Skagit River Journal

of History & Folklore
600 of 700 total Free Home Page Stories & Photos
(Also see our Subscribers Magazine Sample)
The most in-depth, comprehensive site about the Skagit
Covers from British Columbia to Puget Sound. Counties covered: Skagit, Whatcom, Island, San Juan, Snohomish & BC. An evolving history dedicated to committing random acts of historical kindness

Noel V. Bourasaw, editor 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, Washington, 98284 Home of the Tarheel Stomp Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug
Site founded Sept. 1, 2000. We passed 5 million page views on June 6, 2011 The home pages remain free of any charge. We need donations or subscriptions to continue. Please pass on this website link to your family, relatives, friends and clients.

Railway map to the dams, circa 1930

Our Subscribers Magazine online pays for our extensive free home pages. We really need your help this season to conduct more research and share it. We need to travel to research in libraries, museums and newspaper files, and we sometimes need to travel to interview descendants and history experts who are out of town. The results are self-evident. We have now posted 700+ photo features about Pacific Northwest and Skagit history, a resource that cannot be found anyplace else on the web. Maybe you are like us and get annoyed with many websites that are crawling with advertisements, which often get in the way of enjoying a story. We opted for unobtrusive ads and stories that feature large, unique photos, some of which are not available anyplace else. We need your help today because our research budget is nearly flat and we have miles to go in 2010-11. Won't you consider clicking the Donate button today?

Click for: Reasons why to subscribe
Or for: Options of subscription length and gifts
Or you may simply donate with your credit card by clicking the Donation button below.
You may also donate or subscribe by check:
1. Make out the check to: "Noel V. Bourasaw"
2. Mail to: Skagit River Journal, 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, WA 98284

As a special bonus, you get access all the way back to features in Issue 1 on Jan. 1, 2001
See the sample of current stories and archives back to Issue 1.

Options for Subscriptions or donations

We want to keep this homepage free. The separate Subscriber Edition now includes six issues per year, with an increase of 12-18 stories per issue. It is most valuable to genealogists and students of area history because it includes hundreds of names of pioneers and is searchable. If you have a student in the family who is studying history, this is a most important resource, which is cited as an authority by publishers and authors all over the country. And when you subscribe, you get a special bonus of access to all issues going back to the beginning. There is no obligation to subscribe, whatsoever, but if you would like to subscribe or donate to help defray costs, please email us with your name and email address where we can email the link for each issue. Then you can pay by either using the donation button above or follow the instructions for mail payment there. Please choose one of the options below for your subscription. Please note: if you purchase gift subscriptions between now and St. Patrick's Day, we will double the number of your gifts. Please include those names and email addresses for your gifts when you send us an email.
1. $20 for 1 year, with six annual issues, plus occasional bonuses, plus aid in your family research included
Please note: You may still renew for $17.50

2. $35 for 2 years, now 12 issues, with aid in your family research included
Please note: You may still renew for $27.50 for 2 years

3. $9 for 1 year, for a gift subscriptions for your family, friends or clients after your initial subscription.

4. Special! Family package: $45.00 for 1 year, eight issues, for you and four 1-year gift subscriptions for your family or friends.

5. 10-year, "lifetime subscription" for $100 donation.
Thank you for donating any amount to our research fund. Email us and give us the name and email addresses for your gifts.

6. For those who have asked, we would welcome any help to defray the rising costs of copying and reproducing photos and our upcoming trips to interview descendants.

Attention: please consider donating to our research project Are you perplexed about how to be a Santa Angel this year? We have two modest suggestions. For your friends and family who love history as much as you do, 1) Purchase subscriptions as holiday gifts. 2) Purchase the CDs of our first six years of stories and photos. Do you have family members who are away at school or serving in the Armed Forces? This is a perfect gift so that they will have bragging rights about the rich historical tableau that is the Pacific Northwest.
We have reached a crucial point where we either have to receive more donations for our project or we will be forced to take more outside clients and cut back our research and writing radically by the end of this year. This is especially important as we have invested nearly $500 in a new domain and broadband access. We are always woefully underfunded, so any donation you choose to make will help provide funds needed for research, copies and travel to find original sources and meet with descendants of pioneers.

Our goal
to raise
by Christmas
$1,350 We have raised $175 so far.

Why should you subscribe?

This is the main reason for you to subscribe or purchase gifts for family, friends or clients. Photos that you might not see otherwise. Photos that lay hidden for years in someone's attic or garage or the back of a drawer. Your subscription will help us maintain this site so that others like the late Borgne Heyntsen will loan us photos to scan, like this one she provided. Do you remember the days when these monster trees were slung between truck trailers and transported down the Burlington Highway (now Highway 20)? Do you remember this service station, owned by John Conrad, at the corner of Collins road? Would you like to read his notes on the obituary of every pioneer over a 25-year period in mid-century? Is that a good enough reason to subscribe and help this project? Other reasons are below.

Why subscribe? Don't worry. We get that question a lot. To answer your question, there are benefits that a subscriber gets over and above the free resources of the home page. Most of our subscribers have paid mainly just to help us defray basic costs and to help make sure that we can continue sharing information, especially for students and researchers who cannot afford a subscription. But others paid because of these benefits:

You get access all the way back to features in Issue 1 on Jan. 1, 2001.
A free lookup of vital statistics, census, marriage or burial records for your family tree. We have a pretty good track record for tracing records of the family of subscribers.
First look at rare old photos. We have recently scanned more than 120 photos from all over the Northwest in the pioneer days, most in Skagit and Whatcom counties and Sedro-Woolley.
First look at phenomenal discoveries in our research. Most currently are the columns of Frank Wilkeson in the New York Times in 1886-1900 while living in Skagit and Whatcom counties, and our annotated transcription of the 1906 book, Illustrated History of Skagit & Snohomish Counties, with more than 100 footnotes that explain more about the people and towns in the book..
Raw notes from our research that give a picture of the frontier Northwest that no one has read before or which has been lost for years. We obtain this information from descendants, libraries all over the country, museums, doctoral dissertations, etc. This website is the result of nine years of research. We recently estimated that we have gone over the 10,000-hour mark. While this may seem certifiable to some, our search is a labor of love. We truly believe in the motto of historical kindness.
One free answer to a question you may have about the Northwest, Skagit county, Sedro-Woolley, your family or business. For instance, we have answered many questions recently for subscribers who have lost track of family members or have broken branches in their family trees or need obituaries, newspaper stories, etc., about their ancestors or friends. Just don't ask us to recreate the wheel. Any simple question will be answered promptly as a thank you.

I hope this answers your questions and that you will consider subscribing. If you decide not to, we do hope you will consider revisiting our free pages now and then and will page the link on to others. The pages are updated at least every two weeks.

Getting lost trying to navigate or find stories on our site? Read how to sort through our 700-plus stories.
Return to the new-domain home page	Links for portals to subjects and towns	Newest photo features	Search entire site
Our monthly column, Puget Sound Mail (but don't call it a blog) debuted on Aug. 9, 2009. Check it out.

See this Journal Timeline website of local, state, national, international events for years of the pioneer period.

Did you enjoy this story? Remember, as with all our features, this story is a draft and will evolve as we discover more information and photos. This process continues until we eventually compile a book about Northwest history. Can you help?

Remember; we welcome correction & criticism.

Please report any broken links or files that do not open and we will send you the correct link. With more than 700 features, we depend on your report. Thank you.

Read about how you can order CDs that include our photo features from the first five years of our Subscribers Edition. Perfect for gifts.

You can click the donation button to contribute to the rising costs of this site. See many examples of how you can aid our project and help us continue for another ten years. You can also subscribe to our optional Subscribers-Paid Journal magazine online, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in September 2010, with exclusive stories, in-depth research and photos that are shared with our subscribers first. You can go here to read the preview edition to see examples of our in-depth research or read how and why to subscribe.

You can read the history websites about our prime sponsors
Would you like information about how to join them in advertising?

Our newest sponsor, Plumeria Bay, is based in Birdsview, just a short walk away from the Royal family's famous Stumpranch, and is your source for the finest down comforters, pillows, featherbeds andduvet covers and bed linens. Order directly from their website and learn more about this intriguing local business.

Oliver-Hammer Clothes Shop at 817 Metcalf Street in downtown Sedro-Woolley, 90 years continually in business.

Peace and quiet at the Alpine RV Park, just north of Marblemount on Hwy 20, day, week or month, perfect for hunting or fishing. Park your RV or pitch a tent — for as little as $5 per night — by the Skagit River, just a short drive from Winthrop or Sedro-Woolley. Alpine is doubling in capacity for RVs and camping in 2011.

Joy's Sedro-Woolley Bakery-Cafe at 823 Metcalf Street in downtown Sedro-Woolley.

Check out Sedro-Woolley First section for links to all stories and reasons to shop here first
or make this your destination on your visit or vacation.

Are you looking to buy or sell a historic property, business or residence?
We may be able to assist. Email us for details.

Did you find what you were seeking? We have helped many people find individual names or places, so email if you have any difficulty.

Tip: Put quotation marks around a specific name or item of two words or more, and then experiment with different combinations of the words without quote marks. We are currently researching some of the names most recently searched for — check the list here. Maybe you have searched for one of them?

Please sign our guestbook so our readers will know where you found out about us, or share something you know about the Skagit River or your memories or those of your family. Share your reactions or suggestions or comment on our Journal. Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to visit our site.

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Email us at: skagitriverjournal@gmail.com

Mail copies/documents to Street address: Skagit River Journal, 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, WA, 98284.