Clara and John Jensen, 1902

We’re coming up on the wedding season, so it seemed appropriate to share the 1902 wedding photo of Clara and John Jensen.

The story goes . . . In 1900, Clara was finished with school and ready to start her own life.  She journeyed to find work in the Yakima Valley. Once here, Clara stayed with her half-brother William Fiander. One day as she was riding, Clara happened upon some farmers working hay.  On one of the large haystacks, her eyes fixed on one man: John Jensen. He was strong, handsome, and felt the same reaction when he saw Clara. Jensen said, “That is the woman I’m going to marry.” By 1907, they had been married five years and had two beautiful little girls.  Bessie was born in 1905 and younger sister Little Clara was born two years later. (Per Early Eatonville blog.)

Photo courtesy of the Carney family.

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Dining at the Hotel Snow

In the early 1900s, the Mill Villiage Motel in Eatonville wasn’t around. In fact, the man who would build it, Keith Malcolm, wasn’t even born yet. Back in the teens, you would have gotten a room and a hot meal at the Hotel Snow for the affordable price of $2.00 (about $45 today).

Here’s a shot of guests being served a home cooked meal in the dining room.

Photo courtesy of the Parnell family.

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1913 ad for Hotel Snow

Eatonville Auditorium 1916

On the 4^th of July, 1915, Eatonville residents paraded down the Mashell to not only celebrate independence day but to also lay the cornerstone of the new high school.

This school would be first class all the way and at a cost of $45,000 (approximately $1,035,000 today), next to the $16,000 gym. Building got underway and doors opened in 1916. The end result? It blew people away.

No Other Like It
Washington Governor Ernest Lister attended the dedication, along with State Superintendent and, the president of the state college, and, of course, pretty much every Eatonville resident.

Governor Lister said, “There is no other high school in the state like Eatonville’s.” Others agreed. The school was written up in newspapers and journals as an example of what to strive for.

Eatonville High School Gym – 1916

A look inside
It’s not possible to mention all the advanced and innovative features of the amazing 1916 school, but here are a few.
• a steam heating plant in the basement, equipped with an automatic heat regulating system.
• an automatic electric clock in the superintendent’s office. The master clock was connected with 22 smaller clocks in other buildings.
• a fire alarm system.
• a manual training department, complete with the most modern wood and metal working power lathes. It was also equipped with top-of-the-line safety devices in case of an accident.
• a household arts department with a model sewing room, living room, bedroom and a large kitchen laboratory, “where common sense domestic science” was taught.
• a generous agriculture department, including outdoor barns and laboratory.
• physics and chemistry laboratories, and academic classrooms on the third floor,
• a stocked library.
• a reading room and checker and chess room.
• a modern auditorium equipped with a fireproof motion picture lantern room and a three-section lighted stage.

The new gym also had its own wow factor. It was equipped with dumbbells, Indian clubs, horses, bars, rings, trapeze, rowing machines, indoor track, and more. If that wasn’t enough there was a swimming pool, where students received training in swimming, diving, lifesaving, and first aid.

Civic Pride
There was a great amount of civic pride in the school. It would be hard not to be proud when it was being toted as the “leading rural school system in the Pacific Northwest” and being written up in papers in journals back east.

Thankfully, today things haven’t changed that much. EHS is still a beautiful modern school, equipped with some cutting edge technology. Students are being prepared for the 21^st century (instead of the 20^th), and civic pride still runs deep.

Building of the Tall Timber (then a garage) 1915

The Tall Timbers restaurant wasn’t always a restaurant. It got its start in 1915 as a garage. A big piece of the building crew here included Nate Williams, his brother Ed Williams and Bill Oxley.

For more pictures of the building of the garage, click HERE.

Cecil Williams and his dog

Photos of Eatonville’s past are filled with people and and their dogs. Here are two shots of boys with their dogs — Cecil Williams and Otto Haynes and his dog Jiggs Jr.

If you’ve got a picture of an Eatonville-ite and their dog, please share.

Photos courtesy of the Haynes family and Rich and Ruthie Williams.

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Otto Haynes and his dog

Page of the Kjelstad photo album (ca. 1915)

This page comes straight from the Kjelstad family photo album. Several of the photos give you a glimpse of farming in Ohop Valley back in the early 1900s when tractors weren’t part of the landscape yet. (That’s probably e Matt Kjelstad with the calves in the bottom right.)

The top right image features Ohop Valley pioneer Olava Kjelstad in front of a ca. 1915 automobile. Olava may not look it here, but she was quite the mover and shaker in her day.

Photos courtesy of the Kjelstad family.

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Memorial EHS 1945

For decades Eatonville has lost its young men to various. This ran in the 1945 Eatonville High School annual. It gave tribute to the students who had lost their lives:

• James Battle
• Charles Biggs
• John W. Davie
• Irvin Fry
• Rudolph Jugo
• Raymond Lockhart
• Ted Lowell
• Edwin Norberg
• John Ward
• Gordon Worden

Images courtesy of Rich Williams.

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Moving the Canyon hillside rock by rock

It’s hard to imagine the back breaking work that went into building the Canyon Road ‚ at times rock by rock.

There are a number of pictures of the crews toiling away (and blowing away) on the site and here are a few more.

Photos courtesy of the Haynes family.

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State-of-the-Art equipment of 1919

Sometimes you just had to take a hammer to those rocks

Building on the Canyon Rd.

The Canyon Road was quite an undertaking in 1919. Built on a cliff side, roads had to often be blasted out of rock. Today the road is being repair, but they should feel lucky it’s a repair and not the back breaking work on building.

For more pictures of the building, click HERE.

Photos courtesy of the Haynes family.

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Car on the early Canyon Rd. (ca. 1920)

Hotel Snow (ca. 1912)

This is an early shot of Hotel Snow, which was built around 1912. There are a number of pictures of this hotel on this site, as well at the Eatonville Hotel that took its place later down the road.

T. C. Van Eaton Cabin
What is great about this shot is that you can easily see how the T. C. Van Eaton’s log house was used as part of the hotel. It’s the right quarter (behind the men) with the smoke coming from the chimney.

The cabin was the first home in Eatonville and is now located at Mill Pond Park.

Photo courtesy of the Parnell family.

Click on image to enlarge.