THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



817 



Beautiful Lake Chelan 



By J. S. Kirtley 



Lake Chelan, in the state of Washington, is coming 

 to be considered one of the World's most beautiful lakes. 

 The fisherman finds it a paradise for cut-throat trout and 

 other fish; the summer resorter and the nature lover com- 

 bine to say its scenic attractions are entirely beyond the 

 reach of pen or brush. 



How that wonderful winding trough was ever made 

 in the Cascade mountains, for almost a hundred miles, run- 

 ning from near the Columbia river north-westward, right 

 into the heart of the highest mountains, we have to think 

 back into the preglacial, volcanic ages, to conjecture. But 

 there was a later time when a glacier filled it, going away 

 down deeper than the sea level and extending far up to the 

 mountain side, while still above it, towered higher heights. 

 When the glacier melted the water filled up the bed, for 

 fifty-one miles, leaving the upper part of the narrow valley 

 to be drained by streams into the lake. And there it lies 

 today, different from any other lake we have. The Kootenay 

 up in Canada resembles it in general outline. But I have 

 made it my chief objective, in my travels, to get acquainted 

 with our mountains and lakes and streams, and am prepared 

 to defend Lake Chelan against all others of its size, for 

 beauty in its formation and sublimity in its environment. 

 Strip the Alpine Lakes of their artistic and literary and 



Head of Lake Chelan. 



historical trad'tions and associations and Chelan would go 

 into the beauty contest without fear. Crater Lake is mar- 

 velous ; little Lake Louise is without a peer for beauty ; 

 Spirit Lake at the foot of Mt. St. Helens, is a close second 

 to Louise; but Lake Chelan is in a class of larger lakes and 

 is at the head of the class. Starting in at Chelan, the 

 southern point, you go northwest through a succession of 

 Kaleidiscop : c glories, each dissolving view succeeded by a 

 more dazzling one, with every lurch of the boat forward 

 towards the lake's head, in the snow-crowned and glacier- 

 filled summits of the Cascades. 



Outside of Washington, Chelan is scarcely known ; in- 

 side not too well known. Last June the well-informed 

 president of a great university confessed that he had never 

 heard of it. This general ignorance is not wholly due to 

 the modesty of those who live in its vicinity, but to the 

 newness of a country full of clamorous beauty spots and to 

 the remoteness of its railroads. It took us forty-three hours 

 to get to the head of the lake from Seattle 165 miles by 

 rail to W r enatchee ; a wait for several hours and then forty- 

 four miles by steamer up the Columbia River against a swift 

 current, sometimes through raging rapids, to where the 

 Chelan River brings down the outflowing waters of the lake; 

 up four miles by stage to the town of Chelan ; next morning 

 by steamer fifty-one miles to Stehekin, the northern point. 

 Mr. Edmunds and others, at Chelan, told me that Mr. James 



J. Hill has the right of way from his road at Wenatchee 

 up to the lake and he seems about to build it every now and 

 then, but, in a country where every place is shrieking for a 

 railroad and competing lines must be watched, delays seem 

 as inevitable as the railroad itself. 



The approach up the Columbia gives one a chance to get 

 into a geological and botanical frame of mind, though some, 

 who rise early and start at six, may interpret that to mean 

 that they feel rocky and green. The undulations above the 

 banks of the river may almost make one forget that it is 

 a canyon, the river is flowing through. It is, though. There, 

 where the sagebush and greasewood begin to get reinforced 



Winter Scene Lake Chelan. 



by pine trees, a valley opens westward through the walls 

 of the Columbia River canyon and the Chelan River comes 

 down, making a descent of 325 feet in about four tortuous 

 miles from the lake. In that short distance the river does 

 pretty much everything, fantastic and furious, that a stream 

 of its size could do. It begins with rapids that are always 

 flecked with foam, whirls around cliffs, roars through gorges, 

 impassible by man, a mass of snowy foam, and quiets down 

 into its final race for the Columbia River. It has one 

 hundred thousand horse power ready for Mr. Hill when he 

 builds his road in there. 



(Continued on page 841.) 



