistlers for a long time because they were seen in the field. That is 50 very odd for trumpeter swans.; in fact , there is no record of their doing it anywhere else in the United States or Canada . Trumpeter swans graze only in this county . It is probably due to the fact that the area has changed agriculturally and they had to find some alternative, so they started grazing a bit . We have Canada geese , and these are also caU ed honkers . There are eleven subd i v is ions of t he Canada geese, but we don't get them all here. They are quite a bit like swans, and keep tightl;r together . If you shoot a bird, the other ones tend to hang around and wait for the guy that's shot! In Padilla Bay , we have ee l grass, which l ooks like seaweed, and that's what black brants depend on- - eighty perc~1t of their diet is eel grass. This is the only watering ground for black brant in Washington. Most of the black brant go to Mexico and California during the winter, but these stay here . They are truly beautiful, but a lot of people don't consider them geese . Snow geese come down from an island north of Siberia . They are Russian birds and come down every year; in fact, last week we had a hundred birds and this week there are fifty thousand, so you can see that there are a lot. When it is quiet at night, you can hear them--I think it is really a majestic sound . This valley has a very special group of snow geese that stay here and no other place. These birds are from Skagit County , they are our wintering birds and are one of the most northerly wintering groups of snow geese. A lot of people shoot swans, thinking they are snow geese, but snow geese are smaller and their necks are shorter than swans . When it gets cold, their legs curl up in the middle in a ball to keep them warm . They are very sociable , too. One more thing about the snow goose , for anyone who hunts up here who might be wondering why they cut the bag limit back down. The snow goose winters in Wrangell Island . They' r e very dependent on the weather and for several years they had extremely bad weather. When there is bad weather , the geese just don't lay any eggs. This year we did have a lot coming in, although they don't reach the breeding point until they are three years old, so we won't see their effect for three years . They'll come back, though. The mallard duck, a dabbling duck , is one that feeds in shallow water on seeds and little organisms , and this is our number-one harvest duck . It's an excellent bird to eat . They are very easy to pick out and very tasty . A typical female mallard doesn't have the pretty coloring the fellow does, but she's got the wing tip like his. We have a few mallards that nest here, but most of the ducks go up to Canada or Alaska and in the Arctic to do their breeding . Also, the valley has little black birds that a lot of people think are ducks . They're not ducks , they're coots , or a lot of people call them mud hens. They are not a duck at all; they have separate toes that have little lobes on them . You have probably all seen wood ducks; you see them in the slough, usually prior to hunting season . They're really a gun-shy bird . As soon as the hunting starts they virtually disappear . A lot of fishermen will pay a pretty good price to get hold of one of the drake's pelts, for the feathers. These birds are cavity dwellers . We put a lot of boxes up here due to the timber harvesting in the area. The birds have 51 to have cavities to nest in , so we put out boxes , and it seems to do quite a bit for the population. They usually have about n i ne little birds . Another bird that really fascinates me is the canvasback , a diving duck. Diving ducks are a lot like dabbling ducks, but different ! They have their legs in the center of their bodies, but diving ducks ' legs are almost by their tails. They can hardly walk at all when they are on land. They do a lot of deep diving and they eat a lot of fish . We find them in salt water; they are marine-oriented. The canvasback is severely on the decline, and it's really a shame . It's highly affected by the hunting, that's why the bag limit is way down, but it's also being affected by destruction and drought; it's very susceptible to any drought conditions. It is a late nester, and by the time it comes along to nest all the pot holes have dried up. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next few years we're not allowed to shoot canvasbacks at all . Redheads are often confused with canvasbacks . They look quite a bit alike , but the bill on the canvasback is like a straight angle Roman nose, while the redhead has a scooped-out looking face. We get eagles that we believe come in from Canada . We never put any radio packs on any of these birds, so we have no idea exactly where they come from . We get 150 birds that come through the valley and winter in the area of Marblemount and Rockport . That is a substantial number of eagles. The northern bald eagle is not as endangered or threatened as the southern bald eagle, and they look identical , but they don't cross ranges . They are very dependent on the river, depending on the fish. They are a scavenger bird, and it's going to be interesting to see if , with the increase in dams and the decrease in salmon, these birds are going to make it. I would think that these birds will migrate out of here. We have a few resident birds, but most of them are migrants that will just leave. One of our resident birds lives right out by Clear Lake, between Clear Lake and Mud Lake . Last year, one of the adults was shot, and I don't know if another mate has been found . Their nests are very substantial; you can climb up to see them and really crawl up there; it's pretty comfortable! Another bird along the river you see quite often is the osprey, and it's a fishing bird . It picks up fish and carries them around like a torpedo. They are not a really common bird, but they're around - -beautiful birds. The best environmental barometer that we have is the prairie falcon, extremely rare . The federal government has started a recovery team on the west side of the Cascades . This bird is highly sensitive to any changes in the environment at all and will indicate it, usually, before anything else will . Few remain , so environmentalists want us to raise some of these birds and reintroduce them into their historical areas . The Samish flats area has some of the rarest, most impressive birds in the world. We have quite a problem with falcons coming in and capturing other birds. Some game birds you might see in the Valley include the blue grouse. A lot of people might think it's an owl , but it's a blue grouse . They set up little territories . Another one is the ruffed grouse . They are very hard birds to hunt . A lot of people think pheasants are natives but that's not true at all--they are brought in from Asia . Chinese ringnecked pheasants are raised by the Game Department and released. We have very few birds that are establishing themselves on the west side . We 52 used to have a fairly good population, but changes in agriculture, especially in harvesting corn, have taken a toll. We used to just take the corn tops and leave the stubble, and all that stuff was a fantastic pheasant hatching area. But now we cut it all the way down to the ground and also cut the pheasants; they don't have anything to hide in. On the east side, we still have quite a few birds, but we have pretty much lost any of our feral birds over here. Iowa is having the same problem. We have a lot of barn owls out on the Skagit flats. A very nocturnal bird, they are rarely seen in the daytime. One of the few citings of barred owls in Skagit County is where they're going to build the nuclear plant. Snowy owls come here when times get tough in Alaska and Canada. They are marginal birds that need a good area, so they are forced to come down here to feed and winter, then they migrate back. A lot of these birds are shot by duck hunters because the birds will sit on posts and when someone drops a duck the owl goes out and picks it up for dinner, and so the duck hunter shoots the owl. Another owl is the pygmy owl--a tiny owl; he's out in the daytime hunting a lot. He gives a little whistle. In the summer, sometimes, you hear a sound, "peeeeeer, peeer," and it will go on and on. This is the common night hawk. He's an insect feeder, a summer visitor. Other summer visitors are little hummingbirds. We often wonder what the increase in the hummingbird population has been up here with everybody using hummingbird feeders. I'm sure this has affected it quite a bit. The piliated woodpecker is probably the largest woodpecker in North America (and the reason I'm saying, "probably," is because there is one other woodpecker in North America that hasn't been seen for twenty years, so it's not known if it's still alive, and that's the ivorybilled woodpecker in Texas). The piliated woodpecker drills square holes. As long as logging goes on in Skagit County , the old snags and stumps should be left for birds that are cavity dwellers and birds that need to pick up insects; otherwise, we're going to lose these birds, and they need an extremely large habitat. The Forest Service is now saving the snags; in fact, they just got sued by the Department of Natural Resources for saving too many! The Lewis' woodpecker is also an insect eater. He is very rare. Another woodpecker is the common flicker, and they are also insect feeders and cavity dwellers. These woodpeckers are nice because they drill a lot of holes and give a lot of other birds a home to live in; that's another reason why the snags are important. I'm sure you're all familiar with barn swallows. They usually have about three sets of young. And the robin--a lot of people mystify me up here: Everybody knows a robin, but some keep saying there's a winter robin that lives up here and I say, "There's no such thing. You have one robin all year long." They kept on telling me about the winter robin; "it changes clothes," they said, and they were talking about the varied thrush. It's not a robin at all. They'll tell you when your filberts are ready to harvest, and they'll never take a hollow filbert; they shake every one, and they'll eat every one that they can, too. Common crows are federally protected now, so you'll notice the crow population around here is really on the rise. They are really sneaky, very smart birds. The largest song bird in North Amer i ca (not too much of a song bird-not a very good voice) is the cedar waxwing. You can usually see them 53 in part-logged areas and around rivers. They're migrant, too. And the little warblers are migrants, as are western meadowlarks; I'm sure you've seen them on posts calling out-'-they're pretty noisy. There is a red-winged blackbird which brings colonies that a lot of people think lead to the degradation of the grainfields out here, but usually they're insect feeders and they are not a severe problem at all. A lot of people will shoot blackbirds. You can legally shoot starlings, but most people can't tell a black starling from a blackbird, and so there are a lot of blackbirds harvested. A towhee is a happy little bird; you can "squeak" him out of the bushes. If you want to squeak birds out of the bushes to see them, sit down, be quiet, lick the back of your hand, and make a "kissy" noise, and they'll all come down to see what's going on. Towhees are very curious. Everyone here who has a bird feeder has fed them thousands and thousands of pounds of food. I know they almost drove me into bankruptcy last year! 54 COMMERCIAL RECREATION DEVELOPMENT ON THE RIVER--! George TheodoratusReal tor and Developer , Concrete I haven't always been a developer. I just got into the business here about five years ago. Some of the developments are pretty bad, there are a few that are fair, and I decided that there are going to be developments built along the Skagit River, but they should be built with some quality to them. They should be built to protect the environment and still make them usable for people. People still do like to get to stay in the outdoors and have their very own place. The federal parks, the state parks, the county parks are all very good, they all have their place, but there is also a place for private ownership. We're going into architectural control and protection of the shoreline as seen from the river. In just about every one of the past developments, there were no controls at all, so the first thing a person does i t to go in and cut all the trees and clear everything back. Then, the first time the river comes up, it washes half his property away and he wonders why. So, in our development, we've gone to great care to protect the river. We have setbacks from the high water line. You can't cut brush, growth, or any trees without getting a permit from a committee. Buyers want to protect it, also. They enjoy walking down by the river, looking at the water, and just relaxing. I would say of all the lots we've sold, there are probably only about two people who have boats that will even put them on the river. These are not the boating-type people. There are a lot of people that enjoy floating, but these are mostly people that enjoy getting out, relaxing, and getting away from the tensions of the world. They want privacy, their own place; they can have pride in ownership. One of the most important criteria for a development, to make it successful in the recreational end, is to have it on a body of water someplace. People like the vistas of looking out over the water, and they like to go down by it, look at it and enjoy it. You'll find that a private development really does not destroy the environment if it is done well, any more than a county, state, or a federal park. In private development, you probably don't get quite as much use of the river as you would in publicly owned parks and you have the same people using them all the time so they probably take a little bit better care, but this is not necessarily always true either. In our county, especially in the upper river area , twenty years ago , nobody wanted anything down along the river; it was something that nobody really cared about, and all of a sudden it's become a valuable asset and everybody seems to want it, but they don't r eally want to pay the price. They want to stop everybody else from using their property and this is a shame. If the public wants a piece of property they should go in and buy it. The tax base is very important in the upper valley. We do not have industry as in the lower valley, and if we place a lot of the land along the river into public ownership , this will decrease the tax base. I hope if the federal government does this that they will come up with some sort of alternative to he lp support our schoo ls and other f acilities . I 'm not saying I'm for or against the wild and scenic river, because I think in a way it would be good. But I think we must also have private areas. SS COMMERCIAL RECREATION DEVELOPMENT ON THE RIVER--II David Button Northwest Float Trips, Sedro Wcolley When I first became interested in float trips, I went down the Colorado River, which is the grandaddy of them all. I went with Georgia White; she's 75 years old and she started floating in 1S144. Up until 1965, only 4,500 people had floated through the Grand Canyon. Last summer, the National Park Service had to put a limit on peop1 e going down the Grand Canyon, and they took 16,000 down--that's the limit, because of the impact on the environment and the congestion on the r i ver. There are twenty-six outfitters on the river through the Grand Canyon. With that in mind, to find out how it was set up, I came back home and taught school in Newhalem, got a permit from the National Park Service here three years ago and floated my own float trip from Newhalem to Baker, and that first summer I took down 600 people. That was Expo '74 year, so we had a lot of traffic going across the North Cross-state Highway. This was an idea whose time had come. Since the North Cross-state Highway has been built and the National Park has been put in, we have the potential for a lot of people. Now I have a partner and we've expanded to the Sauk River and tributaries of the Skagit. We float Bacon Creek and the Cascade River. We float some sections that are really tricky; you need to be in an inflatable to do it safely. Canoers attempt it, and we run a wrecking service; we pull them out . In the upper stretch of the river, there are canoers tipping over all the time. That doesn't mean we're not susceptible to accidents. Being a professional guide, I've been fortunate not to have one myself. I have rented my rafts and I've had a coqple of tip-overs, which can be serious if they get hung up on a rock or log, because you have a swift current up there and there is a danger involved. I do not recommend that peopl e just get a raft and go down. The rivers change with the flood stage in the spring. Even in the later winter, when we get a lot of rain, I recommend going with a professional guide. We have a variety of white water and wildlife . Down near Rockport and Darrington, the valley levels out. There you have canoers and fishermen. Up where we are, we're the only ones. These rafts are 20 feet long; they are equipped with frames and ten-foot oars. If you line up in the right place, you can float through the rapids pretty safely. Down lower are the tributaries filling the river up so there is more water. The Sauk doesn't have any dams on it , so flow is controlled strictly by the rain and the snow level. The Skagit is just the opposite. It has three major dams that control the flow. If you know the river and have the right equipment, it's safer than driving a car down to Seattle. In fact, the only accident I've had was a logging truck hitting my car when I was on the way to the river! We are going into overnight trips now. We have a three - day trip, so we carry our gear right with us, sleeping bags and food. The raft we've been using has an aluminum frame which is attached with seat belts- - just regular seat belts hooked to big buckles. The guide sits behind. The raft has six compartments, so if I were to hit a snag or rock and puncture it, I'd still have five more compartments that would keep it floating. The oars are made of ash, which make them a little harder to break, and 56 we all wear life jackets. I like the people up front for weight purposes; also, then I can see where they are so if they fall off l can grab them .. I have had some of them fall in . Sometimes they weren ' t hanging on and they kind of catapult out of there. They have kind of a funny look , but the life jackets are Coast Guard approved and they hold you right up , so it's just a matter of being a little cold and wet. I've taken people 82 years old on trips down the rapids, and I'm working with a lot of senior citizens. That's my best market, because they have the time and the money. A lot of people want to go hunting ., but I don't like to shoot the game along the bank . There's a lot of it : we see coyotes, deer , bear, otter, and beaver, and we see the eagle , the blue heron , the osprey , a few hawks, and the common duck. Lower, the river spreads out like a lake; it's placid, yet it's still swift . It looks safe, but it has some submerged obstacles in it, and it can capsize you so you've got to be on your toes in regards to the whole trip . 57 AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF LOGGING IN THE SKAGIT VALLEY Margaret Willis, Member Skagit County Historical Society I decided, in talking about this subject, to ask you to try to picture this country when the white man began moving in: a country of waterways, of salt marshes, of swamps, of high ground covered with trees--everything which was above the regular water level was covered with trees and underbrush, some of the trees so huge that they simply overwhelmed the people who came in. The only way to get around the country was by water. Travel through the woods was impossible. There were a few open spaces here and there--an open space on March's Point, for example. The open spaces have not been adequately explained, but they were calledprairies and there was a prairie on March's Point, there was Sauk Prairie up on the Sauk River , and there was Warner's Prairie. When the white settlers came in, the trees were their enemies . It was not the loggers who came in first, it was men who wanted farms, and what could you do with those awful trees? Of course, one thing you can do is just burn them, and there was a lot of cutting and burning to clear the ground. However, most of the first settlement was made by diking of marshes. Now i t looks like an awful job when you think of building those saltwater dikes because they couldn't use horses or oxen because the ground was too soft. They did it with wheelbarrows running on a plank and shovels with which they dug up mud into the wheelbarrows and took them over to the dikes and let them drain. The amount of human muscle that went into those saltwater dikes is incredible, but that was easier than getting rid of the trees. The first logging was on the islands, where you could cut down a tree and roll it into the water. Don't minimize how dangerous a tree is. It's dangerous as you cut it down ; when you manage to cut it into sections, you have to get behind them and you roll them and they may roll on you, instead. The numberofaccidents was great. However, they cut the trees on the islands and floated them to the first mills. And the first mills were also water ports. The major one around here was Utsaladdy on Camano Island. Most of the early logs went to Utsaladdy, and most of the lumber coming back was from Utsaladdy. As they logged the islands and the mills grew, mills and logging began along the Skagit River--the north fork and the south fork, close to the river--and along Bayview just about the same time, right after the logging on the islands of Fidalgo and Whidbey. As logging began, more people who were loggers by profession came in. They came from New Brunswick, Maine, and Wiscons in; they brought with them the loggers' tricks from those areas. One of the tricks, for example, they used on the Samish River in the logging. The Samish wouldn't run enough water , ordinarily, to float the logs down to the mouth, so they built wooden dams to hold back water and then when they had the l ogs at the bank all ready to go down they released the water in what they called a slash, and the water came rushing down and floated the logs down to the sound. That's an old New England loggers' trick. I did not realize that at first, I thought they invented it out here, but I was reading something about it the other 58 day and found that it had been used long ago in Maine . However , l oggers ,had to be very inventive to handle those gigantic trees , because , remember, it was human power , oxen , who were pretty refractory animals and pretty dumb and very slow, horses that came in later and were far more teachable and useful and wor ked [aster , but none of the mechanical power that we think of today . So the job with the logs was always to get them to water because t hen you could tow them with a row boat if you needed to. A man cut the log on his farm and got into the river and towed it to Utsaladdy and got some money for it . The logs along the river s and str eams , close by , were the first to be logged . Logging became a profession for some men and a quick way of accumulating money to buy land for many others . There were logging camps along the north fork and the south fork of the Skagit River by the 1880's . When they cut through the log jams just below and above Mount Vernon, they began logging on the upper river. They couldn't log above Mount Vernon before that because they couldn't get the timber out . Incidentally , the men who removed the jams hoped to salvage a lot of the logs ' in the jam and get them to Utsaladdy and get some money for them, but they found the timber was so badly strained by the jamming that very little of it was salable . A terrific amount of effort went into cutting out those jams, but there was a channel through both jams by 1880 and then logging began along the banks of the upper river . As soon as logging had moved up the river , little mills sprang up all along the river. I came to Mount Vernon in 1905 , and in my childhood the river was lined with mills. There were mills at Avon, Sedro Woolley, up the river at Lyman , and Concrete. A mill was fairly easy to set up . It didn't have a great deal of equipment; it had saws and it had some way of making power for the saws . They set up a mill on Samish Island that was supposed to run with wind power . There was a mill at Dewey that ran with water power from the outlet of Lake Campbell, believe it or not. I've always found that very difficult to believe , but I've seen pictures of it, so I know it existed . There a water - powered mill at Minker's Landing up the river. The mills created new markets for the timber and it became more profitable to get the timber out . Tows of logs brought down the river meant opportunities for more mills in places like Anacortes. In the 1890's , Anacortes had mills along the whole waterfront from Weaverling Spit past Capsante out on the Guemes Channel . The Anacortes Lumber and Box Company stood on the isthmus between downtown Anacortes and Capsante, spreading right across it . As the railroads began coming in after 1890, they built more logging railroads to bring the logs out of the woods and a railroad or a tram road could bring logs for a much greater distance than a skid road could . A skid road is a really difficult proposition, and the amount of ingenuity the loggers used in getting out the timber was impressive . On these skid roads , sections of logs were fastened together and the leading one was chipped up onthebottom so it wouldn ' t catch on the logs . A small boy, or a man, with a pot of grease, went ahead and brushed fish-.oil on the logs, and the teams of oxen or horses pulled them to a place where they could be rolled into the water . Then , after they were rolled into the water, they usually were made into rafts of logs which the sternwheelers could tow to whatever mill was the destination . Maneuvering a whole big boom of logs down around all the bends of the Skagit, dodging the sand bars , dodging the snags, really took skill. 59 The back of the log boom always had a heavy chain on it which dragged. That kept it from catching up with the boat and ramming it. The boat al ways backed down the river, not forward ~ because the .· waves made by the sternwhee l would have interfered wi t h the boom of logs or. washed some of them out . So the river boat captains backed miles· and miles and miles down around all the bends and bars in the Skagit , towing huge rafts of logs, and blowing their whistles in plenty of time so the bridges would open . There weren ' t too many bridges for a long time . The firs t bridge was at Mount Vernon in 1893 and then came others around 1900 . Then there was the Great Northern Railway Bridge at Riverside, too, after 1890, so there were bridges that had to be opened . The tides had to be considered at the mouth of the river; river piloting was a highly skilled oocupation . As time went on,the little mills along the river died out . Everybody always remarked ab.out one extraordinary circumstance. Of course ~ fires were common--forest fires and mill fires. · It was really very interesting that the mills always caught fire , jus·t about the time they ceased to be profitable! Arson was almost impossible to prove , but it certainly was a common suspicion everywhere. On the question of forest fires, incidentally, let me say that as people moved into the woods the naturally-caused fires became a small part of the whole picture and the careless fires became a major thing . There are always naturally- caused fires from lightning , which usually strikes high up and starts a fire which burns up to the top of a mountain and burns its.elf out or else starts and then is washed away by the thunder storm which follows. But there were also fires from the logging engines, from the cookhouses, from the careless persons in the woods , from the prospectors, from people clearing land before there were any such things as fire permits and then just burning t he slashing. It was estimated on an informed basis, in 1902, that more timber had been burned in fires than had been logged. I remember one summer , I think it was 1914, when the forest fires were so heavy that all summer long , you could look directly at the sun . It was a dry summer, the sun shown all the time, but the smoke was· so thick that it was a screen between you and the sun , and it didn't hurt your eyes at all to stare right into the mid-day sun . The smoke was so thick that it interfered wi th the ripening of the crops that year . The record be comes better after 1915when there was more fire prevention and regulation and more care to see that the logging locomotives did not set fires . As railways came into the country , and you can take 1890 as the date, there was a movement of the logging away from the water , because i t was possible to build logging railroads which could bring in the timber from a greater distance . There was a logging railroad from Bayview to North Avon and a mill at North Avon . There was a logging railroad from Clear Lake to the Skagit River in Mount Vernon . They dumped the logs right where the Lions Park is now , just above that . There were logging railroads all over the county , but the chief influence on railroad logging was the Northern Pacific line (which has been recently torn up) which ran along the lakes : Lake McMurray, Big Lake , Clear Lake , Sedro Woolley, and then, of course , the other route to Seattle , because that line made it possible to log all those hills back there and get the lumber into the lakes instead of the river, then get the finished lumber out by rail to North Dakota and South Dakota, where they were just beginning to build up 60 the farms . There was a tremendous demand for lumber in all the prairie states . The railroads around 1920 began giving way to the log trucks . Road building machinery had been invented and was beginning to be widely used. Bulldozers were available and it proved to be cheaper to bulldoz e r oads all around the mountain-sides and use log trucks than it was to build a railroad or to use the flume . There was one flume which was five miles long, built out of wooden timbers with a stream running down it . There were lots of flumes made out of lumber with water running down them and you could shoot the logs down into the streams or you could shoot the shingle bolts . Cutting shingle bolts followed the logging of big stands of cedar . I used to wonder why they cut stumps so high up. Of course, the reason that they did it was because the tree was broader at the base and they had to get above the bulge in the tree if they were going to drag it over the skid roads. But that left huge cedar stumps, so it became quite profitable and important, since cedar decays so slowly, to cut those cedar stumps for shingle bolts later. Many men bought loggedoff land and went quite a distance toward paying the cost of clearing it by cutting the shingle bolts . There were many people, too , who cut shingle bolts during the winter up along the rivers, when they couldn't farm, and piled them next to the stream to send them down to the mill in the spring freshet; then , sometimes , the spring freshet came in and washed them away before they ever got arrangements made with the mills! There are many sad stories of the shingle bolts going down like that. The great "hay" days of the mills along the lakes came between 1905 and 1920 , and it is just amazing to see pictures of the Clear Lake Lumber Company. There was a tremendous mill at Clear Lake, an equally tremendous mill at Big Lake, a bi g mill at McMurray, another big one at Mount Vernon, but nothing equal to the Clear Lake, or the Big Lake mil l s. Why did they vanish? They wer e dependent on the timber that was in the immediate vicinity of those lakes and they were cut off from timber which was over ridges and distance. So those mills have vanished without a trace . The mills in Anacortes are not what they once were . Anacortes has a more solidly based mill potential than any of these along the river or the in-land lakes. But the trucks now often roll out of the woods and down I-5 and take their logs to Everett. 61 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LAND TRANSPORTATION IN THE SKAGIT VALLEY: A BRIEF OVERVIEW Daniel E. Turbeville, Map Cu:rator Department of Geography and Regional Planning Western Washington State College The Skagit River enters the state of Washington at the 49th parallel, flowing south from the interior of British Columbia. Some twenty miles south of the Canadian border the river bends to the southwest, then, at a point below Marblemount, turns west for the final descent to sea level. The Skagit enters Puget Sound through a broad delta on Skagit Bay. The floodplain of the Skagit River--that part of the valley floor flat enough to encourage the development of land transportation--begins about four miles north of Marblemount. From here the valley progressively widens downriver to a point near Sedro Woolley, where it opens on to the broad Skagit Flats. North of Burlington the floodplain of the Skagit is joined by that of the much smaller Samish River. Early Trails and Logging Roads The Skagit River is the largest stream between the Fraser and the Columbia. The east - west orientation of the river arid certain of its tributaries have made their valleys a natural route from Puget Sound to the Okanogan Valley and the interior of both Washington and British Columbia . Indian tribes from both sides of the Cascade Mountains used parts of the Skagit Valley for hunting and fishing, and many primitive trails laced the area. Skagit Indians and early white settlers lived in fear of raids by tribes from Eastern Washington, particularly from over Cascade Pass, but such attacks are not believed to have occurred in historical times. In addition to the Skagit Valley's importance as an east-west transportation link, the western margin paralleling the shoreline of Puget Sound also provided early residents with a north-south transportation corridor. Indian movement along this axis was almost entirely by water, however, since the entire valley floor was heavily forested. It was not until the arrival of the railroads in the 1890's that the north-south axis of the Skagit Valley assumed its present significance. The earliest white settlements in the Skagit Valley were agricultural in nature. Because of the heavy timber, open areas called "prairies" were settled and cultivated first. As the movement of settlers eastward up the valley began, timber was cleared and by the late 1860's, the first signs of a lumber industry appeared. The earliest mills were located either .on deep water, such as the Daniel Dingwall mill on Samish Island (1867), or on navigable parts of the river like the mill at Fir (1869) and the William Gage mill just below Mount Vernon (1875). Logs for these early mills were floated or dragged over short lengths of corduroy road- - the first "improved roads" in the area. Upriver logging was delayed for many years by large logjams both above and below Mount Vernon. Corduroy roads were built along the Skagit for several miles beyond the upriver jam, but traveling on them was slow and difficult. Although by 1879 it was possible for steamboats to reach Sedro Woolley through holes blasted in the logjams, it was not until 1889 that they were completely removed. After this, the network of corduroy 62 roads expanded rapidly away from the river into new stands of virgin timber. By the end of 1889 there were seventeen logging camps between Mount Vernon and Lyman, each with its own road network. Development of Wagon Roads The construction of improved roads which could be negotiated by horsedrawn wagons began in the agricultural areas of the western part of the Skagit Valley which had gradually been cleared of timber and where the flatness of the terrain encouraged such development. Farmers in the region downriver from Burlington and Mount Vernon were instrumental in building wagon roads in order to get their produce to market. Most of these early wagon roads were quite crude, and in rainy weather they turned into impassable quagmires. Despite these drawbacks, however, wagon roads proliferated, and by the 1880's they covered the lower delta with a rectangular pattern which reflected the township and range system of land ownership. In 1893 the first wagon bridge over the Skagit River was constructed at Mount Vernon, further increasing that city's importance as a regional transportation center. Upriver from Sedro Woolley the impetus for the construction of improved wagon roads came not from the demands of farmers, but because of mineral discoveries along the upper Skagit and its tributaries . Prospectors had been venturing upriver from the big logjams in search of gold and silver since the Van Bokkelin party of 1858. In 1874, a large coal seam was discovered near Hamilton. Twenty tons were mined and shipped downriver by canoe, but transportation costs proved .insurmountable and the operation ceased for the time being to await the arrival of a railroad. The discovery of gold along Ruby Creek in 1879 led to increased agitation for a wagon road to the upper Skagit. By the summer of 1880 the upper valley contained several thousand miners, some of whom had found the tortuous pack trail beyond Marblemount so bad that they came down to the goldfields from Hope, British Columbia, instead. The "Miner's Trail," as it was called, began at Goodell's Landing (just below the present site of Newhalem), which was the head of canoe navigation. A short distance beyond Goodell's Landing the trail met a sheer cliff at the Devil's Corner, and the next four miles--known as the "Goat Trail"--was very dangerous, especially fur pack animals. In 1892 a bridge was built here ·' but it washed out the following year. A group of miners seeking to improve the trail through the Devil's Corner in 1895 even enlisted the aid of Anacortes buisnessmen to raise money for blasting powder, but this attempt was only partially successful. The Cascade Wagon Road The difficulties encountered by miners in the upper Skagit Valley and the potential for future mineral discoveries led the Washington Board of State Road Commissioners in 1895 to appropriate $30,000 for the construction of a wagon road from Fairhaven (South Bellingham) to the Colville Indian Reservation in the Okanogan Valley. Of this sum, $4,000 was for a road from the Whatcom County line to Blanchard; this would link existing Whatcom and Skagit County wagon roads for the first time. For the construction of a wagon road from Marblemount to the confluence of the Twisp and Methow Rivers (site of the present town of Twisp), $20,000 was earmarked, while the remaining $6 ,000 was set aside for the eastern segment of the road. Two possible routes were considered by the Road Commissioners for 63 the difficult mountain section of the wagon road: 1) Slate Creek Route--up the Skagit from Marblemount to Ruby Creek, up Ruby Creek to Canyon Creek, up Canyon Creek to Slate Creek and its north fork, over Harts Pass and down Rattlesnake Creek to the Twisp Riyer. 2) Cascade Pass Route--up the Cascade River from Marblemount, over Cascade Pass, down the Stehekin River to Bridge Creek, up Bridge Creek and over Twisp Pass, then down the Twisp River. After extensive surveys, the latter route was deemed the more feasible, and worked commenced in the spring of 1896 . The road was completed in 1897, but the only portion of the trans-Cascade segment that was actually passable by loaded wagons was the first 12 miles east from Marblemount. The rest of the Cascade Wagon Road was in reality only another pack trail. The route was notorious for its steep grades: 20 percent over Cascade Pass, and 16 percent at Twisp Pass. During the same summer the road was completed, floodwaters ripped away many of the new bridges. The Chuckanut portion of the new wagon road also caused problems due to the expense of blasting a roadw~y across the face of Chuckanut Mountain north of Blanchard. The original appropriation for this segment proved inadequate and Skagit County had to put in another $6,000. Citizens of the towns of Whatcom, Fairhaven and residents of the Samish Flats contributed another $1,000. The completed road was twelve feet wide and was considered a "masterpiece of moden engineering." Parts of this road are still in use today as Chuckanut Drive. Steam Railroads in the Skagit Valley The era of the steam railroad on Puget Sound began in the late 1880's as transcontinental railroads sought terminal locations in the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, the rugged topography of the North Cascades determined that the crossing of the mountains would be further south, at Snoqualmie Pass and Stevens Pass. As a result, the Skagit Valley's primary rail axis became the north-south corridor connecting Vancouver, British Columbia, with Seattle and Tacoma. East-west branch lines were built to feed into the main north-south line. The Skagit Valley's first railroad was the Seattle &Northern, which in 1890 built a 34-mile line from Anacortes to Hamilton. The primary purpose of the Seattle & Northern was to open up the timber and mineral resources in the previously inaccessible upper part of the valley. Railroad magnate James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railroad was a backer of the Fairhaven & Southern Railroad, which soon afterward built a 41-mile line from Blaine to Sedro Woolley, plus a 16-mile branch to Cokedale. This railroad was completed in 1891. Hill also backed the construction of the Seattle &Montana Railroad, which ran a line from Seattle to Burlington, where it connected to the Fairhaven &Southern via a 5-mile stretch of the Seattle & Northern's tracks. The completion of the Seattle &Montana Railroad in 1891 insured Hill an adequate choice of terminal facilities when his main line reached Puget Sound. But soon after, the selection of Seattle as the Great Northern terminus instead of any of the northern Puget Sound cities dealt a crushing blow to the economy of the Skagit Valley . Between 1898 and 1902 these smaller railroads were acquired outright 64 by the Great Northern. In 1900, following its purchase of the Seattle & Northern, the Great Northern extended the line 19 miles east to Sauk. The following year another 2 . 4-mile section was added, taking the line to Rockport. In 1902 the Fairhaven &Southern portion of the Great Northern was rerouted between Fairhaven and Belleville . The new route, called the "Chuckanut Cutoff , " followed the shoreline of Chuckanut and Samish Bays. Parts of the old Fairhaven &Southern were used as a logging railroad by the Lake Whatcom Lumber Company until 1917, when the rails were finally removed . The forerunner of the Northern Pacific system arrived in the Skagit Valley in 1891, when the Seattle, Lakeshore &Eastern Railroad built an 88.5-mile line from Seattle to Sumas. This line ran several miles east of the Great Northern's north- south line, passing by Big Lake, Clear Lake and through Sedro Woolley. The arrival of the Settle, Lakeshore & Eastern in Sedro Woolley made the town a busy railroad center, with three different lines intersecting in the middle of the downtown area. In an 1896 reorganization, the Seattle, Lakeshore &Eastern became the Seattle & International Railroad. In 1901 the line was incorporated into the Northern Pacific Railroad. With the penetration of the Skagit Valley beyond Sedro Wolley by the Seattle & Northern Railroad in 1890, there followed a proliferation of small logging railroads. A complete discussion of these logging railroads is beyond the scope of this paper. It will suffice to say that they served in largely the same manner as today's logging roads: they were built rapidly, used heavily, and when no longer needed, pulled up and used elsewhere. Probably the best known of the logging lines was the Puget Sound & Baker River Railroad, built in 1905 from Burlington to Hamilton. This road was later acquired by Seattle City Light and extended as far as Newhalem. For a time after the turn of the century it seemed that the dream of a railroad over the North Cascades might yet come true, as the Bellingham Bay & British Columbia Railroad began surveys for a line between Bellingham and Spokane . The route finally decided upon was via the North Fork of the Nooksack River, over Whatcom Pass, across the Skagit River and up Ruby Creek to Harts Pass, then down the Twisp River . Unfortunately, the tremendous expense of such a route was beyond the line's capabilities, and actual work was never begun. The Bellingham Bay &British Columbia became part of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul &Pacific Railroad in 1912. More than any other subsequent form of transportation, the steam railroads changed the face of the Skagit Valley by making possible the systematic exploitation of the region's rich mineral and timber resources, creating new industries and employment and providing the basis for the present-day pattern of settlement . On the broad western margin of the valley, the railroads made possible the expansion of what had originally been subsistence agriculture into intensive commercial agriculture. Soon after the arrival of the railroads, Skagit Valley farm products , including potatoes, fruit and, later, dairy and poultry products, were joining timber, coal and cement on trains bound for markets outside of western Washington. Electric Railways Although the steam railroads provided the Skagit Valley with passenger as well as freight service, there existed a need for more local service of both types than the steam railroads could eocnomically provide. 65 The answer to this problem was provided by the introduction in 1912 of an electric interurban railway line. The electric streetcar, or trolley, had been tested and its value proven in over two decades of use in urban transit. After the turn of the century, larger versions of the electric streetcar , called interurbans, began intercity operations. The first electric interurban railway in Skagit County--and very nearly in the entire United States--was the Fidalgo City &Anacortes Electric Railway. This was actually a small streetcar line rather than a true interurban, and was built in 1891 to connect Anacortes with Fidalgo City (now Dewey Beach) on Deception Pass . The line had insufficient power to operate properly, and only ran once. The entire plan was later proven to have been a scheme by Anacortes businessmen to secure a large land grant along the right of way. In 19ll, after twenty years of agitation by Skagit Valley farmers and Bellingham merchants, the Stone &Webster Corporation of Boston, which operated the street railway systems of Bellingham, Everett and Tacoma, built a 27.5-mile interurban line from Bellingham to Mount Vernon, with a 5-mile branch line from Burlington to Sedro Woolley. The Pacific Northwest Traction Company, as the interurban was called, offered hourly service and over thirty stops on this line, as well as night freight service. The latter included the transport of milk, oysters, berries and vegetables as well as the handling of freight cars of the Great Northern, Northern Pacific and Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific lines . The outbreak of the First World War in Europe during the summer of 1914 dried up sources of investment capital and Pacific Northwest Traction was unable to complete the planned link of its Bellingham-Mount Vernon and Seattle-Everett interurbans. Improved internal combustion engine technology hastened by the war and changing public taste greatly increased the numbers of cars and trucks in competition with the interurban. By 1920 trucks had cut deeply into the line's freight revenue-especially the fresh milk business--and competition from jitneys and buses began toerodepassenger profits. In 1926, the Sedro Woolley branch line was replaced by bus service, and in 1930 the remainder of the railway suffered the same fate. The electric railway era in the Skagit Valley, although relatively brief, helped pave the way for the coming transition from rail to automobile transportation. It greatly boosted the dairy industry in particular by allowing farmers to get fresh milk to the dairies at Burlington and Mount Vernon in only hours. Perhaps even more important, it allowed rural residents of the area regular and inexpensive access to local towns for shopping and social visits. Modern Roads and Highways It was not long after the invention of the automobile that pressure began mounting for improved roads in the Skagit Valley. Road construction was greatly facilitated by easy access to paving materials, especially gravel and cement. By 1913, the major city streets of Burlington, Mount Vernon and Sedro Woolley had all been paved, followed soon after by the paving of the gravel roads between them. After World War I a surplus of labor and a backlog of paving projects were responsible for an ambitious road improvement program. The valley floor--especially the broad western portion--was literally laced with, first gravel, then paved "farm to market" roads. The electric railway contributed to its own collapse by bringing 66 cement and gravel from Concrete and Bellingham to the Skagit Flats for the construction of the Pacific Highway, the area's first modern all weather road. By the mid-1920's, the Pacific Highway (later U. S.99) was paved from Everett to Bellingham . There was also a "first class" paved road from Mount Vernon to Burlington and Sedro Woolley . Elsewhere, things weren't so good : the road from Anacortes to Whitney was gravel, while from Whitney into Mount Vernon was a paved secondary road . There was also a paved secondary road to Lyman from Sedro Woolley, but beyond to Marblemount it remained a gravel road. During the 1930's the Public Works Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps were granted piecemeal funds to do work on the Cascade River Road east of Marblemount, extending it to its present terminus. Hydroelectric projects on the upper Skagit beyond Marblemount caused the improvement of the road through the old Devil's Corner, and by the early 19SO's the pavement reached Newhalem. The end of World War II brought about increased interest in a transCascade highway. Work was finally begun in 1960 on such a road, using the Ruby Creek-Granite Creek-Early Winters Creek route explored over a century before . The North Cascades Highway was officially opened in 1972. The north-south corridor at the western end of the Skagit Valley is now served by Interstate 5, successor to the old U.S . 99. This modern superhighway uses part of the route pioneered by the old· Fairhaven & Southern Railroad through the valley containing Friday Creek, Lake Samish and Chuckanut Creek. Old U.S. 99--the original Pacific Highway-has been relegated to secondary status as a scenic route, today's Chuckanut Drive. Another secondary state highway worthy of note is Washington Route 9, which connects Sumas with Seattle. This highway began as a gravel road which paralleled the tracks of the Northern Pacific Railroad . It was paved during the 1930's, and is today a secondary state highway. Conclusion The present day transportation network of the Skagit Valley can only be understood by considering the succession of transportation modes and routes outlined here. The residents of the valley have, over the last few generations, wrought what would be termed miracles by their forebears, given the seemingly insurmountable barriers that faced them . It should be noted that not only such engineering marvels as the North Cascades Highway but even the simplest farm to market roads are monuments to the tenacity of our predecessors here and their desire for improved transportation . 67 OF MAN, TIME, AND A RIVER: THE SKAGIT RIVER, HOW SHOULD IT BE USED? A series of eight meetings open to the public to discuss the interrelationships of the river and cultures of the Skagit Valley. Each will be held on a Thursday evening beginning at 7:30 p.m., and have been scheduled as follows: THE RIVER OF LONG AGO September 9, 1976 LaVenture School, Mount Vernon Communications and commerce along the river. Land distribution, etc. *** NAVIGATION OF THE RIVER September 16, 1976 High School, Little Theatre, Sedro Woolley Dug-outs to riverboats, the steamboat era and navigation today. Clearing and dredging of the river. How it supported life along the river to meet the needs of the people. CULTURAL AND ESTHETIC INFLUENCES OF THE RIVER Octobur 7, 1976 Laventure School, Mount Vernon Folklore, music, crafts, visual arts, education, and the River. *** FISHING ON THE RIVER October 14, 1976 High School Auditorillll, La Conner Connnercial and sport fishing. Native American fishing practices. Coming of commercial fishing, traps, and canneries. Current fishing problems. *** *** THE FARMER AND THE RIVER THE RIVER, RECREATION, AND POPULATION September 23, 1976 High School Cafetorium, Burlington Agricultural development--drainage, reclamation and flood control. Farming and dairy production/ development and problems. *** THE RIVER AS AN ENERGY SOURCE September 30, 1976 High School Cafeteria, Concrete Early dams and flood control. The role of Seattle Power and Light. Industrial requirements and residential needs. *** October 2 , 1976 High School, Little Theatre, Sedro Woolley Early recreation and development, conunercial recreation development. Wild river concept, etc. *** LOGGING, TRANSPORTATION, AND THE RIVER October 28, 1976 Jr. High School Cafeteria, Anacortes Logging and the river, development of transportation (river, roads, railroads, and air). Relationship with Forest Service and other governmental agencies. *** THIS PROGRAM IS SUPPORTED IN PART BY THE WASHINGTON COMMISSION FOR THE HUMANITIES, AN AGENCY OF THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES.
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