Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound

The clearing of land in this heavily timbered country was an item of large expense if hired, otherwise of much arduous toil for the owner. The women and children often helped to pile brush and set fires and many a merry party turned out at night to “chunk up” the blazing heaps; after nightfall, their fire-lit figure flitting hither and yon against the purple darkness, suggested well-intentioned witches.

Cutting down the tall trees, from two hundred fifty to four hundred fifty feet, required considerable care and skill. Sometimes we felt the pathos of it all, when a huge giant, the dignified product of patient centuries of growth, fell crashing, groaning to the earth. This side of the subject, is presented in a poem “The Lone Fir Tree,” not included in this volume.

When finally the small patches of land were cleared, planted and tended, the returns were astonishing, such marvelous vegetables, small fruits and flowers, abundant and luxuriant, rewarded the toiler. Nature herself, by her heaps of vegetation, had foreshown the immense productiveness of the soil.

In the river valleys were quite extensive prairies, which afforded superior stock range, but the main dependence of the people was in the timber.

In 1852 H. L. Yesler came, who built the first steam sawmill on Puget Sound, at Seattle. Other mills sprang up at Port Ludlow, Port Gamble, Port Madison and Port Blakely, making the names of Meigs, Pope, Talbot, Keller, Renton, Walker, Blinn and others, great in the annals of sawmilling on Puget Sound.

This very interesting account concerning Yesler’s sawmill and those who worked in it in the early days was first published in a Seattle paper many years ago:

“The other day some of Parke’s men at work on the foundation of the new Union Block on Front, corner of Columbia Street, delving among ancient fragments of piles, stranded logs and other debris of sea-wreck, long buried at that part of the waterfront, found at the bottom of an excavation they were making, a mass of knotted iron, corroded, attenuated and salt-eaten, which on being drawn out proved to be a couple of ancient boom-chains.

“The scribe, thinking he might trace something of the history of these ancient relics, hunted up Mr. Yesler, whom, after considerable exploration through the mazes of his wilderness on Third and Jefferson Streets, he found, hose in hand, watering a line of lilies, hollyhocks, penstemons, ageratums, roses, et al.

“The subject of the interview being stated, Mr. Yesler proceeded to relate: ‘Yes, after I got my mill started in 1853, the first lot of logs were furnished by Dr. Maynard. He came to me and said he wanted to clear up a piece on the spit, where he wanted to lay out and sell some town lots. It was somewhere about where the New England and Arlington now stand. The location of the old mill is now an indeterminate spot, somewhere back of Z. C. Miles’ hardware store. The spot where the old cookhouse stood is in the intersection of Mill and Commercial Streets, between the Colman Block and Gard. Kellogg’s drug store. Hillory Butler and Bill Gilliam had the contract from Maynard, and they brought the logs to the mill by hand – rolled or carried them in with handspikes. I warrant you it was harder work than Hillory or Bill has done for many a day since. Afterwards, Judge Phillips, who went into partnership with Dexter Horton in the store, got out logs for me somewhere up the bay.

“‘During the first five years after my mill was started, cattle teams for logging were but few on the Sound, and there were no steamboats for towing rafts until 1858. Capt. John S. Hill’s “Ranger No. 2,” which he brought up from San Francisco, was the first of the kind, and George A. Meigs’ little tug Resolute, which blew up with Capt. Johnny Guindon and his crew in 1861, came on about the same time. A great deal of the earliest logging on the Sound was done exclusively by hand, the logs being thrown into the water by handspikes and towed to the mill on the tide by skiffs.

“‘In 1853 Hillory Butler took a contract to get me out logs at Smith’s Cove. George F. Frye was his teamster. In the fall of 1854 and spring and summer of 1855, Edward Hanford and John C. Holgate logged for me on their claims, south of the townsite toward the head of the bay. T. D. Hinckley was their teamster, also Jack Harvey. On one occasion, when bringing in a raft to the mill, John lost a diary which he was keeping and I picked it up on the beach. The last entry it contained read: “June 5, 1855. Started with a raft for Yesler’s mill. Fell off into the water.” I remember I wrote right after “and drowned,” and returned the book. I don’t know how soon afterward John learned from his own book of his death by drowning.

“‘The Indian war breaking out in the fall of ’55 put a stop to their logging operations, as of all the rest.

“‘The Indians killed or drove off all the cattle hereabouts and burned the dwellings of Hanford, Holgate and Bell on the borders of the town, besides destroying much other property throughout the country.

“‘The logging outfits in those days were of the most primitive and meager description. Rafts were fastened together by ropes or light boom-chains. Supplies of hardware and other necessaries were brought up from San Francisco by the lumber vessels on their return trips as ordered by the loggers. I remember on one occasion Edmund Carr, John A. Strickler, F. McNatt and John Ross lost the product of a season’s labor by their raft getting away from them and going to pieces while in transit between the mill and the head of the bay. My booming place was on the north side of the mill along the beach where now the foundations are going up for the Toklas & Singerman, Gasch, Melhorn and Lewis brick block. There being no sufficient breakwater thereabouts in those times, I used often to lose a great many logs as well as boom-chains and things by the rafts being broken up by storms.

“‘My mill in the pioneer times before the Indian war furnished the chief resource of the early citizens of the place for a subsistence.

“‘When there were not enough white men to be had for operating the mill, I employed Indians and trained them to do the work. George Frye was my sawyer up to the time he took charge of the John B. Libby on the Whatcom route. My engineers at different times were T. D. Hinckley, L. V. Wyckoff, John T. Moss and Douglass. Arthur A. Denny was screw-tender in the mill for quite a while; D. T. Denny worked at drawing in the logs. Nearly all the prominent old settlers at some time or other were employed in connection with the mill in some capacity, either at logging or as mill hands. I loaded some lumber for China and other foreign ports, as well as San Francisco.’”

The primitive methods, crude appliances and arduous toil in the early sawmills have given place to palaces of modern mechanical contrivance it would require a volume to describe, of enormous output, loading hundreds of vessels for unnumbered foreign ports, and putting in circulation millions of dollars.

As a forcible contrast to Mr. Yesler’s reminiscence, this specimen is given of modern milling, entitled “Sawing Up a Forest,” representing the business of but one of the great mills in later days (1896) at work on Puget Sound:

“The best evidence of the revival of the lumber trade of the Sound, is to be found at the great Blakeley mill, where four hundred thousand feet of lumber is being turned out every twenty-four hours, and the harbor is crowded with ships destined for almost all parts of the world.

“One of the mill officials said, ‘We are at present doing a large business with South American and Australian ports, and expect with proper attention to secure the South African trade, which, if successful, will be a big thing. We have the finest lumber in the world, and there is no reason why we should not be doing five times the business that is being done on the Sound. Why, there is some first quality and some selected Norway lumber out there on the wharf, and it does not even compare with our second quality lumber.’

“The company has at present (1896) 350 men employed and between $15,000.00 and $20,000.00 in wages is paid out every month.

“The following vessels are now loading or are loaded and ready to sail:

“Bark Columbia, for San Francisco, 700,000 feet; ship Aristomene, for Valparaiso, 1,450,000 feet; ship Earl Burgess, for Amsterdam, 1,250,000 feet; bark Mercury, for San Francisco, 1,000,000 feet; ship Corolla, for Valparaiso, 1,000,000 feet; barkentine Katie Flickinger, for Fiji Islands, 550,000 feet; bark Matilda, for Honolulu, 650,000 feet; bark E. Ramilla, for Valparaiso, 700,000 feet; ship Beechbank, for Valparaiso, 2,000,000 feet.

“To load next week:

“Barkentine George C. Perkins, for Sidney, N. S. W., 550,000 feet; bark Guinevere, for Valparaiso, 850,000 feet.

“Those to arrive within the next two weeks:

“Bark Antoinette, for Valparaiso, 900,000 feet; barkentine J. L. Stanford, for Melbourne, 1,200,000 feet; ship Saga, for Valparaiso, 1,200,000 feet; bark George F. Manson, for Shanghai, China, 950,000 feet; ship Harvester, for South Africa, 1,000,000 feet.”

Shingle making was a prominent early industry. The process was slow, done entirely by hand, in vivid contrast with the great facility and productiveness of the modern shingle mills of this region; in consequence of the slowness of manufacture they formerly brought a much higher price. It was an ideal occupation at that time. After the mammoth cedars were felled, sawn and rived asunder, the shingle-maker sat in the midst of the opening in the great forest, towering walls of green on all sides, with the blue sky overhead and fragrant wood spread all around, from which he shaped the thin, flat pieces by shaving them with a drawing knife.

Cutting and hewing spars to load ships for foreign markets began before 1856.

As recorded in a San Francisco paper:

“In 1855, the bark Anadyr sailed from Utsalady on Puget Sound, with a cargo of spars for the French navy yard at Brest. In 1857 the same ship took a load from the same place to an English navy yard.

“To China, Spain, Mauritius and many other places, went the tough, enduring, flexible fir tree of Puget Sound. The severe test applied have proven the Douglas fir to be without an equal in the making of masts and spars.

“In later days the Fram, of Arctic fame, was built of Puget Sound fir.”

The discovery and opening of the coal mines near Seattle marks an epoch in the commerce of the Northwest.

As early as 1859 coal was found and mined on a small scale east of Seattle.

The first company, formed in 1866-7, was composed of old and well-known citizens: D. Bagley, G. F. Whitworth and Selucius Garfield, who was called the “silver-tongued orator.” Others joined in the enterprise of developing the mines, which were found to be extensive and valuable. Legislation favored them and transportation facilities grew.

The names of McGilvra, Yesler, Denny and Robinson were prominent in the work. Tramways, chutes, inclines, tugboats, barges, coalcars and locomotives brought out the coal to deep water on the Sound, across Lakes Washington and Union, and three pieces of railroad. A long trestle at the foot of Pike Street, Seattle, at which the ship “Belle Isle,” among others, often loaded, fell in, demolished by the work of the teredo.

The writer remembers two startling trips up the incline, nine hundred feet long, on the east side of Lake Washington, in an empty coal car, the second time duly warned by the operatives that the day before a car load of furniture had been “let go” over the incline and smashed to kindlingwood long before it reached the bottom. The trips were made amidst an oppressive silence and were never repeated.

The combined coal fields of Washington cover an area of one thousand six hundred fifty square miles. Since the earliest developments great strides have been made and a large number of coal mines are operated, such as the Black Diamond, Gilman, Franklin, Wilkeson, the U. S. government standard, Carbonado, Roslyn, etc., with a host of underground workers and huge steam colliers to carry an immense output.

The carrying of the first telegraph line through the dense forest was another step forward. Often the forest trees were pressed into service and insulators became the strange ornaments of the monarchs of the trackless wilderness.

Pioneer surveyors, of whom A. A. Denny was one, journalists, lawyers and other professional men, with the craftsmen, carpenters who helped to repair the Decatur and build the fort, masons who helped to build the old University of Washington, and other industrious workers brought to mind might each and every one furnish a volume of unique and interesting reminiscence.

The women pioneers certainly demand a work devoted to them alone.

Simultaneously with the commercial and political development, the educational and religious took place. The children of the pioneers were early gathered in schools and the parents preceded the teachers or supplemented their efforts with great earnestness. Books, papers and magazines were bountifully provided and both children and grown people read with avidity. For many years the mails came slowly, but when the brimming bags were emptied, the contents were eagerly seized upon, and being almost altogether eastern periodical literature, the children narrowly escaped acquiring the mental squint which O. W. Holmes speaks of having affected the youth of the East from the perusal of English literature.

The pioneer mail service was one of hardship and danger. The first mail overland in the Sound region was carried by A. B. Rabbeson in 1851, and could not have been voluminous, as it was transported in his pockets while he rode horseback.

A well known mail carrier of early days was Nes Jacob Ohm or “Dutch Ned,” as every one called him. He, with his yellow dog and sallow cayuse, was regarded as an indispensable institution. All three stood the test of travel on the trail for many years. The yellow canine had quite a reputation as a panther dog, and no doubt was a needed protection in the dark wild forest, but he has long since gone where the good dogs go and the cayuse probably likewise.

“Ned” was somewhat eccentric though a faithful servant of the public. In common with other forerunners of civilization he was a little superstitious.

One winter night, grown weary of drowsing by his bright, warm fireplace in his little cabin, he began to walk back and forth in an absent-minded way, when suddenly his hair fairly stood on end; there were two stealthy shadows following him every where he turned. In what state of mind he passed the remainder of the night is unknown, but soon after he related the incident to his friends evincing much anxiety as to what it might signify. Probably he had two lights burning in different parts of the room or sufficiently bright separate flames in the fireplace.

Doubtless it remained a mystery unexplained to him, to the end of his days.

The pioneer merchants who traded with the Indians, and swapped calico and sugar for butter and eggs, with the settlers, pioneer steamboat men who ran the diminutive steamers between Olympia and Seattle, pioneer editors, who published tri-weeklies whose news did not come in daily, pioneer milliners who “did up” the hats of the other pioneer women with taste and neatness, pioneer legislators, blacksmiths, bakers, shoemakers, foundry men, shipbuilders, etc., blazed the trails of commerce where now there are broad highways.

CHAPTER IV

BUILDING OF THE TERRITORIAL UNIVERSITY

Early in 1861, the University Commissioners, Rev. D. Bagley, John Webster and Edmund Carr, selected the site for the proposed building, ten acres in Seattle, described as a “beautiful eminence overlooking Elliott Bay and Puget Sound.” A. A. Denny donated eight and a fraction acres, Terry and Lander, one and a fraction acres. The structure was fifty by eighty feet, two stories in height, beside belfry and observatory. There were four rooms above, including the grand lecture room, thirty-six by eighty feet, and six rooms below, beside the entrance hall of twelve feet, running through the whole building.

The president’s house was forty by fifty, with a solid foundation of brick and cement cellar; the boarding house twenty-four by forty-eight, intended to have an extension when needed. A supply was provided of the purest spring water, running through one thousand four hundred feet of charred pump logs.

Buildings of such dimensions were not common in the Northwest in those days; materials were expensive and money was scarce.

It was chiefly through the efforts of John Denny that a large appropriation of land was made by Congress for the benefit of the new-born institution. Although advanced in years, his hair as white as snow, he made the long journey to Washington city and return when months were required to accomplish it.

By the sale of these lands the expense of construction and purchase of material were met. The land was then worth but one dollar and a half per acre, but enough was sold to amount to $30,400.69.

At that time the site lay in the midst of a heavy forest, through which a trail was made in order to reach it.

Of the ten-acre campus, seven acres were cleared of the tall fir and cedar trees at an expense of two hundred and seventy-five dollars per acre, the remaining three were worse, at three hundred and sixteen dollars per acre.

The method of removing these forest giants was unique and imposing. The workers partially grubbed perhaps twenty trees standing near each other, then dispatched a sailor aloft in their airy tops to hitch them together with a cable and descend to terra firma. A king among the trees was chosen whose downfall should destroy his companions, and relentlessly uprooting it, the tree-fallers suddenly and breathlessly withdrew to witness a grand sight, the whole group of unnumbered centuries’ growth go crashing down at once. They would scarcely have been human had they uttered no shout of triumph at such a spectacle. To see but one great, towering fir tree go grandly to the earth with rush of boughs and thunderous sound is a thrilling, pathetic and awe-inspiring sight.

About the center of the tract was left a tall cedar tree to which was added a topmast. The tree, shorn of its limbs and peeled clean of bark, was used for a flagstaff.

The old account books, growing yearly more curious and valuable, show that the majority of the old pioneers joined heartily in the undertaking and did valiant work in building the old University.

They dug, hewed, cleared land, hauled materials, exchanged commodities, busily toiled from morn to night, traveled hither and yon, in short did everything that brains, muscle and energy could accomplish in the face of what now would be deemed well nigh insurmountable obstacles. The president of the board of commissioners, the Rev. D. Bagley, has said that in looking back upon it he was simply foolhardy. “Why, we had not a dollar to begin with,” said he; nevertheless pluck and determination accomplished wonders; many of the people took the lands at one dollar and a half an acre, in payment for work and materials.

Clarence B. Bagley, son of Rev. D. Bagley, is authority for the following statement, made in 1896:

“Forty-eight persons were employed on the work and nearly all the lumber for the building was secured from the mills at Port Blakeley and Port Madison, while the white pine of the finishing siding, doors, sash, etc., came from a mill at Seabeck, on Hood Canal. I have been looking over the books my father kept at that time and find the names of many persons whom all old-timers will remember. I found the entry relating to receiving 10,000 brick from Capt. H. H. Roeder, the price being $15.50 per thousand, while lime was $3 per barrel and cement $4.50 per barrel. Another entry shows that seven gross of ordinary wood screws cost in that early day $9.78. Capt. Roeder is now a resident of Whatcom County. The wages then were not very high, the ordinary workman receiving $2 and $2.25 per day and the carpenters and masons $4 per day.

“On the 10th of March, John Pike and his son, Harvey Pike, began to clear the ground for the buildings and a few days later James Crow and myself commenced. The Pikes cleared the acre of ground in the southeast corner and we cleared the acre just adjoining, so that we four grubbed the land on which the principal building now stands. All the trees were cut down and the land leveled off, and the trees which now grace the grounds started from seeds and commenced to grow up a few years later and are now about twenty-five years old. Among the men who helped clear the land were: Hillory Butler, John Carr, W. H. Hyde, Edward Richardson, L. Holgate, H. A. Atkins, Jim Hunt, L. B. Andrews, L. Pinkham, Ira Woodin, Dr. Josiah Settle, Parmelee & Dudley, and of that number that are now dead are Carr, Hyde, Holgate, Atkins and Parmelee and Dudley. Mr. Crow is now living at Kent and owns a good deal of property there. Mr. Carr was a relative of the Hanfords. Mr. Holgate was a brother of the Holgate who was killed in Seattle during the Indian war, being shot dead while standing at the door of the fort. He was an uncle of the Hanfords. Mr. Atkins was mayor of the town at one time.

“R. King, who dressed the flagstaff, is not among the living. The teamsters who did most of the hauling were Hillory Butler, Thomas Mercer and D. B. Ward, all of whom are still living. William White was blacksmith here then and did a good deal of work on the building. He is now living in California and is well-to-do, but his son is still a resident of Seattle. Thomas Russell was the contractor for putting up the frame of the university building. He died some time since and of his estate there is left the Russell House, and his family is well known. John Dodge and John T. Jordan did a good deal of the mason work, both of whom are now dead, but they have children who still live in this city. The stone for the foundation was secured from Port Orchard and the lime came from Victoria, being secured here at a large cost.”

George Austin, who raised the flagstaff and put the top on, has been dead many years. Dexter Horton and Yesler, Denny & Co. kept stores in those days and furnished the nails, hardware and general merchandise. Mr. Horton’s store was where the bank now stands and the store of Yesler, Denny & Co. was where the National Bank of Commerce now stands. L. V. Wyckoff, the father of Van Wyckoff, who was sheriff of the county for many years, did considerable hauling and draying. He also is dead. Frank Mathias was a carpenter and did a good deal of the finishing work. He died in California and his heirs have since been fighting for his estate.

H. McAlear kept a stove and hardware store and furnished the stoves for the building. He is now dead and there has been a contest over some of his property in the famous Hill tract in this city.

D. C. Beatty and R. H. Beatty, not relatives, were both carpenters. The former is now living on a farm near Olympia and the latter is in the insane asylum at Steilacoom. Ira Woodin is still alive and is the founder of Woodinville. In the early days Mr. Woodin and his father owned the only tannery in the country, which was located at the corner of South Fourth Street and Yesler Avenue, then Mill Street. O. J. Carr, whose name appears as a carpenter, lives at Edgewater. He was the postmaster of the town for many years.

O. C. Shorey and A. P. DeLin, as “Shorey & DeLin,” furnished the desks for the several rooms and also made the columns that grace the front entrance to the building.

Plummer & Hinds furnished some of the materials used in the construction. George W. Harris, the banker, auditor of the Lake Shore road, is a stepson of Mr. Plummer.

Jordan and Thorndyke were plasterers and both have been dead for many years.

David Graham, who did some of the grading, is still living in Seattle. A. S. Mercer did most of the grading with Mr. Graham. Mr. Mercer is a brother of Thomas Mercer, who brought out two parties of young ladies from the Atlantic Coast by sea, many of whom are married and are now living in Seattle. Harry Hitchcock, one of the carpenters, is now dead. Harry Gordon was a painter and was quite well known for some years. He finally went East, and I think is still living, although I have not heard from him for many years. Of the three who composed the board of university commissioners Mr. Carr and Mr. Webster are dead.