What's new in Ocean Shores?

The Harbor: ‘Then & Now'

By John C. Hughes - Daily World editor

Saturday, May 5, 2007 11:21 PM PDT

Mark Conley, Sales Associate I was raised in a small community over in Eastern Washington with family ties closely related to Western Washington. I attended college at Yakima Valley College where I studied Accounting & Business Administration. I have over 30 years of experience in the administrative and accounting field. I moved from the Puyallup area in January of 2004 to enjoy the beauty of Ocean Shores.

For Northwest history buffs, Paul Dorpat and Jean Sherrard have teamed up to produce the definitive coffee table book.

“Washington Then & Now,” arriving in book stores and libraries this month, is a gorgeous, album-sized volume. It's filled with archival photos of communities and landmarks across the state — from Aberdeen to Zillah — paired with present-day photos painstakingly taken from the same vantage points.

This has been one of Dorpat's abiding fascinations ever since I first met him in the 1970s when I was doing research for our Bicentennial history edition. He has written the popular “Now & Then” column for The Seattle Times for 25 years. Together with Genevieve McCoy, he wrote the invaluable 1998 volume “Building Washington,” which documents the history of public works in our state. It features an excellent overview of public works on the Twin Harbors, including a mini-chapter called “Aberdeen-Hoquiam: From Planks to Bridges.”

Sherrard, a first-rate landscape photographer, has also been an actor, writer, director, teacher, carpenter and private detective, which must have come in handy as he and Dorpat tracked down where landmarks used to be before dams flooded valleys and bridges and buildings disappeared.

In doing research for “Washington Then & Now,” the authors make it clear they are much indebted — as have been I — to local photographers, museum curators and volunteers, librarians and amateur historians from all walks of life. Aberdeen photographer and historian Bill Jones, Gene Woodwick of the Ocean Shores Interpretive Center, John Larson of the Polson Museum in Hoquiam, Dann Sears of the Aberdeen Museum of History and the staff at the Pacific County Historical Society helped the authors find the best photo opportunities in this neck of the woods.

The book features the Moclips Beach Hotel, circa 1911, a magnificent edifice that offered ocean views that turned out to be too close for comfort. The storm-tossed sea swallowed it up.

There are terrific panoramas — and closeups — of Aberdeen and Hoquiam; a visit to Montesano, with its magnificent Courthouse; unpaved Main Street in Elma, circa 1910, with horses and buggies; plank-city Raymond, circa 1905, and South Bend as a raw-boned clearing in 1890, then with a dazzling Courthouse of its own in 1926.

It's a tour de force of the whole state — from Chuckanut Drive to the Pike Place Market, Neah Bay to Pullman, and most every stop in between.

The same spot on the day the highway opened in 1930. B.B. Jones photo.

The magnificent Hall of the Doges at Spokane's Davenport Hotel — one of my all-time favorite places — is shown filled with costumed revelers in 1911 and hosting the Diamonds & Divas opera-benefit ball in 2005.

Tekoa and Ritzville aren't left out, nor is metropolitan Skamokawa in 1903 and today.

At $45, this book is a bargain. A huge 158-page, 14-by-10 hardcover volume, its pages are poster-quality stock that reproduces photos magnificently, while the narratives are brightly written and carefully fact-checked.

John Larson reports that the Polson museum is now making arrangements to offer the book for sale at the museum.

It's a keeper.

Washington Then & Now, ISBN-10: 1-56579-547-4, Westcliffe Publishers, Englewood, Colo.

Source: The Daily World