Ch01kindletest
Author: Karen E. Redfield
Date: 2014-03-22T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter One
Eugene D. Smith and the Founding of Lowell

Honorable E. D. Smith 1889
Father of Lowell.[1]
(1837-1909)

Chi-cha-dee-a

The Snohomish Native Americans who had first claim to the area, Chi-cha-dee-a, that would come to be Lowell, tolerated the arrival of white men more peacefully and hospitably than was historically true in other parts of Washington, particularly in the Eastern part of Washington Territory in the 1850’s. Indeed, the most influential Snoqualmie Chief Patkanim, who represented the Snohomish, as well as many other Puget Sound tribes in all dealings with the whites, although at first aggressive to white settlement, yet later opposed tribes east of the Cascades during the Washington Territory Indian Wars (1850’s), siding with the whites. Washington Territory was formed merely two years earlier when during the Point Elliot Treaty of 1855, Chief Patkanim was among the signers that ceded a huge area, including Chi-cha-dee-a, to the Federal Government. Point Elliot sits eleven miles west of Chi-cha-dee-a, in what is now Mukilteo. The scope of territory ceded by Chief Patkanim stretched from Whidbey Island to Snoqualmie Pass.

Chi-cha-dee-a never was a native settlement, per se, but the location was a gathering area as they followed the seasonal food sources. It may also have been a burial site as accounts of tree burial sightings and findings of relics related to human remains are in evidence. Some of the bones were restored in 1892 to the Tulalip Reservation[2] near which Chief Patkanim agreed to make his home.[3] These relics were found during excavation of the Prudden Home foundation. Typically, the Salish Tribes would place their upper-class deceased in their finest apparel and possessions into a grand canoe which was then secured on tree branches to elevate the remains. Later, the entire canoe would be buried by the family and a tribal ceremony would follow. The remains were found upon the higher slopes away from flood levels; discovered during clearing for the construction of the Prudden House and conscientiously made public by Mr. Arthur E. Prudden. Don Berry (1985) wrote, “It has been conjectured that other remains were probably found about the same time, but not made public.”[4] So thick were the trees of Chi-cha-dee-a on the Snohomish River that for more than twenty years after the locale was officially founded as Lowell the native relics went unmolested.

Some of these early encounters between white men and natives along the Snohomish River were characterized by trade and friendly exchanges; and sometimes family patterns developed as native women consorted with white trappers and traders. As most of the native population had been relocated from the Chi-cha-dee-a riverside, Frederick Dunbar and Burlington Brown were unchallenged when they set up homesteads on the west side of the Snohomish River near its sharp bend to the east. Their arrival in 1861 included Dunbar’s Native American woman.[5] But with Eurocentric legality and “sensibilities” affected by convention both Dunbar and Brown are identified as “squatters” and “squaw men” in historical sources. The two men had set up their homesteads on the western shoreline of the Snohomish River such that the township line dividing their claims passed through the center of the future town of Lowell. “Fred Dunbar’s house was just behind the … Lowell wharf, while Brown’s was nearly at the … site of the paper mill.”[6]

Map: Washington Territory, (Western), Indian War Battlefields, 1855-56.[7] Fort Ebey was about a mile south of the spot known as Chi-cha-dee-a to Native Snohomish (that later becomes Lowell on the Snohomish River).

In September 1863, Eugene D. Smith and his partner, Otis Wilson, during exploration for an ideal logging camp location eyed the bend of the river as superbly appointed for a logging camp with its deep water undercurrent forming a natural water corral on the western shore for log storage, while the thickest of forests defined the landscape for as far as one could travel. Buying the claim rights of Dunbar and Brown, Otis Wilson and E. D. Smith (as he preferred to be known) set up a pioneer logging camp, most likely occupying the dwellings they left behind for a time. Most of the west side of the Snohomish River at this part of the terrain is extremely sloped and was nearly impassable by rainforest; so dense that the natural mode of transport in the region was solely by canoe.

Indeed, the canoe had been the primary mode of transport for centuries, as the Snohomish natives were seafaring by diet; the river being also the primary conduit for inland communication and trade among various tribes. White occupation would treat the river similarly for a couple of decades, (though the forested shoreline would be vastly exploited in the blink of an eye).

In fact, when Washington Territory was established with nine county divisions the region first belonged to Island County as waterways were the only conduits of passage due to the impenetrable forest. From the Snohomish River there were hardships reaching the seat of Island County located then at Coveland, near the shore of Whidbey Island’s Penn Cove. Because of the considerable water barrier, in 1861 Snohomish County was agreeably formed out of Island County to better represent the interests of 35 voting settlers then established.[8] Originally, Island County was part of Thurston County, and besides Snohomish County, Whatcom, Skagit, and San Juan counties were since similarly carved out of Island County. Island County embraces eight islands today, two large and six smaller islands.

As channels permitted, by the mid-1860’s small steamers began to navigate tenuously the multiple waterways used to support travel and logging camp demand around the Puget Sound. However, the logging operation of Smith & Wilson discovered logs could not be taken to open water on the Puget Sound to Seattle with all the choking debris and dangerous snags in the Snohomish River. Smith & Wilson set about in 1864 to clear the debris out of the Snohomish River to open a waterway for log boom transport. Thus, part of this waterway became known as Steamboat Slough as steamers began to navigate the Snohomish River regularly thereafter.

Founding of Lowell

A woman pioneer from her view aboard Steamboat Mary Woodruff submitted for press her 1865 diary account of the natural beauty seen around the Lowell area a year and a half after Otis Wilson and E. D. Smith arrived.[9] For The Northern Star, a pioneer Snohomish newspaper in 1876,[10] the unnamed author shared her first impressions of passing by the future Lowell along the Snohomish River toward her husband’s claim in Cadyville (as Snohomish City was first known):

The passengers were delighted by the change from the bold abrupt cliffs of the Sound crowned with weather beaten fir, and stunted cedar, to the sloping grassy banks, overhung with alder, maple and spruce all clothed in tender green. The fragrance of crab-apple blossoms and snowy lilies filled the air, which together with the warm sunshine and singing birds, seemed the opening of a new creation. Almost every bend in the river they surprised an Indian encampment, the savages all rushed out pell-mell to view with curious gaze the strange phenomenon: White coming through Steamboat slough; a frightened deer swam across in advance of the steamer and disappeared in the thick underbrush on the opposite shore, a shrill whistle awaking the echoes added to his fleetness. The country was wild looking in the extreme, scarcely a footprint of civilization to be seen, but few claims taken, and very little clearing done. Arrived during the forenoon at what is now the thriving village of Lowell; the sole improvement then made was a log house used by Smith, Wilson & Co. as a logging camp.

Steamboat Slough at low tide along the Snohomish River ~ 1892,[11] but steamers until 1864 would have found this section impassable from snags.

E. D. Smith, born in Columbia, Maine in 1837, arrived to Chi-cha-dee-a in 1863; partner in a logging venture with no more than four years accumulated logging experience. Making the journey across the Isthmus of Panama in 1858 at age 21 he had survived a wreck on the Panama road without injury.[12] Smith then spent his first two or three years within logging camps operated by the Puget Mill Company at Port Gamble, off Kitsap County peninsula. The founders of the Puget Mill Company were from East Machias, Maine. By the mid-1850’s a business partner in Maine was recruiting for loggers on their behalf, thereby giving many young men with Maine connections the notion of pioneering into the Puget Sound in quest of unbelievable timber opportunity.[13] It is probable that this was Smith’s inspiration to head west as Smith’s employment with sailing took him into ports along the northeast coast. Columbia, Maine where his father, John D. Smith, had worked as a shipbuilder is only 23 miles distant from East Machias. E. D. Smith’s father died when he was eight years old and leaving home at age 14, E. D. Smith took up sailing as his occupation.

Smith was a quick study and eager for adventure. For example, prior to arrival on the West Coast, by Don Berry’s (1985) account Smith had held command at age 20 sea-voyaging to the head of the Adriatic Sea.[14] When Smith came west in 1858 there is no clear record of what he wanted for himself but by 1861 news of gold discovery in the Cariboo district, now part of British Columbia, had reached high pitch. Irresistibly drawn, sometime in 1861 Smith left from Port Gamble to seek gold but amid the swampy conditions of the Cariboo Plateau he ended up sick in Fort Victoria with “mountain fever.”[15] His recovery amid the miserable tent city that Fort Victoria had become discouraged him from returning to the Cariboo gold hunt. Heading back to the Puget Sound he bought an interest in Otis Wilson’s logging outfit and they served a contract logging at Brown’s Bay (north of Edmonds), where he and Otis engaged the first oxen-powered logging operation (as far as Smith knew about) in 1862.[16] Their outfit was named Smith & Wilson Logging Company. The strategy of using very powerful horses and oxen was put to use later in all of Smith’s logging activities. Modeling the labor benefits similarly found with the Puget Mill Company (established 1853) Smith had learned to keep his logging team unified. Smith also made sure his camps were well supplied with smithy shops, shelter, stables and staples. At this time in his life, however, Smith worked in partnership with Wilson only a couple of years before gold-fever again beckoned travel.

When the contract was finished with Brown’s Bay Smith and Wilson canoed up the Snohomish River in September 1863, to prospect for a lumber camp which brought them to buy the squatter’s rights at what is now Lowell. For two years the partners worked along the river bank using the waterway for log transport into the Puget Sound, having freed it from snags in 1864. In 1865-66, E. D. Smith heard of the gold found in Idaho Territory and he joined thousands of other men who wandered the multiple mining camps from Coeur D’Alene to the Boise basin, and even to Bannack City, (now in Montana State). Having sold his business interest to Otis Wilson this venture turned into another disappointing attempt at gold mining.[17] The lawlessness and fraud prevailing in the district may have been his bane,[18] for on his return to Washington Territory in less than a year he had to stop at Walla Walla to work for return fare.[19] To his merit, once he was back Smith was able to restore his leadership position as master logger through his own efforts at the bend of the Snohomish River.

E. D. Smith, Founder of Lowell, hunting along the Snohomish River bank in Washington Territory, ca. 1876.
(Photographer Carl Messimer, repaired image, courtesy Everett Public Library).

Within two years of his return by 1869, E. D. Smith’s enterprise bought out Otis Wilson. He then arranged for his bride, Margaret B. Getchell, three years his junior, (with whom it is said he was associated since his youth from his Maine home-State origins), to make sail, meeting her for a marriage in San Francisco so they could travel alone together to Snohomish County. Crossing the Panama Isthmus her courage to travel alone in the year 1869, even at age 29, had to come from an innate motivation and personal drive. Some have written that they were youthful sweethearts in Maine. Her older brother, Martin Getchell, was already pioneering in Snohomish City, having left Maine in 1857 to head west by sail around Cape Horn. Martin Getchell would likely have known of E. D. Smith and may have brought news of Smith’s logging settlement to his sister, Margaret Getchell, upon his return to Maine for his wife and children in 1863, (having later decided to permanently settle in Snohomish County). Also, Margaret’s younger brother, Joseph Getchell, had already journeyed to the Puget Sound region in June 1864.[20] She was not going to be without immediate family members upon her arrival with E. D. Smith in 1869.

The only structural improvement at that time was a nearby brothel (“squaw dance-hall”), built in 1866, along the banks of the Snohomish River, and operated by Rueben Lowe, of Lowell, Massachusetts. Rueben Lowe and Martin Getchell both desired to secure legal claim to the area in 1870.[21] Getchell compromised with Lowe, who filed the preemption claim. Lowe then sold the claim to Baker and Jameson, who resold the claim back to E. D. Smith. Thus, while the settlement at Lowell really is traced to 1863, on October 10, 1872, thirty-five-year-old E. D. Smith is issued the land patent.

E. D. Smith’s ownership patent securing the Lowell town site.[24]

E. D. Smith’s Land Patent document reads:

United States of America to Eugene D. Smith

PATENT.

Dated Oct. 1st. 1872
Filed Mch. 25, 1870
Rec. vol. 3 D. 73
Certificate No. 2621.

Whereas, Eugene D. Smith of Snohomish County, Washington Territory, has deposited in the General Land Office of the United States, a certificate of the Register of the Land Office at Olympia, Washington, Territory, whereby it appears that full payment has been made by the said Eugene D. Smith according to the provisions of the Act of Congress of the 24th of April, 1820 entitled an Act making further provisions for the sale of the Public Ter:-

The SE1/4 of the SW1/4 and the Lots No. 5, 6 and 7 of Sec. 32 in Twp. 29 North of Range 5 East in the District of Lands subject to sale at Olympia, Washington Territory, containing 166.35 acres, which said tract has been purchased by the said Eugene D. Smith.

Now Know Ye, that the United States of America, in consideration of the premises and in conformity with the several Acts of Congress do Give and Grant unto the said Eugene D. Smith and to his heirs the said tract above described.

By the President, U. S. Grant
(Seal of G.L.O.) By S. H. Williamson, Secretary.
Recorded vol. 8 page 298, records Gen. Land Office, C. B. Boyton, Recorder.

Meanwhile, two years before securing the claim in his name and seemingly inspired by his new wife, E. D. Smith went about in earnest to make structural improvements for Lowell. He had built a wharf around 1869, followed by the mercantile store in 1870. Erecting the first post office in 1871, Smith became postmaster in 1873, and again in 1877, serving office for 16 consecutive years until 1893. Lowell was officially on the map in 1871, "The name of Lowell was applied by the department [US Post Office] to the place at the request of Rueben Lowe, who was a native of Lowell, Massachusetts, and wished thus to perpetrate the name of his home town in his new western home."[22] Don Berry's (1985) history relates that E. D. Smith promised Rueben Lowe that he, Smith, would name the place Lowell.[23] The office of postmaster in Lowell, Washington Territory, was served by pioneers Reuben Lowe, 1871; Charles Baker, 1872; E. D. Smith, 1873; Henry Jackson, 1876; and E. D. Smith, 1877. Once the land patent was secured in 1872, E. D. Smith with his wife, Margaret (Getchell) Smith, teamed with her brother, Martin Getchell with his wife, Olive L. (Ireland) Getchell, to plat the townsite of Lowell, which was officiated in the county seat of the city of Snohomish, May 8, 1873.

Plan of the Town of Lowell,
Washington Territory, 1873.[25]

Although Lowell would remain unincorporated, these two corporate features:  A post office and the early platting of Lowell established strong township identity such that Lowell’s neighborhood sustained distinct citizenship; persisting long after the City of Everett incorporated Lowell in 1962.

In 1874, Smith added the boarding house/hotel by the wharf and the first blacksmith shop. E. D. Smith and his wife, Margaret (Getchell) Smith enjoyed a good gathering. While perhaps a bit rough in the beginning, albeit pioneer talents would prevail to make these events fun for family, sophistication did develop over time with lavish community and logging company parties given at least annually, always with music and dancing. Later, when finer structures permitted the Smith events would be formal on occasion; a ball and dancing without children, that is.

From Sinclair’s Athenaeum Society in Snohomish, Margaret Riddle, Everett Public Library historian, perused handwritten notes about a Lowell gathering on July 4, 1874, which she passed along to Don Berry (1985) as published in The Lowell Story: A Community History:[26]

We had the pleasure of attending the ball at Lowell by E. D. Smith on the night of the 3rd of July. The attendance was very large, the hall spacious and well lighted, the music excellent and the supper abundant and in excellent taste. The steamer Zephyr took most of the passengers from here and brought them back again on the morning of the 4th. The ball was a complete success and gave universal satisfaction… . between swinging and innocent games of pleasure, the fusillade of fire crackers, the merry shouts and joyous laughter, we concluded that the children were having a red letter day indeed. A bountiful and elegant lunch was appropriately spread upon the grass, to which all did justice. It was better than a play to see the bright happy faces and graceful fairy like motions of these untrammeled children as their bird like feet tripped through the figures of the dance.

The Northern Star Advertisement for E. D. Smith’s Hotel, 1877.[27]

The spacious hall referred to in the note above was likely the new Lowell Hotel hall used to accommodate the ball. Smith circulated his advertisement for the hotel in nearly every weekly issue of the Northern Star, the earliest Snohomish newspaper, published by Eldridge Morse, Jr., from 1876 into 1879.

The ad reads: “Lowell Hotel. E. D. Smith, Proprietor. The house and furniture entirely new. The Bar Room is the largest in the County, furnished with a Billiard Table, and the best brands of Wines, Liquors, and Cigars to be found in the market. The Table will be supplied with the best that can be obtained in this market. Charges Reasonable.”

Photos from the 4th of July picnic of 1874, that likely celebrated completion of Smith’s hotel/boarding home with the entire population at the time are not available but by 1886 the picture below demonstrates the spirit of the annual company picnic that Smith was counted upon to host.

Smith’s Logging Company, 4th of July Picnic, 1886;[28] Smith stands tallest by himself, photo left.

E. D. Smith continued to expand his land holdings during the late 1860’s and 1870’s. He would eventually have five-thousand acres to work on by 1891. He had at most three logging camps, but usually two were active full-time. Before he purchased the land for himself, one camp he located on leased property from Charles Seybert across the river in the flats north and east of Lowell, for $200 annum, in the vicinity where Marysville is now. According to Seybert’s descendant, Diane Janes: “The Seybert homestead was leased to E. D. Smith, on June 19, 1873, for $200 per annum, payable in gold cast coin, for a four-year period. The estate was sold on the court house steps in 1874, after Seybert’s untimely death to E. D. Smith for $1,200.00 in gold cast coin. E. D. Smith sold the farm to his brother-in-law, Martin Getchell.”

Smith made sure his logging camps were outfitted with adequate shelter for the workers and stables for the animals. Smith would eventually operate three logging camps, at one time employing upwards of 150 men and many work animals. The camp above Lowell as it was recalled to exist during the 1870’s and the process of moving monster logs in a time when mechanical engines were not available was described by Berry (1985).[29] The railway was made entirely with wood:

This camp was on the hill about a mile and a half behind the Lowell settlement. The timber was being felled at least a mile beyond that. The camp was large enough that it could be called a small village, quite independent of the “home” of Lowell on the river bank below. There was substantial collection of log huts, even including a good-sized boarding house, where some of the men lived permanently. Others, including the supervisor, lived below in Lowell. A lot of animals were present in the camp. The work animals alone – oxen and horses- required two large stables. The horses were huge even by the standards of the 19th century. At least a few of them appeared to be Percherons, dapple grays, and they all weighed between 1400 and 1800 pounds. In addition to the work animals, the camp had its own drove of hogs, raised for pork and kept at the rear of one of the stables …

. . . At one side of the railway there was a platform of small logs built to the height of the railway car. The oxen dragged their burden through the brush, dumped their load at the platform, and the timber was then rolled onto the car. At this point the oxen were relieved of their duties and the great gray Percherons were harnessed to the railway car. In extreme cases as many as eight horses would be harnessed to haul a carload that consisted of only two gigantic logs. The logging railway was about two miles long, and consisted of two wooden rails about eight feet apart. The purpose of the railway was to transport the huge logs from the point of cutting to the top of the chute that would eventually deposit them in the river. With good luck and good weather, the logging railway could make about four round trips a day.

Smith’s crew at logging camp above Lowell: Beverly Park area in Everett, today. The men are sitting on the loading platform, perched on the wooden rails, oxen at-ready for a-towing, 1880.[30]

Smith’s earliest and best developed camp was the one above Lowell at what is now known as the Beverly Park/Pinehurst area in Everett, and another camp operated in the 1870’s near Mukilteo[31] to the west of Lowell some nine miles distant. He was employing a good number of men by 1876, and putting some 24 oxen to task. By 1889, Smith had basically cleared all of Lowell, Ebey Slough, Marysville, and several other towns.

Early structures built by E. D. Smith ~ 1886 photo.[32]

Smith offered the waterfront hotel/boarding home for his supervisors in logging. Next to it is his General Store. Behind these two structures is his home, later torn down to make way for the Great Northern railroad. The post office he had built is to the right of the picture, a flagpole in front. The wharf was sometimes used as a dancing platform to which the larger town of Snohomish provided moonlight excursions by steamer to Lowell as a favorite entertainment.[33] Here, the wharf is sheltered for the 4th of July, 1886, with cedar branches.

From his camp a mile and a half above Lowell, E. D. Smith directed the building of a log chute in 1870 at a cost of five-thousand dollars.[34] The two-thousand foot chute slid the huge logs quickly into the Snohomish River log pond. Men at the head of the chute would prep the chute with grease to receive the log. Smith had cleverly diverted a stream some distance downhill towards the chute via a trough to hang directly over the chute and small holes drilled in the bottom let enough water drip through to keep the chute wet and slippery for the rest of its length.[35] To improve on the excitement the chute provided as logs jetted along at high speed Smith built a bridge over the chute on the shore where the logs entered the water. This log chute gained some notoriety as a fearsome, thundering rumble that could be heard a quarter-mile away. Berry (1985) noted that it was sometimes an amusement as reported by the Port Gardner News in 1892:[36]

Early Monday morning quite a number of people, including several ladies, gathered on the river bank where logs are received into the boom from the chute, to see these two leviathans take their plunge. They did not have to wait long, for soon a rumbling sound was heard a quarter of a mile distant, and almost instantly, like a ball shot from the mouth of a cannon appeared the huge log tearing down the side of the hill. Almost like a lightning flash it struck the water, throwing a spray a hundred feet wide and as many high. It was a sight never to be forgotten. A moment later the other log appeared, and those who were standing on the bridge under which the log must pass were taken with such fright at seeing the monster making directly for them with irresistible speed that they all fled. These logs would have made terrible havoc had they left their course.

Considerable damage resulted in 1892 from a log that did escape the chute to the white 2-story boarding home next to the chute. No one was injured but the wall caved in to receive the log deep into the basement near to its entire length.[37] In a separate tale about the log chute the true story that follows is given next in its entirety as reported in 1892 (and reprinted in the Everett Daily Herald, August 5, 1965):[38]

THE EVERETT NEWS
Everett and Lowell, Washington, Friday, January 8, 1892
TERRIFIC RIDE ON A LOG: E. D. Smith’s Chute Used as a Toboggan Slide; News Reporter’s Folly.

Harrowing Experiences of the Wild Dash- Loses Consciousness and Imagines Water in His Face is a Torrent of His Own Blood - The Plunge Into the River Conveys the Sensation of a Crush of Worlds.

During the past week, as all residents of Lowell have doubtless noticed, a number of logs have come down E. D. Smith’s chute from his camp a mile and a half up the hill. Seeing these immense sticks dashing by “on the wings of the lightning,” as the poetic reporter would express it, excited in a NEWS man a desire to try that style of tobogganing. Selecting a large log, one that looked as if it would be contented with one onward motion and not be ever striving to roll over in its narrow track on its wild shoot to the water, a board was nailed across the upper side for a foot brace and leather straps tacked on four or five feet distant for a hand hold. This insured safety so far as not falling off was concerned.

The felled forest monarch was rolled on to the platform, about half of its length extending over the chute. The reporter took his position on top, braced his feet securely against the board and took a firm grip on the leather straps. A half dozen loggers began to move the great timber, inch by inch, with iron levers across the greased ways. The end extending beyond the platform overbalanced the other and it dropped the twelve or eighteen inches into the bed of the chute. The adventurer’s heart ceased its normal, lateral beat and began to jump up towards his mouth. But the Biblical injunction about the party who put his hand to the plough-handle and then took it off- in other words, jumped the game- occurred to him at this moment and he determined to play it out, even if it the ride should land him where the spiritual calamity howler declares all such as he are billed to play their eternal engagement. While these thoughts were passing through his substitute for a brain the loggers were, figuratively speaking, sawing wood, but literally moving the log into that fastest race track on any continent. The toboggan enthusiast became aware that the excursion was about to start when the rear end of the timber dropped with a thull, dickening sud from the ways. The same motion also informed him that there were no springs nor cushions on his seat. Though he had been in that precarious position less than two minutes, it seemed to him as if he had been a fixture there since last spring- yes, ever since it was first reported that the Everett Land Company would sell lots next week, or the week after, sure.

The word’ “Go!” was given and the log started off at an easy canter. For the first fifteen yards it looked as if the rider were in any hurry he had better get off and walk. After covering ten yards more it occurred to him that if he were in any hurry it would be well to remain where he was. The racer was getting warmed up and it was evident that it would soon strike its gait, and would not be distanced, anyway. Fifty yards from the wire the thing was moving at a terrific speed. Its velocity, like that of a falling body, was increasing at an inverse ratio with the distance. (Excuse technical inaccuracies). A toboggan on a snow slide wouldn’t have been in it. When the hundred yard post was reached the NEWS man thought he was falling from the top of Eiffel tower.

Just about this time the log gave a sudden turn. It seemed to have been given a twist by a rock lying in its path, and the passenger’s thoughts reverted to home and mother, to the warming of the above mentioned spiritual alarmist, and wondered if sorrowing friends could find enough of his mortal remains to make a show for a funeral. He opened his mouth to utter some last words that would sound well in a biographical sketch and the wind took his breath away. Darkness suddenly gathered around him, all consciousness was lost, and the only sensation experienced was the feeling that old Earth was slipping from under him.

Just once, when a little stream of water from the trough above dropped into his face, did his sense again revive. Then the horrible thought flitted through his only half-awakened mind that the moisture was a torrent of his own blood. Again all consciousness vanished. Finally there was another awakening. The log had finished its lightning-like trip and struck the water. The shock was as if two planets had collided, and a wreck of matter and crush of worlds ensued. The column of water that shot a hundred feet into the air and glittered in the radiant sunbeams as it fell in unnumbered sparkling drops, were thought to be myriads of brilliant stars dislodged from their orbit and falling through boundless space. Gradually the senses began to perform their functions and the reality of the situation dawned upon the uninjured, shivering reporter as he clung involuntarily to a 60-foot pile, to be used in the foundation of the Pacific Barge works, the most extensive ship-building plant in America.

Industry arrives to early Lowell

Upon the initial structures of post office, wharf, general store, blacksmith shop, bar and hotel, nearly any pioneer town could be provided for. The slopes of Lowell were becoming home-sites. The town was well situated to receive and distribute goods from area businesses and to provide for supplies needed by farmers and logging camps. Initially, in 1876, there was a daily school hour for two youngsters, soon after followed by the first school house for children of the pioneers. By the late 1880’s Smith’s fortunes continued even as he spent large sums with a seemingly easy-going philanthropy. He employed tangible civic tactics including accommodations, in-stride wherever a need appeared. He’d fulfilled an American Dream being a pioneer logger. In 1889, with the admission of Washington into statehood the impetus to attract the best of the civilized and most modern improvements motivated E. D. Smith to attract investors. By 1892, Lowell would no longer be a rough pioneer settlement or early town as the riverfront became an industrial attraction.

E. D. Smith’s General Store, 1892.[39] The building in the foreground is “Pioneer Meat Market.” E. D. Smith is the snowy-whiskered man standing on the platform 2nd from left.

1892 photo of Smith’s Mill built 1889. The Steamer Alki chugs upstream on the Snohomish River.[40]

Town of Lowell, Log Chute and Log Pond 1892.[41]

NW facing Smith’s log chute, Smith’s Boarding Home, Wharf and General Store. The Great Northern Hotel is in construction across the street from the General Store. Behind it is the Post Office, built by Smith. The Fibre Hotel, (not built by Smith), higher on the slope is just under the smoke billow, which likely is brush-clearing activity.

Lowell Wharf rebuilt 1892, amid other new construction at Lowell.[42] View is east-facing towards the flood plain beyond Lowell. Martin Getchell’s farm is across the river from Lowell where his descendants live today.

A fresh flurry of construction rioted in Lowell and at the site of future Everett a short distance north from Lowell during 1891 into mid-1893. Timber investors had been touring since 1890, (which will be discussed fully in Chapter Two about the paper mill). Smith held the largest block of land on Port Gardner where there were also a few other homesteads besides land Smith owned. With the Great Northern Railway terminus expected to be established in Everett, E. D. Smith arranged a sale of land and a land donation to the town-building project conditioned on investor planners assuring the land be used for industry such as factories, including a smelter and an even larger sawmill. With an enormous outlay of Rockefeller money in town-building for a city to be called “Everett,” combined with huge construction projects in Lowell under contract, expectations soon escalated fed by boasts that Everett (with Lowell) could best Seattle in industry. People began to flock to the area.

Smith sold 1200 acres at a reasonable price to Henry Hewitt, Jr. (who had formed the Everett Land Company), which included land where the uniquely planned city of Everett was to be built. Smith then negotiated a donation of another 500 acres out of his five-thousand acres then held to the Everett promoters on condition they bring larger industry to Lowell in the form of a new paper mill, amid other assurances. More than anticipating an influx of industry, E. D. Smith, sole proprietor of Lowell since its platting in 1873, now prepared for incoming industrial shipment for the paper mill and its worker population. He built a better wharf and the town water works, and expanded his General Store. He had already built his sawmill in 1889, but following his land-sale negotiations with the Everett Land Company he built a huge warehouse. Retiring from logging altogether in 1890, Smith then funded the construction of the elaborate Great Northern Hotel. This entailed an outlay of $14,000 to complete construction; such an amount considered an enormous sum then. An Illustrated History of Skagit and Snohomish Counties (1906, p. 319) reported:

“In the Snohomish Eye of November 16, 1891, mention was made of the great improvements in and about Everett, particularly in the vicinity of Lowell. It is stated that the paper mill then in process of erection was expected to be the largest in the United States.”

Paper Mill under construction April 23, 1891. A dairy cow rests amid the stumps remaining at the front of the structures.[43]

The construction projects were so monumental in the area that local brick was getting scarce. The Everett News ran an Extra Edition, December 10, 1891, in which the following article appeared:

Rush Work Done On The Nail Works and Paper Mill ~ Workmen engaged upon the paper mill have not been slow in changing appearances at the great factory. On Saturday last L. R. Stuard, Assistant secretary of the paper mill, went to Seattle and Tacoma, to personally select brick, seasoned lumber and other building material. Except for the brick machine building, the paper mill is practically two-thirds finished. It was material for the machine building and immense smokestack that Mr. Stuart selected, and it is expected in on scows within a few days, when work will be rushed.

The work on the mill was delayed during the months of October and November 1891 because brick was hard to secure. A load on its way from Seattle sank in the Puget Sound. Announced October 2, 1891, in the Port Gardner News, (a paper printed in Lowell until it was bought by the Everett News):

Big Barge Sinks: A barge loaded with 100,000 bricks for the paper mill sank in the Sound near Seattle one day last week. All the brick used so far in this extensive building have been shipped in from other [yards]; yards here not being able to supply the demand.

The loss of this brick slowed down many construction projects at the time. A great deal of brick was being used in construction everywhere including the Great Northern Hotel, located a few blocks from the paper mill.

Under construction is the Great Northern Hotel,[44] Lowell: May 9, 1892; precipitously named for the arriving Great Northern Railway. The structure behind the hotel has a banner that states, “Lodging.”

The road from Lowell into newborn Everett as depicted in The Eye was so awful from ”immense quantities” of lumber from Smith’s mill being hauled along it that wagon wheels sank to their hubs and required a team of six-horses to make the passage.[45] Street projects were being begged by the people all about. This was particularly true of 2nd Street in Lowell; to fill in deep ruts following the construction of The Great Northern Hotel.

Grading of 2nd Street in Lowell, May 1892.[46]

Additionally, other interests were investing upon the slopes of Lowell. Cropping up were family homes that mill workers actually owned, rather than rented. E. D. Smith donated lumber and land to establish a beautiful school, complete with theater, tower, and turrets that was built by architect, Frederick Sexton, and completed in 1893. The Lowell Congregational Church was constructed with funds raised by community donations in 1891, on a lot with lumber both donated by E. D. Smith. (Chapter Six is devoted to this church). Yet another lodging home was built by Ingersoll and McDonald, in addition to their construction of a small grocery store in Lowell.

A partial view of the completed Great Northern Hotel by an amateur photographer in the Buckley family.[47] View is east-facing into the “bend of the river,” on 1st in Lowell. This photo shows the view enjoyed by the guests, ca. 1893.

1892: Above the paper mill is the new Fibre Hotel. Left: Lowell Church, built 1891 on 2nd St.[48] The builders are posed in lower photo.

Known to locals as the “Paper Mill Hotel” it was initially called the Fibre Hotel; a play on words for the patrons who worked at the paper mill. Until an office building was completed the Great Northern Hotel served as headquarters for the paper mill’s administrators.[49] Mill workers often took up residence at the Fibre Hotel, which was renamed the Mountain View Hotel by 1908. Meanwhile, worker homes were being constructed on the slope beyond the paper mill hotel in tidy rows amid the stumps.

Fibre Hotel was a boarding house for Lowell paper mill workers of Puget Sound Pulp and Paper Company, as photographed May 1892.[50] It burned down in the 1920's. This is likely the lodging home built by Ingersoll and McDonald about the same time as the Great Northern Hotel.[51]

Millwright Worker Cottages for paper mill workers, January 14, 1892.[52]

Addresses for the Millwright worker cottages,[53] some of which are lived in today: From left to right: 5102, 5014, and 5012 South 3rd Avenue in Lowell.

Prudden House in Lowell sits where Native American burial relics were found during homesite excavation in 1892.[54]

The Prudden house, which is still standing in Lowell was built in 1892 by Arthur E. Prudden. The photograph was taken a few years later. The home was located near the corner of 3rd & Main.

When the foundation of the house was being built in 1892, Prudden discovered the remains of an upper class Native American burial canoe. Located high above the flood levels of the Snohomish River it was not certain how old were the remains. The relics and bones were restored to the Tulalip Tribes.

So many differences that grew suddenly with the maturation of small town Lowell were amplified by an article that appeared in the Everett News, Saturday, June 18, 1892:

HIS NEGLECTED OPPORTUNITY: Sold the Townsite of Lowell 20 Years Ago for $250 ~ Coming down on the Cascade from Snohomish a few days since was a grizzled old woodsman. When Lowell was reached he manifested considerable interest, scrutinizing every part of the site. Finally he remarked to a neighboring passenger, “I used to own that place. Sold it to E. D. Smith 20 years ago.” Mr. Smith confirmed the statement. He paid the man, Dunbar, $250 for his squatter’s right on the quarter section, which he proved up on as a homestead, and where the heart of the town now stands. The quarter section is worth now $4000 an acre, or something over a half million dollars.

In 1893, Smith had many interests to tend. He had properties to look after and his sawmill. Although he had retired from logging sometime in 1890 to focus his duties on developments in Lowell, Smith was appearing in civic and political circles, being elected to various offices. In a biography of E. D. Smith appearing in An Illustrated History of Skagit and Snohomish County (1906) his citizenship is summarized:

Honorable Eugene Danford Smith.[55]

In politics, Mr. Smith is a Republican. He has served as county commissioner by appointment and election, has been justice of the peace, was postmaster at Lowell for twenty-one years, served on the first provisional council of Everett and for years was either director or clerk of the local school district, besides holding various other offices of trust. In fraternal affiliations he is a Master Mason and a Workman. His views on educational and religious matters are very liberal, as they are on most other things, and he has never acknowledged allegiance to any creed.[56]

Within the Everett Daily Herald, Thanksgiving Edition Saturday, November 24, 1906, an extensive article featuring E. D. Smith was published. The article presents a lively E. D. Smith with an interviewer’s attempt to recall historical events with time-lines and statements that are often historically and politically incorrect, so the reader was (and is) more entertained than informed.

E. D. SMITH: TALES THAT ARE TOLD BY AN EVERETT PIONEER

Stories Gleaned From the Experiences of E. D. Smith, “The Father of Lowell,” Showing the Hardships of the Men Who Came here in the Early Days to Make Snohomish County and Everett Possible. How the First Thanksgiving Feast Was Held on the Banks of the Snohomish River.

“My first Thanksgiving dinner in Snohomish County? Bless you, that is a long way back, thirty-four years, but I guess I can tell you about it. We dined in a logging camp on wild goose, duck and venison, washing down our repast with Hudson’s Bay Company’s whiskey, smuggled across from Victoria by friend Klendennin in his little schooner Minnehaha. There was not a white woman in the country, nothing but Indians and timber, rather different the season of 1906 from that of 1863, eh?” and E. D. Smith, the “Father of Lowell,” laid back in his armchair and smiled at his interviewer.

Like so much fiction is the long experience of this sturdy pioneer of Snohomish County; and it is to him, and such as he, that this rich, fertile section of the great and prosperous Northwest should doff its cap, giving thanks at this Thanksgiving period to those who constituted that fearless band of Argonauts, that pioneer corps, who journeyed thousands of miles from civilization almost half a century ago, that they might hew from primeval forests a home for posterity. It is the intention of this article to set forth a few reminiscences from the early experience of a long life as lived by Mr. Smith on Everett’s threshold, until a few years ago the camping ground of Indians, the scene of logging operations, in which he was the Nestor.

There were no white women here in 1863, the year E. D. Smith arrived. There were no railroads, no county roads, few steamboats, few trails by which to travel, Indian canoes being generally used on both Puget Sound and Snohomish River. This section was rich in timber. Mr. Smith was quick to realize its value and to become the pioneer logger of Snohomish County by purchasing the squatter’s rights of Burlingham Brown and F. L. Dunbar, the only mode of procedure, for there was little or no land surveyed. The town sites of Marysville and most of Everett were logged off by this sturdy crusader. He had his busy camps where now stand mills and brick blocks, his skid roads where steel trolley tracks now are. Mr. Smith sold his logs to the few lumber plants then on Puget Sound, making a snug fortune from his operations. A number of logging camps appeared in 1864-5. Alex Spithill and Joseph Long, following the “Father of Lowell,” started a camp on Ebey Slough above Marysville.

Deadly diphtheria scourged Lowell in the 1860’s. Little medical aid was at hand. The mortality was terrible. Eighteen children out of Lowell’s handful of families succumbed to the ravaging disease which, in instances, tore the hearts of those dauntless pioneers by sweeping away every child God had given them. But buoyed up by that courage which made it possible for them to leave civilization behind and face countless dangers and privations in the then unknown Northwest, these sorely afflicted country-builders silently bowed their heads in recognition of Divine Will, stifled aching hearts in developing the poor homesteads and buried their grief with the little forms.

Mrs. Smith, a relative of the venerable poet Henry W. Longfellow, did not venture from the security of her home in Portland, Maine, to wed her boyhood lover until 1869. Mr. Smith journeyed by vessel to San Francisco to meet his sweetheart, where the nuptials were performed. It was a hard life on the Lowell claim, says Mrs. Smith, and still, upon reflection, she says it was the happiest portion of her life, although there was but one other white woman in the neighborhood beside herself- if a distance of twelve miles may be termed “the neighborhood.” A hard life, yes, but she pluckily threw her best energies into that life, giving her husband an aid and comfort which he alone can measure.

Everett had one settler in 1864, an unmarried man named Dennis Brigham. If the departed Dennis had tarried on this mundane sphere until the present time, retaining the three-quarters of a mile strip of land he owned along the bay front, he would now be sufficiently financed to pose as a man of great wealth. But Dennis Brigham died; no one knows how. In 1865, E. Kromer arrived, settling on what is now known as the Kromer Tract. At that time he was a telegraph operator with the Western Union Telegraph Company, then building a line through from Seattle. The same year found Alexander Spithill living at “Habolum,” an Indian name designating “the mouth of Snohomish River,” at which location Preston brothers, about the same time, erected the first public house in Snohomish County. Tom Robinson, another crusader, once owned a claim where the Ferry-Baker mill now stands. In turn came James Entwistle and Frank La Ball, a Frenchman, both of whom owned claims on that portion of Everett now called “Riverside.” Following slowly came settlers who opened the rich country up Snohomish River, a Mrs. Clark being the only white woman for several years. E. C. Ferguson was Snohomish’s sole resident. Then came one Cady, who is remembered today by old settlers as being the man who cut the first trail through Snohomish County—the Cady Trail, it was called—to connect with settlements east of the mountains. Gradually, man by man, came the first generation, strong of heart, strong of limb, arrogant in the face of hardship or danger, mild-mannered to his neighbor, helpful at all times, fearful of nothing, not even his God, in those days of early struggle, and self-reliance, though his own God he honored in his own way.

A sportsman’s paradise was Lowell thirty-four years ago, Mr. Smith never attempted to give anyone cards and spades as a hunter, but he took his fling at the game on occasions, shooting for meat and pelts. One summer he killed ten members of the bear family on his ranch. Ebey Island—now diked and blossoming into cultivation- was another nearby mecca where deer abounded in great numbers and an occasional “tiger” (which Mr. Smith says old residents will understand and appreciate) was seen.

When it comes to real hard work, Mr. Smith’s experiences of clearing out Steamboat Slough will stand as a monument. This watercourse was needed by the pioneer logger to float his output to tidewater, where it might be transported to the mills. Today this slough has the deepest channel of any of the delta outlets into Puget Sound and is the course taken by steamers. In 1865, however, it was impassable. Great trees for years had been falling from either bank into Steamboat Slough, their branches becoming interlaced midstream. Mr. Smith looked at the necessity for possessing this waterway, not at the work its clearing would necessitate, and set to cutting away the falling timber along the banks and dragging it out of the way. This proved a prodigious task, but he accomplished it as he had overcome former difficulties, for he was a pioneer.

Mr. Smith’s cold weather anecdotes are sufficiently vivid to cause shivers to pass up and down the spinal column. He mentions two cold snaps- one in 1874, the other in 1886. The earlier date saw Snohomish County in the grip of King Winter for six long, tedious months. Snow fell for several days. When the fall ceased, four feet of the beautiful covered the earth- four feet on the level. In 1886, another cold wave visited this section, forming an ice gorge in Snohomish River one foot in thickness. One day the ice broke up, coming down stream banks full with a roar which was heard for miles and forming a mighty jam at Steamboat Slough. If Snohomish River repeats its action of 1886, says Mr. Smith, every bridge along the route would be swept away, and he sees no reason why a repetition should not occur.

Although Indians were thick as autumn leaves, Mr. Smith states that the Tulalips were always friendly, and they thought the Father of Lowell was about “right,” for he never failed to pay them for their services, as some of the whites neglected to do. The tribesmen who killed Col. Ebey in his stockade on Ebey Island were northern Indians, in no manner affiliated with the local reds. Mr. Smith tells of saving an Indian’s life in the early dawn and how this savage ever after served him with the faithfulness of a dog. One day, in passing Priest’s Point, the logger saw a vast gathering of braves gesticulating wildly about a central figure standing, arms, folded and insolent in the face of danger, on a stump in their midst. Mr. Smith quickly landed and elbowed his way among the braves. Two deaths had recently occurred in the tribe and Charley Jehemkin—he on the stump—was accused of giving the “bad medicine.” The tribesmen were anxious to kill the brave, whom they thought responsible for the disease that carried off their people. Further, Charley Jehemkin was known to be a bad Indian. But Mr. Smith’s love for fair play induced him to intercede for the menaced savage. He asked that Charley be given a chance for life, arguing his point so convincingly that the Indian was given his freedom. Charley was the finest canoeman on Puget Sound, so conceded by all tribes, and he could make a canoe live in weather when other Indians dared not venture on the water.

Many other incidents of Mr. Smith’s long career in Snohomish County could be told did space permit. There was the time he ordered a road poll tax collector out of the logging camp because the Father of Lowell would not permit his men to pay tax when there were no roads to be traveled. Another story might be written of the big freeze-up when everybody ran out of flour and Mr. Smith- like a true father—drove an immense ox through fallen trees and deep snow to the beach at Everett, loading his beast with a supply which lasted Lowell and Snohomish until the thaw came. Still again an amusing tale might be woven from his experiences as justice of the peace, when he married Indians. Then there was the establishment of the Lowell school in 1871 with its four scholars and Miss Blackman of Snohomish as mistress, and Mr. Smith’s twenty-one years’ service as postmaster of the town he started. The pioneer is crowding seventy years but he remains hale, hearty and entertaining.

Photo taken ca. 1902-1906
E. D. Smith and Margaret Getchell Smith.[57]

Three years after the Thanksgiving Everett Daily Herald article with E. D. Smith, on June 11, 1909, Lowell’s “sturdy pioneer” died following cardiovascular illness of some three weeks duration at his home in Lowell where he was surrounded by his children and his wife. His wife, Margaret, followed five months later on October 3, 1909.

Notes: Chapter 1

1“Eugene D. Smith,” engraving, 1889, (Everett, WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room Digital Collections), accessed July 12, 2012, http://www.nw.epls.org/u?/People,27.

2Don Berry, The Lowell Story, A Community History, (Everett, WA: Lowell Civic Association, 1985), 4.

3Wikipedia contributors, “Patkanim,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Last modified May 5, 2013, accessed July 1, 2013, doi: 553679729, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Patkanim&oldid=553679729 .

4Berry, Lowell Story, 4.

5William Sydney Shiach and Harrison B. Averill, eds. An Illustrated History of Skagit and Snohomish Counties, Their People, Their Commerce and Their Resources, With an Outline of the Early History of the State of Washington; Endorsed as Authentic by Local Committees of Pioneers, (Chicago: Interstate Publishing Company, 1906), 258, accessed August 1, 2012, http://openlibrary.org/books/OL6973987M/An_illustrated_history_of_Skagit_and_Snohomish_Counties.

6Illustrated, 1906, 358.

7“Washington Territory, Western, Indian War Battlefields, 1855-56,” map (image scan) in History of Washington, Volume 2, by Clinton A. Snowden, (New York: The Century History Company, 1909) 26, accessed July 12, 2013, http://www.sos.wa.gov/history/maps_detail.aspx?m=9

8Illustrated, 1906, 254-255.

9These were probably entries of “Mary Low Sinclair ~ Forgotten Founder of Snohomish” (WLP Story #53), Women’s Legacy Project, accessed June 23, 2013, http://snohomishwomenslegacy.org/wlp_53_MaryLowSinclair.html.

10“Extracts From the Diary of an Early Settler,” The Northern Star, Snohomish City, W. T., 1, no. 2 (Saturday, January 22, 1876): 4, accessed June 27, 2013, http://www.sos.wa.gov/history/newspapers_detail.aspx?t=33.

11R. King and D. W. Baskerville, “Steamboat in Slough, Snohomish River,” photograph, 1892, (Everett WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room Digital Collections), accessed June 1, 2013, http://www.nw.epls.org/u?/KingBask,18.

12Illustrated, 1906, 931.

13Wikipedia contributors, “Port Gamble, Mill Town,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, last modified July 26, 2013, accessed November 20, 2013, doi: 565919791 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Gamble,_Mill_Town

14Berry, Lowell Story, 7.

15Illustrated, 1906, 931.

16Ibid., 258.

17Ibid.

18Kathy Weiser, “Montana Legends, Gold to Ghost,” Legends of America, pg. 2, April 2013, accessed July 1, 2013, http://www.legendsofamerica.com/mt-bannack2.html.

19Berry, Lowell Story, 8.

20Illustrated, 1906, 844.

21Ibid., 358.

22Ibid.

23Berry, Lowell Story, 10.

24“Smith’s Land Patent,” scanned document, 1872, (Courtesy Burk Family Archive of Lowell, WA, July 2012).

25“Plan of Lowell,” scanned image dated 1873, courtesy Margaret Riddle, (Everett WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room Digital Collections).

26Berry, Lowell Story, 13.

27[Smith’s Hotel ad], scanned image, March 31, 1877, in The Northern Star, 3, accessed 8/23/2013, pdf file: http://www.sos.wa.gov/history/images/newspapers/SL_dir_snohomishnortstar/pdf/SL_dir_snohomishnortstar_03311877.pdf.

28Bergman and Follestad, “Smith’s Logging Company Picnic, Lowell,” photograph, July 4, 1886, Everett Historical Series No. 3, (Gail Chism Collection).

29Berry, Lowell Story, 18- 20.

30“E. D. Smith Logging Camp near Beverly Park,” photograph, ca.1880, by Don Berry, in The Lowell Story, A Community History. (Everett, WA: Lowell Civic Association, 1985), 21.

31Illustrated, 1906, 258.

32George D. Horton, “Lowell, Washington Territory, 1886,” photograph, 1886, (Everett, WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room, courtesy David Dilgard).

33Warner Blake, Images of America: Early Snohomish, (Charleston, SC, Chicago IL, Portsmouth, NH, San Francisco CA: Arcadia Publishing, 2007), 22.

34Illustrated, 1906, 931.

35Berry, Lowell Story, 20.

36Ibid., 20-21.

37Ibid., 21.

38“Terrific Ride On a Log: E.D. Smith’s Chute Used as Toboggan Slide, News Reporter’s Folly,” (Original article: Everett News, January 8, 1892. Copy from reprint of full text found in Everett Daily Herald, Aug. 5, 1965).

39“Smith with Group in Front of Store,” photograph, 1892, (Everett, WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room, courtesy David Dilgard).

40“Steamer Alki Snohomish River at Lowell, 1892,” image in article “Everett Neighborhoods: Lowell — Thumbnail History”, by Margaret Riddle, last modified Oct. 14, 2012, cited as “Courtesy Everett Public Library,” Historylink.org, The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, Essay 8570, accessed August 1, 2013, http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=8570.

41“Lowell 1892,” scanned photograph, 1892, (Everett, WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room, courtesy David Dilgard).

42R King and D. W. Baskerville, “Lowell Dock,” photograph, May 9, 1892, (Everett, WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room Digital Collections), accessed December 17, 2012, http://www.nw.epls.org/u?/KingBask,80.

43Frank La Roche, “Lowell Mill Under Construction,” photograph, April 23, 1891, (Everett WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room Digital Collection), accessed July 16, 2013, http://www.nw.epls.org/u?/LaRoche,3.

44“Great Northern Hotel,” scanned from original 5 x 8 glass negative, 1892, (Everett, WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room Digital Collections), accessed August 17, 2012, http://www.nw.epls.org/u?/KingBask,113.

45The Eye, November 16, 1891, cited in An Illustrated History of Skagit and Snohomish Counties, 1906, 319.

46R. King and D. W. Baskerville, “Grading Second Street in Lowell,” photograph, May 17, 1892, (Everett WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room Digital Collections), accessed July 24, 2013, http://www.nw.epls.org/u?/KingBask,62.

47[Great Northern Hotel, river view], photograph, ca. 1893, (Beth Buckley Collection).

48Frank La Roche, “The paper mill hotel at Lowell, known as the ‘Fibre House,’” photograph, Jan. 14, 1892, (Everett WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room Digital Collections), accessed July 18, 2013, http://www.nw.epls.org/u?/LaRoche,2.

49The Eye, November 16, 1891, cited in An Illustrated History of Skagit and Snohomish Counties, 1906, 319.

50R. King and D. W. Baskerville, “Lowell Paper Mill Boarding House,” May 16, 1892, (Everett WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room Digital Collections), accessed August 1, 2012, http://www.nw.epls.org/u?/KingBask,84.

51Illustrated, 1906, 358.

52Frank La Roche, “Mill Worker Cottages,” photograph, Jan 14, 1892, (Everett WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room Digital Collections), accessed August 1, 2012, http://www.nw.epls.org/u?/LaRoche,6.

53Frank La Roche, “Mill Worker Cottages,” photograph, Jan. 14, 1892, (Everett WA: Everett Public Library Northwest Room Digital Collections), accessed August 1, 2012, http://www.nw.epls.org/u?/LaRoche,7.

54“Prudden House, Lowell 1892,” photograph in Everett Neighborhoods: Lowell — Thumbnail History, By Margaret Riddle, April 02, 2008, cited: “courtesy Everett Public Library,” Historylink.org, The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, Essay 8570, last modified October 4, 2012, accessed August 26, 2013, http://www.historylink.org/_content/education/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=8570.

55Illustrated, 1906, 933.

56“E. D. Smith, 1889,” image, 1889, in “Snohomish County residents gather at Lowell to celebrate Independence Day on January 3 and 4, 1874,” by Margaret Riddle, Historylink.org, The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, Essay 8524, March 11, 2008, accessed July 21, 2013, http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=8524.

57Illustrated, 1906, 931.