Qualla: Sappho, Washington https://qualla.com/sappho-washington en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:34:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/c/0/x/9/sappho-washington-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Sappho, Washington https://qualla.com/sappho-washington Sappho, Washington: Introduction https://qualla.com/sappho-washington/ Photo credit CarolEvanoff, Public domain. Martin Van Buren Lamoreux had read law in his youth, admired the lyric poetry of Sappho of Lesbos, and by 1889 had decided that St. John, Kansas held nothing more for him. He gathered eight of his ten children, his second wife, and her three children from an earlier marriage, and went west until the continent ran out. A steamer from Seattle put the party ashore at Pysht, an Indigenous settlement on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. From there they walked twenty miles inland through rainforest to a claim none of them had ever laid eyes on. When the clearing finally needed a name, Lamoreux gave it the poet's.

Read more: Sappho, Washington on Qualla

Image: CarolEvanoff | Public domain

]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/0/x/9/sappho-washington-wp/c0x9-sappho-washington-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Sappho, Washington: The Judge of an Unbuilt District https://qualla.com/sappho-washington/ Photo credit CarolEvanoff, Public domain. Some of Lamoreux's traveling party had stopped at Lake Union, in Seattle, and settled there. Lamoreux looked at that land, judged it worthless, and kept going -- a decision that would look different a century later, and one that says a great deal about how confidently people misr...

Read more: Sappho, Washington on Qualla

Image: CarolEvanoff | Public domain

]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/0/x/9/sappho-washington-wp/c0x9-sappho-washington-the-judge-of-an-unbuilt-district.mp3 0:06 2 full Sappho, Washington: Bunkhouses on a Railroad Grade https://qualla.com/sappho-washington/ Photo credit CarolEvanoff, Public domain. What turned a homestead into a place on the map was timber. Sappho became a logging camp for Bloedel-Donovan, linked by rail to the company's operations at Clallam Bay on the strait. The camp was the standard architecture of Pacific Northwest logging: railroad facilities, bunkhou...

Read more: Sappho, Washington on Qualla

Image: CarolEvanoff | Public domain

]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/0/x/9/sappho-washington-wp/c0x9-sappho-washington-bunkhouses-on-a-railroad-grade.mp3 0:06 3 full Sappho, Washington: What the Fire Spared https://qualla.com/sappho-washington/ Photo credit CarolEvanoff, Public domain. The original town burned. When the smoke cleared, the schoolhouse was the only building left standing -- a detail that has a way of outliving the names of everyone it sheltered. Sappho was rebuilt in the loose way logging settlements were rebuilt, and it kept working as long as t...

Read more: Sappho, Washington on Qualla

Image: CarolEvanoff | Public domain

]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/0/x/9/sappho-washington-wp/c0x9-sappho-washington-what-the-fire-spared.mp3 0:06 4 full Sappho, Washington: Four Times the Rain https://qualla.com/sappho-washington/ Photo credit CarolEvanoff, Public domain. Sappho sits in a very wet oceanic climate, the Koppen Cfb regime that runs up the coast from Aberdeen northward. Forks, farther south and tucked closer against the Olympic Mountains, takes slightly more rainfall. But Sappho is still wetter than anywhere in the contiguous United S...

Read more: Sappho, Washington on Qualla

Image: CarolEvanoff | Public domain

]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/0/x/9/sappho-washington-wp/c0x9-sappho-washington-four-times-the-rain.mp3 0:06 5 full Sappho, Washington: The Junction https://qualla.com/sappho-washington/ Photo credit CarolEvanoff, Public domain. Today Sappho is the point where U.S. 101 meets State Route 113, the shortcut north to Clallam Bay and the strait. There is no town center to speak of -- forest, a highway junction, parks and recreation ground, and the long green corridor that carries traffic between Port Angeles ...

Read more: Sappho, Washington on Qualla

Image: CarolEvanoff | Public domain

]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/0/x/9/sappho-washington-wp/c0x9-sappho-washington-the-junction.mp3 0:06 6 full