I enjoy listening to people tell a good story, particularly when they have interesting tales to tell relating to the history of the place where they live and the people who lived there. This has always been an interesting part of my of work at Chatsworth where there are connections to the past everywhere. It’s similar here in this far northwestern corner of America - the Pacific North West. Links to the past and historical records abound, largely because Euro-American and European settlers started arriving in this part of the world less than 200 years ago, so there are fascinating written first-hand accounts from the settlers, as well as carefully compiled histories put together by their descendants who feel strongly connected to their family’s heritage.
The first hand accounts are my favourites to read because they’re so personal, and I’ve spent a good few evenings pouring over the most incredible book entitled ‘Kinsey Photography’ lent to me by a friend. It documents the work of the husband and wife duo Darius (pictured above) and Tabitha Kinsey who ventured out into logging camps, forests and up into the mountains with the most unwieldy camera equipment in the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th century. And thank goodness they did because the evocative (if not heart breaking) imagery they captured, transports you straight back in time, to an era that could never be recaptured. Here are some of their pictures, along with a few things I’ve learned about this area so far…
1) The first settlers started arriving in this part of the America much later than in the East of the country. It wasn’t until the late 1700’s that George Vancouver (a British Naval officer) mapped out the northwest coastline and announced that “The serenity of the climate, the innumerable pleasing landscapes, and the abundant fertility that unassisted nature puts forth, require only to be enriched by the industry of man with villages, mansions, cottages, and other buildings, to render it the most lovely country that can be imagined”. And so people started to head to the west, often travelling thousands of miles, either by sea, or across the country to carve out a niche for themselves here. Some of these cross-country trips took several years. 
2) It still wasn’t until 1870, just 150 years ago, that fellow named Jasper Gates actually managed to make a home at the point along the Skagit river which became known as Mount Vernon, near to where the Floret farm is today. By 1872 two logging camps had appeared, Beavers were being turned into hides quicker than they could be sold, and enough people had arrived in the town to warrant building a school. Each year there was a bit more town and a little less forest; this image below (from the book Skagit Memories, photographer unknown), shows a young Mount Vernon in the late 1800s, with many of the giant Cedars and Firs already stripped of their branches, waiting to be felled.
3) The north west was (and still is) a wet part of the world and the Skagit is a river prone to flooding. The fact that the river flooded regularly for thousands of years is what made the surrounding soil so rich and fertile; the land here is quite literally built up of sediments deposited over millennia. So there was a strong desire to get this land stripped and levelled ready for farming.
4) After logging companies had felled the trees, often the land Lots would be sold off with the stumps remaining, all of which still needed to be cut or blasted out of the ground with dynamite to make space for farming. If any amount of time had elapsed between felling and buying, the fertile land would have soon become covered by dense regrowth of shrubs and young trees, eager to take advantage of new found light. So, as people bought up their lots, they often had the daunting task of shifting the great stumps. The photograph below shows a homestead yet to have its stumps removed and ground levelled.
5) Farming on a flood plain meant that dykes needed to be built up to hold back the water & enable the land to be farmed more reliably. The dykes served their purpose, but flooding still occurred, as is documented in this brief but insightful diary (pictured below) of a Skagit farmer from 1895. Along with ‘river broke over the dykes’, other entries include ‘ killed pigs, ‘blasted and burned logs all day’, ‘plowed all day’ (entered March 13th to March 28th), ‘dug roots for cows’, ‘fire raged on ridge’, ‘Worked all day on meat’, ‘Hunted a.m and fished p.m’ and ‘Wife and I attended a dance’. It sounds like a tough life, though in all of the personal stories I’ve read (mostly from the book ‘Skagit Memories’), it seems that there was always time to attend a dance.
The history of the previous 13000 years in this area belongs to the native Americans. I'm hoping to find out more about their stories too whilst I’m here, and when I do, I’ll share about it on here. In the meantime, here are a few more photographs by Darius and Tabitha for you.
Thanks for reading!
