Shots fly in rum raid

Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, May 14, 1924

Woman and men caught; big booze stock found

Fifth suspect eludes federal officers after five-mile chase in automobile

Four persons, one of them a woman, were held in the United States immigration detention station and city jail on charges of violating the prohibition act as a result of the activities of federal agents and special detail police officers, yesterday and late last night. A fifth suspect made his escape from the federal agents after a five-mile chase in which several shots were fired at his fleeing automobile.

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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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Roslyn: They came from 24 nations to mine the black diamond

Originally published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 7, 1973

By Joel Connelly

There is a cemetery for each ethnic group inhabiting the town.

This is the 67th 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: The American-Canadian border range of the North Cascades.

For 75 years, Roslyn was Washington’s toughest mining town, but it may also have been the most spirited place in the state.

About 1,200 people live there today, a decade after closure of Roslyn’s last coal mine. But more than 4,000 people—a colorful mixture of 24 nationalities, come to work in coal mines operated by the Northern Pacific Railroad—once inhabited the town.

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Ravensdale is now only deserted village

Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, April 7, 1916

The town government of Ravensdale exists no longer and the once thriving mining center is rapidly diminishing to a village of empty cottages. The exodus of the 350 population began directly after the [Northwest Improvement] Company announced its intention of closing the mine, following the explosion on November 16 when thirty-[one] men met death. With the citizens went also town officials.

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Restaurant and cemetery all that’s left of Krain

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

By Barbara Nilson

Holy Family Krain Cemetery on the plateau north of Enumclaw was established around 1900 by Slovenian immigrants and is still in use today.

A restored restaurant at the corner of Highway 169 and 400th Avenue Southeast is the only building left in the old town of Krain; just “up the road a ways” is the cemetery dating from the 1900s.

More than 255 graves have been recorded with many names that reach back into the history of Maple Valley and Ravensdale such as Lubinsky, Pauscheck, Petchnick, and Logar, grandparents of the Habenichts.

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Book to focus on Black Diamond history

Originally published in the Enumclaw Courier-Herald, January 28, 1988

By Joe Delmore

Carl Steiert, curator of the Black Diamond Museum, and Diane Olson look at the masks and helmets worn by early coal miners. Olson, with Steiert’s help, is writing an oral history of Black Diamond. (Photo by Joe Delmore)

Diane Olson, who is writing a history of Black Diamond, meets with Carl Steiert frequently in the Black Diamond Museum to talk about the glory days of coal mining and a book that Olson is writing.

Olson’s book will be the official Black Diamond Historical Society’s project for the State of Washington’s 1989 Centennial. Olson is writing the book on a volunteer basis and hopes to have it completed later this year.

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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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Four stills captured: Home found converted into distillery

Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, October 30, 1922

2,000 gallons of mash are discovered in raid—got electric current free

Four stills, 2,000 gallons of mash, several hundred bottles of beer, and a complete bottling outfit were seized by Sheriff Matt Starwich and a party of deputies in a raid shortly before noon today on a house at 7440 Green Lake Way.

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Father, son held for selling poisonous liquor

Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, September 27, 1922

Father and son are being held by Sheriff Matt Starwich in the county jail while investigation is being made of their reported manufacture and sale of poisonous liquor.

Steve Vernelli, the father was arrested by police Sunday, released on bail, and rearrested yesterday by the sheriff. While Vernelli was held on the first charge, Deputy Sheriff Lee Morgan raided his home at Black Diamond and arrested his son, D. Vernelli.

Several gallons of liquor said to be poisonous, and a still, consisting mainly of a milk can, were seized in the raid.

A report to Sheriff Starwich, two men were made seriously ill and required hospital attention after drinking moonshine made in Vernelli’s still

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Black Diamond’s lively history comes alive for teachers

Originally published in The Seattle Times, July 25, 1984

By Val Varney
Times South bureau

Seattle Pacific University students take a tour through the Black Diamond cemetery.

The 20 people who gathered in the old railroad depot tried to imagine what it was like in Black Diamond about 100 years ago.

The depot, which now houses the Black Diamond Museum, is filled with artifacts from the coal-mining days and is one of four old buildings remaining from that bygone era.

To make history come alive, a song about coal mining, “16 Tons,” was played over a tape recorder. Stories were told of bootlegging, sometimes called Black Diamond’s second industry, the “revenuers” coming to town, the Christmas show at the old theater, and the miners’ strike in 1921, which was never resolved.

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