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closeone day vacations: Wilkeson offers historic delights, impressive quarry
Sally Zeiger Hanson / guest columnist
Destination: Wilkeson
The only reason I even know about stone quarries is from watching the Flintstones. I’ve seen one.
Wilkeson is a Wild West relic of a town that is just 15 miles beyond Orting, the last stop on the way into Mount Rainier National Park’s Carbon Glacier entrance.
This picturesque town with fewer than 500 residents was in its heyday after they discovered coal in the nearby hills in the 1800s.
Once dubbed “the roughest mining town west of Butte, Mont.,” Wilkeson boasts the state’s oldest operational elementary school and the sandstone quarry that provided the stone for many significant buildings in our state, including our state’s capital building and our own Meeker Mansion.
Until the 1920s, the streets of Seattle were paved with cobblestones from the quarry.
We started our day by going to the historic Town Hall to pick up the map that provides a walking tour of the nine historic buildings in town. We had heard that Town Hall used to be a church and it is rumored to have some ghosts in the basement.
So we acted interested in the old fire truck that is downstairs in order to get permission to check out the creepy basement. We liked the fire truck but didn’t manage to see any ghosts down there.
After walking through town to see all the historic buildings including the blue onion-domed church in a residential neighborhood, we went to lunch at the Pick n’ Shovel.
Located next to the Wilkeson Wilderness Information Center, the Pick n’ Shovel still serves up meals that would satisfy hungry coal miners like they have been doing for more than 90 years.
The piece of the Foothills Trail that is here runs right through downtown Wilkeson. It looks more like a sidewalk and less like a trail but nonetheless we “hiked” through town to get back to our car.
We drove the short distance from town to the quarry and along the way, we saw the coke ovens that are left over from coal mining days. They are hard to see because they are built into a hill and now covered with moss and vines.
As a tribute to their coal mining past, the town has made the area into a park and is working to preserve the ovens from ruin. The roadsides on the way to the quarry are strewn with the most impressive giant slabs of beautiful sandstone surrounded by hearty purple foxgloves.
While it is not possible to drive into the quarry, just the entryway is worth a gander. It gave us a sense of the size and quantity of stones that are still being pulled from the earth and moved to locations far and wide.
Next, we headed back through town and went four miles beyond it to see the Fairfax Bridge, which was the tallest bridge in Washington when it was built in 1921. This breathtaking arched structure spans 494 feet over an even more impressive wooded canyon.
Next July, Wilkeson will be celebrating its centennial as part of the annual Wilkeson Days festival in July.
Wilkeson details > Listed in the National Historic Registry, Wilkeson Town Hall is located at 540 Church St. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, call 360-829-0790.
> Holy Trinity Temple, the Russian Orthodox Church in Wilkeson on Highway 165, is a national historic site. Visit www.orthodoxtacoma.com
> Pick n’ Shovel is located at 527 Church St, Wilkeson. For more information, call 360-829-6574.
> Wilkeson Sandstone Quarry is located at 29915 Quinnon Ext. Road E., Wilkeson. Call 360-829-0999 or visit wilkesonsandstone.com.
> The Wilkeson Wilderness Information Center is a combination ranger station, visitor and information station for Mount Rainier National Park. Located on Church Street in Wilkeson, visitors can obtain backpacking, climbing and camping permits; get current information about camping and day use areas; arrange to leave food caches at the center for long backpacking trips; and purchase books, maps and information about Mount Rainier. For more information, call 360-829-5127.