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Noel V. Bourasaw, editor 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, Washington, 98284 Home of the Tarheel Stomp Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug

Cyrus A. Mosier, circa 1890

This photo was taken by Lyn Topinka on Oct. 1, 1987, and is featured on the fine USGS website about volcanoes and Mount Rainier. It is of the southern slopes of Mount Rainier as viewed from Paradise. Nisqually Glacier is in the foreground and Gilbraltar Rock is on the right. Columbia Crest at 14,410 feet tops the view.

      Subsequently he [Cyrus A. Mosier] received orders from Hon. T. H. Carter, then Commissioner of the General Land Office and now Senator from Montana, to explore the Mount Rainier region for the purpose of obtaining the necessary information in regard to the propriety of making a timber reservation there. The idea of making this reservation was originated by Mr. Mosier. A "national park" had been previously suggested by other parties; but before Congress could carry out any plan for a park here the region would have been denuded of its timber and beauty by organized bands of timber and land thieves. Mr. Mosier spent two years exploring this section of Washington and obtaining the opinions of citizens of the Sound cities as to the feasibility of making a reservation which should range entirely around the mountain and constitute an evergreen frame, as it were, for this awfully grand snow-capped peak.
      Loading a mule with a dog tent, blankets, bacon, flour, coffee, and a few other necessaries, a 5x7 Kodak, an aneroid barometer, thermometer, field-glass, level, forty-four six-shooter, repeating rifle, etc., he walked behind the faithful little animal from the settlements at sea-level to the timber line on the mountain, which was generally about 8,ooo feet above the sea, and camped alone at night, proceeding to points fifty to a hundred miles from civilization. In the daytime he had to cross swollen glacial rivers alone, which are always dangerous even when help is at hand. But he could not retreat; all his work lay before and above him. When the shades of night draped the earth with their mysterious pall and the stars shone out like electric lamps from the black depth of space, the ominous silence being broken only by an occasional scream of the mountain lion and the mysterious notes of night birds and other animals, also the sound of grinding rocks forced by an avalanche sweeping the timber and everything before it down the mountain side, reverential awe which language cannot express, rather than fear, took possession of Mr. Mosier's mind.
      He made numerous trips of this kind, starting from different sides of the mountain, the last being from North Yakima, on the eastern side of the Cascades, during which time he camped in deep snow for three days, his horse pawing down through the snow to the earth to obtain his provender, which consisted of the nutritious grasses buried so deeply.
      To the ordinary observer it would seem that such extreme out-door life would have been impossible, following immediately a period of more than twenty years devoted to court work, where close confinement and steady application were so absolutely necessary to the discharge of duty. The secret lies in the fact that Mr. Mosier had all his life been an enthusiastic sportsman, going annually hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles to enjoy the pleasures of the chase, hunting and fishing and the romance of camp life. To shoot antelope on the plains of Texas and Mexico, to climb the Rockies in quest of mountain sheep, goats, bears and black-tail deer, or to shoot water-fowl and grouse about the lakes and fields of the Dakotas, afforded him the necessary exercise for health as well as opportunity to indulge his passion for the study of nature. It was this that especially prepared and fitted him for the hardships and daring exploration we have mentioned in connection with the topographical survey of the Mount Rainier region, now Pacific Reserve.
      In his explorations Mr. Mosier gathered specimens of all the herbaceous plants, mosses, shrubs and trees that he saw, from the salt marshes at sea level to the glaciers between 10,000 and 12,000 feet above. These specimens he forwarded to the Forestry and Botanical Divisions of the Agricultural Department at Washington. The fauna and flora of this region are worthy the attention of the whole scientific world. He photographed natural scenery, trees and other plants, cascades, rocks, avalanches and glaciers, plains a mountains, and even the ocean.

      This grand mountain region, with its icebound peaks, its smoldering volcanoes, it's craters, its crags, its mimic battlements and towers, its precipices, its deep chasms, its steeps, its lakes, its brooks and rivulets an rills, its waterfalls, its fleecy snows, its crinkled drifts, its crevasses and net-work of deep, fissures and chasms and gorges, its columns of basaltic rock, its moraines, its piles of many angled rocks, its record of the fiery work of volcanic forces, its heaps of scoriae, its volcanic ash-beds, at times garlanded with the choicest plants and flowers, its blooming shrubs, its fragrant wild roses, its nameless mosses, its tall cedars and hemlocks and firs and pines, its' yews and spruces and arbor-vitaes, its smooth barked alder trees, its fallen monarchs, its strings of wild vines, its bowers, its brakes and graceful ferns, its sedges and rushes, its mallows and orchids, its tangled wild-woods, its shrubs with blazing flower and fruit, its sub-alpine trees, its enchanting parks, its colonnades of balsam firs and pines and larches, its grassy lawns, its undulating tables, its clumps of exquisitely beautiful trees, its nooks and meadows, its wooded hills with their green slopes and flecks and patches of mid-summer snows of purest white, its dizzy heights and fearful depths, its bursting avalanches and roaring cataracts, its milk-white glacial rivers, grinding boulders, falling rocks with their reverberating echoes, moaning winds, screaming panthers, soaring eagles, wild goats, deer, bear, beaver, marmot and hare, its partridge and grouse and quail and ptarmigan, wild ducks and geese and heron, its song-birds, its bees and myriad insect life, its fishes, its murmuring waters, its mineral springs, its clear blue skies, its starry depths, its clouds, its zigzag lightnings and loud-rolling thunder, its calms, its storms and tempests, its sunshine and shade, its sunrise over mountains of purple and gold and silver sheen, its glorious sunsets, its weird, creeping shadows, its hallowed gloom, its peaceful solitude, its many voices of nature, exciting reverential awe, its peaceful solitude, its many voices of nature, exciting reverential awe, its peaceful solitude- all these and much more that language cannot express, impel me to again urge that this reservation be made for the benefit of the people of the State of Washington, of the United States and of the whole civilized world."

• Our exclusive two-part profile of Harry Devin, master real estate salesman, Klondike miner, Indian blood brother, best hunter in the Northwest, weatherman and historian & your basic Renaissance man. Issue 3, updated Issue 20.
  
• Pioneer Albert G. Mosier's 1939 history of mining in Skagit county. Issue 20
  
• Harry L. Devin's journal entries about life and hunting in the Klondike. Issue 20
  
• Albert G. Mosier, the last of Sedro's pioneers, who platted the towns of Sedro, Woolley and Sauk City, was city and county engineer and became a famous Alaska miner at the turn of the twentieth century. Issue 20
  
• Cyrus Mosier, father of Sedro pioneer Albert G. Mosier and President Harrison's choice as administrator of public lands in the Western frontier. Issue 20
  
• Harry Devin's journal entries about living on a Northwest homestead in the 1880s and fishing and hunting for food. Issue 20
  
• Cyrus Mosier helps preserve Mount Rainier in its natural state. Issue 20
  

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