When this King County Assessor photo was taken on April 10, 1940, the Selleck school building was just 10 years old. This modern brick structure was built on the site of the original schoolhouse that burned to the ground in 1929. It served children of the hundreds of workers who staffed the sawmill and facilities of Pacific States Lumber Company.
The mill and town site were constructed in 1908 to harvest the thousands of acres of old-growth Douglas fir and red cedar trees that surrounded it. The town was named for its superintendent, Frank Selleck. What remains of the village still marks the terminus of Kent-Kangley Road laying six miles east of Ravensdale.
Selleck was populated with Welsh, Irish, Italian, Slavic, and Japanese laborers. It even had two suburbs, Lavender town and Japanese town. The mill was supported by a steam plant that powered the saws and conveyors plus a huge burning tower that spewed sparks and smoke into the sky day and night.
But the Great Depression of the 1930s took its toll. While, three shifts of workers once regularly produced 450,000 board feet of lumber per day, by 1937 production was limited to one shift, and only three days per week. The bottom fell out in 1938 when Pacific States Lumber declared bankruptcy. Two former employees, Lloyd Qually and Gust Coukos bought the town at a tax forfeiture sale for $3,000.
As for the school, it continued operating until the early 1970s when its remaining students transferred to Enumclaw. In 1987 Selleck was designated a King County Landmark that included 15 company houses, a community hall, and the superintendent’s home where Lloyd and Lucille Qually lived for decades. The old school building is still standing and marks the east edge of town.
On a personal note, my father, Jack Kombol attended this school until 6th grade, while my grandmother, Lulu (Shircliff) Kombol taught in Selleck until she was in her 80s, retiring in the mid-1960s.
