What is the Pacific Northwest?
What is the Pacific Northwest? And where is it?
The Pacific Northwest, also called Cascadia by some, is a region in the northwest of North America, bound by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It encompasses all of Washington, Oregon States and Northern California, British Columbia Canada, and Alaska. It is an area of vast beauty. You will find multiple climates and topography, from the highest mountains on the contintent to many thousands of miles of coastline and globally rare inland seas.
See: The Pacific Northwest on Wikipedia | Scenic Edge on WordPress
Giving Thanks
To all -
May the bounty of our homelands provide for us all. Let’s give thanks to our Maker for what all that we have. Let’s open our hearts to share with those less fortunate. May you be blessed on this wonderful holiday – Thanksgiving!
- J. R.
“Alaska Blues, A Fisherman’s Journal” – Joe Upton, 1977
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“So we came to Alaska, on a wild and lost afternoon, caught in a tide race off a nameless point, in failing light, far from any help . .” Excerpt from “Alaska Blues, A Fisherman’s Journal” by Joe Upton, Author, published by Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, Anchorage, Alaska. Copyright by Joe Upton 1977. Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award Winner |
I received my copy of “Alaska Blues, A Fisherman’s Journal” by Joe Upton as a gift from my father, Floyd “Buz” Hudson*. Joe Upton’s Alaska Blues is replete with dazzling photography. The black and white images in his book compliment well the wilderness known as The Inside Passage. Mr. Upton’s prose is superb, evoking the vastness, loneliness, adventure, and danger that is inherent in this remote part of Alaska. A suitable accompaniment is included the back, a glossary of the language of fishermen. If you have ever fantasized about cruising the Inside Passage of Alaska, even a little bit, you must read “Alaska Blues, A Fisherman’s Journal”. – J. R. Hudson
To preview this book and find out how to obtain copy go to G o o g l e B o o k s .
(Pacific Northwest | J R Hudson is in no way affiliated with Google Books, the author, nor with the publisher.)
*Buz Hudson and the M/V Chinook: Floyd “Buz” Hudson was the Ship’s Purser (a ship’s accountant) aboard the steamer ferry Chinook sometime around 1948. The Chinook steamed regularly between Port Angeles, Washington and Victoria, Canada. See Postcard: View of the sharp-prowed ferry boat (Chinook) from above. Publisher: Smith’s Scenic Views Tacoma, Washington | Postcard: M/V Chinook | Chinook: Her end of life as the Sechelt Queen
Lahar
A Lahar is a thick slurry flow formed when volcanic ash and debris mix with water, either in rivers or from rain or melting snow and ice on the flank of a volcano. More than 60 post-glacial period mudflows have been discerned to have occured around Mount Rainier. See: Lahar on Wikipedia
Osceola Mudflow:
The Osceola Mudflow is the largest known Lahar event. It occurred about 5,600 years ago when up to one cubic mile of rock, ice, and debris slid down off Mount Rainier. Mount Rainier’s summit and northeast slope slipped away creating a mile-wide horseshoe-shaped crater open to the northeast. This crater has since been filled in by subsequent magma flows. The Osceola Mudflow traveled through the site of present-day Enumclaw, broadening and extending at least as far as the Seattle suburb of Kent, and extened into Commencement Bay, now the site of the Port of Tacoma. The communities of Orting, Buckley, Sumner, Puyallup, Enumclaw, and Auburn are also wholly or partly located on top of deposits of the Osceola Mudflow. Resulting sedimentation from the Osceola Mudflow pushed the shoreline into Puget Sound adding more than 200 square miles of new land surface.
National Lahar:
Somewhere between 2,200 and 500 years ago, a large chunk of the south flank of Mount Rainier calved off and a resulting lahar flowed down the Nisqually River. Other smaller flows evident during this time, one which temporarily filled the upper South Puyallup and Tahoma Creek valleys to a depth of at least 1,000 feet.
Electron Mudflow:
The Electron Mudflow buried Orting about 500 years ago and it continued to flow a total distance of about 60 miles. This lahar occured without an apparent eruption from Mount Rainier. A trigger may have been an earthquake or simply that some of the rock near the surface of the mountain had become weak and fractured, calving off.
Summary:
Mount Rainier has built up so high that it currently supports the largest system of glaciers in the lower contiguous United States. Scientists understand that Mount Rainier is still an active volcano. The reasons for this are; Mount Rainier stands atop the Cascadia Subduction zone, it has current geo-thermal activity, it has seismicity, and it has erupted in as late as the 19th century. Because Mount Rainier is an active volcano, it must be respected for its potential to cause destruction in what is now a highly populous area known as the Puget Sound region (including the major cities of Tacoma, Seattle, and Olympia).
Sources cited:
Cascades Volcano Observatory, USGS | GeoTimes | HistoryLink.org, A Short History of Mount Rainier, USGS
Earthquake: April 29, 1965, 7:28am
Revisiting history when on Thursday Morning, April 29, 1965 at 7:28am, a 6.5 magnitude earthquake occured between Seattle and Tacoma. This earthquake was among the largest and most damaging earthquakes of the past 100 years in the Pacific Northwest. The quake was felt over nearly 200,000 square miles covering Washington, much of Oregon, Southwest British Columbia, and the Idaho panhandle.
My Account – The Setting:
I was in 8th grade at East Junior High School in Puyallup, Washington. I had just finished my last lap in a mile run at the track that was located near the east end of the large field east of the school buildings. Exhausted from my run, I huffed over to the bleachers at the edge of the track to sit and catch my breath.
Short Shockwaves:
Just as I was about to relax I heard the loudest noise I had ever heard. It sounded as if a dozen Boeing 707 jet engines were ignited with continuing thunderclaps imbedded in the din. Puyallup is in the Seattle flight line and I feared a jet was crashing near me. I looked around and was suprised to see nothing visible that should cause such a loud roar. Almost simultaneous with the noise, the ground was rapidly and violently shaking. I felt I should flee, but where? I just reasoned that the ground was going to crack open and I would get swallowed into the dirt so I began to run once again.
Medium Shockwaves:
Though still exhausted from the mile run, I was running, this time towards the school for I felt I would be safer there. The field I was on was several acres large, and the school was a long way away. I believed I was running for my life. I could not run straight because I was being buffeted back and forth by the rocking ground. It was a frantic run.
Longer Waves:
Still running, I witnessed the telephone poles rocking back and forth several yards away from me, and I observed waves underneath moving through the field I was on. The power and phone lines were swinging like jumpropes. The field was looking as if it was liquid; as if it was on top a wavy ocean. I could actually see the direction the waves were moving, west to east.
Quake’s End:
Soon I realized that the ground was not going to swallow me up, nor was I going to be called upon to rescue survivors from a catastrophic plane crash and I stopped my run. It was later documented that the quake lasted 45 seconds, but to me it felt as if it shook for minutes. The quake was the only focus of our conversations that day and for some time.
Aftermath:
The quake’s epicenter was near Des Moines, Washington, only 15 miles away. Four people lost their lives in Seattle, and there were a fair amount of injuries as a result of the quake. Damage was estimated at over $12 million.
Sources cited: SeismoArchives
1965 Puget Sound (USA) Earthquake Archive | HistoryLink.org
Remembering Ray’s Cameras and Cameras Et Cetera
Cameras in case at Cameras Et Cetera, South Sound Center, Lacey, Washington, 1972
Once upon a time, when film was the only medium for pictures for the masses, when German cameras were pushed out in favor of Japanese cameras, there was a little camera-store chain in Puget Sound called Ray’s Cameras.
Ray’s Camera started as a small town camera store in Puyallup, Washington. Lyman K. Raymond, the store’s owner, had his store on Meridian, Puyallup’s main north-south street in Puyallup’s downtown core. By 1970 he had opened stores in the area’s three laregest malls.
Seattle, which was home of the 1962 World’s Fair with Century 21 (the future) as the theme, was home to the first regional shopping center defined as a mall (1). Ray’s Cameras stores were in the Northgate, Southcenter, and Tacoma Malls, in addition to smaller shopping centers; most notably Puyallup’s Hi Ho Shopping Center. He was enjoying a regional monopoly of the area’s largest traffic retail spaces of the time.
My girlfriend worked at Ray’s Cameras in the Hi Ho Shopping Center in Puyallup. At the end of the day when the center was closing, she had to count out the money taken in and balance against the cash register. She could do this but I started helping her with the process. She agreed that I had a better aptitude for closing out so she told Mr. Raymond about me and asked if he would be interested in hiring me which he did.
Mr. Raymond brought me into his original store in downtown Puyallup to ship inventory around to the malls. He had long lists of requests for inventory from each of the store managers that he apparantly had a hard time filling. The area managers were asking for the latest Japanese-made cameras but he wanted me to move out the older European-made equipment. It was a balancing act though I supported the managers requests as best I could with both European and Japanese-made equipment.
The European cameras were Leica, Contax, Hassleblad, Rollei; and the Japanese cameras competing with them were Pentax, Nikon, Mamiya, Yashica, and Canon. Ray’s european stock was getting old, the Japanese cameras were newer and priced more competitively. It would have been a camera collector’s dream to be where I was at this time.
Mr. Raymond assigned me back to Hi Ho. My girlfriend and I poured our efforts into this little store. It was “our” pride and joy and our livelyhood. She was still in high school and I was one year out. One night after cashing our paychecks, we covered her family’s livingroom carpet with $20 bills. Each of us living with our families still had little in the way of expenses so we were very comfortable with our incomes.
Ray’s Cameras, Hi Ho Shopping Center, Puyallup, Washington, 1971
As I was working one afternoon a gentleman with a notepad was walking around the store taking notes. I was curious and, like I would do with anyone visiting, I asked him if he was interested in anything. He responded, “I’m thinking about buying it.” I asked, “What?” He responded, “The store.” My response was, “I wish you luck!” There were signs that Mr. Raymond was losing interest in his stores plus I was not too suprised that someone would take an interest in them considering the locations in which he held leases.
Phil Swygart, the man with the notepad, was a Vice President of Wayne’s Photofinishing in Chehalis, Washington. Wayne’s was a very high-volume photofinishing plant. They served most all the camera stores, drugstores, and grocery stores that took in film for processing throughout the Pacific Northwest. One of their products was “Wayne’s Bonus Photo” which provided a regular and smaller tear-out pring provided with film processing. Wayne’s had the backing needed to purchase the entire chain of Ray’s Cameras which they did and renamed them “Cameras Et Cetera”.
Cameras Et Cetera, Southcenter Mall, Tukwila, Washington, 1973
I was installed as an assistant manager at Cameras Et Cetera at the SouthCenter Mall store, then as store manager in Lacey’s South Sound Center Mall near Olympia. My team doubled the sales from the earlier year which impressed Mr. Swygart (I then worked directly under his son Vic Swygart) and I was moved to their highest-volume store which was at Southcenter Mall.
Anyway, all of this is now history. Cameras Et Cetera was bought by Kitz Cameras, who was eventually bought by Ritz Cameras. I went on to manage the highest-volume photographic retailer in Washington, Jafco at Southcenter. Jafco was bought by Modern Merchandising which was bought by Best, then eventually dissolved.
Busy day selling at Jafco, Southcenter, Tukwila, Washington 1977 (J. R. on right)
There was little information on this past on the web so I felt that it was important to share this history. The period in this documentary covered the decade from 1970-1979.
(1) Source: Evolution of the Shopping Center
Mount St. Helens’ Blast Zone
Mount St. Helens' blast zone nearly thirty years later.
Mount St. Helens on the north face, the side of the most intense pyroclastic explosion that occurred on May 18, 1980. Nearly thirty years have past and the blast is obviously still evident, although new vegetation tenuously gaining a toehold.
On the day of the blast in 1980, I was in Spokane, over two hundred miles away. When the ash reached my location, the sky became black as night and the city street lights turned on. For many months we were plagued with a “putty” colored fine ash surrounding the entire area. It has never completely vanished. Closer to the mountain, the remaining ash is much more pronounced.
Washington – Grandeur of the North Cascades
Looking South from Sahale Peak
Sahale Mountain, one of the most popular climbs in the North Cascades, is located near Marblemount. Compared to some of it’s close neighbors, to climb Sahale is relatively simple and straight-forward. An elevation gain of 6200 feet and outstanding views of the heart of the North Cascades are sure to satisfy. Climbing Sahale is very similar to the alps in terms of weather and the quality of alpine climbing. Source: Summit Post
This was a 12 hour climb for us. Much of it was on glacier, but the most severe effort was on loose shale rock and a couple places of near-vertical rock. We chose the east approach which turned out to be more difficult than the more popular west approach. Coming back down, I asked the climber beneath me to plant my foot in a foothold because I could not see what was below the rock face I was on. I could see the valley perhaps 3,000 feet below to the east. This was a real adventure for me never having any formal rock climbing experience beforehand. There were rope-climbers around us.
Sahale Peak Climbers (me on left)
Tour of a Container Ship: North Star
 North Star |
 Loading Ramp |
 Pilot House |
Complete PhotoSet |
I was recently given a tour of a 839-foot cargo ship moored in Tacoma, Washington. This is the second-largest I had toured, the largest being the USS Missouri.
J. R. Hudson
