The Miner Who Came Home: A Snohomish Native Rejects the Yukon for the Slough
After years of chasing gold in British Columbia and finding only poverty, Neil McMillan returns to his old partner's side on Ehey Slough to start a ranch, proving that local timber is more valuable than distant dreams.
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.
Mr. James McMillan, a gentleman who was formerly engaged in the legging business on Ehey slough, and who was at one time a partner of Harry Mills, but who left this county about one year ago, has lately returned; and having purchased from his former partner (Mr. Mills) between five and six hundred acres of timber lands on Ehey slough, intends to resume business and permanently settle in the county. Mr. McMillan has been most of the time in the Cassiar mines and other parts of British Columbia; and failing to find anything that suited him, after a year's search, now thinks our county good enough for him for life.
Mr. McMillan’s opinion of the mines is this: that there are a few rich paying claims, but they are exceedingly scarce and hard to find. Some claims have paid as high as $100 a day while most of the balance yield barely wages, and many not that even. Wages are from $8 to $10 a day. The season is very short, barely three months. Provisions of all kinds are high, the winters long, cold and dreary. Those only can make anything who have a high yielding claim, and they are few indeed. Mr. McMillan will go at once to Ehey slough, to his old place and commence ranching.
His timber lands being subject to a lease.
This 1897 account of a failed gold rusher returning home mirrors the modern economic reality where resource extraction booms often leave behind depleted communities, forcing residents to pivot to more stable local industries like timber or tech. It highlights the enduring tension in Snohomish between the allure of 'get rich quick' external opportunities and the pragmatic stability of local land ownership.
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