Roslyn's rich history gets new exposure

ROSLYN -- This place has risen from the economic ashes so many times that you might be tempted to call it Phoenix.

Don't.

Especially as a visitor to a local saloon late on a Saturday night.

But, like the phoenix bird of Greek mythology, Roslyn has risen from its ashes repeatedly since its incorporation 120 years ago.

Established by the Northern Pacific Railway's mining division in 1883, it had become a certified city by 1886, and by 1910 sustained a population of more than 4,000. Most were immigrant miners from Eastern Europe who dug and died for coal.

Their points of origin cluster most heavily in Eastern Europe. This jumble of ethnicity would grow more complex in 1888 with the arrival -- under armed guard -- of strikebreakers from Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky. There were 50 and they were black.

Some of their descendants still call Roslyn home, and in the 1976 one of their own, William Craven, became the state's first black mayor.

It's that long history as one of the state's oldest, most ethnically diverse communities that visitors can sink their teeth into, whether meandering the town's sunlit sidewalks, poking through its museum or pondering the clutter of headstones in the hills west of town. That's where every ethnic group and fraternal organization -- some 28 in all, it is said -- has a plot of their own.

GORDY HOLT / P-I

Buttresses were added to Roslyn's Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church to save it from toppling.

"There are more dead ones up here than are alive in the whole town," Jim Barich joked.

Maintaining order in all that clutter is among the responsibilities of this Roslyn native, a retired Edmonds middle-school principal who returned to his roots and is a member of the Roslyn Cemetery Commission.

Barich, 75, is No. 12 in a Croatian family of 15 children. His parents, Vance and Paulina, are buried in one of the cemetery's highest plots, while four of his brothers lie below in a place set aside for World War II veterans. The brothers' stories, together with the war stories of two more brothers and an Army nurse sister -- seven in all, the most from a single family in the service at the time -- were told in a May 1, 1945, Seattle P-I story headlined "The Fighting Bariches."

But as that old baseball guy might put it, Roslyn is still one of those places you have to go to to get there. The traffic on Interstate 90 zips past with alacrity, and the highway department indicates the town's existence with the same green sign that has marked Exit 80 for years: "Roslyn-Salmon la Sac."

To get there you have to hit the brakes squarely, then head north up Bullfrog Road, passing through two roundabouts along the way. You will make those turns in about 90 minutes after leaving Seattle, and if you don't push it, you may get your V8 to do it for about $30 round trip at $3 a gallon.

GORDY HOLT / P-I

The Brick Tavern, Roslyn's landmark watering hole, is a place for brews and pub grub. Don't expect valet parking.

If you can get there for the sunrise, stop for breakfast at John and Rene Sommerville's Roslyn Bakery & Cooking Co., 305 N. First St., where menu prices range from $2.95 for an English muffin melt, to $8.95 for a three-egg Tortilla Omelet Wrap. It's the reward the Sommervilles deserve for starting their workdays at 1 a.m., as they have since 2002.

If you linger a while you may hear John Sommerville mutter, "Wanna buy a bakery?"

When coal gave out in 1963, Roslyn spent the next decade and a half scratching to survive. Then, one bright day in 1978, Stanley Kramer, the Hollywood director, came to town. He had in mind "The Runner Stumbles," the story of a priest (Dick Van Dyke) who falls in love with a nun (Kathleen Quinlan) and goes to trial for her murder.

Their co-star would be Roslyn's Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church, a picturesque but teetering wood-framed edifice that stands high on a hill to the east, where it was built by mostly Croatian miners 119 years ago.

Retired Roslyn fire chief Jim Ash, who married a Croat, still talks about the movie fire that could have, but didn't, engulf his church.

As Ash recalled recently, Roslyn's firefighters -- engines and sirens screaming -- roared up the hill on queue to quench the planned blaze that erupted in an old house behind the church. But the filmmakers' propane and diesel mix got out of hand, causing panic on the set.

GORDY HOLT / P-I

Not quite two miles north of Roslyn on state Route 903, the Ronald General Store offers one-stop-shopping for locals and travelers alike.

Those first screams you hear in the movie, Ash said, are from the actors as scripted. The other screams aren't.

Visitors with a feel for preserving old buildings will appreciate what has happened to the leaning structure in recent years. Afflicted with a dangerous list to the south, the building had been restrained for a decade by guy wires strung to massive lumps of concrete mixed and poured by church members.

After funds were raised two years ago, a Bellevue contractor winched the structure upright, then added a series of buttresses designed by Bainbridge Island architect Ron Lacey Jr., who said he borrowed the idea from the architecture of small, stone churches in England.

More than a decade and a half earlier, Roslyn's old church was still leaning when the town accepted the role of "Cicely, Alaska" in the TV series "Northern Exposure" (1990-95). The series would become the town's next great wave of good fortune, and it continues to lap at the edges of certain local cash registers.

For example, east a block from the museum and across Pennsylvania Avenue, Marianne (Milos) Ojurovich (her father was a boss at mine No. 9) is making do behind a little storefront called Cicely's Gift Shop.

She does not correct customers who call her "Cicely."

GORDY HOLT / P-I

Jim Barich, a retired Edmonds principal, tends the grave of a brother, Carl, one of his four brothers buried in Roslyn's cemetary as WWII veterans.

In the TV series, Marianne's storefront was the office of Dr. Joel Fleischman, upon whose early medical career the series hung. The paint of his office sign is still visible, low on the storefront window, and the shelves and counters inside are a jumble of "NX" kitsch. It ranges from fan photos to finger-size ceramic moose and the scruffy head of a real one that hangs above Marianne's desk.

She says it isn't Morty, the late Washington State University moose seen ambling past the Roslyn Cafe in the series' opening title scene. But it was a series prop, she said, acquired recently at auction.

Cicely's impact on Roslyn's future, however, is waning as memory of the series skids toward "Gunsmoke" and Art Linkletter.

Just in time, though, comes that phoenix again, and it is no myth.

As Roslyn was coming up short on its claim to a spot on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, a resource with a potential some say may be greater than coal was being assessed for a 6,000-acre stretch of Plum Creek timberland to the south and west of town.

The study produced "Suncadia."

Although the name suggests a sunlit hideaway of double-wides for the unaffordably retired, this Suncadia is a multimillion-dollar, four-season resort for high-end permanent living and recreation, principally golf at $95 a round.

The project initially made headlines as MountainStar. For reasons yet to be understood in town, developers Jeld-Wen (a windows-and-doors company from Klamath Falls, Ore.) and Los Angeles-based Lowe Enterprises changed it to Suncadia two years ago.

The change still saddens Roslyn liquor-store owner Vicki Mathes, who was quick to say she appreciates the new business generated by the big development, but ...

"I still prefer MountainStar," she said. "It describes what it's like up here. It's more cheerful."

Already completed are two of three golf courses -- one public, one private, a practice range and the Prospector Inn.

The third golf course also will be public but has been designed to facilitate families and will offer tee boxes for children.

As the weather warms, visitors may wish to head two miles north on state Route 903 to Ronald for ice cream at the Ronald General Store, or continue another few miles to the Starlite Resort for lunch (the French dip special is $6.95).

As Route 903 morphs into Salmon la Sac Road farther on, a profusion of trailheads lie just off the pavement. The Salmon la Sac Campground (French for "salmon in a bag") is where a century ago 1,000 gold prospectors tore up the place and French investors eyed the prospects of a rail line and built a log depot.

They dropped the project when World War I erupted, but the log structure survives. It has been used since as headquarters for the Cle Elum Ranger District and as a Forest Service guard station.

Upcoming events

* May 27 -- Roslyn Riders Poke Ride, state Route 903 playfield

* July 1 -- Pioneer Days Parade, 10 a.m., Cle Elum, and Heritage Festival, Ronald

* July 2 -- Runner Stumbles Run, Suncadia; information: Paul Schmitt, 509-674-5331

* Aug. 19 -- Black Pioneer Picnic, Roslyn City Park

* Aug. 20 -- Run to Roslyn; information: Jerry Childs, 509-674-5448

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