A Brief History of Barneston

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This post is the first in a series of three concerning the specific history of Barneston, Washington. You can find the next two posts at these links: “The Nikkei Community” and “Issei Life and Work at Barneston“. This post draws upon material published in my 2017 article in Archaeology in Washington.

Barneston, Washington, was founded in 1898 by the Kent Logging Company to log the Cedar River Watershed. Located in King County and east of Seattle, the town was one of many that logged the forests there. Its presence coincided with a wider boom in the timber industry (Ficken 1987). After the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, the City of Seattle decided to seek out a fresh water source to help prevent future disasters and to ensure the continued growth of the city. The Cedar River Watershed was chosen as the primary source for water, and the City began buying up land throughout that area (Klingle 2007). After initially agreeing to sell in 1913, the Kent Logging Company managed to extend its mill’s operation until 1924, when the city finally acquired and razed the town (Gilbert and Woodman 1995).

Figure 1. Barneston boiler and planing mill. Courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives.

Like most mill towns, Barneston cut and processed lumber gathered by loggers in camps (Figure 1). These could range as far as 5 miles away and up to elevations of 3,300 feet above sea level (Figure 2). While life in Barneston was more comfortable than in the distant camps, both situations were dangerous, and accidents, including deadly ones, were common. Large saws, wide fan belts and conveyors, deafening noise, and the movement of tons of lumber made working in the mill towns a hazardous activity. It also didn’t help that towns rarely had doctors in residence. Injured workers were usually kept comfortable until a doctor could arrive, or were themselves sent to Seattle for treatment.

Figure 2. Logged area near Barneston. Courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives.

A 1911 survey map, made as part of a value assessment by the City of Seattle, provides additional details on the town. Much of the town was organized around the processing and production area, which included a planing mill, kiln, and sawmill, as well as the mill pond. The Euro-American single men’s barracks were also located in this area. To the north and the east were a series of family houses and a school. The Nikkei community was segregated off to the west. A variety of pig pens, gardens, and chicken coops dotted the landscape, particularly in the Nikkei community.

The Nikkei Community at Barneston

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This post is the second in a series of three concerning the specific history of Barneston, Washington. The first one can be found here, at “A Brief History of Barneston,” and the third here, “Issei Life and Labor at Barneston.” This post draws upon material published in my 2017 article in Archaeology in Washington.

As with a number of other sawmill operations in the region, the Nikkei1 community (Figure 1) was spatially segregated from the other workers. Furthermore, and in contrast with the other inhabitants, both Issei bachelors and families lived in the same area. Most houses in the community measured between 15 and 20 feet on a side. There were 54 individuals identified as “Japanese” in the 1910 census, of which 43 were bachelors or married-but-living-alone and 11 were family members (3 families total; United States Bureau of the Census [U.S. Census] 1910). By 1920, the population had risen to 58, 17 of which were bachelors or married-but-living-alone, with the remaining 41 organized into 11 families. This increase in the number of families may have required the construction of additional households beyond the ones noted on our maps (Figure 2). The 1920 census also shows an additional population of 15 Issei railroad workers, however I am not yet sure if they actually lived at Barneston, or if they were merely there to be counted in Barneston’s census enumeration district (U.S. Census 1920).

Figure 1. Photograph of Issei community from the south, facing north. Courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives.

There is some question as to the number and location of Nikkei camps in Barneston. An early cultural resource survey of the area suggested that the Japanese immigrants lived in two locations: one near–but not in–Barneston, and another further away in a location called “Hemlock” (Getz 1987:40–45). More recent heritage work found detailed survey maps which placed the Nikkei within the town of Barneston itself; oral testimonies gathered as part of this project showed no recognition of the name Hemlock (Brown and Schroeder 1996; Gilbert and Woodman 1995). The change in the community’s location—from outside of Barneston to the town proper—occurred sometime around 1906 or 1907 (Getz 1987). It resulted from erosion issues and concerns over possible pollution of a nearby river. I will write a bit more about this in a future post, but in effect, Barneston became entangled in wider debates about water quality and the watershed. This resulted in the Nikkei community not only being moved into the town, but also suffering some rather racist characterizations and attacks from local newspapers. Because it is better documented and less likely to have eroded, and because it was established right around the time of the first coordinated anti-exclusion efforts by regional Issei leadership, this project focuses on the camp within the town.

Figure 2. Nikkei community, as per 1911 R.H. Thompson survey map. Digitized and created by David Carlson.

Notes

1. I use the term “Nikkei” here to refer to the entire community. While the Issei are, for the moment, the primary focus of this project, the community included a number of Nissei children.

Why work on a sawmill town? (Part 2)

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If you haven’t had the chance to do so, you may want to read our previous posts on “Push” versus “Pull” factors in immigration, the impetus for Japanese immigration, and the economic reasons for working on sawmill towns. This post draws upon material published in my 2017 article in Archaeology in Washington.

In a previous post, I wrote a bit about some of the economic factors that may have encouraged Issei to come to towns. Here, I would like to explore some of the non-economic reasons for working on a mill town. As before, this material is a synthesis of published literature and oral testimonies regarding Issei on sawmill towns.

The non-economic factors motivating Issei to work at sawmill towns appear to be the availability of “amenities”. Issei sawmill communities organized and ran an array of amenities and social networks to meet their psychological, social, subsistence, and cultural needs. As a number of testimonies suggest, these likely served as an additional draw for the Issei, particularly those with families. These amenities varied from town to town. Barneston possessed only a store, a school, and a bathhouse, while nearby Selleck had much more, including a movie theater (Bowden and Larson 1997; Brown and Schroeder 1996; Dubrow et al. 2002; Gilbert and Woodman 1995). While some amenities were likely provided by the companies which owned the towns, the workers were largely on their own. Logging and sawmill companies were aware of the paternalistic and corporate welfare policies in other industries. However, the economic geography of logging and wood production, in combination with company stinginess, meant that these philosophies by and large do not appear to have taken hold in the lumber industry (Beda 2014:84-110; Carlson 2003; Ficken 1987; see McClelland 1998 for an exception).

Figure 1. Advertisement for the M. Furuya Company from a 1919 edition of the Four L Lumber News. Companies like this served towns like Barneston.

As a result, workers were frequently responsible for their own amenities. For the Japanese, this meant establishing a number of social services within their communities, in addition to taking advantage of those already present. It also meant establishing wider, regional social and economic connections between Japanese communities in company towns and in urban areas, such as Seattle. In terms of daily subsistence, Issei (and, more broadly, Nikkei) sawmill communities relied heavily on urban-based companies to meet their cultural and culinary needs (Figure 1), though this may have been different for communities based in ports. Representatives of various Asian food and market companies made monthly visits to the town of Barneston to drop off supplies. Barneston’s Issei often purchased these supplies communally (Brown and Schroeder 1996; Gilbert and Woodman 1995). Similar practices occurred at sawmill towns like Manley-Moore, Selleck, and National (Bowden and Larson 1997; Dubrow et al. 2002; Hall 1980; Olson 1924a). Finally, like their European-American and European counterparts, Issei supplemented their diet whenever possible with gathered and home-grown vegetables and fruits. They also raised chickens and on occasion hunted deer (Beda 2014; Ito 1973:410–412, 415–416).

These hunting and gathering activities deserve special consideration, as they speak to the kinds of labor benefits that family members could bring to the towns. Gardens, for example, served as an important means of subsistence, as they allowed Issei (and their non-Japanese counterparts) access to a renewable source of fresh vegetables and fruits. Gardens could be quite complex; one young adult who worked at Barneston in its latter years recalls the presence of not only gardens but fruit trees, including apple trees (Brown and Schroeder 1996). The inhabitants of Selleck routinely gathered apples from the trees of a nearby abandoned orchard (Bowden and Larson 1997). Families may have been particularly well suited to take advantage of these opportunities; women (and children, when they were not in school) could have tended gardens and gather local resources, in addition to maintaining the household (Brown and Schroeder 1996; Ito 1973:190). Of course, not all women were limited to these activities; some maintained jobs that provided additional sources of income for the family.

Figure 2. Schoolhouse at Barneston. Courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives.

Another important non-economic draw for families was education. Multiple informants report either attending school as children in these towns or sending their children to schools. Schoolhouses were also used by adult Issei to take night classes in the English language (Olson 1924a, 1924b, 1924c). Schooling was important enough to Nikkei families that if a school in a town closed, they would seek alternative means of education. In the case of Barneston (Figure 2), the closing of the town school in 1920 led to some children having to walk two hours a day to the school in Selleck. Other families simply left town, finding other mills where the parents and older siblings woulc work while younger siblings attended public school (Brown and Schroeder 1996). Schools were generally not segregated, and so the local school often served as a point of contact between Issei and non-Japanese families. And while American schools typically did not teach much on Japanese culture or language, Issei communities managed to meet this need by offering their own night classes. Children in sawmill towns often spent the day in public school and the night being schooled in Japanese language and customs by local, knowledgeable laborers (Bowden and Larson 1997).

Additional References*
*See the Common References page for a full list.

McClelland, John M.
1998     R.A. Long’s Planned City: The Story of Longview. Westmedia Corporation, Longview, Washington.