Our images this month mark the beginning of the campaign season with the registering of candidates during the first week of June.
The corner of Avenue D and Second Street is the closest our town comes to a public forum where every election season, citizens exercise their right to free speech by silently waving their candidates’ political signs to passing motorists with the hope of a honk or two of agreement. It might be called a “drive-by political dialogue” I suppose.
Perhaps this corner has always been a gathering spot for the community as evident in our historic image taken around 1885 by our own Gilbert Horton. The names listed on the back of this image are from left to right, Maggie Black, Mrs. Lawry, her son Charles, Mrs. Elwell, Mrs. Getchell, and Mrs. Blackman. The group could be chatting about the photographer Horton who had just purchased, with someone we know only as “Lewis,” a barge with a photo studio built on board that he called “The Place Floating Gallery.” According to newspaper accounts, he sold the Floating Gallery in 1888 “to a Seattle gentleman who will take it to Stanwood next week.” Horton opened a stationery business on First Street with his brother, which remained his profession from then on.
Gilbert Horton’s images of early Snohomish are a real treasure and we will publish more of them as the months go by and the city council race takes to the street corners of Snohomish.
Published in the Snohomish County Tribune, June 27, 2007.