“In summary, the DuPont Municipal Code requires a Type III Sensitive Area Ordinance (SAO) application with a public hearing and SEPA review for the project. The combined SAO application and SEPA review filing fee is $4,500, payable at time of filing. The processing time is approximately 4.5 to 5 months from submittal of a complete application to final decision.”

- Letter from Bill Kingman, Senior Planner with the City of DuPont to SCWC

This is very interesting since Glacier plans to expand the mine and drain the Vashon aquifer. This would of course have a negative impact on the Edmonds Marsh–that is if you think draining the marsh is a bad thing? If it smells like something DuPont would do and looks like something the City of DuPont would do, then it is DuPont. I find it ever more obscene that while those of us as individuals or small community groups want to restore the flow to the creek the city puts up all sorts of road blocks in order to make sure those citizens that actually care about DuPont are up a creek without a paddle. Yet golf courses can cut down trees as needed, people can put signs out regardless of laws but the important things that can never be brought back after they are destroyed goes by unnoticed.

Perhaps the City knows that Glacier will solve the beaver issue by destroying the wetland. Actually the Centex Wetland issue doesn’t really matter that much anyways since the City of Glaicer–Err. DuPont hasn’t stopped the mine yet thus there will be no more edmonds marsh.

Anger and frustration are too heavy on things like this and I dare not write another word for the City of DuPont may just send there threatening letters once again in order to try to shut up the few who actually care.

Why should you care about Edmonds Marsh?

Edmonds Marsh fills from ground water and Sequalitchew Springs. Which then historically runs down through DuPont under Center Drive and out to the Sequalitchew Delta (For Fait). Those waters also supplied food for the Sequalitchew People and the Hudson Bay Company (Ft. Nisqually). It’s been used by many people the DuPont Company ever purchased the land. It was along the site of the Historic Methodist Mission as well. The Wilkes Observatory flanks it to the South and the Inskip Observatory flanks it to the North. From saw mills, missions, trading posts, native american villages, united states explorers, the spies from England Vavasour and Warre to the many infamous names Huggins, Tolmie, Richmond, Lee, Wilkes, Heath, La Ha Let, Chloe Clark to sheep shearing dams, flume dams and the generations of kids who grew up with the Sequalitchew Creek.

If anyone wants a historic tour and has 3-4 hours, contact me I’ll be glad to take you on the tour or farewell tour depending on how the future plays out. I recently came to understand that not only does DuPont lack leadership it also lacks a company culture an administrative culture. Passion, execution and keeping their word impeccable would be a good start for the City.

About a week ago, I was taking my son back to the emergency room and as I was leaving the City of DuPont, I noticed at the intersection of Barksdale and Wilmington there were crews there clearing the land.  This corner marked so many memories for me as a child and had already been changed so much – several years ago there wasn’t this large, busy intersection that there is today.  The traffic used to be much less, and it used to look a lot different.  In fact, one of the greatest joys we had as children was to ride out bikes up to the front of town and pick blackberries on this corner, with the Iafrati’s sometimes there to oversee us.  We could walk from their property if we wanted to pick blackberries, right to that infamous corner at the front of town.

We could also walk from the Iafrati’s property through a small underground tunnel (which bypassed the road/traffic) and came out) where the Starbucks and Better Business Bureau are today.  This is where the City Hall used to be and where we would go sometimes to drop off miscellanous things for our parents.  This was  also where we colored Easter Eggs a few times as volunteers.  The underground tunnel was destroyed when the intersection was put in several years back.  The blackberry picking was the highlight though…it was a contest between all of us kids to see who could get the most and then when we got home with our buckets we’d rinse them all off and then Grandma Anna would show us how to make blackberry jam.  She’d walk us through the pectin process and getting the jars ready, even right down to letting us make the labels.  She was a real teacher from start to finish and was so patient.

What I remember most about my grandmother was her love for details and saving everything.  Whenever I’d arrive to her house the routine was the same, enter through the back door, walk down the long hallway to where you’d find her sitting in her rocking/recliner chair and then we’d talk for a few minutes.  She’d most likely be watching the news and talk with you about the record tempatures for the day.  Then she’d show you an article she’d recently cut out that fascinated her and most likely it would have been about DuPont or it would be a comic that reminded her of you.  These memories I’ll hold with me forever.  I haven’t had a Family Circus cartoon by Bil Keane cut out for me since my Grandmother’s passing in June 2001.  Now, I also will no longer be able to pick blackberries at the front of town, which is where I’ll always remember picking them. Saving history is more than just writing history, it is also about saving our landmarks.  Today its the blackberries, but what might it be tomorrow?

I am not sure if I tuned it out because I lived here and proclaimed I knew it all already…or why I didn’t pay better attention that day because now I wish I had. I do know the water was a lot higher in the Creek 20 years ago. I know things can change, but instead it feels as though all the trees and nature have diminished, all the water has dried from the creek bed and now rather than a history having aged; it feels as if it has disappeared. Photos can tell a story, and combined with a great storyteller you can take readers on a journey. But looking back now, the value to stand in front of the Sequalitchew Creek and have the history explained to you then – what an experience. We should continue to do that now with our children and visitors to the city – the city’s history is worth saving.
Information’s pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience. ~Clarence Day, The Crow’s Nest

The front of town used to look a lot different

The front of town was always more exciting than our end of town. We liked going up to the store because if we were lucky we might be able to get some kind of snack or drink which might break up the day. We always used to save up our change too because they had a gumball machine and we’d go in and buy as many gumballs as we could and see who could blow the biggest bubble.

As kids, my brother and I used to pick up our mail at the post office on our bikes and then on some occasions we would have to go up to the city hall. To do this, we used the tunnel several times that passed under the road starting closest to the Iafrati’s property by the blackberry bushes. One of the things we always looked forward to was picking blackberries at the front of town next to where this tunnel was. We could get buckets of fresh blackberries just in an hour – there were so many on the bushes up at the front of town.

School buses and children in front of DuPont School. Click Photo for details.

My grandma Anna Kelley on Louviers in 1961.

Whenever I think about the Old Town Village of DuPont today, I am reminded of so many things, but especially of my childhood that I shared with the population when it was only 601. I can visualize Barksdale Street in spring lined with the fully blossomed cherry trees and the white antique lamp posts adorned with their hanging baskets of flowing ivy. I think of so many things – time spent frequenting the great outdoors (trails and woods), taking on side jobs to help out the town folk (painting, pulling weeds, mowing lawns, babysitting) and having the chance to earn some money and walking to the Post Office to pick up the mail (only the Post Office was where the old Police station was and now the Fire department uses and at the time we all had keys and an actual mail box). Summers consisted of barbeques at the Park behind the Church and Christmas always included an Advent Ceremony at the Church typically rehearsed and led by the infamous Paula Andre.

An appreciation of DuPont’s history is sure to enrich one’s life. I grew up here and had frequented the museum and found the lemon drops they used to keep hidden in one of the displays. We used to spend hours on the train as we played games of train robbers. I’ve been to the area where the Wading Pool was built in the early 20’s, but wouldn’t have known what it was at the time, and even played in the bunkers pre-Powderworks clean up.

Living here now, I have a different appreciation for the town and the history ingrained in the land and soil, specifically the Mission site, Sequalitchew creek, Old Town and various other historical landmarks. Unfortunately, so much of the land has already been cleared and so much of the other land is so overgrown, sometimes it might feel like a lost cause. I am quickly reminded though that a natural disaster could just as easily ruin our land – that is why I feel it is important for us all to be that changing voice in our community.

My husband, Patrick has always been passionate about the things he does. He has been actively involved in the city while he served as a Reserve Police Officer, even when he lived outside the city limits from 2002-2006. When we moved back to town in 2006, he became more and more interested in the details surrounding the Powderworks Plant and Old Town and especially the land where both the first and second Nisqually Mission Sites are marked. Our research efforts are purely self-led, based solely on instinct and interest we feel this is our best effort and our biggest contribution to save the history.

Here is my lineage to DuPont:

Quick Lineage

Apparently people has no respect for protected areas deep with history. Here’s a sad scene one morning when I walked from the mouth of the creek to the shipwreck. As of 9AM the fire was still buring.  I took these on a brisk July morning.

I did attempt to notify at the time:

• Nisqually Wildlife Reserve
• Nisqually Delta Association
• Forest Service
• Fish & Game

Forest Service and Fish and Game responded right away. Sadly they informed me they have no jurisdiction of that area. The two organizations who I thought would have cared never responded either.