Exercise and history.
Makes sense.
You walk, you look around, you learn.
Just in time for summer strolls, the University of Washington Press has published Judy Bentley’s “Walking Washington’s History,” which follows last year’s “Hiking Washington’s History.”
While the hiking book focused on nine regions and 42 hikes, the walking book looks at the history of just 10 of the state’s cities: Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, Yakima, Walla Walla, Vancouver, Olympia, Bellevue, Bellingham and Everett.
In her chapter on Everett, Bentley takes her readers through Lowell, up Rucker Hill, through downtown and north to the Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson family home on Grand Avenue. Everett was an easy section to write, Bentley said, because the most colorful part of the city’s history involves its beginnings in the late 1800s through World War I.
The chapter, titled “Milltown,” starts with logging in the region and the resulting industrialization of Everett with lumber mills, paper mills and shake mills.
“We were really proud of those smokestacks and the jobs that came with them,” historian David Dilgard of the Northwest Room at Everett Public Library told Bentley.
The story then moves on to the labor movement and includes the Everett Massacre. Nearly 100 years ago, on a November Sunday in 1916, about 300 members of the Industrial Workers of the World, a union commonly called the Wobblies, decided they would try to demonstrate at the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore. They boarded the steamers Calista and Verona from Seattle and landed at the City Dock at Port Gardner in Everett.
There, they were confronted by the county sheriff and about 200 citizen deputies. Shots rang out and men on both sides died.
“I walked around Depot Park on Bond Street at the west end of Hewitt, in the vicinity of the old city dock,” Bentley said. “Lots of history there. I also enjoyed the Forgot-ten Creek natural area.”
Bentley, an emeritus English and liberal studies instructor with the Seattle Community College system and a longtime teacher, has a love of Northwest history.
“Everett is fortunate to have the Northwest Room at the library there,” she said. “And David Dilgard is a real treasure.”
From Bond Street, Bentley suggests walking up Kromer Avenue to the Rucker Mansion at 412 Laurel Drive.
The juxtaposition of the homes of the wealthy very near the homes of blue-collar workers is evident on Rucker Hill and in north Everett, and Bentley encourages her readers to take note.
Her walking loop takes people past the Monte Cristo Hotel, the Historic Everett Theatre, the old city buildings, the old county buildings, the Carnegie building, the Labor Temple, the public library, Normanna Hall, Clark Park, Everett High School and some of the beautiful old homes on Rucker and Grand avenues.
Along with early logging and mining, Everett’s labor movement and the industrialists, Bentley’s chapter on Everett includes bits on prohibition, women’s suffrage and Gov. Roland Hartley.
Two of Bentley’s favorite chapters are the ones on Olympia and Bellingham, which have attributes similar to Everett’s, she said.
“But I really liked them all, and Everett has a great history.”
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