THEN & NOW: Oldest Kirkland Photo?

THIS FADED old photo might not be the first photograph taken in Kirkland, but it is the one president Loita Hawkinson came up with when I asked to see the oldest one in the group’s archives.

Taken sometime between 1887 and 1889, it is a compelling image indeed, because as you can see from the tangled mess of downed trees and vegetation, it hints at the wilderness Kirkland once was.

It’s even more interesting when you became aware of the hardship the woman and her older child here, on the left, had survived not so long before -- the 1885 diphtheria epidemic, which killed her first three children.

Eliza Crane Clarke and her husband Martin left Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1877 and traveled west in search of a homestead to San Francisco, then took a sailing ship to Seattle. After three years of making a claim on land near Green Lake, they sold out in search of better soil, and rowed across the lake to Kirkland.

They took up a 160-acre claim in the area east of today’s , now the Highlands Neighborhood, but then deep, dark, damp wilderness forest.

According to the book Our Foundering Fathers by the late Arline Ely of Kirkland, Martin worked the land while Eliza and their three kids remained in Seattle. Martin built a one-room cabin somewhere in this forest of trees so large the sun seldom shined.

It’s not known exactly where the cabin was on the claim -- 160 acres is a pretty good chunk of land. The “Now” photo here is of the entrance to , undoubtedly not the spot where the cabin stood. But let it suffice, since the precise location is not as important as the Clarkes’ story.

THE LITTLE GIRL on the left, Lucy, or “Lutie,” as she was called, was born here, apparently in early or mid-1885. Then that fall, two of the older children awoke one day seriously ill with sore throats. Neighbors sent inhalant medicine and their blessings, but fearing the contagion, all but one refused to come and help.

Reportedly a neighbor who lived five miles away, a rugged, tobacco-spitting French-Canadian trapper, arrived after two of the children had died, and assisted the Clarkes as they battled unsuccessfully to save another child’s life. By then Eliza and Lutie had come down with symptons and in desperation Martin and the trapper, who spoke little English and wore a beaver skin cap, bundled them up and rowed them to Seattle.

There Eliza and Lutie were taken in by Catholic nuns, whose kind assistance allowed the mother and daughter to survive. The family spent the winter in Seattle and returned to the cabin when the sun began warming the forest in the spring.

Martin and Eliza’s first three children were buried on a knoll near the cabin, inside a white fence.

So here the photo shows a resilient Eliza and Lutie (left) a few years later with two new children, Margaret and Charlie, the latter on his mother’s lap.

The outline of the cabin is vaguely visible at the top right. The jumble of downed trees is likely the result of a clearing effort.

Later the Clarkes sold some of their homestead to Peter Kirk so he could build Piccadilly Avenue -- which I believe became today’s 7th Avenue -- and a railroad from town up to his at Forbes Lake.

The Clarkes then built a large home on the property. No photos of that house have ever been found. But it was undoubtedly more comfortable than the little cabin, the woods by then a little less wild, and one can only hope the family prospered in the little town of Kirkland.