The Fight Over the Road Through the Cascades

There is a big meeting tonight over the location of the state wagon road across the Cascade range, and a lively time is promised when the committee gets down to the matter. The contest is between the Cascade Pass route, by way of Marblemount, and the Slate Creek route for a road across the mountains to Lake Chelan and the Methow.

The bill for the road, presented a few days ago by Senator Hutchinson, contemplates almost an air line, while the Slate Creek route runs north nearly to the British Columbia boundary. It provides that the road shall begin, the same as the Slate Creek road, at the Cascade and Skagit rivers, thence to Cascade, or Skagit, Pass, twenty-four miles. Of this, ten miles already possess a trail over which two horsemen can ride abreast, the grade being only sixty feet to the mile for twelve miles and a gentle grade to the foot of the summit. From the summit of the Cascades down the Stehekin River to Bridge Creek, where it would connect with the Lake Chelan road, is nine miles; along Bridge Creek to the Twisp and down to the Methow River, where it connects with the old survey of the state wagon road, is about fifteen miles. This makes a road from Marblemount, at the Skagit and Cascade rivers, to the Methow River east of the Cascade range only about forty-eight miles in length, while the Slate Creek route between the same points is about double that distance.

The Cascade Pass is easy of access. The Great Northern had surveyed it as a possible route to the Sound, but finally abandoned it owing to the estimated cost of $73,000 a mile for twenty miles for building the road along Lake Chelan. Perhaps one of the greatest advantages to the state by the Cascade Pass is the fact that it would give easy access to the center of the state, which would not be the case with the Slate Creek route. The Cascade route also opens a mining district that is beyond all comparison larger and richer in all of the precious metals than the Slate Creek trail, and as soon as it was completed there would be a large tonnage taken out immediately, going both east and west. Senator Hutchinson even claims there is a better trail today over the route proposed by his road than the state would have by the Slate Creek road if the $33,000 asked for its construction was expended upon it, while $25,000 would make the present Cascade Pass trail a good wagon road that would accommodate all traffic.

It is also alleged that the Slate Creek route is urged in the interest of the newly discovered Slate Creek mining claims, a number of which are owned, it is said, by friends of persons who were at work surveying the state wagon road last summer.