Mill town of Selleck still exists; remnants of Lavender town next door

Originally published in the Voice of the Valley, August 22, 2006

By Barbara Nilson

The rebuilt Selleck School, completed in 1930. This April 10, 1940, photo is courtesy King County Assessor Property Card collection, Washington State Archives, Puget Sound Branch.

At the end the Kent-Kangley Road east of Maple Valley is the mill town of Selleck, which still exists today; next door was the town of Lavender, or “Jap Town.” The mill is gone, but the school is still there and about 16 of the original houses.

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Lake Sawyer log dump

Originally published in the Voice of the Valley, September 9, 2014

By Bill Kombol

Lake Sawyer log dump, 1928

This photo by Clark Kinsey shows one of the log dumps of the Lake Sawyer Mill Company, circa 1928. This log dump facility was located on the west shore of Lake Sawyer at the current site of the Sunrise Lake Sawyer Resort. This old log dump is now a short peninsula at the resort which juts out into the lake.

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St. Paul to lay rails next fall

Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, May 27, 1906

Grading expected to be far enough advanced by that time to permit contractors to construct new tracks

Right-of-way through Cedar River Valley will be improved as soon as the franchise ordinance permits

Line reaching for Tacoma beyond Black River Junction will parallel the Puget Sound Electric Company

Actual track laying will commence on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul’s line in this state by fall. Grading on the extension up Cedar River Valley from the point near Maple Valley where the St. Paul leaves the tracks of the Columbia & Puget Sound, will begin as soon as the company is notified of the approval of its franchise ordinance.

The camps will be established within a few days. The mills of the state are so busy with orders for rail and cargo shipment that they will be unable to handle the big contract the St. Paul will have to let. As a result a number of portable mills will be sent into the woods along the right of way of the St. Paul and ties will be gotten out at convenient points.

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2,000 tons a day for 50 years

Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, April 25, 1929

Sixty-six years ago next fall “Ed” Henderson sighted an imaginary line across the foothills of the Cascade Mountains which revealed one of the cornerstones of community and industrial progress in the Pacific Northwest. Engaged in surveying, he became the discoverer of an extensive coal field from the various developments of which millions of tons of coal have been poured into the uses of commerce during the last half-century.

The only commercial coal produced in the Pacific States is mined within a radius of seventy miles from this discovery, and therefore it commands an extensive market. Next to lumber it is the most enriching natural wealth of the region, the annual output being normally about 2,500,000 tons.

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Black Diamond society

Originally published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 26, 1893

The Hanson-Turnbull wedding: A “hard times” entertainment

The Masonic Hall, left of center, ca. 1915. The photographer was looking up Baker St. toward Third Ave. (The Congregational Church is to the right; St. Barbara’s in the background.) Today’s Masonic Hall resides in the same location.

Mr. Alexander G. Hanson and Miss Jeanie J. Turnbull were married in the Masonic hall at Black Diamond on Tuesday evening by Rev. H.T. Shepard.

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House by old mill site rekindles memories

Originally published in the Voice of the Valley, December 11, 1974

By Laura Lorenz

Desolate and forlorn today—with a fire-gutted roof—is this only remaining building of the Sandstrom Mill. Around 1910 the mill, located near the present Wilderness Village Shopping Center, was one of the most active spots in the valley. About 50 men worked there at the mill’s peak. Laura Lorenz, with help from the Greater Maple Valley Historical Society, traces its history in the article below. (Voice photo by Lowell Lorenz.)

A fire during the last week of November gutted the only remaining building of the Sandstrom Mill.

The cause of the mid-morning fire, which destroyed the old white-framed caretaker’s house, is being investigated, says Fire Marshal Larry Johnson.

The mill itself, our historians recall, was located at the Dowlings Cut, so named after a railroad employee who helped lay the tracks through the area. It is better described as the empty flat land to the northeast of Witte Road and Highway 169, diagonally across from the present Wilderness Village Shopping Center.

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Beginnings of Sherwood and Taylor—once lively areas—traced back 83 years by Anna Conover

Originally published in the Voice of the Valley, [Month, day unknown], 1978

By Ruby Ziegner

Anna Gruenes Conover looks back over 83 eventful years in the Hobart-Sherwood-Taylor areas.

When Anna Gruenes Conover celebrated her birthday on January 30, she could trace her 83 years of memories back through the history of this entire area from Hobart to the beginnings of Sherwood and Taylor, once-lively places which have long disappeared from current maps.

She was born in 1895 in Sherwood, east of Hobart and northwest of what was just becoming the town of Taylor at the time. Her father, Franz Gruenes had arrived in 1886. As a European immigrant en-route from Minnesota to Oregon, he met a couple of men who urged him to stop off in Seattle. One of them was coming out to claim a homestead on which he had filed.

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