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Skagit River Journal

of History & Folklore
Free Home Page Stories & Photos
The most in-depth, comprehensive site about the Skagit
Covers from British Columbia to Puget Sound. Counties covered: Skagit, Whatcom, Island, San Juan, Snohomish & BC. An evolving history dedicated to committing random acts of historical kindness

Noel V. Bourasaw, editor

810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, Washington, 98284
Home of the Tarheel Stomp

Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug

Along the fence and behind the barn
and Cottonwoods along the upper Skagit River
From the Journal's extensive Dowdle collection

"Behind the barn and along the fence" — so begins Mollie Dowdle's springtime story about a grove of cottonwood trees near her home in the Upper Skagit River Valley. (Skagit Valley Herald photo by Don Anderson)

Puffy, fibrous catkins, which each spring drift slowly to the ground, reveal how the cottonwood tree got its name. (Skagit Valley Herald (Skagit Valley Herald photo by Bob Richardson)

By Mollie Dowdle, Skagit Valley Herald, May 30, 1975
Behind the barn and along the fence bordering my fields from that of my neighbor stands a grove of cottonwood trees. After a windstorm the ground is strewn with lengthy branches of the soft wood that has broken off the Mother branch. Early in the spring, dainty, purple catkins swing from the long leafy branches. These little aments contain the brown seeds that scatter and start a new family of cottonwoods.
About the first of May they begin to drift slowly to the ground, dripping with a thick, sticky substance that has the exotic fragrance of wild honey. It literally fills the air and I try to find time each day to walk through the field and drink in the perfume. It's my "Balm of Gilead" and for a time I can forget the problems of being a widow and still hanging on to a few sparse acres.
The seeds go out to start a new life tipped with a wisp of soft, lustrous cotton fiber that floats through the air on fairy wings to new planting ground. They settle to the moist earth, sprout roots and a new family of trees are in the making. Sometimes the cotton wrapping will drift into piles like snow to whiten the grass and tangle in the dry thistles standing in the fields. With their bearing responsibilities ended quite early in the spring, the parent trees begin their new growth. And it seems they forever grow. Their white fibrous roots spread out, sometimes lifting themselves above the ground to make a twisted, intricate mat around the base of the tree. And now that summer is near the soft green, heart shaped leaves furnish a dense canopy of shade for my cattle during the hot days. Like groves of cottonwood trees can be found in hill and dale, up and down our Skagit Valley.
After a warms spring day, following a rain, I take my dog and a basket and go in search of the luscious morel mushrooms that come up under the cottonwoods. Perhaps some unknown chemical is in the decayed, fallen leaves because I've never found them elsewhere.
Cottonwoods are quick growing and their wood is soft and pliable. Pioneers who found them growing along the streams and in swampy places soon learned their value for making furniture and laying floors. I know where there is an old cabin of early days, where the floor is made of cottonwood logs, sawed through the middle and laid with the rounding side down. After almost 50 years of scrubbing and hard wear they are still white and lovely.
Modern industry values cottonwood for boxes, crates, excelsior and wood pulp, which makes a fine grade of paper. I'm fascinated by the eerie phosphorescent glow of fox fire that radiates from old decomposed cottonwood and I've oft times been startled by a log of it that lies in my back woods.
Occasionally a clump of cottonwood will establish itself on high ground but they prefer a moist loamy soil. They are persistent and hardy and will somehow survive, even under dire circumstances. Covered-wagon pioneers wrote in their diaries and letters that they liked to pitch camp in cottonwood groves and under their gentle, whispering leaves it was easier to forget the loneliness and hardships encountered during their long journey

Journal Ed. note: Mollie's father, "Gramp," was David Moyer, who married Florence Wood in Hamilton on May 24, 1911. So he was technically her stepfather but he obviously had a strong influence in her life, more than her birth father, whose identity is a mystery. Dave died in 1969 at age 97 and Florence died in 1965 at age 85; both are buried in the Hamilton cemetery. David had three children by his former wife, including Gertrude, Chester and Vinnie, who also lived into her 90s. Dave also moved his family West, from Arkansas, in 1900 and he went to work as a logger for the Lyman Timber Company. Mollie's maternal grandfather, Malcolm Wood, moved Florence and Mollie and other members of his family from Haywood County, North Carolina in 1908 and they settled on land across the river from Hamilton, where a school was also built.
Many thanks to Carol Bates, for the information from official records and descendant memories in her book, Hamilton 100 years, that helped me sort out the genealogy of this very complicated family tree. Dave's former wife remarried to Irving Cary, a son of another pioneer Hamilton family, and in other Mollie stories linked below you will find many of Mollie's memories about the Carys.

Those who stopped to make homes on the almost treeless prairies would usually plant cottonwood saplings for shade and wind breaks. Cottonwoods have been known to attain a height of 90 feet and live to be as old as 75 years. I've seen deep fissures on the dull grey bark of old trees two or three inches deep and I've seen tree trunks brutally scarred from bear claws.
Towering above its forest neighbors, a cottonwood is often a target for lightning. On the hill in back of my fields stands an old tree that is a veteran of winds and storms. It has probably been hit by lightning many years ago but it continues to stand, defiant of the elements, its trunk half torn away, dead white, scarred and lopsided. I've seen crows and ravens balancing on its naked, outstretched limbs and I'm sure they're saying in bird language, "Stay on, old tree, we like you, stay on." There must be some reason why it hasn't collapsed in a windstorm — perhaps the birds understand why. It's known in my household as "The Sentinel."
A slight breeze, almost no breeze at all, will set the cottonwood trees into a tremor and it's easy to imagine they are engaged in a confidential conversation. And sometimes they can trick you into a momentary delusion. I've walked to the back of the fields to drive in the cows on a hot summer evening, praying for rain and scanning the sky for a possible cloud overhead. As I near the grove of cottonwood trees I've often heard the soft patter I was hoping for. But it was only the trees whispering goodnight to each other in such an enchanting manner.
I hope my neighbor, George Adams, has the same feeling for these trees that I do. I'd like to see them stand there along the fence and grow old along with me. There will be spring blooming fragrance that is like no other in the world, golden leaves in-the fall and a haven of shade for my cattle. And besides I will always have loveliness along my line fence. How could I ask for more?
[JournalEd. note: cottonwood trees became a vital factor in the economy of the upriver area at the turn of the 20th century. At that time, before petroleum-based packing material was invented, cottonwood logs were shaved and the resulting "excelsior" shavings were sold throughout the world to manufacturers who shipped their goods. A succession of mills, known as Sedro Box & Veneer and other names, operated at the site of Mortimer Cook's original townsite of Bug/Old Sedro, which by then was turning into a ghost town after a succession of massive floods on the Skagit River. The only remnant of that mill, which burned twice in the mid-1920s and contributed to a local recession, is a concrete abutment near the creek at the eastern edge of Riverfront Park. A very large log pond once straddled the area around the present River Road, just north of the old Fairhaven & Southern railroad depot and Mortimer Cook's store.]

Links, background reading and sources

Introduction to the late Mollie Dowdle and links to all her stories that are transcribed in the Journal. An emigre from North Carolina, she became a voice for Tarheels and country folk in the Skagit Valley and the North Cascades.
Mollie Dowdle lived to the age of 97 and she had quite a gene pool. In this 1963 column, she told us about her father, his Tarheel values and how her family maintained the values and culture in Hamilton and the upper Skagit River.
In a 1966 column, Mollie reflected on her Tarheel ancestry and eternal laughter with her upper Skagit River family.
In a 1975 column, Mollie Dowdle wrote about springtime along the fence and behind the barn on the family's upper Skagit River farm, and the ubiquitous cottonwood trees.
In a 1963 column, Mollie wrote about her mother and the challenge she faced with her family, setting up a home clear across the country.
Mollie tells the story of how her beloved grandfather, Malcolm Wood, moved his family and four-year-old Mollie out to the Skagit Valley from North Carolina, where poverty, disease and death had taken several of them while very young.
We especially thank Pat Hegg Brown, Deanna Ammons, Bernie Leaf and Larry Spurling for the large collection of articles that they have shared with us, some of which includes these columns. We encourage readers to share similar columns with us. We also welcome copies of old newspapers, especially those before 1920 and copies of the annual Puget Sound Mail Pioneer Picnic special editions of any year. We never ask for your originals. Please either send us scans or for copies, you can find our mail address at the top or bottom of this story.
Stories of the upper Skagit River Quall and Cary families by Mollie Dowdle; memories of the families and the 1916 reunion by Gladys Ellis Pape Miller, descendant of the Savage and Boyd families; and Journal research.
Pioneer cemetery of the Qualls and Carys, by Mollie Dowdle, from her 1985 book, My Best Loved Stories.

Other Dowdle stories

Mollie Dowdle tells the story of little Gar Green learning the facts of life as midwife Mrs. Tingley races to deliver a Pioneer Baby.
Gar Green, Hamilton/Birdsview pioneer, his family, and his friends, Mollie and Wal Dowdle, with correspondence from some of his relatives.
Mollie Dowdle shares her favorite Christmas memories, when her son Wal shipped out for service in the Korean War before Christmas 1952. For anyone who knows Wal, you will love the story of how he played Santa Claus while there.
Our Upper Skagit River section includes links to dozens of stories about upriver communities from Utopia through the North Cascades, including a large section on the pioneers and events of Hamilton, which boomed briefly in the 1880s and early '90s.

Story posted on Oct. 29, 2006 . . . Please report any broken links so we can update them
This article originally appeared in Issue 36 of our Subscribers-paid Journal online magazine

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Along the fence and behind the barn and Cottonwoods along the upper Skagit River From the Journal's extensive Dowdle collection

Along the fence and behind the barn
and Cottonwoods along the upper Skagit River
From the Journal's extensive Dowdle collection