VI. FIRST SUCCESSFUL ASCENT, 1870 

 BY GENERAL HAZARD STEVENS 



GENERAL HAZARD STEVENS was born at Newport, Rhode Island, 

 on June 9, 1842. His father was Major General Isaac I. 

 Stevens, and his mother, Margaret (Hazard) Stevens, was a 

 granddaughter of Colonel Daniel Lyman of the Revolution. 

 In 1854 and 1855, while the son was only thirteen years of 

 age, he accompanied his father, then the first governor of 

 Washington Territory, on treaty-making expeditions among 

 the Indian tribes. Later he accompanied his father into the 

 Union Army as an officer on his father's staff. He was severely 

 wounded in the same battle where his father was killed while 

 leading the charge at Chantilly, September i, 1862. 



Hazard Stevens continued in the army, and at the end of the war 

 he was mustered out as a brigadier general of volunteers. He 

 then returned to Washington Territory and went to work to 

 support his mother and sisters. On August 17, 1870, he and 

 P. B. Van Trump made the first successful ascent of Mount 

 Rainier. 



In 1874, he followed the other members of the family back to 

 Boston where he remained until his mother's death, a few 

 months ago. He then returned to Puget Sound, and is now a 

 successful farmer near Olympia. 



His companion on the ascent, P. B. Van Trump, remained in 

 Washington. For a number of years he was a ranger at 

 Indian Henry's Hunting Ground in the Mount Rainier National 

 Park. There he was a quaint and attractive figure to all 

 visitors. In 1915, he returned East to live among kinsfolk in 

 New York State. 



The names of both Stevens and Van Trump have been generously 

 bestowed upon glaciers, creeks, ridges, and canons within the 

 Mount Rainier National Park. 



General Stevens prefers to call the mountain Takhoma. The full 

 account of the ascent was published by him under the title 

 of "The Ascent of Mount Takhoma" in the Atlantic Monthly 

 for November, 1876. It is here reproduced by permission of 

 the editor of that magazine. 



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