This month’s images celebrate the release of my book Early Snohomish by Arcadia Publishing. Last January, the publisher requested five or so historical images that I felt would make a good cover and they selected this month’s early image of our riverside town.
The image was published as a postcard with no date or photographer listed, and since the one in our collection was never postmarked, we can only guess about when it was taken, but there are some good clues. First, it’s certainly in my mind that only the new railroad bridge could have offered this vantage point of the river and town looking west.
The story of this bridge is told in “Chapter 4: Rails over the River” in my book, which goes like this; when the first train arrived from Seattle on July 3, 1888, with 12 passengers, there was no bridge. It seems another railroad concern was bringing a line south from Bellingham Bay and they had received a court order preventing their competition from crossing the river. However, Judge Thomas Burke and Daniel Gilman, directors of the Seattle, Lake Shore, and Eastern – and of Burke-Gilman Trail fame – built the bridge anyway, somehow distracting the armed guards, or so the story goes. The bridge was completed by September 1888 only to lose a span in the fall flood a few months later.
On the left of our historic image, the silo of the lumber mill dominates the horizon, but beyond is the wooden framework of Snohomish’s first Avenue D bridge finished in 1891 -- which is clue number two toward dating this image. Our Historical Society has in its collection a photograph of this amazing structure, labeled as the “longest wooden bridge in the world” and it’s in the book on page 91.
Did I mention that my book Early Snohomish is now for sale at many shops around town? Let me add that I will be doing a book signing on September 16, 2007, at the Waltz Building, 116 Avenue B from 11 to 2p. Book sales will benefit our Historical Society and this is the same day as our annual Tour of Historic Homes. Bring along your gift list so that I can personalize each copy for you, and I look forward to meeting readers of this column.
Published in the Snohomish County Tribune, August 15, 2007.