The Case for a Wagon Road Over Stevens Pass

Skykomish, Jan. 2, 1895.

To the Editor: During the last two years there has been considerable money spent by the state in a fruitless search for a wagon road route through the Cascade mountains north of Mount Baker. The route has been well cruised, and from reports as published in the papers it seems that it would be next to impossible to build a road there that would be passable for wagons more than two months in the year.

It is a lamentable fact that there is not a wagon road across the Cascades connecting Eastern Washington with the Sound country that a wagon can be taken over without almost carrying it. I think that if the state builds a road across the Cascades it should be centrally located, be over a low pass and be as short as possible.

We need a road that can be used at least six months in the year, and it should be graded, ditched and puncheonned so that a prairie schooner loaded with drought-shriveled, cyclone-blown, or grasshopper-eaten farmers from the effete East can get to the promised land of fogs and dams without paying out his last hard-squeezed dollar to a railroad company to haul him across one little hill, when he has come a thousand miles or so with his kerosene.

Now, there is a route, short, central and easy of construction, which will have easy grades and over which considerable road is already constructed; which is easy of access from the whole of King and Snohomish counties. It is the old tote road along the Great Northern railway, built to carry freight over during the construction of that road. It runs up the south fork of the Skykomish river to Stevens pass, and down to Leavenworth on the eastern side, where good roads connect with all important points in Eastern Washington.

The main road should be built from Seattle to Tolt, in the Snoqualmie valley; thence up the south fork of Tolt river to the pass between that stream and Money creek, which is only 2,230 feet altitude and easy grade right to the summit on both sides; thence down Money creek to Smith's ranch, where it would connect with the tote road.

The region opened up between the Snoqualmie and Skykomish rivers alone would add enough to the wealth of the state to justify the expense ten times over. Tolt valley has the best timber on Puget Sound and as fine agricultural land as any valley in Washington. The mines at the head of Tolt and Money creek are second to none in the state, and only need a wagon road to make them great producers. Twenty tons of ore was taken out of one claim last summer, packed on horses to the railway and gave $52 per ton in gold and silver at the smelter. A wagon road through there would bring a concentrator and cause the development of numerous other claims.

The cost of the road, comparing it with the cost of the road built by the Great Northern railway, would be 30 miles of new road at $700 per mile, graded and puncheonned 10 feet wide, $21,000; 35 miles of old road to be puncheonned at $250 per mile, $8,750; about 40 miles of old road to repair, $4,000; bridges $5,000; total, $38,750; locating and surveying, $2,250; making a total of about $40,000 for a road that could be traveled from July to January without shoveling snow across the summit, and would be available the year round on each side.

The branch to Snohomish county down the Skykomish only needs a little repairing and a couple of bridges costing about $2,000 a piece to put it into good shape. Won't some legislature take up the proposition and try and get the legislature to make an appropriation at this session?

GEORGE R. PROCTOR.