The Skagit's Buried Treasure
A survey of the booming coal prospects near the Skagit River, and the physical toll extracted from the pioneers who first uncovered them.
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.
Prospectors have spent the last two years thoroughly searching the mountains in the Skagit valley. Mr. Everett first discovered the coal near the works of the Skagit Coal Company. Shortly after he made the discovery, a boulder rolled down the mountain and broke his leg, finally compelling him to have it amputated just below the knee. Messrs. Stevens and Everett, along with Mr. Scott, are among the most enterprising, go-ahead pioneers and explorers of the Skagit. The mountain is three thousand feet high, bounded on the north and east sides by the river and Day Creek, and on the west by a strip of low land running from the Skagit to the Stillaguamish river. Some day, when a prosperous town is built up in this vicinity with its iron furnaces and machine shops, we may see a railroad joining this fertile land between the Skagit, Stillaguamish, and Snohomish, some ten to twenty miles from salt water.
“Messrs. Stevens and Everett are now among the most enterprising, go-ahead pioneers and explorers of the Skagit.”
This article captures the 19th-century 'growth machine' mentality that defined Washington State's development. While the envisioned coal-fueled industrial city never materialized in this specific mountain corridor, the boosterism and the romanticization of 'pioneers' sacrificing their bodies for resource extraction remain key elements of the region's historical mythology.
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