History of Stillwater Washington:
The first known industry in the area was a logging camp run by the Mauglin Brothers started in 1897. The firm would log the Stillwater area and float the wood via the Snoqualmie River to their mills in Snohomish. Their mills produced 60 million shingles per year. Logging in the area got underway around 1906, with the arrival of the Stillwater Logging Company, a subsidiary of the Cherry Valley Logging and Railway Company. The Stillwater Company consisted of a group of men who had logged previously in Stillwater Minnesota, and were still referring to themselves as the “Stillwater Gang”. In 1910, Mr. H. Butikofer platted out a town on the present Stillwater site and named the town in honor of the men who worked in the nearby logging camp. The logging railroad extended from a point on the river at the east end of the State hunting reserve, then along and across the present highway, crossing a long trestle where the Buse home now stands, and then up the hillside across from the store. The old grade can still be plainly seen where it crossed the road about halfway up Stillwater Hill Road. From there, the tracks branched out all over the top all over the top of the hill, going back into Lake Joy and eventually reaching as far north as Marckworth Forest and Drunken Charlie Lake.
The Great Northern Railroad arrived in Stillwater in 1910 and the Milwaukee a year later. Both sets of tracks ran through a field in the back of the store. The Milwaukee erected a small depot, manned by an operator to control the dozen or more trains that used to triple crossing daily. Over the next few years the logging company continued to grow adding several locomotives and operating around 50 miles of main line track and spur lines in the hills above Stillwater and in the Camp Elwell and Marckworth Forest area. In late 1917, during the height of World War I, Cherry Valley Logging Company, like many others was taken over by the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, the United States Government Spruce Division. In 1924 the company constructed a number of logging lines and built a roundhouse and shops located near present C.Y.O Camp Bosco, and a siding was built alongside the Milwaukee, that extended from present Lake Langlois Road almost to Griffin Creek. A new log dump was constructed at Lowell, near Everett, and in September the operations at Stillwater and Riverview were abandoned. The operations at Stillwater were sold to Robert Swan who owned the Swan and McKay Logging Company. The company also took over the Stillwater Lumber and Shingle Company, which later became known as Swan’s Mill. In 1926, most of the remaining timberlands were sold to Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company. By 1939, the remaining timber contracts had been sold to Weyerhaeuser Company, and on January 18, 1948, after disposing of its remaining land, the Cherry Valley Logging Company was officially dissolved. Weyerhaeuser’s Vail operations continued until 1992, running two log trains a daily from Vail to South Bay, dumping 90 cars of logs a day into the bay and rafting them to the same mill in Everett. The log cars in Vail are the same ones that were used by the Cherry Valley Logging Company, in the valley in 1918.
The Lake Marcel-Stillwater area is an official CDP (census designated place) and in 2000 the US census bureau reported the population of this CDP to be 1381, and a total area of 1.3 square miles. Lake Marcel is principally fed by Stillwater creek. At the base of Stillwater hill Stillwater Creek briefly joins Harris Creek before meeting the Snoqualmie River. This area is protected by the 456-acre Stillwater Wildlife Area, owned by the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife. The Stillwater Wildlife Area was purchased in 1970 to provide hunting opportunities and other wildlife recreation. The area is also protected by a 44-acre Stillwater Natural Area, owned by King County, and is adjacent. The Stillwater Natural Area was purchased in 1994 with Conservation Futures Tax Levy funds to protect and preserve the open space and agricultural characteristics of the site, to conserve the integrity of the Snoqualmie Valley Trail corridor and to provide public access to the Snoqualmie River. The portion of Stillwater Creek below Lake Marcel is also labeled as Essency Creek on some maps and government databases. Essency Creek was named after one of the early settlers of Stillwater, Mr. Joseph Essency.
History of this cache:
The survival of the community of Stillwater was originally placed by Akitahikers on 10-23-2010, She placed a lot of really great caches in the area, unfortunately most of them were archived in the spring of 2015. I am attempting to bring some of them back online for the community to once again enjoy. This cache is the original container and log, in it's original location, though I did change the name. The original cache page listing was GC2H6CX. The history of Stillwater is reformatted version of the history that she put together, because there is very little information written down regarding Stillwater, most of the information she gathered was from speaking to folks that owned the businesses in Stillwater at the time as well as the Duvall and Carnation historical societies.
The Cache:
If your an experianced cacher you will probably be able to guess exactly where the cache container is located. You are looking for a small lock'n lock type container, it is located on the south side. There is parking immediately by the cache. Please know that if you found the original version of this cache you are welcome to go out and sign the log again, and then log your find on line as this is a new cache listing and new owner so technically it is considered to be a different cache.
Congratulations to F^3 for FTF on the original incarnation of this cache!
Congratulations to sth2878 for FTF on the re-incarnation of this cache!
 This cache was placed by a WSGA member. If you are a geocacher in the state of Washington, please consider joining Washington State Geocaching Association. See the WSGA website for details. |