Qualla: Waldron Island https://qualla.com/waldron-island 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/2/8/s/waldron-island-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Waldron Island https://qualla.com/waldron-island Waldron Island: Introduction https://qualla.com/waldron-island/ Photo credit Connor Lee, CC BY-SA 3.0. Some of the most widely sung choral music written in America over the past thirty years was composed on an island with no electrical supply, no ferry service and no store. Morten Lauridsen bought Crum's Castle - Waldron Island's former general store, closed since 1942 - in 1975, and has been writing there ever since. O Magnum Mysterium came out of that arrangement in 1994; Lux Aeterna followed in 1997. Choirs perform them in cathedrals with enormous acoustics and full lighting rigs. The room where the notes were first set down has one county dock and a boat ride between it and the rest of the world.

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Image: Connor Lee | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/2/8/s/waldron-island-wp/c28s-waldron-island-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Waldron Island: Lemos, and Then Two Brothers https://qualla.com/waldron-island/ Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The Spanish got here first, in naming terms. Francisco Eliza's 1791 expedition charted the island and called it Lemos. Fifty years later the United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes worked its way through Puget Sound, and in May 1841 Lieutenant Case of the Vincenne...

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]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/2/8/s/waldron-island-wp/c28s-waldron-island-lemos-and-then-two-brothers.mp3 0:06 2 full Waldron Island: Stone, Coal, and a Homestead https://qualla.com/waldron-island/ Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Waldron is 4.6 square miles of rock and forest, and for a while in the nineteenth century people tried to make an industrial living from it. Sandstone was quarried here and shipped out for buildings elsewhere. Coal deposits were found, though nothing on the scale that would have ...

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]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/2/8/s/waldron-island-wp/c28s-waldron-island-stone-coal-and-a-homestead.mp3 0:06 3 full Waldron Island: Living High https://qualla.com/waldron-island/ Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. In 1941 a Waldron resident named June Burn published Living High: An Unconventional Autobiography, and put the island firmly in it. She described building a log cabin with her family, a life assembled largely by hand out of a place that offered very little infrastructure and a gr...

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]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/2/8/s/waldron-island-wp/c28s-waldron-island-living-high.mp3 0:06 4 full Waldron Island: The Year They Chose Less https://qualla.com/waldron-island/ Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The last store closed in 1942, and no regular ferry has served the island since. What is remarkable is that Waldron then decided, formally, to keep it that way. Since 1976 it has been designated a Limited Development District. Commercial recreation facilities are prohibited. No l...

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]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/2/8/s/waldron-island-wp/c28s-waldron-island-the-year-they-chose-less.mp3 0:06 5 full Waldron Island: One Hundred and Four People https://qualla.com/waldron-island/ Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The 2000 census found 104 people on Waldron, in 62 households, 27 of them families. That is the entire civic scale of the place - a number small enough that the census tract and the community are effectively the same thing. Living here requires generating your own power, collecti...

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]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/2/8/s/waldron-island-wp/c28s-waldron-island-one-hundred-and-four-people.mp3 0:06 6 full