The Pioneers of Dog Fish Bay

Abstract

by Rangvald Kvelstad 6 The Pioneers of Dog Fish Bay Only Canada FOUR and years the United after the States boundary was set between at the Canada and the United States was set at the 49th Parallel, the first Norwegian arrived in the Pacific Northwest. It was 1849, the year of the great gold rush to California, and his name was Zachariah Martin Toftezen . Exact details of his trek are wanting, but it is known that at age twenty-eight he had shipped out as a sailor and landed in New Orleans. Thomas Ostenson Stine in his book Scandinavians on the Pacific (1900) says of him: "He was a pioneer of heart and courage - chivalrous Martin Toftezen. He had drifted around the Horn on a ship, and was tossed into the mouth of Puget Sound, where the breath of the deep calmed to a gentle zephyr, and the wings of speed flapped in disconsolation ." In a less flowery vein, Alice Essex in her Stanwood Story (1975) says of his landing on Whidbey Island: "Enroute, he met Col. Ulrich Freud of Switzerland, who was also seeking a land of promise .... they were joined by C. W. Sumner, a Yankee from New England with the same yearning. The three teamed up, hired a sloop, and via Indian canoe and guide found themselves 196 PIONEERS OF DOG FISH BAY in Crescent Harbor, where they landed at a spot called 'Big Springs' in December, 1849. After climbing to the top of a high hill, Toftezen pronounced the view 'the most glorious on earth' and shouted to his companions, 'Our search is over - we have at last found our earthly paradise.'" The "paradise" Toftezen saw was from a hill now overlooking the town of Oak Harbor. Alice Essex continues her story: "Stirred with a tinge of wanderlust, Toftezen left his Paradise three times, but always returned to the island he loved, where he died in 1901 at the age of 80. He was buried in an old cemetery in Oak Harbor, the place that was his first love in the West." The remains of the first Norwegian settler in what is now the state of Washington were consigned to a forgotten grave in an abandoned cemetery. Thirty years later compassionate fellow Norwegians on Whidbey Island and in the Stanwood community were instrumental in having the body moved to the Lutheran cemetery in Stanwood. A marker was erected over his grave by the Pioneer Historical Society of the Stillaquamish Valley and the Sons of Norway. Suitably, the monument was dedicated by the future King Olav V of Norway, on May 27, 1939. The founders of what was to become the city of Seattle followed Toftezen by two years, in 1851. The Arthur Denny party came over the Oregon Trail from Illinois to Portland, and then by ship to the Puget Sound. They landed on what is now known as Alki Point. In the party was Mary Denny's newborn baby boy. Eighty years later he was still alive and well. Rolland Denny had spanned the years from the Indian cayuse to the automobile , from the canoe to the airplane. He saw Seattle grow from one roofless cabin in the wilderness to a city of towering buildings. When the Norwegians moved into the Pacific North197 Rangvald Kvelstad west they found a land very similar in climate and scenery to their homeland. The surprising difference was the huge stands of big trees. The forests provided them with a livelihood until they could clear a piece of land and begin to grow their food. Dozens of sawmills sprang up, some the largest in the world, and the timber products found a worldwide market. Amidst this abundance of timber, game, waterfowl, fish, shellfish, wild berries, and fruit lived the children of Nature, the Indians. At first the white man posed no threat to their livelihood and the relationship was amicable. There were here none of the fierce military confrontations that shook the Midwest, though the Indians' lack of a sense of ownership of land was later to create problems. The Indian tribes limited their activities within fairly well defined areas. A tribe would usually number only a few hundred souls...