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A chalk pastel drawing on a dark slate schoolroom blackboard in a wooden frame: a small white schoolhouse with a bell tower and one lit window in the middle, a coal mine headframe with a plume of smoke at the far left, and a row of coat hooks holding five small coats along the bottom above the chalk tray.

Local Life/October 2, 2026

Lulu Kombol: the teacher who went back after the mine blast

A 1925 mine blast blinded Tony Kombol. His wife, Lulu, went back to teaching at Cumberland, then Selleck, and was still in the classroom at 76.

A three-color risograph print of a boxy orange tracked snow vehicle standing in deep snow outside a low, empty schoolhouse beside railroad tracks, with one window lit, tall dark firs and a mountain pass behind.

Local Life/October 1, 2026

Lester, Washington: the ghost town on Enumclaw's school map

Lester, a railroad town behind Tacoma's watershed gate, lost its school district in 1985. A new state minimum sent it to Enumclaw. What the record shows.

A steel engraving in the style of an old stock certificate vignette: a glaciated mountain basin with a small mining camp and a timbered mine portal, a dairy cow standing beside an ore cart in the foreground, and a long single-file line of townspeople walking up the wagon road toward the camp, each carrying a sheet of paper.

Local Life/October 1, 2026

Peter Storbo's Mount Rainier copper mine sent him to prison

An Enumclaw farmer built a copper mine in Mount Rainier National Park and was convicted of mail fraud in 1930. Accounts say 1,200 neighbors petitioned for him.

A watercolor and ink field sketch on cream paper of a 1930s steel arch road bridge whose stone-faced supports stand in a braided glacial creek, the milky water curling around and undercutting the stone, with a longer, paler bridge sketched from bank to bank behind it.

Outdoors & River/October 1, 2026

Summerland trailhead closed through 2029 for a new bridge

Why Mount Rainier's Summerland trailhead is closed through 2029: a 1931 bridge with its feet in Fryingpan Creek, the longer hike in, and the road delays.

An illustration in the style of a hand-tinted vintage photograph: a small-town gymnasium stage framed by a red velvet curtain and glowing footlights, where an elaborate model railroad of a coal town circles in place of a chorus line, a pink feather fan and a bitten apple left at the edge of the stage, and a man and a child watching from the gym floor.

Local Life/October 1, 2026

Gracie Hansen's World's Fair theater now hosts a train show

The Maple Valley Model Train Show, October 17 and 18, fills a Ravensdale gym that was Gracie Hansen's burlesque theater at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.

An illustration of an isometric tabletop scale model: forested hills beside a small river gorge, a pale excavated terrace set among the trees as a removable piece, four toy dump trucks on a thin road, and two alternate terrace pieces, a spare truck and a heap of loose model trees waiting on the table beside it.

Local Life/October 1, 2026

Segale gravel mine near Cumberland: what King County ruled

What Segale wants to build north of Cumberland, what King County ruled on July 8, 2026, who decides next, and the October 13 meeting in Enumclaw.

A hand-embroidered panel on dark wool: a row of glowing orange stitched beehive ovens under fir trees on the left, a single gold thread running across the cloth to a tall grey smokestack on a bay at the right, the smokestack's stitches coming loose and hanging as threads.

Local Life/September 30, 2026

Wilkeson coke ovens: the smelter is gone, the ovens remain

Wilkeson's beehive coke ovens baked fuel for the Tacoma smelter that became ASARCO. Its stack fell in 1993. Thirty of the ovens are still standing.

A stained-glass window of a snowy peak made of clear crystal glass with silver-leaded ridges, a small miners' cabin and a gold-flecked creek at its foot, and three skiers on a near ridge looking across the valley at it.

Outdoors & River/September 30, 2026

The skiers who built Crystal Mountain named its silver peaks

Crystal Mountain's founders were scouting Corral Pass when they spotted it in the 1950s. Then, one founder said, they named its silver peaks.

A 1920s pulp-magazine cover painting of a small-town main street at golden hour: shopkeepers with shotguns in doorways around a bullet-holed black touring car, while above them, painted like a faded memory in the sky, two men in 1890s frock coats walk away down railroad tracks carrying bulging carpetbags.

Local Life/September 30, 2026

Buckley bank robbery, 1925: two gunmen died in the street

In 1925 Buckley's marshal and merchants shot two bank robbers dead on Main Street. The town had a tip; an earlier bank was reportedly emptied by its officers.

An antique stereograph card with two sepia photographs side by side: on the left a coal mine hoist and wooden houses on dry, treeless California hills; on the right the same hoist and houses among tall dark firs.

Local Life/September 30, 2026

Black Diamond is named for a coal seam in California

Black Diamond, Washington, took its name and first families from Nortonville, California, a coal town that emptied to build it. Only ours kept the name.

A surreal rainforest scene in which an old gravel road with a parked 1950s car runs beside a glacial river shown in cross-section like an aquarium, its rocky bed and milky water standing higher than the car's roof, with a trickle spilling onto the road.

Outdoors & River/September 30, 2026

Carbon River Road didn't sink. Its river climbed over it.

Why Mount Rainier's Carbon River Road closed to cars: its riverbed rose up to 31 feet, a 1929 warning, the 2006 flood, the rain forest walk and 2026 access.

A cyanotype-style illustration in deep Prussian blue: the pale silhouettes of two pairs of adult hands holding a folded letter, laid over the faint white lines of a 1930s architectural drawing of a two-story tile-roofed building with an arched covered walkway, with the outline of Mount Rainier behind.

Local Life/September 29, 2026

Rainier School in Buckley: its history and its wind-down

Parents lobbied Buckley's Rainier School into being in 1937. In 2025 the group they founded backed the law winding it down. Its history, and what comes next.

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