(click to enlarge photos)

 

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 28, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 1, 2024

After 115 years, Wenatchee names the first cross-Columbia bridge

By Jean Sherrard

Sometimes a rose by another name does smell sweeter, suggests Teri St. Jean, a retired elementary school teacher from Wenatchee. An amateur historian and preservationist, she has devoted considerable time and effort to restoring historic homes. She’s also served on local landmark boards.

Like many Wenatchee-ites, St. Jean has enjoyed strolling across the 1908 pipeline bridge —  the first to cross the Columbia River south of the Canadian border. But she’s lamented that it bore no official name.

“It was just called the Pedestrian Bridge,” she says, “or the Black Bridge, or the Old Bridge.”

St. Jean believed that the graceful, cantilevered structure, beloved by locals, might be even more appreciated if it bore a name reflecting its storied past.

With a group of like-minded history buffs, she turned

for advice to Waylon Marshall, manager of the Wenatchee Reclamation District and responsible for maintenance and upkeep of the span.

Perhaps the city’s iconic bridge could be named after its creator? Marshall enthusiastically agreed.

Thus, 115 years after it first opened to traffic, the W.T. Clark Pipeline Bridge was finally christened on Oct. 4, 2023.

Originally from Ohio, William T. Clark arrived in Eastern Washington in 1893 and instantly understood the landscape and its limitations. The fertile soil, suitable for all manner of crops, was constrained only by lack of water.

After cutting his teeth on irrigation canals in the Yakima Valley, “Artesian” Clark (his popular nickname) spied opportunities further north.

The Highline Canal, his most extensive project, tapped the Wenatchee River at Dryden, running 16 miles through rough terrain southeast to Wenatchee. The gravity-powered canal opened in 1903, providing water to 7,000 acres and triggering a population and property boom. Parcels selling for less than $25 per acre climbed to $400 and more.

Just east, across the Columbia River, parched

scrubland stood tantalizingly close but mostly unirrigated. Clark’s solution: a bridge that could carry not only a pipeline extending the canal but also vehicle traffic.

He enlisted investors including James J. Hill, director of the Great Northern Railroad, and Seattle business leader Thomas Burke, both eager to further expand — and profit from — arable land.

Completed in 1908, the combined highway and pipeline bridge reclaimed 4,000 acres of East Wenatchee, luring another 6,000 settlers within months.

“The pipeline opened up development in Douglas County,” Marshall says, “and still serves water six dry months of the year, 24 hours a day, at 24,000 gallons per minute.”

Now part of Wenatchee’s 11-mile Apple Capital Loop trail, the W.T Clark Pipeline Bridge adds a name to a sweet bloom of regional history.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 degree video of this column, click right here.

 

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 21, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 24, 2024

Book reveals novelty of our state’s 19^th century photography

By Clay Eals

How many times have you aimed your smartphone to capture a face, a meal, a repair project, a pleasing scene? Every year, humans worldwide are said to take more than a trillion photos. Many of them graze our consciousness for mere seconds. They are seemingly lifeblood but also, strangely, a shrug.

More’s the pity. If we back up a century and a half, we reach a time when the concept of a photo, let alone a physical print, was novel, even revolutionary, especially in the rugged West.

That photographic era in our state, the latter 50 years of the 19th century, captivates Tim Greyhavens, who recently published “Artistic and Life-Like: Photography in Washington, 1850-1900.” With more than 200 carefully reproduced photos, his 262-page tome documents how and why the earliest image-makers toted heavy cameras, plates and chemicals far and wide to mine for true-to-life pictures.

Greyhavens, 76, from Seattle’s West Woodland neighborhood, grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio. As a grade-schooler, he often visited a local photo studio, whose owner introduced him to his darkroom. “I was hooked as soon as I saw my first print develop in a tray of chemicals,” he says. Reaching college, he wanted to “be the next Ansel Adams.”

Life steered Greyhavens to a different career, directing the Wilburforce Foundation, a Ballard-based nonprofit that dispenses grants for conservation causes. But retirement prompted him to revisit and approximate childhood dreams.

His encyclopedic chronicle of vintage images also profiles many of the state’s 500 earliest photographers. They include Ida Bell Mitchell Smith, who in 1895 took over the Olympia studio of A.D. Rogers and likely learned the trade from him. She offered holiday portraits of “all styles and grades” with “pastel and crayon enlargements.”

Greyhavens covers signature scenes, such as the 1860 Yesler house (considered Seattle’s first photo) and the 1889 Great Seattle Fire, leavening them with substantive and obscure excursions to logging and railroad sites and the portraiture of Native Americans, including Chief Seattle and his daughter, Kikisoblu.

Throughout, Greyhavens supplies researched context while cautioning readers not to make faulty assumptions, such as trusting the words scrawled on the backsides of prints. An overarching theme is the profound importance that Washingtonians placed on such a personalized art form.

The “real meanings” of early photos emerge only “by understanding the culture and society in which they were created,” he writes.

“People soon recognized that having life-like and easily accessible depictions of loved ones was more important to their happiness than almost anything words might contribute.”

In today’s flood of taken-for-granted photos, dare we summon such deep appreciation?

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Dan Kerlee and especially Tim Greyhavens for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below, you also will find 8 additional photos, 1 document and 1 historical clip 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.

 

 

 

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 14, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 17, 2024

‘People of the Salmon’ totem pole celebrated at Lake Union Ivar’s

By Jean Sherrard

Seattle restaurateur Ivar Haglund heard that property he owned along the north edge of Lake Union had once been an Indigenous gathering place, an invigorating vision was born.

The seafood salesman scuttled plans for a Hong Kong-themed restaurant and — with a doff of his familiar captain’s cap — opted to honor those who had feasted on salmon and shellfish for millennia.

His vision took shape at a University of Washington institution. “I wanted to do something legitimate and different,” he recalled for friend and columnist Emmett Watson. “One day at the Burke Museum, there it was: a replica of an authentic Indian longhouse, big places where Indians met, lived and ate.”

By the late 1960s, the inspired Haglund launched plans to build his own longhouse, fill it with Northwest art and artifacts and serve customers salmon cooked over a huge fire pit. Built with split cedar logs and lodge poles, Ivar’s Salmon House became the third restaurant in what is today a legendary Puget Sound chain.

Continuing Haglund’s original vision, Ivar’s recently recruited Alaskan-born David Boxley to replace a deteriorating Northwest Coast-style totem pole in the restaurant’s entry courtyard.

Creativity caught Boxley early on. Raised in the Alaskan community of Metlakatla, on Annette Island near Ketchikan, he knew he wanted to be an artist in third grade. After minoring in art at college, he dedicated himself to re-discovering once forbidden Tsimshian traditions in art, dance and song.

Today, his 86 totem poles stand around the world, with one on

permanent display at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.

“I started carving to bring back a culture that was erased,” he says. “I’m proud to have been a part of its revitalization.”

Boxley’s celebrated carving gifts are amplified by his extended family, including children and grandchildren, who compose the Git Hoan (“People of the Salmon”) Dancers, who use movement and song to revive traditional stories.

In September, more than 100 spectators assembled at the Salmon House to mark installation of Boxley’s latest pole. By turns graceful, joyful and, yes, electrifying, the troupe showcased Boxley’s articulated masks, bringing artistic masterpieces to kinetic life.

Raven-masked dancers wove through the audience, playfully clacking wooden beaks. A heart-stoppingly graceful orca arrived to the crash of drums, its hinged mask swung open to reveal a second hidden face beneath. And a Tsimshian salmon, larger than life, circled the parking lot, flashing ornate fins and tail, while the youngest members of Git Hoan flowed in its wake.

Throughout, Boxley’s red-cedar totem pole stood sentinel above this gathering place.

The purpose was dual and simultaneous: to bless and be blessed.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 video of this column, click here.

One news clip:

A selection of photos from the event are included below (click twice to enlarge):