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Most Endangered Places

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Our Lady of the Assumption/St. Urban’s Church

Status: Saved!

Year Listed: 2004

Location: Lewis County

Originally known as Our Lady of the Assumption, this tiny church now referred to as St. Urban’s, is one of three mission churches established in the Cowlitz Mission by the Catholic Church. St. Urban was a German/Swiss community, which at one time possessed a small store, a grange hall, a school, this church, and a cemetery. Built in 1891 with the help of several pioneer families, it is the only remaining structure of the original community settled by the Ruther, Meier, Waller, and Bremgartner families. The lovely interior still contains relics and framed documents dating back to 1891 and the early 1900s. Original statues and stations of the cross all remain, as well as a pump organ in the choir loft.

Most Endangered Places

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Scout House

Status: Lost

Year Listed: 2004

Location: Jefferson County

Sir Robert Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scout movement in England in 1907. Four years later in 1911, Port Townsend’s first Boy Scout Troup was organized. In the 1920s, a Port Townsend businessman donated the city
block at Quincy and Cosgrove streets “for use by the Boy Scouts of Port Townsend.” Community volunteers and scouts built a rustic log house on the property and began using the “Scout House” in 1931. Since then, the Port Townsend Elks Lodge has sponsored the local scout troops and maintained the Scout House as a meeting place and activity hub for scouts. The Scout House played a key role in the scouting experience in Port Townsend. For more than 70 years, the rustic character of the house meshed comfortably with the historic fabric of Port Townsend, serving as a focal point for the Morgan Hill neighborhood and an authentic backdrop for countless scout meetings, ceremonies, and camp-outs.

Most Endangered Places

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Ellensburg Depot

Status: Saved!

Year Listed: 2004

Location: Kittitas County

In 1910, the Northern Pacific Railroad built this handsome brick and sandstone depot for passengers, freight, and mail coming through and into the town of Ellensburg. For 71 years it served as a primary point of entry into the Kittitas Valley until 1981, when the last passenger train pulled away. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the grand depot played an integral role in the history of Kittitas County and in the lives of the men and women who built Ellensburg.

Most Endangered Places

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Dorsey Bulding

Status: Saved!

Year Listed: 2004

Location: Columbia County

The Dantzsher Building—commonly known as the Dorsey Building—was built around 1895 and is the cornerstone of Dayton’s Downtown Historic District, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Over the past 100 years and more, the building has housed a tailor and millinery shop, drug store, lounge, and lodging on the second floor. The tailor shop became the first local telephone company office in Dayton.

Most Endangered Places

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Collins Building

Status: Lost

Year Listed: 2004

Location: Snohomish County

Tthe Collins Building was a remarkable three-story, old growth timber, post and beam structure. North Coast Casket (later the Collins Casket Company) erected this substantial 60,000- square-foot frame factory on the wharf in 1925. Broad windowed expanses maximize natural light to the interior, which originally saw assembly activity on the first floor, trim work on the second, and storage on the third. Inside and out, the Collins Building evoked an era of industrial activity that has been virtually erased from Everett’s bay front. Before the Port of Everett Commissioners voted for its demolition in 2010, it was the only surviving example of the wooden bay front mills that were the industrial backbone of “The City of Smokestacks.”

Most Endangered Places

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B Reactor, Hanford Site

Status: Saved!

Year Listed: 2004

Location: Manhattan Project National Historical Park, Benton County

B Reactor is the world’s first full-scale plutonium production nuclear reactor. It was constructed in only 13 months, from October 1943 to September 1944, and became operational under the supervision of pioneer physicist Enrico Fermi. B Reactor is widely recognized as the building that gave birth to the Atomic Age and one of the most stunning technological advancements of the 20th century. Located at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Hanford Site, B Reactor was the first of nine reactors built on the reservation as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Plutonium extracted from B Reactor was used in the Trinity Test—the world’s first nuclear explosion, in Alamogordo, New Mexico—as well as the “Fat Man” bomb the United States used against Japan in World War II.

The story of Hanford’s B Reactor was once one of the most secure secrets imaginable, but today it is a well-known historic site. Yet, as clean-up efforts at Hanford began in 1989, B Reactor’s future was uncertain. Questions persisted over which structures, if any, should be saved given the high levels of contamination. Some debated the value of saving any buildings the vast majority of the public might never see. The Washington Trust sought answers to these questions by including the B Reactor on the 2004 Most Endangered List. The listing coincided with a federal study to consider the addition of Manhattan Project sites to the National Park System. The Washington Trust advocated for this, along with the B Reactor Museum Association, Department of Energy decision-makers, Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, and then-Representative Doc Hastings. Completed in 2008, the study recommended including the property in a new Manhattan Project National Historical Park, allowing B Reactor to be removed from the Most Endangered List. In December 2014, legislation sponsored by Senator Maria Cantwell was passed to create the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Park planning remains underway, but the public can already tour the B Reactor and see its intact control room and exhibits.

Read more from our “40 for 40” featured story from the Washington Trust’s 40th anniversary in 2016.

Most Endangered Places

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Anderson-Baum Cabin

Status: Lost

Year Listed: 2004

Location: Whatcom County

Charlie Anderson, prospector, woodsman, and shingle mill worker, built his one-room, hand-hewn cabin adjacent to the North Fork of the Nooksack River in the 1920s during the Mt. Baker Gold Rush years. After Charlie died, his long-time friend Jerry Bourn took up residence in the cabin until his death in 1980. Both men represent typical early pioneers and miners in the North Cascades from the 1890s to 1930s, during which time 5,000 mining claims were filed within the North Fork Nooksack Mining District. Charlie’s cabin is one of the few tangible remnants within the mining district, which once consisted of a flume system, tent cities, small town sites, roads, and trails linking it with civilization in the town of Glacier. The style of the Anderson-Bourn Cabin was once prevalent throughout the North Cascades, but it is now the only hewn log structure standing today in fair condition in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest