The park board approved concept
plans for a playground at Schel Chelb Park last week. It also
held a public hearing for a project to replace the dock at Hidden
Cove Park and make small improvements to the
uplands. Comments can be sent to Perry Barrett –
perry@biparks.org – through May 28.
The public dock on Port Madison is getting a little long in the
tooth, to put it lightly. Popular with kayakers, dog walkers and
bored teens, the dock has become rickety and rotted in places. The
float also grounds out regularly at low tide, a no-no in the eyes
of state permitting agencies.
Here’s a rough synopsis of the two options the district is
considering: Continue reading →
While digging into the history of Bainbridge distilleries for a
recent story, I found a good amount of information
about floating whiskey bars, desperately thirsty loggers and the
reigning island whiskey king – William “Bob” Impett – a seaman,
logger, druggist, miner and co-owner of the infamous Whiskey Forty,
a backwoods still and saloon serving island mill workers in the
late 1800s.
As is always the case when they let me run free in the
Bainbridge Historical Museum’s library, I gathered way more
information than I could put in my story. Fortunately, I have this
blog to fill you in on all the booze-soaked history.
The company town of Port Madison (founded late 1850s) didn’t
allow hard alcohol on its property, which included much of the
north end of the island. Owner and town founder George Anson Meigs
was an adamant teetotaler, allowing only beer at the town’s
hotel.
William H. Seward, President Lincoln’s secretary of state, was
impressed with Meigs’ efforts to keep Port Madison dry.
“Here is the modern sawmill of Puget Sound,” Seward wrote during
a visit. “All the pleasant manifestations of family life were
noticeable and not a drop of liquor was sold.”
Seward apparently didn’t venture near the town’s edges. That’s
where a number of “whiskey farms” were known to operate – just
beyond Meigs’ control, but close enough that workers could hike in
for an after-work shot or two (or six).
Some whiskey shacks were best reached on water using whatever
floating vessel could be had. One Bainbridge pioneer recounted
seeing two Port Madison lumberjacks paddling on a log to a liquor
establishment on a nearby point. Balanced between them was a hefty
jug awaiting a refill.
Whiskey sellers also took to the seas to help workers get their
fix. Floating bars – or “marine whiskey peddlers,” as Meigs called
them – were frequent visitors to Port Madison.
“A floating whiskey battery and dance house is laying anchor
around Puget Sound and the commanding pimp is to lay siege to all
the different ports on the Sound, Port Madison not excepted,”
reported a Seattle paper in 1866.
Meigs went after one floating saloon – Gin Palace Polly – in
particular, successfully pinning several charges on its owner, Ben
Sprague.
In the book “Son of the Profits,” author William Speidel wrote
that Gin Palace Polly was “popular with the men who took the day
off whenever Sprague’s jolly crew put in an appearance. It was less
than enthusiastically received by the operators of the camps.”
Of all Port Madison’s whiskey purveyors, Impett’s Whiskey Forty
received the most ink in history books.
“If you wanted to drink, that was the place,” island
historian Jerry Elfendahl told me.
Sometimes described as a two-building establishment, the Forty
was built teasingly close to Meigs’ property on 40 acres near the
northwest intersection of present-day Sunrise Drive and Torvanger
Road. While Meigs was successful in fining or shutting down other
liquor establishments built or floated near his town, the Forty
seems to have thrived for quite a while. Its success probably owes
a lot to Impett, who appears to have been a tenacious, resourceful
and downright mean guy – a match, perhaps, to Meigs, who museum
director Hank Helm told me was a “scoundrel” in his own right.
The city was this week pulled into a longstanding property
dispute involving Mayor Darlene Kordonowy and two of her Port
Madison Bay neighbors.
Last year, Kenneth and Jette Hammer filed a lawsuit in the
Kitsap County Superior Court against Kordonowy, her husband James
Abbott and the neighboring Knapp family seeking damages related to
the placement of docks and a disputed property line.
The Hammers, who live to the west of the Knapps on Sivertson
Road, on Monday amended the lawsuit to include the city.
The Hammers charge that the city violated its rules in allowing
the Knapps to build a dock on their property. City shoreline
regulations prohibit two docks on the same lot and mandate that no
dock can be built within 10 feet of an adjacent property. According
to the Hammers, a dock on the Kordonowy lot straddles the Knapps’
east property line, precluding the construction of a new dock on
either property. The Hammers contend that the Knapps’ new dock
crowds their dock, making vessel navigation difficult.
Health authorities have closed Port Madison Bay on Bainbridge
and Miller Bay in North Kitsap to shellfish harvesting because of
red tide.
High levels of paralytic shellfish poison were found in mussels
taken Monday from Miller Bay near Suquamish.
State and county health officials responded by closing the
Kitsap Peninsula shoreline from Agate Passage to Jefferson Point.
On Bainbridge Island, the closure goes from Agate Passage to Point
Monroe. The closure is for all species of shellfish.
