1934, West Parcel: Einar Erickson

In the 1934 map shown in the last post, the owner of the West Parcel is an E. Erickson. This was Einar Erickson. It is currently unknown when Einar first acquired the property.

Born in Bellingham in 1907, Einar married Muriel Trickey in 1934, and both worked for a collections agency at the time of the 1940 census of Crescent Township (indicating that the Ericksons had their permanent residence at Lake Samish at that time). Einar enlisted as an infantryman in the Second World War in April 1944. He was medically discharged that October.

Einar and Muriel had two children: Gregory, born in 1947, and Thomas, born in 1950. Muriel died in 1952. According to the Whatcom Assessor report for the West Parcel of the Point, Einar sold the property at Lake Samish in 1951.

Platting of Shallow Shores Road

The next clues about the Point's history come from a 1934 map of Crescent Township (the original name for the Whatcom County voting precinct surrounding Lake Samish; see page 21 of the Harris Journal for a brief explanation of the origins of the name).

A closeup of the map shows an E. Erickson as the owner of the West Parcel, and that the East Parcel is now platted along a road named Shallow Shores.

Source: Historic MapWorks

We don't yet know when or by whom Shallow Shores Road was platted, but it was sometime between 1916 and 1929. In an oral history about the Lake Samish community of 1929, a local resident named Davis said: "No one lived between Zugelders + Shallow Shores Road,  On Shallow Shores Road -- going north again from Nulle Road, the first house was Bill Sarland’s. He had the place where Morris is now. The present house was not there then. It was built about 1934 or 35, I think, could have been built in 36. I’m not real sure when any other permanent residents moved on to Shallow Shores, but I know that in 31 the McCullough’s were there + Roy Powells, also Al Forslof + another couple I don’t know."

We should be able to obtain road and original platting records that indicate when and by whom Shallow Shores Road was created.

The Point 1916: George W. Loggie

The next map we have of Lake Samish is dated 1916, and in it we can see that the Point is still divided in two distinct parcels. The East Parcel, initially designated school land, is now owned by Lake Whatcom Realty, and the West Parcel is owned by G.W. Loggie.

Source: Whatcom Museum

According to the biography of George W. Loggie in History of Whatcom County, Vol. II by Lottie Roeder Roth, Loggie was one of the best known lumbermen in the northwest.

George W. Loggie (sourced from History of Bellingham and Whatcom County, Washington)

Western Washington University maintains the George W. Loggie Papers, and these papers may provide some hints as to Loggie's interest in or use of his property at Lake Samish. Perhaps he had intentions of establishing a mill there. There was certainly other milling activity at the lake at that time, including Manley and Sons Shingle Mill and Bloedel-Donovan Lumber Mills, both of which operated mainly on the east side of the lake.

The East Parcel: School Land

In the Galen Biery edition of the Harris Journal is a map of the original homesteaders at Lake Samish. (The Lake Samish Association's history web page includes a scanned copy of the Harris Journal, though without the map.) The Point is within parcels 9 and 10:

As described in the last post, Parcel 10 (the West Parcel) was first homesteaded by Thomas McTighe (though the year given on the Harris map, 1893, conflicts with the year of 1899 shown on the government homestead record). Parcel 9 (the East Parcel), however, was not homesteaded by an individual, but rather was designated as school land.

The Harris Journal states that a school was established at Lake Samish during that period, but not within Parcel 9. Instead, the first school at Lake Samish seems to have been established on Sam Humphries' land in Parcel 5, and the Lake Samish Association's history page corroborates this. Why the school was built outside the designated school land is a curiosity yet to be resolved.

First Homesteader: Thomas McTighe

The property now known as "the Point" at 394 Shallow Shores Road, Lake Samish, was originally divided in two: the West Parcel (in section 35 of Township 37, Range 3E) and the  East Parcel (lots 12 through 15 in section 36 of the same township and range). Thomas McTighe acquired the West Parcel in approximately 1899 through the Homestead Act.

McTighe, originally from Louisiana, was a veteran of the American Civil War (1861-65), having enlisted as a Confederate soldier at the age of 13, according to his gravestone in the Bayview Cemetery in Bellingham. The 1900 census listed him as a farmer and widower. 

When he died in 1909 at the age of 63, McTighe’s obituary said he had been a Whatcom County resident for a number of years, “living on his ranch near Lake Samish.”