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Skagit River Journal

of History & Folklore
Free Home Page Stories & Photos
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

Congratulations Noel from all of us at Boom Towns & Relic Hunters of Northeastern Washington State. We recently had the pleasure of viewing your site Skagit River Journal of History & Folklore for www.GhostTownsUSA.com "Rare Find Award." You have a unique web site which is well presented, highly informative, and with good design.
Visit www.GhostTownsUSA.com today to learn about ghost towns all over Washington and the U.S.A.

Awarded Five Stars, the highest rating from WashingtonSuite,
the premier links referral agency for Washington history.

This webpage is dedicated to my children, Jennifer Willow Johnston and Maxwell James Bourasaw. And to the memory of my late mother and father, Hazel Nadine Kirks Bourasaw (1908-1996) and Victor Andrew Bourasaw (1901-1982), who moved here in 1948. And to my late brother, Jerry Roger Bourasaw (1935-2000), who graduated from Lyman Grade School in 1949 and Sedro-Woolley High School in 1955. He knew in his soul that it don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing.

Go to this Journal site to see a map of the Skagit area and many others.

We are all saddened by the death of Kerry Freeman of the Sedro-Woolley museum.

We especially want to thank Berniece Leaf, Pat Hegg Brown, Paula Thomas, Tom Robinson, Donna Sand, Dr. Jesse Kennedy and Dan Royal for everything they have contributed to this research project.

Editor: Noel V. Bourasaw
Webmaster: Raoul Dangerfield
Patron saint: Guy Le Petomane
Band director: Prof. Harold Hill
Ace researchers who share background material: Roger Peterson about Sedro-Woolley and Tom Robinson about the western section of Skagit county; Larry Spurling, who has transcribed more than three dozen stories (including many of Ray Jordan's) plus many of his own family stories; plus dozens of descendants of pioneer families.

Brevet Corporal Bourasaw; Regular Army 1963-66; Vietnam-era veteran; 4th Armored Division; Known By Their Deeds Alone

Noel Bourasaw is a native of Missouri and moved with his family at age 4 to a farm near Sedro-Woolley in the old Utopia area near the Skagit. After graduating from high school here, he studied at Western Washington State College. After writing for several magazines and newspapers and wine publications, and serving as the first executive director of the Washington Wine Institute, he returned to Sedro-Woolley. For the last nine years he has been researching about Skagit county in libraries and museums all over the country and interviewing descendants of county pioneers, both in person and over the internet. He is working on a book: Utopia on the Skagit. The first 50 years of settlement in Skagit county, Sedro-Woolley and the upper Skagit river, which he hopes to have ready for publication in 2005-06. The website is a wonderful way to collect stories and photos and to correct draft profiles and essays. He hopes you will share from your knowledge, your memories and your attic. Thank you for taking your time to visit the site.

Statement of Purpose and Plans

From the publisher, Noel V. Bourasaw I started researching Skagit county and Sedro-Woolley history fourteen years ago when I moved back home to be closer to my mother, who was facing long-term confinement in a rest home. Many people communicated disappointment that the story of dozens of key pioneers in the area was left untold in available books about the history of the region. Initially, I thought I could produce a book quickly by 1995. That was a major mistake. After traveling around the country and communicating with descendants of the pioneers, I discovered that there were major stories that needed intense, in-depth research.
By 1999, after writing several drafts for the book, I realized that my efforts were still in many cases just skimming the surface. I soon realized that the key to writing a truly comprehensive book was to spend even more time consulting original sources and family members who had unique material about their pioneer ancestors. In the summer of 2000 I realized that the best way to do that was to post an Internet website and invite readers to share their memories and information. After starting a full fledged site in September 2000, we had a tremendous response that frankly shocked us. Hundreds of readers who have either moved away from the area or who grew up far away flooded the site with memories, stories, documents and photos. This was a mixed blessing. Their responses pointed us in different directions that were truly rewarding but their input also created an overload of information that has taken us two years to get a handle on it.
So we went back to square one and now in the winter of 2006 we are getting back to the big picture and formulating concrete plans. After more than 1.25 million page views on this website, we have the nucleus of a truly comprehensive book that will update a century later what was so brilliantly presented in the 1906 book, An Illustrated History of Skagit & Snohomish Counties. What we plan will also be similar in tone and feel to Ray Jordan's wonderful book from the 1970s, Yarns of Skagit County and Bob Jenkins's Last Frontier in the North Cascades. [see our books to read section. The major difference will be that we will carefully document information and provide an exhaustive bibliography and references to source material, just as if we were writing a doctoral dissertation. Foremost in our mind is that we will make the whole process fun so that readers will not confuse our work with the dull, dry, boring history that sends students shrieking from most history tomes.
Our planned book has a working title of Utopia on the Skagit. The first 50 years of settlement in Skagit county, Sedro-Woolley and the upper Skagit river. The book will begin with the opening of the Northwest corner of the United States after the Lewis & Clark expedition. It will then continue through the exploration of the Puget sound and the river valleys, fur traders, the gold rushes, the railroads, the steamboats, the loggers and the settlers of the region. The reader will then be guided through the settlement of Washington's four northwest counties, focusing on the rural areas and villages — some long gone — from the sound to the Cascades. In order to provide context, we will study the very early years of each town in Skagit county. Finally, we will concentrate on the area north, south and east from Sterling, the lakes and Sedro-Woolley through the upper Skagit valley, where people originally settled in the 1870s to get away from it all.
We will avoid that poison pill that assigns so many similar books to the trash heap and remainder bins: provincialism and too narrow of a focus. We realize that a costly publishing venture will not succeed if it only preaches to the choir. All along the way, we will show the connection between what transpired here and the region, state, country and the world. This area was a magnet for people from all over the U.S. and Europe and our challenge is to explain to you what the attraction was. We will help you feel the steam from the mighty locomotives, smell the fog of the river valleys, taste the fish of the Skagit watershed, imbibe from the stills of the moonshiners and experience what the pioneers did when they took a chance on the Northwest. All along, you will be introduced to the experience of frontier women — which was sadly glossed over in most prior local histories, and we will try to explain the melting pot, both good and bad, for Indians and Asians.
The Internet website will continue to be a key part of our mix. During the research period, the web stories are a wonderful way to give the reader an in-depth portrait of families, events, business concerns and towns. Some of those will have to be summarized in the final book, for space reasons. The reader of the book will be directed to the Internet site to learn more about a subject and to add to our stories or correct any mistakes we make. We want the website to continue to be a vital tool for genealogists, students at all levels and for people who just want to find a "sense of place" in this wonderful area.
All of this will be costly. We are not affiliated with any government unit or any one museum, although we do contribute to all of those and link to them for those who are exploring a specific area. In January 2001 we started a separate Subscribers Edition to provide a modest income. We have incurred a lot of expense traveling all over the Northwest and the U.S. to trace stories and contact descendants. We have now visited more than 50 museums and libraries alone and have traveled more than 5,000 miles in more than ten states and Canada. The initial travel was partially underwritten by the Sedro-Woolley Rotary Club, a tremendous boon in the early days. So far, the proceeds from the subscribers magazine have just barely paid for the most basic costs of the website. Businesses and families have also contracted with us to help research their history, and we hope to expand that in the near future to generate income for future printing of the book. We want to emphasize that we will always provide a vast assortment of stories and photos on the free homepages so that we can share the information with the largest number of readers possible. And although the stories that require the most time and investment to research are often shared with the subscribers first, we eventually share those costly stories with readers of the free site. Please note that we do not ask for originals of your precious family keepsakes. We will refer you to the museum that would be most appropriate if you want to donate or loan material. We have already worked with several families to organize and catalog material after the death of a relative.
Finally, there is one thing we are definitely not: the National Enquirer. While researching families and towns, we have often found material that would embarrass descendants. We have kept dozens of secrets so far; we do not want to purposely embarrass living descendants. To that end, we have also dispelled a number of myths that proved to be built on foundations of sand and we have corrected many tales that proved to be unfounded or just plain made up. Along the way, we have discovered the kernel of truth in the myths that shows they were more legends or embellishments of something that really happened.
We plan to complete our research by 2006 and spend the next year polishing the book so that we can publish it in the 2007-08 time period to celebrate the centennial of the 1906 work. To that end, we ask only that you be patient when we stumble and that you share information by email, or mail copies of documents and scans of photos that will help us illustrate the struggle and accomplishment of the pioneers. We also hope that you will pass on the links to the website far and wide so that we can find through the web those descendants of the most elusive and mysterious pioneers. As we have stated from the beginning, we are completely open to addition, correction and criticism. We need your input. Please email us any suggestions you have. And if we have not answered any of your questions, please contact us. Thank you for your patience.

Story posted on Aug. 26, 2000; last updated Dec. 1, 2006 . . . Please report any broken links so we can update them

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Oliver Hammer Clothes Shop at 817 Metcalf Street in downtown Sedro-Woolley, 86 years.

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