Friends Landing, the Blue Slough

June, 2020

Let me start out by admitting that I never could find out why Blue Slough was named Blue Slough. There was no information about the name on any sign in the area. I talked with several people in the nearest two towns (Montesano and Cosmopolis) … no one knew where Blue Slough got its name. Maybe the water was so blue when a name was needed, coupled with the fact that “blue” rhymes with “slough”, and maybe there you have it … Blue Slough.

Even though I can’t explain the name for you, I have some really pretty photos and some interesting information to share about what I learned about the Blue Slough. Again, it’s information that I didn’t know that I didn’t know!

On my way from the campground to the Blue Slough, I needed to cross to the south side of the Chehalis River. The closest and easiest way to do that was over the bridge below.

The old bridge was being completely replaced with a new bridge. While they were building the new bridge, they were keeping a section of the old bridge intact (and had added supports to it so it was safe). There was just one lane of traffic across the old bridge. With that cement truck coming directly at me, I was happy to sit patiently at the stop light and wait until the light turned green.

And then with a green light, it was on down the road, across the bridge, and then along the south side of the Chehalis River to the Blue Slough parking lot.

I thought it might be crowded on such a beautiful afternoon. Hmmm, not so much. That’s my big white truck in the photo above. I was here for about an hour and never saw another soul.

Here’s a map (above) of the Chehalis River Surge Plain. It’s very marshy land with hundreds of big and little waterways running for many miles, twisting and turning. Friends Landing campground is off the map to the right. The red arrow above points to the parking lot and access to the Blue Slough. I was right there where that red arrow is pointing.

The photo above was found on the internet, as was the photo below, both showing just a tiny bit of the circuitous waterways that run throughout this land around the Chehalis River.

There are stories of people going kayaking or canoeing here and getting thoroughly lost. Trust me, I stayed on land for my visit.

Let’s get back to that parking lot, and my access point to the Blue Slough.

There wasn’t much of anything to do here except launch your canoe or kayak or rowboat using this boat ramp, but it was a beautiful place to enjoy the sun, listen to the birds, and just look around.

There were signs posted warning about the dangers of mud. You can see why in the photo above.

In the map up above near the top of this blog post, you saw that I was standing at a sharp corner of the slough.

The photo below is looking to the right.

The water was very slowly flowing towards me. I could hardly see it moving, it was so slow.

Then I turned to the left-hand leg of that sharp corner of the slough, where the water had come around the corner and was moving oh so slowly away from me.

Oh my word, look at all of those pilings. Had there been a dock here? But the pilings are on both sides of the slough. The land on the left side of this portion of the slough is dry land. A road runs along the slough there. But the “land” on the right side of this portion of the slough is marsh, with no road to it and no connection to dry land. Hmmmm.

The two photos below are of the pilings on the left (land) side of that portion of the slough.

 

And the two photos below are of the pilings on the right (marshy) side of that portion of the slough.

 

Why are all those pilings there? Two very long docks? The slough was much too shallow for ships to enter. Two trestles of some sort? But why would one set of pilings be over there along the marshy land where it accesses nothing?

This time, for this question, I found the answer. 🙂 The pilings were part of the logging industry here.

The aerial photo below shows a better close-up of the small area where I was, inside that very large surge plain. The red star is where I was standing. The Blue Slough flowed past me, then into the Chehalis River. The Chehalis River flowed to the left, to the sizable city of Aberdeen, where the lumber mills were (and still are).

A long time ago, there was a train track along the slough at the bottom of the photo above, right about where the white line is. Timber would be harvested up hill and be brought by train to the slough and dumped sideways off the railroad cars into the water of the slough. Then lumberjacks or “boom men” would arrange the logs into rafts or booms, by walking on the logs that were floating in the slough and by tying the logs (and the rafts) … to the pilings! There were usually so many logs dumped at one time that the logs completely filled the slough from one side to the other. So there were pilings on both sides of the slough.

The postcard above shows a photo of logs being gathered into a boom on the Wishkah River, which flows into the Chehalis River closer to Aberdeen than where the Blue Slough enters the Chehalis River. The pilings allowed the men to keep the logs in place until they could be rafted together, and then to keep the rafts/booms in position until they were ready to take them down river to Aberdeen, and the pilings kept the logs in the center portion of the slough so there was room for boat access on both sides of the slough.

You can still see hundreds of pilings by using Google Earth and going to this area of the Blue Slough and zooming in to the waterway. You can still see hundreds of pilings on the Wishkah River too.

So there you have it. That’s why those pilings were there. I thought that was pretty cool.

On the other hand, while I was driving back to the Friends Landing campground and to my little white trailer, I kept thinking about all of those processes of logging … what it took to install those pilings, what that work cost, and how well the pilings were installed since they are still there today. And I thought about being there to watch hundreds and thousands of huge logs being dumped into that slough all at once, and I was sure hoping no one was on the water at that time … what a tidal wave!

And of course all of that made me think about the men who walked the logs when the logs were in the water. That was an extrememly dangerous profession. Logs would roll and turn on you without warning. You could break a leg or an ankle, or be drowned really quickly. The men wore caulk boots (pronounced “cork” boots) that were leather nail-soled boots for traction. But even with boots like that, you had to have perfect balance and be constantly alert for motion to the right, to the left, for motion from a log suddenly submerging, or a submerged log suddenly rising.

The road below was the route I took from the Blue Slough back to the campground. It sure looked like how one of those boom men might have felt out there on those logs.

For more info, here’s a DNR (Department of Natural Resources) document that has more information about this area. https://www.dnr.wa.gov/publications/amp_chehalis_2.pdf