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Early humans lived near rivers not only because of their need for drinking water, but also because the game animals on which they depended for food also came to drink at the river. As humans evolved, they continued to depend on rivers as a source of water to help them raise crops and domesticated animals. (Brittain, 195 8: 55) Early people viewed the river as a living being not unlike themselves, with personality quirks and a will of its own. To maintain a good relationship with the river, they treated it as a sentient being, humoring its idiosyncrasies, appealing to its better nature and either placating its outbursts or attempting to whip it into submission. (Brittain: 71) Land use around rivers has been a contentious issue since a few people first thought to divert river water for agriculture, thereby encroaching upon those who wanted to use the river itself as a source of food. (Brittain: 73) The value of rivers as a source of transportation, food and recreation has throughout history drawn people to live close to their banks, despite the threat of flooding. Early civilizations accustomed themselves to periodic flooding as part of the yearly ecological cycle until they discovered ways to control rivers and streams with dams, levees and canals, allowing them to harness the water for use in sustained agriculture and reduce flood risk. (Bardach, 1964: 182)
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The Chehalis River has long served as the main transportation route for the Native American tribes that historically inhabited the region, including the Chehalis and the Chinook peoples. These tribes were among the coastal tribes known as "canoe Indians" because of their reliance on hand-hewn red cedar canoes as the principal means of transportation. When white settlers arrived in the Chehalis Valley in the mid- 1800s, they encountered constant canoe traffic along the river as the tribes paddled to and from villages and fishing camps. (Van Syckle, 1982: 67) The Chehalis tribes are thought to have navigated the river upstream to above the modern town of Dryad, at the foot of the Willapa Hills in the Coast Range. (DNR, 1980: 1 0) In the deeper channels of the lower Chehalis River, the tribes typically used "Chinook" canoes, which could measure 40 or more feet long and six feet wide. (Van Syckle, 1982: 71) 'These seaworthy canoes could be paddled on the rough open waters of Grays Harbor bay and out along the coast north to Vancouver Island and south to the Columbia River for trading, raiding, slave trafficking, whaling and seal hunting. In the upper Chehalis, the tribes typically paddled or poled smaller, shallow-draft shovel-nosed craft. These much smaller canoes were an advantage in summer, when droughts reduced the river to a shallow, bony stream, as well as in winter, when floods forced travelers to portage huge logjams.
Floods have always been a part of the life cycle of the Chehalis River Valley. Early settlers adopted the use of Native canoes, and later built their own scows, as their emigrant wagons were of little use in the dense forests and on the wet soil of the heavily silted lowland valley. (Van Syckle, 1982: 128) Written recollections of local pioneers frequently refer to heavy winter rains and the deep mud and dangerous flooding that resulted. Jacqueline Ingalls, a pioneer daughter who grew up in the area, referred to Lincoln Creek - a tributary of the Chehalis - as "just an ordinary stream" in summer. But flooding on the Chehalis River in winter often generated huge logjams that "backed the water up the creek, making the valley a sea from hill to hill." (Smith, 1942: 300) "In winter when the swollen waters of the creek didn't cover [the land] entirely, the mud was "belly deep" to the horses that wallowed through it." (Smith, 1942: 314) Ingalls remembered how winter flooding could completely change the character of the lowlands: "I've seen the creek overflow parts of the valley until they showed up only as small islands. And I've seen the wind blow on this vast amount of water, forming little white caps that resemble the ocean as it rolls to shore." (Smith, 1942: 301)
Ingalls also recalled that early homesteaders stayed above the winter floods by building their homes on the hills and packing in supplies during the summer so the only reason they would venture out in the winter was to pick up their mail. (Smith, 1942: 314) Even then, winter drownings in the Chehalis or its tributaries were a common occurrence.
The mud and floods of the Chehalis River Valley were so legendary they became part of local folk history and the subject of folk stories. Another homesteader, Marcella Muir, recalled a popular story from pioneer days: "If a traveler was passing along and saw a hat floating on the flood, he was not to be surprised if a horse and rider rose up under it a moment later." (Smith, 1942: 25) And along one tributary, the mud holes were said to be so deep that "only the horses' ears show when they go through." The stories were hardly exaggeration: pioneer accounts reported that horses often fell while pulling a load through deep muck, breaking the harness or the wagon shafts - or worse, tipping over the entire wagon. (Smith, 1942: 315) The marshy lowlands around Chehalis, formerly called Saundersville or Saunders Bottom, was jokingly referred to by pioneers as "Saunders No Bottom." (Chehalis Community Development Program History Committee, 1955: 8)
The pioneers continued to be resourceful in their efforts to overcome the difficulties they faced as a result of flooding. Until the construction of a rail line in 1872, the primary means of transportation was by riverboat. (Lewis County, 1999: 3-1) Wood planks were laid down over thick mud to make new roads passable for wagons. In the late 1880s, settlers contributed labor toward building a high road that would allow people to travel out of reach of the flood waters, but harsh winter storms frequently resulted in so many blowdowns that it took months to clear the trees away. Local residents built a bridge over the Chehalis River in 1891; it lasted only until 1896, when the next big flood washed it away. (Smith, 1942: 316) Resourceful homesteaders abandoned inundated trails and roads in winter and switched to canoes for transportation. (Washington Pioneer Project, 1937: 112)
The early pioneers and community boosters refused to let the annual freshet dampen their enthusiasm for attracting more settlers and developing the Chehalis area. The river served as a commerce route for homesteaders, who by the 1860s were sending their products to market on sternwheelers designed to navigate the shallow waters of the upper Chehalis. (Van Syckle, 1982: 320) The construction of bridges over rivers and creeks in the Chehalis River watershed opened up more land for development. (Ramsey, 1978: 178) When the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition was held in Seattle in 1909, a book aimed at attracting settlers and investors to the area touted the rich, fertile farmland in the valley bottom. (Lewis County Historical Society, 1983: no page number) The book was published and distributed by local land and business owners - perhaps Lewis County's first growth coalition.
A review of these and other accounts of early pioneer life in the Chehalis Valley indicate that residents - out of necessity - practiced sound land use strategies by using the rich bottomlands for farming and pasture in summer, while maintaining homes on hills out of reach of winter floods. But as the valley has grown more populated, its residents have sought to control flooding through engineering solutions ranging from dikes, ditches and river dredging to dams. The sense of security provided by these efforts has encouraged development in the flood plain, resulting in increasing losses due to flooding. (See Appendix 11 for an historic timeline of Lewis County flooding.)
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