A Report On Washington Territory Part 16

[Sidenote: Railroad lines.]

Her growth will be rapidly accelerated by the extension of her railroads. Besides her coal roads, she will soon be practically the connecting point of certainly two, and perhaps three, transcontinental railroad lines. She now has railroad connection with the Northern Pacific, and will shortly be connected with the Canadian Pacific by the West Coast road. But the road that will do most for Seattle, indeed, the road which of itself would make a city at its Sound terminus, is the Seattle, Lake Sh.o.r.e and Eastern Railroad. This will be true if the road never crosses the limits of Washington Territory; but no doubt it will ultimately cross the continent, or at least have close transcontinental connections.

When these roads are thus extended, they will bring vast quant.i.ties of lumber, and of mineral and agricultural products, and carry in exchange foreign and domestic products for the supply of the rural and mining population, to say nothing of the great Eastern trade. Her coastwise and foreign trade have already been discussed.

[Sidenote: The chief ship-building centre.]

Puget Sound must also become the chief ship-building centre of the continent, and the possession by Seattle of the great fresh-water lakes so close to the Sound, and the fact that here will be the point where the Bessemer pig-iron and its products will be manufactured, will give this point advantage over all others on the Sound. Seattle will build ships for England, New England, South America, Asia, and the Islands of the Ocean; and just here will first be seen the dawning of the new day which will come to our American merchant marine, of late so depressed.

And the Government itself must sooner or later establish on Lake Washington a navy-yard where ships can be built of the best material at minimum cost; and where her ships out of commission can lie landlocked, secure from the teredo and the corroding effects of sea-water, and can at once get rid of their barnacles.

[Sidenote: Seattle better located than San Francisco.]

Seattle can have no rival on the Pacific Coast except San Francisco, which has the only good harbor and entrance outside of Puget Sound, but which has no coal, nor iron, nor timber, and whose back-country does not equal the Snoqualmie valley of East Washington for agricultural and mineral capabilities.

THE TERMINAL PROPERTY OF THE SEATTLE, LAKE Sh.o.r.e AND EASTERN RAILROAD.

[Sidenote: Unrivalled terminal property.]

The city and suburban property which the railroad has secured is singularly valuable, and will afford every facility for city and foreign business. It is correctly described in the doc.u.ments of the company. No future road can acquire such facilities. They approach a monopoly of great value.

SUBURBAN INTERESTS.

[Sidenote: But two entrances by land.]

[Sidenote: Superiority of the northern suburbs.]

There can be practically but two railroad entrances to Seattle, one from the south, and the other from the north, owing to the bluff ground on which the city is built, with Puget Sound in front and Lake Washington in the rear. The roads from the existing coal mines and from the Northern Pacific enter from the south; the Lake Sh.o.r.e road enters from the north. Suburban improvements will no doubt be extended both north and south. But it seemed to me that for residences and amus.e.m.e.nts the northern end has the advantage, as the high lands are more convenient to the railroad, and command fine views of those beautiful lakes on the east, and of the Sound on the west. Here will be the pleasant drives, the place for sailing, rowing and swimming; for open-air games, picnics, etc. On the east side of Lake Washington will be vegetable and fruit gardens and dairies, whose products will reach the city by this railroad; to all of which have been added the powerful influence of the Moss Bay operations.

The logging business begins in sight of the city, and a number of logging camps were already in operation along the first twenty miles of the railroad. After the loggers, follow the farmers. Already a surprising number of people have established homes in this direction.

[Sidenote: Factories of the future.]

[Sidenote: Ship ca.n.a.l.]

Near the Sound and a little distance from the city will be great saw-mills, grain elevators, canneries, and, in time, fish-oil and fertilizer mills, tanneries, smelting furnaces, sulphuric acid and other chemical works. And here will be the ship ca.n.a.l connecting the lakes with the Sound, and the shipyards of the future.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TRAIN-LOAD OF LOGS ON THE SEATTLE, LAKE Sh.o.r.e AND EASTERN RAILWAY.]

TIMBER.

[Sidenote: Superiority of the timber on the Seattle, Lake Sh.o.r.e and Eastern Railway.]

The great lumber interest will have a larger and richer field on the Seattle, Lake Sh.o.r.e and Eastern Railroad than on any other through line in Washington Territory. On the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad the timber is abundant, but too small for the mill, except in a very few spots. The other roads show but little left close by, and the trees never had the size of those of Snoqualmie Valley. The West Coast road, which will be tributary to the Lake Sh.o.r.e Railroad, will pa.s.s through good forests; but, according to my information, the forests on the line of the Lake Sh.o.r.e road are the very best in Washington Territory.

The forest of mill timber beginning in sight of Seattle, continues with some intermissions to the top of the Cascade Mountains. It increases in size and quant.i.ty to a point far up on the mountain side, and the trees continue of good size all the way to the top. Crossing the Cascade Mountains, on the east side the trees are quite numerous, but smaller than on the west side, though some of them can be sawed. Continuing eastward, the trees get fewer and smaller, and change from fir to ordinary yellow and bull pine. In the plateau country of the Great Bend there are only scattered groups of stunted trees to be seen, and, excepting a few skirts along the bluffs of the Columbia, no forests of mill timber are to be met with until after pa.s.sing the Idaho line.

[Sidenote: The forests described.]

I will now review this timber belt with more particularity. After leaving Seattle, there is a somewhat elevated country between the lakes and Puget Sound, which is largely covered with mill timber of medium size. Perhaps two feet and a half would be about the average diameter of the logs. Here, as everywhere, the princ.i.p.al timber, and that most cut and valued, are the Douglas fir and the white cedar.

[Sidenote: Forests of Raging River.]

Continuing along Lake Samamish, and up Squak Creek, these forests continue on both sides at some distance off. A large body of moderately sized timber runs off toward the northeast, covering the hills which lie in front of the mountain range. Pa.s.sing the Gilman mines, we meet but little large timber until we enter the valley of Raging River. Here there is an almost unbroken forest of splendid timber, extending from near the mouth as far up as I went, namely, ten miles from the mouth.

The mill timber here would average from six to ten inches more in diameter than that we pa.s.sed near Lake Washington; and there seemed to be a vast body of it in this valley. As far up on the hill or mountain side as I went, or could see, the trees retain their large size.

At the upper coal mines I found this to be the case to the mountain top, 800 or 900 feet above the river. The trees were not only large, and thick on the ground, but extremely tall and free from knots. I was told that the heavy forest continued a considerable distance above the upper coal mines.

[Sidenote: Forests near Hop Ranch.]

[Sidenote: Superior to the Long Leaf forests of the Southern States and of the Mississippi Bottom.]

In the Snoqualmie Valley proper are to be found the largest forests and the largest trees. The farmers and hop-growers have destroyed thousands of acres of the finest timber trees on the continent, but many, many thousand acres still remain unbroken. Between Falls City and Hop Ranch the wagon road pa.s.sed through two or three miles of this magnificent timber. Turning from the road, I ascended the Snoqualmie Mountain, and all the way up to the coal openings I traveled in the densest forest of the largest trees I had ever seen. Pa.s.sing the cleared country about Hop Ranch, I again plunged into one of these monstrous forests, and traveled three or four miles through it without a break. The sun never touches the earth in these forests. The trees rise to the height of 250 feet or upward, and lock their branches together far overhead, shutting out the sunlight and awing the traveler. Their trunks seem to stand absolutely straight and plumb from the ground to the top. I had studied the long-leafed pine forests of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. I had traveled for a hundred miles through that marvelous forest on the Yazoo Delta, where it seemed to me that Nature had done her utmost in covering the ground with vast and lofty trees; but here in the Snoqualmie valley I traveled through forests that for the size, height, and number of trees to the acre, as much exceeded the forests of the Yazoo bottom as the latter exceeded all other forests I had ever seen. The Snoqualmie forest also exceeds all others I have known in the immense quant.i.ty of its fallen timber, which renders locomotion off of the trails extremely slow and difficult. The railroad ascends the South Fork of the Snoqualmie. I did not go up the Middle Fork, but was told that the timber is fine in that valley also.

[Sidenote: Trees ten feet in diameter.]

[Sidenote: Average nearly five feet in diameter and 250 feet high.]

The little Salal Prairie, five or six miles long, and six miles from Hop Ranch, breaks the continuity of the forests, but with that exception, it continues to the pa.s.s of the mountain. As to the size of the trees, I feel sure that I saw hundreds that would average ten feet in diameter. I measured two that were by no means singular, and one gave a circ.u.mference of thirty-three feet (equal to eleven feet diameter), and the other not much less. There is no doubt that many of these trees are 300 feet in height. I think it likely that the average height of the mill timber on the line of the road from Raging River, for two-thirds of the way up the main mountain (a distance of over twenty-five miles), is 250 feet, and 150 feet of this clear of limbs, and hence of knots. And I think that the average diameter of the b.u.t.t-cuts of the mill timber would be near five feet. I found my greatest difficulty in estimating by the eye the average number of trees to an acre. I can only say that I not only never saw so many, but I never conceived it possible for such a number of large trees to be supported by the soil of an acre of ground.

It was not unusual to see many trees of six to eight feet in diameter standing within ten feet of each other. I knew, of course, that there were single trees in California, and elsewhere, larger than any single specimens to be found here, but I did not know before going to Washington Territory that such forests as these were to be found on the face of the earth.

[Sidenote: Lumber product per acre.]

I shall leave to men better versed in the details of the lumber business than I to estimate the quant.i.ty of sawed lumber which would be yielded by an acre of such timber, and by the many thousands of acres which lie on, or near, the line of this railroad. Somebody published that the average yield of the Washington Territory forests would be 30,000 feet to the acre, and this may be, because there is much small and scattered timber; but if this amount be multiplied by six, it would not do justice to the forests I saw in the Snoqualmie valley. There are single trees that would make 30,000 feet of lumber. It is fortunate that the fir and cedar timber are preferred by the lumbermen, as these varieties const.i.tute the larger portion of the forest. Undoubtedly the hemlock will all be wanted at an early day, and so of the larch and the less abundant trees, both evergreen and deciduous.

The bearing of these facts on the interests of the railroad are obvious.

Such bodies of timber, standing close to the road for a distance of eighty miles, would of itself guarantee the success of the road for a generation to come.

And there is everything favorable in the position of the timber with reference to the track, especially if the track, in ascending the mountain, can be kept near the river. It is to be hoped that the timber along the right of way will be saved for sawing. It would be no small item in paying for the road.

There will promptly spring up along the whole line both logging-camps and saw-mills. Besides those already in operation, I heard of some large new enterprises projected. The demand for lumber is so insatiable, and the profits of the business so good, that an extensive fresh field like this will be entered with avidity by an army of lumbermen.

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.

[Sidenote: Agricultural freights.]

The agricultural interest is not so large at present on the west side of the Cascade Range, as the timber, coal and iron interests, but it is growing, and will become exceedingly important. East of the Cascade Mountains this will be the chief railroad interest in the beginning, though ultimately it will be surpa.s.sed by the tonnage of the mines. I have heretofore described the soils and vegetable products of West Washington, but would say specially with regard to the belt we are considering, that it is destined to be a fine agricultural region. The bottom lands of Squak Creek, and of Snoqualmie River, including all its branches and tributaries, are extremely fertile, and suited to produce the largest crops of gra.s.s, oats, barley, hops, and roots of almost every sort, besides most of the overground vegetables.

[Sidenote: Produce of Hop Ranch.]

At my request, Mr. Wilson, the manager, and one of the owners of the Hop Ranch, furnished me the following written statement concerning that estate, which, although larger than any other on the route, is not richer than many other places of smaller size.

MR. WILSON'S LETTER.