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Liberty, WA
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On a drive to Leavenworth "The long way", we stopped by the town of
Liberty, which is basically a old Mining ghost town, with a rich history. |
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Liberty started out as
Meaghersville (pronounced Mearsville). Originally
it was simply called Williams Creek camp, but when the miners
moved their families into the camp, they felt they needed a
name. It was briefly
referred to as New Yakima and in 1897 the name Meaghersville
was adopted.
Thomas Meagher had discovered an old channel gold
deposit and had a prosperous mine at the location on Williams
Creek. He, together with Charles Bigney, another prosperous
miner, laid out a townsite that was name Meaghersville. In
1912 the Liberty Post Office was moved to Meaghersville and
Meaghersville gradually came to be called Liberty. |
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Today, the entire town is registered as a historic place, a
living ghost town. |
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Some of the buildings are still occupied... the one pictured
above, believe it or not, was one of the ones that seemed to
have people living there. Liberty was once bustling with not
only a fairly large contingent of miners, but their families
as well. Unlike other mining communities, ruffians were
not welcome.
About 3 and a half tons of gold was mined out of the stream
and hills around Liberty, and the town grew to a size that in
1912 Liberty had a hotel, doctor's office, school, barbershop,
and a store... the store, established in 1870, remains
below... |
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Yeah, I thought the picture above was amazing, too! I
put in the text from the marker, because I don't hardly
believe it myself, let alone TYPE it and have you all believe
me... that's amazing! The old buildings in the town were
quite incredible! Walking around, you can't help but
wonder at how different things are from when the people who
built those walls were there... its amazing.
The building behind my truck is the 'old' fire station,
which was built in the 1930's. |
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This is an Arrastra, a device for grinding ore between a drag
stone and the rock-lined bottom of a tub. The
merry-go-round looking device is a horizontal water wheel,
with buckets attached under the wheel, powered by water
pressure rather than the weight of the water, as in a
traditional "overshot" water wheel.
The picture on the left below was taken in the 1920's...
not much has changed... |
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The ore carts were pushed by hand to the grinding sites...
there often was not enough room for horses, and the terrain to
and from the mining sites weren't fit for horses to travel
safely. Some of the artifacts around town are a bit more
modern. The town still sports an active mining company,
and gold is still being pulled from them thar hills...
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We resisted the urg to head up the dirt road to Cougar Gulch,
instead putting it on our list of "things to do"... we'll be
back -- there's some hiking trails up to where the miners did
their work, and to other ghost towns in the area... |
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