Return

Images of Cascade River Road
Image of Cascade River Road MP22 <credit: Dave Pickenpaugh>
Milepost 22, just a little over a mile before the Cascade Pass parking lot
Image of Entering the National Forest <credit: Dave Pickenpaugh>
First you enter the National Forest...
Image of Backdoor to the National Park <credit: Dave Pickenpaugh>
Then you arrive at the entry into the North Cascades National Park
Image of Cascade River along the road <credit: Dave Pickenpaugh>
Stop and look down into the Cascade River in the ravine below you


There are lots of mountain streams like this one cascading down by the roadside
Image of X Marks the Spot
"X" Marks the Spot
In the 1877 rush for gold, six of the early settlers of the Upper Skagit Valley, Otto Klement, Charles von Pressentin, Jack Rowley, Frank Scott, John Duncan and John Sutter hired two guides (two Indian brothers, Charlie and Joe Seaam), jumped into their canoes and started out to look for gold.

They went up the Cascade and down to Stehekin to Lake Chelan. How do we know they went across Cascade Pass? Because they were guided by Indians and even in the 1700's the name Stehekin meant "the way through". Long before the white man came here, the native people found the way through, and it was their trade route.

So these man must have walked by this stream, on the way up to the Pass, and perhaps checked it for gold. The Indians must have snickered to themselves, the white man looking for colored rocks, and, as we know today...


THE WEALTH WAS IN THE VIEW.
Peaks at Cascade Pass <credit: Dave Pickenpaugh>
The glacier-covered peaks visible from the parking lot, where you can watch avalanches in the summer
Image of Glacier Melting
Glacier Melting Aug. 5th, 2001, view from parking lot.