Lost towns of King County: Busy Cedar Mountain of former years now is only a memory

Originally published in the Seattle Times, April 2, 1961

(This is the first in a series of articles which will appear from time to time about lost towns of King County.)

By Lucile McDonald

Overlooking the site of the mining community of Cedar Mountain is a window on the south side of the home of Mrs. Edith Cavanaugh. On the table were deeds to the Cavanaugh land, signed by Presidents Grant and Arthur. —Times photo by Roy Scully.

Lost towns of King County rival in mystery the ghost towns of gold-mine country. The thing about them is that most have vanished without a trace—not so much as a weathered heap of timber or a false-front abandoned store to indicate that at this or that road junction stood a community of several hundred persons.

Any map of 50 years ago or more is sprinkled with place names where nothing to indicate a community exists today. Some of them were swallowed by the Cedar River watershed. Others died from natural causes.

Who could find Taylor, Kerriston, Cedar Mountain, Sherwood, Eddyville, and Barneston today? Who would know about Henry’s Switch, Atkinson, Trude, Holmar, Herrick, Danville, and Durham?

Yet, these names remain on the map, monuments to another time, when coal mines and sawmills attracted population to the foothills of the Cascades.

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Union demonstration at Bayne coal mine has riotous sequel

Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, April 2, 1913

Lawless malcontents fire into company hotel and attempt to tear down stockade at open camp

Corporation employee gets bullet in foot

Bayne hotel

One non-union employee was shot, a rifle bullet shattering his foot, and an attempt was made to tear down the stockade gate and fence at the open-shop Bayne mine of the Carbon Coal & Clay Company, forty miles southeast of Seattle, last night.

It was the climax to a day of demonstration during which more than 1,000 members of the United Mine Workers of America had assembled outside the stockade to register a protest against the non-union status of the employees on the other side of the fence.

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