Index -- Thumbnail History HistoryLink.org Essay 9143 :
The Town of Index is a riverside hamlet in the shadow of 5,979-foot Mount Index in Snohomish County. It is hemmed in by the north fork of the Skykomish River to the south, and by a steep granite cliff, the Town Wall, to the north. The area was home to the Skykomish People before European immigrants came to mine the mountains and log the forest. The granite wall was to become a large quarry in 1904. Thus mining, logging, and quarrying defined the town's prosperity early in the twentieth century. At its height in 1905, the town's population reached 500, with perhaps a thousand more in the surrounding area. With the loss of mining, quarrying, and logging in the 1930s, recreation was to become the prime means of employment.
As early as 1859 Emory C. Ferguson and Edson Cady had trekked through the valley, to a mountain pass, a route that had been used by the Skykomish to cross the Cascades to visit and trade with tribes on the east side. Ferguson and Cady named the spot "Cady Pass," but were blocked by heavy snow. They returned in the spring to improve the route, but mining in Eastern Washington had died out, and the plan was abandoned. In the late 1880s prospectors looking for gold, silver, lead, and copper followed Ferguson and Cady's rough trail on their way to the mining areas of Silver Creek. By April 1890, Amos D. Gunn and his wife, Persis, had arrived from Kansas and purchased a squatter's claim with a small log cabin serving as a miners' hotel, "Cady Lodge." They constructed a larger building that became the primary hostelry and supply depot for those heading east to the towns of Galena, Mineral City, and Monte Cristo. Persis Gunn was impressed by Index Mountain, which looked to her like an "index finger pointing toward heaven", thus the name "Index" was chosen when a post office was established in December 1891. The name did not originate with her, however, as "Index Mt." was on the maps long before the Gunns arrived.
It does look like an index finger if viewed from the west, but it was renamed Mount Baring in 1917, and the mountain to the west, called "West Index Mt." was renamed to Mount Index. The Gunns' settlement prospered not only through the need for lodging and supplies by the miners, but because of the 1890 surveys for the Great Northern Railway. John F. Stevens hired Amos and his son Luther for horse-packing a survey crew up to Cady Pass in tandem with Stevens's survey of Stevens Pass. Track building from 1891 through 1893 added to the influx of laborers needing accommodations.
On April 25, 1893, Amos Gunn platted the Town of Index. His hotel and packing business had prospered, and he was selling lots from $25 to $50 each. According to his daughter Persis, "The population had grown to 500, ... a tent hospital had been established and ... that year my sister, Lena Gunn, taught the first school in a room of a private home". Hopes were high enough that Gunn platted one street exceptionally wide at 100 feet to accommodate an expected rail line to go over Cady Pass. The line never was built.
In July 1893 the Gunn hotel burned to the ground, spreading fire to every other building, excepting the train depot. A new Hotel Index was built with a small store included. However, two sources of revenue were ending -- the main line of the Great Northern Railway was finished and the financial panic of 1893 halted many mining efforts in the Silver Creek area. Monte Cristo was no longer reached via Index since a new route had been opened 11 miles north along the South Fork Stillaguamish River.
In a 1959 interview Luther Gunn remembered, "'94 was hard times. Oh yes, it was hard times ... because so many men were out of employment with their work finished". By 1898 the discovery of the Copper Bell and Sunset copper mines ended those hard times. Index was booming, with 800 to 1,000 prospectors coming and going at one time or another. R. Frank Niles came in 1899 to print the Index Miner, a four-page weekly paper published by Charles W. Gorham of Snohomish. Niles recalled:
"Index was in the throes of a wild mining boom. The town was crowded with prospectors, men working on some of the mines being opened up and the usual riff-raff and promoters and grafters. ... The one hotel had men sleeping in the hallways and wherever there was a chance to lie down. "While the boom was at its height, new buildings were being started, new mining companies were announced, and mines located every day; many of these 'mines' had not the least trace of minerals. ... The most ambitious mine was the Sunset, six miles upriver from town. It was owned by a bunch of farmers from the big marsh between Snohomish and Lowell. They ... proved a flop as miners. They built a tram road to Index, including a bridge across the Skykomish, and then started shipping ore to the Everett smelter. ... that did not pay the expense of sorting it. They soon went broke and the mine shut down, and the boom -- what was left of it collapsed. It is hard to imagine what a gloomy dejected town Index became overnight when the bad news hit" (Niles, 2-3). Although The Index Miner trumpeted: "What Butte is to Montana, Index Will Soon be to Washington", all that remained in 1901 was a small-scale granite quarry east of town, a general store, two saloons, an assay office, a drugstore, and a single sawmill that had been constructed to saw ties and bridge timbers for the new railroad.
In 1903 and 1904 two men turned the mood back to optimism. "Aided by the recent arrival of the Great Northern Railway to the town of Index, Sylvester Smith recognized a good location for logging and, in 1903, built a large combination saw and shingle mill near town. The sawmill had a capacity of 40,000 feet per day and the shingle mill a capacity of 30,000 shingles per day. The mill also contained an electric lighting plant of sufficient power to supply the town ... . Between 40 and 50 men were employed year round ... making it the largest employer of the area at that time" . The small sawmill in town quit operating.
The other man who helped stabilize the economy was John A. Soderberg (1866-1935), general store owner in 1900, who in 1910 also became President of Swedish Hospital in Seattle. In 1904 he began developing the Index Granite Company, a large quarry along the Great Northern tracks three-quarters of a mile west of town. Seventy men were employed there most of the time, supplying material for construction of prominent buildings in Seattle, Spokane, and Everett, including the State Capitol in Olympia. Soderberg also provided the town's first piped spring water, a welcome service since before this the town had battled its second major fire two years without a water system. In 1905, in addition to the promotion for mining, some investors were planning hydroelectric development. Two dams on the North Fork Skykomish River were promoted, but never begun. A plan for generating electricity from Sunset Falls on the South Fork, as well as putting in a major pulp mill there, had interest, but no completion.
A 1905 promotional brochure calls Index "One of the scenic spots of the world, with sublime rugged peaks and wonderful waterfalls ... . A popular summer resort among eastern people" (Brochure, 1905). The fishing was great, according to Frank Niles of the Index News: "I walked from the back door about 60 feet to the river and in a distance of perhaps 40 rods [660 feet] I caught 45 trout" (Niles, 6). As a result, hundreds of tourists came by train, stopping at one of five hotels operating at that time. Most people went hiking and fishing, but the more adventurous, such as members of The Mountaineers, would carry out expeditions to climb surrounding peaks.
Lee Pickett (1882-1959), a professional photographer who lived in Index, captured images in 1911 showing a long line of climbers, including women in long skirts, on Mt. Index, trudging upward with alpenstocks.
The Sunset Copper Company re-opened in 1902 under new owners, making it a primary employer until 1935. The business flourished when the demand for copper increased because of World War I. The work attracted men with families who, unlike the earlier miners, would become permanent citizens of the town. Soderberg's quarry brought workers and stone artisans with their families from as far away as Barre, Vermont. Photos show intricately carved, highly polished tombstones waiting for shipment. Bert Spada (1896-1985) reminisced: "In 1912 they put in a polishing machine -- you know before that they used to rub them by hand -- polish them just like glass" (Spada, 1985).
In 1927 new owners continued as Western Granite Company. The Smith mill was sold in 1908 to a partnership which greatly expanded and improved the operation and re-named it the Index-Galena Company, employing an average of 150 men at its peak. Assets included two Climax steam engines and the rail cars to haul logs as far as 16 miles down the North Fork Skykomish valley to the mill. Another mill on the South Fork Skykomish had been started by Louis Heybrook, though in comparison it was a small-scale operation. Families of these workers needed the social stability that the town offered -- a school, hospital, church, and organizations such as the Fish and Game club and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F.). The Red Men, a fraternal organization dating from the Boston Tea Party, and restricted to Caucasians only, shared a two-story meeting hall with the I.O.O.F.
That hall, built in 1903 and including a stage and a kitchen, hosted everything from touring vaudeville shows to town celebrations.
There was full political participation when the town incorporated in 1907, with a Mayor/Council government paying for a town clerk, law enforcement, and a maintenance man, with volunteers manning the fire department.
A new two-story school was planned, opening in 1908. A major challenge to the budding town was periodic flooding. Many homes and businesses were built right on the riverbank, only slightly protected by wooden cribbing.
The flood of 1917 was especially devastating, taking with it not only many homes and businesses, but the recently built bridge across the raging river. Floods would continue to cause loss throughout the century.
Coming to town by river, as pioneers did in many Snohomish County communities, was never a possibility for Index settlers. The river was too swift and hazardous for navigation by steamboat. Early pioneers came by horse on rough trails until the Great Northern Railway was completed in January 1893. Then transcontinental trains and two locals called "Dinkies" provided reliable transportation. The depot was literally at the center of the community.
The county road to Index and Galena was completed in 1911. As autos were developed and roads expanded, including Washington's first "Scenic Highway," following the 1911 road directly through town and competition from the Index Stage Company became serious. That bus service lobbied to expand its route to the top of Stevens Pass via the new highway to Wenatchee that opened on July 11, 1925. Once the extension was granted, the Great Northern stopped service of the beloved "Dinkies," which had delivered postal bags and passengers every morning and evening except Sundays.
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