The Log Jam That Held Back a Valley: Skagit Settlers Propose a DIY River Clearance
With a massive log jam blocking navigation on the Skagit River, a settler proposes that landowners take matters into their own hands rather than wait for Congress.
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.
THE SKAGIT RIVER.
For the Puget Sound Weekly Argus:
EDITOR ARGUS: Desiring to call the attention of the settlers in this vicinity to a few facts in relation to their future welfare and the prosperity of the country, I beg a little space in the columns of your valuable paper, hoping the subject will meet with the favorable consideration and support of all those who have or may desire an interest in this locality.
The Skagit is the largest river that empties its waters into Puget Sound and is navigable for more than fifty miles up its stream. It runs through a rich loam bottom averaging about four miles wide, timbered with alder, vine-maple, cottonwood, and an occasional belt of spruce and cedar. In this large area of tillable land are only about a hundred settlers, and all, with the exception of four, located within eight miles up from the mouth of the river; there all roads stop; there immigration ceases; and why? It is because, at the end of the eighth mile is met the great nuisance of the country—the jam.
Now, the suggestion the writer would wish to offer is, that in case our Delegate to Congress should fail in his endeavors to procure an appropriation for its removal (such we expect, being only another repetition of the failure of bills introduced for similar purposes on former occasions) and rather than wait till the Territory becomes a State when such an apportionment might be made, I speak the sentiment of others on the river when I say, let us do it ourselves. The time occupied in cutting a channel sufficiently wide for steamboats would not, we estimate, exceed over two weeks, each landowner on the river contributing that amount of labor. The mode adopted should be, sawing the logs up at low water and when the freshets come run them out, for the drift is always floating and would loosen up at high water making it much easier to handle. For this small amount of labor the inconvenience of mileages would be avoided; an excellent tract of country opened out for navigation. The coal mine could be worked to good advantage and all improved lands would be greatly enhanced in value by the upper valley settling up and a ready market for all produce raised adjacent to steamboat navigation. The writer states this matter trusting to hear from others, who, with him, have a common interest in the growth and prosperity of this country.
A SETTLER. Skagit, Feb. 5, 1876.
“I speak the sentiment of others on the river when I say, let us do it ourselves.”
The Skagit River log jam was eventually cleared, and the valley became one of Washington's most productive agricultural regions. But the debate over who should pay for infrastructure—and whether communities can solve problems themselves—remains familiar today.
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