Granite I was reached the town as and for J- U, Boyd » company in 1898. was and real who freight. .J exorbitant the building for Percy Parmlnter store in 1898 it passed into the Chappell. J. ; the Mercantile by came .1 in the first ' „--J old shinglewea1 campa anci ml]Ig with the and miners Cascades. being .the ■1 the plat bore - and Abbie for well Prospectors a mining Postoffice John L. --a mail Getchell schedule saloonkeepers, chiefly on .the 'town was no police supplied by W. W. . NILES ) (Editor's Note: Mr. Niles will be remembered by oldtimers as the town's pioneer editor, he having established the Granite Palls Post 1 over 40 years ago and published i it for many years. In recent years | Mr. Niles has published the |Lynn- . wood Press, in a new town on | Highway 99 between Everett and .‘Seattle.) ; The editor of the Granite Falls Press- has asked me to write the ■.Ilory of the early days of Granite Falls and adjacent communities, fit is with some misgivings that I lembark upon the task. As much lot the material to be used de­ pends upon memory—running back fifty years or more—inaccuracies are reasonably sure to creep in. If any reader detects any of these I shall deem it a great favor if he will report them to Mr. Wil­ lcox at the Press office, in order that corrections may be made. I shall make no attempt to write the story in chronological order, but shall handle it under different headings. Whenever the word '‘here" is used it will be understood to i mean Granite Falls, though I am no longer a resident of the town. For information on the early settlement I shall depend upon1 facts set forth in a History of Skagit and iSnohomlsh Counties, published in 190fi, and assumed to be correct. I have been unable to find any record of the early exploration of this section. The first men to penetrate the woods this far may have’ been hunters, trappers or prospectors. It Is possible, how­ ever, that the first white visitors were members of a military ex- I plorlng party which made a trip I north along the foothills of the Cascades before the territory was settled. This theory is supported by two facts. First, in the woods which stretched between town and ■’ the old Robe-Menzel mill as late as 1903 there was a soldier’s grave enclosed by an old fence but no marker. I believe the fence was destroyed when the land was logged off. Second, some time be­ tween 1910 and 1918 loggers found an old army sword in the John­ son-Deane logging works near the Stocker and Cady lakes. This was probably left .tiierg—some mem­ ber of the expedition. headquarters -J as for Cascade year a with as post master. The over from no regular 1 for some time. ------a of Marysville in a years until the state „ local option the town 19 votes of going dry, cause being‘-saved by votes transient loggers who 'brought In from adjacent (To be continued) He later sold to Morgan & Good-' rich, and this subsequently be­ came the Granite Falls Mercan­ tile Co., under ownership of E. R. Moi gan and J. L,. Shumway. Later it was sold to C. M. Hess. It closed its doors in 1918. Before the building of the Se­ attle, (Lake Shore & Eastern rail­ way through Getohell, Marysville was a chief point of supply, goods being brought by trail and later by wagon road. The Stillaguamish river may also have been utilized as a trade route to some extent although the Indians v..‘ ed with canoes charged rates. Eva Andrus taught school in Robert Wright’s cabin a short distance northwest of town. After two 'terms it , (moved to a cedar shack on Cas­ cade avenue near Pioneer street. ' Later a fram"= -ouau.ug was built ' pioneer and Granite avenues' i being replaced about 1916 by the ! present brick structure. The town was incorporated R C'.n3S t0'Vn On Novemoer 8, 1903. The incorporation cam­ paign was a hot one, with the dry forces favoring the move and the -®Lf0rces’ Ied b* a number of opposing ft — premise that the peaceful and needed Protection beyond that s- , i ' ■ a part- t me deputy sheriff. The first of­ ficials were: Mayor, E Fhnr, Pen ; councilmen,\ H. F^, % Luckey, L. E. Messner, D I Car penter and W. H Earl- C Smith™*111 ChappelI; c'le,'k, C^t’ Smith; marshal, I* R. Clinton ' The Wet-dry fight continued for several years at each election went dry. Under —.A came within the wet of were camps. Pioneer Editor Writes of.. Early Days in This Region 1 1 The '^r«t settler in Falls was William ivr ■■ i ' P;,Davis c- 1"S8 aDd *°bert Wrlght‘ By 1889 th6 settlement had be stopping place ... a3 a going int0 the country. ,fa that was established ■Snethen r- ■ was carried occasionally being established £ ■Mark Swlnnerton bundbinShetl a store in 1SS» building near the location of the Present school house °f 016 T. K. Robe. A townsite c Platted in 1891, During this p-- became a bustling and .j,38 wlld an