Please read the memoir below before driving to the cache
site as it will make clear the history of the area as you drive
through it. The history is in the drive to the cache, not at the
cache site, and the only reason to do this cache is for the
history. Please do NOT try to access the cache from SR 522; you
must drive to the cache via Tester Road from Monroe.
In 1888, Blackman Brothers were the leading lumber men in
Snohomish County. The three brothers worked together. One operated
the sawmill at Snohomish City, one a general store and Cap
Blackman, as they called him, had charge of three logging camps in
the county, of which the bog hole was one. The bog hole, as it was
called, was located at a little lake on the Skykomish bottom near
the forks. That year they logged off a part of what is now the
state reformatory and that flat between there and the big hill to
the west. (George Tate, now living in Monroe, and I are all that
are left of that crew of twenty men.)
They had three yoke of oxen to yard the logs into the main road.
There they were dogged together, three or four in a turn according
to size. Then hauled over the main skid road with four yoke of oxen
and rolled into the little lake, then poled down a slough
one-fourth of a mile. They were hauled out again onto the skid road
and hauled again one-fourth mile with three yoke of oxen, then
rolled into the Skykomish River.
Early in the summer, we saw Cap Blackman was visiting the bog
hole camp quite often. He spent a great deal of his time down at
the river awatching the logs being hauled out of the slough to the
river. One morning he came to the camp and asked the camp boss for
a man to help him for a few days. I was detailed to go with him. As
we walked that half mile to the river, I found out Cap never talked
unless he had something to say, as he said nothing until we arrived
at the landing. Then he said he was going to haul the logs from the
slough with cable powered by steam.
But how? There was nothing in sight but a pile of junk that had
come upriver by boat. The junk consisted of a little portable
engine and boiler, a few cog wheels of different sizes, a few
castings, a coil of steel cable and a couple of logs by the skid
road.
We got busy at one. We split the little cedar log that was about
two feet in diameter and bedded one half in the ground on each side
and parallel to the skid road. A post seven feet high was mortared
in the center of the sills and well braced. The fir log, about two
and one half feet in diameter and sixteen feet long should be
called the drum, as the cable to haul the logs was wound up on the
log. That log or drum with castings attached to the ends was raised
up and the dudgeons were entered into the bearings on the posts.
The little engine was set up and attached to the drum by cog
wheels, then the little boiler was ready for steam.
We had worked more than a week to complete the job, when the
engineer came on the job. He was a tall, red-whiskered man but we
soon found out he could swear as well as any bullpuncher. The
engineer was getting up steam as Cap and I were stretching the
cable to the slough. We attached the cable to an average-sized log.
Soon we heard the little boiler blowing off steam. Cap gave the
signal to go and the log began to move out of the water. Cap stood
by the roadside, hat in hand, anxiously watching. Would it go when
it struck the skid road? As we watched, the log struck the road and
moved on to the landing, where it slipped into the water. Cap was
very much pleased with what he had done. He said that it was the
first logging to be done with steam and cable in Snohomish County,
and he believed anywhere.
I cut and split the wood and fired that little boiler and packed
water from the river in two coal oil cans to keep a barrel filled
to furnish steam. I said that red-whiskered engineer sure knew how
to swear. One day, they hooked onto an unusually large log. When it
got on the skid road, it stopped. All the little engine could do
was to blow off steam. The engineer shoved the weight out on the
lever to the steam gauge, and again it only blew off steam. He put
the weight to the end of the lever, but it was no go. Then he
grabbed a small axe I used to split wood and hung it on the lever,
saying "I'll hold that steam if it blows to h_____." At that time I
was on my way to the river with two coal oil cans for water. I went
pretty fast expecting the little boiler would blow up, but it
didn't and soon that great log came over the skid road and slipped
into the river.
That little engine had put three yoke of oxen out of a job. It
was several years later the logging engine came into the woods.
Then the oxen were all retired from their labor. When I saw that
logging engine in the woods and saw it work, they called it a
donkey, then I wondered if that little animal I helped put up down
on the riverbank of the Skykomish River wasn't its ancestor. But
such is progress.
--Hiram
Ellsworth Pearsall
Donkey Engine used in 1904 not far from the cache
site.
Another in series of caches that focus on Monroe-area
history. You are looking for a small lock 'n lock box under the
west-most clump of alders of a pair of clumps.