North Cascades

MARKETING THE WILDERNESS: DEVELOPMENT OF COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISES

TRAPPING AND THE FUR TRADE

East Side

Miners, settlers, and others trapped on the east slopes of the Cascades as well. From the 1890s until the 1940s, Stehekin valley residents and tourists transported furs downlake to be sold. The Chelan Leader reported on June 18, 1897: "Among the bales of fine furs, goat, bear and linx [sic] skins which Red Pearl is getting ready to ship from the head of the lake, is a monster mountain lion skin which measured eight feet in length." Miner and horse packer Dan Devore was trapping the Bridge Creek drainage in 1906 and may have been responsible for building one or more of the backcountry log trapping cabins erroneously attributed to the Hudson's Bay Company. [24] The Weaver Brothers trapped and operated a taxidermy business at the head of the lake, capitalizing on the local tourist market in the early twentieth century by preparing pelts and skins for the visiting hunters.

Weaver Brothers' cabin, displaying an assortment of animal pelts trapped in the Stehekin River drainage, n.d.
(NOCA-Stehekin photo file)

Other individuals trapping on tributaries of the Stehekin River included Hugh Courtney who worked seasonally for the USFS and spent winters trapping marten. It is believed he built a log trapping cabin in the rarely traversed Butte Creek drainage, and remnants of this structure exist today. [25] Hugh's son Ray accompanied him for many years and continued the activity long after his father died. Both Hugh and Ray were known to have trapped Company Creek as well. [26] Another Courtney son recalled shipping the furs to Silbermans in Chicago and J.L. Prouty's Sons in New York. [27] Barney Zell and Fred Bowan were two Stehekin residents who trapped in the 1920s. Zell trapped Agnes Creek and together with Bowan trapped the Rainbow Creek drainage. [28] The two used and possibly built a trapping cabin up Rainbow Creek near Bowan Creek. Today all that remains of this structure are foundation logs. [29]

By the 1930s few people were trapping in the Stehekin backcountry. The USFS noted that fur trapping was controlled fairly well in the Chelan District because of the trapper cabin permit system and that:

Very few permits are issued and seasons staggered. Beaver are lacking and there is little chance for their introduction, as nearly all the streams of any size fall rapidly through narrow canyons. [30]

Remnants of a trapper's cabin in Butte Creek drainage, north of Lake Chelan.
(Photo by J. Hammett, NPS, 1984)