By early fall of 1909, Eatonville was still a
settlement. Many called it a town, but
it came time to take the next logical step toward township. On October 16, 1909, with a vote of 47 to 21,
Eatonville became the third town incorporated in Pierce County. Technically, it was a city of the fourth
class categorized by the county. The members
of the newly formed Eatonville Town Council were Joseph Hearn, Charles Williams,
C.C. Snow, T.E. Jones, and Clint Smith.
Joseph H. Benston (owner of the private bank) was the town’s first
Treasurer. The first mayor of Eatonville
was actually George B. When
Ingersoll fell ill, C.C. Snow was made Mayor Pro Temp. When Ingersoll officially resigned, Snow was
appointed as mayor by the town council.
Though not the elected mayor, C.C. Snow was the first acting mayor of
Eatonville. Finally, the Town Council
appointed L.E. Martin the town Marshall.
He earned $15 a month but later demanded an increase saying he would not
serve for less than $75.
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| CC and Agnes (Mensik) Snow |
The first
entry of the town minutes recorded the petition to the Board of County
Commissioners of Pierce County, Washington:
We, the undersigned
electors of the County of Pierce, do hereby petition your honorable body that
the territory, hereinafter described, be may be incorporated as the city of the
fourth class under the provisions of Sections 3373 to 3380, inclusive, of
Chapter 7, in Pierce’s Code of the State of Washington and to be known and
designated when incorporated as the Town Eatonville, Pierce County, Washington.
With no
town hall, the first town council meeting was held at the jewelry store of
Councilman Hearn. Later, meetings were
conducted at Red Men Hall. It was
Hearn’s job to secure a permanent location for the town hall. Two properties, both owned by T.C. Van
Eaton, were good prospects. Van Eaton's
terms were $150 cash or by installments.
The cost to construct was estimated at $650. The town used a loan from the Eatonville
Lumber Company at 6% interest to pay off the outstanding bill of $455.91.
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| Town Hall |
Alongside the town’s incorporation came the need for more
civility regarding the animals of the area.
In addition to the usual requirement of dog tags, other beasts of the
field were given restraints. Horses had
to slow down to a trot not exceeding 6 miles an hour. Cows were not to roam at night as their bells
kept many awake. Chickens were
prohibited from roaming town streets.
The prohibition was later extended to pigs. In 1911, the marshal appointed deputies to
kill all the Chinese pheasants and were allowed to shoot from Washington Ave.
West to the town limits. Trespassing
rabbits were fair game as well. The rats
actually had bounties on their heads.
Ten cents a rat to be paid after the kill was verified by the Town
Clerk. The rat problem was so bad that
some businesses offered incentives for killing rats. The Eatonville Theater offered a free movie
ticket for each dead rat.
With all
those shots being fired, it was good to have another doctor in town. Albert Wellington Bridge served as
Eatonville’s fourth mayor, but he is best known as Dr. A.W. Bridge. In 1909,
Dr. Bridge was a graduate of the Vermont Medical School who was earning money
by delivering telegrams when his bike got a flat tire. He came in through the trees carrying his
bike and ran into T.C. Van Eaton who was looking over the ground where the
school was to be built. Anxious to have
an additional doctor in town, Van Eaton offered to house him in a clinic if
Bridge would practice in Eatonville. At
first, Bridge lived with Dr. Martiny eventually taking over his practice. According to a 1910 census, A.W. Bridge was a
roomer with Martiny as was a bartender named Dexter and thirteen-year-old stable
boy Jay Osborn.
Dr. Bridge was
motivated to practice in a logging town because of a trauma from his past. While he was young, he lost his own father
from a logging accident, and his mother’s death left him an orphan. Needing an income, he had to find work at the
local sawmill. After he inherited the
family farm, Bridge sold it off and went to the University of Vermont. He wanted to become more than a doctor. He wanted excellent care for those far from a
city hospital. In 1912, Dr. A.W. Bridge
established the Western Clinic in Eatonville in a house he remodeled into an
emergency room. After earning more
income, in 1915, he expanded to the construction of larger building with a drug
store downstairs and a hospital upstairs.
It was named it the Bridge Clinic and was open 24 hours a day, seven
days a week. The staff included managers
for the store and nurses for the hospital.
Eventually, it even had an ambulance.
There is no longer a hospital upstairs but downstairs is still a
pharmacy now called Kirk’s Pharmacy.
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| Western Clinic 1912 |
Dr. Bridge
was a healer but could be tough if needed.
During the World War I, Dr. Bridge organized “smokers” as
fundraisers. They sold tickets at the
Red Men Hall where boxing matches were held for charity. The doctor needed his own treatment after
volunteering to go rounds with a young, strong logger. Bridge suffered two black eyes and a broken
nose. In 1913, when Dr. Bridge was
mayor, he and other men from town captured a group of men who had just robbed
the bank. He lined them up and gave them
a good lecture on the evils of their ways.
Dr. Bridge
was one of the first “contract doctors.”
He had a contract with the Eatonville Lumber Company and workers paid a
dollar a month to receive full services when they needed it. Many physicians and hospitals frowned at
this. Now it is a common practice.
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| Mashel Telephone Company |
Many
Innovations came to Eatonville in the 1910’s, and Christensen family was a big
part of In 1910, the
Mount Tacoma Telephone & Telegraph Company was wiring the town. T. C. Van Eaton’s store housed the first
phone. The first telephone operators
were Mrs. Dye, Mrs. Haynes, and Anne Christensen. The phone company building burned down in
1911. As the new building was being put
up in1912, N. P. Christensen bought it and renamed it the Mashell Telephone
Company. At that time, there were 30
phones in use, and they rented for $1.50 a month. The Christensen family was synonymous to
telephones for decades in Eatonville. It
is now called Rainier Connect.
the new technology.
After he
returned to Eatonville from Alaska, Nate Williams became the second Town
Marshall in 1910. He also put his skills
to good use and constructed the Anvil Rock Block House
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| Anvil Rock Block House |
Nate and Sarah Williams had six
children. Their daughters Carrie and
Hazel died young leaving the four boys: Tom, Charlie, Leon, and Clyde. Leon worked as a logger. Tom was a shingle sawyer and filer. Clyde (or C.C.) made a living as a shingle
sawyer and filer but is best remembered for his involvement in the town playing
on winning sports teams and as a member of the Eatonville School Board for many
years.
Other son Charlie returned from Alaska with enough gold to
build the Pioneer Garage. It opened in
1915, and Charlie operated the business.
Now most of what remains of that garage is the old Tall Timber
Restaurant.
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| Pioneer Garage |
The Sun’s Rays Bakery operated from 1911 to 1919 as a
confectionary and coffee house. It was
owned by Frank Mensik. He came to
Eatonville from Czechoslovakia with his brother Charles. He started out in Chicago in 1888 as a
confectioner. His wife Mary went into a
depression after the loss of her baby.
The doctor told Frank that he must get her away from Chicago as
everything reminded Mary of her lost child.
They left and moved to Alder where Mary gave birth to daughter Mary
(named after the baby who died) in 1893.
Frank worked in Tacoma and was very skilled at candy making. His almond candy recipe may have inspired or
have been purchased by Brown and Haley to create Almond Roca. At the time of his death, Frank had seven
surviving children: Anton L., Charles, Joseph, George, Mary (Biggs), Frances,
and Agnes (Neche).
Frank’s
father Josef came to America with his second wife Anna and children: Anton,
Agnes, Anastasia (Annie), John, August, and Louise. Frances, his first wife and mother to Frank
and Charles died in 1881. Josef was 70
years old at the time, but the fear of upheaval in his home country compelled
him to come. He bought the property
owned by Walter Baker that was once Meta.
They first stayed in the building that was once the Meta Post
Office. His wife Anna died in 1905, and
Josef passed away in 1916. Their son
John acquired the property and purchased surrounding lands that were tax
foreclosures. He was known as a
cattleman and drove many a bovine to the Yelm Cattle Yard.
Josef’s son
Anton wed Mary Basler and had a daughter Nora Anderson. His daughter Annie married Scott Turner. Turner bought property in the same area as
the Mensik’s and the road that bears his name runs through most of it. He was a
gentle, loving man. Mother Annie worked
hard her whole life. Turner had served
as a medic in WWI. A motor blast injured
his eyes, and caused blurred vision. As
a result, he suffered from headaches for the rest of his life. Even so, he designed the overflow tunnels for
Alder Dam and constructed houses at Fort Lewis. Annie and Scott Turner had
three children: Robert, Josephine, Virginia, and Eloise. As mentioned before, Josef’s daughter Agnes
married C.C. Snow. August Mensik died in
1921 from a logging accident, and Louise worked for the Tacoma General Hospital
for over 50 years but never married. The
Mensik name is best known from the picture of a mining claim at Wildcat
Falls. Some of the Mensiks did have
mineral rights.
As more people
moved into the new town, by 1913, “rubbish” started piling up in yards and
vacant lots. Some citizens were careless
about maintaining their yards and let them get piled up with useless materials. It did not help matters that the town had a
smelly dump located on the hill past where the high school sports fields are
now located. Overall, it was getting
filthy in Eatonville, and this sloppy attitude translated into how the children
treated the school grounds and buildings.
B.W. Lyons
had had enough. He put the students to
work cleaning the school houses and yards.
The results were inspirational as Mayor Nettleton wanted to keep it
going throughout the whole town. Lyons
and the students moved through town cleaning the streets and buildings. It caught on as residents started cleaning
and burning up the trash. The remaining
refuse was hauled away using funds from the mayor and town council.
They
decided to make it an annual event adding a rousing baseball game in which
Eatonville beat Sumner with a score of 5-6.
As years went by, more festivities were added and became known as the
Tacoma Eastern Fair Day then Community Day.
At present, it is called May Day.
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| Eatonville State Bank |
With the presence of the lumber
company, stores, and other businesses, a financial institution became
necessary. At first, Henry Howard and
William Benston established a private bank just prior to 1909. Two years later, the new town council passed
a resolution that this bank should be the depository for the funds of the Town
of Eatonville. However, state code
prohibited a small, private bank from handling public funds, and the money was
transferred to the Pacific National Bank in Tacoma. F.M. Roberts and his father F. W. Roberts had
already found success in operating several country banks. After a visit to the town, they decided to
charter an additional branch. The
Eatonville State Bank was established in 1913.
The main part of this building exists today as Key Bank.
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| Mensik Church Tree |
or in the outdoors.
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| Methodist Church 1912 |
Many gathered for another innovation: going to see a “moving
picture.” Movies, as they were later
called, were first shown in Van Eaton Hall in 1910 and then over at the Red Men
Hall. For a time, it was called the Red
Men Theater. In 1915, Frank Van Eaton
built the first movie theater. Frank
operated the theater until he left for WWI in1917. His brother McKinley Van Eaton ran the place
in his absence. The stars of the day
included Ann Pennington and Mary Pickford who appeared in the hit movie
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| Eatonville Movie Theater |
The films
were exciting, but the real show was the occasional fire in town. In 1915, a man became so enraged at someone
at the saloon that he tried to set it on fire.
He must have been a little tipsy because he set Ingersoll’s Hardware
Store ablaze instead. There was a
volunteer fire department, but fire engulfed the building too quickly. Dynamite kept in the back of the store did
not help matters. Brave citizens from
the Japanese community ran into the building and retrieved all of the dynamite
saving many buildings and people as well.
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| Fire in Eatonville 1915 |
Of the
family businesses that began in Eatonville during the 1910’s, the Malcom family
has the most prolific number of stores and services to date. Olaf Malcom (shortened from Malkomsen) came
with his brother from Norway in 1901.
Butchers by trade, they quickly found work in Tacoma. While there, Malcom met and married Jessie
Smith. They moved to Kapowsin and opened
their own meat market. Later, the
Malcoms moved to Eatonville, and Olaf built a slaughterhouse near the Mashel
River and opened a shop on Mashell Avenue (later used as the Sears
building). Malcom expanded and opened
other meat markets in surrounding towns; but the Great Depression sized him
down to the one shop in Eatonville.
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| Olaf Malcom |
Olaf and
Jessie raised four children together: Muriel, Byron, Keith, and Bruce. Byron went by the name “Barney.” He opened a restaurant and gas station at the
south end of the Eatonville Cutoff Road; and though the restaurant is gone,
many in Eatonville can give directions to “Barney’s Corner."
Keith
Malcom married Delores Jones. They had
four children: Gary, Kathy, Linda, and Diana.
Keith and Delores extended the legacy by opening several stores and
shops. Keith took over the Red and White
Store and then, built the town’s first supermarket: Shop Rite (the building now
houses Medical Billing). Delores built
and operated Malcom’s Deli (later sold and is now called Bruno’s). Together, the Malcoms created Mill Town with
a motel, storage, gas station, and various shops, including their son’s store
Gary’s Video.
As the town
became more populated, T.C. Van Eaton’s dream of a top-notch school came to
fruition. Though N.P. Christensen saved
the town the $9000.00 fee for contracting between 1904 and 1910, the first
school burned down as did the second.
Students had to attend classes in the back of a store or in Van Eaton
Hall. The townspeople got down to work.
A
story is told that prior to any ideas of building, it was discovered that the
school superintendent had taken a check from the school funds, cashed it at a
bank, and disappeared. T.C. Van Eaton
was on the school board and was made aware of the predicament. Working quickly, he made a deal with the
state. If Eatonville would supply a bus
for Camp 1 students and allow surrounding students to attend, then the district
could collect the money from additional sections of timber land and subsequent
taxes. The revenue from the timber was
astounding and inspired the school board to build a new school “second to
none.”
With money
in and land donated by T.C. Van Eaton, new schools were in the works. They would not be like the ones prior. To start anew, the school board elected B.W.
Lyons to be the head of the school. He
and others worked out plans for the construction with all the latest in
education. After viewing the new plans
for the high school from Lyons, Dr. Holland, the president of the Washington
State College, exclaimed that they were twenty-five years ahead of their
time. Many families contributed. It was to their advantage to have an
excellent secondary school close by. In
the past, families had to send their teenagers outside of Eatonville to attend
a good high school.
On July 4,
1915, the town celebrated Independence Day and the foundation of a new school
with a parade and laying the cornerstone of high school building.
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| Fourth of July 1915 |
On April 29, 1916, a day of
festivities began full of ceremonies, tours, singing, and addresses from
several speakers. The State
Superintendent of Public Schools and Governor Ernest Lister came to Eatonville
to speak for the high school dedication.
It was an amazing event (in 2009, the town celebrated a total renovation
of the high school and kept much of the original brickwork). The school encompassed three buildings: grade
school, gym, and high school.
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| Gym, High School, and Grammar School |
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| Auditorium |
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| Chemistry Lab |
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| Agricultural Lab |
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| Swimming Pool |
Businesses continued to
expand. According to excerpts from The
History of Tacoma Eastern Area Volume II, these businesses operated at the
given years:
1912 businesses: Nelson-Benson real estate and insurance;
Hotel Snow; T.C. Van Eaton, real estate; Anderson and Wise, Mashell Bar and
Cafe; Sun's Rays Bakery (Frank Mensik); CA Nettleton, meat market; G.B.
Ingersoll; Kipper's Grocery; Howard and Benston, private bankers; Columbia
Cafe, Lee Barber Shop; Benston Mercantile Co.; Lumberman’s Hospital and
Dispensary, Dr. A.W. Bridge, M.D.; C.H. Williams, dealer in gasoline lighting
systems; A.Y. Lindsey Co., groceries and men's furnishings; Depot Hotel, R.
Marti; Joseph Hearn, jeweler; R. Rotter, plumber; A.E. Dye, telephone service;
Dr. W.H. Marsh, Dentist; Fredricksen and Skewis, confectionary, tobacco, and
billiards; E.A. Williams, confectionary.
By 1916 the
number of business places had increased and included the following: J. Hearn,
jeweler; Eatonville Theater, A.P. Arkins; Fredricksen & Beckwith, Auto
Stage; Eatonville Dispensary for drugs; Eatonville State Bank; C.C. Emmons,
Hardware & Harness Repairs; Benston Mercantile Co.; Christensen's
Department Store; Hotel Snow; Dr. M.C. Hill, Dentist; Depot Hotel, R. Marti,
Proprietor; Johnson & Thompson, Blacksmithing and Horseshoeing; C.A.
Nettleton, butcher; Mashell Telephone Co., N.P. Christensen; Victor S. Viken,
tailor; E.R. Vaughn, attorney, with office at Eatonville; Club Pool Hall, A.U.
Fairbairn & Co., proprietors; and the Eatonville Dispatch.
By 1916, the town was strong and
had the conveniences most towns desired.
There was water and electrical systems, a phone company, church, a movie
theater, several stores, a hospital with a drug store, a town newspaper, and a
strong school system. The town had pride
and met together on Community Day. This
sense of cohesiveness and dedication to education caused Eatonville to survive
after the logging company closed and many jobs were lost. Many other surrounding towns died out as work
had to be found elsewhere. Jobs were lost in Eatonville as well, but because it
had so much to offer its citizens, they chose to stay. Though not all the amazing early families
have been mentioned, their contributions led to Eatonville’s success. The families, familiar faces, forest living,
and its founder formed Eatonville giving it a firm foundation.
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| Silo Day Looking north Mashell Avenue 1912 |
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| Mashell Ave. Looking North (HS not built yet) |
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| Mashell Ave. Looking South (Methodist Church on the left) |
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| Chamberlin's Bakery 1919 |
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| Eatonville Livery and Transfer Stables (Mashell Ave) |
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| Groe St. (Center St. looking west toward the bank) |
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| Groe St. (Center St. looking east) |
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| Lee Barber Shop |
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| Waddel Candy Store |
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| Bath and Tailor Shop |
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