Life at the Paradise Mining & Milling Co. Millsite
by Doug Evans
You can’t tell it today, but directly across the Paradise Road from the Cougar Rock Campground three cabins existed for most of the first half of the twentieth century on the mill site of the Paradise Mining & Milling Company. This is where I grew up.
Until 1908 mineral claims were allowed in Mount Rainier National Park. The PM&MCo. was established about 1906 by my granddad, Ike Evans, and his brother Sherman. The cabins were built to accommodate workers employed at the mine. They were primitive but comfortable; each had a kitchen, living room, and one or two bedrooms. They had minimal electrical service, enough for a few lights, but no indoor plumbing. Two outdoor pit privies served the three cabins. A one inch iron pipeline brought water to the site from the spring that now serves the Cougar Rock Campground. The water merely poured out the end of the pipe into a pool and was carried into the cabins in galvanized buckets.
My dad, Henry “Heinie” Evans, continued working part time for the mine even though he was employed as a heavy equipment operator for the National Park Service. The cabin we occupied was two stories with three tiny bedroom spaces upstairs. A large woodshed held the winter’s supply of firewood, which was amply supplied by dead and downed trees from the mill site property. Our cabin had a small kitchen cooking stove and a circulating heater in the living room. I learned at a very young age to wield a six-foot crosscut saw and help bring in the winter’s wood.
Our nearest neighbors were the people who operated the hydroelectric plant on the Paradise River for the Rainier National Park Company and the Park Headquarters community at Longmire. I ran the mile and a half trail to Longmire to play with the kids there until I had every inch of that trail memorized. Adding to the excitement of this run was the NPS garbage incinerator along the way that attracted large numbers of bears rummaging through the piles of garbage awaiting incineration. I had learned to make noise so as not to surprise them; other than that we simply ignored each other. The bears were much too interested in their garbage to pay any attention to me.
PHOTO: Our cabin on the millsite of the Paradise Mining & Milling Co., ca 1934-35.
