Water Service Improvements
By 1923 there were approximately 110 permanent families on the two points. Up to that time Dash Point's water supply was the well on the beach. Browns Point's families either had their own private wells, or carried water from a neighbor's well.
Captain McDowell founded the McDowell Water Company in 1924 which serviced Caledonia residents. It had a 6" artesian well 235 feet deep, a concrete water tank and a system of wood creosote pipes. When Gil Garrison began working for McDowell in 1931 the water company had 23 customers. For a year and a half after McDowell's death in 1945 it functioned under the direction of the Bank of California. It then became publicly owned as the Caledonia Water Company. It had about 155 customers.
The Hyada Mutual Service Company at Browns Point was formed and incorporated in 1924. The first trustees of the company were G. H. Shuett, R. F. Gleason, J. E. Burrows, C. C. Hull, A. R. Wingard, H. Roy Harrison, and George R.Taylor. The first year of existence produced 53 members each paying a $50 membership fee. The system was worked with cast iron pipe. A five year contract was made with Mr. McDowell for the provision of water from the McDowell Water Company. When the contract came up for renewal the third time, Mr. McDowell failed to reply to inquiries and requests to renew. In 1935 the Hyada Company built their own reservoir and dug their own well becoming completely independent from the McDowell Company.
J. Churchill, left, and friends in the store presiding over voting, circa 1920.
On Dash Point a water system, using wooden pipe, was developed by Harry Kline. This was the water system used by Dash Point after wells on the beach proved to be inadequate. The system later was owned by Claude Austin. When Austin owned it, it consisted of two water tanks, one above the clubhouse and the other above Marine View Drive between Whittier and the school. A spring above Marine View Drive behind the Presbyterian Church was also part of the system. After the new company formed, this spring continued to service the fountain in the park.
Every summer water pressures on the hill would drop due to the influx of summer residents and the upkeep of beautiful lawns on the beach. Due to a misfortune of the Olson Brothers Logging Company which logged the upper part of Dash Point's hill, Dash Point residents were presented with an answer to their water problems. John Austin, who was then a little boy, remembered the logging company's operation. A Fordson gasoline tractor pushed logs on a track alongside the creek all the way to the water. The system of track, made from small round trees chiseled together at each end, carried two cars filled with logs which were pushed by the tractor down to the water. The empty cars were then pulled back up the hill. In the water men used pike poles, boom sticks and chains to raft the logs, preparing them to be pulled by tug to the Tacoma mills.
It is not known how long the Olson Brothers had been in business, but in 1924 they could not meet their mortgage payment. Because the property had natural artesian resources that required no pumping, the Dash Point Cooperative Water Association purchased the 122 acres. The Dash Point Cooperative was registered on January 9, 1924. Its first Trustees were O. E. Tisch, David Smith, A. L. Geiger, Walter Steele, and John W. Hillis.
These ladies took advantage of a rare opportunity to frolick in the waves off Dash Point, circa 1920.
From the beginning of building on the two points, the developers had promised their clients a road into the area. Browns Pointers could come up Julia's Gulch to what is now Browns Point Boulevard to today's Slayden Road. Dash Pointers came the same way through Northeast Tacoma but just to the top of Dash Point hill. All of these roads were narrow dirt roads, usually impassable in rainy weather.
Finally, in about 1918 three men formed the Pacific Boulevard Association. They were Frank Ross, one of the Hyada Park owners who was nicknamed "the Daddy of Tacoma's Tidelands," Henry Sicade, a prominent Puyallup chief, and R. P. Milne, a Tacoma newspaper man who lived on Dash Point. One of their accomplished projects was getting the release of properties necessary for a scenic road called Marine View Drive (Eastside Drive) between Tacoma and Dash Point via Hyada Park. It was supposed to be part of the entire proposed Marine View Highway System going all the way to Seattle. The road was completed in about 1920 and paved to the middle of Marine Hill (the hill below the Cliff House) in 1925. The section between the low tide flats and the top of Marine Hill was particularly hazardous due to narrowness, steep cliffs and rock and dirt slides. The part of the road not paved was little better than the road through Northeast Tacoma because it was also a dirt road. In dry weather it was dusty and during rainy weather it was muddy, but it was a road and the residents valued it no matter how bad it was. The next community project became the paving of Eastside Drive. Meanwhile, Ed Newcome, who still owned his two mules, was hired by the county to maintain the road. He scraped it to keep it tolerable.
View of Browns Point from Marine View Dr., circa 1920.
Both the Improvement Clubs worked for paving of the road, sending vocal representatives to meetings and utilizing influential people on the points who had contacts with the right officials. The bridge connecting King County to Pierce County was built in about 1932 or 1933. The road was paved soon after the bridge was completed. The bridge at Caledonia which we cross today, hardly realizing it is a bridge, was rebuilt as a concrete structure in 1957. The original wooden bridge was so noisy that folks at the lighthouse could hear a car crossing it.
Mudslides had been a problem since the white man first settled at the points. Ed Olsen recalled one as far back as 1917 on the south bank of Browns Point. The Kapaskys, who lived on the Browns Point tide flats below the bluff, lost everything due to a slide. He had left for work early in the morning while she remained in bed a little longer. She heard a noise, realized it was a slide and quickly jumped out her bedroom window into the bay and swam for her life. The slide swept their home completely into the bay.
Another devastating mudslide occurred on the Dash Point west bank below Eastside Drive near Whittier. It is believed that the W.P.A. blocked a culvert with dirt causing water to backup behind the road. Since the area lay on a clay shelf, the water acted as a lubricant between the two strata causing Eastside Drive to drop 10 - 12 feet and taking three houses into the water.
With the road came bus service to Tacoma provided by Joe Lyon from 1925 - 1937. Roy Harrison took over the bus service from 1937 - 1942. He made four round trips to Tacoma every day plus a run just for the school children. His service was not guaranteed, however. If the bus broke down, passengers were out of luck. However, his favorite customers did get rides into Tacoma via his private limousine.
Touring in a motorcar was a favorite pastime in those days.
As the population increased larger schools were needed. At Dash Point, the school district owned property near the top of Dash Point hill. They wanted to build a school exactly where Claude Austin had built his home midway up the hill. He consented to a land swap in 1921 and moved his three-room house up the hill to the new site (next to today's Austin mansion/Dash Point Retirement Home). He rigged a capstan consisting of a drum ( a tree log), a large cable wrapped around a drum and a block and tackle that capped a long 15-foot log lever. The house was put on roller tracks built of planks. Claude turned the huge lever in circle wrapping the cable around the drum, pulling the house up the 45 degree hill. He ground the cable and changed the rollers as needed, accomplishing a little distance at a time. He had help only when he had to move the house over the road and did not want to block traffic too long. After Austin cleared the new school property, two portables were set up. By 1924 a new stucco two-room school was completed. It had a basement and a playroom. Claude Austin, meanwhile, began building the Austin mansion which sits on Austin Drive.
The Oathout family, circa 1928.
In 1924 the Tacoma School Board decided to close Browns Point School and send the children to Dash Point School, probably because Dash Point had a large brand-new building. Due to many letters of protest and delegations of parents, the board rescinded their decision. Enrollment at Browns Point increased and by 1928 a second room was added. In 1932 another portable was moved in and set perpendicular to the first. It became the playroom and lunchroom. Browns Point children attended their school for about 15 more years. However, in 1934 and 1935 dissension again became very apparent over the assignment of teachers to the Browns Point, Dash Point and Northeast Tacoma schools. The board decided that Browns Point should have two teachers for 60 students and one teacher for Dash Point.
Pierce County Library at Browns Point School
Mrs. Jerry Darling established the first Pierce County branch library in a corner of the Browns Point School building. Mrs. McBee, who lived across the road from the school, was the librarian. Children loved to speculate about her age as she was the kind of person we all remember as always looking old, but being perennial and legendary. Books from the main branch in Tacoma were brought weekly and rotated.
Dash Point Dock Dinner (Hoop-Te-Doo)
The annual Dash Point Dock Dinner began in the summer of 1927. It was called a "Hoop-Te-Doo" and for a few years was an in-community festivity. After Roy Allen donated the materials and the labor for a 40-foot high dive and 15-foot springboard, the dock dinner took on a water carnival atmosphere. By 1934 the range of activities at the various dinners included diving demonstrations, swimming races, boat racing, pole walking, tugs-of-war, a bathing beauty contest, and a dance in the hall. In 1936 the dock dinner was expanded to a two day event and added to the main events were a street dance and band concert. The dock dinners were held every year until 1940 when everyone's way of life was interrupted by World War II.
A Dash Point dock dinner celebration, circa 1930.
A spectacular and very beautiful custom was adopted by the Dash Point residents during the 1920s. The Community Club purchased Japanese lanterns and candles which were placed along the dock and on the porches of homes lining the beach. During the summer all lanterns were lit from dusk (when the last waves of the steamer hit the beach) until 11 p.m. This practice lasted for almost 10 years and was a very beautiful sight to behold.
The first telephone exchange for both points was located in Dash Point's new store building that replaced the Churchill store that burned down where today's Lobster Shop is located. Later, the exchange moved onto a private home on the hill just below Eastside Drive. A local operator assisted residents in making calls. In the mid-1930's a new telephone building was built at Browns Point, and direct connections could be made by dialing the telephone; instead of asking the operator to make the connection.
First Grocery Store in Browns Point
In 1925 Mr. Shuett built Browns Point's first grocery store east and up the hill a short distance from today's clubhouse. The building had an upstairs where various meetings, dances, and dinners were held. This was Browns Point's grocery store for the next 25 years. It had several owners through the years. Charles Jackson was the last grocer in the old store and the first one in the new shopping center built in the 1940s.
From Wooden to Concrete
The wooden lighthouse was replaced by a gleaming white concrete tower in 1933. It was built 34 feet high and 9.5 feet square. The old bell, which Oscar and Annie had so faithfully rung, was retired from lighthouse service to the College of Puget Sound, today's University of Puget Sound. The bell had been molded in 1855 in Philadelphia and carried around Cape Horn to be first installed at the Cape of Dungeness near Port Angeles in 1860. It was brought to Browns Point in 1903 when the wooden lighthouse was built.
In 2000, the Points Northeast Historcial Society successfully reaquired the original bell for the church on Fox Island where it had resided for several years. It now hangs in the old pump house behind the cottage.
All Contents Copyrighted Property of Points Northeast Historical Society © 2002
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