1900-1910: Snohomish County’s wonder years
Published 1:23 pm Monday, September 13, 2010
The front page of The Everett News on June 10, 1899, predicted it all.
“Story of Great Opportunities. Natural Forces that Determined the Location of Everett as the Site of a Great City.”
The account heralded a coming economic boom from 1900 to 1910.
It would turn out to be the fastest-growing decade in the history of Everett and Snohomish County.
During that decade, Everett’s population more than tripled from 7,838 to 24,814. No other decade since has seen such dramatic change in the city.
In those years, the county also quickly grew. Seven of the county’s 16 towns became incorporated during that time.
The county’s forests drew workers and their families to logging camps that dotted the mountains.
The rivers and Port Gardner attracted fishermen from all over the world.
Countless shingles poured from Everett mills, and were used on houses throughout America. The mills brought people to work in them, and the workers made their own homes, built businesses, hospitals and churches.
It was the decade when the county came of age, when people came to realize their dreams.
It was a decade of prosperity.
The roots of many institutions that still exist today were planted during those years.
A century-old photo from The Everett Library’s Northwest Room gives a glimpse of the excitement and energy people brought to the county. A woman holds a baby on the platform of a train station. Two children stand nearby. All dressed up, they smile wide, exuding joy.
Behind the family, a train chugs away, a plume of black smoke rising into the air, leaving them to their future.
Natural advantages
Jack Hatlen wasn’t sure if he wanted to inherit his family’s farm in Norway.
His two older brothers already had abandoned the farm that was plagued with rocky soil. They moved to Everett to become tailors.
Go ahead and take the farm, they told Hatlen, said his daughter Betty Lee, 84.
No way, Hatlen thought. He was 19 years old, ready to take a chance.
In 1907, he took a steamship from Norway to New York and crossed America on trains all the way to Everett. His brothers moved to Everett, because the city’s waterfront and mountain views reminded them of their home country, but with better opportunities.
Hatlen also became a tailor and owned men’s clothing shops along Hewitt Avenue. Affluent customers helped his business grow in an era when a man wore a suit and tie to church.
Eventually, Hatlen’s parents and their youngest son moved to Everett. Hatlen built a house for them.
The family sold its farm in Norway.
The Hatlen family’s story mirrors many immigrants, especially Scandinavians, who came to Everett in the early 20th century.
The county had natural wealth: thick forests, rich minerals and plentiful fish. Everett had what it took to turn those resources into jobs and money. Smoke and steam rose in the mill town as it bustled with workers.
The area’s gorgeous mountains and moderate climate attracted William and Rosamund Spoerhase. In 1891, the German couple with seven children moved from the Midwest to Whitehorse near Darrington where there was a wealth of old-growth trees, said Loren Kraetz, 71, the couple’s great-grandson.
The family first lived near the North Fork Stillaguamish River, with William Spoerhase working at logging camps.
Loggers used coal to burn down trees too big for a saw, the thick smoke blocking sunlight on summer days. The big trees blocked their way to the stands of marketable timber.
As acres of forest disappeared, fertile farmland emerged in the Stillaguamish River Valley. The Spoerhase family eventually moved to the valley to start dairy farms along with many German immigrants.
In 1901, Arlington created its first cooperative creamery to make butter. The farms thrived, feeding the county’s growing population, Kraetz said. Farmers began holding fairs to make friends, exchange tips and find others making a living from the rich soil.
Families and neighbors came together to build barns that still stand today.
Kraetz lives in a farmhouse in Arlington built by his grandparents in 1905. He owns two century-old farms inherited from his family.
“It’s home,” he said. “It’s part of me. You think part of your soul is here.”
Streetcars and horses
Hewitt Avenue is one of the busiest streets in downtown Everett. When hockey games or concerts are held at Comcast Arena, traffic crawls and people quickly fill parking spaces along the street.
The road now filled with banks, restaurants and other businesses never seems to have enough parking spots during day. People crisscross the road, some waiting to catch a bus.
In 1900, the city had far fewer people than it does today. Streetcars ran in the middle of Hewitt Avenue, and horse-drawn wagons waited along the dirt road to move people around.
Interurban trolley cars also ran on steel tracks, connecting Everett with Seattle and Snohomish, said David Cameron, of Index, a local historian who co-authored “Snohomish County: An Illustrated History.” It would take about an hour to visit Seattle from Everett on the Interurban.
“We used to have a far better mass transit system back then,” Cameron said.
Rail tracks spread over the county among towns, logging camps and mines.
When the Great Northern Railway built new rail tracks in 1893 over the Cascade Range, it didn’t generate much traffic. In the late 1800s, the economy was bad and few people and goods moved into Snohomish County. During the decade of prosperity, that changed.
Once Everett got back on its feet, the tracks became a key transportation system, connecting Everett with the Midwest, where timber supply had declined. Investors in Minneapolis set their eyes on Snohomish County.
“Virtually all the money came from the Midwest,” Cameron said.
Loggers and quarrymen moved along the railroad through the Skykomish River Valley. Hundreds of newcomers such as Jack Hatlen and the Spoerhase family came over the mountains on trains.
Trains also carried timber and heavy equipment. In Everett, multiple rail tracks merged and steamboats arrived and departed, making the city a destination.
Rail tracks were built along rivers, which also were used to carry people and materials, like today’s highways.
Communities formed along rivers and rail tracks.
Between 1900 and 1910, seven settlements in Snohomish County incorporated as cities and towns: Monroe in 1902; Granite Falls, Arlington and Stanwood in 1903; Sultan in 1905; Index in 1907; and Gold Bar in 1910.
Today, rivers and rail tracks still exist side-by-side with roads and highways. Over the years, mass transit faded, as people started living in suburbs and relying on automobiles.
But the rail tracks are again piquing interest, as high gas prices prompt people to look for alternative commuting options.
More and more people are hopping on Sounder trains between Everett and Seattle to avoid clogged roads and the pain at the pump.
In Snohomish, people are discussing bringing commuter trains from King County.
A costly transit ballot measure on the November ballot aims to bring light rail to Lynnwood in 15 years.
All the push for mass transit makes historian Louise Lindgren chuckle.
“It’s one of those things you learn from history,” said Lindgren, who is married to Cameron.
Changing times
Rita Krusmark, 61, feels at home when she walks down Colby Avenue in Everett.
Krusmark loves to stop at Everett High School. The large brick building looks handsome, a kind of structure that seems to belong in Washington D.C., she said. It’s a landmark, built in 1910.
“I love the building,” said Krusmark, a 1967 Everett High graduate. “I love the school. I’m still proud of my school.”
Kitty-corner from the high school is a three-story apartment building that has existed for as long as Krusmark can remember.
It’s the first apartment house built in Everett.
The Bell Flats went up at Colby Avenue and 25th Street in the fall of 1908. The red-brick building cost $40,000, The Everett Morning Tribune reported on Sept. 27 of that year.
The house’s 20 apartments were for young couples and bachelors. Each apartment had heat, water, telephone and janitorial service. Visitors used the house phone to talk to tenants before knocking on their doors.
“Every detail has been arranged to a nicety and when the lawn and grounds about the apartment house are finished it will be one of prettiest and most desirable places in the city to live,” the newspaper reported.
The house was three blocks from the city’s business center. People lived near their workplaces.
In 1910, 24,814 people lived in Everett, U.S. Census figures show. That was about 42 percent of the entire county’s population of 59,209 people. Today, Everett is still the largest city in the county, but only about 15 percent of the county population lives in the city.
The rapid population increase brought growing pains. Mill workers gathered in the downtown, drank, socialized and fought. At one time, Hewitt Avenue alone had 36 saloons, said Larry O’Donnell, a lifelong Everett resident.
In time, drinking became a hot political issue; Everett would approve a citywide ban on alcohol in 1910, a full 10 years before the rest of America adopted Prohibition. In that year, the state approved women’s suffrage.
The strong economy also brought good things. People built new homes; couples started families. Families formed neighborhoods; churches began at homes and moved into their own buildings as more people joined.
Community groups such as the Everett Yacht Club and the chambers of commerce were created. Hospitals and nursing homes were built.
Many new public schools went up throughout the county. At schools, children from different ethnic backgrounds learned to speak English.
“Public schools did more than any other institutions to integrate different ethnic groups,” said O’Donnell, a retired Everett school administrator.
When the new Everett High School went up on Colby Avenue in 1910, the brick building was considered a symbol of the city’s cultural maturity, O’Donnell said.
A year later, President William Howard Taft visited Everett and delivered a speech at the high school.
A variety of cultures
It all started in the house with a brick chimney at 1801 Rockefeller Ave.
Arnt Gravrock opened his Everett house to others in 1904. That was the beginning of Central Lutheran Church, which would later settle in a brick building on the same street nine blocks from the house. Gravrock knew his fellow Norwegian immigrants needed a place to congregate, pray and worship.
Most immigrants came to the county from Norway, Sweden, Germany and Canada. Others came across the Pacific Ocean. A lumber company built a village of shacks for Japanese workers and their families in Mukilteo. Chinese people toiled in mines as well.
Groups such as the Daughters of Norway and Sons of Norway allowed Norwegians — the largest immigrant group in Everett — to maintain their cultural roots in their new country.
Thelma Lodge No. 26 Daughters of Norway celebrated its centennial this May. Pamela Gleave, president of the group, said members don’t speak Norwegian anymore, but a desire to maintain their cultural identity keeps the group going.
The county continues to grow with people coming from different parts of the world, especially from Korea, the Philippines and Latin America.
Gleave said that new immigrants would learn English over generations and be part of the mainstream society, as her grandfather did.
“They are going in the same way; they are gathering in the same way,” she said.
Yesterday is gone
Betty Lee of Everett has been a member of Central Lutheran Church her entire life. Her father, Jack Hatlen, who owned men’s clothing stores along Hewitt Avenue, attended the church as well.
She met her husband, Stan, 89, at the church. The couple married there; they made an exhibit for the church’s centennial anniversary four years ago.
The church of about 60 people has helped the couple for years, and vice versa.
“It provides a lot of stability and a lot of love,” Lee said.
Everett’s downtown is changing; new condominiums are proposed for construction. That could bring more people to the church and help it thrive this century, the couple said.
“We just hope it will work out,” Lee said.
The Thelma Lodge was struggling with dwindling membership a few years ago. But Lee and other new members joined the group to learn about their family roots.
“It’s just the pride of knowing your roots,” Gleave said. “That’s kind of the way all the ladies are feeling.”
The group has about 65 members, Gleave said. As long as people care about their roots, the group should continue.
In rural parts of Snohomish County, farmland is giving way to development, pushing farmers out of agriculture.
Kraetz, an Arlington farmer, has seen his neighbors get out of farming. He decided to keep his family’s centennial farms because that’s how he wants to live and because people have to eat.
He worries that people count on imported food today.
“It’s kind of a big loss,” he said. “You put yourself in a dangerous situation.” He hopes local agriculture will see better days in the future.
Across the street from his 1905 farmhouse, cows roam on the farmland.
Kraetz wants the landscape to remain the same for years to come.
Reporter Yoshiaki Nohara: 425-339-3029 or ynohara@heraldnet.com.
