page_title: North Cascades National Park
section_title: Mining, logging and dam construction
hierarchical_section_title: North Cascades National Park / Human history / Mining, logging and dam construction
caption_attribution_description: Ross Lake Dam, North Cascades National Park, Washington
context_page_description: North Cascades National Park is an American national park in the state of Washington. At more than 500,000 acres, North Cascades National Park is the largest of the three National Park Service units that comprise the North Cascades National Park Complex. North Cascades National Park consists of a northern and southern section, bisected by the Skagit River that flows through Ross Lake National Recreation Area. Lake Chelan National Recreation Area lies on the southern border of the south unit of the park. In addition to the two national recreation areas, other protected lands including several national forests and wilderness areas, as well as Canadian provincial parks in British Columbia, nearly surround the park. North Cascades National Park features the rugged mountain peaks of the North Cascades Range, the most expansive glacial system in the contiguous United States, the headwaters of numerous waterways, and vast forests with the highest degree of flora biodiversity of any American national park.
  The region was first settled by Paleo-Indian Native Americans; by the time European American explorers arrived, it was inhabited by Skagit tribes.
context_section_description: Mineral prospectors entered the North Cascades region, and by the 1850s were doing placer mining along the banks of the Skagit River in search of gold. In the 1870s, placer mining also commenced along Ruby Creek, and hundreds of miners came to the region even though it was difficult to access. Most mining activity along Ruby Creek had ended by the 1880s, but was soon replaced by hard rock mining for silver and other minerals. This second period of mining lasted from the 1890s to the 1940s, but was only marginally more lucrative. Miners were hampered by short working seasons, difficult terrain, low quantities of ore and a lack of financial investment. Miners built some of the first trails and roads into portions of the backcountry, some of which involved intricate engineering, including bridges over the numerous streams and dynamiting rock ledges above steep gorges during trail construction. One mining company built a series of flumes, the longest of which was over 3 miles (4.8 km), to transport lumber and to supply water for use in their hydraulic mining operation.
  During the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, larger operations mined silver and lead in addition to gold, mostly with little or no profitability. The demand for metals was not constant, and so prices tended to fluctuate too greatly for mining to be viable. Once the region became a national park, some privately owned mining inholdings remained. One such inholding, the Thunder Creek mine, was still privately owned as of 1997.
  Unlike in many other regions of the Pacific Northwest, logging had little impact on the future park. The ruggedness of the terrain and the existence of more economically viable timber resources that were closer to transportation routes largely dissuaded the timber industry from logging in the area. In 1897 the Washington Forest Reserve was set aside, preserving the forestland that would later become the park. By 1905, the management of the reserve was transferred from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture. The Forest Service was subsequently created to administer these forest reserves nationwide, which were redesignated as National Forests. Though the Department of Agriculture allowed commercial enterprises to log the forest with a permit, most of the timber taken from the region was used only locally for the construction of cabins and similar small-scale enterprises. Logging expanded when the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project was commenced by the public utility, Seattle City Light in the 1920s. Almost 12,000 acres (4,900 ha) of timber would have been left underwater by the completion of the Ross Dam. A contract to extract the timber was awarded in 1945 and the project was completed in 1958. None of the dams or areas that were extensively logged are within the current boundaries of the national park, but they are in the adjoining Ross Lake National Recreation Area.
caption: Ross Dam in the Ross Lake National Recreation Area
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