This shot of Eatonville was taken around the 1955, I believe in conjunction with Operation Bootstrap. If anyone has a better date, please let me know.
The picture may be grainy, but there’s no question that it’s Eatonville. The high school and the football field — which looks like it used more for baseball — stand out at the bottom.
I had thought that the dark-roofed building at the top left of the football field was the FFA poultry barn. I was mistaken. Pat Van Eaton says, “It was the 1952 addition to the grade school. It had rooms for kindergarten, 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades. The school lunchroom was in the basement. It was a California design with a “flat” roof that drained toward the center and had massive single pane windows for the class rooms. We’re lucky it go demo’d”
Photo courtesy of Pat Van Eaton and the Eatonville Historical Society.
Click on image to enlarge.
Eatonville To Rainier 
10 responses to “Arial shots of Eatonville (1950s)”
You can see the sign at the triangle entering town, showing Mashell ave. as “City Center”, and Washington ave.(or Meridian) as “Truck Route” Back in those days, there were not any businesses on Washington ave. and used by the logging trucks to keep them off Mashell Ave., the “MAIN” street of Eatonville. Great pic !!
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I like the picture too. I heard that they made the “truck route” to divert them away from the school as well. Unfortunately, now everyone who comes to Eatonville via 161 drives through Washington and never drives down Mashell.
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A rotten shame that the traffic now by-passes downtown. That has probably hurt alot of businesses on Mashell Ave. Of couse the town has adapted an built businesses on Washington Ave and Center St.I think that has taken away some of the small town charm, of having all the businesses on one MAIN street. But that’s just my opinion.
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Hi The building you think is the poultry barn is really a “new’ca 1952 addition to the grade school. It had rooms for kindergarten,1st,2nd & 3rd grades . The school lunchroom was in the basement.It was a California design with a “flat’ roof that drained toward the center & had massive single pane windows for the class rooms.We are lucky that it got demo ed.
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Thank you. I’ll make a change to the post right now.
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I remember that building, I attended kindergarten through 3rd grade there,(’58-’61) the Lunchroom and recreation room were in the basement. we would all have to go to the lunchroom during a “bomb alarm” and crouch under the lunchroom tables with our coats over our heads(Cuban Missile crisis era) our coats would surely protect us from nuclear fall-out !! The recreation area was used for school sponsered square dancing, and when skate boards (Metal skates fastened to a board, with masking tape wrapped on the wheels to quiet them down) became popular , we got to ride those down there.
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Yeah, I did all my elementary school years there, and wondered at the time why it had a flat roof. You think I would have recognized it. Sheesh! 🙂 But I did like the the cafeteria in the basement. Thought it was always cool when then had the carnival down there. Kind of like having a party in a friend’s basement.
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It looks like the swings, teatherball, monkey bars, and covered play areas were not in yet. I also remember the bake sales, and canivals in the basement. Funny how vivid all that is in my mind !! ( What I had for lunch today totally evades me though !!) Actually the roofs on the other buildings are flat also, with hot mop tar roofing, with a scupper style drainage system. The “california-V” roof is not a bad design, if it is built properly with enough cricket to make the water flow away from the center of the roof.
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I still have scars from the swings (built on concrete, ideal for the clumsy children like myself), the merry-go-round (where I think the goal was to see who got sick to their stomach the first and flew off while spinning at 30 MPR) and the killing machine that looked a lot like a metal maypole. (You can find it if you look up “dangerous playground equipment of the 1960s).
If you’re not familiar with the maypole, you hung on to your metal handle and the bigger kids got it going. Your feet lifted off the ground and you were flying. Very cool for the first five minutes, when you realized there was no “stop” button and no amount of screaming would get the bigger kids to slow it down. So the goal turned into —hang on for your life until it slowed and your feet could touch — which was usually at the end of recess.
My experience was that your hands got sweaty or your muscles gave out long before the end of recess and you went flying backwards, again onto concrete. This time though, because of the speed and the fact that you actually flying, the landing was a frontal skid and the loss of 90% of skin from your ankles to your forehead.
I got the guts to go on the maypole about once year — I can only imagine I had a perverse need to fly. Never was able to hold on. I came home looking like freshly ground hamburger.
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I remember the maypole also, a nasty sort of child cruelity contraption !! I never did under stand why there was blacktop, or concrete under and around ALL the things a kid could fall off of ??? On the same thought as the maypole, later in life, when i was dating my wife, we went to the Oregon State fair. We decided to ride the “swings” much like the maypole, but spinning horizantally at 2000 mph, held to this horrible evil machine by only a couple of flimsy chains, I am picturing the chains breaking, thus flinging me 20 miles away from the fairgrounds. !!!! My wife said I was as white as a ghost !! We…(she) still laughs about it !!
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