George Green Arnold

George Arnold was a West Virginia native who was the only one of his brothers to enlist for the Union cause in the Civil War. He fought under General Grant at Vicksburg and was in General Sherman's march to the sea. He married Marry [America] Nutter (Davis), a widow with 3 children and they had three more together. They moved to Cass county, Missouri and then to Seattle, Washington in 1872, where he experienced failure twice after building a sawmill with Al Spalding on Gamble Creek and later in the mining business. In 1883 they moved their family to Lyman, Skagit County, Washington, which he noted was then only the site of Kiement's trading post for barter with Indians.

According to the 1906 Illustrated History, he filed a homestead of 160 acres and made a farm of it and leased the hop ranch after A.R. Williamson died. (We have not yet determined exactly where his ranch was, so we hope that a reader might know.) At that point, there were still no roads; only a trail passed in front of his house. He cleared much of his land with six yoke of cattle and brought the first horses to Lyman. He then raised hops on his own cleared place and then became a major Skagit County producer, twice making $15,000 from the hops.