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Snoqualmie Valley Record • October 15, 2014 • 9
THEN
A spotlight on historic Snoqualmie Valley
PUBLISHED AS A SUPPLEMENT TO THE SNOQUALMIE VALLEY RECORD
Tradition continues at Carmichael’s The Reinig family founded Snoqualmie’s hardware store more than 100 years ago. Carmichael’s has its legacies... and its ghosts. Page 15
Secrets of Fall City
history Go behind the scenes and learn about what regional museums will never show you, at FC Historical Society annual meeting BY SETH TRUSCOTT
T
Editor
he wool uniform is surprisingly heavy, and in fine condition, considering it’s a century old. Now cared for by Ruth Pickering, the suit’s original owner was Jesse Kelley of Fall City. Jesse donned the heavy shirt and laced on the puttees after he was drafted into the Great War in 1917. He probably wore it during his 1918 service on the Western Front in a balloon company, just before World War I came to a close.
Seth Truscott/Staff Photo
Above, Ruth Pickering, Fall City Historical Society President, hoists the WWI-era wool uniform and campaign hat worn to war by Jesse Kelley, now in the museum collection at Fall City United Methodist Church. Fall City Historical Society discusses the unseen side of museum collections at its annual community meeting, this Sunday. Years later, he passed it on to his son, the late Jack Kelley, complete with campaign hat. Today, it’s part of the small collection of Fall City Historical Society, stored with other valued relics in an upstairs room at Fall City Methodist Church. As museums go, Fall City’s is small, and technically off limits to the public. But once a year, the society invites the community for an annual meeting, sharing the last discoveries from the past. Without a real display room, Fall City’s physical collection is necessarily limited. But there are still a few treasures, and some stranger finds, preserved here.
Symbols and secrets
Not long ago, Historical Society President Ruth Pickering was poring over a digital photo the museum recently obtained from the Washington State Historical Society. She was zoomed in, perusing the shelves of the Fall City confectionary shop owned by Scott and Nettie Magee, as they looked in 1930s. Eyeing the tins and boxes, she got a shock. “I was semi-astonished” to see “Swas-Tika Sodas” soda crackers, she said. Most Americans know the swastika as the symbol of Nazi Germany and white supremacist groups. It wasn’t always so. SEE SECRETS, 11
Trestle tracks Check out this rail bridge on a scenic fall walk, and see a piece of Valley’s industrial past. Page 13