Today I visited Bob Kelly at the Skykomish Historical Society and we discussed the Alpine photo history CD. In the afternoon I went to Alpine Falls looking for a trail shown on this 1936 map:
No sign of the trail after a couple of hours of brush whacking. Headed back to the truck, parked at the site of the historic Alpine Falls House of Souvenier. The house is gone, but not the outhouse. It's just a short but dangerous walk away across Highway 2.
Here is a video of Alpine Falls.
Keesha was pretty tired so we headed back down to the lowlands.
Today I was in Snohomish and stopped by the Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery to locate the grave of Carl Clemans, patriarch of the Alpine Lumber Company. Tim had been there a few years ago and gave me directions; drive past the office and on the gravel road, to the left. I was pretty close but was unable to find the markers so I called Tim for more detailed directions. Look around the maple tree he said.
Ah, there they are.
On the right: Carl Lane Clemans Jr. Feb. 28, 1907 - Jan. 1, 1908
Carl Lane Clemans 1873 - 1941
Harriet Smith Clemans 1878 - 1961
The Clemans family lived in Snohomish, at 315 Avenue C.
On Wednesday, June 1 we cleared some brush at the saw mill in the area on the map with the blue and red marks. This is a rough estimate on the location since we don't have many reference points yet except the west end of the mill, sort of.
We found this thing, represented by the blue mark on the plan, two concrete pads with a some timbers in between. At ground level the wood is preserved quite well, the top part has rotted away but judging by the bolts still in place it was probably about 24" off the ground.
Looking east, the railroad tracks are about 100' to the right. It kind of looks like the concrete anchored the timbers and maybe used as pier pads for posts.
The piece of wood between the concrete is still solid. There was a fire here at one time, lots of charcoal in this area.
11 feet west of our first discovery was a concrete block, measuring 77" x 30". This is shown in red on the saw mill plan.
No anchor bolts in this one, there was a masonry cap on top, probably for leveling purposes.
The Alpine depot was at mile post 1723.5, at 1723.9 is Great Northern Railway Bridge 406, built in 1902. I got some pictures of the bridge from below, don't try this at home though, very steep terrain.
Keesha likes to do the scary wolf routine when we are in the woods.
At the end of the day, we packed up our toys and stopped to admire our work as a westbound train came down the hill. Not just any train, the first car was carrying a 737 fuselage from Wichita to Renton. Unfortunately, we were out of position to get a picture and the cameras were already put away, so we high tailed it down to Skykomish in hopes of getting set up for a good shot when the train came through town. We made it with time to spare.
