North Cascades

EARLY IMPRESSIONS: EURO-AMERICAN EXPLORATIONS AND SURVEYS

EXPLORATIONS

Merriam/Symons Party (1879)

Two years after this private group of gold-seekers passed through the North Cascades, the United States Government revived its interest in the area. Indian unrest elsewhere in the territory during the 1870s prompted the government to establish several temporary and permanent military forts as a precautionary measure. In 1879, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Clay Merriam and Lieutenant Thomas Williams Symons were sent to establish one such outpost on the east side of the Cascades.

With orders in hand, Merriam and Symons met in September of that year at the confluence of Foster's Creek and the Columbia River, near Fort Okanogan. They immediately set out down the Columbia in search of a suitable site for the new fort. After examining both sides of the river they decided the best site was at the outlet of Lake Chelan. A good supply of timber existed there and "the purest water is at hand and available for every purpose." [81] Symons recorded his impressions of Lake Chelan eloquently:

Lake Chelan is a wonderfully beautiful sheet of water, about 60 miles long and from 1 to 5 miles wide. It seems to be and is in fact a dammed-up mountain canon of the most rugged and pronounced description. The water is of diamond-like clearness and yet in places no sight can penetrate to the bottom of its liquid depths. It is supplied from mountain springs and from the melting snows of the mass of snow-capped mountains lying about Mount Baker [Symons was incorrect this latter detail]. [82]

Both Merriam and Symons navigated up the lake in a dug-out canoe approximately 24 miles but did not enter today's park on this particular trip.

The following year, in the spring of 1880, Colonel Merriam relocated his troops from their temporary home at Foster's Creek to the new campsite at Lake Chelan. "Camp Chelan was established just where the lake narrows into the creek [Chelan River], on a beautiful bunch-grass-covered plateau on the north bank, stretching back about a mile to the rocky and timbered hills." [83] The troops "carried on with vigor and rapidity," building a sawmill and fortification.

That summer Merriam took the time to explore the lake further, traveling its entire length by canoe. Merriam's general observations were recorded by Symons:

Colonel Merriam afterward went further up the lake, and says that the timber becomes better and better as the lake is ascended, and cedar is foudn [sic] about the head of it, which region he describes as being wonderfully grand. At the extreme upper end he found solid vertical walls of rock and on these, several hundred feet above the water's edge, were a large number of hieroglyphics written in a horizontal line, evidently by people in boats when the waters were at this higher level. [84]

The site, however, had far too many drawbacks, and within one year the army decided to abandon Camp Chelan. By October of 1880 Merriam had orders to reestablish a new post at the mouth of the Spokane River. The post became known as Fort Spokane and it served as a military fort for sixteen years until abandoned by the government in 1900. [85]