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Skagit River Journal

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Sam Strom memoirs
Monte Cristo mines 1890s, Part Two

Sam Strom's personal experience and witness
(Monte Cristo)
Photo of Monte Cristo in about 1894 by Edward L. Meyer of Seattle, from the Philip R. Woodhouse collection. See this Journal site that features photos from the book, Everett and Monte Cristo Railway, by Woodhouse, Daryl Jacobson and Bill Petersen. Click on photo for full version.
      As I the writer of this information did not arrive in Monte Cristo until the month of Sept. 1893. I do not claim personal contact until that date. The Men and Women whom I name is these I came to know and worked with and worked for and met and is correct as stated as I think records will corroborate. Naturally there are many that I did not meet or know that visited Monte Cristo in these days. I of course cannot name them. But will confine myself to persons I know are the ones responsible for the making and building of the place. As for the source of the Finances that furnished all the Money that too is a matter of conjecture and was handled by the Men named and that I know to be true by personal contact and experience.
      Beginning from now on — Sept. 1893, I will relate how we lived, worked and played and planned in these Mines of their day that attracted Men and Women from all parts of the world. Myself included and I will mention that. I was the youngest boy in camp reaching the sweet age of 21 years old the following month Oct. 24 and hailed from far away Norway near the Border of Sweden Mountains. I was young the world was new and so was the Mines and the big West just in the beginning of a Development of Natural Resources that informed Men and Women, I think, will agree will forever be remembered as the greatest period of all times in the History of the West both here and elsewhere.
      As this deals with Monte Cristo Mines, I will confine this narrative to that place and its People as I found it in these years of 43 years ago. There was dynamite blasts to be heard on all Mountain sides. The Railroad switchback not completed but nearly so at that time. Passengers would get off the train, [float] down the creek and walk the rest of the way. The Depot was not yet completed. The fact is, nothing was completed. But was [with] buildings going up everywhere there was still many People living in tents and tent houses or temporary tent shacks.

Burning Stump Saloon
      It was hard to get something to eat. Drink was easier as it came ready for use in bottles and kegs. The first whiskey to be sold over a bar was on a big Fir Stump on the bank of the creek in the lower end of the town, or what later became the town. This place was called the Blazing Stump and used while a saloon and dance hall was being built close by. This sort of thing was going on all around. Everybody had to build their camps or future homes and places of business as the case might be the plan in hand.
      All seemed happy and all had hopes and faith in the mines that was in the early state of development and would begin to ship ore as soon as aireal [aerial] trams was completed to:
      1. Pride of the Mountain
      2. Pride of the Woods
      3. To Mystery Hill
      4. To the Rainy Mine
      5. Phil's Mine
      6. O and B Mine
      7. The Golden Cord mine
      Well known mines now being opened by several hundred men working at tunnels night and day and prospectors in the nearby hills. Everything new and buildings of all kinds going up in a new country. It looked promising indeed to everyone.
      This building of Monte Cristo brought in all kinds of people and all kinds of money and all was clumped into the canyon together to maker their fortunes or loose all. There was miners from Montana, Colorado, a few original '49ers from California, Virginia City, Nev.; Tombstone, Arizona, Idaho, British Columbia, Mexico, Africa, Australia, Italy, Russia, Surbia, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, France, Denmark, Isle of Man (Cousin Jacks) and some from my native land, Norway. they also was quite a few from Ishpeming and from Mountain, Mich. who claimed to know Henry Ford and said he was a tinkering damned Fool in the early '90s, always monkeying with something. It is said it takes all kinds to make the world and I can say Uncle Sam sure got 'em. Citizenship was never questioned.

Sam describes first view of Monte Cristo in 1893
      People worked and played and met on even footing and Monte Cristo was our Home town. A center in the Mountains from whence many creeks start on their way to join rivers that flow into Puget Sound to swell the Pacific Ocean tide and who knows, perhaps wash the shores of foreing [foreign] lands as it onward go forever. as the topography at Monte Cristo is such as to be best described as a narrow canyon ending up against high mountains on the South, East and West. It takes on the appearance as if everybody came there and got stuck, because there is no outlet and impossible to go any further unless to climb the mountains on foot or to go back where you came in. There is no level spot of ground in Monte Cristo. The Mountain sides are steep right into town so building room was small and always on the hillside. So was the road and R.R. track. It put everything and everybody close together and nobody seemed to mind, not at all.
      There was the post office, 7 saloons, 2 dance halls, 1 tailor shop, 1 newspaper — the Monte Cristo Mountaineer, 1 meat market, hotels, rooming houses, boarding houses, stores, gorse barns, bachelor quarters, maid quarters, girl quarters, family residences, blacksmith shop, machine shop, cobbler, 1 church little used, all [built of] 10x10 light lbr. jail not used at all. The jail was so light that some miners picked it up and carried it about 100 feet and set it down on a bar in the middle of the creek one night and nobody even heard them do it and it was never found out who done it.
      Fate played strange pranks here. The Constable himself was the only person that occupied that jail. He being of the human kind, played poker and drank whiskey and beer. Lost money in the poker game and said he was cheated with marked cards and started a fight free-for all himself. The foregoing will serve to give the read a word picture of Monte Cristo as it was those days 43 years ago.
      There was work for everyone that wanted to work. Everything had to be built up, the tunneling into the Mountains, the buildings connected with the mines in process of completion and having arrived to the point of operating at full capacity in some mines. A $250,000 concentrator having been completed. The Crusher, the airial trams to Pride of the Mountain, the Mystery Hill, the Golden Cord mines pouring out ores night and day and shipping concentrates to Everett smelter regularly and other mines getting read to ship. Many prospectors in the Hills. Some for themselves, other on grubstakes. Several mining companys working by selling stock nd hiring men by day work or contract work. Trails was built into the hills in every direction, also cabins and camps. Most everywhere to mining claim locations. Also timber claims and homestead locations.

The town of Monte Cristo
      Monte Cristo was the center of trade and meeting place to all that came to carry on in these Mountains. Some came to do and dare, some care to work and play. Some came and looked and went way. Some came there to loose their lives and died with their Boots on, on these Mountain sides. Things like the crack of doom did happen. To me it seemed like everything desirable on Earth was gathering here, and all played some part and seemed to fit in. All in keeping with the times of that day of beginning in a new region that seemed to choose for headquarters a narrow Mountain Canyon for a meeting place for all. Miners, prospectors and homesteaders and that tribe of tinhorn Gamblers Fraternity that always follow up to provide means of taking the working man's earnings in any place where established industry thieves. Monte Cristo was now well know and had about reached its height in the late fall of 1894. It now settle down to a steady routine of work in the mines that was going night and day and Sundays.
      So was the saloons, dance halls and gamblers and stores and eating places. Building construction being about completed or nearly so, as far as a rush was concerned. A school was established in 1894. Winter coming on, there was of course several houses yet underway to completion but beginning to slow down as if the place had reached its capacity. There probably was about 1,000 or 1,500 people in the hills surrounding Monte Cristo Country at the time, as the town was a starting point as well as a Mining Camp and covered a large territory. Work in the Mines kept going regularly and steady for many years and was only interrupted by a few tragedies by accidental dynamite explosions. Some falling Rock and cave-ins. Resulting in the death of several men and injury to others and some fell down shutes in slopes. These are accidents common in any Mine and as usual none can tell how these explosions happen.
      The greatest property loss was caused by Snowslides and Floods. In connection with these there was also some loss of life. Myself, during the time I worked there, helped to carry at least half doz. corpses down the Mystery Hill after we dug them out of the Snow or picked up the pieces of men that blown to bits by Dynamite Explosions in the mines. I myself was buried and reported as killed in a snowslide that carried Phil's Mine Snowshed and Headhouse away Nov. 28, 1898, loss $25,000, 1 died, 3 injured. These are accidents that seemingly was unavoidable and so every Man on hand done their best to help matters out with anything that happened.
      So I say, everything connected with the Mines run good and smooth and it was a good place to work for several years, and it is my belief if it was not for the floods taking out the Railroad there be mines running today at Monte Cristo. Bust as we know, the Railroad washed out and the Mines had to close and so had everything else as all depended on the railroad and when that ended, all else had to go but as a while it was good while it lasted. [The railroad was shut down] several times in 1896-97 and finally destroyed entirely about 1918. As I have said all the work ran smooth and steadily in the Mine and everything connected with it. But oh those snowslides and high waters. But not quite so with the gamblers and dancehall girls and proprietors of these resorts.
      Things never run quite true and peacefull.

Endnotes
Monte Cristo Mountaineer
      The 1894 Monte Cristo directory [at http://www.rootsweb.com/~wasnohom/sc94mcdi.htm ] lists the editor of the newspaper as James S. Bartholomew. [Return]
Shutdown:
      Philip R. Woodhouse explains the earlier shutdown in his 1979 book, Monte Cristo, a book that was vital of us to understand the Monte Cristo mining phenomenon and how it faded away. The flood of 1897 was one of the worst since the days of settlement. It also washed away most of the town of Sauk City at the confluence of the Sauk and Skagit rivers.
      The scene on Friday, November 19, [1897], was one of nature on a mad rampage. The rain came down in torrents and normally placid streams in Monte Cristo rose to levels never before seen or imagined. Glacier Creek flowed through the stables, and the animals had to be cut loose to fend for themselves, else they would have drowned. water coursed down the mountainsides where streams had never been known to flow before. Monte Cristo, located at the junction of Glacier and '76 Creeks, caught the brunt of the flood. The trestles carrying the railroad across the Sauk River just below the depot were washed away, and the surging water ate so deeply into the bank the depot itself was threatened. The town's terrified residents could only stand by helplessly on the high ground and watch the flood cut its destructive swaths. the accompanying roar was awesome, like a titanic surf driven before hurricane winds. The temperature rose to 61 degrees and the rain, driven relentlessly before the chinook [wind], continued to swell the streams and rivers until they rose far above the levels of the previous year. . . .
      Surprisingly, the mines at Monte Cristo sustained relatively minor damage. But, without the ability to ship ore, they were closed until the railroad could be built. The tramways had sustained only slight damage, but they were now useless unless the mines were operating, and they too were shut down. . . . On December 11, Frederick Gates [representing the John D. Rockefeller interests] made an announcement in New York which shocked and stunned everyone connected with the mines at Silverton and Monte Cristo: the railroad would not be rebuilt. He stated that the road had "never paid dividends and the mines in which the owners were interested had not panned out." The line had been, he continued, a losing proposition, with the profits eaten up by the enormous maintenance costs, especially during the winters. Not enough freight was carried to make it pay; therefore it would remain closed.
      One must remember that the nationwide Depression that started in 1893 still stifled investment at that time anyway, and Rockefeller was cutting his losses. Three year later, however, the Northern Pacific took over the line and you can read about how the line was rebuilt. The details are fascinating and are well documented in the 2000 book, Everett and Monte Cristo Railway, by Woodhouse, Daryl Jacobson and Bill Petersen. Then, starting in 1902-03, a series of railway accidents and natural disasters led to another shutdown of the mines. From then on, there was a series of starts and stops. World War I finally dealt the death blow in the 1917-18 period, when wartime called many of the miners away to service in Europe. [Return]
Return to http://www.stumpranchonline.com/skagitjournal/Washington/Snohomish/Monte/StromSam2-Memoir1.htmlpage one
Links to other stories and further reading
Journal features in this issue
Journal links with the history and photos of the Monte Cristo
mines and the Everett & Monte Cristo Railway
Journal links, background reading and books

Story posted on Oct. 10, 2005
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