During the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I replaced the ancient Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia with St. Valentine’s Day to be celebrated on February 14th. By the 15th century, Valentine’s Day was associated with romantic love. The term “lover’s lane” originated in the 1850s to describe a secluded pathway, trail, or road where young couples could stroll discretely.
In Black Diamond, this secluded stretch of railroad tracks was the coal mining town’s Lovers Lane. The isolated section of rails stretched north about one-half mile from the downtown business district to the railroad trestle over Robert’s Drive. The tower on the right was used to fill the water tanks of the steam locomotives that moved trainloads of coal from the mines of Black Diamond and Franklin to Seattle’s ports. This photo likely dates to the 1910s and comes courtesy of Gary Gibbon, with inspiration from JoAnne Matsumura, an Issaquah historian. Photo colorization was undertaken by Boomer Burnham, a Tahoma High School photography instructor who operates his private business at http://www.boomersphotography.com/
This photo was part of a 23-page birthday card presented to Mrs. Charlotte (Davies) Jones on the occasion of her 92nd birthday, celebrated in January 1932. The booklet titled “Memories Culled From a Long and Useful Life” was signed by 43 friends. Charlotte Jones died at 94, two years after the special party. Her great-grandson, Gary Gibbon of Cornelius, Oregon, provided the booklet and biographical information on the Jones and Gibbon families, as described below.
Charlotte’s life was typical of Black Diamond’s pioneer residents. Like many coal-mining families, Charlotte Davies emigrated with her parents from Wales. She landed in New York City on July 8, 1859, at age 18. Shortly thereafter, she married Thomas F. Jones, a Welsh coal miner, ten years her senior. They returned to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Jones worked as a coal miner.
By 1861, Thomas and Charlotte relocated to Port Wine, California, a gold-mining town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, approximately 180 miles northeast of San Francisco. Because the transcontinental railroad had not yet been built, they traveled by ship through the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean side, where they boarded another ship, disembarking in San Francisco. They made their way to Port Wine, where two children, Lizzie and John, were born.
In 1875, the Jones family relocated to Nortonville, California, about 30 miles east of San Francisco, where Thomas found work with the Black Diamond Coal Mining Company (BDCMC). However, the Nortonville coal was of inferior quality, and the reserves were dwindling. So, in 1880, BDCMC sent an expeditionary party to southeast King County, where a new seam of superior coal was found along the Green River and near a creek in the town that became Black Diamond, Washington. That seam became known as McKay.
In April 1885, Thomas, Charlotte, Lizzie, and John trekked to Black Diamond. There, crews of carpenters and laborers were busy completing the homes and stores as most of Nortonville’s coal mining families followed their company north. With Thomas working in the coal mines, Charlotte operated their home as a boarding house for bachelor miners. The lot upon which the home stood was leased from the Black Diamond Coal Mining Co., as was typical in company towns of the day. Their daughter, Lizzie, opened Black Diamond’s first school in the parlor of her family’s home.
Lizzie taught school until 1887, when she married William D. Gibbon, who had also earned a teaching certificate but changed his vocation to merchandising. Gibbon purchased the first store in the original townsite of Maple Valley in 1891. The W.D. Gibbon General Merchandise store and post office still stand and can be toured from 10 am to 2 pm on the first and third Saturdays of each month. It’s located at 22024 S.E. 248th Street, across Witte Road from the Maple Valley Library. The Gibbon store is among several of the Maple Valley Historical Society’s attractions.
As for the Lover’s Lane seen in this photo, the former railroad property now lies neglected and covered in blackberries within Black Diamond’s 27-acre Ginder Creek Open Space park.
