When this King County Assessor photo was taken on April 10, 1940, the Selleck school building was just 10 years old. This modern wood 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 State 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 after 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 150,000 board feet of lumber per day, by 1937 production was limited to one shift, just 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 in 1940.
As for the school, it continued operating until about 1980 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 still stands near the northeast edge of town. Its two stories support multiple rooms, and the building measures nearly 9,000 square feet in size. It has been owned by Pacific States Condo, LLC since 2008 and is used for residences.
On a personal note, my father, Jack Kombol attended this school until 8th grade, while my grandmother, Lulu (Shircliff) Kombol taught in Selleck until she was in her 80s, retiring in the mid-1960s. She died in 1977 at age 91.
