The Unsung Pioneers of the Skagit River
When federal funds for regional infrastructure failed to materialize, a group of Seattle loggers took matters into their own hands to open the Skagit River to navigation.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Our Delegate succeeded by persistent solicitation in getting an order for the survey of the Skagit river and an estimate of the cost of clearing out the jams near the mouth of the same. The survey was made and the cost estimated—if we remember correctly—at $20,000, but no appropriation was made for that purpose. Half a dozen loggers clubbed together, and by their own labor, aided by contributions of supplies to the amount of a few hundred dollars, cleared out those jams and opened the river to steamboat navigation for 70 miles through a section before inaccessible, full as rich as that bordering upon the Willamette river, upon the improvement of which Congress expends tens of thousands of dollars annually. With the opening of the Skagit gold mines, the travel and traffic on that river will greatly exceed that of the Willamette, and yet Congress refuses to reimburse the poor men who opened it to navigation. Are these things right towards citizens of the United States deprived of a voice in the Government?
“Half a dozen loggers clubbed together, and by their own labor... cleared out those jams and opened the river to steamboat navigation.”
The frustration over Washington Territory being overlooked by federal infrastructure while paying into the system echoes the ongoing struggle for equitable state and federal investment in Pacific Northwest transit and environmental cleanup. Then, as now, the promise of economic booms—like the Skagit gold rush—often relied on the grit of local laborers who were left to absorb the costs of development themselves.
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