At the Deer Harbor Community Club, Sue Foulk explains Deer Harbor history to tourists from the Senior Center
Two vans full of nearly 20 Seniors traveled to the hinterlands of Deer Harbor on Thursday, Sept. 24, to hear about area history and see the old school at Deer Harbor (now the Community Club), the Post Office building, (recently purchased by the Deer Harbor Community and leased to the U.S. Postal Service for 10 years), Deer Harbor Marina, Four Winds/Westward Ho Camp, the Bullock Nursery and the “Gnome House.”
Dick Thompson and Irene O’Neill drove and guided the outing, provided by the Orcas Senior Center. O’Neill informed her group that Deer Harbor was so named because it was where Hudson Bay Company hunters obtained the meat supply for their staff.
At the Deer Harbor Community Center, Sue Foulk spoke to the group about the building’s history, as a two-room school house until 1925, and then as the Ladies’ Aid and Literary Society and the Deer Harbor Community Center.
Foulk credited Jen Volmer and Dave Richardson for consolidating the history displays, and Irene O’Neill added that Foulk herself spent five years coordinating the many maps, photographs, and articles that line the Center’s walls.
Abby Rueb guided the group through the craft areas and dance pavilion of Four Winds camp, originally begun as a girls’ camp and then expanded to include boys.
The camp, which now takes on about 160 campers per month during the summer months, cost $4,000 per session. Scholarships are available, and counselor-in-training programs. One of the camp’s unique features is that uniforms are worn — polo shirts and shorts for boys and middy blouses and bloomers for girls.
The Gnome House
At the Gnome House, on property owned by Bob and Meg Connell, the tourists explored a quaint home fit for fairies, with arched doorways, sleigh beds, and unique woodwork and masonry indoors and out. The Gnome House is rented out weekly by the Connells.
The Senior Center plans future trips, both on Orcas and off-island. For information, contact the Senior Center at 376-2677.
