HISTORY OF ARLINE, PIERCE COUNTY, WASHINGTON The US GenWeb Archives provide genealogical and historical data to the general public without fee or charge of any kind. It is intended that this material not be used in a commercial manner. Written by Cherie Kuranko, ©1997. Submitted by Cherie Kuranko June 30, 1997. Both above notices must remain when copied or downloaded. Cherie Kuranko Orting, WA 98360 Arline, Washington History woodhopper@earthlink.net The town of Arline, Washington (Pierce County) was located off the road now known as the Carbon River-South Prairie Road. It is located about halfway between the current towns of South Prairie and Orting. I recently tackled the task of recording the history of the town while writing a newspaper article. Finding very little information at any libraries I dug up records that were kept by a few "old-timers" of the local area and also found a couple interesting tales as well. The following is true to the best of my knowledge and meant only to help steer those researching this town and its people in the right direction. Arline was also sometimes referred to as Arline Mills, and on some records was spelled Arlene. In the beginning Arline could only be accessed by wagon trails. The first settlers that homesteaded in or around this area that would later be called Arline were: John Dean (80 acres on October 12, 1880) George Bosdet (40 acres April 21, 1880) James A. Temple (120 acres September 6, 1881) James McCarthy (160 acres August 29, 1888) Moses F. Drake (160 acres March 15, 1888) Charles Zimmerle (80 acres October 31, 1888) Hamilton H. House (160 acres September 26, 1889) John Breen (160 acres About 1890) Orville Biggs (About 1897) See Article Below. Armstrong (Prior to 1910) Fred Keating (1902 until 1977) Fred Keating, Sr. and Jr. can be found in Orting History. Also a interview was taped by Alice Rushton with Fred Keating. Yotsko and Wm. Wilchuck Home (1904 until 1923) Robert D. Moore (1907-1910) Partner in the Manley-Moore Lumber Co., more info. later. Mrs. Nettleton (1915 until 1930) School teacher at Arline School Sawyer (Unknown time) By 1915, the only original names listed above that remained were Fred Keating, John Breen, and Wm. Wilchuck. Also a W.G. Sawyer shows up but on a different section of land. Much of these lands were owned by various lumber companies by 1915. Sawmills and lumber camps sprouted up everywhere. The 1915 Map also shows the N.P.Ry in existence at this time, which is what the early loggers used to transport their timber. There were other small settlements near Arline and they were called Crocker and Broomfield. Some information on Broomfield and Crocker can be found in a book called "The History of the Town of Orting" written by Alice Rushton. In about 1900 Orville Biggs built a sawmill at Arline. This same sawmill was later used by the Manley-Moore Lumber Company from 1907-1910, Robert D. Moore (above) being part owner of the newly formed operation. He was partnered with J.E. Manley and August Von Boecklin, but only Moore lived at Arline and oversaw the operation. This same sawmill was then bought by Merrick-Robb Lumber Co. and ran by them from 1910-1915. Many company houses were built here for the loggers. Robert D. Moore was born in China in 1878. His father was Marshall Moore, a tea merchant in China for some years. Robert attended the University of Minnesota and had been a civil-engineer for the Great Northern Railroad. He married Eleanor Von Bodenstedt, in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1907 and the couple then came to Washington State. That same year he went into partnership with Manley and Von Boecklin. He went to live at Arline and oversaw the mill operation while his partners took care of the financial dealings from an office in Tacoma. J.E. Manley was born in Wisconsin, in 1876. He attended the University of Minnesota's law school and graduated in 1899. He later went to Washington and opened up a law practice in Seattle. He married a lady named Rose Henriot in 1904 in Tacoma. Not much was known about the other partner Von Boecklin. You can find a great deal more about the company and its operations, as well as more family history on Moore, in a book called "Carbon River Coal Country" by Nancy Irene Hall. Many pictures are also included here. It is also interesting to note that Andy Yotsko, an Arline schoolboy, later went to work for Manly-Moore Lumber Company. Some of this Yotsko family still exists in the Sumner, WA area. Also, a town was named Manley-Moore on the upper Carbon River area where their company operated until 1929, "the depression", which ended the market for lumber. Manley-Moore had many outstanding debts and were forced to sell the company to a Mr. Gailbraith from the Eatonville Lumber Company. They were a very highly thought of and respected outfit in this area as they treated their workers generously and kindly. The Arline School Census is already on-line at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/wa/pierce/school/11arline.txt Some of these names show up in books written about the various towns that were nearby Arline. There are books written on Orting, Connells Prairie, South Prairie, Wilkeson, Carbonado, Burnett, and Buckley; all close to this Arline town. A wealth of information is at the South Prairie Town Hall in reference to their own town history. It is a collection of a long-time S. Prairie resident, also a fellow genealogist!, who has loaned it to them so that anyone can stop by and thumb through it. Many family histories, town history and pictures are included. This has never been printed or published though and it remains a local pleasure only! If you ever need a look-up in S. Prairie I would be happy to oblige. The books mentioned above can be still be purchased at the Orting Heritage Quest Library in Orting, WA. The following is the article I wrote about the town of Arline and I hope you enjoy it. It is provided for you with the exception that you please ask my permission before publishing it anywhere else. Copyright 1997. "Bygone days of the Town of Arline" by Cherie Kuranko Orville Biggs went to Alaska in 1896 and found more gold than he ever dreamed possible, he'd struck it rich in the Klondike! In 1897, the same year Orville Biggs arrived in Seattle, the ship Portland landed in Seattle with a ton of Alaskan gold carefully stowed away beneath the decks. The first news of the gold rush hit the papers and turned Seattle into the "Gateway to Alaska" practically overnight. The Klondike Gold Rush was on! After Orville arrived in Seattle he began scouting the Pacific Northwest area for a profitable investment. Finding an abundance of timber and the land cheap he decided to stay a while and take his chances in the lumber industry. Orville and his family settled about three miles south of South Prairie, an area which at that time was mainly traveled by wagons and trails. Orville wasn't the first to settle here though. Other homesteaders had come as early as 1880 to the same valley in the wilderness. Some of the early homesteaders names, those coming between 1880 and 1890, were written down by a few "old-timers" of the South Prairie area, they were recorded as: John Dean, Ira C. Drake, George Bosdet, James A. Temple, James McCarthy, John Breen, Charles Zimmerle, Hamilton H. House, and a Sawyer family that lived across the Carbon River. Soon after Orville arrived he built a sawmill complete with a mill pond which was located in the draw where Keating Road turns to go up the hill off of the South Prairie-Carbon River Road. Orville used oxen to yard in the heavy loads of logs which would then be loaded onto the flat railroad cars of the Northern Pacific Rail Road which was nearby. Evidence of an old skid-road remains today on this property, the current owner being, Werner Ackermann. The process of using oxen to log is best described in Roy Stier's book, Down The Hill, as follows: "The bull driver (usually called "puncher") was the top man in camp and received the highest rate on a modest pay scale. Swampers cleared out the skid-roads for the roaders (often called "monkeys") who cut skids of about ten feet in length that were partially buried in the ground. These skids, usually spaced about nine feet apart, eventually became depressed in the middle from the heavy friction of logs during the yarding operation. A skid greaser always preceded the team with a bucket of grease and a swab to keep the turn moving along. The oxen bulls were never in the lead, but placed somewhere in the middle of a team where their inherent balkiness was overcome by the pressure of animals fore and aft. But the bulls were key movers of heavy logs after they were prompted into action. Logs had to be loaded onto railroad cars by parbuckling. This term described the action of rolling logs with a section of wire rope from underneath and around in bight form. "Jump up" skids were set on an incline angled to the horizontal height of the car. The logs were hauled up the skid so there was very little actual lifting involved. Single tongs with a "Y" strap were used later to skid and lift the logs. Sometimes a single boom, normally an A-frame with a block, was the control mechanism for this operation. The oxen were usually housed in temporary shelters called "wickiups" (later a term used for men and equipment)." Used by permission. Orville had a daughter named Edith Arline Biggs whom he must have cherished as he not only named his sawmill after her but named the town Arline after her as well. Arline, as she went by all her life, lived in the town of Arline for a rather short time actually. In 1904 her father, Orville, became ill and went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota where he died May 29th of that same year. After the death of Orville the family moved into the city of Tacoma, Arline was about 13 years old at this time. In June of 1914 Arline married Edgar N. Gott, the cousin of Bill Boeing. Edgar N. Gott was the vice-president for Pacific Aero Products Company, in July of 1916, and his cousin, Bill Boeing was president of the new company at this time. Later the name of the company was changed to Boeing Airplane Company which Edgar served as the president for from about 1922-1925. Edgar then resigned from Boeing and joined the rival company Fokker Aircraft as vice president and he and Arline moved to California. With all of Arline's connections to the airline industry a rather ironic error occurred a few years ago with the placing of a road sign on the 300 foot stretch of pavement that is known as Arline Road. The county placed a sign that read "Airline" Road instead of Arline Road as it should have been. They eventually corrected their error and replaced the sign and now the Arline Road sign is about all that is left of a small town that no longer exists. The town of Arline continued to grow long after Orville and his family were gone. In the early 1900s settlers named Keating, Yotsko, Hodgenson, Moore, Nettleton, and Armstrong could be found in the town of Arline. With the growth came other lumber companies, sawmills, a schoolhouse and a post office. Lumber companies by the names of St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Co., Weyerhaeuser Timber Co., Stevenson Lumber & Shingle Mill, Merrick-Robb Lumber Co., and Manley-Moore Lumber Co. all operated from Arline at one time or another. The Carbon Hill Coal Company was also in the Arline area. Manley-Moore bought Arline Mills in 1907 and operated there until about 1910, selling out to Merrick-Robb Lumber Co. Manley-Moore then moved their logging operation to the Upper Carbon River area, near Carbonado, where they had a very successful business for a number of years. Manley-Moore was owned by three men by the names of John Manley, August Von Boecklin, and Robert D. Moore. Robert and his family lived in Arline during the time that the lumber company was in operation there, and then followed the company to the Carbon River area and lived there. Small communities, such as Arline, were allowed to set up a post office when there were about a dozen or so families in the area. The Arline Mills Post Office was short-lived, only existing from about 1910-1913. School first began for the children of Arline in the old Armstrong home in about 1910 and continued there until 1911. By 1912 a new schoolhouse had been built near the Arline Mill. Some of the early teachers at the Arline School, District 117, were Miss Florence Reed, Miss Ruth Shafer, and Mrs. McFarland. Grades one through eight were taught here to the students until the schools closure in 1920. Between 1924-1928 Joe Case, of Orting, bought the school from the school district. He used the schoolhouse for various dances and social functions, mostly on an invitational basis. Frank Swalander and Ross Welch are remembered as doing most of the "calling" for the square dances and other dances of that era. After the death of Joe, the town businessmen of Orting remodeled the schoolhouse for Joe's widow and children. They lowered the ceiling and added a second story with four bedrooms, and a bath in one of the old cloakrooms. The next owner was Sam Riddle who then sold to the Meitzler family in March of 1942. After the Meitzler family came the current owners, George and Ruthie Langlois, who own and operate a pallet repair company called National Pallet Service, Inc. They are one of the first owners of this property not to live in the old schoolhouse. Instead, George and Ruthie remodeled the old potting shed from the Meitzler Greenhouse business during their first year there. The old schoolhouse was moved down to a swampy area near the road where it remained empty for years. George and Ruthie said, "we thought about repairing it but it was too costly to restore. The South Prairie Fire Department burnt it down in a practice fire drill years ago." George also said, "I have heard rumors that there is a Chinese burial ground in the hillsides here. Guess they buried their dead in the sides of hills, these were the people who worked in the old log camps and for the railroads around here years ago." Steve Meitzler was a baby, just six months old, when he moved into the old Arline schoolhouse with his family. His family ran Meitzler's Greenhouses from their home location for many years and then moved near South Prairie in 1975. Steve continues to stay involved in the community and owns and operates Heritage Quest Press in Orting. Steve remembers one story he heard years ago, "There were these two ladies in Arline and one was complaining to the other about some old woman that lived up the hill that had a blind pig. Well....the one lady asked what was so wrong with keeping a blind pig and the other lady informed her just exactly what a blind pig was.", Steve chuckles as he continues to explain, "a blind pig is what they called a moonshine still. So the lady complaining was pretty upset about someone making moonshine just up the hill from her." Many other interesting tales about the town of Arline are shared from generation to generation to anyone that cares to listen. One rumor even has it that the old Nettleton home was sold to a madam in about 1930. The home was transformed into a dance hall, known as the "Shady Glen", but this was not all it was rumored to have been. The dance hall was also known to be a house of ill-repute at the time that the unknown madam owned it. The sheriff later shut the business down. While the town of Arline no longer exists today, you can see that there are still a few reminders of the town's history and of the original homesteaders who came full of hopes and dreams of living a full and prosperous life in the lush green valley under the shady old-growth firs of Arline.