I recently ran across a photo of downtown Wilkeson taken in 1909. It was printed on a postcard and shows the Miners Trading Company, the first Bank of Wilkeson and A. Saario Merchant Tailor. Virtually all buildings are wooden structures befitting the "boom town" nature of many early mining towns. The one exception here would be the bank just opened in 1908. Pretty darned opulent.
Photo courtesy Tacoma Public Library, TPL-5654, circa 1908
Last week, I did a post about Walker Cut Stone and their sandstone quarry business which was located just north of Wilkeson. What particularly caught my attention about this postcard image was the message written on it: "Coal mines made the town in 1875, sandstone quarries sustained it." Sounds as if sandstone quarrying may have been an even bigger part of Wilkeson's history than I would have thought.
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