The Boomtown in the Clouds

Monte Cristo, Aug. 28, 1892. About two months since, this camp could be reached by pony trail only. After that, it was pony-pack trains on trails so steep that only a cayuse could climb. The road from Getchell has been through about a month, but now that the roads are through, the work of development will go on rapidly. Almost the first team through brought the sawmill. A river craft had carried it up the Skagit to Sauk City, and there it lay. Teamsters hauled up the engine, but to get the big boiler over fifty miles of ugly roads was a task of another color. The oxen went down to Sauk, guided by Tom Frost, and the boiler came back with them. Now from down in the gulch the mill is heard at work. In another fortnight, up the hillside will run a planked and graded main street. Like all the valleys in the western slope of the Cascades, that of the south fork of the Sauk is densely wooded. Every mile of the railroad is gained only at the expense of huge quantities of dynamite and giant powder. It will take something between three and four years to develop a mining prospect of such wonderful promise as Monte Cristo. The site for the smelter at Everett has been chosen and the work of construction begun. There are at present between 75 and 100 men employed in the mines and on the townsite. The present indications are that the railroad will be through and trains running by the 1st of December.