Lesser Known History of the North Cascades Vol. VII

Highway 20 (North Cascades Highway) Mile 109.5

The last Lesser Known History of the North Cascades post (Vol VI) left off at about Milepost 109.5. About half a mile east of Milepost 109, Highway 20 intersects the old railroad grade and it now follows it’s bed for about half a mile to a little past Milepost 110. Just east of this intersection the highway, and the railroad before it, passes under some bluffs on the westbound lane.

I think it was from these bluffs that my uncles, when they were kids (probably 7 or 8 to early teens), threw rotten eggs at the Seattle City Light tour trains, which goes to show you that young boys are quite often obnoxious, regardless of era. I also know that they had to work pretty hard around the place so it goes to show that young boys will also spare no effort and go out of their way to be obnoxious. Fortunately I think the egg throwing was a rather short lived enterprise.

At some point, before they abandoned this nefarious pursuit, they decided to pull out all the stops on the egg throwing. They devised a giant slingshot built from two cedar fence posts for a frame, two entire truck inner tubes for the elastic bands and the entire tongue of an old boot for the pouch. The whole scheme fell apart when they test fired a potato in the slingshot.

The potato beaned my grandpa, who was working out of sight over a small hill, in the head and knocked him out cold. When he came to, he was mad as a hornet. My Uncle Nick, who was a little older than my dad had been the lookout for the whole operation. Of course, the last thing Grandpa saw before the lights went out was Uncle Nick up on the hill looking at him. Undoubtedly this led him to believe that Uncle Nick had thrown something and hit him. I understand that Grandpa and Uncle Nick didn’t get along very well to start with and this incident didn’t end well for Uncle Nick.

I’m sure that, at some point, Grandpa figured out that there were more involved than just Uncle Nick but Nick was the one that got punished for it. Grandpa was so mad that he destroyed the slingshot by tearing the posts out of the ground with his bare hands. He had to have been around 70 years old at the time.

My dad was too young to be involved in any of this beyond witnessing it. Dad wasn’t an angel. I’m sure he would have been in on the egg throwing and slingshot building too but he was too little. He worked 29 years for Seattle City Light before retiring. I remember him telling this story and often commenting how awful it must have been for the folks from Seattle and other far away places to come all the that distance and have their good clothes covered with rotten eggs. I understand that, after the slingshot incident, there was no more egg throwing.

Milepost 110

Milepost 110 is just past the eastern end of the egg throwing bluffs. If one looks closely, you can see the old railroad grade on the north side of the highway and a little above it. The highway here goes down a small hill.

About a quarter mile or a little less, there is a slough in the river on the south side of the road (off the east bound lane). This is called Charlie’s Slough. I don’t know the story behind the name. Actually, I should say that I don’t remember. I asked once and I think I was told but I don’t remember.

About half a mile east of Charlie’s Slough is Bacon Creek and just east of it, Bacon Creek Road and Leonard Bacon’s Place and Milepost 111. The Bacon Creek area is well covered in my Know Your Forest, Bacon Creek post of 12/11/13.

About a quarter mile east of Milepost 111 there is a patch in the highway that doesn't get any sun during the short months of winter. The shaded spot is perfect for forming black ice under the right conditions and there have been a lot of car crashes here over the years but no fatalities come to mind. The DOT now keeps this area well sanded during cold spells in the winter months.  

About half a mile east of Milepost 111 there is a road intersecting the east bound lane that leads to the Copper Creek Boat Launch and a Seattle City Light sand pit. And about a quarter mile east of that, one enters the Ross Lake Recreation Area. The monument on the road now says North Cascades National Park which is technically true because the Park does administer the Recreation Area as part of the North Cascades National Park Complex but the land use rules are different in the Recreation Area than in the Park.

The situation has always been a bit confusing but it is nice to have a Recreation Area where the rules, while they are certainly more stringent than on Forest Service land aren’t as strict as in the Park proper. The Recreation Area was created when the Park was created because there was already some development in the area and as a concession to local people who, at that time, depended, at least to a degree, on the ability to use the natural resources of the area for their livelihoods. Many of us still use these resources regularly. With a few exceptions, rules prohibit almost all use of natural resources in North Cascades National Park proper. I understand that they have renamed the Recreation Area to North Cascades Recreation Area rather than Ross Lake Recreation Area in an effort to clear up some of the confusion.

Milepost 112

Milepost 112 is about a quarter mile east of the Recreation Area boundary. About a quarter mile east of this milepost, Alma Creek flows into the south bank of the Skagit. The Alma Creek valley is quite visible from the highway at this point though the creek itself enters upstream of a corner where the road trends away from the river, so it is nearly hidden.

My dad told me a story passed down by his dad about an Indian battle that occurred at Alma Creek. It was between the Skagits and a band of Indians down from Canada (maybe Lower Thompsons). The fight was over an iron cook stove. The outcome of this battle wasn’t passed along in the story. For the Canadian people this would have been quite some distance down the river from at least one of the traditional territorial boundaries that I am aware of which was at Stetattle Creek in the present day town of Diablo.

 The other story I have about Alma Creek doesn’t necessarily concern that particular spot other than it was the starting point for a compressor base that my grandpa packed into the Skagit Queen Mines up on Thunder Creek.

Supposedly this compressor base weighs a thousand pounds and has the weight stamped on the base of it and my grandpa and four other men packed it in there on a big black horse. The story goes that the compressor base was the only part of the machine that couldn’t be made smaller to pack into the remote location.

If one looks at a lot of the big parts of equipment that were packed long distances in those days, one will see that parts such as wheels that, ordinarily, would be one solid piece have been broken in several places and bolted back together. Wheels were probably broken rather than cut so there would be a unique break line that would only match perfectly one way. This insured that, when the wheel was reassembled, it would still retain its balance. Or maybe they were broken rather than cut for other reasons.

As I previously stated, this compressor base couldn’t be reduced to smaller parts so it had to be packed in one big chunk. The base was brought up the river to Alma Creek. I don’t know if this was in a steamboat or canoe. From there my grandpa and the five other men, or more accurately, the horse, packed it into Skagit Queen.

As the story goes, Grandpa rigged the pack saddle or maybe some unique contraption that wouldn’t be immediately recognizable as a pack saddle, in such a way that boards could be slid horizontally under the load and perpendicular to the long axis of the horse. That was what the four other men were for. Each one carried some boards and was assigned a corner of the load. When the horse got tired, it would bow its back and a board would be passed under the front and back of the load perpendicular to the long axis of the horse. Then each man placed a board upright under his end of the horizontal board under the load to support this board and the load on top. The horse would then sag into the pack saddle and rest. When it was ready to go again, it would bow its back, the boards would be removed and it would go up the trail until it was tired again whereupon the process would be repeated.

They got that compressor base all the way into the Skagit Queen Mines without killing the horse. Quite obviously this was a smart horse. And, evidently, Grandpa knew its capabilities to a fine degree. Along the trail, he chose spots to stop for the night that were well within the capacity of the horse to travel in a day carrying such a load  and where there was a suitable tree to offload the compressor base.

I have had people call B. S. on this story. There is a book written on the old mines in the area that seems to mention this compressor. The explanation of how it (or some very similar piece of machinery) got to where it still sits today is rather vague, something like getting the biggest mule they could find and dragging it in by brute force. Evidently the author didn’t talk to anyone in my family..

This compressor base, with the rest of the compressor, still sits next to the Thunder Creek Trail a short distance above where the trail crosses Thunder Creek on the way to Park Creek Pass. I wasn’t there when it was packed in and I don’t know a whole lot about horses and packing. But I can tell you one thing. It wasn’t flown in by a helicopter because such a machine didn’t exist in those days.

I have heard of horses and mules that can pack up to a thousand pounds. I have it on good authority that there is at least one mule in this day and age that can pack a thousand pounds for a about a mile.

And one should consider that, in the days when a lot of things were packed long distances over difficult terrain, people knew their animals to a much greater degree than people do today. In those days, many people depended on their animals for their living and worked with them daily. It paid to know how much a given animal could, or couldn’t, do because sometimes it could mean life or death or loss of a means to make a living. One only has to read books from the 19^th Century or prior, before the invention or widespread use of automobiles, to pick up that even the average person of those days could evaluate a horse or mule in much the same way as someone today would evaluate a car. I couldn’t evaluate a horse or mule in such a way.

And I would not at all be surprised if a lot of the traits useful for a work animal have been lost to some degree today. A big animal with a lot of muscle to fuel is going to eat a lot of feed and, if you aren’t using it for work, what good are those traits? The valuable work animal of yesteryear is today’s hayburner. It is also possible that these traits may have been lost simply because they were no longer important.

Finally, whatever rig my grandpa had set up it sounded like a custom job, not to be found in a standard packer’s manual of today. My dad told me the story and he grew up around horses and mules and was familiar with livestock packing. So, if it was a common or standard rig, my dad would have been familiar with it and would have referred to it by name. He did not.

It is possible that it could have been a rig that was well known in those days for oddball type loads that has been lost or not well known by my dad’s time, again, due to the lack of a need for such a thing when automobiles became prevalent and later helicopters which are both cheaper, faster and can move more weight. At any rate, the description of how the rig worked makes perfect sense to me whereas I have heard several modern day packers puzzle over how they could accomplish the task with the rigs that they are familiar with. The machine is there, still fourteen miles from the highway. The reader can decide how it got there.

Back to the lower part of the valley. Across from Alma Creek, the road cuts into the forest and away from the river (actually it is the river that is flowing towards the road at this point). About where the highway enters the forest from the opening created by the river bend a small stream flows under it. This creek is named Talc Creek for nearby talc deposits.

Evidently, years ago, the old road here was a problem spot and very slick, according to my mom. I don’t know if talc was incorporated into the road surface or was deposited on the road surface frequently when the creek flooded over the road. The road here has also been problematic, constantly sagging either from the river bend below or maybe a lot of talc incorporated in the road fill.

There are several old talc mines in the area but due to the area’s status as a Recreation Area, minerals, including talc are not allowed to be removed.

A little east of  Talc Creek the road trends a little south in a long curve, following the route of the old railroad. The car road actually followed a straighter line through this area and is now overgrown with forest. When I was a teenager, 30 years ago, the asphalt road surface was still walkable through this area.

There was a railroad siding in this area named for the logging company that it was built for, Jennings and Nestos, sometimes you will hear an old timer refer to it as Jennings and Nestos Siding but often it is shortened to just Jennings and Nestos or Jennings Siding by the few remaining folks who still call it by that name. For years I thought it was Jennings and Estes, because I knew quite a few folks named Estes, until I saw it spelled. I also thought the term siding referred to the type of siding you put on a house, not realizing that it was a railroad siding.

About three quarters of a mile east of Milepost 112, Highway 20 crosses a small creek. The name of this creek is Tilt Creek. The whole general area where the highway follows the old railroad grade is generally known as Pinky’s.

Pinky’s is named after a man named Pinky Hendrickson who had a house near Tilt Creek. It is called Pinky’s even though he and his wife, Rosella, got the property from Rosella’s mother.

Somewhere in this area, my dad, in his youth, around the Fourth of July got into a little trouble. It seems that he and several of his friends, possessing an abundance of firecrackers, decided to play some tricks on passing motorists. There was a spot in the road where cars had to slow down and that is where they carried out their ambush, lighting firecrackers and throwing them into the road so they would explode at the precise moment the car was over the top of them.

This went fine for a while, at least from the point of view of a delinquent kid, I am sure they were having loads of fun, I doubt the motorists were quite as amused. Then one night of the cars they ambushed suddenly screeched to a halt and a man got out with a hatchet yelling “C’mere you little b_____ds. I’ll cut your heads off.”

Of course Dad and his friends scrambled to hide. I think it was after dark so this helped. The hatchet man stumbled around quite a while looking for them and screaming that he was going to cut their heads off. Dad said they were hiding under logs and behind stumps and brush. I think the guy actually walked over one or two of them without seeing them.

Finally, he gave it up, went back to his car and drove off. Would he have killed anyone he caught? I don’t know. I don’t think Dad was sure either. I think this incident probably put a damper on their car ambush activities but I am sure, in their vigorous youth, it wasn’t long before they were up to some other mischief.  

Milepost 113

Milepost 113 is near the east end of the old railroad grade and the old car road grade meets the present day Highway 20 about where Seattle City Light’s south transmission line crosses the highway and the river.

About a quarter mile east of Milepost 113 and a little upstream of where the transmission lines cross the river there are some big bridge piers in the river. They used to be quite visible from the highway but the trees and other vegetation have grown up and hide it now.

This bridge was probably originally a railroad bridge retrofitted for automobiles. The log stringers for the bridge were blown out sometime in the mid to late 1960’s. You could still see a few in place when I was a kid.

This bridge led to a mine, the Skagit Talc Mine and some logging units on the other side of the river. I have a few stories about the talc mine. My oldest uncle, C. H. (Charles Henry), worked there. At that time, the talc was being cut up for steel marking chalk in the shipyards. Chunks or crayons of talc are still used for this purpose today. I think they also used talc from this mine for firebricks in foundries and the like. And they cut one very big piece to be carved into a bathtub for some rich guy in Seattle.

The mining method was very interesting in those days. They had saws that they used to cut slabs out of the talc deposit. The slabs were then sent to a mill on site where they were sawed into the steel marking crayons with a saw that I have heard was invented on site specifically for that purpose or at least it was invented for use in that specific site.

C.H. was killed in that mine when he was 21 years old. The story goes that a slab fell on him and crushed his legs. In those days the only rapid transportation was the railroad. The nearest doctor was in Rockport, the nearest roundhouse where the train engine could be turned around was in Newhalem. So they had to take the train to Newhalem, turn the engine around and come back to get my uncle. By the time they got him to Rockport he was dead. It is likely that they wouldn’t have been able to do anything for him anyway. If he had survived, he undoubtedly would have been crippled for life in an era where everyday life was not kind to people with disabilities.

I don’t know a lot about C.H. beyond a few stories here and there. He didn’t have any children and he died just before my dad was born so my dad didn’t even really know him. He was named after my grandma’s dad. Rosella, who grew up there said he used to stop by their house to visit all the time. It seems that he really liked kids and she said he told great stories. I guess they took him to their house after the accident to wait for the train. Rosella nearly broke down talking about it many decades later. A few years back, I was reading in one of my grandma’s journals about C.H. when he was still in diapers and I got a kind of odd, sad feeling. We still have a egg cup that C.H. carved out of talc from the mine.

Albert Merrit, my neighbor across the street also worked in the Skagit Talc Mine after the Second World War. In those days, they just shot the talc and shipped it off to be ground into baby powder. He told me that they had a routine. They got so much per ton and they could make decent money by spending about the first half of the day drilling and loading the holes and shooting (blasting) the talc (they had delays between each hole so they could hear and count them separately to make sure all of the charges went off) and then spending the rest of the day loading up the carts (mucking) and dumping them. He said that they made decent money but they were never going to get rich.

He worked with his step dad, Herman Smith who my folks and their friends bought the Smith Place from. I mentioned the Smith Place earlier as the property where the Diobsud Creek road meets Highway 20 (Vol VI). Herman was an expert hard rock miner and had worked many mines in throughout the west.

Al told me a good story about another mine in the same area as Skagit Talc. There was a guy from Bellingham named Pat who was mining for another outfit though undoubtedly in the same deposit as the Skagit Talc Mine. The tunnel Pat was working was down near the bottom of the hill where the main mine was I believe. Pat would work a regular week and then go back to Bellingham for the weekend.

As Albert told it, the outfit who employed Pat only paid him for how much talc he produced, not for timbers and the time it took to put them in. So evidently Pat skimped on the timbers, probably so he could make enough for a decent living. One Monday Pat came back from his weekend in Bellingham to find that his tunnel had collapsed with all of his equipment inside. Al said that Pat just turned around and went back to Bellingham and never came back.

Something similar happened at the main mine. Sometime in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s (the date is recorded but I don’t have the reference handy) the guy who owned the mine decided to shoot the whole area and do an open pit. There was more overburden than he expected, evidently too much to make it economically feasible to keep working the mine. So it was sold. I don’t know if it went directly to the National Park Service or passed through other hands before the Park acquired it. It is now illegal to take materials and artifacts from the mine site.  

Just east, up the river from the talc mine site and on the same side of the river (south) as the mine site, there is another creek. This is also called Talc Creek. Talc Creek enters the Skagit River at the upstream end of The Portage which I will cover in the next post.