The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Historically the South End has been a place where the lumber companies cut down the forests and the developers sold off the scrub and slash that was left as ‘view property’.  You look around and times haven’t changed too much.  Except the price of a lot now is more than all the five acre chicken ranches of Mabana sold between 1910 and 1950.

Folks wonder why it took so long to discover’ the island you can drive to’ never knew our history as an exploited backwash.  The developers didn’t worry about zoning here.  Blast a bluff down with hydraulic hoses and call it Tyee or Tillicum.  Sluice down Summerland and build a rock jetty around it out into the bay.  Dig out a canal at the country club and double the waterfront.  It was wild west stuff, all right, where a man and his bulldozer could cut a wide swath without fear of government regulation or horrified neighbors.

Nowadays we look askance at dynamiting bluffs to make waterfront or dredging a lagoon to create lakeside gated communities or draining the wetlands to make quality 18 hole golf courses.  Judging by the agonized screams of the developers, you’d expect growth would reverse, forests woulde expand, housing starts would sit half finished, abandoned and rotting.  Oddly the juggernaut of gated communities and developments with names like South End Estates, Elger Bay Meadows, Tyee Vista all seem to be doing just fine with more on the way, thank you very much.

Clear Cut Cul-de-Sac, Blast Zone Barrio and D-9 Trailer Court are going to struggle, but the South End is gentrifying now that some of the trees have grown back and the chicken farms are broke and the Dot.com retirees are priming the pumps.  Won’t be long before we South Enders celebrate Back Wash Days and the rough and tumble no-holds-barred pioneers who carved out our civilization over the past century.  Thank you boys!

Hits: 45