This modest log cabin, which likely dates to the early 1900s, recently occupied a forested property near Four Corners – Maple Valley’s primary commercial center. It was torn down in 2024 to make room for the latest retail development called Switcher’s Landing. The finished project will feature a Chick-fil-A, 7-Eleven, Gravity Coffee, Valvoline, dentist’s office, and three other businesses yet to be determined. Phase II will include apartments with retail on the first floor.
Switcher’s Landing is located across the street from the Les Schwab Tire Center at the site of a new roundabout. It’s being developed by Pallis Properties, which in 1998 built the nearby 120,000-square-foot Safeway-anchored shopping center. The following year, Chris Pallis, its president, completed the popular Four Corners Starbucks out front. His father, George Pallis, established GP Builders in the early 1960s.
Four Corners wasn’t always this way.
Maple Valley’s first business district was located near the original railroad station, where the Highway 169 bridge crosses over Cedar River. By the 1950s, Wilderness Village supplanted old Maple Valley as the area’s primary business hub. Back then, Four Corners consisted of Belleman’s gas station and lunch counter, Palmer Coking Coal Company’s mine office, three homes on the highway, plus a rundown sawmill and trading post across the street. Situated at the intersection of three major roads: Kent-Kangley, Highway 169, and Summit-Landsburg, Four Corners gradually replaced Wilderness Village as the center of commerce and higher-density housing. The 2017 completion of the new Tahoma High School sealed Four Corners’ primacy.
In the 1920s, the original 16-acre Switcher’s Landing site was owned by Ray Cavenee, who may have built this log cabin home. In the 1930s, ownership passed to O. Oakland. Joe ‘Switcher’ Drazich purchased the property in the 1950s.
Josip Dražić was born in the Croatian village of Mrkopalj in 1899 to Vinko Dražić and Marija Pasquan. The family arrived in America in 1903, bound for Roslyn, Washington, where Vinco found work in the Northwestern Improvement Company’s coal mines. NWI was a subsidiary of the Northern Pacific Railroad, whose locomotives were primarily fueled by coal. In the U.S., their son, Josip, became Joseph Charles Drazich, with the family surname spelled to emulate its Croatian pronunciation.
When registering for the draft during World War I, Joe, as he came to be known, worked as a coal miner for NWI. At age 19, he’d already suffered an accident, the loss of the end of his right-hand index finger. When registering in 1942 during World War II, Joe was listed as 5 feet, 7 inches tall and weighed 150 pounds. He curiously listed his birth year as 1902, claiming to be 39, or three years younger than he really was, in what may have been an attempt to increase his chances of being drafted.
While working in the Roslyn and Cle Elum coal mines, Joe acquired his nickname. His job underground was to tend the ponies and mules who pulled empty and loaded coal cars throughout the mine. When coal miners brought their workhorses to the underground barns, where they rested and were fed, Joe switched out a tired team for a fresh one. The miners began calling him ‘Switcher.’
Joe married Marie Adamcyk, a Cle Elum waitress in 1923, but that marriage ended for unknown reasons. He next married Rose Marie Sogura in 1934. Rose Sogura was a beautician born in Cle Elum, and 18 years younger than Joe. Rose was part of the Ravensdale Sogura family. Two children were born to Joe and Rose: a daughter, Jonell, in 1935, and a son, Joseph Edward, in 1943. By 1947, the family was living in Renton, where Joe found employment with Pacific Telephone & Telegraph. He later worked at the company with lifelong Ravensdale native, Gary Habenicht. Switcher Joe died in 1987 and is buried in Renton’s Greenwood Cemetery next to his wife, Rose, who passed away in 1996.
In 1960, Joe and Rose Drazich sold their Four Corners property to their daughter, Jonell (Drazich) Bitney. Jonell’s son, Randy Bowden, designed the distinctive coal miner statue that serves as the Switcher’s Landing logo. Randy, who fondly remembers his grandfather Joe’s stories about his coal mining life, lives in Hobart. Such as, Shetland and Welsh ponies were considered the top breeds for underground work.
This photo dated October 13, 1950, comes from King County Assessor records for tax parcel 342206-9038, held at the Puget Sound Regional Archives in Eastgate. Photo enhancements were undertaken by Doug Burnham, who teaches photography at nearby Tahoma High School. Burnham operates Boomers Photography, which specializes in capturing the energy, passion, and pride of team sports. Genealogy information about the Drazich and Sogura families was provided by Donna Brathovde, a Ravensdale research historian.
