Could any time be better than the dark days and long nights of winter to fire up the computer and curl up with an intriguing online article? Probably not.
And if local history is your thing, boy, are you in luck. If not, you really ought to consider taking an extended cruise through the free online encyclopedia of Washington state history, HistoryLink.org. You might get hooked.
There you’ll find a treasure trove of articles about Washington history and a growing list of stories about the history of the San Juan Islands as well.
The HistoryLink website is used daily by more than 5,000 students, teachers, journalists, scholars, government and business researchers, and tourists, as well as the general public.
It recently added four stories written by island authors under the umbrella of the local “Writing Our History Project,” a county-wide collaborative writing project launched in May.
Town of Friday Harbor Preservation Coordinator Sandy Strehlou, co-founder of the project along with Liz Illg, said the goal of the writing project is to develop well-researched and well-documented articles about local history, add to the historical record and expand on some of the lesser known but equally important island episodes, events and personalities.
By partnering with HistoryLink, Strehlou said, the local project can piggy-back on the non-profit’s online presence and its editorial expertise, and present the stories of island history to an extremely wide audience.
HistoryLink subscribers receive a weekly newsletter highlighting recent additions and events from “this day in history.” Subscriptions are free.
Strehlou said fundraising ideas are in the works to help finance the Writing Our History partnership with HistoryLink, and that more essays on island history are expected soon, such as the history of Friday Harbor’s waterfront, American Camp, the Land Bank, the lime kilns of Ocean (Orcas Island), notable doctors and providers of health services on San Juan Island, to name only a few.
Below is an excerpt from the recent contributions to HistoryLink.
A town called Richardson
The rise and decline of the town of Richardson on Lopez Island is told by Kathi Ciskowski and Woody Ciskowski of Orcas Island in their HistoryLink Timeline essay, “George Richardson receives land patent for his property at the south end of Lopez Island on November 25, 1879.”
Richardson was blessed with a deep-water harbor. The town played an important role in shipping lucrative island produce to mainland markets. This was before government-sponsored irrigation projects increased agricultural production in eastern Washington, and before new railroad lines provided fast, inexpensive transport of goods from eastern Washington farms to cities nation-wide.
The same public works projects that enabled other areas to prosper made San Juan Islands’ produce inconvenient and uncompetitive.
The Ciskowskis’ essay reveals much about farming, trade, and the lives of islanders living in those days, including this description from the Fagerholm family.
The abundance of fish and fruit in those years is illustrated by a quotations from an article by descendants of Lopez settler Philip Fagerholm (1867-1954): “Philip raised beautiful strawberries he would take by rowboat to Richardson from Huggins Bay. He worried that the sockeye would jump into the board and ruin his strawberries!”
For more information about the Writing our History project, including research and writing opportunities for other essay topics, contact Sandy Strehlou by email at sstrehlou@fridayharbor.org or by phone at 378-2810.
