REMEMBERING RICHARDSON

By John Goekler, LIHS President
The Lopez Island Historical Society & Museum Newsletter Autumn 2003

Somewhere around 1870, George Stillman Richardson decided the south end of Lopez, between Jones and Davis bays, was a pretty good place to settle. [He was] originally from Maine.

Richardson worked as a cabin boy on a square-rigger, and came to the Northwest via Cape Horn. He homesteaded with his family on Lopez, from which he commuted to Whidbey for his “cash” job as a light-house keeper. A few years later, he left the islands to homestead near Port Hadlock on the Kitsap Peninsula.

Richardson’s farm passed through several hands before being acquired by William Graham, an expatriate Canadian. Graham was a canny businessman who knew how to get things done—he served as a school board director and county commissioner—and he clearly recognized the potential of Richardson. It was the southernmost deepwater port in the county, was accessible by road and convenient to local farmers who needed to sell their products, and was adjacent to huge seasonal runs of migrating salmon.

Graham set to work to make Richardson the trading center of the island. He got a post office established in 1887, and in 1889 he built a dock capable of handling the larger streamers that were beginning to provide regular service to the islands. He added a warehouse to store goods, then helped a newcomer named Robert Kindleyside build a store across the road. In addition to general goods, Kindleyside did a brisk business selling cordwood to feed the steamer fireboxes.

Lopez was a veritable market basket in those days, producing field crops such as hay, oats, barley, wheat, rye, potatoes, and peas. Gardens grew everything from greens, to beets, to melons. Farmers raised sheep, cattle, hogs, and poultry, and sold meat, wool, eggs, cream, and butter. Local orchards produced bushels of apples, pears, cherries, and plums. Much of this bounty flowed through Richardson, via steamer, to growing markets down-sound, while trade goods came to the island in return.

By 1897 Richardson was such a going concern that Graham built a 40 X 80 public hall, which hosted everything from the local school to political events, Friday night dances, and Sunday church services. Two daily steamers hauled freight and passengers on a circuit from Seattle to Port Townsend, Richardson, Lopez, Argyle, Friday Harbor, Deer Harbor, Westsound, Orcas, Eastsound, Rosario, Olga, Bellingham, and back.

The local economy got a boost in the late-1890s when fish traps were built off the south end. By 1900, Graham and his partner, N.P. Hodgson, opened a fish packing plant, salting salmon and loading them into barrels fro shipment. The attraction of a ready market was such that in salmon season, hundreds of fishermen lived on their boats in the bay or in a tent camp that blanketed the shoreline.

Richardson became a gathering place for locals and visitors, with a hotel, a bakery, a barber shop, a creamery, a slaughterhouse, and a pool hall. And, of course, there was the store, where, according to the San Juan Islander, shoppers could choose from an array of, “dry goods and notions, boots and shoes, ladies and gents furnishing, tin-ware, glassware, all kinds of domestic articles of household utility, fancy and staple groceries, provisions, flour, food, fruit, candies, tobacco, cigars, etc., and all goods of a general nature.”

By 1913, there were five fish traps off the south end, and three canneries had sprung up to process the catch. The Hidden Inlet Cannery stood on the north shore across the bay from the store, while the Salmon Bank cannery was located where the Davis Head dock now stands. Another floating cannery was sometimes anchored in the bay. The summer population was estimated to be as high as 5,000, including a fair number of Chinese cannery crews. A “China House” workers’ dormitory stood behind Hidden Inlet.

Things began to slow down at Richardson after the Hell’s Gate Slide in 1913 blocked a major portion of the Fraser River, and disrupted the salmon runs. A fuel leak from a boat at the dock resulted in a blaze that burned down the warehouse in 1916. Another fire in 1921 – a common hazard in steam-powered canneries – consumed the Salmon Bank facility. Hidden Inlet discontinued operations soon thereafter and its machinery was moved to Alaska. Without the big salmon runs and the canneries, the fishers and packers moved on. Freight began arriving on island by car ferry in 1924, and the regular freight boats ceased calling at Richardson by 1925.

As Seattle turned from horse power to automobiles and the railroads opened the markets of Puget Sound to the vast farms east of the Cascades, island export markets for farm products disappeared. The Great Depression finished off Richardson, and everything but the store and the Community Hall fell or was torn down. The store kept going through a series of owners until October of 1990, when it too went up in smoke. Lucky, the resident cat, escaped. But Richardson, as an island center, was gone