A Brief
History of Snowater A Brief
History of Snowater The earliest known settlers of the region were the Nooksacks, part of the larger Salish cultural and economic group which includes the Lummi and Skagit tribes. These people may have arrived more than 5000 years ago. The Nooksacks subsisted primarily on the salmon that ran up the branches of the Nooksack River, hunting game and wild root crops. Their name is variously translated as "mountain people" or "fern-eating people." They lived communally in long houses in the Deming area but presumably had camps along the river and up stream beds for hunting and fishing. Historian P.R. Jeffcott (1949) estimated that there were 450 Nooksacks before the arrival of settlers.
European exploration of the region began in 1790 with Ensign Manuel Quimper of the Spanish Navy. He, with his First Pilot Gonzalo Lopez de Haro, probed the shorelines of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula. Haro's chart of the Strait of Juan de Fuca contained a sketch of a mountain in the vicinity of Mt Baker labeled "La Gran Montano del Carmelo." The Nootka Convention, a treaty signed between Spain and England in 1790, allowed England to trade anywhere along the North American shore north of the 42nd parallel (currently the boundary between Oregon and California). Captain Vancouver on the HMS Discovery and Chatham arrived on the Washington coast in April, 1792. There they learned from the American Captain Gray, who discovered the Columbia River in 1792, of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Vancouver elected to explore the region.
It was First Lieutenant James Baker who first sighted the mountain that would bear his name. Puget Sound was named for another lieutenant, Peter Puget. During his explorations Vancouver named Mt. Rainier and succeeded at circumnavigating Vancouver Island. Vancouver met with Bodega y Quadra but they could not come to agreement on how to enact the Nootka Convention. Three years later, Spain withdrew from the region, leaving America and Great Britain the primary interests in the Puget Sound.
Following the Lewis and Clark exploration in 1805-06 was western expansion along the Oregon Trail, and the trapping and trading done for the North West Company (later part of the Hudson Bay Company). What was not settled was a boundary honored by the United States and Britain. The U.S. advocated for "fifty four forty or fight" while the British aspired to the totality of the Oregon Territory. In 1846 a treaty was drawn up, ratified and finally proclaimed on August 5, 1846, fixing the 49th parallel as the boundary between Canada and the United States. The eastern boundary of this treaty was the Rocky Mountain continental divide, with the western boundary jogging south in the Strait of Juan de Fuca so that Vancouver Island remained Canadian. It took another 12 years to begin the boundary survey, and in the process British and Americans squared off in San Juan Island in what is now known as the Pig War.
The Fraser River Gold Rush created a need for supplies, guides and beasts of burden. Surveying and cutting through the Cascades became a daunting task. The surveyors utilized Indian trails and streambeds such as the Tomihoi and the Chilliwack. While the surveyors and astronomers set the boundary, the topographer Henry Custer was busy climbing peaks and naming rivers, streams and lakes after the Nooksack tradition. His names, however, were changed by later visitors such as Austin, Bagley and Wells. Thus the "Bostons" first arrived in the valley just south of the boundary between the United States and Canada that was being established by the treaty of 1845.
A forest fire in 1875 led to the opening
of the area to homesteading. The first homesteader near Snowater
was Charles Cornell, in 1888, who noticed coal deposits in what
is now Glacier Creek. Cornell staked a coal claim, but primarily
did farming and started a hotel. Bellingham Bay and British
Columbia Railroad arrived in 1904. The first plat was filed in
1898 by Albert Vaughan. The town, never incorporated, was renamed
Glacier (from Cornell) in 1904.
Early economic activity centered on coal
mining, logging, and gold mining. The buildings at Snowater were
named after these mines. Coal seams still exist, some evidently
of good quality, but coal mining was only a marginal industry and
ceased at about the time of the beginning of Snowater. The Lone
Jack gold mine, however, does still exist, having yielded over
$1,000,000 of gold ore down through the years. The Glacier Mining
Company first owned the site now occupied by Snowater. There were
also early shingle and timber mills, but tourism is the industry
which has endured
Mt. Baker National Forest was created in 1897 and in 1906 the townsite became part of the Forest, but existing homesteads and mining sites around Glacier were recognized (subject to royalties). The first homesteaders at what is now Snowater were the Samsons. Harold and Nancy Samson moved to Seattle from South Dakota in 1891. They homesteaded 160 acres along the Nooksack River in 1907 in the name of their daughter, Nellie. The Samson Ranch for a time served food to miners, loggers and others. These 160 acres eventually became Snowline and Snowater. Nelly Samson (then Hinton) sold 20 acres to two families, the Flockois and the Jeffcotts, who later divided the property equally. Much of the rest of the private land around Glacier was consolidated into the Glacier Land Company in 1947, and the timber rights to 5,000 acres were leased to the Puget Sound Pulp and Timber Company, then bought by Georgia-Pacific in 1963. The Trillium Corporation, which developed Snowater, purchased the timber rights in 1991, which permit logging until 2020.
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| The Samson's at the Original Homestead |
At one time there were settlements beyond Glacier, at Excelsior (near Nooksack Falls) and at Shuksan (now marked by a highway maintenance shed near the road to Hannegan Pass), but now Glacier is the last town on the way to Mt. Baker. The town has waxed and waned over the years, peaking during the Depression at around 1,000 and reducing to around 40 permanent residents today. What is now Graham's (store, ski shop, former restaurant) was originally the Mt. Baker Inn, built in 1906 by George McLaughlin. It was not the first hotel _ the Mountain Home Hotel across the street was built in 1904, but burned down in 1915.
The Mt. Baker Inn had a garage and gas station as well as a general store on the first floor, and rooms on the second. Earl McLaughlin later ran the Inn, and still later it was owned by Earl Graham and his wife. Earl's grandson Gary Graham, who would figure prominently in the early years of Snowater, took over the management of the present structure from his grandmother in the early 1970's.
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| Bridge to Excelsior |
The Mt. Baker Highway to Artist's Point has its origins in failed plans to build a road to the Ruby Creek mining area on the upper Skagit River, and later across the North Cascades to eastern Washington. Banning Austin led expeditions, which found both Hannegan Pass and what is now called Austin Pass (originally Wild Goose Pass!). Based on his reports a road was extended from Maple Falls to six miles beyond Nooksack Falls in 1893, but here the project ended. It was not until 1926 that the road would reach Austin Pass, and not until 1972 that a road would cross the North Cascades, but via the Skagit, not the Nooksack (Washington State Highway 20). Many of the backcountry roads in the area started as mining trails and were improved by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930's; others were built for logging. What is now the Baptist Camp was the home for 1000 men of the CCC, who built the Glacier Public Service Center in 1939 and the Austin Pass Warming Hut in 1941.
Camp Glacier
The Mount Baker Development Company of Bellingham purchased 5 acres at Austin Pass Meadows in 1923, and opened the elegant Mount Baker Lodge, a summer resort, in 1927. The dining room, 50 by 80 feet, was eclipsed only by the lobby, which measured 50 by 106 feet. The mountain was then opened for summer recreation and plans were made to open a winter season to accommodate the ski enthusiasts who were climbing the slopes on their own and skiing down on wooden skis, but the Lodge was destroyed in a spectacular fire in August of 1931, before these plans were put in place.
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| Mt. Baker Inn |
Tourists continued to stay in the guest cabins and dine at the Heather Inn that had been saved from the fire. While it was estimated that the lodge could have been rebuilt at half its original cost, it was never resurrected. It was not until 1953 that a chairlift was built and the Mt. Baker Ski Area started to grow.
Several movies have been filmed in the region. The Call of the Wild was filmed in Glacier, at the Mt. Baker Ski Area, and on the Nooksack near Hannegan Pass in 1934. The effect of the environment on human character shines through in the movie, but the screenplay differed from Jack London's book in that the love story between the characters played by Loretta Young and Clark Gable superceded the story of Buck, the dog.
When not living in the accommodations at Heather Inn, Gary Graham reports that Loretta Young stayed in Grandma Graham's guest room. In recent years Graham's restaurant was a setting for
The Deer Hunter, starring Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep (Glacier was passing for a Pennsylvania coal mining town in the Viet Nam war era).
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| "Graham's" | Interior of Graham's |
The area has always been the scene of unusual athletic events. The Mt. Baker Marathon, staged from 1911-1913, was a round trip from Bellingham to Mt. Baker and back, with any means of transportation allowed, including the train (which hit a cow in the first race) and the motorcar. The event was cancelled after several near disasters. This might be considered the predecessor of the current Ski-to-Sea Relay, started in 1973 and consisting of cross country skiing, downhill skiing, running, biking, canoeing, mountain biking and kayaking from Mt. Baker to Bellingham.
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| July 4th at Glacier | Church Mountain Lookout |
©2001 SNOWATER ASSOCIATION
