Same Location ?

The Lone Fisherman

Lake Cushman

(From a Real Estate Developers Web-Site)

The “Lone Fisherman” is another favorite photo from out of the old leather suitcase. I have looked at this scene many times over the last ten years wondering just who is the subject and where was the scene?

All the old photos that were passed on to us had to have been saved and protected for a reason. Sentimental reasons, for sure, but just might an underlying reason have been that they were saved with the hope that succeeding generations might also find them of value in some way, some day. I seemed to have adopted the latter reason simply because my interest lies in attempting to document our families past based on what I am able to deduce. I cannot present a complete story only bits and pieces seen through my perspective only.

So in this light, I suggest both of these photos were taken from near the same points and along Lake Cushman, above the small community of Union, Washington on the southern end of Hood’s Canal, an arm of Puget Sound.

I also suggest that the subject person very well might be Charles Jones Sr. There is something about the facial profile that suggests the possibility. There is no real surety level here; it is only suspicions so do not take the identification all that seriously.

Dad and Uncle Tom both talked many times about their years in bridge construction all over the Northwest, and Hood’s Canal and Union remain fixed in my mind as one such vicinity. It is difficult to say just when Dad commenced this type of construction. Assuredly it was after his arrival in Washington State around 1909. Uncle Tom most likely began after his discharge from the Army around 1918-1919. Regardless, it was in the bridge construction camps that the two met and they began their long lasting friendship. One thing led to another and they became brother-in-laws through marriage.

I remain convinced however that the scene for this was on Lake Cushman and probably very near the time of the construction of the dam that forms the lake. The dam began construction in 1924 and delivered electricity to Tacoma in 1926. With the stumps showing in the photograph, it probably dates the photo to the 1925 period during the filling of the lake. The water level at the time of the dams completion would have covered all the stumps left by the logging crews that cleared the acres of land that comprise the man made lake.