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Skagit River JournalSubscribers Edition Stories & Photos The most in-depth, comprehensive site about the Skagit. Covers from British Columbia to Puget sound. Counties covered: Skagit, Whatcom, Island, San Juan. An evolving history dedicated to the principle of committing random acts of historical kindness |
Home of the Tarheel Stomp Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug |
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How the Far West Grows
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During the period of building the empire of the Mississippi Valley and of the highland Commonwealths that were originally founded on beds of golden gravel the locations of cities and towns was determined by chance. Many men now living can remember when Indiana town sites were slowly and laboriously chopped out of first-growth forests. The opening of farms fully occupied the agricultural settler for years. Pioneers lived hard in those days. Towns grew very slowly. They were merely shabby collections of log huts. The forest town was never in advance of the surrounding and supporting country. During this time, when the pioneers carried axes, there were no railroads, no steamboats, no telegraph lines, and a weekly, or maybe a monthly, mail was the only means of communication between the frontier settlements and the Atlantic seaboard. A more dreary and dispiriting place than an Indiana town of fifty years ago cannot be imagined. The people were narrow-minded and egotistical, as all woodsmen who live apart from the world are, it matters not at what period.
Frank Wilkeson has been our favorite early Northwest columnist since we discovered his role in Skagit and Whatcom counties while we conducted our original research in 1893. We owe this column to Patricia McAndrew, a Pennsylvania researcher who is writing a book on Wilkeson and his famous family. You can read a bio of Wilkeson and 11 more of his columns in various sections of the website. |
north from Fairhaven 1889 Click on photo for larger version |
You can also read this story about Nelson Bennett, a ranscription of an 1889 biography by Elwood Evans. From Subscribers Edition, Issue 4. See a list of links to all of Frank Wilkeson's columns on our site. And read about Patricia N. McAndrew's new book, The Old Soldier Goes Fishing — planned for publication in winter 2005, a collection of his columns and a biography of Frank and his family.
Did you enjoy this story? Please consider subscribing to the optional Subscribers Edition. That is how we fund this grand project. Please report any broken links or files that do not open and we will send you the correct link. Thank you. |
Heirloom Gardens Natural Foods at 805B Metcalf street, the original home of Oliver Hammer. Oliver Hammer Clothes Shop at 817 Metcalf street in downtown Sedro-Woolley, 82 years. Bus Jungquist Furniture at 829 Metcalf street in downtown Sedro-Woolley, 36 years. Schooner Tavern/Cocktails at 621 Metcalf street in downtown Sedro-Woolley, across from Hammer Square. Peace and quiet at the Alpine RV Park, just north of Marblemount on Hwy 20 Park your RV or pitch a tent by the Skagit river, just a short driver from Winthrop or Sedro-Woolley. Would you like to buy a country church, pews, belfry, bell, pastor's quarters and all? Email us for details. |
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Mail copies/documents to street address: Skagit River Journal, 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, WA, 98284. |