Monroe about 1893

Click on the above thumbnail image for the full-size photo (237k).

For a look at Monroe in 1907, see this birdseye view.

For a look at Monroe twenty years later, see the Martin panorama.

In 1883 John F. Stretch drove the first team and wagon to Monroe from Snohomish and took up this 40-acre tract east of what is now Ferry Street along Main Street. He logged it with his Uncle Ben Stretch. The logs were hauled to the mouth of Woods Creek, which was much closer to the homestead then than today, and when the fall rains raised the river level, they were floated downriver and then formed into booms and towed across Puget sound to the Port Gamble mill. When the final survey for the Great Northern mainline placed it next to his property, Stretch platted the site, and named it Tye city in honor of George Tye, the Great Northern Railway locating engineer.

This photo looks south and slightly east across Stretch's plat, which is now the Monroe Shopping Center and before that the site of the Condensery. It was taken about point A on the this detail of the 1910 plat map of Monroe, which shows the condensery as a shaded outline nearby. The building at far right (Vanasdlen's Store) is about where the southeast corner of Main and Ferry streets is today (point 1 on the plat map and on this 1907 birdseye view photo). The buildings from left to right: Stretch Chop House at the very edge of the photo, Dolloff's Store, Sanders Hotel, railroad tracks, Mrs. Berry's saloon, and Vanasdlen's Store and Post Office, which had been moved from Park Place. Running through the middle is the Great Northern mainline with engines under steam with railroad cars. The current Main Street crossing would be roughly at the center of the photo (point 2).

--Monroe Historical Society Photo #388