By John Kendall For Peninsula Daily News
EDITOR’S NOTE: Exactly 120 years ago this week, five men set out to cross the Olympic Mountains — and in doing so opened up the frontiers of the North Olympic Peninsula to America and the world.
But their five-month wintry trek was anything but a walk in the woods.
Port Angeles writer-researcher John Kendall concludes a three-part series on the Press Expedition. The first two installments, which appeared in the PDN on Wednesday and Thursday, can be read at www.peninsuladailynews.com.
Last of three parts
On May 4, 1889, the Press Expedition — which set out to cross the Olympic Mountains the previous December — trekked up a valley toward a gap between what it named Mount Seattle and Mount Christie.
The following morning, it named Lake Mary, then Lake Margaret. The group assumed that the area between the lakes was the long-sought divide.
But it was wrong. The divide was nearby.
The group called it the Elwha Pass; today it is known as Low Divide — at 3,650 feet the lowest divide in the Olympic heartland.
The explorers — James H. Christie, the leader; Charles Adams Barnes, the topographer,; and John H. Crumback, John W. Sims and Christopher O. Hayes — were now making rapid progress across compact snow.
They spied a large rock, where a hole in the snow showed water flowing south — proof that the explorers were headed in the right direction.
Then the dogs flushed out a bear, which was shot.
After living on flour soup for weeks, eating bear fat was a welcome delicacy.
Two more bears were killed as the others rested while Barnes scouted ahead.
As they headed down the Quinault, snow on the ground gradually gave way to rain in the air, steep hills and dense woods — the rain forest.
At one point, it was like “exploring a dark rat hole.”
On May 17, the group reached the point where the Quinault and North Fork of that river meet and found an empty trapper’s cabin — the first sure sign of civilization since it left the lower Elwha 80 days before.
That night, the group ate the last of the flour for soup; they had two days worth of meat left.
This river was different — smooth flowing and no fallen timber to block the way.
While the group was building a raft, the settler who built the cabin, F.S. Antrium of Aberdeen, and two Native Americans appeared in a canoe.
Antrium told the group that Lake Quinault was eight miles downriver, where he had a fully stocked cabin and the explorers could help themselves to the cabin’s food.
He then left the group and headed up river.
Soon the group was gliding the raft downriver, first gently, then suddenly.
As it rounded a sharp turn, the raft was swept up in the now swift current and under a large pile of driftwood.
Gone were guns, ammunition, bearskins, fishing tackle and most mineral specimens.
But Barnes saved the pack containing the expedition’s journals, some 250 negative films and a map the group created.
This was yet another setback.
“The expedition made many mistakes,” wrote Jerry Russell in The Seattle Times in 1962, “traveling in the winter, building a boat and trying to pull it up the Elwha River, attempting to pack 2,000 pounds of equipment through the rugged area.
“Most of the errors were due to lack of knowledge of the territory in 1889, some of them due to poor advice and others because of excess haste.
“Hours after each mistake, they overcame their disappointment and proceeded with their intended purpose.”
Cabin arrival
The Quinault River now separated the group, so three hiked down one side while two trekked along the other bank.
Antrium reappeared and took the group in his canoe to his cabin.
Here, wrote Barnes, Antrium “spared not his grub” — potatoes, powder biscuits, ham, salmon, coffee — “any single article which we would have gladly and willingly have committed a homicide to attain.
“But murder was needless.”
With full stomachs and anxious to reach civilization, the group left by canoe down Lake Quinault to the Indian agency at the mouth of the river and hired a horse-drawn wagon, which carried the group to the entrance to Grays Harbor.
“We arrived in Aberdeen at 2 o’clock in the morning and had great trouble getting accommodations,” wrote Barnes.
“But when we did touch real beds, it was a luxury to be appreciated.”
The next morning, they found congratulatory telegrams from the Seattle Press, and Christie sent a telegram of his own:
“Expenses to Seattle will approximate $125. Please remit this morning by telegraph.”
Seattle newspaper wars
After two days of rest, the group took a steamer to Montesano, then to Seattle.
The Press, of course, covered the expedition’s May 23 arrival in Seattle — 166 days after leaving that city — while the rival Seattle papers were silent.
But five days later, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer roared back with account of another expedition by two men from the Gilman family who trekked up the Quinault River and back in 1889.
Clearly this reprint from the Tacoma Ledger was meant to minimize the Press Expedition’s feat.
On July 16, the Press printed its report. “THE OLYMPICS” shouted the one-column headline.
Subheads included “No Signs of White Men Ever Having Entered That District Before” and “A Good Trail Made for Further Explorers and Prospectors.”
Because the halftone process whereby newspapers could take photographs and reproduce them for presses was not yet available, the group’s photos were reproduced using the photoengraving process. The result looked like textured drawings.
Forty six of these drawings of photos, two sketches and two maps were spread over 10 newspaper pages.
Some were mountainscapes (“From valley as seen for this side of Mount Seattle”), others straight from a dime novel (“A Bear!” showing three men staring at a bear across a blanket of snow).
On Sept. 30, the Post-Intelligencer struck again, this time publishing a reprint from another paper about the Jones party, which claimed that the Press Expedition had left no blazed trail in the Elwha Valley.
“A Trail That is No Trail” sneered the P-I headline, followed by this subhead: “Bogus Olympic Explorers Exposed — A Sea of Rocky Mountains.”
Newspaper merger
William Bailey, the Press’ owner and publisher who paid for the expedition, soon realized Seattle could not support two evening papers, so he bought the other evening paper, the Times; the new paper was called the Press-Times.
The depression of 1893 forced him to sell to creditors.
Alden Blethen eventually purchased the paper, which he renamed The Seattle Times.
Descendants of Blethen’s family co-own the only Seattle daily to this day. The Post-Intelligencer ceased newspaper publication earlier this year.
As to the Press Expedition’s immediate impact, author Carsten Lien wrote, it “spawned an explosion of Olympic penetration by adventurers, miners, hunters, opportunists, and anyone and everyone who could concoct a reason for going.”
All because five intrepid explorers docked at Port Angeles 120 years ago.