The Forgotten Trail to Eastern Washington

The project of building a trail across the mountains from some point on the Snohomish river was first broached by Mr. Cady, one of the pioneer settlers on this river. He, together with some of his neighbors, about the year 1862, surveyed a route across the Cascades from where the town of Snohomish now stands to Wenatchee Lake, on the Wenatchee river in Eastern Washington. About the same time, a good and practicable pack trail was built on the survey made, and but little work would be required to put it in good shape again.

This trail leaves Snohomish city and, after following the course of the Snohomish river for a short distance, strikes eastwardly into the woods for some 20 miles, when it crosses the Sultan river a few miles above its confluence with the Skykomish river, then follows the Skykomish, though at some distance from it, till it reaches Wallace river, which it crosses near the mouth; it follows the south fork of the Skykomish to its source, passing within a mile or so of the head of the south fork of Stillaguamish, and leaving the south fork of the Skagit but a few miles to the north; thence across the summit of the range and down the Wenatchee to the lake. The trail located by Cady was a good pack trail in every particular, no heavy grades, and running through a country rich in mineral wealth, and destined some day—and that not far remote—to play an important role in the mining exhibit in the Northwest. The south fork of the Skykomish is known to abound in quartz leads of undoubted richness and value; all that is needed to make the mountains reverberate with the clang and thud of the stamp mill is the opening of this route and the introduction of men skilled in mining.