Forum Index > Pacific NW History > Earliest Trails in the Olympics
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Phil
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PostFri Feb 05, 2010 9:12 am 
Maybe I missed this in prior posts but is there a way to get a hard copy of this from somewhere? UW library or..... ?

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Mace
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PostFri Feb 05, 2010 12:04 pm 
I am working with the library on getting permission to duplicate. It is a process.

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PostFri Feb 05, 2010 9:01 pm 
Oldest Trails in the Park
This is great!!! From this it looks like good long trails were cut as early as 1902 and certainly by 1911. That is amazing. I am wondering if back then the trails had the same level of maintenance they have today, I would think so, it seems endless. There must have been a dozen Rod Farlees out there back then, eh?

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RodF
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PostSat Feb 06, 2010 1:27 am 
Re: Oldest Trails in the Park
boomheist wrote:
This is great!!! From this it looks like good long trails were cut as early as 1902 and certainly by 1911. That is amazing. I am wondering if back then the trails had the same level of maintenance they have today, I would think so, it seems endless.
The 1910 Big Burn, the stories of the lives and towns lost, the heroism of Forest Service firefighters like Ed Pulaski, was a major national news story. Until that point, USFS had been essentially defunded by Congress and was on the verge of disappearing. But the Big Burn changed all that. Congress decided the USFS should embark on a major trail building program, so fire fighters could get into the backcountry and knock down small fires before they blew up. That is what led to the reinvigorated USFS trail-building effort of 1911-15, and the many new trails that appear on the 1918 map. We have accounts from the 1920s that major trails such as the Dosewallips and Quinault were then receiving major upgrades to enable horses and mules to use them. And the CCC made major improvements in the 1930s. So I suspect most of the "trails" shown in the 1918 map were primitive routes - perhaps little more than "when the elk path peters out, follow the blazes, because at least they won't lead you to an impassable cliff, but to the next elk path" - a lot better than nothing, but nothing close to 1930s CCC standards.

"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir "the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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PostWed Feb 17, 2010 9:33 am 
Thanks for sharing the maps guys, it is great to look back. I'm having a hard time seeing the Tubal Cain trail on the 1911 map but that Little Quil to the Big Quil loop looks grand. If anyone ever comes across the rest of the 1932 Taplin map, please post it; there are lots of interesting historical tidbits on it!

"Life favors the prepared." - Edna Mode
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PostMon Apr 26, 2010 10:27 am 
Oldest Trails
Looking in some detail at the old Camp Parsons booklets, it appears that the scouts went deep into the area, up the Dosewallups to Mt Anderson, all over Deer Park, Cameron Creek, From Dosewallups over Constance Pass to the Big Quilcene. It's also fascinating to speculate on the route for the "Canal to Ocean" annual trip, which I am guessing started on the Dosewallups (though maybe down by Lake Cushman though it appears the Six Ridge Trail wasn't built yet) over Hayden Pass then to Low Diovide and then on the "sky line route" which I am guessing is the Skyline Trail. Says they were stopping at Camp Baldy on Lake Quinault which suggests coming out either on the North Fork Quinault or East Fork, I am guessing North Fork. Seven or eight days, which ain't too bad. It's pretty striking to me to imagine that 80-90 years ago most of the basicx trails were cut, maintained, and used, and this suggests to me that when settlers first went into the area in the 1890s there were lost of "game" trails which I am guessing were really trails made by local tribes to gather herbs, game, and just check out the territory. I'll bet that people have been wandering through those places for thousands of years.

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Phil
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PostMon Apr 26, 2010 11:38 am 
Interesting stuff, boom. up.gif Did you stop by the CP museum ?

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PostTue Apr 27, 2010 3:36 pm 
Old Trails
CP Museum? Is that the one in Shelton? Never been there. It's pretty amazing to think that the tracks we're trudging on out there may have been first worn by boots a century ago, and I am guessing that while the trails below treeline and especially along the rivers were dynamic and changign every year, sometimes a lot, requiring lots of cutting out and clearing, the paths up above treeline would have been made fast without too much foot traffic and have remained the same since. I know from just walking in the Graywolf over 20 years how much that trail has changed, and altered, and shifted, and I imagine it's true for many of the others, but I would guess that tracks up high are darn near the same as they were when first walked a hundred years ago. And it's a fair thought to wonder if some of those high tracks, started with elk but enlarged by people, were first laid into the earth by feet in leather mocassins a long long LONG time ago. I figure of today there's a bunch of people who live to go wandering through that country why not five hundred years ago?

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Phil
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PostWed Apr 28, 2010 7:17 am 
CP = camp parsons museum .... was wondering if by 'booklets' you were talking about what can be viewed there. Like to stop by there myself some time.

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PostMon May 03, 2010 8:24 am 
Re: Oldest Trails
a very minor point...
boomheist wrote:
(...it appears the Six Ridge Trail wasn't built yet)
It was! Remarkably, Six Ridge is one of the earlier "built" trails in the Olympics. Chris Morganroth led the crew which built the South Fork Skokomish - Sundown Pass/Lake - Six Ridge - Lake Success - Mt. Olsen - O'Neil Creek (not later ridge route) - O'Neil Camp/East Fork Quinault Trail in 1907. In 1912, the USFS completed it to pack standards, and built the Anderson Pass trail. (See Morganroth "Footprints in the Olympics" chapter 24.) (I dunno when the eastern section of Six Ridge (Lake Success to N Fk Skok) trail was built, though.) I think you're right about the route of the Camp Parsons' Boy Scouts annual (by ca. 1925-6) "Canal to Ocean" hike - Hayden Pass (built 1916) - Low Divide - Skyline, then I guess Finley Ridge Trail to North Shore Quinault RS. Almost all of this trail route (except the Lake Beauty section of the Skyline) already existed by the time of the 1913 Mountaineers cross-Olympic expedition (see Wood, "Trail Country" (1968) p. 208). p.s. there should be an account of the Graves Creek trail construction in Rudo Fromme's memoir file in the ONP archives... but it was built sometime after 1917, which is when they renamed Success Creek as Graves Creek and no trail existed (see Parratt's "Gods and Goblins"), as shown on the 1918 ONF map posted above.

"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir "the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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Mace
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PostMon May 03, 2010 10:49 am 
I added photos of several more sections of the map. All of the guide text is there along with the legend and a few other previously missing parts. Still some other sections that I need to get better photos of. Lots of cabins and telephones in the interior. http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=loontattoo&target=ALBUM&id=5434638770983773009&authkey=Gv1sRgCKSK2d2M3rfwvgE&feat=email I am still dealing with the libraries on getting full sized hard copies.

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reststep
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PostMon May 03, 2010 12:41 pm 
Phil wrote:
CP = camp parsons museum .... was wondering if by 'booklets' you were talking about what can be viewed there. Like to stop by there myself some time.
I was a camper at Camp Parsons in the late 40's so it would be interesting to go to the Camp Parsons Musuem. I am going to have to try and make it there. At that time they had 2 week sessions and the second week was hike week. The first year I went on the Charlia Lakes hike and we hiked right out of camp, somehow connecting to the Quilcene River Trail. I think the museum in Quilcene is worth taking a look at also.

"The mountains are calling and I must go." - John Muir
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Phil
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PostTue May 04, 2010 10:19 am 
Good work mace, thanks for the link

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PostTue May 04, 2010 10:49 am 
CP Ventures into the Olympics
There have been numerous references to Boy Scout hikes into the Olympics as well as the Camp Parsons museum that we felt it was time to be availabe to add to the conversation when items that we have researched have come up. Camp Parsons began operations on July 7th, 1919 and by August scouts from the camp had ascended the Brothers, been over Anderson Pass by way of the Dosewallips and Marmot Pass through the Big Quil (the classic "poop-out-drag" that BSA veterans call it). During the next 10 years scouts made the second ascent of Constance, named Del Monte Ridge after the camp's popular West Indian chef and named Sunnybrook Meadows. Edmund Meany named Mt. Tom after the first scout that scrambled to the top. The canal to ocean trek took two routes, both starting up the Dosewallips, one via Skyline and one out to Lake Quinalt. The Camp museum is open pretty much daily though the best time to come is in the summer when all the displays are up.

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PostWed May 05, 2010 12:35 am 
Some other stuff concerning early trails and boy scouts in the Olympics that might be of interest can be found in a topic in this forum titled "Early Scout Hikes in the Olympics". I don't know how to link to it or I would.

I think there's an easier way on the far side
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