Franklin’s Our Lady of Holy Rosary Catholic Church hosted the wedding Martin Kubski and Catherine Buozok on May 15, 1905. The church was located on a beautiful site near the edge of the Green River Gorge about one-third mile north of the historic single-lane bridge built in 1915. The church once served the needs of the Catholic coal miners living in both Franklin and Black Diamond. Adjacent to the church is the Franklin Our Lady of Holy Rosary cemetery, which is still active and maintained by Elder family and other local descendants. The cemetery site is owned by Washington State Parks as part of its 50-year efforts to preserve land along the Green River Gorge stretching from Kanaskat-Palmer State Park to Flaming Geyser.
The church’s first known wedding was held on May 20, 1904 when Micke Aydek married Zoezi Orawice. The first communion was held on June 24, 1904. Its date of construction was likely earlier that year. Our Lady of Holy Rosary was also where on August 21, 1905, Joseph Kuzaro, a 20-year-old coal miner and Polish immigrant married Prasyda Kaluzny, a 15-year-old Austrian-Polish immigrant who went by Roxie.
Both Joe and Roxie Kuzaro are buried in the nearby cemetery. Roxie died in 1924 from hemorrhaging while giving birth to her twelfth child, Robert later known as Bob Kuzaro. His father, Joe died in December 1941, eighteen months after a rock struck the base of his neck during a cave-in at the Ginder Lake Mine just north of Black Diamond. Like many other fatalities that occurred when miners died weeks or months after an accident, Joe Kuzaro was not listed in the State Coal Mine Inspector’s report of fatalities.
Only tidbits are known about the church’s eventual demise. It’s last mention was in the Oct. 4, 1912 Enumclaw Courier which noted that Reverand Z. Rozanski officiated the congregation. As Franklin’s population dwindled and Black Diamond’s Saint Barbara Catholic Church was built in 1910, the Holy Rosary church lost most of its parishioners. One story claimed there were plans to convert into a saloon, but it was instead razed by burning on an unknown date, likely in the late 1910s. However, a piece of the Franklin church survives as the Holy Rosary bell was relocated to Saint Barbara’s tower.
The 7-acre property where the church once stood was sold by Pacific Coast Coal Co. to Fred Elder in 1944 for $212.50. Fred’s son Bob Elder constructed a 2,200-sf rambler on the site in 1971. A pink-colored home built in 1915 on the same lot is where Fred & Mary Elder once lived. Across the street on the west side of the Green River Gorge Road, a beautiful waterfall was visible from the church yard, where Randolph Creek, sometimes known as Franklin Creek cascaded down the 25-foot-high vertical face of 50-million-old sandstone bedrock. But, sometime in the mid-1950s, a surface coal mining operation penetrated the old the Franklin No. 12 (aka Fulton seam) and ever since the creek has flowed directly through old underground mine workings into the Green River. Only when winter rains are massive does the waterfall display its once majestic grandeur.
JoAnne Matsumura, an Issaquah historian provided information about Franklin’s Our Lady of Holy Rosary Catholic Church. This wedding photo plus information about the Kuzaro and Kaluzny families comes courtesy of the Black Diamond Historical Society whose museum at 32627 Railroad Avenue is a storehouse for historical artifacts, archives, and genealogy. Museum hours are Thursday, 9 am to 4 pm, plus Saturday and Sunday, 12 pm to 3 pm.
