When I recently mentioned the good old days at Silver Lake in south Everett, and how amenities included huge slides and a toboggan, the Resort Boys came calling.
I dubbed them the Resort Boys. Don Bothne, 83, worked for his folks, Hans and Pauline Bothne, at the Green Dragon Resort on the west side of the lake. Gordon Stubb, 80, worked for his parents, Walter and Mabel Stubb, at Silver Beach on the east side.
With families who owned opposing resorts, their teen lives were similar. Both worked while their buddies goofed around in rented canoes, paddle boats or plummeted down the rides.
“All the kids would be out swimming,” Stubb said. “I’d get half an hour off, then go back and rent lockers.”
Everett Library historian David Dilgard joined us last week at Hauge Homestead Park on the south end of the lake to look at marvelous pictures from old scrapbooks. Bothne had amazing 3-foot-long panoramas of company picnics at the resorts.
Dilgard told us about Joe St. Peter, who managed the Rose Theater in Everett. Every summer, vaudeville performers flocked to his cottage at the lake.
Some of the earliest amenities were inns such as the Willard and Silver Lake, Dilgard said. In the ’20s, there was the Bungalow Inn and Annex, with huge fireplaces and an enormous dance floor where marathon dance contests were staged.
“In the ’20s, an eight-piece orchestra provided music for Saturday nights,” Dilgard said. “It was eventually destroyed by fire.”
During prohibition, being outside the more heavily patrolled Everett city limits, Silver Lake was a hopping spot for bootleggers.
“Row a boat with your girlfriend,” Bothne said. “Get a little moonshine.”
Folks didn’t have to drink and drive. They could take the Interurban to Everett or Seattle. Perhaps the most memorable structures were the slides and toboggan.
Stubb, who lived in family quarters behind the tavern at Silver Beach, said he did his homework while listening to the jukebox. He said his homesteading grandfather, John Hauge, for whom the park is named, built a slide before World War I that was enjoyed until about 1926. A toboggan ride was built that lasted until insurance went sky high in the 1930s.
Folks screamed down the ramp in a toboggan rented for two bits an hour, then hauled the sled back up the steps for another ride. In 1928, North Pacific fairgrounds opened west of the lake on Stockshow Road with a racetrack and baseball grounds.
One of their pictures showed Stubb and Bothne in an all-school photograph outside Silver Lake School. They said it wasn’t a one-room school, it was a two-room school with a basement. They graduated from Everett High School.
Both men served in the military. Bothne, who lived in Everett, worked for the Boeing Co., GTE and managed properties. Stubb, who lived on Silver Lake with his wife, Eleanor, owned a vending business and worked in construction.
I remember summers in the 1950s when Silver Lake was a place my father’s volunteer fire department got together for picnics. Stubb remembered how it was in the good old resort days.
“When I was a kid, it was dark,” Stubb said. “We could see the northern lights. I haven’t seen the lights for years.”
Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com.
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