If you were around before the late 1970’s you remember this wooden water tower right behind the Pharmacy where the Water District building now sits.
My friend Jack Talbott, who was one of the summer kid’s I hung out with back in the day was on the Island this year for the 4th of July week and brought his drone with him. One morning we took it Uptown to recreate photos that were taken of town from the water tower forty years ago in 1975.
Kinda funny because around 1973 Jack brought his friend Craig Kanagy with him up from California for the summer to work at K2. Craig brought a red white and blue flag design parasail with him and I remember flying in it at the Wax Orchard runway behind a van. Now more than 40 years later I’m uptown flying a drone with Jack and Craig has lived here ever since that summer in 1973.
Left side photos are from 1975, taken by Ken Brooks. Right side photos are from 2015, taken by john Talbott
from May 1926 Radio Address by P. Monroe Smock, Editor, Vashon Island News-Record
If you will climb with me to the top of the new 75 foot water tower at Vashon and look southward you can see the smoke rising from the Tacoma Smelter. This smoke-stack is the second highest in the world. If you will look north you can see the top of the 42 story L.C. Smith building in Seattle, which is the largest city for its age in the world. If you look backward you will see the eternal snow-clad Olympics and beyond these stand one-seventh of the merchantable timber in America, waiting the axe and the saw to convert it into ships, and bridges, and homes to gladded and enrich generations yet to come. If you look eastward you will get an open view of the Great Mountain – so great that it requires two names – Mt. Rainier and Mt. Tacoma – to properly do it justice. I am told that no place in the world but Puget Sound will give you a vista in altitude of three miles. Here you sweep with one look, from the waters of the Sound to the top of this Mountain – an elevation of over 14,000 feet! If you will draw a circle with a radius of 20 miles, with our water tower for the center, you’ll enclose within that circle more people than can be found within any similar circle west of the Mississippi river, California alone excepted. You will enclose within that circle about three quarters of a million progressive people, and in the perfect center of the circle, you’ll find nestling sturdy little Vashon Island.
Vashon Island has 8 U.S. Post Offices. It has a twenty-four hour electric light service and a twenty-four hour telephone service. It has modern auto busses that meet the boats and ferries. It has a boat service each day plying between these two big cities through the west pass. It has a boat service out of Tacoma to all points on Quartermaster harbor, several times each day. A ferry from Tacoma to the south end of the island making frequent trips, and a ferry out of both Seattle and Fauntleroy to the north end at most any hour of the day. There are several lodges – such as Mrs. Shanahan’s Swastika at Dilworth Point, Mrs. Pyle’s Madrona at Ellisport, and Mrs. Evan’s Island Inn at Burton. At Cove the Methodists have an assembly at Beulah Park, at Cedarhurst the Lion’s club of Seattle give upward of 100 girls a summer vacation of rest and delight, near Lisabeula is Camp Sealth, one of the largest Camp Fire sites on the U.S., at Ellisport is the big public Pioneer park, and at Burton the Baptists of the state hold their annual assembly. This should be a great place for Baptists – for the island is entirely surrounded by water. There are big gravel bunkers on Maury Island. Theo Berry – not the movie vamp but a merchant at Dockton – has a couple of big fish traps which catch the big salmon by the ton. He’s going to give some of these away to you who are listening in. The island has a prosperous bank, a half dozen garages, steam laundry, newspaper, state park, nursery, two big sawmills, Standard oil service station, electric store, beauty parlor, barber shop, moving picture house, twenty general stores, a drug store, a dentist, three doctors who are threatened with starvation, and an undertaker who makes his living by working at another trade.