Waking fresh from the long night of repeal for daylight savings 2010 Jean awakened to a sky with promise, and when it fulfilled he set out to take more repeats or “nows” for our upcoming show next spring at the Museum of History and Industry. He will return to put here our Highway #2 parts of Washington Then & Now later with Startup Addendum #2. Meanwhile I’ll search my collections for Stevens Pass (and routes) related illustrations, most of them what is called by their dealers and consumers, “Real Photo Postcards.” Depending upon how rare, some of these can be precious, indeed! My scans are mostly taken from loaned prints or from internegatives I have made from loaned prints. I learned early on to take nearly every precaution making my internegs – cleaned prints, polarized lights and lens, tech-pan high resolution 35mm black and white film. Consequently, what you see will be quite close to what I saw when I recorded or scanned the original. In some instances if the original was faded or cluttered with wear I have attempted to fix it with a little “photoshop polish.”
Showing now a slew of odd pictures identified by location, we will “startup” at Everett and stop at Wenatchee. Some of these will relate directly to what Jean will put up with the Startup Addendum #2. We will keep the captions short – mostly This is a sample only.
Read all about boomstown Everett's amazing growth in 1892 - until the panic of 1893. A street scene with distant parade identified as Everett on the back of the postcard, and if there are any doubts with a handsome sign on the left.Elks home in Everett
The Snohomish River Bridge in 1926, courtesy Dept of Highways, (Click to Enlarge)Marysville then, ca. 1913.Marysville now, 2005
Marysville Old & New
Thanks to the popularity of “real photo postcards” we have faithful and often detailed historical views of most communities nation-wide. The first years of the 20th century was the time of greatest enthusiasm for this sharing and collecting and the date 1913 is postmarked on the rear of this record of the old Marysville business district on First Avenue looking west from State Street.
The three-story Marysville Hotel on the right is impressively fronted with an open veranda. If the three women standing at its second floor were not preoccupied for the moment with the unnamed “postcard artist” they might have looked a little ways south across First Avenue to the Marysville waterfront on Ebey Slough or two blocks west to the railroad tracks that first brought trains to town in 1889.
That was the old Marysville. Walt Taubeneck’s mother recalled for him how when the Pacific Highway first entered Marysville in the 1920s from the east on Third Avenue, “First Avenue wasn’t cutting it. It was built for boats and the railroads not automobiles. One by one the businesses moved north.”
Taubeneck, an expert on the history of Snohomish County logging, is one of the stalwarts of the Marysville Historical Society. His friend Arthur Duborko is another. In 1922 the Duborko family was living temporarily in the Marysville Hotel when it burned down. The seven-year-old Arthur was playing a quick game of marbles on the rug with a cousin before the two planned to take off for school. After someone started yelling “fire upstairs!” the boys dropped their marbles and started throwing furniture out the window. The quick thinking second grader went on to become Marysville’s mayor.
Marysville was founded in the 1870s as a trading post for the Tulalip Reservation. Now its citizens regularly shop at the Tulalip Mall. An alternative is the Marysville Mall, whose unadorned rear wall, seen here on the right of the “now” view, fronts First Avenue west of State Street. (The above first appeared in The Seattle Times Pacific Mag in late Sept. 2005.)
This claims to be an earliy Snohomish street scene with a glimpse of the river. Courtesy University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections.The flat-bottomed riverboat the Skagit Queen visiting Snohomish.This pan of Snohomish will appear again - with explanation - in Startup Addendum #2. It will there be accompanied by Jean's helicopter shot that successfully got above the trees that have since lined the banks of the Snohomish River here. (Click to Enlarge)Snohomish's once famous swing bridge.AgainSnohomish First Street, its "Main Street."I remember "Snohomish's Famous Bicycle Tree" when it was a rag of its former gothic glory. As I recall the tree was somewhere near the southeast corner of Harvey Field (an airport) where Airport Way takes its turn to the west. Or it may have been south of there on 99th Ave. S.E.. Surely a reader will confirm or correct me.
The Bike Tree and it rarely revealed neighbor. By Price (of Price photo on Roosevelt Ave. in Seattle.)The Snohomish County Farm at Monroe.Here I have juxtaposed two Monroe, WA cards that have to do generally with "education" there. They came from the same collection as well. The bottom card shows the plans for a proposed enlargement, I assume, of the state's school for "bad boys" at Monroe, that dreaded reformatory that all teenage boys have hoped to avoid and/or escape. The "modern" institutional part of these plans are in contrast to the clapboad residentail-like structures to the front and back of them. The postcard on top shows similar clapboard structures and also captions marked both on the negative, "Public School Buildings, Monroe, Washington," and by the user of the product-postcard itself, which has left generous roof for a scrawled commentary or description. The handwritten "This is where I don't go to school." suggests, perhaps, that the author either knows something about these buildings that it's innocent caption does not reveal - that is, that this is that reformatory itself - or he is using the association with the town Monroe and education to make a joke, thinking that the reader will understand that he means this to be the notorious reformatory in Monroe, for purposes of his dark humor, even if it is not.A Sultan streetAnother and later street in Sultan and another real photo postcard by Washington's prolific Ellis.The swing bridge to pioneer SultanA Goldbar hotel"Old Index Road" Where in relationship to Index, I don't know."Index Dirt Road" somewhere near the town.A bridge at Index with Mt. Persis beyond, by Index resident, Pickett. Road to Index with Mt. Persis beyond, by PickettIndex Mercantile by PickettIndex by Anders Wilse who accompanied the Great Norther Railway survey of Stevens Pass in the early 1890s.. Persis is, again, on the horizon. Jean's repeat of Wilse's then.Mt. Index by EllisAn Index subject with Mt Persis again.Mt. Index and Persis, left and right, by PickettMt. Persis might look familiar by now.And the lodge too. Note two sections of the tumbling Bridal falls above the lodge's roof sign that reads "Modern Cabins." The postcard artist Ellis took no chances and offered two mountain toppers for the lodge - one for the partisans of Mt.Persis and the other for the enthusiasts of Mt.Index. Bridal falls, the "middle falls," I believe. These hydraulics come from the north face of Mt. Index & surrounds.Another of the "middle falls," and this one with hikers by PickettThe powerful chute of Sunset Falls is less than one mile upstream on the Skykomish from where the stream that makes Bridal Falls joins the river. By line Sunset Fall is about one mile south the town of Index. Take the road, its about two miles. This is another photo by Index professional Lee Pickett.Less than a mile up stream from Sunset Falls the river's channel narrows for Canyon Falls. Directly below Sunset Falls the Skykomish is at an elevation of 525 feet, while above Canyon Falls it is close to 645 feet above sea level. Eagle falls, which we features in Washington Then and Now, is about a mile-and-a-half upstream from Canyon Falls. Lee Pickett's record of his neighbor Gunns Peak, which is due north of the little town of Baring. To my taste for the spectacular joined to the singular Mt. Baring is one of the great peaks of the Cascades and you can see it from HIghway-2, the west and south sides of it. It rises in a most alluring swoop more than 5000 feet above the highway at Baring. And then on the north and east side it falls so suddenly that from certain angles, like from the top of Gunn's Peak, Mt. Baring seems to be undercut on its north side. It might be a good fall for free-fall parachutists. This year, 2010, one (at least) attempted the same and was snagged on his way down, and not far from the summit. The successful rescue operation - which he called for on is cel phone - would have been harrowing. If one visits Gunn's Peak on Google Earth and starts mousing the blue dots near it up will come one of Baring from Gunn's that makes the point. Others will too. There's about a two mile walk from road's end (out of the town of Baring) to Barclay lake, which lies in the canyon directly below the Baring summit. This, you see with its own caption, is yet another Pickett photo.Looking east over the Skykomish Valley with the gentle swoop of Mt. Baring rising to its three tops on the left. Its steep north side is glimpsed upper-left. The pyramid-shaped peak on the horizon left of center is Mt. Stuart. Pickett's record of Mt. Baring from its less spectacular west and Highway 2 side. The top of Baring has three facets. Two of them stand here on the left.It is roughly seven fairly direct miles from Baring to Skykomish, once an important railroad town, and once a favorite stop at its big hotel for skiers breakfasts. This is - evidently - another Pickett recording.
Looking west at the big hotel.
A busy Skykomish with the passenger Great Northern stopping on the right and a swept-fin Cadillac parked on the left.
The Skykomish public school, 1909 (Courtesy U.W. Libraries Special Collections.)Climbing to the pass (or dropping from it) with postcard purveyor Ellis. (courtesy John Cooper)Scenes along the wintery wayMany years earlier the Great Northern Railroad being laid along this way in the early 1890s. Railroad Switchbacks near Stevens PassWest side of the Great Northern tunnel beneath Stevens Pass.A few of the 96 victims of the March 1, 1910 avalanche on Windy Mountain on the Great Northern Railroad's route over and under Stevens Pass. Two trains waited days for a storm to pass and the tracks to be dug out so that they could proceed to Everett. They waited near Wellington, a railroad town outside the west side of the tunnel. A turn to war weather brought rain and the avalanches the took the waiting cars into the canyon below Wellington. Many of the dead - once dug out - were dragged on toboggans along the same tracks they expected to travel in the comfort of sleepers and passenger cars - although most of the casualties and deaths were among raliroad employees.
Early at the top with Good Roads supporters in June 1925. Stevens Pass was officially opened on July 11, 1925. Another by Pickett.Another look at this service station will be shown with Startup Addendum #2, the scene taken from the book "Washington Then and Now."The Tumwater Canyon on the Wenatchee River is just upstream from Leavenworth. I do not know why these cars are lined up - perhaps for the passes 1925 dedication procession. Photo by Simmer, a photographer who did a lot of work for the Washington State Dept of Highways. Leavenworth's Front street looking northeast through its curve before the Tyrolian "adjustments" that turned a depressed western town into a tourist destination with the fun for locals of many celebrations and bell-ringing cash registers. Startup Addendum #2 will include views of the changes wrought on Front looking southwest from the far end of it.Deep drifts on Leavenworth's Front Street. Note the warm and inviting "The Palm." An early Tyrolian side-by-side with vernaculars somewhere on Leavenworth's Front Street.The Hotel Edelweiss, a more ambitious Tyrolian (Tyrolean) on Front Street.Wentathee's "Old Town" on Miller Street - then. (A rough print pulled from an old book.)Old Town's Miller Street "now" (in 2005). Wenatchee Ave., Wenatchee
Red Delicious Upon a Green SkyEspecially after the Great Northern Railroad reached Wenatchee - and created a boomtown with it - river traffic with paddlewheels to the navigable river north of town and into the Okanagon River was lucrative. This river bounty was eventually superceded when the railroad ran competing rails north to the same communities and farms along both rivers.The first bridge across the Columbia for more than railroads was opened at Wenatchee in 1908. More on this with Startup Addendum #2.The state's first highway north from Wenatchee, named Highway 10 then (ca.1912) and long since U.S. 97.
Love the pictures, history and site. Thanks for posting!