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The Earl of Blewett Pass - Bonus Episode
14 Plays2 months ago
Locals still whisper about Tom Douglas, the so-called Earl of Blewett Pass, who lived like a recluse and died under circumstances no one could fully explain. Some say he carried secrets from a life he left behind; others swear he hid something valuable in the hills before he died. Whatever the truth, his story still lingers in the pines and shadows of the Pass.
Very special shoutout to the Leavenworth Echo from 15 September 1905 edition for the wonderful story on lost laundry!
⚠️ Content Warning: This episode includes references to abuse, trauma, and death. Listener discretion is advised.
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Full source list and supplemental materials are available on our website at Beneaththeevergreens.com.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Update
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Jess. And I'm Anna. You are listening to Beneath the Evergreens bonus episode. Welcome, everyone. We are going to sporadically, maybe more than sporadically, start doing bonus episodes.
00:00:16
Speaker
this is going the first one. Congratulations. Congratulations. Also, we're doing this podcast in person today for the first time. So we might get a little wily. Shenanigans may ensue.
00:00:29
Speaker
All of the shenanigans. Also making eye contact for the first time. And it's rough. It's real awkward.
00:00:38
Speaker
But it's going to be fun
Introducing Tom Douglas, Earl of Blewett Pass
00:00:39
Speaker
day. So for this bonus episode, I'm going to tell you about an earl. Oh. An earl of Blewett Pass. Do where Blewett Pass is? I do know where Blewett Pass is.
00:00:50
Speaker
I did not think Blewett Pass was worthy of an URL. Apparently it is. And I'm going to tell you all about it. So don't you worry your head.
00:00:59
Speaker
So Bluewood Pass, for those like me who didn't know where this was until you look it up on a map and you're like, oh I've been there. It's tucked away in the central cascades of Washington State and has always been a place of movement.
00:01:14
Speaker
It's got more of a rugged landscape with thick forests, steeper beans, but it's very rich with minerals. So this drew a lot of prospectors and homesteaders.
00:01:25
Speaker
and people throughout the late 1800s into the early 1900s. So that is the timeframe we're looking at for this particular earldom, if you will. So among some of these settlers was a person, ah man named Tom Douglas, and he was a very mysterious man o syria whose life was very interesting and his death was even more interesting.
00:01:55
Speaker
He actually is one of the first, I would say, local legends of the Blewett area.
The History and Challenge of Blewett Pass
00:02:02
Speaker
So that we're going to talk about today, Tom Douglas, and how people came to know him as the Earl of Blewett Pass.
00:02:12
Speaker
Okay, I'm excited. Yes, yes, yes. So first I'm going to go into why people were moving to Blewett Pass, just because, history is fun, and I didn't realize that Blewett Pass was... such a destination in the 1870s to the 1900s i knew this area you know homesteaders went there but i didn't realize that it was such a magnet for the mining community oh interesting yeah the way that I know Blewett is yeah on the way to Wenatchee. a family of Wenatchee will go through Blewett sometimes.
00:02:42
Speaker
But it's pretty remote and even like today there's not many people there. It's all a pass through destination. Yeah, so I guess Blewett Pass in the 1800s was a busy mining area.
00:02:53
Speaker
especially after there was a goal someone struck gold in the 1870s and that's when it really really grew and there's also the blewit mining district that was established in the 1870s and through the 1880s and that drew a lot of the prospectors who were wanting to be rich the reason why this place Drew such a crowd is because it's so steep and so remote that only the toughest of the tough miners could sustain life here. Right. So life, it wasn't easy. People who came here faced lots and lots of isolation, lots and lots of harsh winters.
00:03:34
Speaker
And hardly any infrastructure. So when you come here, you're essentially building your own shanty and that's what you're living out of at all times. Even in the dead of winter when there's six feet of snow, you're kind of buried into your own cabin. Yeah.
00:03:50
Speaker
So it's very, very... desolate isolated, isolated, so only the toughest of the tough could come here. So besides mining, the past connected the Wenatchee Valley and the Kittitas Basin, attracting ranchers and loggers and small business owners throughout the times, but still Blewett Pass is still pretty remote.
00:04:11
Speaker
So for outsiders, immigrants, strifters, and people look looking for a fresh start, this also offered some appeal, right? Because it's got that isolation. not a lot of people
The Mysterious Life of Tom Douglas
00:04:21
Speaker
know you. And you have, you know, your chances to kind of make a name to your name for yourself, but also maybe reestablish your identity.
00:04:30
Speaker
And that is why people say Tom Douglas came to settle here. Because he didn't really tell people where he came from when he first landed. Right? So no one knew exactly where he came from. Many locals believed he was born into a noble British british family because he had very polished manners. He had an unusual accent and sometimes he liked to drop hints about his life abroad.
00:04:57
Speaker
So he never directly corrected anyone, but he definitely leaned into the rumor that he was Earl and forsook his earldom and came to blew it past to just kind of chill and hang out is what they were thinking. I had a full friend of my husband's.
00:05:18
Speaker
yeah He joined like a gym and he had an Australian accent. And they're like, where are you from? He's like, oh, I just got here from Sydney. yeah And he has an accent from Sydney. They all assume he's Australian, right? yeah He never corrects anyone.
00:05:34
Speaker
But as the months go by, his accent kind of fades away. And then he's like, yeah, I'm going home for Christmas. And they're like, oh, like, so somehow it came up where he was going. And he's like, oh, Ohio.
00:05:45
Speaker
I'm from Ohio. What?
00:05:50
Speaker
That's kind of crazy. I feel like I need to investigate this person. Good night, Nate. Actually, I'm just going to go home to the ranch in Ohio. Yeah, it just slowly drifts and then it comes out like, oh no, I'm actually very, very normal. but It sounds like his accent would kind of come back when he was talking note to women specifically.
00:06:10
Speaker
That is a very way interesting way to pick up ladies. Right? Right? It's an don't know, an interesting catch. like he's gonna keep it up there we like What happens when he when he gets married, he's just going to drop it?
00:06:24
Speaker
Let's go home for something. Oh, oh. Why does no one else in your family have this accent? And why are we in Ohio?
00:06:36
Speaker
I thought I was going to eat some Vegemate, and now I'm over here eating corn. I'm confused. Ohio? Corn? Corn in Ohio.
00:06:44
Speaker
I don't know. Geography hard. Mines. There's mines. Okay. Circling back. Great connection point. Yes. So Thomas Douglas actually became known as the Earl of Blewett Pass.
00:06:57
Speaker
So Douglas is believed to have arrived in this area in the early nineteen hundreds He lived in a small cabin, supporting himself through odd jobs, prospecting, and seasonal labor.
00:07:08
Speaker
Though private, he was a very private person. he had He was known for a lot of quirks. So he often wore really formal clothing, like suit tie, hot like top hat. oh And may I remind you?
00:07:24
Speaker
for a wash There's no infrastructure. So old boy's walking around with dress shoes on in the mud and rain and ice and oh my go on the moss.
00:07:35
Speaker
I don't
00:07:38
Speaker
He also read aloud to himself. So people would be walking down this road and then all of a sudden they'd stumble upon this man reading Shakespeare to the winds. Jesse, I do fear that's something that you would do one day. thought For sure. While hugging a tree.
00:07:55
Speaker
He also carried himself with almost a regal calm.
Rumors and Legends of Tom Douglas
00:08:01
Speaker
To me, this is striking of, serial killer energy, but, I mean, don't It's each their Didn't know any better back then. So people found him very, very polite. However, he was very distant. He didn't have a lot of connections with people.
00:08:14
Speaker
Maybe he did with ghosts, considering that he would read aloud to things. But anyways, he also revealed very little about his past, and speculation grew more and more. Again, he had an interesting accent. He also dressed like I don't know, formal figure. So that was kind of interesting.
00:08:34
Speaker
a lot of people suspected he was hiding a title or he was running from a scandal or maybe he lost his fortune and now he had to go into hiding. But the biggest turning point in Tom Douglas's, you know, life was actually his unexpected death.
00:08:51
Speaker
Ooh. Yes. So stories differ, but the most common version is that a traveler hunter... noticed something unusual near Douglas's cabin and went to check.
00:09:02
Speaker
When he was looking inside, they saw Tom Douglas laying on the bed. he They thought he was dead. He was like stiff as a board, just lying there, but the but he had a lantern going.
00:09:15
Speaker
So he was laying there and the guy could see that his eyes were open, but he was lying on the bed. Then his eyes start blinking rapidly. So he's laying on the bed there, there is light on an oil lamp.
00:09:29
Speaker
He is perfectly rigid, but his eyes just start blinking rapidly.
00:09:36
Speaker
So is a position no. So the guy runs into town is like, I think something's up with this guy. I think we got figure something out. I don't know. So him and the postmaster come back to the house.
00:09:49
Speaker
They, they open the door, they go inside. It turns out he had a stroke. Oh, potentially he had a stroke. Some say it was poison, but historians are thinking that he actually had a stroke.
00:10:02
Speaker
And so he did live for a couple more days, but he eventually died. And this is where a lot of the rumors start going on because just a couple days before this,
00:10:17
Speaker
Tom Douglas had a whole bunch of quote-unquote friends over. He invited some guys from the town to come over and play poker. Well, he wasn't using normal poker chips for this game. He was actually using gold coins.
00:10:31
Speaker
Coins that range from $5 coins up to $25 coins. And they played all night with these coins. And these men were like... look at him over.
00:10:43
Speaker
At the end of the game, Douglas gathers them all up, puts them in a chest, and slides them under his bed. They all go home, and then a couple days later, this he's found with potentially a stroke and then soon dies.
00:10:59
Speaker
What's interesting is that after the poker game, one of his neighbors, which this is why I think it might be lore, because Tom Douglas lives on like an isolated property in the middle of nowhere.
00:11:14
Speaker
Where's your neighbor? Yeah. Unless this neighbor is one of the poker guys that was like, I'm actually going to watch his house to see when he leaves so I can steal this chest. Right? So apparently this neighbor or ghost, I don't know, saw him leave his house and bury the chest in a patch, a grass patch next to his house.
00:11:36
Speaker
And You're telling me you're burying a chest? Yeah. You're not going to wait until there's no lights in the air? Well, there is no light. it that's it yeah Yeah. Like if youre you see a light from your neighbor's house, right? Like, okay, I'm wait till they're done. And then I'm gonna go bury this in my loot.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah. that's weird. Yes. So apparently he buried this chest, but there was chest at some point under his bed or buried in the backyard.
00:12:04
Speaker
What really matters is that when he was found, there was no chest. There was no chest under the bed. There was no chest anywhere around.
00:12:15
Speaker
There was nothing. They actually had a team of people go out and dig up the area around his house to try to find this chest because apparently it was pirate's gold essentially.
Tom Douglas's Legacy and Local Folklore
00:12:25
Speaker
After Douglas's death, the legend of his supposed aristocratic past only grew.
00:12:31
Speaker
No relatives ever came to claim his belongings and silence really fueled more questions because one thing I didn't tell you is he would randomly just disappear.
00:12:42
Speaker
He would go to Leavenworth and right catch a train, be gone for an X amount of time and then come back with wads of cash and throw money around in Leavenworth and then go back to his cabin.
00:12:52
Speaker
All well dressed like Dapper Dan. Like... just a really weird life especially for someone who's claiming to be a prospector yeah so no one came to identify his belongings uh the silence was really fueling a lot of conversations about who he really was what was he running for did he really have treasure are people just making stuff up so it's sparking a lot of theories sparking a lot of treasure hunts over time tom douglas actually became a fixture of local for folklore He's actually in the museum of in Wiannatchee, named as the Earl of Blewett Pass.
00:13:31
Speaker
And he is actually one of the major symbols of the frontier at this museum. So his mysteriousness, his solitary way of life, and his unforgettable treasure has become lore and history within history. blew it past.
00:13:48
Speaker
I had no idea that he that this was in existence and apparently people are still looking for his treasure. Really? Yeah. They think that it still exists and that someone, he just happened to bury it in a place where someone in the dark didn't quite capture where it was at and they still think that treasure's out there. So every once in a while people will go out where they think his cabin was and and go treasure hunting.
00:14:11
Speaker
That's super cool.
Tangents and Episode Conclusion
00:14:12
Speaker
Yes. So short story but kind of interesting yeah yeah honestly weird thought but like was leavenworth poppin town then it was actually i was gonna read you if you go if can i read you it is a popping town and they had their actual their own newspaper wasn't it still a bavarian village yes it they they built it oh no no when did they start building it i can't speak to that
00:14:40
Speaker
I can't remember if it was built to be a Bavarian village. I think it was after the mining industry came to kind of a halt that they decided to convert it to more of a Bavarian town.
00:14:54
Speaker
i mean But as i was looking for Tom Douglas's obituary, because I wanted to see what it said for the time, and I stumbled across this story about lost laundry. This is a huge tangent, but can I just read this to you? Because it's crazy to me.
00:15:09
Speaker
They published this in an actual newspaper. Okay, so the title is A Story About Lost Laundry. So D.R. McCambly is a very absent-minded man.
00:15:22
Speaker
For the past year or more, a boy about 10 years old has always called for and returned his laundry. Not long ago, he had collected his own, his brother's, and his nephew's laundry together, and seeing a boy he thought was the one that always called for his laundry, he called out to him. He said, wait a moment, son. i want to give you something.
00:15:42
Speaker
He handed the boy a bottle of laundry and said, you take this home now. And the boy did this that he took it home and that was the last he ever saw of his laundry.
00:15:53
Speaker
Mr. McCambly afterwards learned that he had mistaken this boy. And perhaps this this report may help him to find his clothes.
00:16:09
Speaker
Could you imagine posting that in as a plea for help in the local newspaper?
00:16:17
Speaker
God. So anyways, I couldn't find Tom Douglas's obituary, but I did find lost laundry. po
00:16:27
Speaker
So yeah, Leavenworth was the main hub for people in Kittitas County, Wenatchee. It was a major city, quote unquote. Gotcha. but there Yeah. Cool. but That's my story.
00:16:38
Speaker
That's really cool. Thank you. I feel this podcast is slowly turning into like cool Washington history. I know. And I'm here for it. I think, well, next week I'm not going to next week I'm not going to do true crime, but I think that the week after that I'm going to do. Okay.
00:16:55
Speaker
Okay. Dew one that's a little crusty and musty and a little bloody. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But that's it for today's dive into the dark corners of the Pacific Northwest.
00:17:09
Speaker
If you loved our stories or shivered a little, be sure to subscribe and follow so you don't miss what's lurking beneath the evergreens next time. Thanks for joining us on Beneath the Evergreens. We appreciate you diving into the mysteries with us.
00:17:20
Speaker
Until next time, keep your eyes open and your doors locked.