North Cascades

MARKETING THE WILDERNESS: DEVELOPMENT OF COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISES

Stehekin Mining District

MINERAL RESOURCES: MINING

Bridge Creek

Former miners' cabin at Bridge Creek. Today this structure
is used as an NPS seasonal ranger station.
(Photo by G. Luxenberg, NPS, 1984)

Bridge Creek was the third major area of mining in the Stehekin District. Beginning in the early l890s, dozens of mining claims were located and worked along the numerous tributaries of Bridge Creek for more than a decade. Bridge Creek was also a primary means of access into the Stehekin Mining District and for a time was considered the most feasible route for the state road across the North Cascades. The confluence of Bridge Creek with the Stehekin River became a strategic location for miners traveling into the upper Stehekin valley and Horseshoe Basin and upper Bridge Creek.

Realizing this confluence to be a potentially valuable site, Frank Wilkinson chose this land as a homestead site ca. 1891, and erected a "large store building" and another structure. He planned to invest $10,000.00 worth of stock into his venture. By 1893, the store was in business. [155] His son Bayard operated the enterprises and the Chelan Leader noted he was "rushed with business." [156] Wilkinson hired horsepacker Dan Devore to bring in the goods that season. [157] The Bridge Creek store operated for only a few years, however, closing ca. 1895. Miners camped at Bridge Creek later that year were "disappointed in not finding a store there, and had to make a trip to Chelan after supplies." [158] This date also marks the closing of a post office at Bridge Creek which had been in operation for three years. A 1900 account of an "undeveloped mining district" described Bridge Creek and noted "an old log shanty" which acted as a "kind of free hotel for passing prospectors." [159]

Ten years later the Chelan Leader reported that "Misses Lydia and Eunice George left . . . for Bridge Creek, where Miss Lydia will conduct a wayside inn for the accommodation of tourist and miners during the summer months." [160] The following year, 1906, Mrs. Henry Freeland Buckner and her daughter Frances ran the "Hotel de Buckner" at Bridge Creek. Over the years as many as four or five cabins were built at this important junction.

Along with the available services, the confluence of Bridge Creek and the Stehekin River was also the site of several mineral claims. When or why Wilkinson abandoned his homestead claim is not known, but by 1897 the land had been reclaimed and located as a mineral claim by A. C. Edwards. Edwards called his claim Rock Island Lode and Millsite. [161] Edwards arranged for Stehekin settler William Purple to survey the claim as a step toward applying for a mineral patent. At that time, Purple recalled seeing two cabins on the property which had been built by Wilkinson, and a cabin built by Edwards and his partner John Blackburn. [162] Later the claim was officially surveyed and town lots platted on the site. [163] Consequently, for many years in the early twentieth century the area was referred to as the "Bridge Creek townsite." [164] By 1904 improvements to the property included several open cuts into the rock, and three small log cabins designated as Bunkhouse, Assay Office, and Machine Shop. [165] Due to the lack of valid assessment work, the Rock Island Lode and Millsite were eventually canceled as mineral claims by the USFS.

Remnants of sawmill near Bridge Creek Ranger Station.
(Photo by G. Luxenberg, NPS, 1984)

S. J. Stinson (and others) relocated a portion of these former claims in 1925, renaming it Tiger Millsite (or the Horseshoe Basin Millsite). When a USFS ranger visited the property in 1936 to determine its validity, he noted that two old cabins, one a 12' x 14' "board structure" and the other a 30' x 30' shake and board dwelling," remained on the site. Stinson apparently used them as headquarters while doing assessment work on his mining claims in Horseshoe Basin, and for living quarters during the summer season. In the 1930s or earlier, Stehekin horsepacker Guy Imus relocated the remaining portion of the old Rock Island Lode but never made any visible improvements to the land. In the 1940s the Horseshoe Basin Mining and Development Company used this site as a camp. This operation was probably responsible for the machinery and sawmill still evident on the property today. On the flat to the south of the sawmill, a board and batten cabin stands above the confluence of Bridge Creek and the Stehekin River. [166] Although it is possible that this cabin dates from Edwards' time it was probably constructed by Stinson or another individual in the 1920s. After years of abandonment and neglect the NPS began using it as a backcountry ranger station, a status it retains today. [167] The old bunkhouse, assay office, and machine shop have long since disappeared, their sites reclaimed by vegetation. Still to be found on the site is the remnant of a large tunnel built to carry water from the river to a nearby power plant. [168] Across the creek on the north side of the Stehekin River, the Gem Lode claim was filed by Sidney Rosenhaupt in 1910. The foundation logs of an old cabin can be found on this former claim. [169]

Historic view of the Sulphide/Frisco cabin, from the south, n.d.
(NOCA-Stehekin photo file)

Farther up Bridge Creek toward its headwaters and Twisp Pass, on the north fork of Bridge Creek, as many as 18 mining claims were located and worked in the l890s. A miners' trail depicted on the 1899 mining map of the region extended up this fork of Bridge Creek, crossed over "Thunder Pass," and continued down Logan Creek to Fisher Creek; by 1913 the trail was overgrown. Today few hikers attempt the trailless pass. During the active years of mining, possibly into the 1910s, log cabins were built here by prospectors working their claims along the north fork. J. A. Trost, owner of the Tiger group of claims, had a cabin near the headwaters of the north fork. None of the miners' cabins remains standing today, all were broken down by snows or removed by the USFS. [170] Only adits remain in the mountainside as evidence of the miners' presence.

More than a dozen claims were taken in the upper Maple Creek area although none appear on the 1899 mining map. A cabin at the end of the trail on the north side of the creek is depicted on a 1902 USGS map and a 1913 Washington National Forest Map. It may have belonged to John Ferguson who worked the Prince of Wales prospect nearby. [171] By 1917 no cabin was shown in this location. [172] The old Sulphide or Frisco Cabin built by A. H. Peterson still stands on a former mining claim along today's Bridge Creek hiker trail. Beginning in the 1920s, Peterson spent many summers developing his three claims along upper Bridge Creek. [173] The cabin first appears on a 1937 Chelan National Forest Map as "Sulphide Cabin", but the present-day cabin is believed to be the second one built on the site. Peterson also built a smaller cabin which he used as an office and living quarters, and a three-sided building used as a blacksmith shop. Only the large two-room cabin is extant, with foundation logs of one other structure still discernible nearby. In 1952 a horsepacker named Cliff Libbey relocated the claims and used the cabin for his packing business until the claims were declared invalid in 1977. [174] Since then, the cabin has sheltered hikers along the Bridge Creek trail. Recently a tree fell on the structure, crushing its roof, leaving it in poor condition.