Every great company had small beginnings, and Dwight Garrett’s rise to business prominence was no exception. Born and raised in Black Diamond, young Dwight demonstrated his boyhood entrepreneurial spirit by delivering coal and wood to homeowners. His father, David Garrett ran a service station and store in Morganville, providing Dwight with business insights from which he built his own enterprises. By age 15, he was driving the school bus to and from out-of-town games, carrying both athletes and fans. After graduating from high school in 1934, Dwight and his brother, Dave Garrett Jr. worked in the coal mines, drove logging trucks for Tougaw & Olson, and operated a small sawmill. By the late 1930s, Garrett was a salesman for Collins Motors, Enumclaw’s Ford dealership. Several years later he and Dave Jr. sold army surplus machinery from their warehouse in the old Condenser building on Stevenson Ave. in Enumclaw. In 1945, Dwight formed Garrett Motors operated from the building formerly located on property where Chase and Walgreens now stand. Following its demolition in 1999, the City extended Second Street, since renamed Garrett Street through this property to SR-410, also known as Roosevelt Ave. Behind the tractor is the Garrett Motors sign which advertised the company’s specialties in logging, construction, and machinery.
This image by Wilber Photo of Black Diamond dates to the late 1940s and comes courtesy of JoAnne Matsumura, an Issaquah historian. It’s believed that Dwight Garrett himself is seated in the tractor. According to Mike Intlekofer of the Newcastle Historical Society,the tractor is a McCormick-Deering W-9, based upon the TD-9 crawler tractor, which began being manufactured in 1940. Within the next few years, Dwight Garrett would expand his business empire by introducing the skidder, which transformed fixed-chassis farm tractors into articulating logging equipment, nimble enough to dart between stumps, but hardy enough to pull heavy loads of logs through mud and brush. Garrett Skidder soon became an important tool as the logging industry transitioned from cable yarding and rail transport of old growth timber to the harvest of smaller second growth trees. But, more about Dwight Garrett’s Enumclaw legacy over the next two weeks.
