Lesser Known History of the North Cascades Vol. VIII

State Route 20 (North Cascades Highway) Milepost 113 cont.

The bottom of The Portage is just upstream of the bridge piers to the abandoned Skagit Talc Mine, maybe a half mile upstream of Milepost 113 and it ends at about Milepost 114. This spot was called The Portage because in the old days when everyone got around by canoe, it was the only spot in the river where you had to portage your canoe. The rest of the river was navigable below that point and above that point to The Gorge at Newhalem.

Though you had to portage your canoe up around this spot in the river, I have been told that, if the river was right, and you knew what you were doing, you could get back down through it in a canoe. I imagine portaging one of those dugout canoes was a lot of hard work so any extra portaging you could avoid would be worth it, as long as you stayed alive. If the river wasn’t right or you didn’t know what you were doing, you had better portage back down through this spot too. Over the years, at least since European American settlement, and I imagine for the preceding millennia, a lot of people were drowned trying to get down through this spot.

One of the more interesting stories passed down by my dad involves a canoe full of Chinese, probably coming down from one of the mines upstream. The canoe didn’t make it and everyone drowned. Supposedly they were finding these poor Chinese guys, or what was left of them, all along the river for several years after.

There has been a good bit of information written about The Portage, I believe, but I don’t know about the Chinese. My dad also had a story about three Chinese guys who got out of the country with about 10,000 dollars in gold. The story goes that these guys kept quiet about it and pretty much just disappeared from the Upper Skagit one day. Those times were pretty rough I think with a lot of bad people around who wouldn’t think twice about killing someone for their money. Add to that, in those days there was a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment and people wouldn’t think twice about killing Chinese. It was probably illegal but unlikely to be prosecuted, depending on where you were.

When the railroad came through there was a spot along The Portage called Shovel Spur and the area is generally referred to by this name today. Shovel spur got its name because the tracks were constantly being covered with slides in this spot so a spur was built nearby to park a steam shovel to clear the tracks.

According to geologists, thousands of years ago there was a natural dam on the river in this area. Evidently a large landslide dammed the river and formed a lake (Lake Ksnea) for many, many years, hundreds or maybe thousands. The rapids at The Portage/Shovel Spur flow over large boulders deposited at least in part by the slide (there is bedrock at the top of The Portage that might be the source of some of the boulders) and I don’t doubt that the remnants of the material that formed the landslide dam contribute to the unstable soils in the Shovel Spur area.

At the top of The Portage, just a little west of Milepost 114 there is a sharp corner in Highway 20. There was a sharp corner in the tracks here as well because the present highway follows the old railroad grade. In the railroad days, this corner was called Devil’s Elbow because trains frequently derailed here.

A little over half a mile east of Milepost 113, you can see the remnants flat surface of an old grade trending uphill in the woods off the west bound lane of Highway 20. This is the old road up the valley. It goes up and over a big hill while the railroad, which needed to maintain a low grade, stayed down by the river. During the Second World War, there was a guard shack on the road at the top of the hill.

Just short of Milepost 115, Highway 20 crosses Damnation Creek. Damnation Creek is so named because in the days when there was just a pack trail up the river, they packers going in to the mines would ask the guys coming out of the area what “that creek about nine miles up was doing”. A common answer was that “it was running all over Damnation.” At some point the name stuck.

If you look above the west bound lane of Highway 20 in this area, you will see large deposits of gravel and small boulders with a number of stream channels beside, some dry, some wet in addition to the main stream channel. The large sediment deposits are likely the result of the stream rapidly exiting a very constricted channel just above the lower run of Seattle City Lights transmission lines. This is probably coupled with some factor, rock competency, a fault line, etc. that makes the bedrock along the stream channel highly erodible. This area is also within the landslide mentioned earlier in association with The Portage which would probably result in a lot of highly erodible material in the area.  

Over the years, the State Department of Transportation has had a number of problems here keeping the creek in the main channel so it will flow under the bridge like it is supposed to. Several bridges have washed out here. When I was a kid, someone in the DOT or some other agency that had the power over the DOT took offense to the word Damnation.  The road sign was changed to Darnation. It lasted less than a week before disappearing. Another sign went up and came down just as quickly. The DOT went through several signs before giving up and putting the Damnation Creek sign back up. At some point many of the stream signs have been removed. There hasn’t been a sign naming Damnation Creek for quite a few years now.

This post will end this series of lesser known history. There is much more I could write about on the same theme of lesser known history along The North Cascades Highway, Highway 20, going almost all the way to Rainy Pass.

Looking downstream near the bottom of The Portage at the bridge piers for the bridge to the abandoned Skagit Talc Mine. 

Close up of bridge pier on left bank (south side) of river.

Looking upstream from spot previous two photos were taken. 

Near the top of The Portage. 

Near the top of The Portage. The rock in the foreground is man made riprap placed to protect the road from erosion by the river. The rock on the other side of the river and in the river, causing the white water is naturally occurring. 

At the top of The Portage.