THEN & NOW: Kirkland's '29 Fire Truck

This week’s Then and Now feature is not so much about a place, or about people per se. It’s about one very cool old fire truck, which came to Kirkland around 1929 and is still here today in all of its shiny red glory, 82 years later.

The Kirkland Fire Department’s original motorized pumper is a 1929 American LaFrance truck, shown in this classic photo from the archives of the Kirkland Heritage Society.

A couple weeks ago while visiting the society offices in on Market Street, the photo caught my eye. I’m a sucker for photos of vintage vehicles, especially work vehicles, and especially when the people who used them are shown as well. Little did I know at the time that this very truck remains in Kirkland, completely restored -- and furthermore, that I had just recently taken a photo of it for a photo gallery on Kirkland’s annual .

The usually quite knowledgeable Kirkland historian and president of the heritage society, Loita Hawkinson, didn’t know where the old volunteer fire station shown had been, or who all the men were. But she told me to call longtime Kirkland resident Arnold Berkey, because one of the firemen -- they were all “firemen” back in those days -- was his father, Floyd Berkey.

Arnie, a former Kirkland Park Board member who worked hard to help acquire some of city's cherished waterfront parks, proved a font of information. His father Floyd is the tall one in the middle of the back row. And the old fire station, such as it was, had been in the garage of a gas station on Kirkland Avenue.

“It wasn’t really a fire station,” he said. “They used a garage in a gas station. It was quite a large gas station.”  

The site today hosts a bank.

All of the men shown here were volunteer firemen, except for possibly one who served as chief, since Kirkland Fire Department records show the first paid fireman in Kirkland was a chief hired in 1928.

Despite their volunteer status, however, these guys were real firefighters.

“They had a siren down in Kirkland,” Arnie recalls. “The minute they heard it, they’d drop everything and run up to the truck.”

Back then, of course, most of the structures in town were built of wood, and most of them had wood-burning stoves. Like today but perhaps even more, the consequences of a fire could be disastrous for a community. Maybe some of those firemen recalled watching across Lake Washington as smoke rose during the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. Kirkland’s first fire brigade formed in 1890.

Floyd Berkey, Arnie says, was dead serious about his role as a volunteer. “He was really gung ho. He was a fireman’s fireman.”

But back to the truck. Arnie knows well the photo, identifying the rig as a LaFrance and pointing out that he believes Kirkland acquired it new in 1929.

“That was a big deal at that time,” he said. “Kirkland was just a real small town. My folks came in 1919 and the population was less than 1,000, something like that.”

Then Arnie told me that the beautiful old pumper truck was still in town, kept at the Houghton Fire Station and brought out every year for the big parade on the Fourth.

Dumbfounded, after our conversation I looked through the 600-some photos I had taken of the parade.

Sure enough, there it was, carrying the Kirkland City Council during the parade -- and the only way that truck could have looked any finer would have been if she were pumping streams from her hoses. Take a look at it in our “Now” photo -- the truck is in mint condition.

According to the KFD, some time ago Kirkland firefighters restored the truck as a tribute to their heritage -- what a rich legacy!

One little mystery remains with this old black and white photo. On the back of it is written “Kirkland Fire Dept. pre 1929.” If that pump truck is indeed a ’29 American LaFrance as the sign on it says and as KFD records show, then the photo could not have been taken before 1929.

For the sake of accuracy it would be good to know exactly when the photo was was taken. But what is vastly more important is that this sweet red chariot remains here in town, a most tangible, rolling manifestation of Kirkland’s rich history.