It all started on July 4th, 1889 when Joseph L. Persall staked his claim in a newly platted mining region of Snohomish County.  Keeping in the spirit of this significant American date he named the mine Independence of 1776 Mine.  Several other claims soon followed and Joseph was soon joined by his friend Frank Peabody.  Joseph persuaded Frank, a bit of a smooth talker, to travel to Seattle with some of the ore to be assayed and to try to find some financial backing to further fund explorations and plans for hard-rock mining.  Frank did manage to get the attention of John MacDonald Wilmans an entrepreneur familiar with mining.  John, who went by the nickname of “Mac” and his brother Fred set out to join Joseph and Frank at their mining camp. Fred, to entertain himself in the evening, brought along what would become an influential book. The book was The Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas. This engrossing and popular book is the story of the enduring struggles of a man who discovers vast riches that transform his life.  It is reported that Frank commented around the campfire that “There is enough gold in that mountain to make the Count of Monte Cristo look like a pauper”  and thus the distinguished name for this area stuck.  As much as these four men tried to keep their mining claims secret while securing more backers to fund operations,  news leaked out about the discovery of gold in the North Cascades at a place forever known as Monte Cristo!

Hoyt, Colby and Company, Everett, Washington, backed by John D. Rockefeller could see the potential of investing in Monte Cristo.  A road needed to be built to move in the heavy equipment that would be used to develop the mining camps.  This road would run from Sauk City on the Skagit River, all the way south to Monte Cristo.  By fall of 1891, a caravan of horse and oxen moving tons of equipment had reached Monte Cristo, blasting and building a road as they went.  By that time a steady stream of prospectors were making their way to Monte Cristo to find employment or stake their claim and get a piece of the action.  While all this was going on, another mining settlement, known as Starve Out, sprang up at about the half way point on the road. This  area will later be renamed Darrington.

With all the promise of prosperity and a steady stream of men coming up the wagon road, Mr. Moorehouse and his wife built a store and post office near the Bedal homestead.  His wife named the place Orient, because she felt like it was half around the world from just about anywhere.  Orient became well known to travelers looking for a good home cooked meal and two other camps were established near by.  In the apex of their success, their dreams of wealth ended abruptly in 1898, when the swift high waters of the Sauk River washed away the post office, store, even their home. They never rebuilt.  Orient was located near where the Bedal Campground is today.

In 1891 John Quincey Barlow, a surveyor, discovered a suitable route to bring a railroad up from the smelter at Everett to the mining town of Monte Cristo.  Construction of a railroad began in 1892 and was estimated to be completed that same year.  But when a severe winter hit the area with freezing temperatures of 22 degees below zero and heavy snows, work ground to a halt.  The Northern Pacific Railroad finally reached Monte Cristo in 1893, and boasted of having the longest tunnel in recently formed Washington State, which was 1,500 feet long.  This new railroad was plagued with severe washouts in 1897, then again in 1903 putting the train out of service until repairs could be made leaving Monte Cristo isolated.  The big mining dreams for Monte Cristo eventually faded and pretty much petered out by 1900 with only a few determined prospectors holding out.

Around 1915 a new wealth had been discovered – tourism for the prosperous.  Two brothers, Wyatt and Bethel Rucker, owners of a sawmill at Hartford, near Lake Stevens, leased the railway renaming it the Hartford Eastern.  These two brothers had a big dream of providing a wilderness experience to those willing to pay who could enjoy their visit from the comforts of a lavish and sumptuous inn.  Construction of the new Big Four Inn was completed in 1921.  A gas car with trailer came up the railroad making regular trips as the wealthy now began to flock deep into the mountains.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, the wealthy could no longer afford such excursions to places such as Big Four Inn and the business dried up.  The year of 1932, during the Great Depression, saw some of the worst floods in Snohomish County history and the Hartford Railroad was devastated by washouts.  The railroad had washouts before, but this time no one wanted to reinvest in a railroad that shuttled one to a closed inn and mining operations that had all but curtailed.

In some ways it was the Great Depression and WWII that helped build what we call the Mountain Loop Highway today.  Access into the area was very difficult, the old pioneer wagon road coming down south from Darrington was hardly used anymore and was little more that a horse trail.  Penn Mining in the Elliott Creek area had done some minimal work to the road to access their mining operations. Motorcars would at times drive the abandoned railroad, a troublesome journey fraught with breakdowns and damage.  There was one bridge that sagged so badly that you would have to rev up your engine driving at uncomfortable speeds or your car would likely stall out in the middle and you would be stuck.  But the old routes to Monte Cristo would again see new life when the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt came up with a plan to get the country back on its feet again.  The New Deal resulted in thousands of useful jobs, many in an outdoor setting, and put money back in workers pockets.  Men were enlisted to the Civilian Conservation Corps, C.C.C., to build needed infrastructure for America.  On average, a skilled worker was paid $1.20 an hour, intermediate worker $.75 an hour and unskilled worker received $.50 an hour.  Work began March 23, 1936 on a road that would later be called the Mountain Loop Highway intended to connect Granite Falls, Silverton, Monte Cristo and Darrington.  The boys from Camp Verlot began pulling up tracks on the south end where a road for motorcars would replace them while the boys from Camp Darrington began work on the north end upgrading the old wagon road.

The idea for these road improvements was to enable access to timber lands, unfortunately in building this road, there was an error in their land survey which directed road construction onto the claim of local prospector, Sam Strom, collapsing one of his tunnels.  Sam took to a different sort of prospecting, protesting these illegal actions and established a toll gate charging 25 cents to all who wished to pass on the new road.  Sam made a point of not letting folks forget about the illegal access of this road cutting through his land and he could be seen with his shotgun sitting at his gate with a sign that read:

“In Everett and Seattle, there are lawyers and politicians that operate in ambush by trying to obstruct justice and build entanglements born to delay and deception and status of limitations.  It is to protect my rights against these that I constructed this toll gate on government built CCC road for which I assume full responsibility.”

Most of the time the gate stood open and in truth, Sam admired the CCC.  He made a point however to collect from any governmental official who wanted to pass through.

In December, 1941, The CCC Camp Darrington Crew from the north and the Verlot Crew from the south connected the road at Barlow Pass.  For a short time the Mountain Loop Highway was open for tourist traffic, but when the U.S. became involved in WWII the backroad was closed to civilian traffic.  The previously shut Big Four Inn was occupied by the U.S. Coast Guard as a “Duty Station” for men awaiting active duty.  The military occupation of Big Four Inn prompted the Federal Government to improve the road grade and a portion of the road was straightened to bypass the old railroad grade.  This portion is now the Old Government Trail #733 also known as Snohomish County’s Old Robe Trail.  The old railroad bridge was nicknamed the “Red Bridge” because of it’s rusting condition and even though it badly sagged in the middle was not replaced, but rather adapted for automobile traffic.  It wouldn’t be until 1955, that this bridge would be replaced, when the county was again prospering in post WWII times.  The bridge was moved up river to a new location and this aided in straightening the road.  There is a waytrail to the original site where you can still see the old concrete bulkheads, down river to the west.  When looking at this site, remember this was an old railroad bridge, the train making a dramatic bend as it crossed the bridge.  Nostalgically the new bridge was painted the same rusty red color as the old bridge and named Red Bridge.

When the WWII ended in 1945, there was speculation that the Big Four Inn would again reopen, but restructuring this lavish inn again for a new generation of wealthy patrons was less appealing.  On September 7, 1949, at 6:30 am, flames were spotted coming from the main portion of the Inn and this massive wooden structure quickly burned to the ground.  All that remains today of the Rucker brother’s dream to build a resort to access paradise in the mountains is the huge fireplace and sidewalks that now seem to lead nowhere but to the Big Four Picnic Area.

It was big dreams that made this road, starting with the gold rush days of Monte Cristo.  It has been rerouted over time, modern bridges replaced by new ones in the 1970’s and 1980s.  It has seen several washouts from the scenic rivers that made it such a destination.  In 1990 the Mountain Loop Highway moved to the west side of the Sauk River due to ongoing washouts, disconnecting the original CCC road that caused all the trouble with Sam Strom’s mines back in 1936.  Part of this original road still exists and is the scenic forest road drive to Cougar Hollow, where once there was a Forest Service Guard Station.

Why do we call it a Loop?  Most of us think of the Mountain Loop Highway as the scenic forest drive connecting Granite Falls and Darrington.  At one time, this road was looked upon as a transportation route connecting Granite Falls to Darrington, Darrington to Arlington via SR 530 NE, then down to Hartford – Silver Lake via Hwy 9, then to Granite Fall via Hwy 92.  The portion of the road connecting Darrington to Granite Falls is a designated Forest Service Scenic Byway.

Next time you drive the Mountain Loop Highway, arm yourself with a little history and you won’t even have to pay Sam his 25 cents at the toll gate.  There stands an historical marker in Darrington where the pioneer wagon road came through, a reminder of how it all started for the town of Darrington, the mining boom town of Monte Cristo and a road that would eventually connect them.