North Cascades

SETTLEMENT PATTERNS IN THE NORTH CASCADES

CORRIDORS OF SETTLEMENT: SKAGIT RIVER

Whitworth

Miles above the Rowland homestead and approximately four miles north of the international boundary, Henry Robert Whitworth located a cattle ranch along the east side of the Skagit River. Although outside the present-day park and the United States, the Whitworth ranch deserves mention in this chapter because it represents the closest homestead to the northern boundary of today's park. [151]

Between the years 1904 and 1910, Whitworth and his family developed the property, building a ten-room house, two outbuildings, and furniture, using wood cleared from the site and cut by a portable sawmill brought onto the ranch. Dairy and beef cattle, pigs, horses, and chickens were also brought in for the family farm operation. Whitworth chose this site in hopes that the Canadian government would construct a major road through the ranch. But a series of family illnesses and the subsequent loss of livestock compelled the Whitworths to abandon their efforts, never to return.

In 1911 Oliver Smith leased the ranch intending to establish a roadhouse, but nothing appears to have come of this. Eventually the ranch was deserted. Only hikers and trappers used the buildings intermittently, and the ranch fell into disrepair. By 1929, the land had been sold to Seattle City Light as part of the proposed Ross Dam Reservoir site. This land has not been flooded by the waters of Ross Lake, but it is unlikely that any remains of the uppermost Skagit River homestead are extant today. [152]

The upper Skagit River corridor closed to settlement, in theory, with the passage of the 1906 Forest Homestead Act. After that, any lands held privately here either became patented homesteads, were issued a special permit, or were declared illegal, forcing the squatters to relinquish all rights to the property and move. All other lands were federally-owned and under the administration of the USFS. New settlers could no longer locate homes in the upper Skagit region of the North Cascades unless a legal property owner chose to subdivide his/her land and sell. The population of the area decreased as early settlers died, many leaving their unpatented claims to revert to the federal government.