Last week’s column featured Wilkeson’s second school that served students through the first eight grades, from 1899 until this new building was erected in 1912-13. This photo was taken at the new school building’s dedication.
Wilkeson’s origins date to 1874, when William and David Flett, together with their brother-in-law, John Gale opened the first coal mine. A spur line of the Northern Pacific Railroad, called the Puyallup branch reached Wilkeson in 1877. Coal production boomed and the population grew. Wilkeson’s original school likely opened in the early 1880s, after families began joining miners and the community developed.
Wilkeson was incorporated on July 18, 1909, leading to the election of a Mayor and council. At the time, it was a flourishing coal mining town with a population of 1,500, with 300 or so coal miners employed by the Wilkeson Coal & Coke or Gale Creek Coal Mine companies. The town had grown so much that it was necessary to build another school to supplement the older school consisting of two buildings, visible to the right in this 1913 photo. The school property was acquired from Northwest Improvement Company, a division of Northern Pacific Railroad for $300.
When the new school was erected, Joseph McCaskey was the Mayor who undertook paving the town’s main streets with funds supplied from issuing liquor licenses. At one point there were 13 saloons in town, according to Emily (Merritt) Porter, whose father, Frank Merritt was born in Carbonado in 1882 and led several local coal companies. Her grandfather, George Morris owned the livery stable and transfer company that delivered kegs of beer from the rail station to the saloons and taverns.
Tacoma architects Frederich Heath, George Gove, and C.R.W. Lundberg designed the new building, while Mr. Dolph Jones of Tacoma won the bid at $26,985, though the final cost totaled $35,000. While designed as a brick structure, competitive bidding found it cost only $1,500 more to use Wilkeson sandstone, due to the proximity of the nearby quarry. Only the cupola was not built with sandstone. Wilkeson sandstone was earlier used to construct the State Capitol building in Olympia.
The original dimensions of the building were 66’ x 100’ consisting of three stories with a boiler room in the basement-ground floor, plus two large playrooms and two large toilet rooms. The second floor featured a big platform, a laboratory, a grand corridor, plus large and small classrooms, and closets. The third floor consisted of four large class rooms, four coat closets, one large ante room, the principal’s office, one toilet, and two other closets.
While this large sandstone structure was occupied by 1st through 8th graders, within a few years some high school courses were offered in the wooden structure to the right. When Louie Jacobin’s detailed the mining and milling towns of east Pierce County in his Dec. 1917 Wilkeson Record, Superintendent, J.R. Buttorff described the high school’s three departments offering commercial, domestic science, and manual training. The commercial unit taught courses in shorthand, typing, bookkeeping, arithmetic, penmanship, and spelling. The domestic unit was equipped with both an electric stove and coal range where cooking was taught, as well as sewing, fabrics, design, and color combinations. The manual training department focused on construction, design, and finished carpentry.
In 1971, the school was closed following a levy defeat, and leased for some time to a local church. The building later reopened as a school. During the 2017-2018 school year the building underwent internal renovations and now operates for 1st through 5th grade.
Historical information for this column was obtained from a number of sources including Nancy Irene Hall’s “Carbon River Coal Country,” Tacoma Ledger newspaper articles, plus additional research by Sara Sutterfield, a Wilkeson resident since 2017. This photo comes courtesy of Ski Wallace with colorization performed by Doug ‘Boomer’ Burnham, a Tahoma High School teacher whose photography business can be reached at: www.BoomersPhotography.com
