Diamond’s shock troupe

Originally published in the Pacific Coast Bulletin, May 15, 1929

Some outfit in the Mountain League may stop this steam-rolling bunch from Black Diamond. The way they are travelling now it is going to take a couple of barricades and few barrages to turn the trick. Bill Cushing is certainly leading a smooth working, snappy bunch of socking sluggers. They don’t do much beefing but, brother, they do a man’s size job of biffing.”

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Coal dealers of Northwest visit mines

Originally published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 23, 1923

156 fuel men tour workings of Pacific Coast Company; are feted at banquet

One hundred and fifty-six Pacific Coast Coal Company dealers, from Washington and Oregon, the largest number of fuel men ever assembled from the two states, visited mines and other plants of the company at Newcastle, Renton, Black Diamond, and Burnett yesterday.

Calling them fuel men is a misnomer because the delegation included one woman, Mrs. Agnes Shano of Ellensburg, said to be the only woman coal dealer in the Northwest.

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New skipper

Originally published in the Pacific Coast Bulletin, February 1, 1929

Martin Hamlin, of Carbonado, on the right, turning the wheel over to Albert Allen, of Black Diamond. At the last meeting of the Central Council the regular semi-annual election was held and Albert Allen was elected to succeed Martin Hamlin as chairman. Both men are leaders and both are universally well liked.

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Selleck history survives—owner seeks ways to keep town alive

Originally published in the Seattle Times, December 17, 1986

By Jim Simon

In its heyday, Selleck was a testimony to American corporate energy.

Running three shifts a day, the massive mill owned by the Pacific States Lumber Co. turned out nearly a million board feet of lumber each week. Its power was generated by an on-site steam plant; to feed the saws, the surrounding hillsides were stripped of virgin stands of Douglas fir and red cedar.

Built in 1908 as a workers’ camp, Selleck became a full-fledged town with two hotels, its own hospital and school, a tavern and a community hall. Nearly 900 people lived there at one point: East Europeans, Irish, Italians—and a contingent of Japanese recruited to produce lumber used to rebuild Tokyo after a 1923 earthquake leveled that city.

The good times came to an abrupt end in 1939, when Pacific States went bankrupt and dismantled its mill to provide building materials for the war effort.

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Suds safari

Originally published in The Seattle Times, December 9, 1973

By Andy Fuller

Have you been on a suds safari lately?

The safari is out to such remote places as Buckley, Black Diamond, or North Bend in quest of schooners and pitchers brim full of beer.

But a suds safari is more than a trip to the sticks for a beer. Just any old beer joint won’t do.

Taverns included on a suds safari should not only be rustic and out of the way, but also have something extra in the way of color or background or plain honky-tonkiness.

Most of the taverns worth visiting have basic similarities. There’s a certain weathered and ancient dignity in the heavy carved backbar and battered but comfortable wooden tables and chairs. There is always at least one pool table and perhaps a shuffleboard and piano. There usually is a dance area. The country tavern’s interior is more roomy and airy than its counterpart in the city. Often there’s a horseshoe pit out back.

Country taverns of any pretensions have country and Western music Friday and Saturday nights. You can stomp and jostle on a dance floor jammed with loggers and construction hands and their wives and girlfriends and also with a surprising number of city types who go out for the weekends.

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Brave men toil with no reward, except that of trying to do service to stricken comrades

Originally published in The Seattle Sunday Times, November 21, 1915

Workers go hours and days without sleep

Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Garnes, of Ravensdale Hotel, who remained on duty for hours preparing food for members of mine rescue crews who toiled in depths of mine where workers lost their lives.

In the events following the disaster at Ravensdale last Tuesday many have enrolled their names in the ranks of the heroes.

Working desperately through mud and grime, crawling through cracks in the black coal pits, more than a quarter of a mile below the surface of the earth, and often going without sleep for protracted periods, scores of men have shown themselves to be the salt of the earth. And they did these things without hope or expectation of reward.

It was a hopeless task in which they were engaged, for they knew full well that none of the thirty-one men left in the mine a few hours after the explosion could be left alive, and yet they hoped against hope, and toiled on. They thought that, perhaps, one might have escaped the violent concussion that shook earth—the maybe one or more would survive if reached in time.

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34 dead in coal mine explosion in county

Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, November 17, 1915

Five bodies removed from workings at Ravensdale, three escape, and others are still underground

Foreman and head of union killed

Exact cause of accident has not been determined, but is supposed to have been from gas or coal dust

By J.J. Underwood

Entrance to Ravensdale Mine and Black Diamond rescue crew. 1—Mine rescue crew from Black Diamond: M.A. Morgan, Joe McDonald, Roy Rank, A.L. McLean, James Murphy, Charles McKinnon. 2—Entrance to No. 1 mine at Ravensdale. This photograph was taken yesterday afternoon, following the explosion. The other photograph is that of Mike Firlich, who made his way out of the slope, unassisted, after the accident.

RAVENSDALE, Wednesday, Nov. 17.—Of the thirty-seven men who descended into the lower workings of the Northwest Improvement Company’s coal mine No. 1 at Ravensdale yesterday morning, five are known to be dead, three have been taken out alive, and the twenty-nine others are missing and believed to be dead as a result of two explosions.

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Monument to honor town’s past

Originally published in the Enumclaw Courier-Herald, September 18, 2012

By Wally DuChateau

The other day I heard about a Black Diamond memorial to Washington state’s coal mining past, so I drove across the river to check things out. I suspect this project has been in various stages of development for a number of years, but this whimsical storyteller just learned about it.

Indeed, the preliminary steps have been completed and ground is about to be broken just outside the entrance to the Black Diamond museum. Plans include a granite wall that will bear the names of Washington miners who have perished in this rather dangerous occupation.

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Butcher, baker, and candlestick maker

Baker George Eipper was ‘Citizen of the Year’ in 1962

Originally published in the Black Diamond Bulletin, Fall 2012

By JoAnne Matsumura

Baker George A. Eipper, along with his wife Leone, served their famous breads and pastries for more than 40 years to Black Diamond miners, families, and visitors.

The Eippers’ generous donations of cakes for fundraisers and special occasions were appreciated by many, and in 1962, George was honored with the Labor Day Citizen of the Year award from the Labor Day Committee.

The Eippers’ Crystal Mountain bread, which is made with potato flour, became so popular that George began making it in four-pound loaves.

Customers buying several loaves at a time ignored the sign over the kitchen door warning, “He who indulges, bulges.”

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Old mill town a vestige of the past

Originally published in The Seattle Times, July 31, 2007

By Cara Solomon

SELLECK—In the quiet of this forest clearing, there once was a bustling way of life, with a school, a hotel, and a dance hall for hundreds. Bands traveled to town on Saturday nights to play.

That was back when the woods were loud with logging. Now the sound of Selleck is children scouring the nearby creek for snakes. Parents talking on the porches of century-old houses. A few dozen people, living in a time capsule of a town.

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