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closeMeridian: The spine of East Pierce County
Meridian has evolved into a way of life in Pierce County
Roxanne Cooke and Shaun Scott
Meridian Avenue has been called many different names throughout the years: Ball-Wood Road, Puyallup-Graham Road, Barney-Larson Extension Road, 102nd Avenue.
But today, it’s simply called Meridian.
This 30-mile river of asphalt flowing from Edgewood to Eatonville has connected communities and sustained a regional economy for more than a century.
In a special four-page section inside today’s newspaper, The Herald explores the people and places that define Meridian today, and the fond memories of what it meant to locals in the past.
“Meridian acted as a lifeline,” said local historian Carl Vest. “Since the 1890s it’s been a very important thoroughfare.”
In 1888, more than 80 local residents submitted a petition to the Pierce County Commissioners requesting that a 5-mile road be built from the vicinity of Pioneer Avenue — the former city line of Puyallup — up the hill to the south. The south end of the road would be extended east for three quarters of a mile and end at the property of prominent hops farmer Carl Muhler, near what is now 160th Street East.
The petitioners argued that the road would be easy to maintain and build and it would create a direct farm-to-market route to the important and growing settlement of Puyallup, according to documents compiled by Vest.
The county commissioners accepted the petition in 1889 and a field team surveyed the land.
Two of the petitioners, Harvey M. Ball and George Wood, agreed to assume responsibility of paying for the land survey and laying out the road. For that contribution, the road was named Ball-Wood.
The exact date the road was completed is unknown, but in the 1890s it was only paved in one direction to aid farmers coming down the hill to sell their goods, said Andy Anderson, president of the Ezra Meeker Historical Society. The area that is now South Hill was covered with forests and populated by timber operations as well as farmers who raised dairy cows, chickens, vegetables and holly trees.
From about 1850 to the 1920s, the road that is now Meridian within Graham was pieced out in small sections, but there was only a muddy trail leading from Graham to Puyallup, said Graham historian Lawrence D. Anderson.
Graham settlers had to travel to Orting to get to Puyallup in those days — old timers have said it took nearly an hour to reach Puyallup on the muddy road, but only 10 minutes once it was paved.
Locals submitted another petition in 1910 requesting the development of a four-mile road starting from the southern edge of Ball-Wood and extending south to what is now 224th Street in Graham, Vest said.
The commissioners granted 1.5 miles instead, and the new Puyallup-Graham Road was built from 200th to 224th streets.
In 1915, the commissioners approved construction of a thoroughfare connecting current-day 110th Avenue with the Puyallup-Graham Road, running through what is now the closed dump. The county commissioners named the entire length the Puyallup-Graham Road by the late 1920s for simplicity’s sake.
What turned into the Puyallup-Graham Road was once the Barney-Larson Extension Road, stretching out to Clear Lake near Eatonville, according to Lawrence Anderson.
The name “Meridian” was not adopted until the late 1930s, Vest said.
At one point, the road was called 102nd Avenue.
“It was confusing,” he said. “They finally decided to call it Meridian and do away with all the names.”
Lawrence Anderson recalled that as a child in the early 1950s, Meridian was still only paved in one direction. His family would drive on the paved part of the road on their way to Puyallup and switch over to the unpaved portion when oncoming cars approached.
Modern-day Meridian was only a dirt road in Edgewood until the 1930s, recalled longtime resident Cleora Colin, who is better known by her maiden name, Wakefield. Her parents moved to Edgewood in 1927, when she was 4.
Colin remembers her family’s Model T Ford couldn’t make it up the steep two-lane hill to Edgewood because the car didn’t have enough power. Instead, her father drove in reverse up the hill.
She also remembers when the first side of the road was paved.
“We thought that was wonderful,” Colin said. “The other side was all muddy and awful.”
Meridian was paved in both directions for some time before more significant changes were made. In downtown Puyallup during the 1970s, Meridian switched from a two-way to a one-way.
Today, it continues to be a central point of downtown Puyallup and the home to The Puyallup Fair and Events Center and Good Samaritan Hospital, among other landmarks.
South Hill’s boom of commercial development may have occurred after the completion of State Route 512 in the 1970s, Vest said. As recently as the 1990s, South Hill still had a rural feel, he said. But that has disappeared.
“It’s grown beyond reason,” Vest said. “It’s sad.”
Longtime East Pierce County resident Gary Pierce agrees that Meridian has changed dramatically over the past several decades.
Pierce grew up on 288th Street near State Route 7 on a dead-end road. The 66-year-old has seen Meridian transform the area from a country-like setting to a thriving metropolis.
“Meridian use to be just a two-lane country road when I was a kid,” Pierce said.
The changes on Meridian have forever altered the area he knew decades ago.
“Graham used to be a wide spot in the road,” Pierce said. “Where Safeway on South Hill is located, there was 50 to 75 acres of timber. Everything is more urbanized. For me seeing the changes is kind of hurtful in a way. I enjoyed the forests.”
The intersection of 128th and Meridian is particularly significant to Pierce — he remembers a time before the congestion.
“I remember when there was no light there but just a stop sign,” he said. “There was a house owned by someone I knew on the corner. Now the whole area around there is full with commercial businesses.”
Emerald Ridge High School teacher and former boys soccer coach David Rosdahl lived in Puyallup, then moved near 160th Street in South Hill before moving to Bonney Lake in 2006.
“The area has just gotten bigger and bigger,” Rosdahl said. “My wife and I wanted to raise our family in Puyallup but we moved out to Bonney Lake in 2006 because of the traffic. We just got fed up with it.”
While residing in South Hill, Rosdahl said he came across some people who shared the history of his property.
“They told me this is where they used to ride their motorcycles out in the forest,” Rosdahl said. “That gives you an idea of how much the area has changed. The expansion keeps on growing in the south all the way to Graham.”
The surge in growth in South Hill reminds Rosdahl of what happened in Federal Way in the 1980s.
“I remember when the expansion started on 320th, and Meridian has become just like that,” he said. “It’s unbelievable.”
Fellow soccer coaching enthusiast Tom Nelson began his career in education in the Puyallup School District in 1962. Nelson was the head coach of the Rogers Rams boys soccer program from 1974 to 1996. He has lived in South Hill since 1974 and seen the surge of people move to the area in the past four decades.
“When I first moved up here, Meridian was one lane going north and one lane going south,” Nelson said. “Where the South Hill Mall is now was just a big hill.”
The area is now a far cry from what Nelson remembers when he first moved to the area.
“My daughter was able to ride up and down the road on a pony while pulling a cart back then,” Nelson said. “That was a long time ago. We chuckle now when looking back on that because look how much traffic there is now on that road. The whole area alongside of Meridian is one big strip mall.”
Nelson thinks the widening of 94th Avenue may somewhat ease the traffic woes on Meridian in the near future.
“I think the construction on 94th may help out a little bit,” he said. “But I suspect the people living on 94th feel the same way about the traffic they’re getting that people felt on Meridian when all the growth began. There’s just a lot of people moving to the area. The traffic problems will probably just continue. I don’t think there was a lot of planning for the amount of growth the area has experienced.”
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Check out the Special Section on Meridian in the August 28 issue of The Herald