Then & Now: Lee Family, Rose Hill, 1914

ONE LOOK at the latest issue of the ’s monthly journal and I knew this photo had to be the next Then & Now feature in Kirkland Patch.

It’s a classic picture no doubt, of a big old cedar stump, springboard notches and all, with an entire family atop it, on Rose Hill in 1914 almost 100 years ago.

The photo resonates with me in several ways. First, the stump is an artifact of early logging in the Kirkland area and a relic of the huge old-growth timber that once covered this entire area, probably toppled in the 1890s.

And those “springboard notches?” They are the cuts you can see just above the swell of the trunk. In the old days loggers would chop these notches with an axe, and then insert a board with a steel sleeve on the end right into the tree.

Notches would be cut and springboards inserted on either side of the tree to provide a perch for two loggers. They would then stand on the boards while cutting the tree with a long, double-handled crosscut saw. They did this because the swell at the butt of a tree could not be milled, and thus was not merchantable.

They called the two-man crosscut saws “misery whips,” because not a lot of joy could be gained by cutting down a monster tree by hand. And this tree, quite obviously a western red cedar, appears to have been at least five feet though.

The tanins and resins in red cedar, which the first people here called the tree of life and used extensively for everything from house planks to canoes, act as a preservative and the wood resists decomposition for decades. To this day you’ll find huge cedar stumps with springboard notches, here in the remaining woods of Kirkland and in forests throughout Western Washington.

But enough of the logging history. The people here too are important, one of Kirkland’s most enduring families. Janeen Ryseff is today the heritage society’s membership chairwoman, and that’s her granddad standing on the stump, Lewis Lee. Her mother is the baby in the lap of the woman on the right, her grandmother.

In the latest issue of the society newsletter, The Blackberry Preserves, is a story written by Janeen’s mother, the late Dorothea Lee (1912-2004). It’s a wonderful peek into the past of Rose Hill and the lives of those who settled it.

“We lived on Rose Hill and at that time,” she wrote, “it was beautiful, covered with a lot of trees. We, along with our friends, would go out into the woods and pick flowers like Johnny Jump Ups (little yellow flowers like violets) and Easter Lillies (trilliums) and many more.”

Those of us who grew up on Rose Hill in the 1940s, '50s or '60s well remember those forests. As kids my brother and I would spend hours roaming the woods, by then mostly mature second-growth, and scattered with big cedar stumps like the one in the photo.

Janeen says the location of this photo is now under the asphalt of mega-busy Interstate 405, just west of the big parking lot at Costco. At that time nearby were the still standing ruins of Peter Kirk’s steel mill, which of course never sold a single ingot.

The Lee family arrived and settled on Rose Hill in 1911, a century ago. Lewis Lee was a bugler in the Spanish American War in 1898, and later would call his kids home with the instrument. My mom used the same technique, only with a whistle.

If you’re curious at all about Kirkland’s past, you really should check out and join the heritage society. There are varying levels of membership; for an individual it is $25 a year. See a wealth of information at www.kirklandheritage.org.

Anyway, Janeen, thanks for the memories!