Chiwawa Basin, Day 1: Trinity Mine

The trail to the basin below Chiwawa Mountain (above) begins at the old mining development of Trinity, situated deep in the North Cascades. So on Saturday, August 20, Steve and I drove the 25-mile Chiwawa River Road to its end at Trinity.

Now a virtual ghost town, Trinity once was home for over 300 men and women employed by the Royal Development Company of New York in its heyday -- the 1920s and 1930s. In those days, the residents of Trinity had high hopes of "striking it rich."

Today, however, Trinity has been reclaimed for the most part by Mother Nature, who dumps an average of 14 feet of snow on the town site annually.

Destroyed by fire or crushed by the weight of many years of snow, most of the original 38 buildings are now gone. What remains are a few residences (left) and the generator plant.

Beginning in the 1890s, a number of companies -- including the Chelan Mining Company -- established claims in the area for silver and gold. Most failed to find anything of value and ceased operation. Then, in 1918, F.J. Naughten, a stockholder in the Chelan Mining Company and a Roman Catholic priest, hired mining engineer P.J. Lonergan, who determined that there was little silver or gold at the site but significant amounts of copper.

Father Naughten then recruited his brother James, a miner from Montana and, together with Lonergan, formed the Royal Development Company. Mining operations commenced immediately, but heavy snowfall and avalanches in the narrow Phelps Creek valley forced them to abandon work in the winter.

The solution was to blast a 11,000-foot tunnel into the side of Phelps Ridge (below) which would provide year-round access to the ore. The Royal Development Company sold stock to fund the mine. A hydroelectric project, first on nearby James Creek and later on the larger Phelps Creek, would provide power to the town and the mine.

But in 1938, the mine closed permanently for economic reasons; apparently, the ore was not of sufficiently high grade to continue mining. However, several old-timers associated with Trinity had other perspectives, which they shared with me for a magazine article I wrote for a Seattle-based recreational journal back in 1982.

Mildred Naughten, wife of James and proprietor of Parkside Grocery at Lake Wenatchee in the 1970s, said she and her husband were excited about the prospect of mining vast deposits of copper, gold and silver. But W.O. (Bill) Burgess, another old-timer, noted that the mine was built "totally on speculation." In other words, the investors were protected but the miners were not.

But hopes were high, based on continued investment by the Royal Development Company. This optimism was accentuated by the fact that the Roman Catholic Church had, in part, financed the mine. Naughten said the town site was booming despite the Great Depression, and many new buildings were constructed, including a mess hall, sawmill and residences, with more in the planning stages.

Then, one fateful autumn evening in 1931, the news came across the wire from New York City: the Royal Development Company had ordered the mine closed. They gave no explanation for the closure.

Naughten explained that many of the miners -- immigrants from Eastern Europe -- had recently come to work at Trinity. They had spent what little money they had stocking up on groceries and goods for a snowbound winter of anticipated work. Suddenly, they were out of a job and they were mad -- real mad.

"That night, they started drinking," Naughten reminisced, noting that the group of immigrants soon became a howling mob, violently angry because the main office had closed the mine for what the miners perceived as a "phony financial reason" rather than a lack of ore. She said they "went on a rampage," breaking windows and otherwise destroying company property.

"All of them had their wine, and they became unruly," said John Hendrickson, another old-timer who worked at the mine. "Liquor was a precious commodity in this remote community." One winter, he remembered, a man attempting to bring in a case of whiskey got lost in the deep snows and died in the woods leading to Trinity. "They didn't find his body until the following spring," he noted.

"This really was a struggle between those who were operating the mine and those who were financing the mine," said Naughten. The financiers -- all Easterners -- could care less about the mine, she said. All they wanted was to get hold of the money set aside for investment in the mine. The angry miners sensed this undercurrent, so they took their frustrations out on the company.

"I guess they took their vengeance out by smashing buildings," recounted Naughten. "It was really frightening. You just don't know how far a mob will go under the circumstances. It was sickening news for people to suddenly have the work stopped."

Naughten said the situation was intensified by the belief that the miners were betrayed by one of their own. "There was someone in the office who, the miners felt, was getting information back east as to when the shipment of ore was going to the smelter (in Tacoma)," said Naughten. "The men suspected who it was, but the nearest it came to any trouble was talk about tar and feathering the guy."

No serious attempt has been made at mining the Trinity tunnel since, and the buildings that remain are grim reminders of the aborted investment of the Royal Development Company. The Trinity town site, which sits in the shadow of 8,500-foot Buck Mountain and other spectacular peaks at the headwaters of the Chiwawa River, has gone through several owners since 1931, all content to enjoy the property as a recreational retreat.

As Steve and I hiked through the town site on our way to Chiwawa Basin, I reminisced about these old-timers and their stories of days of hope and human stamina, corruption and collapse, and finally, despair and drunkenness. After hiking the five miles into the basin, we stopped for the evening at a campsite at the junction of the Chiwawa and Red Mountain trails (below).