J.A. Mitchell Family Model T Outing, 1912
James Andrew Mitchell was born in Wroxeter, Ontario on October 24, 1859 to Andrew Mitchell and Mary Elliott, both natives of Scotland. He worked on his father's farm as a boy, then moved to Michigan at age 21. He came west from the Saginaw Valley of Michigan in 1883, with stops in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. In Washington State, he logged for W.S. Jameson in Port Gamble, then "in 1885 he worked at rafting on the log boom at Utsalady" on Camano Island.
"I came to Anacortes in 1892, stayed here until 1895, and went to Vancouver," Mitchell told a reporter in later years, spending two years on Fidalgo Bay working at the same log boom he later operated. According to the article, "he had purchased these boom grounds prior to going to Vancouver. It consists of many acres of tide land surrounded by a 'boom' into which logs are dumped and stored until sold to the mills." Mitchell said, "I came back to Anacortes in 1900 and I've been here ever since."
J.A. Mitchell served as the Washington State deputy log scaler from 1885 to 1892. He served two terms as Skagit County Commissioner beginning in 1908. He married Martha Ellen Dyer, of Kansas, on January 1, 1894 in Seattle and they were the parents of a son, Walter Mitchell, and six daughters: Eleanor (Barth), Beatrice (Gallant), Elaine (Gallant), Ruth (Spaulding), Pauline & Katherine (unmarried as of 1926). A 1904 Anacortes American article reported: "Mr. Mitchell is building and decorating day by day one of the prettiest and most scenic homes in Skagit County."
Prior to Mitchell's arrival in Anacortes, Griffin and Howard logged the shores of the island. The July 24, 1885 issue of the Northwest Enterprise reported: "W. Griffin has four hundred thousand feet of logs in the water at the head of Fidalgo Bay, awaiting towing to Utsalady. They are pronounced first class logs and Mr. Griffin will be reasonably rewarded for his Spring's work. Mr. Howard has been helping him and they had a light crew."
The most consistent and enduring use of the railroad to Anacortes was the transport of logs from Cascade Range forest lands to the booms and mills of Fidalgo Island. The Anacortes American noted that "J.A. Mitchell scaled 44,000,000 feet of logs in the year 1908." The pace of log dumping in Fidalgo Bay continued for decades to come, and by 1919 the operation required "a daily train of from thirty to thirty-five cars." An Anacortes American article of 1892 decried the shipping of Skagit County logs to outside mills: "Why is it that Skagit county, with her wonderful timber, which has for years been the main source of supply for a number of large Puget Sound mills, has not a large mill of her own," and thus "the people of Skagit county are not alive to their own interests and are merely tossing sheckles into the coffers of the metropoli of neighboring counties."
The Mitchell Boom operated into the 1960s and remained a key component of the process of converting logs to lumber in Anacortes.
- Anacortes Museum Historical Archive
