A step back in time: A snowy Valentine’s Day 1923

Originally published in Maple Valley Neighbors, February 2023

By JoAnne Matsumura
Maple Valley Historical Society

It was early February and snow flurries in the surrounding foothills caused concern that the new Maple Valley post office, under the direction of W.A. Burtenshaw, would not be completed before snowfall.

The weather bureau gave no reports and there was conflicting information, yet the snow kept getting closer. The blizzard hit Tacoma and Seattle. Seattle got 24 inches of the white fluffy flakes in a few hours, while at the same time Maple Valley was getting its fair share.

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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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2 women die in 3-car crash at isolated Lester

Originally published in The Seattle Sunday Times, July 19, 1959

Grim reminder: Residents of Lester, King County, solemnly surveyed damage to an automobile in which two young mothers died Saturday evening just outside the little Cascade Mountain town. The automobile may be placed at the entrance to Lester to warn others to cut their speed. —Times staff photo by Vic Condiotty.

Two young mothers were killed and three persons were injured in a three-automobile accident near the airport of the isolated mountain town of Lester about 7:15 o’clock last evening.

The dead, both of Lester, were Mrs. Harold Otterman, 20, and Mrs. Walter Roundtree, 21.

Mrs. Otterman was the driver of a car which collided head on with another. Mrs. Roundtree was her passenger.

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A step back in time: There is more than one Maple Valley

Originally published in the North Maple Valley Living Magazine, June 2021

By JoAnne Matsumura
Maple Valley Historical Society

1909 Maplevalley postal cancellation

Many of you have noted seeing your fair city spelled as Maple Valley and Maplevalley in previous issues of this column. Let’s take “A step back in time” to some surprising information about the city’s name—as far back as 1885, and the story of the Maple brothers’ trek across the Washington Territory.

When the brothers arrived at a valley full of maple trees, they named the area Maple Valley and registered it at the nearest post office. Their story is interesting and enlightening to the vast beauty of the area.

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Local railroaders meet to reminisce

Originally published in The Daily Record, Ellensburg, Wash., May 30, 1983

By D.T. Sprau
Contributing Writer

Four retired railroaders, all of them old friends, gathered in mid-May at Burlington Northern’s Ellensburg station for an afternoon of reminiscing about their railroad careers.

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All that remains from Lester are stories, memories

Originally published in the Enumclaw Courier-Herald, March 26, 2003

Wally’s World by Wally DuChateau

The other day I was enjoying a tuna sandwich in the Lee dining room when a casual acquaintance walked over and asked: “What’s left of the old town of Lester?”

That’s a good question.

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Town built school: Lester dedicates ‘citadel of freedom’

Originally published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 11, 1954

By Charles Russell
Post-Intelligencer staff writer

Modern lines with lots of glass windows in the classrooms are features of Lester’s new school [shown here in the late 1960s.] Note how the school nestles among the high mountains.

LESTER, Jan. 10. — A “citadel of freedom” was dedicated today in this isolated Cascade Mountain town, linked in winter with the outside world only by train.

It was the new $192,490.51 Lester Elementary and High School.

Built without a cent of federal or state aid, the rambling, one-story, brick school provides more luxurious accommodations per pupil than perhaps any other of the state’s public schools.

The Lester school has only 31 pupils and four teachers. Its entire high school student body numbers eight—five girls and three boys, not boys enough even for a basketball team.

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A weary village breathes its last—dying logging hamlet vanishes in a blaze, but without glory

Originally published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 31, 1993

By Ellis E. Conklin
P-I Reporter

Gertrude Murphy, 90, picks through the remains of her home, the last one standing in Lester until a blaze destroyed it Sunday. (Bruce Moyer, P-I)

A little town, ailing for decades, finally died this week. The end was sudden and violent, in stark contrast to its long, quiet decline.

Nestled amid mountain peaks at the scenic headwaters of the Green River just below Stampede Pass, Lester was 102, only a dozen years older than Gertrude Murphy, the town’s last resident. Yesterday, she stood silently in the stinging cold watching smoke rise from the rubble of her home.

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Old towns: Railroad towns of Palmer/Kanaskat

Originally published in the Voice of the Valley, March 6, 2007

By Barbara Nilson

The original depot at Kanaskat built in 1912 and destroyed by fire in 1943. — From the Museum of History and Industry and loaned by Ruth Eckes.

The old railroad towns of Palmer and Kanaskat once thrived across the Green River from each other, Palmer on the north and Kanaskat on the south; eight miles southeast of Enumclaw. Somewhere along the line the two lost their identities. Apparently, the post office located in Palmer burned and the authorities moved it to Kanaskat but left the name of Palmer.

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The spirit of 1925

Originally published in the Pacific Coast Bulletin, July 2, 1925

Eyes steady in the face of danger
Resourceful, true, a man of soldier-worth
Who braves, for loved ones’ peace and comfort
The dark, deep-delving trenches of the earth.

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