When finally the small patches of land were cleared, planted and tended, the returns were astonishing, such marvelous vegetables, small fruits and flowers, abundant and luxuriant, rewarded the toiler. Nature herself, by her heaps of vegetation, had foreshown the immense productiveness of the soil.
In the river valleys were quite extensive prairies, which afforded superior stock range, but the main dependence of the people was in the timber.
In 1852 H. L. Yesler came, who built the first steam sawmill on Puget Sound, at Seattle. Other mills sprang up at Port Ludlow, Port Gamble, Port Madison and Port Blakely, making the names of Meigs, Pope, Talbot, Keller, Renton, Walker, Blinn and others, great in the annals of sawmilling on Puget Sound.
This very interesting account concerning Yesler’s sawmill and those who worked in it in the early days was first published in a Seattle paper many years ago:
“The other day some of Parke’s men at work on the foundation of the new Union Block on Front, corner of Columbia Street, delving among ancient fragments of piles, stranded logs and other debris of sea-wreck, long buried at that part of the waterfront, found at the bottom of an excavation they were making, a mass of knotted iron, corroded, attenuated and salt-eaten, which on being drawn out proved to be a couple of ancient boom-chains.
“The scribe, thinking he might trace something of the history of these ancient relics, hunted up Mr. Yesler, whom, after considerable exploration through the mazes of his wilderness on Third and Jefferson Streets, he found, hose in hand, watering a line of lilies, hollyhocks, penstemons, ageratums, roses, et al.
“The subject of the interview being stated, Mr. Yesler proceeded to relate: ‘Yes, after I got my mill started in 1853, the first lot of logs were furnished by Dr. Maynard. He came to me and said he wanted to clear up a piece on the spit, where he wanted to lay out and sell some town lots. It was somewhere about where the New England and Arlington now stand. The location of the old mill is now an indeterminate spot, somewhere back of Z. C. Miles’ hardware store. The spot where the old cookhouse stood is in the intersection of Mill and Commercial Streets, between the Colman Block and Gard. Kellogg’s drug store. Hillory Butler and Bill Gilliam had the contract from Maynard, and they brought the logs to the mill by hand—rolled or carried them in with handspikes. I warrant you it was harder work than Hillory or Bill has done for many a day since. Afterwards, Judge Phillips, who went into partnership with Dexter Horton in the store, got out logs for me somewhere up the bay.
“‘During the first five years after my mill was started, cattle teams for logging were but few on the Sound, and there were no steamboats for towing rafts until 1858. Capt. John S. Hill’s “Ranger No. 2,” which he brought up from San Francisco, was the first of the kind, and George A. Meigs’ little tug Resolute, which blew up with Capt. Johnny Guindon and his crew in 1861, came on about the same time. A great deal of the earliest logging on the Sound was done exclusively by hand, the logs being thrown into the water by handspikes and towed to the mill on the tide by skiffs.
“‘In 1853 Hillory Butler took a contract to get me out logs at Smith’s Cove. George F. Frye was his teamster. In the fall of 1854 and spring and summer of 1855, Edward Hanford and John C. Holgate logged for me on their claims, south of the townsite toward the head of the bay. T. D. Hinckley was their teamster, also Jack Harvey. On one occasion, when bringing in a raft to the mill, John lost a diary which he was keeping and I picked it up on the beach. The last entry it contained read: “June 5, 1855. Started with a raft for Yesler’s mill. Fell off into the water.” I remember I wrote right after “and drowned,” and returned the book. I don’t know how soon afterward John learned from his own book of his death by drowning.
“‘The Indian war breaking out in the fall of ’55 put a stop to their logging operations, as of all the rest.
“‘The Indians killed or drove off all the cattle hereabouts and burned the dwellings of Hanford, Holgate and Bell on the borders of the town, besides destroying much other property throughout the country.
“‘The logging outfits in those days were of the most primitive and meager description. Rafts were fastened together by ropes or light boom-chains. Supplies of hardware and other necessaries were brought up from San Francisco by the lumber vessels on their return trips as ordered by the loggers. I remember on one occasion Edmund Carr, John A. Strickler, F. McNatt and John Ross lost the product of a season’s labor by their raft getting away from them and going to pieces while in transit between the mill and the head of the bay. My booming place was on the north side of the mill along the beach where now the foundations are going up for the Toklas & Singerman, Gasch, Melhorn and Lewis brick block. There being no sufficient breakwater thereabouts in those times, I used often to lose a great many logs as well as boom-chains and things by the rafts being broken up by storms.
“‘My mill in the pioneer times before the Indian war furnished the chief resource of the early citizens of the place for a subsistence.
“‘When there were not enough white men to be had for operating the mill, I employed Indians and trained them to do the work. George Frye was my sawyer up to the time he took charge of the John B. Libby on the Whatcom route. My engineers at different times were T. D. Hinckley, L. V. Wyckoff, John T. Moss and Douglass. Arthur A. Denny was screw-tender in the mill for quite a while; D. T. Denny worked at drawing in the logs. Nearly all the prominent old settlers at some time or other were employed in connection with the mill in some capacity, either at logging or as mill hands. I loaded some lumber for China and other foreign ports, as well as San Francisco.’”
The primitive methods, crude appliances and arduous toil in the early sawmills have given place to palaces of modern mechanical contrivance it would require a volume to describe, of enormous output, loading hundreds of vessels for unnumbered foreign ports, and putting in circulation millions of dollars.
As a forcible contrast to Mr. Yesler’s reminiscence, this specimen is given of modern milling, entitled “Sawing Up a Forest,” representing the business of but one of the great mills in later days (1896) at work on Puget Sound:
“The best evidence of the revival of the lumber trade of the Sound, is to be found at the great Blakeley mill, where four hundred thousand feet of lumber is being turned out every twenty-four hours, and the harbor is crowded with ships destined for almost all parts of the world.
“One of the mill officials said, ‘We are at present doing a large business with South American and Australian ports, and expect with proper attention to secure the South African trade, which, if successful, will be a big thing. We have the finest lumber in the world, and there is no reason why we should not be doing five times the business that is being done on the Sound. Why, there is some first quality and some selected Norway lumber out there on the wharf, and it does not even compare with our second quality lumber.’
“The company has at present (1896) 350 men employed and between $15,000.00 and $20,000.00 in wages is paid out every month.
“The following vessels are now loading or are loaded and ready to sail:
“Bark Columbia, for San Francisco, 700,000 feet; ship Aristomene, for Valparaiso, 1,450,000 feet; ship Earl Burgess, for Amsterdam, 1,250,000 feet; bark Mercury, for San Francisco, 1,000,000 feet; ship Corolla, for Valparaiso, 1,000,000 feet; barkentine Katie Flickinger, for Fiji Islands, 550,000 feet; bark Matilda, for Honolulu, 650,000 feet; bark E. Ramilla, for Valparaiso, 700,000 feet; ship Beechbank, for Valparaiso, 2,000,000 feet.
“To load next week:
“Barkentine George C. Perkins, for Sidney, N. S. W., 550,000 feet; bark Guinevere, for Valparaiso, 850,000 feet.
“Those to arrive within the next two weeks:
“Bark Antoinette, for Valparaiso, 900,000 feet; barkentine J. L. Stanford, for Melbourne, 1,200,000 feet; ship Saga, for Valparaiso, 1,200,000 feet; bark George F. Manson, for Shanghai, China, 950,000 feet; ship Harvester, for South Africa, 1,000,000 feet.”
Shingle making was a prominent early industry. The process was slow, done entirely by hand, in vivid contrast with the great facility and productiveness of the modern shingle mills of this region; in consequence of the slowness of manufacture they formerly brought a much higher price. It was an ideal occupation at that time. After the mammoth cedars were felled, sawn and rived asunder, the shingle-maker sat in the midst of the opening in the great forest, towering walls of green on all sides, with the blue sky overhead and fragrant wood spread all around, from which he shaped the thin, flat pieces by shaving them with a drawing knife.
Cutting and hewing spars to load ships for foreign markets began before 1856.