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Published in The Seattle Times online on April 24, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on April 27, 2025

Deadly, damaging 1965 quake reminds us: Should we run?

By Clay Eals

The boy was maybe 8. He resembled TV’s Beaver Cleaver, but his smirk was more Eddie Haskell.

Interviewed briefly on a downtown Seattle sidewalk by KOMO-TV reporter Howard Shuman on April 29, 1965, about that morning’s 6.5-magnitude earthquake, the boy said he had been “in my house,” which “started to rumble.”

What did he do? “Ran outside. What else?”

Lasting 45 seconds at 8:29 a.m., the quake, centered in Northeast Tacoma, shook residents and structures over an area of 190,000 square miles. Three died from falling debris and four others from heart attacks.

The temblor marked the memories of many Northwesterners still living today. With its 60th anniversary upon us, the boy’s cheeky response merits reflection.

Running outside may be a natural gut reaction. But it goes against longstanding advice, which is to stay inside, move away from objects that could fall and crouch under a table or near a wall.

The boy’s sentiment, of course, wasn’t unique. Shuman’s other unnamed interviewees provided chilling echoes.

A Queen Anne High School girl, queried downtown, described a scene of panic before classes were to begin: “At first we saw someone running down the hall. There was a lot of noise, and the building started moving and the floor shaking up and down, and everybody started running out.”

A middle-aged man who had been in an elevator in the Great Northern Building at Fourth and Union said, “The elevator wouldn’t work, I pushed all the buttons, and it was shaking, and I didn’t know what to do. Finally the door opened, I looked down, and it was still shaking, and I walked right out of the building.”

At Harbor Island’s Fisher Flour Mill, a wooden tank fell seven stories, brick walls broke away from the sixth floor and two died. A jittery young worker said, “I didn’t have any control over my legs, so I dove underneath a post until I quit, and I ran out, and I ran about a 5-second 100-yard dash in street shoes.”

Admonitions to the contrary abound for an in-the-moment response. So do longer-term tips, such as those provided by Seattle disaster-preparedness coach Alice Kuder. Her firm, Just in Case, outlines a comprehensive “Flee Bag” of key items needed when a quake knocks out basic services.

All of which is immediately relevant, as geologists repeatedly tell us the Big One is imminent. Not if but when, and it could happen tomorrow. Our region’s most recent major earthquakes warned us in 1949, 1965 and 2001. Logic points to getting educated and taking precautions.

Indeed, “What else?”

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Alice Kuder and especially Joe Wren, longtime KOMO-TV archivist, 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 two videos, 5 additional photos and 15 historical pages from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, all of which were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on April 17, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on April 20, 2025

Should Seattle’s Klondike museum close? Just ask its visitors

By Jean Sherrard

On a blustery, mid-March weekend, at a beloved federal facility targeted for closure by the current administration, it was time to strike it rich with opinions.

At Seattle’s Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, inside Pioneer Square’s restored Cadillac Hotel, I launched a poll.

My first prospect was a tall, bearded, mountain of a man. Formerly a Lake Tahoe-area ranger, he was touring the Northwest. He shook his head, declining to identify himself. But as he watched a Gold Rush video, he seethed.

“Nothing I say would be printable,” he said. “If I told you what I really felt, it would ruin my vacation.”

No less passionate, others eagerly went on the record.

Theresa Lacey and Tom Calder of Redmond had just heard of the potential shuttering and made a beeline downtown.

“It feels just like burning books,” Lacey said.

“If we don’t know about the past,” Calder added, “we don’t know where we’ve been or where we’re going.”

Jason Hein, with daughter Vivian, said the museum provides a parallel lesson for today. In a dig at AI and

its investors, he said of the Gold Rush, “For the vast majority seeking the mirage of promised wealth, it was a complete bust.”

The lessons also are generational, Vivian noted: “Kids can come here and see how their ancestors lived and see how the city they live in was built.”

Connie Wall and Dawn Walker, longtime Olympia pals and “national park geeks,” said between them they’ve visited 30-plus national parks. They took the possible closure personally.

“It threatens who we are as people,” Wall said.

“As Americans,” Walker chimed in.

Ex-rangers David Monroe and Jenny Dyste, who ferried across the Sound to visit, saluted the museum’s organizational context.

“The national parks,” Monroe said, “are the greatest thing America has done. It’s a gift to the people of the United States.”

Wiping away tears, Dyste added, “It’s our shared history.”

Lifelong Northwesterners John and Sandi O’Donnell were making their first visit.

“I’m celebrating my 63rd birthday by buying a National Parks Senior Pass today,” John said.

Sandi lamented the “heartbreaking” prospect of closure. “This place is a national monument.”

Could I find supporters of closure? Try as I might, it just didn’t pan out.

Theresa Werlech of Mercer Island has worked as a tour guide for 35 of her 88 years. Escorting dozens of student choir members from Arizona, she summoned a hopeful analogy.

“This place is an absolute jewel,” she said. “I’d be devastated if it closed. Let’s hope that the Klondike continues to go in search of gold.”

WEB EXTRAS

A handful of photos show off the museum’s lovingly designed interior, upstairs and down.

For our narrated 360 video of this column, please head over here!

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Published in The Seattle Times online on April 10, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on April 13, 2025

Neighborhood views from the air school us in new perspective

By Clay Eals

Throughout our lives, we often yearn to be close-up. But sometimes the farther away we get, the more we learn and appreciate. I’m speaking of distance — not only in physical space, but also in time.

Consider today’s pair of photos looking northwest at the West Seattle hub of Admiral Way and California Avenue. Taken from high up, they grant us perspective we rarely glean on the ground. They reveal how neighborhood icons can endure and how radically the rest of it can change.

Recently I received the main “Then” above — an oversized, mounted print — from a Fall City friend. Cars and other elements date it between 1930 and 1932. The photographer is unknown, but the image’s purpose is clearly to showcase its centered subject, Lafayette Elementary School.

Built one-half block south of Admiral Way in 1893 before West Seattle became a city of its own (1902) and annexed to Seattle (1907), the schoolhouse was first called West Seattle Central, drawing students of all grades peninsula-wide. With a bell tower and spires, it took on the nickname of “The Castle.”

Growth prompted an eight-room addition in 1908, and after West Seattle High School opened nearby in 1917, it focused on lower grades. In 1918, it was renamed for French Gen. Lafayette, who aided the Continental Army in the early 1780s during the U.S. Revolutionary War.

An April 1949 earthquake, fortunately during spring vacation, reduced much of the edifice to rubble, so in 1950 a much flatter Lafayette opened on the same site, featuring nine rows of innovative brown “saw-toothed” rooftop skylights.

The school presides at the center of our “Now.” But both airborne views display much more that survives:

At upper right is the narrow 1919 Portola Theatre, predecessor of the expanded 1942 Admiral Theatre, today a beloved landmark moviehouse. At lower right is the 1929 former Sixth Church of Christ, Scientist, also a landmark and home of the newly opened Washington State Black Legacy Institute. And at bottom center is the northwest tip of 1911 Hiawatha Playfield, an Olmsted-designed landmark, with two lone tennis players on its courts in each photo.

What’s changed in nearly 100 years? Oh, my. Lot sizes are far smaller. Houses and commercial buildings are more plentiful, many of them much taller.

The comparisons are seemingly endless, which is why drone shots and Google Earth are popular successors to the airplane- or even balloon-based photos of yesteryear, says Ron Edge, an expert on local aerial photography.

“The interest has always been there,” he says. “People have just loved to see what their towns looked like from the air.”

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Ron Edge for his invaluable help with this installment!

To see Jean Sherrard’s aerial video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, visit here.

Below, you will find 9 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, all of which were helpful in the preparation of this column.

You also will find 107 photos from the Laidlaw aerial negatives in the Webster & Stevens Collections at the Museum of History & Industry, along with an index, courtesy of Ron Edge‘s scanning.

And here is a brief history of aerial photography!

Help create a fun and timely Now & Then column featuring the local history of Social Security!

The Alaska Building was home to the first Social Security Administration offices in Seattle in 1937. Its enthusiastic regional director was the aptly named Frank Messenger.

Join us Sunday, April 13, at 2pm at the northeast corner of Second and Cherry in front of the Alaska Building to demonstrate your support for a strong and healthy social security system.

Bring your SSA cards  (or facsimiles) to hoist in the air for the group photo. All are welcome!

Also, another opportunity to make your voice heard. Send us your succinct thoughts about Social security for possible use in the upcoming column. All comments will be posted here on the blog as well. Please email seattlenowandthen@gmail.com with the subject line “Social Security.”

Published in The Seattle Times online on April 6, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on April 3, 2025

Cruise along Chuckanut Drive – ‘an incomparable panorama’ since 1916

By Jean Sherrard

For my Grandpa Jean, a truck driver originally from Stillwater, Oklahoma, the journey was the destination.

In the 1930s, he crisscrossed Washington state in his trucks and was eager to share his scenic discoveries with a growing young family.

Hugging the steep sides of Chuckanut Mountain south

of Bellingham, Chuckanut Drive offered breathtaking vistas across Samish Bay and must have attracted the ex-Okie flatlander like a bee to honey.

Parking along the two-lane road and scrambling down to a small Pigeon Point cove for picnics became a family tradition. Sandy beaches, busy crab pots and massive Burlington Northern trains (and the pennies they flattened) colored childhood memories.

Chuckanut Drive has always taken the “drive” part of its name seriously. It can be traversed by car,

motorcycle or a particularly intrepid bicycle, but its narrow curves chiseled into precipitous sandstone cliffs leave scant margins for error (or photographers!). Likewise, its creation story boasts twists and turns worthy of dime-store novellas.

Primitive and undependable, the earliest north-south passages along the west side of Chuckanut Mountain were subject to falling rocks and high tides.

After the Great Northern Railway bought the right-of-way along the shoreline in 1893, road improvements were stalled to prevent landslides that might impede rail traffic.

In 1910, a nascent state highway department took control, hiring inexperienced convict crews to carve out stone ledges watched over by guards with shotguns. After 5.5 grueling miles, money ran out, and labor ground to a halt. With a further injection of state funding, contractors finally completed the task.

Hailed upon its spring 1916 opening, the road boasted a slew of firsts. A glowing Seattle Times account proclaimed it “the first link of the Pacific Highway from Vancouver B.C. to San Francisco to parallel salt water.” The route also handily connected Skagit Valley farms to Whatcom County ports, “proving its utilitarian value” while providing “an incomparable panorama of Western Washington.”

What’s more, Bellingham’s Charles Larrabee, encouraged by Gov. Ernest Lister, donated 20 acres of forested land along the road’s northern stretch, which became Washington’s first state park. Proclaimed the Times, “It will undoubtedly be appreciated by tourists desiring an ideal picnic spot.”

In 1919, Chuckanut Drive began to be paved and widened, attracting even more sightseers. By the mid-1920s, tourist-filled buses with observation windows shared the highway with Prohibition-skirting smugglers of liquor and drugs from Canada.

The Larrabee family gifted the state another 1,500 nearby acres in 1937. Today’s 2,683-acre Larrabee State Park is one of the state’s largest and most popular — and just one of the many hallmarks of spectacular Chuckanut Drive.

WEB EXTRAS

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

And for ultimate enjoyment, check out this hand-tinted photo from the same prospect (but a different photog) supplied by the legendary Ron Edge.

Below, a few more photos of Larrabee State Park beach and environs.