Every picture tells a story

Oct. 26, 2019

The public restrooms on the left of the photo was about where Henry McCleary had his executive office when his sawmill was in current day Beerbower Park. The kitchen-picnic building behind that was constructed around the late 1980s or early 1990s to replace the original building that had been built in the early days of the McCleary Bear Festival as a place to cook the bear stew.

The current City Hall, constructed in the late 1950s, was originally the site of Henry McCleary's later headquarters. When President Roosevelt came through town in an open car in the 1930s, Henry instructed his employees to turn their backs. After McCleary sold the town to Simpson, he tried living in northern Nevada for a brief time, but that did not work out. In his final year or so even though he resided in Olympia he could occasionally be seen sitting outside of his old headquarters watching the world go by in a town he no longer controlled.

The crosswalk brings to mind this little tale. McCleary has had a long and colorful history of Chiefs of Police. In the 1950s the City hired a young photogenic fellow from Shelton for the job and he was the first person to institute the use of marked crosswalks on the main roads. Most of the residential streets were not paved until much later.

Anyway, after maybe a year the Chief vanished "between two days" as Norman Porter of the McCleary Stimulator put it, with part of the City treasury and someone else's wife. The law finally caught up with him in the Bay Area about a year later. So think of that next time you use a McCleary crosswalk.

The Square Corner

Oct. 26, 2019

The corner of Simpson and Main used to be a sharp 90 degree corner back in the day when Main Street really was Main Street and the business center of town.

As time went by and the town's commercial activity shifted to the west, this corner was deemed a traffic hazard. If I am not mistaken, off the top of my head I think Chris Curtis of Shelton, who had once been implicated in the great McCleary alcohol distribution scandal of the 1920s which had taken down a few county and local law enforcement figures, owned that corner and very kindly gave it to the City around 1960 so it could be rounded off.

Weirdo-shaped parking strip

Oct. 26, 2019

What is with that weirdo-shaped parking strip between City Hall and the VFW Hall? As usual, there's a story there.

On the right hand of the photo is Beerbower Park. In the old days that chunk of land was Henry McCleary's original lumber mill, which was shut down in the 1930s.

On the left hand of the photo is the present Simpson door plant. In 1910 Henry McCleary bought the Chehalis Fir Door Company and moved the whole operation, including most of the workers to this camp. A giant clearing took place and a mountain of wood was burned to make space for his door plant. When it opened it was all electric and one of the largest and most modern door plants in the world. It also produced airplane and automobile parts when those industries used more wood in their product.

The two huge operations, sawmill and doorplant, were connected by a pedestrian skyway. Roughly about where the first tree in the line on the right sits there were two ugly buildings, big hulky two story cubes on either side of the road. A covered walkway on the second floor connected the twin structures.

For people arriving to town from the north, this gave the impression of entering through a Medieval gate during the feudal times, which in fact was not far off from reality This was Henry McCleary's Kingdom-- a one-man principality where you were paid in script, lived in company-owned homes, and God help you if you ever even entertained the very idea of forming a union.

This pedestrian skybridge did not exist for very long. The building on the west side where the door plant now resides was torn down first. The eastern building remained for some reason and just sat there like a wart. After Henry sold the entire town to Simpson on the last day of 1941 and the park was created by local people out of the ruins of the old mill, they had to work around that building and hence we have that elongated triangular parking strip.

When it was finally torn down maybe in the early 1950s a local newspaper commented that in the old days "they didn't build for pretty."

Sidewalk closed

Oct. 26, 2019

That sidewalk needed replacing anyway.

Until April 1949 that particular stretch of sidewalk was a wood construction walkway designed to rise above the sometimes swampy high water table and where this Dollar General store will be sitting. The 1949 date can be pinpointed to exactly the moment of the worst earthquake in living memory around here. One eyewitness told me the planks on the boardwalk popped out in a wave as the seismic shocks hit.

In the 1990s McCleary's Land Planning Commission (which no longer exists) denied a rezone for this parcel from multifamily to business. The thinking that having a central business core with concentric circles of zoning rather than strip enterprises was preferable. It would be interesting to see when and why the rezone eventually happened, indicating a changing of the municipal guard. Also, when and why we no longer have a Land Planning Commission.

McCleary Rock Harbor

Oct. 26, 2019

What was once the Assembly of God, then the Evergreen Christian Community-McCleary Branch, is now McCleary Rock Harbor, which also seems to be in the category of Protestant Evangelical.

Outdoor furniture starts to hunker down as it gets cold

Oct. 26, 2019.

Rainbow Park.

Ellis Food Market

Oct. 23, 2019

If you had been standing at this location in the 1960s to 1970s, the view would have been much different.

To begin, where Gordon's Grocery is today was once, ca. 1960, the Ellis Food Market or a name that was close. For some reason the store downsized and in the early 1960s they moved across the street to the present location of Cheema's. Their building, which perhaps had previously been an auto mechanic garage, was a nondescript mostly windowless block of concrete, maybe cinderblock, with a half-quonset hut roof. The store occupied the NW part of the lot while the rest was a parking lot. The entrance was in the SE corner of the building, facing the Post Office.

The present building originally opened as Mike's in the first half of the 1980s.

Aircraft Warning Service Lookout Tower

Oct. 23, 2019

Here's a view looking south on 4th with Maple as the cross street. During World War II McCleary had at least one, maybe more, lookout towers designed for the Aircraft Warning Service. This was a program where civilians, armed with little charts showing the shapes of Japanese military planes through the use of silhouettes, would voluntarily give their time to scan the skies for enemy aircraft.

In McCleary the location of one lookout tower I am pretty sure about was on the SW corner of 4th and Maple, on the right hand side of the photo where the brown duplex sits.

McCleary ca. 1950

Oct. 22, 2019

This photo can be found on one of the pillars near the cash registers at Gordon's. It was taken from the SE corner of Simpson and 4th facing northwest. I estimate it was taken around 1950-1952.

Moving left from right in the photo--

Lumbermen's Mercantile is now the building housing Gordon's, built shortly after WWII I believe.

The buildings housing the next four establishments were constructed close in time about 1950 if I am not mistaken. Interesting that parking was head-in rather than parallel in those days. Simpson  Ave. in 1950 was also Highway 410, the main road to Elma, Montesano, Aberdeen, and the Coast. Washington SR 9 (later renumbered 8) didn't exist yet.

The Olympic Cigar Store Tavern, run by D.I. George and Earl Nobach was already an institution in McCleary before they moved to this location from a block away. Nobach was the person who donated the land upon which Mark E. Reed Memorial Hospital was constructed a few years later. For several decades it operated under a variety of owners and names such as the Waterhole, Rounders, and was it Miss Kitty's or something like that. Today this is the location of the Mexican cuisine Al Carbon restaurant which is the first time that space has been anything other than a tavern.

Next is Billie's Cafe, run by Billie Stilwell. Her Cafe was also an institution before she relocated. I remember it had a big horseshoe shaped counter with booths along the east wall. It was there until sometime in the mid to late 1960s.

The old Billie's Cafe location later became the Bear Claw Bakery in the 1970s, operated by Gene and Muriel Mullin. After that it served as a series of short-lived restaurants with names like The Feed Bag, Bear Buns, Squatty's, and Rounders. The wall between the restaurant and tavern was opened up only some time in the last 20 years or so. In between all the culinary attempts, I do recall something about a worthy try at making the area a "Kid's Club" place so McCleary youth wouldn't go crazy with boredom in this metropolis. 

Although there is no signage, the third storefront was the US Post Office. I'm not sure if the Postmaster at the time would have been Leonard McCleary (Henry's youngest brother who lived in the house next door south of the McCleary Hotel) or Leon "Jinks" Boling. The PO resided there until 1963 when they removed to their present location. That location seems to have had the most economic struggle of these storefronts. In the 1980s it was a real estate management office. In the 1990s when KGY-FM found some radio airspace here in McCleary they briefly had an office there. So far as I know KGY does not send news reporters to cover McCleary government or happenings. In McCleary, the most popular radio station is the police scanner.

Anyway, this third storefront remains sort of a funky and mysterious place. Recently I found the key to the front door lying on the sidewalk and it looked like it had been there for awhile. I flagged down one of our Boys in Blue who just happened to be driving by and handed it to him.

The last storefront was the pharmacy run by Bud Davidson. During the 1920s McCleary lost their drug store, run by a Mr. Baisch, I think. A fellow named Chuck Heslep approached Henry McCleary about opening a new drug store in the early 1930s, since this town at that time was a one-man principality. According to Chuck, Henry's German shepherd did not growl at him durng their initial meeting and Henry took that as sign that Chuck was alright.

Heslep opened his first store on the one of retail outlets that was part of the Porter Hotel Annex, roughly where today's Police Station now resides. He later started an appliance store on Simpson that is now the parking lot of the clinic.

But I digress.

Eventually Heslep's pharmacy morphed into Davidson's outfit. And then, perhaps in the late 1950s or early 1960s, a gentleman named Bart Bloom took it over. The pharmacy also doubled as the State Liquor Store. In later years the storefront became a florist shop, and then a series of restaurants including the Rose Garden, a Mexican restaurant I cannot recall the name of, and presently for over a decade Rain Country, which is apparently for sale right now.

There's a lot of history in that one little photograph. 

Grazing shovels

Oct. 16, 2019

Two giant shovels graze where deer used to play.  Evidently it is going to be a wet and muddy construction season on Summit Road.

This is the final edition of the East County News

Oct. 8, 2019

"35th Year, No. Z --- Wednesday, October 9, 2019"

Baby Gorilla in the Banana Section

Oct. 6, 2019

At Gordon's. It doesn't bite.

Dating McCleary Photos

Sept. 30, 2019

This photo of an early sawmill currently on display in the Summit Pacific Clinic can be dated after Sept. 1902 but probably before 1910. The clue is in the background toothpicks that used to be trees.

The devastating 1902 fire wiped out the entire town of Rayville and most of what we call White Star. Rayville was an embryonic town that used to exist in the area where the Elma-Hicklin Road crosses the railroad tracks and joins the old 410 highway, now called the Elma-McCleary Road.

The flames headed east and in no time at all surrounded the new logging camp. But then the ring of fire just stopped rather mysteriously. So for years the burned trees just stood, shorn of their limbs by flame, baton noir. For some time the children would come home covered in soot after playing outside.

The 1902 fire was region-wide and later called The Big Burn or the Yacolt Burn, but actually was many individual forest fires that took place in a short span of time. My grandmother, who was 11 at the time and living in Centralia, said the smoke was so thick that daytime turned into night and some felt the End of the World had arrived.

Donor Recognition Tree

Sept. 30, 2019

Summit Pacific Clinic