North Cascades

SETTLEMENT PATTERNS IN THE NORTH CASCADES

CORRIDORS OF SETTLEMENT: SKAGIT RIVER

Oakes

Frank L. Oakes located a homestead along Bacon Creek outside, but adjacent to, the present-day park boundary. Little is known about this settler who came to the upper Skagit as early as 1895 and who remained into the 1940s. He trapped in the winter, and built a trapping cabin farther up Bacon Creek from his main ranch. He may have been a miner like so many of these early arrivals. Oakes was signed on as an axman in a 1909-10 GLO survey (T36N R11E western boundary), and in 1935 Ranger Tommy Thompson visited at his ranch to discuss the work he had completed along the Cascade Mine trail. Whether he was actually employed by the USFS is not known, but he did supplement his simple existence by supplying the USFS with goods, such as oats, and by leasing his pasture land to Ranger Thompson who needed land to winter the government-owned burros. [76] Remnants of Oakes' homestead and trapping cabin along upper Bacon Creek may still be extant today, but have not been field-checked recently.

Frank Oakes' barn in a clearing at Bacon Creek, 19 September 1907.
(USFS-Mt. Baker-Sedro Woolley photo file)