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.