Time & Again: The enduring mysteries of questions from 1976

Published 1:30 am Thursday, September 11, 2025

Islander Bill Speidel, author of “Sons of the Profits” and “You Can’t Eat Mount Rainier” and founder of the Underground Seattle Tour, asked readers in a 1976 letter to the editor of The Beachcomber to help answer 31 questions about the history of the island.

The Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Association had recently been formed, and the group, which included Spiedel, was interested in gathering stories about the island.

He concluded his list with the following plea: “Please address your information to The Beachcomber on paper if possible. If you have any information we will have someone call you.”

Many of Speidel’s questions have now been answered by the intrepid researchers and historians at the Heritage Museum.

We know, for instance, the stories about moving the ferry from Portage to the North End; how Clam Cove became Tahlequah; the Mosquito Fleet story about the clam fight; and stories about Ephrim Landers, Bill Rendall, John Reid, Hope Fairweather, Billy Scales, Frank Brown’s lion, and Miles Hatch.

We also know about the 1925 hour-long radio broadcast by Vashon Island News-Record owner P. Monroe Smock that Jeff Hoyt so hilariously recreated in 2024. The Museum’s 2017 exhibit “Ellisport: The Hidden History” also addressed many of Spiedel’s questions about the Chautauqua Assembly, and his queries about the history of Vashon College have largely been answered.

But there are still stories Speidel asked about that remain mysteries, and the Heritage Museum is still eager for answers, nearly half a century later.

There is a story about the Tuck-a-ho Swiss Cheese Factory, involving a ruckus with the Borden and Carnation Milk companies over shipping milk from the island to the mainland using the Portage-Des Moines ferry in the late 1910s and early 1920s. But we do not know many of the details of how the dairy industry developed on the island, which included various dairies that delivered milk directly to island homes.

We do not know much about the numerous attempts of the island to secede from King County, beginning in the 1890s and continuing to the last attempt to incorporate the island in the 1990s. The State of Washington made it illegal for Vashon to incorporate, thus keeping Vashon subject to the authority of King County.

Bill Speidel also asked about a bootlegger who apparently hid from “the revenooers” (government agents who chased down moonshiners during prohibition) in a well, alongside a dead horse, to avoid being arrested. Did he eventually get caught, or did his obviously odorous escapade result in success?

And as the Vashon-Maury Island Community Council begins to become active again, we still do not have a clear answer to Bill’s question of who stole the name “Vashon Community Council” and registered it as a non-profit in, of all places, Olympia.

To find answers to the many unanswered questions, and to capture the stories, the life experiences, and the memories of islanders, islander Mike Sudduth has started an oral history project at the Heritage Museum. If you are interested in being interviewed, contact Mike Sudduth at collections@vashonheritage.org, and if you have any artifacts, photographs, or other material you think the museum should preserve, please contact Laurie Tucker at collections@vashonheritage.org.

Part of the Museum’s mission is to collect, preserve, exhibit, and interpret the history of the island. If you have questions you want answered, or insights into the questions Bill Speidel asked nearly 50 years ago, please contact the Vashon Heritage Museum through the Museum’s website at vashonheritagemuseum.org/contact-us.

Bruce Haulman is an island historian. Terry Donnelly is an island photographer.

Correction: Bill Speidel’s surname was misspelled in previous editions of this story. We regret.