A convenience store and gas station at the intersection of Highway 169 and S.E. 416th Street is one of the longest-operating businesses on the Enumclaw Plateau. Today it’s called Stop-n-Shop doing business in an enlarged version of the same building featured in this photo. The original filling station was opened by Robert J. ‘Bob’ Chambers in 1925 and sold to his son, Robert E. ‘Bob’ Chambers two decades later. For simplicity, we’ll call them Bob Sr. and Bob Jr. even though they didn’t share the same middle name.
Both Bob Chambers were Canadians who emigrated to the U.S. in the 1920s. Last week’s column featured a photo of Bob Sr.’s filling station in 1939 with biographical details of the family’s early years. This Aug. 15, 1950 photo from King County Assessor archives shows how much the station had grown from the modest wood-framed structure of the early years. The Assessor records disclose a 1945 expansion that tripled the size of the complex. When this picture was taken, the south wall of the building was being painted with scaffolding seen where the color changes.
The growth of gas stations accelerated after Henry Ford built affordable cars for the middle class, which mirrored the expansion of new roads and the proliferation of motor vehicles. That led to the development of vehicle repair facilities called garages as early automobiles were far less dependable that today’s. According to Wally DuChateau, a former Courier-Herald columnist, “Back in the 1930s and 1940s, there were at least 13 or 14 independently owned garages in the greater Enumclaw area, and, in damn near every case, the owner was a pretty skilled mechanic.” DuChateau recalled one afternoon when a smiling Bob Jr., owner of Chambers Corner bragged, “And I do more work than any six mechanics in King County.”
Long before Bob Jr. learned how to repair cars and trucks, he embarked on a series of exploits during the frontier days in British Columbia of the early 1900s. At age 13, Bob Jr., with siblings Violet and Fred ran away from home working odd jobs to support themselves while traveling through western Canada. He learned boxing in the Canadian Boy Scouts which he parlayed into a short career fighting under the ring name Mazouk. His last match left him with a grafted lip, a sewed-up ear, and fewer teeth. Bob Jr. joined the circus as an acrobat with acts like walking up one side of a free-standing ladder and down the other, as well as riding a unicycle backward and forward. He also worked as a fur trapper and lumberjack.
In 1927, he rejoined his father in Enumclaw, two years after Bob. Sr. bought the property and started the business. Bob Jr. moved to Seattle in the early 1930s for a job at the Olympic Foundry Company where he helped form a union. When Harry Truman visited the plant, Bob Jr. was selected to show him around the facilities. Halfway through World War II, in 1943, Bob Jr. swore his oath to become an American citizen while living near Georgetown in South Seattle.
When Bob Sr. prepared to sell his Chambers Corner gas station and store in 1947, he first placed an ad in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer offering it for $4,000 on a 5% mortgage contract. Bob Jr. promptly relocated to Enumclaw and bought the business from his dad. The price and terms negotiated between the two Bob Chambers were never disclosed.
Next week’s column will dig deeper into the life and times of Robert Elmore Chambers, called Bob Jr. in this telling. Genealogical information about the Chambers family comes courtesy of Donna Brathovde, a Ravensdale historian, and Penny Reich, daughter of Peggy (Reich) Chambers, who interviewed her grandfather during the last months of his life. Penny completed Bob Jr.’s short biography for a school project. This Aug. 15, 1950 photo from King County Assessor records was provided by Puget Sound Regional Archives in Eastgate. Photo enhancements were undertaken by Boomer Burnham, a Tahoma High School teacher and entrepreneur who as: www.BoomersPhotography.com
