Tuesday, July 26, 2016
It will be dark soon
Road Closed
The Old and New, 410 and SR 8
That 60 mph speed limit sign back in the 1960s-1970s was 70 mph, which meant people drove at 80 mph in huge cars like it was normal. Needless to say, the freeway carnage was significant.
June 2, 2011
Dead Man's Curve
The two lane road was formerly State Highway 410 and served as the main route between Olympia and Aberdeen until State Route 9 (later renamed State Route 8) was completed in the late 1950s-early 1960s. In the old 410 days, this pictured part of the road was called "Dead Man's Curve" and was regularly decorated with white crosses.
June 2, 2011
Christ Pappas 1882-1956
Henry McCleary, who ran this company town, "wished not to tolerate unions" and hired many workers from Italy and Greece and other parts of the Mediterranean in the early part of the 20th century as they were not likely to organize as laborers at that point in history.
Many of the Italians, who mostly arrived from the northern part of Italy, remained in McCleary. Angelo Pellegrini, perhaps McCleary's most famous historical resident, landed in McCleary as a boy in 1913. The neighborhood blocks around First and Mommsen (where the Pellegrinis lived) was known as "Little Italy."
Many of the Greeks who worked here did not settle in McCleary, although a few remained such as grocery store owner Nick Rillakis. The McCleary Cemetery has a small Greek section and a few of the headstones are carved in the Greek alphabet.
May 25, 2012
In memory of Michael, Wendy, Austin
This plaque was on the street side of the Community Center, accompanied by various flowering plants, until recent years, May 25, 2012
Monday, July 25, 2016
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Saturday, July 23, 2016
McCleary Community Center
Next door is the McCleary Cemetery, once operated by the Knights of Pythias but handed over to the city when McCleary incorporated in Jan. 1943.
McCleary Community Center
Entering Grays Harbor County
Coming from Thurston County it can frequently be sunny, until you hit the Grays Harbor County border 3 miles before you reach McCleary. The boundary for the Grays Harbor/Puget Sound drainage basins is about at this point. There are a few homes here in Thurston County that have a McCleary mailing address and are part of the Grays Harbor PUD.
This 3 mile cut from the county border on SR 8 to McCleary didn't exist until about 1910. Prior to that, wagons went over the Hicklin Hill to the north and connected to the present Tornquist Road. It took a wagon from Olympia all day to reach this point and in this area there stood a two-story inn known as the Halfway House, since it was halfway between Olympia and Grays Harbor. J.T. Hicklin, who lived in this area and settled when U.S. Grant was President, was an early settler who constructed the road.
Hicklin's name still exists today on part of the road. Some of the street signs humorously say "Hickland" Road.
That weird sliver
The library building was originally a laundromat operated by the Daniel family. Later it was a video rental store for several years known as Olympic Video (later McCleary Video). Both of these buildings were constructed around the same time in the early 1960s.
Friday, July 22, 2016
UFO hovering over McCleary!
Actually it is a helium balloon on the loose. However, a genuine UFO sighting was once reported by a group of Simpson workers in late July 1950 when they spied a large craft shaped like a sombrero hanging over the plant for several minutes and then sped off, as reported by the newspaper The McCleary Builder.
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