The Log Jam That Held Back the Skagit

The Skagit drains the southern portion of Whatcom County, reaching the Sound by two mouths called the North and South forks. Skagit City, a new town recently surveyed and platted, is situated near the bend of the delta or forks of the Skagit, and within the forks. It is located upon bottom land above the reach of freshets. Edward McAlpine is proprietor. At present most of the business is done adjoining to but off from the platted town site. Skagit City is at present the business center of the river.

The first settler on the river was Wm. H. Sartwell, who stopped there while on the Snohomish, then settled on the Skagit in February 1863. By the spring of 1865 there were five settlers: Wm. H. Sartwell, Wm. Alexander, Wm. Johnson, J. V. Abbott, and Edward McAlpine. T. R. Jones brought the first family to the river; they settled in 1870. By 1871 there were six families; in 1872 there were fifteen; now there are about fifty families and some three hundred white people on the river, not including the Swinomish flats. About 1,200 acres are under cultivation.

No logging had ever been conducted on the North Fork. For several years camps have been in operation near the mouth of the South Fork, but this year is the first that regular logging has been carried on any distance up river. Now there are four camps on the South Fork and two more situated near the jam.

The jam is the peculiar feature of the river. The lower end is about two miles above Skagit City. It is divided into a lower and upper jam. The lower jam is about 1,400 feet long. Then the river is clear for about three-quarters of a mile to the upper jam, which is over half a mile long. This jam acts as a check upon the settlement of one of the finest regions in the Territory. Only two families and some fifteen people have settled above the jam. All of the settlements are crowded within the delta or along the forks of the river, while a magnificent country along a fine navigable stream for over sixty miles above the jam is prevented from being opened to settlement and cultivation—to say nothing of the numerous mines of the best coal found on the Sound, or the great amount of the finest timber that the jam prevents coming into market. Logging can be carried on only to a limited extent until the jam is removed, as the high land is too far back from the river to haul lumber from; even the most favorable townsite, Skagit City, is situated on the bottom land near the forks because there is no high land on the river below the jam. Perhaps no river in this Territory has greater facilities for settlement, provided the jam was removed.

The Legislature has been petitioned; bills have been introduced into Congress seeking appropriations for its removal. Engineers and others have examined the jam and estimated that it would cost about $15,000 to remove it, but so far no effective aid has been secured. Despairing of outside aid, at various times parties have gone to work to see what could be done at home. Some two years ago John Campbell and others associated themselves together for the purpose of cutting a passage around the jam by clearing sloughs filled with jams close beside the river, hoping to be repaid by logs they could secure from the upper jam and leave a channel large enough for a steamer to pass up river. Their means were exhausted before they accomplished their object.

Last winter, about February 1, three men from the Snohomish—Marvin Minniek, Daniel McDonald and John Quirk—together with Joseph Wilson of the Skagit, started to work to cut a channel large enough for all purposes of navigation through the center of the upper and lower jams. Mr. Campbell is zealously assisting them by all means in his power. These men evidently mean business. They began with no flourish of trumpets nor expensive materials. They are men of experience and practical working talent in water as well as land logging. The tools they use are very few, cheap and simple, but very effective. They have pledged their all to the enterprise. They have cut and cleared away some two or three hundred feet of the lower jam and loosened it so that when the June freshets come it will probably go out, leaving the main jam a half-mile of cutting to be cut through. These men hope to be remunerated in part by the logs they get out of the jam, suitable for saw logs, and in default of government aid—of which the prospect is slight—they expect that when they have demonstrated to all interested that they are the men fit to succeed in the enterprise, sufficient support will be donated by the coal companies and the logging and agricultural interests of the Sound connected with that river to carry them through. These logs will probably only partly pay them. In the meantime their work is liable to stop for lack of credit or want of funds to carry it farther. The whole Sound region owes it to the enterprise and public spirit of these men to see that they are sustained and that they do not fail for lack of support. We understand they ask no donations to be made, or support subscribed, except that it be upon the condition that they clear a passage sufficient for all purposes of navigation through the whole upper and lower jams before they receive a penny of the amount subscribed. Upon the faith of this subscription, if made soon, they can easily procure all necessary supplies. The balance, if any is left, will go to them. Upon such terms as these, it seems there ought to be relief at once over the whole Sound. They will get some $3,000 worth of logs out of the jam, thus making them even upon this noble enterprise.

To those who have witnessed such a sight the jam is well worthy of a visit. The river here is probably from 400 to 1,300 feet wide and very deep. A great part of the jam is composed of timber that scarcely ever rots. It is the accumulation of ages; we have no means of calculating how long. It looks as permanent as the forests beside it. It was probably caused by big trees and other driftwood lodging in a bend or upper end of a slough or channel, gradually, or perhaps in a single freshet, closing the whole channel. In the jam are found trees of all sizes, from fir, cedar and spruce ten feet in diameter and three hundred feet long down to the merest brushwood. These are wedged and jammed together in every conceivable form. The parts projecting out of the water are usually covered with long pendant moss, while from the rotten wood or earth attached to roots or logs may be seen bushes or alder trees alive and growing as well as if they were upon solid land, in place of over twenty-five feet of water flowing beneath them. It is a sight once seen not soon to be forgotten.

The first store on the river was started by Mr. Campbell some five years ago at Skagit City. About one year ago he sold out to the energetic and enterprising gentleman Mr. Daniel E. Gage, who now owns the store there. Since Mr. D. E. Gage bought out the store he has nearly or quite doubled the business formerly done there. He now is cramped for room and will build a new and more commodious store building this season.

The most immediate and pressing want of the river is regular steamboat communication with Seattle and other points on the Sound. The steamer Zephyr has been up this river and tied up to the jam. A steamer like the Zephyr or Fanny Lake could from the start have full freights monthly from Seattle, stopping at Mukilteo, Tulalip, Hatt's Landing, Centreville near the mouth of the Stillaguamish, thence passing eastward of Camano Island, and up the South Fork of the Skagit to Skagit City. They would have nearly a direct route, would supply about a dozen logging camps and furnish direct steam communication to over six hundred persons who now are wholly without any. As soon as harvest time, if not before, there would be full freight for semi-monthly if not weekly trips. After the first year or two it would be as paying a route as the Snohomish river trade, which now employs three steamers per week. Mr. Gage offers to pay full freight for the first trip to induce them to adopt the route. We should think the self-interest of steamboat men would induce them to try this route without delay.