The first dock at the north end of Vashon, like most of the docks on Vashon, was built for Mosquito Fleet steamers, and only later would it be developed for automobile traffic. The Mosquito Fleet is the name given to the steamers that moved people and goods across Puget Sound from the early 1890s into the 1920s and were so numerous that they often seemed like a swarm of mosquitoes descending on Seattle and Tacoma.
Originally named Hammersmark Landing after Thorkeld Hammersmark — who homesteaded there in 1883 and had a float anchored out where the Mosquito Fleet boats could stop — Lisabeula on Vashon’s western flank is a unique name not shared by any other community.
Point Robinson marks the halfway point between Seattle and Tacoma and is the most eastward point in the main shipping channel of Puget Sound. It was named in 1841 by the Charles Wilkes Expedition in honor of Quartermaster John Robinson. Early sailors labeled this area a “fog net,” because fog often obscured the point, creating a navigation hazard.
The Marjesira Inn at Magnolia Beach, just south of Burton, represents a past when Vashon was a summer vacation destination…
Vashon has had a theater since the early part of the 20th century. In 1904, the YMCA built a structure…
Miles Hatch, an early and energetic settler and developer, named the town of Burton in 1892, after his birthplace of…
As The Hardware Store Restaurant celebrates its fifth anniversary, the building it sits in turns 120 years old this year.
Point Heyer — better known to Islanders as KVI Beach after KVI Radio purchased the Vashon sand spit and built a tower on it in 1936 — and Point Robinson — where a lighthouse stands — were named by Charles Wilkes of the American Exploring Expedition in 1841 after his quartermaster Henry Heyer and his crewmember John Robinson.
The property where the bustling Vashon Community Care Center now sits has gone through a series of transformations over the past 100 years — beginning as a working ranch, becoming a boarding house and farm for the poor during the Great Depression and finally transitioning to its role as a community-supported nursing home.
P.E. Ellsworth originally purchased the property along what is now Vashon Highway in 1908 and built the farmhouse, barns and other outbuildings seen in the 1915 photograph of the Ellsworth Ranch.
In 1891, the largest dry dock on the West Coast was moved to what would later become Dockton.
Quartermaster Yacht Club was formed in 1948. The first facility was a short dock and float for landing boats and boarding passengers and a cook shack on the bulkhead, where the current clubhouse is located just north of Burton.
Burton was founded in 1892 by Miles Hatch and named after Burton Township, where he was born in Illinois. Hatch…
