In The Middle of Nowhere On Your Way To Somewhere!
SERVING BOW, WA
SINCE 1935
Bow, then "Brownsville," grew up around the sawmill built by William Brown, in a location that once hosted a village that the natives called "Noo-wha-ah." They would reach the village by canoeing the various rivulets of the old salt chuck, which were later merged by the whites to facilitate water transportation, and called the Samish River and later Edison Slough.
After the railroad station closed, the timber supply declined, dikes organized the water flow, and highway and road changes removed all but a trickle of transit from Bow, the area has become a more spread-out community of farms. The Corner Pub is a friendly neighborhood bar which has been around a surprisingly long time and originally seated 10 people. It was constructed in 1928 and became a bar shortly after prohibition.
Source: Seattlebars.org
One of the highlights at the community hall is the painting of old Blanchard by Shirley Hanson on an old mill saw-blade donated by Bob Gilchrist. When we interviewed her we discovered that she has deep roots with two Blanchard pioneer families and an upper Skagit River family. Her mother was Ruth Henry Wiseman, a sister of Tillie Henry Coble. Shirley was ill when she was a toddler and while her mother taught school at Custer, Shirley lived with Tillie and George out near the highway.
Her maternal grandfather was W.K. Henry whose name pops up in more than one area of the county. A Tennessee native, he moved to Skagit County with his bride, Amanda, in the late 1890s and after a brief time in Burlington, he moved his family to Ralph's Corner, which is better known today as the location of one of the finest country watering holes, the Corner Tavern. In the early years of the last century, Henry donated part of his land along Joe Leary slough for a country school and the school stood there until the tavern opened after Repeal of Prohibition.
In 1924, Henry decided to open a Red Crown service station in Blanchard where a trading post from the early days of the village stood in disrepair. He bought a corner of Terry and Fannie Coble's farm, which bordered the Interurban line and the highway alongside that became known as Chuckanut drive. He tore down the old building and built the service station and the house behind where Shirley now lives. Shirley remembers her great-aunt Fannie Coble very well.
