This portrait of the Alpine mill was taken by Lee Pickett in November 1925 for the annual report and menu of the Alpine Lumber Company. Each year the Alpine Lumber Company would have a Thanksgiving banquet in the "Victory Hall" in Alpine. The banquet was usually the first week in December. All of the town was invited and were given menus as mementos. These menus often ran to 20 pages or more, and contained much more than just the menu and entertainment for the banquet. The menus were also abbreviated annual reports of the Alpine Lumber Company. The annual reports included births, deaths, and marriages in Alpine, reports of former Alpiners who had gone on to bigger and better things outside of Alpine, and special events that had occurred during the year. The date of the last snow, and the first snow were always a part of the report. Photos of those who had died were often included. Significant events - the burning of the mill in 1917, the "Spanish Flu" epidemic in 1918 - were a part of the report. The Alpine schools and Alpine Sunday schools found their way into the menu/annual report. In 1925 it appears that Lee Pickett, a well-known photographer from Index, Washington, was hired to photograph the entire town in November of that year. Then Argus Press in Seattle printed the menu/report including many of the photographs. Many of the surviving Alpine photographs are from this 1925 visit to Alpine by Lee Pickett.

In the upper right background is Windy Mountain. If you look carefully you can see the line of snowsheds that cover the Great Northern Railway. This portion of the Great Northern Railway is now the Iron Goat Trail. The snowsheds, except one, are long gone, but the backwalls of the snowsheds are still visible as you walk the Iron Goat Trail. If you look even more carefully it appears that there is a train, just above the the electric pole, making its way east toward Windy Point. Steam from the engine is pouring out of the snowshed as it goes east from Martin Creek. In this photo it appears that the first snowfall of the year has already hit, but there is relatively little snow for that late in the year. Photo courtesy of Skykomish Historical Society.