49° North Mountain Resort is located on the Newport Ranger District, of the Colville National Forest, approximately ten miles east of the town of Chewelah, and sixteen miles west of the town of Usk. It is located fifty miles north from Spokane, the largest metropolitan area in Eastern Washington. Situated along the primary corridor to eastern British Columbia, Canada (approximately 55 miles north), the ski area is accessed via Flowery Trail Road, considered an important transportation conduit from the Colville Valley to the Pend Oreille River Valley. The natural beauty of the area attracts visitors on a year-round basis, to enjoy a variety of recreational opportunities, whether in nearby Canada or on surrounding National Forest, State or private lands.
The history of the town of Chewelah (est. 1883) is culturally diverse, with immigrants largely displacing Native Americans and settling in the area to share the prosperity provided by agriculture and the timber industry. As the town flourished, the settlers also succeeded in producing an abundance of crops, as well as developing mining properties. Skiing at Chewelah Peak (elev. 5,773 ft) has attracted numerous year-round recreational users since before the Flowery Trail Road was opened to motorized traffic in the early 1930’s. The use of Chewelah Peak in the winter was formally recognized by the Colville National Forest in approximately 1935. A permit was issued for development of a site approximately three miles west of the present site of 49° North Mountain Resort. The completion of Cy’s Hut in 1936 and a rope tow in 1939 firmly established winter recreation on Chewelah Peak. Cy’s Hut burned in 1949. The next location on Chewelah Peak was two miles of the present site of 49° North Mountain Resort. After the completion of the two story Chewelah Mountain Lodge in 1950 and installation of a double chair lift in 1951, the area experienced an increased volume of recreational users and tourists. Over a period of years, obsolescence of the lift and lack of revenue due to a gradual decline in the condition of the facilities, culminating in closure in early 1968.
On May 6, 1970, the Chewelah Basin Ski Corporation was formed and submitted a bid to develop and operate a ski resort in a basin approximately two miles east of the old area. Development commenced in late 1970 and continued during the summers of 1971 and 1972. Construction of three lifts, runs and a day lodge was completed and the area first operated for public use in late 1972. In 1976, the U.S. Forest Service approved a master plan allowing for continued upgrading and expansion within the existing Special Use Permit. A fourth lift was added in 1980 and new runs to support the lift have continued to attract an increasing number of visitors. In June of 1996 Chewelah Basin Ski Corporation was sold.
49° North Mountain Resort remains a local family oriented facility, with a growing emphasis as a small regional resort, supported by the amenities and accommodations available in the town of Chewelah. The ski area is well known for its special events and contributions to the welfare of the community. The area provides a variety of year-round recreational opportunities enjoyed by both residents and tourists alike.
Prehistoric Human Use
According to oral tradition, the area lying between the Colville River valley and the Calispell Divide was unoccupied when it was first viewed by the Kalispel looking for a place to settle. This area has also been identified in various sources as the northern part of the range of the Spokane Indians and the territory of the Chewelah Indians. All of these groups were part of the Plateau cultural tradition and the Salishan language grouping. As such, their resource based economy included a seasonal round of harvesting and trading for the various materials and foodstuffs required for life in the Plateau region. A principle reason for traveling through the area would have been to access the fishery and lowlands areas, which were generally used to gather camas, one of the very important staples of the Plateau diet, as well as waterfowl and waterfowl eggs. Upland areas were generally used to gather a variety of berries, most notably huckleberry, and for hunting game.
There is evidence that the native people used the area for gathering (probably huckleberries) because of the location of peeled cedar trees near what has been identified as a part of the Chewelah Trail. This was also near a branch of the Kalispell Trail. The tree scars are generally small, indicating the construction of a small gathering-type basket or use of the bark as a platter or serving vessel. There have been no other cultural sites identified as Native American use sites within the project area so we have no hard data to support the idea that Native peoples spent time at any particular site within the area (Draft Quartzite Watershed Analysis, Project 1-108, Daniel Mattson, etal., Colville National Forest, 4/20/99). We can, however, assume that parts of the project area were used as at least short term habitation sites and that there were trails passing through the area dating from pre-contact times.
Probably the only practice that would have significantly affected the ecosystem within the area was the use of fire to enhance resource habitat. There is ethnographic evidence of Native Americans setting fires to enhance habitat for huckleberries and forage for deer in the period around the 1850’s. There is no data available indicating how early this practice may have been used or in what specific areas.
Mining
Mining began in the Colville Valley around 1850. In the late 1880’s, the areas around Eagle Mountain and Jay Gould Ridge became the focus of major mining efforts. A promising lead and silver strike in 1883 lead to the development of the town of Embrey two miles east of what is now Chewelah. The town was created in 1883 by the founders of the Juno-Echo mine named, Embrey, Kelly, Wagner and Hanschel. It was located on the Flowery Trail about one half mile east of the Chewelah cemetery. In the late 1880’s three buildings were moved to what is now Main Street in Chewelah and Embrey slowly disappeared.
Timber harvest would have occurred in connection with the development of mine properties. The location of a good source of timber for framing shafts and other uses was a necessary part of early mine development. Timber harvest, the construction of adit and shaft features, talus piles, pits from the actual mine working, and possible modification of stream channels for use at the mines all would have potentially affected the environment. The ski area currently does not contain any patented mining claims.
Homesteading
The effects of homesteading on the landscape included timber harvest and the clearing of land for agricultural purposes; as well as stream modification and road building. Human-caused fire could also be considered an effect of homesteading. Historically, fire, both natural and human-caused, had an impact on the lower flanks of Chewelah Peak.
The earliest record of permanent settlement in this area is probably the Metis community in the Colville valley, dating from some time in the early 1800’s. When Fr. DeSmet came through the area in the late 1840’s he noted the community was already established. There were several homesteads recorded along the Colville river and up some of the tributaries at the time the GLO survey was conducted in the late 1800’s The heaviest homesteading activity occurred in the last decade of the 1800’s, after the GLO survey was completed, through the 1930’s, when the Resettlement Act returned many of the marginal homesteads to public land. There were several areas around the ski area that were homesteaded. Some areas that reverted to public land were around Horseshoe Lake, Upper Cottonwood, Ten Mile Creek and North Fork Calispell Creek. One half section of railroad (Burlington Northern R.R.) land was located in the ski area. This land is now held privately by the owners of 49° North Mountain Resort.
Athol Playfair, who lived up the canyon from Horseshoe Lake, dammed the little creek which flowed into a meadow on his section of land, and created a small lake, a horseshoe shaped body of water. Here he operated a fish hatchery for many years, producing Cutthroat trout eggs, which he contracted to the Department of Fish and Game. In 1974 Horseshoe Lake undermined the dam and plunged down the canyon to the Chewelah Valley, causing great damage.
Roads
The Calispell Trail was used by early explorers, missionaries and fur traders to cross from the Pend Oreille country (Calispell Valley) to the Colville River Valley. The Hudson’s Bay Company maintained a herd of horses in the Calispell Valley around 1830, according to David Chance in a study he conducted in 1973, called Influences of the Hudson’s Bay Company on the Native Cultures of the Colville District. The route taken between the horse herd and Fort Colville could have crossed at Flowery Trail Pass (4,046 ft) or near by. Travel between these two points was also noted by early explorers, David Thompson in 1811, John Work in 1826, and Sir George Simpson in 1841. In 1858 the Flowery Trail was named as the route taken by Fr. Vercruysse on his way from St. Francis Regis Mission to the Crees in Chewelah to St. Ignatius Mission on the Pend Oreille, Fr. Pierre Jean Desmet also traveled in this vicinity in 1841. A 1930 GLO Survey Plat shows a part of what is identified as “Old Calispell Trail” running through sections 20, 29, and 30 just northeast of Woodward Meadow as the location of an early trail. Since it is the nature of roads and trails to be reworked for subsequent use, there is a strong likelihood that at least parts of the Flowery Trail Road may have been one of the original trails over the mountains.
Explorers’ maps from as early as the 1850’s indicate a trail running from the Spokane River north along the east side of the Colville River Valley. With the establishment of the military at Fort Colville in 1850, this route became a military supply route known as the Colville/Walla Walla Wagon Road.
A letter written by an early settler indicates that the Cottonwood Road was built in 1867. An 1881 map of Washington Territory by the Department of the Interior shows a trail oriented along Cottonwood and Calispell Creeks.
The Chewelah Trail or Chewelah Wagon Road was designated such on the 1893 GLO plat map. It runs in roughly the vicinity of a branch of the Calispell Trail and parallel to Flowery Trail. It was also referred to as an Indian Trail in the survey notes and as such could have been a reworking of earlier trail.
The current Flowery Trail Road was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930’s. This road provides access to 49° North Mountain Resort and the Pend Oreille River Valley. McPherson Spring is located along the Flowery Trail Road and is used for drawing water in an unimproved manner by the general public (trail access only). Federal Highways Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation is currently (5/1/99) working on fundamental re-alignment and reconstruction of the Flowery Trail Road, to be completed in 2006.