The Skagit Gold Rush Mirage

A few small-potato journals in our own Territory are making an effort to thrust odium upon Seattle, her merchants and her newspapers, for the getting-up of the Skagit mining boom of last winter. This effort is childishly malicious, and will bear no good fruit to its authors. Our people are not gold miners, and they knew nothing of the upper Skagit country. Four men spent the summer, fall and winter of 1878 searching for gold in that region. They found it, and found it as they thought, rich. Their provisions ran out, and it was late in the season, and cold, when they made their discovery, and they were compelled to come down to the settlements for the remainder of the winter. These men brought the reports that started the Skagit mining boom. In bringing them, and spreading them broadcast, they were actuated by honest and conscientious convictions. So firm were they in their convictions that the upper Skagit was a gold country, that they have since devoted all their time and money to its development. The April (1879) following their discovery a party of about twenty went up the Skagit and into the diggings, and later on in the year not far from two hundred more. The returning men brought back small amounts of gold and the best of reports. If any men spoke falsely concerning the mines, it was the men who had been in there. Their reports were almost invariably of the most glowing character. It has certainly not been a money-making enterprise to anybody. Everybody, throughout, has acted in an apparently conscientious manner. Gold is there unquestionably, for it has been seen and got, but it has so far not been obtained in quantity sufficient to pay. Men who have been in there repeatedly still declare their faith in the richness of the mines, and in not a few instances announce their determination to make another good trial in 1881.