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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTranscript 12/17/2002 Transcript of comments made by June Robinson at City Council meeting of December 17, 2002, on the matter of Port Angeles as the 2nd National City: "Your crowds aren't as large or as loud as they are in Sequim. One of the things that I do —on the first Council meeting of each month, I give the Sequim City Council a section of history of Sequim. And we're working through gradually to today, but we're sure a long way back. By the way, I'm June Robinson and, in addition to being a columnist for the Peninsula Daily News, I'm the President of the Clallam County Historical Society and a few other things. But, I've been asked to talk to you today about one of the most loved myths of the City of Port Angeles, and that is Port Angeles —the Second National City. It's engraved in bronze, not as a myth, but it's engraved in bronze as a real thing that happened on a granite rock between the Carnegie Library Building and the old City Fire Hall on Lincoln Street. And it's frequently mentioned—I don't think I've seen a Port Angeles history book that has ever been written that did not say Port Angeles is a Second National City. The term, as far as I can tell from very extensive research, came into existence about 103 years ago as part of a campaign to introduce Port Angeles as a center of commerce and the railroad terminus for the Puget Sound/ Strait of Juan de Fuca area by the first predecessor of the Chamber of Commerce Citizens Association which was established in 1889. They wrote a very beautiful book—the only one, it's a booklet really, that I've ever been able to find that's in the National Archives, and I was privileged to be able to copy it. It's called A Pictorial History of Port Angeles from the Citizens Association - very florid writing. They'd run you out of town if you wrote like that today. But, among other things, it said about Page 4, Port Angeles was selected for and made a townsite by the United States Government many years ago after a very careful survey lasting some two years and extending over this entire coast. Among the many admirable locations which presented themselves for this purpose to those engaged in the work, Port Angeles with its magnificent harbor privileges, it's recognized facilities for commerce and inland trade, and it's unequaled facilities for commerce and island trade, and it's unequaled natural advantages was finally decided upon. It is the only townsite, with the exception of that upon which the City of Washington, the national capital, is now built that the Government ever laid out. The language sounds very remarkably like that used by Norman R. Smith, who was Victor Smith —Victor Smith, remember, was the Father of Port Angeles —his son, he returned to Port Angeles about 1885 and was, in 1889, the Secretary of the Citizens Association, and he was later a Mayor of Port Angeles for several terms. He wrote an unpublished biography of his father, Victor, many years after he was Mayor. And he used the term Second National City in his book, but that wasn't the only time that his fiction became fact in his book. In another section of the history of Port Angeles, and this isn't Victor Smith, but it's the Citizens Association that claimed that the harbor here was named by Juan de Fuca. Juan de Fuca, who may or may not have even existed, did not report that he took refuge from a storm here and named the harbor Port Angles. In fact, we have on record that the harbor was named for a much later Spanish explorer, Francisco Eliza in 1791. And Second National City is real nice prose, but it's not quite true. What the paragraph did was combine two Government actions into one fact. On June 19, 1862, at the request of Victor Smith, Abraham Lincoln signed an Executive Order setting land at Port Angeles aside, locking it up as it were in the Military and Lighthouse Reserve. And that language 1 was as follows: Port Angeles and Ediz Hook in Townships 30 and 31, Ranges 5 and 6, for Lighthouse purposes at Ediz Hook, from low water mark at the lowest and on all sides not exceeding ten acres, for military purposes, a reservation for five miles in front on east and west and said harbor and bay, including the tongue of land known as Ediz Hook, extending back or southward from the harbor of Port Angeles to the depth of one mile. In other words, everything from the harbor to Lauridsen Boulevard, which was then called Grand Boulevard or later called Grand Boulevard. And from Ennis Creek to what is now Ocean View Cemetery was set aside as a Military and Lighthouse Reserve, and it effectively closed all of the land within that area to any settlement or land claims. And that very same day, also by Executive Order, the President ordered the Puget Sound Custom House to be moved from Port Townsend to Port Angeles. The fact of the reserve stopped a few men, including Victor Smith, from speculating in Port Angeles real estate. Their claim had not been registered with the land office either in Olympia or the Auditor in Clallam County which, at that time, was headquartered at New Dungeness because, at that time, all land claims had—could not be, except donation land claims, could not be considered official until the land was surveyed. And Port Angeles area was not surveyed at that time. It was chiefly unoccupied, virgin forest, except for the Custom House and the Navy hospital which were built on the beach at the foot of Valley Creek, and Valley Creek at that time was known as Mariner Creek. A wharf was built into the water where ships could be docked while being inspected, and incidentally, all of that land now from the hillside which is where they were located, has been filled in 10 - 20 feet with fill from up the hill. And the Custom House, of course, was washed into the bay when there was a horrible storm one year, a blockade like a dam was built up in the hills and it broke all at once and the water came rushing down and pushed the Customs House, the people in it and everything into the bay. The next year, on March 3, 1863, the United States Congress passed an act for increasing the revenue by reservation and sales of townsites on public lands. And that provided that public lands, whether surveyed or unsurveyed, on the shores of harbors at junctions of rivers, important ports, or natural or prospective centers of population, should be set aside, surveyed, and sold. The fact that they should be offered for sale at public outcry—I just love that terminology—offer for sale at public auction. The funds raised were to be used for the expenses of the Union Army, then engaged in the Civil War. This not affected only Port Angeles, but there were at least nine other cities in western Washington, as well as many other future communities in the western states that were affected by this. There was nothing in the Act that even hinted which, some people say, Second National City means, that in case Washington, D.C., were to be captured by Confederate troops, the Nation's Capital would be moved to Port Angeles. And this was some people's understanding—this is some people's understanding of what Second National City meant. At that time, if you had perfect connections and absolutely marvelous weather for sailing ships, you could get from Washington, D.C., to Port Angeles in six weeks —that would be the very fastest you could make it. When the surveyor arrived to survey the Port Angeles townsite, Victor Smith who was the Custom's collector and the self-appointed leader of the community, which was not very big because it was mostly the Customs House and anybody else that worked there who lived along the beach, persuaded him that only the land along the waterfront from Ennis Creek to Tumwater Creek and back as far as 4', should be surveyed. An area from approximately Laurel to 2 Tumwater and back to 6'was surveyed into blocks. Land east of Lincoln was set aside to be sold as 10-acre plots, and the remainder—in other words, everything from 4 h Avenue back to Lauridsen and from Tumwater to the Cemetery, which would be the Cemetery, remained reserve land closed to settlement. This report went back to the Government Land Office and nobody objected, and so the reserve continued. It was this Government survey that was the basis for the claim that Port Angeles was a National City, because the land was surveyed by a Government surveyor,just as Washington, D.C., had been. As for the Townsite, after the lots were surveyed and prices fixed, they were sold at public auction. Some lots were designated for government purpose, and we know Lot 33 at the top of the bluff above Ennis Creek was designated for hospital purposes. It was laid aside by the Federal Government for hospital purposes, and we have a hospital up there. Certain large blocks on the east side of Lincoln Street were identified as a future home of local government offices, and that is where the County Courthouse and the Fire Station are. Incidentally, where the Library is now, that land was about 20 or 25 feet higher than it is now because it was all sluiced down into the Port area. The Catholic Church, a very large church building, they were informed that this was illegal because that land was set aside for government use. So, they sold that property and building to the County, and that was the third County seat in Port Angeles when they moved into Port Angeles. And it remained so until 1916 Another place where the Government set aside land for a specific purpose was at the top of the bluff and at the bottom of the bluff—actually those map makers paid absolutely no attention to the fact that there were ravines and a bluff in this City. They just drew all their lots out without worrying about it—they were just drawn out square. And those were for Federal Government purposes, and that's where the Federal Office Building and, for a long, long time, there was a Government signal tower and weather station at the top of the bluff above the Federal Building. But the other lots were sold, very slowly. There were 30 sales made the first day for a total of $4,570.25. There were years when no lots were sold. After 26 years of very slow growth, Port Angeles was announced as the site of the Puget Sound Cooperative Colony, which is down near Ennis Creek where Rayonier was, and sales picked up. By 1889, when railroad fever reached Port Angeles as well as Port Crescent and Port Townsend and Seattle and Tacoma and the rest of them, all of the townsite lots were sold. And people were wandering around the City, wishing that they could get in and have more—buy more property, but it was all reserve, and the railroads were running around here looking for places where they could get railroad right-of-ways, some of them through the reserve. A man by the name of John Murphy—he was a lawyer sent out by one of the railroad companies to purchase rights-of-way—met with the people who were agitating for a series of meetings, and they ended up jumping the reserve on July 4', 1890. They had agreed in advance that people who go in—and by the way, they had been going in and looking after they made this decision before the day came—looking they could take up two lots each, one they had to build a home on and the other they had to improve. And they're the standard City lots —I think it's 40 x 150 is a standard City lot here in Port Angeles. Well, they could each take up 2—they made some rules about it— no minors could acquire land, but women could. The story of the reserve is another story to tell. But, they asked Congressman Wilson to push for a Congressional Act which would legalize their actions and make it possible for the squatters to purchase the reserve land. In the meantime, they lived illegally on that land for 2 - 3 years. In August, 1893, Congress authorized a new survey to be made extending the lines of the streets back from the waterfront and established a procedure 3 for squatters to purchase the lots that they had settled. The prices were varied, anywhere from $15 per lot—my grandfather bought two lots for $30 up on 8h Street, between Laurel and Oak. The lots at the top of the bluff, however, if they faced the bluff they were $150 and if they faced away from the bluff, the other side of the block they were $15. There was a lot of squabbling, and I've got all of the documentation—I'm writing a book about it. It was during that time that the Board of Trade which succeeded the Citizens Association advertised Port Angeles as the Gate City and, for a long time, we were known here as the Gate City—the gateway to the Puget Sound area. And in the advertisements, they offered free land which is not true, because the people came out and they discovered they had to pay the Government settled price, a perfect climate, and the magnificent setting of Port Angeles. One of the groups that did accept were the Civil War veterans we know as the Michigan Soldiers Colony that settled on 40 lots on Lincoln Heights that were dedicated to them. Two of the most prominent men in Port Angeles history in addition to Norman Smith who had started this Second National City story—about this time, Thomas Aldwell and G. M. Lauridsen each wrote a history of the beginning and development of Port Angeles as they saw it. And since they had heard from the Citizens Association about the Second National City and Norman Smith was positive that the Second National City was what President Lincoln had intended when he signed those Acts that Norman's father had asked for, they included the Second National City part in their histories. And every history I have read of Port Angeles since then includes Port Angeles as a Second National City. As a historian, I am disturbed by some of their history, because none of them cited original sources. They didn't go back and see what Norman Smith—what authority for Norman Smith was. Remember, he combined two acts —a government Presidential proclamation and an Act of Congress —and so these authors have perpetuated the myth. And that's how it became to be engraved in bronze on a granite boulder on Lincoln Street. It is perfectly true that Port Angeles has been involved with the Federal Government since its inception. When I worked for the National Archives, one of the things that we were writing—I was, what would you call me, a researcher for a book about the National Archives. And the author said, see if you can find a town that has had a great deal of involvement with the National Government. He was thinking of a town in Oklahoma, and I said there's one even better than that—it's Port Angeles. And I researched, and Port Angeles has been touched 121 times by different agencies of the Federal Government. But, it was set aside as a Military and Lighthouse Reserve by President Lincoln, and that's true. It was open for survey and sale by the United States Government in 1863 —true. That it was the second town in the United States to be so opened for survey and sale is very problematic, as I said, there are at least nine others in western Washington that came under the same act of Government. But other purposes, that hospital, local government, and federal government on certain blocks had to be resolved for the Act of Congress is true. Remember when we tried to put the Library on the block that the old City Hall had been we had to go to Congress and get permission for a Library to be where it is —for the Carnegie Library to be where it is now. The Ocean View Cemetery was set aside for cemetery purposes by an Act of the United States Government—that's true. And Lincoln Park was set aside for park purposes by an Act of the United States Government—all that is true. As a historian, I have been trained to believe that you go to original sources to verify history's 4 stories, and I cannot find any original source that proves beyond all doubt that Port Angeles is the Second National City, much as we wish it to be true. And it's a nice story, and you can believe it if you like, but it's really not so. Do you have any questions?" 5