Historical tidbits, anecdotes and notices.

Former resident Jay Blackburn, who grew up in South Colby and was in the last group of children to attend the second Colby school on Garfield Avenue, has offered his extensive collection of glass negatives and prints from the 1900’s. A casual perusal of the negatives reveals that this is a genuine treasure-trove of information. While we need to have the film carefully cleaned and contact printed before an actual inventory can be made, we know that there are photographic records of:

• The construction of the second wooden bridge over Curley Creek, about 1910. There have been three permanent bridges in all, and the second one is an amazing, high-arched struture that was a marvel in its time.
• A group photo of the official Colby baseball team.
• A panoramic view of the old picnic grounds before the fill taken from the Southworth Drive cut covered it over. It includes a glimpse of the full-size baseball diamond.
• Pictures of vintage sailing vessels in the harbor.
• Various houses and churches, including interior shots, from the entire region.

These negatives appear to be of remarkable quality and detail, and will eventually be housed in the Kitsap County Museum in Bremerton. We will, however, post the images here.

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Artifacts from the Grant Stores keep turning up! We now have in our posession a second “Colby Bell”, this one, reportedly, from the original Colby School that once stood at the intersection of Cole and Yukon Harbor Drive. It may also have been from the second school, located on Garfield Avenue. It is painted green, and a bit cruder than the Grant & Sons store bell.

Which reminds us: there must be some good photos of the original one-room schoolhouse somewhere! We are still looking for those.

Also located are the store’s safe, several hundred pounds in weight, and the post office sorting bins. Both are on property uphill from the store on Garfield Avenue.

And finally, Douglas Grant of Kansas, the man who sent us the Grant & Sons store bell, has also given us a commemorative mirror presented to Georgeina Grant on her 99th birth day by the Daughters of Masons Lodge.

Speaking of the original school, Earl Whitner (a frequent visitor and contributor to our effort) lived in three different homes in Colby, and in the early 1960’s helped tear down one of them that was located on Cole Loop. He reports that the large, oddly configured living room had blackboards behind the wall board, indicating that the original schoolhouse was moved thirty yards downhill from the original location and added to another structure.

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With all the recent interest in Blake Island and the Trimble Family, another interesting note about the place is worthy of mention. One frequest visitor in the 1920’s was William Trimble’s close friend, President William Howard Taft (also Supreme Court Justice) who also happens to be an ancestor to YHHS Chairman Russell Neyman. The island also hosted President Clinton during an international trade summit in the 1990’s.

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Russell Neyman, our co-founder and chairman, has been elected to the Kitsap County Historical Society Board of Directors and will serve on the Marketing and Strategic Planning Committee. He will continue his duties with YHHS, as well.

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In a newspaper tidbit that appeared in the Kitsap County Herald (Paulsbo) about 1910, we noted that the writer referred to the area of Colby as “Idylwylde Place.” Has anyone ever run across that reference, either as a street name or the general vicinity?

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The Yukon Harbor Historical Society’s renewal of the tradional Fourth of July celebration at Colby with the “Old Colby Potluck Picnic” was a huge success and we plan to continue the event in 2009. Concerns that the crowd would overwhelm the neighborhood and create massive parking problems were overcome with some creative thinking and cooperation among the neighbors, and the truth is we could have handled many more visitors. (The truth be told, we actually “toned down” the promotion of the gathering, for fear of creating problems in the neighborhood.)

We’ll do this again next year, bigger and better than ever.

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JB Hall was the most recent one to theorize that the community noted on local maps between Colby and Manchester, Colchester, got it’s name from the simple merging of the two neighboring towns — “Col” from Colby and “Chester” from Manchester. There is no evidence that there was ever a town, pier, or business there, and it’s probably only a developer’s designation. Still, Colchester IS noted on several maps.

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JB, who owns the house originally build for the senior Grant in Colby, has located an original artifact shown in one of the historical photographs. There is a wheel on his beach that is also shown in the 1908 photograph of Colby taken from the end of the pier.

Update: Since we posted this note, the wheel seems to have disappeared, either taken by some opportunist or buried by the shifting sand/rock on the beach.

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Paul Gustafson, who lives on Cole Loop, owns one of the area’s vintage homes. He tells us of hearing that his house was built as “a library” for the larger home just to the north of him, 1726 Cole Loop. His house has been expanded several times since to a point that it is nearly as large as the one next door, though. It was later owned by the Swan family, founders and owners of Evergreen Lumber and Building Supp-ly.

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Earl Whitner, formerly of Colby, rowed to Blake Island during a military leave in the 1940’s or 50’s, and took it upon himself to gather up some of the bricks from the then-ruined Tisdale House. He brought the brick back and built a fire ring on the beach below his family’s house in Colby. The ring is still there as of January 2008.

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