Trail marker would tell story of immigrant laborers

This historian has researched the story of immigrant workers in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the Tacoma area and wants to make sure everyone can learn it too from a display he wants to build. - - Donna Poisl

John Dodge, Soundings

If Northwest historian and Tenino native Edward Echtle has his way, the Yelm to Tenino trail maintained by Thurston County will someday have a historical marker detailing the role inland lumber mills and their immigrant work forces played in South Sound economic life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Echtle is researching the history of the Perry Mill at McIntosh Lake, which sat about at Milepost 9 on the 14-mile trail built on the original Northern Pacific Railroad line that ran from Kalama to Tacoma.

His goal, which has the support of the Thurston County Historic Commission, is to develop an interpretative display along the trail at the old mill site, to explain the rise and decline of lumber mills built next to rail lines in Thurston County.
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