Forging the Frontier: The Perilous Push for a Stillaguamish Road

On Monday, September 9th, William P. P. Gray, the surveyor; Charles McAlway; B. S. Gregory; and William Clark, headed by D. P. Bartlett and Frank Kent, left this place for the final survey of this road. During the next six days, they traversed the region starting from the northwest corner of Section Three, in Township Twenty-Nine North, of Range Six East, Willamette Meridian, being on the north line of said township, and distant from Snohomish City about nine miles. The party reached the prairies on Sunday evening, six days after starting. They report finding an excellent route for a road all the way across; had no trouble from lack of water, and no serious obstacles that would prevent the opening of a good wagon road the whole of the way at a reasonable expense. Much of the way there was open burns, where a man could ride on horseback. The starting point was on a clean, good grazing land, on the divide between Pilchuck Creek valley and the streams flowing into the outlet of Lake Stevens. There is excellent farming land around these streams, easier cleared than on this river, and equally as good land. In fact, all the way across they find plenty of good farming land, easily cleared; plenty of beaver meadows, that only needed the beaver dams cut out to drain them, and thousands of acres of ferns where if timothy or clover were only sown, whole herds of cattle could range and get their living almost the whole year through.