Steamboats and Gold Dreams on the Skagit
A traveler recounts the frantic race of riverboats up the Skagit and the sudden discovery of gold nuggets high above the river, fueling hopes for a new frontier.
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.
We tied up at Mount Vernon last night, with the Josephine alongside and fastened to us. At 4 A.M. today the Josephine's whistle awoke me, and I heard her getting under way. That mate's whistle awoke our watchman, whose duty it was to have had the fires roaring in the furnace an hour before. So we were 45 minutes, wasting time minute by minute—and each one seemed an hour or less—getting up power enough to start up stream. But by and by we passed the Josephine, and to gratify your curiosity, eager no doubt by this time, we reached this city [Sedro-Woolley/Mount Vernon area] and tied up. It has been a day of unalloyed pleasure, save a brief five minutes when the Josephine ran alongside, and touching our guards in the way the British boast he used when knocking the chip off his antagonist's shoulder, challenged the swift Skagit to a trial of speed. We accepted, and won by our gallant pioneer boat.
It is not too superlative to say that this is a noble river, with miles of richest Nile bottom lands on either side, only awaiting the axe of the settler to be transformed into homes of plenty and contentment. When you stop for a moment and see that the Skagit receives only insignificant ailments from its mouth up to this city, you can understand why it is as lordly as it is at its mouth. By the way, one of the Gellerson boys at Mount Vernon showed me a dozen little nuggets running all the way from a dollar to five dollars, which he unearthed out of the rocks 500 feet above the river—way up the hillside, mind. Well, you ask, what of that? Just this: If this is so, then the gold-field is rich and extensive. The little chunks were water-worn like other placer gold, and therefore the eroding influence must have been deep and extended. But as we have only come up here to 'go a-fishing,' as Dan Webster said, why it don't matter much to me. But to you people, it matters a great deal.
“It is not too superlative to say that this is a noble river, with miles of richest Nile bottom lands on either side, only awaiting the axe of the settler to be transformed into homes of plenty and contentment.”
In 1880, the Skagit River was the primary industrial artery for the region, with steamboat captains and prospectors vying for dominance over the 'noble' river. Today, the Skagit remains a lifeline, though the focus has shifted from gold panning to salmon conservation and agricultural preservation in the face of modern development pressures.
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