Lesser Known History of the North Cascades Vol. II

Addendums to the post of 3/29/14 (Lesser Known History of the North Cascades Vol. 1):

Milepost 90: My mom recalls that years ago a man was killed in a slide coming down one of the chutes or stream channels just outside the town limits of Concrete. His name may have been Sullivan.

Milepost 91: My mom informed me that my grandpa and great uncle did indeed save the barrels of flour that were lost in the Skagit River when a mass of pink salmon or humpies rushing out of the mouth of Jackman Creek and tipped over their canoe as they poled past. They only lost the very outer layer of flour which was like a glue or cement from contact with the water. Most of the flour was saved. I think I had been told that at one time but had forgotten until mom reminded me.

Also at Milepost 91, mom told me that there was once a sawmill with a millpond in the flat area across Highway 20 from Van Horn Lane and the former store. Evidently a man was killed in this mill in an electrical accident. The mill closed and the pond was filled in just before or just after I was born so it was before my time. I now vaguely remember references to the Van Horn mill but had completely forgotten about them until mom mentioned it.

Milepost 94

Milepost 94 is in the middle of a section of Highway 20 rerouted around what is now Sauk Store Road. The Sauk Store Road was the old main east/west road. There has been quite a bit written about the town of Sauk, which no longer exists, and the Sauk Store. The Sauk Store building still exists but it is no longer a store. The old road continued past the Sauk Connection Road to Highway 20 and up the side of a ravine to the big flat where Rockport State Park sits.

The old road is now a county road and it dead ends near the bottom of the ravine but you can see what remains of the old road from the present Highway 20 and follow the power lines along it. The present Highway 20 cuts across two ravines as it goes up the hill just east of the Sauk Connection Road. The second ravine it cuts across, a little over halfway up the hill, is the one that the powerlines and the old road follow. This part of Highway 20, between the Sauk Connection Road and the top of the hill was cut when I was very young or maybe just before I was born. I recall riding the school bus at a very young age and looking at the fresh road cut. This road cut has taken a long time to grow back.

Milepost 95

Milepost 95 is near the top of the hill just above the point where new Hwy 20 crosses over the old road. The flat at the top of the hill and a smaller hill to the south of Highway 20, where the county dump or transfer station and a gravel pit are located, are evidently a large deposit of sediments left by the glaciers of the last Ice Age. I understand there are some very interesting land forms created by these glaciers in the area of the gravel pit but I haven’t seen them myself.

The old road following the ravine from Sauk connects to the current Highway 20 at the west end of the aforementioned flat. I think it is now a county road called Hornbeck Road or Hornbeck Lane.

There used to be lots of deer in this area of Highway 20 when I was kid. When I was very small, I remember a guy, some teenage kid in a hotrod of some kind, passing us at very high rate of speed. Just as his car reached the limit of our headlights, near what is now Littlefield Road, we saw the hood of his car fly up in the dim light turning end over end. Dad rolled up to the scene, avoiding the crumpled hood in the road and expecting the worst. The guy in the car was somehow okay but his car was destroyed, as was the deer that he hit. We knew this guy, pretty much everyone knew everyone in those days, but I can’t recall exactly who it was. I think we gave him a ride to his house.

At the west end of flat, very near MP 95, my dad hit deer while driving a bunch of us kids back from a junior high basketball game when I was 13. It was one of those perfect hits, though it was not intentional. The deer went to cross the road. My dad jammed on the brakes. The deer wheeled to go back the way it had come. It looked like it would be a clean miss and, at the last moment, it wheeled back around as if to go back across the road, putting it’s head point blank in front of the passenger’s side headlight. It was too late to do anything at that point. The car hit with a solid Whump! And the deer spun around, its rump hitting the rear quarter panel of the car and I was shouting something like "Yeah, you got it!!" The deer, a nice two-point or “Y” was dead with no meat ruined and with minimal damage to the car, a little bent sheet metal and a broken plastic grille.

It was late November and I had just finished my second unsuccessful deer hunting season. I was so pumped up that I grabbed the deer and dragged to the opposite (wrong) side of the road all by myself. When you kill a game animal on the road you are supposed to call the state Department of Transportation or the Department of Wildlife for them to pick it up and dispose of it. I was all for us keeping it and was lobbying dad hard to do just that. Dad wasn’t too enthusiastic about the idea, saying it would be illegal to take it.

As I look back now, the legality of the matter was probably a pretty minor issue. Dad had worked all day then driven 16 miles down to Concrete to watch the game and bring a car full of noisy kids home, where he probably wanted to either relax or work on a long list projects. We had plenty of beef in the freezer for the winter. So probably the last thing he wanted to do was spend several hours gutting and skinning that deer in the cold and dark and then having to cut it up and get it in the freezer a week later. All of this on top of the damage to the car, which, though it was minor, would need to be fixed. The deer was also rutting, with a big neck and a strong smell, which would make the meat less appealing. The rut might have also explained the deer’s behavior just prior to being hit. Rutting bucks aren’t the most wary and they often act pretty stupidly.

Finally this rough looking guy rolled up in a flat bed truck. He commented that it was a nice deer. Then he asked if dad was going to keep it. Dad said, “No. You can have it if you want.” So the guy loaded it up and headed down the road. I was so disappointed.

The whole event from first seeing the deer to hitting it unfolded in several seconds or less. This was before car safety was really big. There were about seven of us, three in the front seat and four or five in the back seat of a sedan. My friend, Jerry, sitting next to me in the front seat had put on a pair of sunglasses that my mom had left on dash and was clowning around, acting cool saying “Check me out, I’m wearing sunglasses at night.” He missed the whole thing even though it happened right in front of him, literally the length of a car hood away, because he couldn’t actually see out of the sunglasses because they were too dark. This predated the Corey Hart song “Sunglasses at Night” by about six years. I laugh every time I hear that song.

There used to be a lot of deer in the area on the flat between Mileposts 95 and 96. I haven’t seen any here in years. I think the DOT has even taken down the deer crossing sign. I don’t know what the cause of the deer disappearing was, whether it resulted from natural changes in vegetation and habitat or from land use changes by people living in the area. 

Alder Lane used to be woods. This area was developed sometime when I was in grade school or junior high-late in the 1970’s. I don’t think this has anything to do with fewer deer being on the road here because at the time it was developed and for quite a few years afterward, there were still a lot of deer.

Sauk Mountain dominates the area here and there has been a lot written about it. One bit of knowledge that is recorded but probably less well known is an Indian name for Sauk Mountain, Penelomah. I don’t know, or remember, what this name means or what tribe or tribes used this name. I have seen written accounts that this mountain was (and probably still is) believed to be a place where a good spirit and an evil spirit reside. I had also heard by word of mouth that this mountain was a place of strong spirits though no distinction was made as to whether they were good or evil.

People wishing to know the outcome of some future important endeavor would climb up to the base of the steep rock cliffs and watch eagles soar in the updrafts. If an eagle soared smoothly then the good spirit held sway and the omen was good for the future. If the eagle fluttered, then the evil spirit held sway and the omen was bad for the future. I read this somewhere in the late 1980’s but I don’t recall the source.

My dad had a story about a couple guys hunting up on Sauk. I don’t recall any names but it seems like the lookout had been built at that time since, if I remember correctly, these guys were staying in the lookout. It was after the fire season so there were no U. S. Forest Service personnel using it. These two guys could have even been Forest Service employees laid off for the season.

The story goes that it had begun snowing a lot and they wanted to get the heck out of there. About that time they spotted a mountain goat (Oreamnus americanus). The first guy wanted to shoot it and the second guy told the first guy something to the effect that if he, the first guy, shot it, he, the first guy, would have to stay in and eat it because he, the second guy, was headed out and wasn’t going to stay and help pack it out. Well the first guy shot the goat and the second guy abruptly headed down the mountain without the first guy. The first guy was missing for a couple of weeks and folks were starting to get suspicious but eventually he showed up back down in the valley. He had stayed and eaten the goat, or at least enough of it that he could pack the rest out.

This is the only account I had ever heard of goats on Sauk Mountain and I was always a little skeptical about it. But a few years ago, a friend of mine who does a lot of hunting and knows what he is looking at, saw a goat on the north side of Sauk Mountain. Diobsud Buttes and Bacon Peak aren’t too far from Sauk Mountain and there are fairly healthy goat populations in both places so it is probably well within the realm of possibility for a goat to travel from either of those two areas to Sauk.

In 1993 I worked on a helicopter logging job on U.S. Forest Service land on Sauk Mountain. Most of the Douglas-fir on this job was heavily infested with laminated root rot (Phellinus weirii). Sometimes this fungus completely rots the roots of a tree out and it falls over. In other cases, the rot is isolated to the center of the bole of the tree while a solid, apparently healthy living shell remains like a rind on the outer part of the bole. This is the way the most of the trees on that sale were. The centers of the trees were rotted out in the lower 15 to 20 feet.

So we ended making a lot of long butts, logs bucked off the lower parts of the trees that were essentially waste because they just shells with rotten centers. This was in late October and it was cold and wet. There was a fire in the landing for warmth and the guys were burning these waste long butts.

One morning we showed up to work and, as I was getting my boots on, the guy who ran the machine that picked up and moved the logs dropped by the helicopter to the shovel or loader, came back to the crew bus with a pale face and stunned expression and said that his machine was burned up. At first I thought he was kidding and laughed but then I saw he was serious.

I went to the far side of the landing and looked. He had parked his machine well away from the landing fire but he had parked it with a tire about a foot from the end of a 20 foot long hollow log. Unfortunately, the other end of the log was on the landing fire. The wind had picked up and the landing fire burned into the hollow log and then, evidently, the wind blowing the fire through the hollow log was like a blowtorch, igniting the tire.

In an ironic twist, the friend of mine who had been wearing the sunglasses the night we hit the deer at the base of the mountain worked with me on that job. I hadn’t seen him in a few years but, at the time, he was also living just below the mountain on Hornbeck Road within about a quarter mile of the deer incident.

That timber sale was pretty big and quite a bit of timber was harvested. But being as it was a thinning sale, you couldn’t see from Highway 20 where the logging was, even while it was being logged, unless you happened to see the helicopter. To this day, there is no sign that the forest in the area of that sale has been logged. At some point the remaining trees in that area may succumb to the rot. Commercial thinning can exacerbate laminated root rot problems but not always I understand.

Milepost 96

The western boundary of Rockport State Park is at Milepost 96. There is a lot of recorded history for this park and this is probably a more reliable source than my memory. I recently found out that some information that I thought I knew about the park is wrong according to the official record, which was written down long before I was born.

The one thing I do remember about Rockport State Park that probably isn’t written down anywhere is about the lights for the entrance intersection. I believe state law says that intersections meeting certain criteria must be lighted at night. Evidently the Rockport State Park entrance meets this criteria because four lights were installed to light the intersection.

These lights were kind of a pain years ago when headlights weren’t as bright as they are now. The intersection lights were much brighter than car headlights and could cause temporary night blindness. Some of my friend’s fathers every so often made a point of shooting out those lights. I think it might have been after hours entertainment when the local taverns closed at 2:00 a.m. After a few years, they finally gave up on that activity, possibley after a conversation with the local sheriff’s deputy.

Milepost 97

Milepost 97 is just east of the eastern boundary of Rockport State Park. Just east of this milepost, Alfred Street intersects the eastbound lane of Highway 20. Alfred Street is also known as Rockport Hill and leads into the town.

Just east of Alfred Street on Highway 20, there are now two patches in the eastbound lane of Highway 20. These patches cover a spot in the road that steadily sinks. There has been a problem with this spot in the road for as long as I can remember. The road has even been reworked twice here to my knowledge. One of those times they went about 10 feet into the road prism in the area of the sinkhole and rebuilt the roadt. Yet the sinkhole persists. It may be associated with a small perennial stream which flows under it at this point. I believe this stream was also the water supply for the town of Rockport at one time.

The Rockport Store is a little further down the hill off the eastbound lane. When I was a kid, Mel and Myra Benton ran the Rockport Store. They may have also built the store in the present location. I don’t know this for sure. Both have long since passed away. Once my dad told me that Myra knew him since he wore three cornered pants (diapers).

East of the Rockport Store and just east of the intersection of Highway 20 and Highway 530 a big slide came across Highway 20 sometime in the 1970’s. I remember watching from a school bus as a front end loader worked at clearing that slide from the Highway. The school bus I was on was rerouted to what is currently known as the Rockport/Cascade Road. The slide went into river and the lower part of it is still there below Highway 20. This lower part is a large mound of earth extending into the river from a large pull out that is popular during eagle watching season. Now the slide is not really obvious because it has become overgrown over the years.

Milepost 98

Just east of the previously mentioned slide is Milepost 98. Shular Road (County) intersects the westbound lane of Highway 20 here. Shular Road goes up a hill on its west end and down a hill on its east end to reconnect with Highway 20. It is part of the old east/west road up the valley. The new section of Highway 20 has been routed below, or south of Shular Road, and is fairly flat.

My dad died somewhere in the straight stretch on Highway 20 just around the corner from the west end of Shular Road. His car hit a maple tree on the east end of the straight stretch almost immediately across Highway 20 from the eastern intersection with Shular Road. We don’t know exactly what killed him. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt and his body was so badly damaged that the coroner couldn’t determine the exact cause of death. Maybe his heart stopped before the car ever left the road or maybe the crash killed him.

There is a house made of rock at the intersection of the east end of Shular Road and Highway 20. My mom and dad knew the guy who built this house. His name was Red Severe. I think my dad worked with him for a construction company on the new Gorge Dam. Red still has some descendants living in Marblemount. Evidently artistic talent runs in the Severe family. Red had a cousin (who might still be living) named Duff Severe who was a renowned saddle maker, famous for his ornately decorated saddles.   

A little east of Shular Road, Highway 20 goes through a narrow spot with a cut rock wall close by on the west bound lane. This is a very bad spot in the road and is very active, especially during times of heavy rainfall. Rocks and debris are constantly falling off the high bank. My sister put a car in the ditch under the rock wall one snowy day and I have had a tire blown out by rocks in the road and have run over one small tree that fell into the road. I am sure many a tire or oil pan has met its end here. There have been no car crash related fatalities here that I can remember.

There is a big open marshy area on the south side of Highway 20 across from the rock cut. This is Washington’s Eddy and the whole area along the highway here is generally known as Washington’s Eddy. The marshy area used to be a great big eddy in the Skagit River. The river has now migrated away to the south leaving the area to fill in with sediment. The area gets the name Washington from an Indian family named Washington who lived there and still owns land there.

There is a gravel road between Highway 20 and the marshy area of Washington’s Eddy. For most of its length it is below the level of the highway. This was originally developed and envisioned as eagle watching area but this fizzled out rather quickly. The eagles don’t hang out here much, though you can sometimes see lots of other wildlife.

There are lots of areas immediately on the highway where eagles are usually abundant from November through early February during the chum and coho runs (actually the chum are usually done by early January but their carcasses sometimes persist into early February, providing food and an attractant for eagles). Everyone goes to these spots. There are some designated, well set up, safe pullouts to look at eagles. Many of the other places where one often sees eagles near the highway are not very good places to park. Many eagle watchers drive irresponsibly and park irresponsibly and walk into or stand in the roadway in these areas where the eagles like to hang out. Many of these areas have posted speeds of 50 m.p.h.

To this point in this post I have written seven pages in a word document. That is enough for this post. More to follow later.