When my husband, George Stever, was about 18 years old, he came to Holly for an outing – also took a trip into the Olympic Mountains. While here he found this property for sale and as George had fallen in love with the place, he went back home and told his folks about it – so looked into it and bought the place and moved here in 1907. Mr. Stever (Ira) and George got jobs in logging camps and also commercial fishing. When Frank was a little older, he also followed this line if work. Of course there was not much else to work here at that time. Everyone had their own orchards and gardens – raised their own chickens for eggs and raised their pigs for meat and had their milk cows and horses for plowing.
The only transportation was a stern wheeler that came up the canal everyday with passengers and freight and stopped at all the little settlements on both sides of the canal. My uncle Fred Wyatt had a store and post office at that time and a few years later had a dock built so the boat could land at the
dock. Before that someone would meet the boat in a large rowboat and bring the freight and passengers ashore. My husband George Stever was a passenger on the boat – the old “State of Washington” one winter when the canal froze over up at Potlatch and the boat got froze in the ice.
The boat coming every day was quite an event. The women would get their housework done and get all dressed up and go the store in the afternoon to wait for the boat to arrive. They would wait and visit, then buy their groceries and get the mail and go home to get their husband’s supper. The little one room school house was not far from the store and if the boat had not come when school was out, the children would go to the store knowing their mothers would be there. If they weren’t, they would go on home.
At that time people knew each other up and down the canal. If a community had a picnic or a dance, everyone would gather on a fish boat and go across or up or down the canal wherever the party took place. If it was dance, they would get some neighborhood group to play. My husband learned to play the saxophone and he and Uncle Fred and two of his children formed a little band and played in many places.
We had a wonderful school teacher at that time who taught for about 12 years at Holly. She was very talented putting on plays and taking it to other communities charging admittance to raise money for our school buying a piano and bookcase, books and many other things. This teacher’s name was Alma Webster and she was loved by everyone. She also could play several instruments and gave piano and violin lessons to many of her pupils or anyone who wanted to take them.