Monte Cristo (Washington)

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Coordinates: 47 ° 59 '8 "  N , 121 ° 23' 38"  W.

Monte Cristo (1895)

Monte Cristo is a ghost town in Snohomish County , Washington state in the northwestern United States . It is located in the Cascade Mountains northeast of Seattle . In the 1890s, it was briefly considered the site of one of the most important silver and gold deposits in North America.

history

In 1889, former teacher Joe Pearsall, who had been searching for gold and silver unsuccessfully for years, discovered a rich deposit of the ore galena , which is often found together with gold and silver , in this still unexplored, rugged mountain region . In Seattle , the closest city, he found Mac Wilmans, an experienced mining business supporter and financier. Wilmans confirmed Pearsall's assessment that his find was very promising. However, because of the severe winter that set in early, they were initially only able to stake a few claims . The following year Pearsall returned with his partner Frank Peabody, Wilmans' brother Fred, and a few workers to stake out more claims and build a log cabin. According to the book The Count of Monte Cristo (Engl. The Count of Monte Cristo ) by Alexandre Dumas , the Fred Wilmans doing, she had called the place Monte Cristo .

More investors were quickly found, and the construction of a road for the delivery of the heavy equipment needed to exploit the ore veins began. Since the hoped-for large quantities of ore in this very impassable area could only be removed via a specially built railway line, the engineer John Barlow was commissioned to explore a suitable route. Barlow discovered the pass named after him today, over which a railway line to the west to the coast would be possible. The people of Monte Cristo then turned to Henry Hewitt of Tacoma , a logging entrepreneur interested in coastal forest areas west of Monte Cristo. There, Hewitt wanted to found a new industrial center with the solvent entrepreneur Charles Colby, and Colby had very good relations with the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller , the richest man in the United States. After the Monte Cristo gold prospectors came to Hewitt in 1891, Hewitt sent a team to Monte Cristo to check it out, and based on its positive judgment, he finally informed Colby, Hoyt & Company in New York . Colby and his partner Colgate Hoyt, in turn, sent a team of experts, including the distinguished Alton L. Dickerman, and they found that, given the large quantities of galena, it was one of the most important deposits in the United States, noting, however, that that no deeper digs had yet been undertaken.

The concentrator on the railway line in Monte Cristo (1894)

Investors' expectations were particularly fueled by the fact that the German government had introduced silver coins the year before, which would increase the price of silver. In the planned city of Everett on the coast they saw the future center of the region, the importance of which would be based on the supposedly largest gold and silver deposits in the nation. They were also able to inspire Rockefeller for this project, who had already co-financed Colby's and Hoyt's earlier ventures and who had great confidence in them. As early as November 1891, a syndicate dominated by Rockefeller founded the Monte Cristo Mining Company and the Everett & Monte Cristo Railway in Everett. In addition to other mining companies also emerged United Concentration Company , which is a huge Montecristo concentrator built in a five-story building where the ore should be enriched before it with the still to be built railway to also still under construction mined ore in Everett would be transported.

The sawmill staff (1892 or 1893)

The beginning boom in Monte Cristo reached its peak in the summer of 1893. While fewer than 100 men had persevered in the harsh winter, the population now reached 1,200, many of whom were still living in tents. A sawmill was completed, leaving plenty of timber for buildings and road paving. However, only a few achieved the prosperity they had hoped for, while the miners mostly only received around $ 3 a day. Nevertheless, the saloons flourished , and one of the beneficiaries was the young Frederick Trump , the grandfather of Donald Trumps from the Palatinate town of Kallstadt , who built a boarding house with modest means in the center of the emerging entertainment district . There was a church, the US Mail , and a weekly newspaper, the Monte Cristo Mountaineer , came into being.

The railway line was completed in September 1893, and by 1894 the infrastructure at Monte Cristo was set up to allow regular deliveries to the Everett smelter to begin. That year, however, Rockefeller, who had temporarily retired due to burnout prior to Colby and Hoyt's inquiry , resumed business and sent his closest associate, Frederick Taylor Gates, to the area to check the status of the project. Since Congress had reduced the issue of silver coins in response to an economic crisis in November 1893 , the mining of silver ore had little promise, and Rockefeller wanted to know if Monte Cristo had anything else to offer. Gates reported a disaster: he had encountered losses, misjudgments, and fraud everywhere, and Colby and Hoyt had already sold their holdings without informing Rockefeller. Above all, however, it turned out that deeper excavations, unlike the previously known deposits in the Rocky Mountains , only found small and qualitatively poorer deposits here in the geologically much younger Cascade Mountains.

Gates tried to save what could be saved. He sold Rockefeller's shares in various companies in Everett immediately, despite the associated losses, which meant that the speculative bubble there burst. In Monte Cristo, however, he proceeded more cautiously. Although it was now clear to him that the inferior ore, which in terms of quantity was far below expectations, would not bring the hoped-for profit, Gates spread optimism and invested in repairs and further expansion of the railway line. The concentrator went into operation and the railroad began transporting ore and timber to Everett. The mood was great, the saloons were open around the clock, and high-quality asbestos was discovered nearby as another source of income.

From 1895 to 1897, ore production in the mines increased. The ore was transported by cable car to a bunker above the concentrator, crushed there, then processed from floor to floor in the concentrator until the concentrate was finally loaded into the railroad cars for transport to the smelter in Everett. In 1895 there was unrest among the workers over poor working conditions and poor pay, which, however, in view of the ongoing economic crisis could easily be brought under control by bringing in workers from other areas, and the following year the shifts were extended and the deductions for the catering increased.

In November 1897 the disaster struck. As every year at that time, it was pouring rain, but this time a snowmelt was added due to the extremely mild temperatures, and therefore the floods and landslides were far worse than in previous years. This led to serious damage to the railroad tracks, some of which had been laid in the valley floor for cost reasons, and to the tunnels. Gates announced that the railway line would not be repaired, as it had been three times before. As a result, almost all of the residents left the village on foot, and few returned in the spring. Gates brought all major mines under his control.

In the following years Gates sold all of Rockefeller's remaining stakes in Everett, which had nothing to do with the mining in Monte Cristo, and part of the railway line. The main line from Monte Cristo to Hartford (now part of Everett) he restored with the help of Japanese contract workers. From 1900 to 1903, Monte Cristo saw a second phase of continuous mining under the direction of Gates' new Monte Cristo Company . Then Gates sold everything to a cartel belonging to the Guggenheim family , which only operated the Everett smelter. As a result, there have been some largely unsuccessful attempts to resume mining. This ended on Christmas 1920 when a landslide spilled the last exploration tunnel of the Boston-American Mining Company and the remaining four miners left the place on snowshoes.

tourism

People have been coming to Monte Cristo for the scenic landscape since the early 1890s. After the Boston American project ended, one of the investors, John Andrews, moved to the ghost town, took over many of the abandoned properties and opened the last intact hotel to vacationers. During the Great Depression (1930s) and World War II, there were hardly any guests, and in 1951 Andrews sold his property to Del and Rosemary Wilkie, who did quite well thanks to a new road over the Barlow Pass and increasing prosperity. At the same time, however, large parts of the former mining town were demolished and the material used elsewhere. In the 1960s, investors tried to expand the place as a destination, but it turned out that the nearby slopes were not suitable for skiing. The summer season alone was too short for a profitable tourism business, and so the few remnants of the village continued to fall apart. In December 1980 the access road was so badly damaged that the district administration decided not to repair it. In 1983 the abandoned Wilkies house burned down and large parts of the ghost town were vandalized.

literature

Web links

Commons : Monte Cristo (Washington)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gwenda Blair : The Trumps. Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster , New York 2015. pp. 53f.
  2. ^ Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. p. 54.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i David A. Cameron: Monte Cristo - Thumbnail History . HistoryLink.org 2008.
  4. ^ Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. pp. 54f.
  5. ^ A b Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. pp. 55f.
  6. ^ A b Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. p. 56.
  7. ^ Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. pp. 56f.
  8. ^ Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. p. 57.
  9. ^ Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. pp. 59f.
  10. ^ Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. pp. 59f. and 63f.
  11. ^ Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. p. 64.
  12. ^ Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. p. 66.
  13. ^ Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. p. 67.
  14. ^ Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. pp. 67f.
  15. ^ Gwenda Blair: The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate . Simon & Schuster, New York 2015. p. 79.