The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-10-16
MONTE CRISTO MINES.
A Trip Into the Heart of the
Cascade Mountains.
WONDERFUL BODIES OF ORE.
Achievements in Railroad BuiIdiur--
Scenes In the Western wsh-
ington Jungle.

10 ohe Vi TIC iuoSt typlcal logging nam
lets, half tents, half lumber in the rough,
and comprising handful of saloons,
lodging houses and a sawmill. 1t lies in
that strip of heavily timbered country
skirting Puget sound whose lumber out
put is already an immense industry
There, If at any time this summer you
CHANGED to be journeyIng northward on
the line of the Seattle & Lake Shore rail-
road, you would see deposited miscel-
laneous crowd of human freight. going to
work on the new railroad, or to Monte
Crlsto. The road is building from Ever
EFT, a Few point on the Sound, eastward
up the valley of the Stillaguamish river
fifty miles into the very heart of the
Cascades. Its object is to reach and open
up the gold and silver mines of the re-
Gently discovered district of Monte Cristo.
The work of construction had just be-
gun. wagon road in virgin forest was
being completed. where not so much as a
trail had led before. At Getchell lay huge
piles of unhoused freight, which was being
loaded into wagons and hauled ov four
horse teams up to the construction camps
along the lines of the railroad. 1t needed
no persuasion to induce pair of faded
exiles from New York, seeking recreation
and health. to join the party which in the
morning would set out in the little rickety
stage to ride over twenty miles over the
toughest and joltiest of mountain roads to
the foot Of the Cascades. No pen is ade-
quate to recite the compressed agony of
that ride. In three-seated springIess
spring wagon rode nine able-bodied,
strong-legged men (there were thirteen the
ia hafora he u
bundle of blankets which every man must
carry for himself. Why they rode no man
among them knew. 1t required seven
hours of scientifically aimed jolting and
Earring to compass those twenty miles.
which might have been done in compare
tive comfort in five on foot.
The road ran like narrow pew-way in
the forest; above lowered the giants of
cedar and FIR, $50 and 30 feet high, often
sheer hundred feet to the limb: in the in
terstices grew a close matted underbrush,
and above in thick, heavy folds hung the
gray moss, like somber festoon. AS the
road Strengthened and one caught vista
in the softened light which filtered
through the dense LEAKAGE, there came
suggestion of cathedral aisles in the
forest" and through the mighty silence
the whispering of an unsung vesper. 1t
was almost grewsome, traversing this
Western Washington jungle.
AT intervals along the way We came
upon bits of clearing, rarely more than an
acre in extent, in the corner OF which
would be found the rude, quaint log hut
or ruder sleeping shack of some adventur-
ing rancher, and at wider intervals of ten
miles or more, the hastily improvised
camps of the construction gang. Contracts
for the grading and clearing for the right
Of-way are sublet in small sections, and as
soon as the engineers have set the course
a gang of laborers and mules are brought
in, a camp area slashed in the woods. and
the work of telling the big trees, blowing
out the stumps and cutting through the
deep mould to secure earth for the grad
ing, is begun.
The valley of the Stillaguamish is in
reality only narrow gorge cut down
through the mountain range TO depths
varying from / 800 TO 5000 feet, and no.
where more than three--quarters of a mile
wide. Ten or twelve miles out of Getchell
it narrows still more. leaving but sheer
cleavage of the rocks to offer passage 10
the river. Monte Cristo. which We have
set out to see, lies over thirty miles farther
up in the mountains, over yet rougher
roads and in a yet wilder country. Ii We
shall reach it we must join the blanket
brigade" the long single-tiled stream of
which extends all along the road, eager TO
reach this latest Ell Dorado. The freshest
of mornings and the freshest of noun
tain air invite, and long before
the sun has gained the peak tops and
crested their SHOWS with its gold, We be-
gin the thirty-mile climb. 1t is intoxi-
eating spinning along these mountain
detiles in the cool of the earliest dawn
and spurred by the invigorant air. The
MOSES and debris of centuries carpet the
forest floor; the deep green LEAKAGE,
patched with blue sky, hangs as a canopy,
and the sibilant stream, one hundred and
two hundred feet below, runs murmur-
ingly. Dinner-bacon, beans, ''spuds"
and condensed miik-at struggling row
of tents-groceries, lodging houses and
"hurdy- gurdys Silverton or Sill
yer Gulch, and perched carelessly on the
river bank; and nightfall brings Us, sur
mining wonder.
Five miles back we have crossed a low
pass and struck into the valley of the Sank
river. Here. at Monte Cristo. il heads in
a perfect mountain pocket, with two COM
Observation-Disclosures and '76 Basins-and
back of this the great wall of the center
line of the Cascades. The two basins are
long, half mile wide, living parallel and
parted by a great mountain tongue on
whose back lie the the white, cold TANKS
OF an immense glacier. In these basins lie
the mines, and where they come together
10 form the valley of the Sank is a triangu-
lar hole burned IN the deep woods-Monte
Crsto.
As we emerge from the deep, shaded
road, already darkenlng, into the open. a
vivid picture stands bold and luminous
before US. We are in narrow, sharply
cut valley, a good 300 feet deep, and shut
in by the steepest and swiftest-sloping
mountain sides: il seems as though some
glacier has cut clean this stupendOus fur
row in the earth, as u moved melting 20
the sea. Sluare.ln front, cutting The val
lev in twain and cleaving the blue full
200 feet above us, stands the Jovian front
of Mount Wilmans; even as We gaze. its
three burnt-red pinnacle crags catch the
RAYS of the westering sun and glow warm
and luminous against the flush tints of
the sky.
At its feet, in the depths of the gorge, il
throws out long, low ridge, like a toe.
and on this ridge, back amid all the black
and char of burned and felied trees, lies
the new mining camp, as yet IN veriest
embryo.
This il is of which We have heard almost
nothing else since the Coast was reached.
Three million dollars, they tell you, is be-
ing spent in building railroad and open
ing up this new district IN which as yet
there is not mine IN active operation
only development tunnels and prospects.
There is boldness and swing n the enter
prise that challenge notice.
Though the new district was discovered
three years ago this summer, compared
with the usual rapid growth Of mining
camps there is little here as yet. that
length of time being required to interest
the heavy capital needful 10 a successful
,ro-kiry ri tho mines The diatrtrt lies