What a difference 120 years can make when you don’t cut down all the trees.
Our historic image was taken around 1885 by Gilbert Horton, Snohomish’s resident pioneer photographer who we introduced to you last month with his image of the intersection at Second Street and Avenue D.
This month’s photograph is mounted on cream-colored cardboard with the hand-written notation at the bottom, Downtown Snohomish, 1882, and At the Foot of Maple Avenue. On the reverse is a stamped impression of elaborate typography that reads, “Palace Floating Gallery, Horton & Lewis, Proprietors, Puget Sound, Instantaneous Portraits and Landscapes.”
According to newspaper accounts at the time, it has been established that Gilbert Horton operated the photo studio on a barge between the years 1884 and 1888. Of course, he could have taken the image earlier, although we are not certain when Horton first arrived in Snohomish; but then didn’t get around to mounting it until he owned the Floating Gallery and had the fancy studio stamp made. Solving these little puzzles is the fun of historical research.
Since all of “downtown Snohomish” was built of wood, none of the structures pictured are still standing. We need to remember that nearly everything, as well as, everybody, arrived by the river in early Snohomish and that the riverside buildings were primary warehouses, built quickly to handle the ever-increasing supplies required to support the rapid growth of our young city.
In those busy times, it would have been impossible to imagine a leisurely walk on a sun-dappled path alongside the river, beneath the tall, gently swaying Cottonwoods, and that only peek-a-boo views of downtown Snohomish and the river would be available from the foot of Maple Avenue.
Published in the Snohomish County Tribune, July 18, 2007.