Stories by Martin Middlewood

Columbian freelance contributor

Taken before 1908, this photograph shows early Vancouver policemen — Winfield Gasaway, Henry Burgy and John Secrist — wearing their seven-pointed badges and caps with curved olive branches. Burgy and Secrist would go on to serve as Vancouver police chiefs.

Clark County history: Law enforcement in Vancouver started with a single marshal

July 20, 2024, 6:08am Clark County Life

There seems to be a gap between Vancouver’s 1857 incorporation and any official call for law enforcement. Policing wasn’t high on the city council’s priority list until after 1880, when the census counted 1,722 inhabitants in town. Read story

Activist Francis Willard believed in suffrage first and temperance. She’s seen here in a photograph from her book, “A Wheel within a Wheel,” learning to ride a bicycle. Safety bicycles were new; many women showed independence by riding them and learning as Willard did here.

Clark County history: Women’s Christian Temperance Union

July 13, 2024, 6:10am Clark County Life

The second Women’s Christian Temperance Union president shifted the organization’s focus from temperance to suffrage. When Francis Willard took office in 1879, she launched a “do everything” policy. She reasoned, “meet argument with argument, misjudgment with patience, denunciation with kindness, and all our difficulties and dangers with prayer.” She first… Read story

Local pilot and inventor Marvin Joy stands next to his experimental wingless plane that he called the “pumpkin seed.” The plane was flown twice at Pearson Field, in perhaps the first test of a lifting body aircraft.

Clark County History: Local inventor’s ‘flying flapjack’ was an aircraft ahead of its time

July 6, 2024, 6:05am Clark County Life

A decade before Roswell’s stories of flying saucers and little green men in New Mexico captured the mind of the nation, Pearson Field saw its own unidentified flying object. Marvin Joy, a bridge tender on the railroad crossing the Columbia River Slough, appeared at the Vancouver airfield with a strange… Read story

William Shoenig stands behind the bar at the Lehthle Saloon at 502 Main St. in Vancouver in this undated photo. Before Prohibition, local groups fiercely debated the propriety of saloons, and how to regulate and tax them.

Clark County history: Liquor licenses come to Clark County

June 29, 2024, 6:09am Clark County Life

The first house built on Vancouver’s Main Street was a saloon. On July 4, 1854, Pete Fergusson opened it as a tenpins bowling alley with liquor sales. Vancouver wasn’t incorporated until 1857, so getting a liquor license wasn’t a problem for him. From the start, Clark County residents split into… Read story

This “revival tabernacle” used in Yakima County possibly resembled the one constructed in 1909 in Vancouver for a similar “spiritual awakening” religious event.

Clark County history: “Tabernacle Day”

June 22, 2024, 6:08am Clark County Life

Vancouver unofficially declared Jan. 11, 1909, “Tabernacle Day” as several local churches erected a space large enough to house the attendees expected for the “Cyclone” Dan Shannon revival. The Oregon evangelist wasn’t scheduled to speak until April, but the 10th Street building held 1,500 people when the county’s population was… Read story

Clark County History: Ku Klux Klan rally at the Clark County Fairgrounds breaks records

In August 1924, Kolumbia Klavern No. 1 flew an illuminated cross over the Clark County Fairgrounds at Bagley Downs. This photo, taken at an unknown location in 1922, shows two Klu Klux Klansmen climbing into a plane as they prepared to drop propaganda leaflets.

Thousands attended the Ku Klux Klan rally at the Clark County Fairgrounds on Saturday, Aug. 23, 1924, according to The Columbian, making it the most attended event ever held in Southwest Washington, outstripping the total of every revival and Chautauqua held locally. Vancouver’s Kolumbia Klavern No. 1 had planned to… Read story

Clark County History: Edith Foltz, who often flew out of Pearson Field, won the 1930 dead stick landing contest at the Municipal Field dedication

Sitting on a biplane, Edith Foltz sports the Foltz-Up outfit she designed to make it easy for women pilots to go from the cockpit to dinner. Her experience racing in the 1929 Women’s Air Derby inspired her versatile design because on stopovers, the pilots had to go immediately to dine with local officials. Portland department store Meier and Frank sold her dress in the 1930s.

When America entered World War II, male pilots were at a premium here and abroad. Jacqueline Cochran, an able pilot, lobbied Army Air Corps Gen. “Hap” Arnold and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt to recruit women pilots for the British Air Transport Auxiliary. Among those Cochran recruited was Edith Foltz, who… Read story

Clark County history: Vancouver sits atop conflicting claims

The Witness Tree, seen in this undated photo, was a legal point for surveys and property disputes for decades. In 1909, it fell as the Columbia River’s north bank eroded.

The land the city of Vancouver now rests on has a contentious past. Supposedly, its first owner was Ermatinger, a Hudson’s Bay Company employee who traveled to the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) and never returned. Then came Job McNamee, who grabbed the land in the absence of the original owner.… Read story

Clark County history: Dorothy Hester, pilot

Dorothy Hester examines a silver bracelet she received in November 1930 for her stunt flying accomplishments. She held the world’s record for 69 outside loops — 62 deemed perfect circles — for 58 years until it was broken in 1989.

As a child, Dorothy Hester chased a hot-air balloon, hoping for a flight. The balloon eluded her, but flying didn’t. When the blue-eyed blonde was barely out of her teens, she became one of the nation’s best stunt pilots and held the women’s record for outside loops for nearly 60… Read story

Clark County History: Minnie Hill captained steamers on the Columbia and Willamette rivers

Born in Albany, Ore., in 1863, Minnie Mossman Hill was only about 19 years old when she was licensed to pilot a steamship after learning the trade from her husband, Charles. She was the first female west of the Mississippi River to captain a steamship.

When Minnie Mossman married Charles Hill in 1883, she signed on as a life mate and as first mate on his steamer. Minnie Mossman Hill soon became the first licensed woman steamship operator in the West and the second in the nation. Read story