The wonders of Waterville
Published 2:03 pm Friday, June 11, 2010
Waterville, the state’s highest incorporated town, sits at 2,650 feet above sea level on the Waterville Plateau, about 25 miles northeast of Wenatchee and halfway between Everett and Spokane.
For travelers, Waterville can be an hour’s stop or a base to explore the area.
Getting there is half the fun if you opt to take the roller-coaster Badger Mountain Road from Wenatchee. The reward atop Badger Mountain is a terrific view across the Waterville Plateau.
The gazebo represents one of President George H.W. Bush’s Thousands Points of Light that honored community organizations “spread like stars throughout the nation, doing good.”
One “point” is the volunteer force that created a ski hill on Badger Mountain and has maintained it for 72 years.
The town is an unlikely place to have ties to astronomical events, but the Douglas County Historical Museum owns two meteorites. The 82-pound Waterville meteorite discovered in 1917 less than 20 miles away, was the first meteorite found in Washington.
For a while, it was kept at the entrance to William Schluenz’s hardware store. He offered to pay $1 to anyone who could knock off a piece of the nickel-iron space rock. He never had to pay off.
The Washington State History Museum borrowed it to study but was not as quick to return it. The county sheriff had to retrieve it.
The 19 1/4-pound Withrow meteorite was found in 1950 about 15 miles away in a farmer’s field and was later donated to the museum.
The museum also houses a two-headed calf and one of the state’s largest (4,500 specimens) rock-and-mineral collections. The University of Washington offered a princely sum for the Schluenz collection it but was turned down.
Waterville is well-named. In the late 19th century, it had the only good supply of water for miles around, a valuable commodity in Central Washington.
Cattle ranching created the economic base until the harsh winter of 1889-90, when the below-zero temperature and snow drifts into April killed the majority of animals and destroyed the industry.
Potatoes and wheat became the cash crops until dry-land wheat farming took over as the economic engine.
The 1,200-resident town is perfect for a walk. The commercial district is on the National Register of Historic Places, along with the Waterville Historic Hotel and the Nifty Theatre.
You get the sense that children are safe to wander and if you lived here, you’d know the names of every business owner. Young Adysen Warner walked her dogs, Hobie and Louise, while playing her recorder. Two women handled details of a surprisingly large thrift shop. An ice cream sign tempted walkers into Mitchell’s Drug, Hardware and Floral, a barber pole sat outside Waterville Parlor, and Thomsen Insurance Company advertised crop insurance.
If you’re tired of mortgaging your first-born for an ice cream cone, the Blue Rooster Bakery had two scoops of ice cream for $2.25.
Other stops are Waterville Pioneer Park, eye-pleasing St. Joseph Catholic Church and Douglas County Courthouse, built in 1905 with tower spire and roof detailing offering a whimsical contradiction to the solid structure.
Considering an overnighter?
An advertisement from the Douglas County Press in 1907 touted the Jacobean Revival-style Waterville Hotel (1903) as offering “first class accommodations to the traveling public (with) hot and cold water.”
It’s now the 12-room Waterville Historic Hotel, owned by Dave Lundgren, who discovered it while on vacation in 1992 and bought it in 1994.
“I was intrigued by the building. I thought, ‘This is a building that should be open.’ It was built of brick on elevated foundations of basalt boulders hauled by wagon from five miles away.”
Lundgren has been constantly restoring and remodeling the 12,000-square-foot hotel and given its size, will be at it for quite some time.
Information: Waterville Chamber of Commerce, 509-745-8871, www.watervillewashington.org; Waterville Historic Hotel, 888-509-8180, www.watervillehotel.com.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.
