(final) 2024 Campbell's Resort Directory - Flipbook - Page 16
Although today Chelan is famed as a recreational
mecca, it was the quest for riches that first
brought waves of newcomers to the lake's shore.
Gold, silver, copper, and other minerals were to
be found in abundance; Ponderosa pine and
Douglas fir blanketed the surrounding
mountainsides; a limitless supply of pure alpine
water was on tap for consumption, irrigation, and
later, power generation. Chelan's early settlers
did not wait for arcane legal complications to be
resolved before putting in place those things that
make a town.
Later in 1888, L. H. Woodin and A. F. Nichols
opened a sawmill at Lake Park that, unlike poor Mr.
Domke's, proved to be a useful and profitable
The pioneering families were
soon joined by other settlers, at
first very few.
enterprise. Mill equipment was brought up the
Columbia by steamship, then carried by horse from
Chelan Falls overland by local Native Americans,
including those known to the whites as Long Jim,
Cultus Jim, Crooked Mouth Bob, Wapato John, and
John's son, Sylvester. The mill was the first of
In April 1888, the families of Captain Charles
Johnson (1842-1912), Benjamin F. Smith (b. 1858),
several on the lake that would supply virtually all
the lumber with which the early communities
and Tunis Hardenburgh (1832-1898) settled on the
would be built.
south end of the lake about a mile west of the
Just east of Lake Park, at the Chelan townsite, a
Chelan River. This site was first called Lake Park,
then Lakeside, and until 1956 existed as a separate
town. Lake Park would become the settlers' first
industrial center because the depth of the water
there, unlike at the entry to the Chelan River, was
sufficient for boats and log booms.
Page 16
post office was established in 1890. At that time
there were more than 300 rough buildings there,
mostly thrown up merely to preserve claims to lots.
By the next year three general stores, a hardware
store, a drug store, two saloons, and a blacksmith's
shop were up and running.