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Published in The Seattle Times online on July 18, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on July 21, 2024

Orre Nobles’ artist colony once blossomed along Hood Canal

By Clay Eals

Beauty and stories abound here. We’re near Union, a wisp of a logging town formerly called Union City that once sought to be our state’s capital.

On a sunny drive, just west of Alderbrook Resort near the southwest corner of Hood Canal, this spot sparkles.

The scene overflows with deep-blue water, countless trees and snow-kissed Olympic mountains, a genuine Washington state paradise. But abandoned beneath the natural splendor is evidence of a century-old center of civilization, tiny but potent, a coterie of urban expatriates calling itself an artist colony.

The evidence stands on a bluff, dwarfed by greenery and just a stone’s throw from State Route 106. In fact, it was made of stones, shaped into human-sized pillars that once bounded Olympus Manor, a compound created by an irrepressible Danish renaissance man, Orre Nelson Nobles.

Beloved as a longtime art teacher at Ballard High School, Nobles (1894-1967) lived in Seattle during the school year in a unique, self-embellished “doll house” that eventually was moved from the path of Interstate 5 to 1623 S. King St., where it stands today.

Summertimes, however, east of Union, the painter, carver and musician convened what was considered an elite retreat starting in the 1920s. His adherents included local teepee-living woodblock printmaker Waldo Chase and a variety of visitors, including poet Don Blanding and world boxing champ Gene Tunney.

Fueling the gatherings were art pieces and clothing that Nobles collected during extensive travels to China, along with land- and water-anchored, Japanese-style torii gates. His 16-room manor succumbed to fire in 1952.

This and much more is documented in “The Artist Colony on Hood Canal,” a 2011 book by fifth-generation Union native Michael Fredson, who marvels at Nobles’ influence: “His motto was ‘Live rich. Don’t be rich.’ He was really the voice, the imagination, the joy of Hood Canal.”

Elizabeth Arbaugh, executive director of the Mason County Historical Society, whose museum in Shelton holds colorful artifacts from Nobles’ vision, confirms his charismatic role.

“He brought a little bit of class to Mason County,” Arbaugh says. “With artists and creative celebrities and others from all over the world, it was very exotic for the time.”

Fitting right in, Fredson himself might be called an artist of bygone storytelling. A lifelong homebuilder, the loquacious former historical-society leader has penned nine locally flavored books.

After an early-1970s service stint in Vietnam, Fredson returned to his home community, devoting himself to unearthing nuggets from Mason County’s yesteryears.

In a typically emphatic utterance, he says, “I just had to know everything about where I live. Otherwise you don’t know anything.”

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Michael Fredson, Elizabeth Arbaugh and especially Mike Munson for their invaluable help with this installment!

No 360-degree video with this installment, but below you will find 9 additional photos, 4 pertinent pages from the 2020 book “The Lavender Palette” and 7 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.