In the beginning of the white era in Snohomish
County the river was the only highway. So wrote
William Whitfield, the editor of the 1926 History of Snohomish
County. He continued in part: All the functions now
fulfilled by railway and public road were then the exclusive
province of the river. For this reason it was of prime importance
to the pioneer. Its course defined the path and the limits of
settlement, for the dense forest, inaccessible by water, was
worthless no matter how fine the timber nor how rich the soil. It
was the river which must bear the pioneer's wares to market,
whether those wares were logs or the products of the farm. It was
the river which must bring him his supplies. It was the river which
gave him his slight touch with the outside world. It was the river
which brought him all that he knew of friends and neighbors and
social life of any kind. More than one western Washington
settlement suffered deprivation almost amounting to famine, when
for any reason the river was obstructed. Under these circumstances
every phase of the river was watched with absorbing interest.
Whether the water was low or high made a vast difference; almost
the difference that it would mean today as to whether all the roads
and all the railways were blocked or open to travel.
Skykomish River looking upriver from the Reformatory
Hill toward Monroe c1912.
Photo courtesy Monroe Historical Society #891.
The first craft to ply the river was, of course, the Indian
canoe (pictured below). Utmost care was used in the selection of
the logs from which these canoes were made that no blemish of the
wood should mar the perfect craft which was the Indian's pride.
Towed to a convenient place, the log was stripped of bark and then,
with axes of stone the top was split off or levelled to make ready
for the burning. Stones were heated and placed upon the flat
surface and the burning process was begun. This required many days
and infinite care and skill. Should the log be burned too near the
edge the whole structure would be weakened or entirely spoiled.
After the burning came the most expert work of the canoe builder.
Both the inner and the outer lines of the canoe must be made smooth
and perfect. Stone chisels and stone adzes were used for the first
of this work, and this was followed by scorching, and scraping with
sand stone. The great war canoes were sometimes nearly seventy feet
long.... The canoe of commerce, the one used by the men of the
tribe for hunting and fishing and ordinary journeyings, were much
less ornate and were usually no more than twenty feet in length.
They were handled with great skill and braved rough seas. Still
smaller canoes were used by the [women] of the tribe. Many of these
craft were not more than ten or twelve feet long and were of
rougher finish but possessed of pointed prow and graceful lines.
Nevertheless, these were the canoes most used both by the Indians
and by the early white settlers. There is evidence that these
canoes reached the very headwaters of the rivers. These Indian
"gondoliers" were cheaply hired and their muscles and their canoes
furnished the first transportation in the county.
The Jimmicum Family, a Native American family, with
canoes on the river c1892.
Such a canoe, built by a member of the Jimmicum family, is on
display in the Monroe
Historical Society Museum.
Photo courtesy Monroe Historical Society #264.
Although The Traveler became the first steamer up the
Snohomish River in 1855, going some eight miles, it was another
decade before there were any commercial vessels running the
Snohomish River. By the late 1870s, river steamers were also
traveling up the Snoqualmie River as far as Falls City and up the
lower Skykomish as far as Park Place (about a mile downriver from
the cache site and also the site of Pattison's
Ferry). In May 1887, The Gleaner became the first
steamer to travel some distance up the Skykomish stopping less than
two miles below Sultan. The following January, The Mame
reached Sultan and continued upriver another three miles. With the
mining boom of 1891, river traffic to Sultan became a regular
feature with daily roundtrips between Snohomish and Sultan on the
The Monte Cristo and three times a week on the The
Minnie M (pictured below). The runs were short-lived ending by
August 1892 with the coming of Great Northern Railway.
Steamer "Minnie M" welcomed by the band at Sultan in
1892.
Photo courtesy Monroe Historical Society #158.
To reach the cache site, the easiest parking is probably at the
west parking lot of the
Skykomish River Park at N47 50.853 W121 58.792 unless the gate
is open to the south parking lot. One hundred years ago this park
was the site of the Great Northern Berry Farm, which grew
raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries, shipping 150 cases a
day in season for a total of 5,000 cases. By the following year,
farm production was expected to double with a total of 28 acres of
raspberries, five acres of strawberries, and three acress of
evergreens (blackberries). They used pony refrigerators to ship the
berries. These had been invented by the president of Great Northern
Fruit, C.J. Stewart, around 1900, and held 54 cups of berries and
10 to 15 lbs. of ice. On a trip to St. Paul, the berries required
two re-icings. Stewart was originally a berry farmer in the
Puyallup area until Great Northern approached him to start the
berry farm here.
Walk either through the park or around it to the south parking
area. If this were a hundred years ago, as you drop down into the
south parking lot you would be entering the Skykomish River and
would have to swim to the cache and perhaps dive down to it
depending upon the level of the river as the cache location is near
the south bank of the river as it flowed a hundred years ago. The
area to the east and south of this parking area is a bit of a maze
of trails and is in the river's flood plain. Find your way without
trespassing on the Cadman Gravel Claim to N47 50.712 W121 58.491.
The easiest way is the wide trail that leaves the southeast corner
of the south parking lot. At the waypoint, look for a trail heading
downriver parallel to the river bank. This is a legal fisherman's
trail that will take you to the Gravel Bar Access further down the
river. The cache, a small rubbermaid container, is a short way off
this trail on the river side of the trunk of a large tree. Please
rehide it well as this area has a high muggle factor. Please be
aware that this cache could be washed away in a flood, so please do
not leave Travelers in it during flood season. Also please note
there are a number of large trees across the trail that you will
have to clamber over, under or around caused by the recent flooding
and hence the high terrain rating.
Hayes's Schades Island Homestead.
Photo courtesy Monroe Historical Society #272.
At the cache site there is a good viewpoint for looking up and
down the river. Upstream you can see the Skykomish
River Bridge. Downstream you can see the Gravel Bar, where the
trail ends but before it does, it takes you past the Cadman Gravel
Pit. That huge hole, now filled with water, was once largely the
Schades Island Homestead (pictured above), which was then on an
island in the middle of the river a hundred years ago. The Gravel
Bar was then roughly across the neck of a peninsula (at right in
this photo)
that pushed north from the Tualco Valley. This peninsula
(foreground) and Schades Island (center right) can be seen in the
first photo at the top of the page. And remember, where you are
standing now was under the river close to the south bank of the
river a hundred years ago. The river has changed course around
Monroe several times in recorded history.
Another in series of caches that focus on Monroe-area
history. Sats in this area can be weak and variable so specific
instructions for finding the cache are also in the above
narrative.