Logger’s death ascribed to fall in 80-foot well

Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, March 9, 1934

Investigation of the death of Arthur Thomas, logger and miner, after a drinking party at a resort near Black Diamond, was near an end today with authorities virtually agreed that Thomas accidentally fell down an eighty-foot well near the resort while groping his way toward his automobile in the darkness.

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Death in well called mishap; man is quizzed

Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, March 8, 1934

Claude Starkey, 31-year-old roadhouse proprietor, was being questioned in the county jail today about a drinking party which Arthur Thomas, logger, attended February 22 at Starkey’s resort at Henry’s Switch, near Black Diamond.

Thomas’ body was taken from a well behind the resort yesterday. An autopsy showed severe bruises and internal injuries and evidence that Thomas apparently did not drown.

Coroner William J. Jones said the injuries could have been suffered in a fight or in the fall in the well.

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Enumclaw: Trim, green, and brimming with clean air

Originally published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 25, 1973

By Kathy McCarthy

This is the 74th visit The Seattle Post-Intelligencer staff reporters and photographers have taken to introduce the people, industry, and lifestyles of Northwest cities, towns, and rural communities. Next week: Othello.

Neatly trimmed lawn and autumn leaves front Enumclaw’s municipal building. (P-I photos by Tom Barlet)

Enumclaw doesn’t hire a professional grass-mowing service, but visitors have been known to get that impression after a quick look at the town’s lawns. Trim, green, and brimming with clean air, the town and its plateau nestle on the doorstep of Mt. Rainier, so close the citizens are apt to refer to it as “our mountain.”

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Wants to buy standing timber

Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, November 8, 1915

Pacific States Lumber Company of Tacoma makes offer to city council for forest at Cedar Lake

Negotiations for the purchase from the city of Seattle of approximately 200,000,000 feet of standing timber around Cedar Lake were today opened by the Pacific States Lumber Company with headquarters in Tacoma. In a letter to the city council the company says that it is in the market for the city’s timber, having practically closed deals for the purchase of 200,000,000 feet of timber from the Northern Pacific Railway Company and the United States government, all in the same section of the watershed.

The company is willing to submit to such sanitary restrictions as the city may impose on its logging operations in the watershed, and in addition to the purchase of the city’s timber to also purchase the city’s railway line, extending from Cedar Falls and connection with the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound line to Cedar Lake.

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Lester: Isolation part of charm of small King County town

Originally published in The Seattle Times, October 18, 1970

By Jerry Montgomery
Times Staff Reporter

Lester—‘Smallness has its advantages.’

LESTER—This tiny town is hidden high in the Cascades of Eastern King County, dependent solely on logging and the Burlington Northern Railroad.

Lester is so small that the school superintendent, Jerry Metcalf, has to double as overseer of the water works and as a ceramics instructor.

Smallness has its advantages, though. Until a few years ago, oil to heat the small building that serves as the town library was unofficially borrowed from Scott Paper Co. tanks.

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Load boom breaks, kills Diamond man

Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, October 7, 1933

John Brocklebank, 45-year-old logger, was killed almost instantly shortly before noon yesterday when a loading boom broke and fell on him at Henry Switch, three miles north of Black Diamond.

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When coal was king on Puget Sound

Originally published in The Seattle Sunday Times, September 8, 1963

By Alfred L. Lomax

The Dakota, a sidewheeler on the Seattle-San Francisco run, was taking on coal at Talbot Dock. — Photos courtesy of Museum of History and Industry.

In the 1860s and 1870s, when the pungent aroma of freshly cut lumber permeated the damp Puget Sound atmosphere, the sulfurous smell of coaldust mingled with the more fragrant sawdust at Seattle, Tacoma, and Sehome (Bellingham).

While whirring saws sliced the giant firs into exportable lumber, the thud of picks and the harsh scrape of shovels could be heard in the Cascade foothills preparing the coal for tidewater bunkers.

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A mile in the sky… on the Mount Rainier scenic drive

Originally published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 27, 1963

Your family will enjoy this inspiring 205-mile drive that skirts the giant evergreens of Federation Forest… and meanders through alpine meadows

On the drive round Mount Rainier, there are many places where you’ll want to stop and take pictures.

You and your family can spend a memorable day or weekend on this 205-mile trip around Mount Rainier. The drive will take you through some of the most spectacular scenery in our Northwest and provide opportunities to fish, ride, hike, and see many forms of wildlife.

An outing like this is naturally an education for the youngsters. And it will let you share many new experiences together that will become subjects for family discussion in weeks to come.

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Bells & whistles & signals: Along the Carbon

Originally published in Carbon River Heritage, April 1988

An early-day logging operation

“This was even before my time,” chuckles Fred Miller of South Prairie. “The steam donkey pulled the logs down the skid road. There’s a pile of wood to stoke the boiler and the water troughs, off to the right, generated the steam.”

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6 dead, 19 saved in air crash

Originally published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 15, 1953

Last of survivors taken from wreck on Cascade slope; Crews fight snow, dark to reach injured GIs

Plane wreckage—The battered fuselage of the DC-3 transport which crashed in the Cascade Mountains 10 miles east of Selleck, in the Cedar River watershed, is shown in this dramatic aerial photograph by Post-Intelligencer photographer Tom Carson. Note the trees felled by the plane. The transport’s wings were torn off and left behind in a twisted trail of wreckage. Six died in crash, 19 survived.

In a herculean rescue effort by air and land, all 19 survivors of the 25 persons aboard a twin-engine DC-3 transport plane which crashed at the base of a snow-covered Cascade Mountains peak near Selleck were brought out Tuesday night.

The wreck occurred early Tuesday morning.

The Army-chartered Miami Airlines plane, carrying soldiers and a crew of three from the East Coast to Seattle, crashed 40 miles southeast of Seattle in the rugged Cedar River watershed, 10 miles east of Selleck, in a blinding snowstorm. The flight began at Washington, D.C.

Six men were killed, according to the Army and Coast Guard. Lt. Cmdr. Robert T. Norris, coordinator of the rescue operation.

Both pilots, 4 soldiers killed

They were the pilot and copilot, Capt. A.J. Lerette Jr. and William E. Harshman, both of Miami, and four soldiers whose names were withheld pending notification of next of kin.

In shuttle tuns, helicopters carried out survivors, many of them injured seriously. Trucks took over the burden after darkness grounded the helicopter.

The first two survivors brought out were Adra Bebe Long, stewardess, Miami Fla., and Pvt. Odell Matthew of Washington D.C. Both struggled out through deep snow for help before being found and picked up.

M.E. Merett, sanitation patrolman for the Seattle Water Department, picked up Mrs. Long and took her to Selleck in a station wagon.

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