Translated from 'Nordmændene i Amerika' by Martin Ulvestad. 1907. Snohomish County The Norwegian O. H. Brekhus was the first white man to settle by the Stillaquamish River. In 1858 he came to Utsalady in the company of some Indians but soon after he came here to Sylvana, where he still lives. He is now (in 1905) 79 years old. But the real settlement in this area was not established until 1874-75, as we will see. The pioneer O. B. Iversen, who we will besides find among the Norwegians in public office elsewhere in the book, has written, "Norwegians are a roaming people, they can be found almost anywhere in the world. To fight and defeat natural obstacles seems to be a characteristic of them. It is probably the viking blood. The first* and - except for the large cities - still the first Norwegian settlement in the State was in the Stillaquamish Valley in Snohomish County. As a government surveyor, I visited this region in 1874. I found the land to be fertile - and it was virgin. I bought some of it myself and told some of my friends in Dakota about it. The following year a dozen families came. They also found the land satisfactory and told their friends etc, and as a result the area is now almost overpopulated by almost exclusively Norwegians. They found something to struggle with here. Therefore they are probably happy. Some built dikes to keep the sea off the lowlands, others attacked the virgin forest which was also something to take on! Trees 20 to 30 feet in circumference - from a dozen to a half hundred per acre and between them an impenetrable underbrush. In the first years all transport was on the water up the river by canoe or rowboat. In many places there were rapids, in others the river was filled with log jams and therefore impassable. Past these jams, paths had to be cut through the forest and the boats skidded overland a half mile or more and goods carried on their backs. Several years passed before there were any real roads. It was no child's play to build roads over a landscape that was almost covered with huge fallen trees - many so thick that no saw existing at that time was long enough to cut through them. The mail came every now and then when someone fetched it from Utsalady, a half or whole day's trip depending on whether the weather and river current was favourable - or not. But these pioneer days were happy days nevertheless. All were friends an all worked to the common end. After time a priest came. A church was built and around it a small town. Roads opened, the land was cleared, steamboats came up the river, the railroad came. Civilisation with its good and evil was here. The wilderness was for the most part gone. The pioneers could now take it easy, at times they could look west with a longing. But that is the ocean." Trefoldigheds Congregation, that was established in Stanwood in 1875, was the first Norwegian congregation in Snohomish County - and in Washington State. And the County's (as well as the State's) first Norwegian church by that congregation in 1877. Nehem Christensen was the congregation's first priest. Chr. Jørgensen came to Stillaquamish as his helper as early as 1878. Christensen went back to the East for a time, while Jørgensen served as the only Norwegian Lutheran priest on the Pacific Coast. Now there are 15 Norwegian congregations and 11 churches in Snohomish County, 7 belong to The Norwegian Synod, 3 to The Lutheran Free Church, 3 to The United Church and 2 to The Methodist Church. In this county there also those Norwegians who took the political path on the Pacific Coast. See the section, 'Norwegians in public positions in America'. Norman (Post Office and Railway Station) has obtained its name from the Norwegians. *The State's first Norwegian settlers we have though (as previously mentioned) found in Island County.