The Brutal Trail to the Stillaguamish
A survey team mapping a new route through the wilderness describes a 80-hour stretch without water and the discovery of a 'white pine' 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.
In accordance with the general wish of most of the settlers of the Snohomish and Stillaguamish river valleys, the board of County Commissioners appointed a surveyor and viewers to view out, locate and survey a county road connecting the two parts of the county, heretofore separated by an almost impassable wilderness. The viewers were: Chas. Neymier, E. S. Gregory, and William A. Clark, with W. F. Brown as surveyor. About two weeks ago, this party with D. Bartlett and J. Stafford as chainmen, started from the Pill Chuck creek to make the preliminary examination.
The point of commencement was at the end of the Snohomish city and Pill Chuck road. The parties were thirteen days before they reached Stanwood and eight days from the Pill Chuck to the Stillaguamish prairies. It is about 11 miles from their starting point to the Prairies in an airline; but they traveled about 20 miles in examining a route for a road. One half day out from Pill Chuck, they struck dry high land. They had no water to drink or cook with from noon of the second day out, or 84 hours thereafter. Once after that, they were 80 hours without water. It had been a heavily timbered region; but a windfall and fire passed over it 10 years or more ago. They passed through some very fine farming land. On the Stillaguamish side at the divide, they passed for one mile through a White Pine forest. The Stillaguamish Prairie is occupied by men by the name of Kent and another by the name of Lynch. It contains about 200 acres: a nice spring runs through it. It will make two first class dairy farms.
“They had no water to drink or cook with from noon of the second day out, or 84 hours thereafter. Once after that, they were 80 hours without water.”
This 1878 account captures the extreme isolation that defined Snohomish County before modern infrastructure connected its river valleys. While today's residents navigate the congested SR 9 or I-5 corridors, the sheer physical struggle of these early surveyors reminds us how recently the 'wilderness' was effectively a barrier to civic and agricultural development.
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