Seattle Now & Then: Auburn Sweet Auburn (revised!)

(click photos to enlarge)

THEN: Auburn’s Main Street decorated for its Aug. 14, 1909,  “Good Old Days” celebration.  Photo courtesy of the White River Valley Museum.
THEN: Auburn’s Main Street decorated for its Aug. 14, 1909, “Good Old Days” celebration. Photo courtesy of the White River Valley Museum.
NOW: Two Main Street landmarks, on the right the Tourist Hotel (now without its original tower,) and the Jones Block  (behind the letters ELC in “welcome”) have survived the century.
NOW: Two Main Street landmarks, on the right the Tourist Hotel (now without its original tower) and the Jones Block (behind the letters ELC in “welcome”) have survived the century.

Auburn was platted in 1886 and incorporated five years later, but not as Auburn.  Rather, the town was named in honor of a Lt. W.A. Slaughter, who in 1855 was slain near here in a battle with Indians during the war then between the settlers and some of the Puget Sound indigene.  For obvious reasons the name would be hard to keep.  For instance, local wits might meet visitors arriving by train with the greeting “This way to the Slaughter House.”  The proprietors of the city’s hotel, the Ohio House, turned queasy imagining the uncomfortable and unprofitable future they seemed guaranteed as Slaughterians.

The community’s arbiters of taste soon proposed a new name taken from the opening line of Oliver Goldsmith’s poem “The Deserted Village.”  It goes, “Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain.” When a few old-timers objected to the change, the contraction “Slauburn” was suggested.  It was a failure in the art of compromise.  So in 1893, Auburn it was and remains.  (It may be noted that Kitsap County was also originally named for Lt. Slaughter.)

Here is Auburn’s Main Street looking east from the Northern Pacific Railroad tracks in 1909.  Patricia Cosgrove, director of The White River Valley Museum, explains that the historical photo was probably taken from a boxcar.  For the centennial repeat Jean Sherrard used both a stepladder and his trusty ten-foot extension pole.  [Below this extended caption for the 1909 view we have attached another look down Main Street from some time later.  How much later, you can estimate by the cars and other clues – like the signs.  Consider it a research challenge.  A third photo from this intersection will also be included – once we can find it.  Although temporarily misplaced it was, we are confident, photographed on May 22, 1901.]

Cosgrove explains that the date on the banner – “Welcome Aug. 14” – refers to that year’s Auburn Good Old Days.  The director of “the best local history museum in the state” (at least as ranked in 2007 by the Washington State Visitor Guide) adds, “Isn’t it nice that it is an even 100 years ago.  Note how the flags still have only 46 stars.  They don’t show the addition of Arizona and New Mexico to the union in 1912. The photograph also shows Main Street with a packed earth surface.  It was paved in 1912.”

This photograph and many others are part of a community canon of images taken by Auburn pioneer Arthur Ballard – a collection that has recently come into the hands of White River Valley Museum, which is now showing them.  The exhibit title lists the three historic names for Auburn: “Ilalko, then Slaughter, now Auburn: Historic Photographs of Place by Pioneer Arthur Ballard.”  Be aware or, if you prefer, concerned.  This exhibit runs only through this coming Sunday April 12, 2009.

Jean Sherrard took his photograph recently while on a museum tour with his family that stopped at Auburn but wound up in Tacoma at the Washington State Historic Museum.  There he saw for the first time that museum’s standing exhibit of his own work with “Washington Then and Now.” It was drawn from the book of the same name that Jean and I completed in 2007.

Of all the farming towns in the White/Green River Valley, Auburn was chosen by the Northern Pacific in 1913 to be its “boxcar terminus” where freight trains were “broken down” and rejoined over the 50 miles of track laid there for that purpose.  With the 24-stall Roundhouse, or locomotive repair shop, the previously quiet farm town became an often-boisterous division point for the Northern Pacific.  Stockyards were added in 1942 and one year later the Army installed a Depot in Auburn as well.  Boeing arrived in 1965.

The same prospect, almost, a few years later...
The same prospect (almost) ca. 1920s
An elevated shot taken May 22, 1901
An elevated shot taken May 22, 1901
Same day, taken from street level
Same day, taken from street level
Our earliest view east from the N.P. tracks - or above them - down Main Street.  We give it a circa date with wild speculation - ca.1895
Our earliest view east from the N.P. tracks - or above them - down Main Street. We give it a circa date with wild speculation - ca.1895
In 1909 the Seattle photographer Edwin Pierson was commissioned to photograph the schools of King County, and in many examples their student bodies posing or playing before them.  Here is Pierson's 1909 capture of Auburn's Primary School.
In 1909 the Seattle photographer Edwin Pierson was commissioned to photograph the schools of King County, and in many examples their student bodies posing or playing before them. Here is Pierson's 1909 capture of Auburn's Primary School.

4 thoughts on “Seattle Now & Then: Auburn Sweet Auburn (revised!)”

  1. Trying to figure out how to get you the requested photo of Fremont Baptist Orchestra (1920s), but I only have a phone number and my wife is on the phone. No email? Will try to upload it to the church website, it will be at

    http://fremontbaptistchurch.org/history/Orchestra.jpg

    in a few minutes if all goes well.

    Leland aka Haruo
    (the guy in the purple shirt, Webmaster)

  2. We got it fine. I went back to the church and took a digital photo of the big print. I laid it on the front sidewalk in ambient light and bent over it. As you will see when it comes up in Pac NW and here on May 10, there is no glare.

  3. How can I find the history of a specific street that had a church but is now a house, a mayor or someone used to live in a house a few houses down… 118 East Street SW Auburn, Wa?

    1. Giselle, the best first step is to acquire a PRC (property record card) from the Puget Sound Regional Branch of Washington State Archives, https://www.sos.wa.gov/archives/archives_puget.aspx#admin. To do that, enter the address at King County Parcel Viewer, https://gismaps.kingcounty.gov/parcelviewer2/, to learn its parcel number. Then take the parcel number (inserting a hyphen before the fourth-to-last digit) and use it to search for a PRC here, https://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/Collections/TitleInfo/854. If the property’s PRC has been scanned, you should be able to download it. If the PRC hasn’t been scanned, you can make an inquiry for it at PSBranchArchives@sos.wa.gov. They are pretty responsive, though they do have a backlog. Also, send me an email at ceals@comcast.net, and I can email you a document, “Ten Steps Toward the History of a House.” –Clay

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.