North Cascades

TIMBER RESOURCES: LOGGING

East Side

The timber resources of the eastern slope were utilized only after the territory was open for settlement. As in the Skagit River valley, the initial demand for wood was based on local needs. Between the years 1890 and 1910 the local newspaper made numerous references to rafts of logs assembled at the head of Lake Chelan. [71] At the foot of the lake both Chelan and Lakeside boasted sawmills, the latter began operation in 1893. Kingman and Sullins were known to have operated a sawmill in Chelan for many years. A 1900 survey of north central Washington forests stated:

Fifteen sawmills are located on the eastern slope and these are mostly small plants operated during the summer season to supply the local demand. This includes the materials for the construction of irrigation flumes and fences and for the manufacture of fruit boxes and crates to supply the demands of the enormous fruit growing industries of the Yakima, Wenatchee, Entiat and Chelan Valleys. [72]

The same report noted that "most of the logs are brought down from the head of the lake and are handled with very little waste." [73]

At the head of the lake, in the developing community of Stehekin, the earliest loggers were settlers and miners who removed timber from their own land as needed for their cabins and homesteads. In the 1880s, some of these settlers cleared their land with the intention of making profits downlake. This required hauling the logs to the lake shore, rafting them together, and arranging for a steamer to tow the raft to sawmills in Chelan. William Buzzard, a Stehekin homesteader who arrived at the head of the lake in 1889, had a contract with the steamboat company operating on the lake at the time. The first boats on the lake burned cordwood and Buzzard agreed to keep them well-supplied. Taking the timber off his claim, Buzzard paid local boys to cut the wood with a crosscut saw. Buzzard would then haul it from his property to the boat landing. [74] Merritt Field was another early settler in Stehekin who on several occasions sent hundreds of thousands of board feet of timber downlake for processing. [75]

The lake provided an easy means of transporting the cut timber to the sawmills. Early in the twentieth century the Chelan Box Factory sent crews of men to the head of the lake to drive rafts of logs down the Stehekin River to the lake. The Chelan Leader of May 3, 1907, reported that "the company has nearly a million feet of logs in the valley and about two weeks' time will be required to drive them down to the lake." Once at the lake, rafting the logs down to Chelan often could take an additional ten days of travel. [76]

For the next five decades logging would continue in the lower Stehekin valley . All along the Stehekin valley road from Boulder Creek to the Courtney Ranch selective logging occurred on private lands. [77] A number of sawmills once operated in the valley. The Chelan Leader reported on February 1, 1895, that "a sawmill will be in operation at Stehekin within from 60 to 90 days . . . Messers. Robert Pershall and Charles Baron are the promoters of the scheme . . ." In 1917 a settler named Lesh started a small sawmill operation in the valley. He ultimately produced nearly everything the valley needed in the way of lumber for the years he remained in business. At Bridge Creek, the remains of an old sawmill (ca. 1940s?) are in place near the National Park Service's ranger station. This mill may have cut wood for mining operations active during that time in Horseshoe Basin; it may date from earlier mining ventures at Bridge Creek. [78]

When the level of Lake Chelan was slated to rise 21 feet in the late 1920s with the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Chelan River, hundreds of acres of land in Stehekin were to be inundated. This necessitated the removal and relocation of buildings at the head of the lake as well as the clearing of timber. Upwards of 500 acres were logged in 1926 by Grant Smith and Company, prime contractors for this substantial job. [79] The last sizable logging operation in this vicinity occurred three decades later in the 1950s, when the Chelan Box Manufacturing Company came to Stehekin to make a final but lasting impact in the valley. In 1956 the company purchased the old Maxwell place, which surrounded the Courtney family ranch. The property contained approximately two million board feet of timber, and a crew was sent uplake that summer to begin the harvest. Operations ceased on July 30, 1957, and the company departed the valley leaving the land heavily logged. [80].