Ediz Hook Part Three: The Fog Bell

I'm just going to continue on with a focus on changes to Ediz Hook, and notably the beautiful old lighthouse facility that used to sit on its tip.  Part 1 and Part 2 are here and here.  Below is a 1907 view of the fog bell that once sat on the end of Ediz Hook:

1907 photo of fog bell on the end of Ediz Hook.  Photo from the Burt Kellogg collection, hosted by the North Olympic Library System.

This view is notable for a variety of reasons.  One, it was shot in winter, and there is snow on the ground.  Second, it appears that this was a manual bell...so during foggy weather, or presumably any time visibility was impaired, the light-keeper had to be working that bell.  Pretty astonishing.

I could find no trace of this building...no foundation, no indentation in the grass.  However, based on the outline of the mountains that are visible behind the building its evident that this photos was taken from roughly here, looking towards the south.  Here is the modern view, as close as I felt I could match it:

Photo collected 9 June 2020, Ediz Hook, by Ian Miller

The site of this fog bell building is important, as it is the only thing that provides any reference for a few other photos of the lighthouse complex that sat on Ediz Hook.  A post to follow will focus on one of those photos.

Ediz Hook Part Two - From the Other End

Every year I try to make it out the the end of Ediz Hook to collect survey data to add to a multi-year monitoring study of beaches in Washington State.  Since the whole of the end of the Hook is part of a US Coast Guard base, its not just a simple matter of driving out there...it takes a bit of set up.  But its always fun and interesting.  My trip out there this year was last week, and I figured it also offered a stellar opportunity to provide some perspective on changes to the Hook to complement my earlier post on Ediz Hook.  Notably, the end of Ediz Hook used to host a lighthouse, built in 1865 and subsequently modified a few times.  For this post I want to focus on this photo, dated to the 1880's and presumably shot from the lighthouse tower, looking landward along the Hook:

Photo taken in the 1880's looking landward along Ediz Hook.  From the Burt Kellogg collection, hosted by the North Olympic Library System.  

There really isn't much trace of the lighthouse or its associated buildings out at the end of Ediz Hook anymore, but there are a few more modern storage buildings...and one of them has a flight of stairs that allowed me to get up pretty close to where this photo was shot ~140 years ago.  Here is what the view looks like now:

Photo by Ian Miller, collected 9 June 2020

Ediz Hook is so heavily modified...you have to really use your imagination to get a sense for what an amazing habitat it must have been.  I would love to be able to go back to when the 1880's photo above was shot and take a look around.

Washington Harbor - 600 Years of Activity

This Washington Harbor shoreline at the entrance to Sequim Bay is one of the most culturally significant and extensively researched historical locations in the Sequim-Dungeness area. The few acres of land shown here were home to a S’Klallam Tribal village for at least 600 years, a clam cannery for more than a half-century, and is now utilized for research in marine sciences.  

Then - Bugge Clam Cannery, approx. 1905-1910 
(Courtesy the Burt Kellogg Collection of the North Olympic Library System)  
Now - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, May 2020

The historical photo is one of many taken of the Bugge Clam Cannery and available for viewing in the Burt Kellogg Collection of the North Olympic Library System. The cannery operated at Washington Harbor as early as the 1880s and a large Victorian home was built in 1889 (at far right). Sequim pioneer Hans J. Bugge is the most notable developer at the site.  Hans, and later his son Anphin, operated the cannery here for more than 60 years. The cannery had 30-40 employees and at its peak, shipping 10,000 cases of clams per year under the names Moon Kist and Tureen.

Bugge Clam Cannery at Washington Harbor,
with Bugge's Georgian-style home
Courtesy of the North Olympic History Center

The site also included a creamery (1905-1917) and the dock served as the primary port for commercial ships of the Mosquito Fleet until the wharfs at Port Williams and Dungeness were built. Children arrived by boat to a small schoolhouse that also sat on the property until it was moved to a nearby hillside due to winter tidal flooding. In 1910, Hans Bugge replaced the previous home on the site with a 6-bedroom Georgian style home which stood well into the time period of the next owners, Battelle.  

In 1966, Battelle Northwest purchased the property and developed it into a marine research laboratory and continues to operate at the site today as Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, operated by Battelle for the Department of Energy.

The S’Klallam village sxʷčkʷíyəŋ occupied this same site for approximately 600 years, until the late 1880s. The town of Sequim takes its name from this village, which translates to “place for going to shoot,” reflecting the abundant opportunities for hunting. There are a handful of cedar posts on the beach today that remain from that era (far left in the pictures but too small to see). They can be easily spotted from a standup paddleboard or kayak as you paddle along the shoreline.

Cover of Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe's history of the village at Washington Harbor

The most comprehensive and easily accessible telling of the Tribe’s history here was prepared by Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s Cultural Resources Specialist David Brownell and is available as an ebook pdf from the Tribal library.   

Lost cities of the Strait: Port Crescent

Okay, the use of the term "cities" might be a bit of a stretch in this case, but I've found myself increasingly fascinated by a few forgotten coastal settlements along the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  Most of these were, I would guess, associated with logging in an era when moving logs overland was an impossibility.  Some were quite small, but others were impressively large communities...that have now more or less completely disappeared.  Port Crescent, for example, was an impressively large coastal community on Crescent Bay along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, supposedly envisioned originally as a big ship port.

Here is a view of part of town from 1905, looking to the east from a point on the current road leading down to Crescent Beach:

1905 view of Port Crescent.  Photo from the Burt Kellogg collection, North Olympic Library System

and here is the view from the same point today:

8 June 2020 photo looking east towards Crescent Bay

In the far field of both photos is Tongue Point, site of Salt Creek County Park, and where Fort Hayden was built during WWII.  Because of trees and shrubs it is sort of hard to make out the shoreline in the near field of the modern view.  Here is a modern view of approximately where the large hotel and wharf would have been:

Photo taken 8 June 2020 approximately here, approximately where the large wharf and hotel sat in the 1905 photo above.  

Barely a trace of the extensive turn-of-the-century development associated with this town is visible.

Elwha River Dike and Fox Point Bunker

Here's stories from the Evening News and Chronicle from 1962 and 1963 detailing interest in building a dike to control the flow of the Elwha River to save Place Road homes from being affected by high water flooding.  

A former WW2 fire control bunker at the end of Fox Point had fallen into the river sometime before the article as a result of erosion. 

I included a Puget Sound Harbor Defense document showing the location of the former WW2 bunker. The bunker would've been the same simple pillbox style also seen near the camping area at Camp Hayden / Salt Creek Rec Area.  

There's been recent interest from the Coastal Watershed Institute in PA to remove part of the dike to help restore the original river flow and help save struggling salmon runs. The last I heard, the Place Road neighbors had met with CWI discuss their interests.  The effect of Covid-19 on things have slowed progress on this project.  

From the Chronicle, written by Del Price.

From this link

 

The SS Bering, a Reindeer Ship in Ballard

The SS Bering was a ship that was parked on the beach at Point Shilshole, now the home of the Ballard Elks Lodge. The Bering was built originally as the Annette Rolph at Fairhaven, California in 1918. The ship later spent time as a tramp steamship, reindeer ship, refrigerator ship and supply ship to Alaska during WW2.

In 1964, she was burned by the local fire department to make way for new development. Soon thereafter, the Ballard Elks Lodge was built on the site.

  

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Now view from the Ballard Elks webcam.

In 1943, she ran aground on Cape Spencer. Her crew re-floated her. Seattle based Tregonning Boat Company bought her for $1 and proceeded to beach her at their facility on Point Shilshole where she sat for the next two decades.  

A piece of the hull can still be seen at extreme low tides (-3 ish).  I launch my kayaks and SUPs from that location nearly daily and still see pieces of the ship on the beach. About a decade ago, a guy was removing larger pieces from the ship to clean the beach. The pieces generally look like burnt looking wood planks covered in barnacles. 

Read more about the SS Bering in this great HistoryLink article.   See my article on the Ballard Elks Lodge history.

The location of the Ballard Elks is 6411 Seaview Ave NW, Seattle. 

By Rob Casey / Ballard

Johnson Creek Auto Camp / Pitship Point (part 2)

Our previous post on Pitship Point introduced you to some history of John Wayne Marina and included a historical picture of a long dump near Johnson Creek, likely dating back to the turn of the 20^th century. We skip ahead a decade or two with a picture taken only a hundred yards or so east of that previous shot. 

Then - Johnson Creek Auto Camp (unknown date) / Now - John Wayne's Waterfront Resort (2020)

This image comes to us from the Museum and Arts Center in Sequim-Dungeness, featuring what was known then as Johnson Creek Auto Camp. Again undated, but with cars that I believe date to the 1920’s, this photo shows the early cabins of a campground that later would be called Silver Sands Resort and is now part of John Wayne’s Waterfront Resort on the western shore of Sequim Bay. The shoreline and primary use of this property hasn't changed much in nearly 100 years. The one exception, Whitefeather Way now separates the larger building on the left from the cabins on the right.  

Newspaper ad from May 1957

I presume the cabins in our Then picture were built in 1910, but I don’t believe any remain (although the county assessor lists 1910 as the “built date” of the current cabins). According to a 2017 Peninsula Daily News “Back When” column, which features a postcard picture of Silver Sands Resort in the 1960s, locals recall the old cabins were replaced by the current structures after World War II. Ads for Silver Sands Resort in the Port Angeles Evening News start mentioning “new cabins”

around 1960. Adjacent to Silver Sands was Hague’s Resort with apartments, camping, boat ramp and saltwater swimming lagoon. Both resorts were sold in the late 1960s to Sequim Bay Marina, Inc. (actor John Wayne), later becoming the RV park, camping and cabins you can visit today. Unfortunately, information or advertisements from the Johnson Creek Auto Camp era have been hard to track down.

Same tree?

For me, the fun of Now and Then photos is spotting landmarks, buildings or items that survived the intervening years and appear in both photos. After turning the brightness up all the way on our old photo, I spotted something that I believe has remained, although now only in part. A unique tree with multiple trunks can be seen in the old photo in nearly the same spot we currently find an enormous stump, just outside the second cabin from the left.

Lucky for us, Silver Sands Resort sold numerous postcard photos of their cabins in the 1960s and we can see the tree in all its glory. I can't be absolutely certain it is the same tree we see in the Johnson Creek Auto Camp photo, but the position and uniqueness of the tree itself make me feel confident that it is the same one.

Postcards from Silver Sands Resort in the 1960s

If you have any additional information about this location before it was Silver Sands Resort, please let us know.