Conconully State Park History

Conconully State Park is a favorite camping and fishing place in the arid transition zone of north central Washington. The park is set between the town of Conconully, WA and the north shoreline of the Conconully Reservoir, which stores water from Salmon Creek for flood control and irrigation purposes.

Indigenous Lands

The park lies within the traditional territories of Interior Salish people whose present-day descendants include members of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. For thousands of years these foothills of the Cascade Mountains and the rivers that flow through them have provided habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their cultures. Various explanations have been given as to the meaning of the place name, “Conconully,” with some consensus that it is an Interior Salish language word meaning “money hole.” Historian Edmond S. Meany recorded that an Indigenous hunter “could get a beaver there any day and use it as money at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Okanogan…because the basin now occupied by the government reservoir was a great beaver ground, and beaver skins were money at the old trading post.”

Members of the tribes occupying this area were not represented at the Walla Walla Treaty Council held by Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens on June 9, 1855. Subsequently, an Executive Order of President Rutherford B. Hayes on April 19, 1879, created the Columbia (or “Moses”) Reservation, roughly covering the same area as today’s Okanogan County west of the Okanogan River extending southwest to the north shore of Lake Chelan. Non-tribal miners living in the area protested the order. On July 4, 1884, the reservation was dissolved, and the land returned to the public domain of the federal government. On May 1, 1886, the area was formally opened for mining claims and settlement.

Mining Boom and Bust

The land at the heart of today’s Conconully State Park passed into private ownership as a patented placer mining claim, the “Golden Sand,” to James F. DePue, Thomas Lowthian and William Yeargin on March 1, 1890, as part of the Salmon River Mining District. Placer mines obtain precious metals such as gold or silver by separating them from the streambed sand where they have been deposited. The patented land was subsequently platted as a subdivision with streets, blocks and building lots as a real estate venture.

Washington State Geologist George A. Bethune visited the area the same year and wrote in his annual report that the Salmon River District “is the most accessible of all the state’s mineral districts, and its prospects as a great ore producer are of a most flattering character….the goaheadativeness of the Salmon River miner is proverbial in Northeastern Washington…” His assistant, Eugene Ricksecker, was as impressed by the landscape as the mineral wealth, writing that the area was “composed of beautiful glades opening out into natural parks, presenting long vistas carpeted with luxuriant green grass and bright hued flowers.”

The Sherman Silver Purchase Act, enacted by the US Congress on July 14, 1890, increased the amount of silver the federal government was required to purchase and mint into coins to 4.5 million ounces per month. This gave a boost to silver mining and prospecting in the Conconully area and throughout the western states. An unforeseen consequence was a large increase in the amount of circulating dollars without growth in the government’s gold stocks to back up the money. This led to a precipitous drop in the market price of silver, which along with global economic trends, brought about the Panic of 1893. Over 15,000 companies and 500 banks in the United States failed and unemployment rose to nearly 20%. Mining operations in the Conconully area went bust. Things got even worse when the town was devastated by a storm and flood on May 27, 1894, that destroyed more than 42 buildings and killed one resident.

Irrigation Dreams

With the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, the U.S. Congress passed the Reclamation Act on June 17, 1902. The law used funds from the sale of federal public lands for the “construction of irrigation works for the reclamation of arid lands.”

Eager to benefit from the newly established Reclamation Service, Okanogan newspaper editor S.T. Sterling sent a letter and petition signed by 200 local residents stating that 50,000 to 75,000 acres of arid land was waiting to be reclaimed by an “inexpensive reservoir.” On March 3, 1903, Frederick Newell, Chief Engineer of the Reclamation Service ordered a survey of the project. On October 23, 1904, engineer Charles E. Hewitt recommended against the project because construction costs would be very high due to the remoteness of the site from rail transportation. Local proponents were undeterred and traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby Secretary of the Interior Ethan A. Hitchcock. On December 2, 1905, Hitchcock authorized up to $500,000 to build the Okanogan irrigation project and Conconully Dam as the first federal reclamation project in Washington. The project was planned to provide irrigation water to 7,206 acres. The Reclamation Service acquired the lands necessary to accommodate the Conconully Dam and reservoir, including all of the land in the original “Golden Sand” claim. Structures built during Conconully’s mining boom, including a schoolhouse, were demolished.

Construction of Conconully Dam

Engineers addressed the supply of materials to build the dam in its remote location with a clever solution. A three and one half mile water flume was built to divert water from local creeks to rock pits on Peacock Mountain above the dam site. Rock blasted and dug from the pits was then loaded into the flume to be carried by water 3,000 feet down a four percent grade to the construction site. The flume could move rocks weighing up to 250 pounds. Work proceeded over three years, with breaks in winter when it was too cold for water to run in the flume and in the summer when the creeks could not supply enough water to transport the rocks. Assembled over a puddled core of impermeable clay, the finished dam was 1,025 feet long and 70 feet high. Construction was completed in July 1910.

There was a notable delay in July 1909, when the 17 workers on the site called a general strike. They demanded a fifty-cent daily increase in pay and cookies once a week. They settled for the cookies and a twenty-five-cent pay increase.

Creating a Park by the Lake

Once water was flowing from the dam through canals to the apple orchards it was designed to water, the Washington State Parks Committee agreed to lease lands at the head of the lake (the former “Golden Sand” claim) from the Reclamation Service for park and recreation purposes.

At the urging of local cattleman and state legislator Robert M. French, the Washington State Legislature appropriated money for the development of facilities at Conconully State Park in 1945, and the camp and picnic facilities were opened to the public in the summer of 1946. At the same time, an historic log cabin was moved from John Perkins’ Ranch to the park.

The building had served as the first courthouse in Okanogan County in March 1888, when the three county commissioners appointed by Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens met to organize the county government. According to Commissioner Guy Waring, a delegation of “whores, thieves, and drunkards, and other notorious citizens” of Ruby City gathered outside, making it “difficult for anybody inside to hear himself speak.”  The commissioners selected Ruby City as the county seat. In an election later in the year, county voters chose to move the county seat to Conconully. The cabin was reconstructed in 1978 by the Youth Conservation Corps.

Tragically, John Perkins was shot and killed by his neighbor E.E. Hess in 1901 in a water and land dispute. Arrested and charged with murder, Hess was exonerated by the trial jury, citing testimony that Perkins was “proved to be a violent tempered man.”

Swimming facilities were built at the park in 1968, but fluctuating reservoir levels mean that swimming experiences can’t always be counted on.