By REBEKAH DENN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The center of the self-proclaimed "City of Maltby" are the cafe and shops in the old schoolhouse buildings that property owner Ron Nardone restored about 20 years ago.

They're decorated with Nardone's collection of antique signs, and Nardone lists himself on his complex's tongue-in-cheek sign as "mayor of Maltby."

The shops are located in the former schoolhouse, and visitors sometimes recall where their fifth-grade classroom had been or which teacher had settled where.

"My window was a coal chute," says Kristal Nebenfuhr, owner of The Tender Thistle, a collection of her handmade birdhouses and candles, along with soaps and stuffed animals and country knicknacks.

The stores are a friendly, artsy collection of women-owned businesses, with clerks referring customers to their neighbors if one lacks the patchouli oil or picture frame or bubbling fountain that the other one stocks.

Next door, in the old WPA-built school cafeteria and gym, the Maltby Cafe serves up a constant stream of platters.

Founded by four friends who often lunched together after playing soccer, the cafe built up a fast reputation for its friendly atmosphere and fresh, hearty meals. Several of today's employees have been there for years -- as have the stream of regular customers who embraced co-owner Sandra Albright before she led them to their tables on a recent weekday.

At first, the founders were told they were crazy to bet on Maltby, that the area was too remote to support their business, says co-owner Tana Baumler. But their place soon bustled with locals on the weekdays and out-of-towners on the weekends. Their kudos include being named one of the country's top home cooking spots by the Zagat's restaurant guide.

Like so many of its Snohomish County neighbors, Maltby was founded as a logging town in the 1880s and became a lively community when the railroad came to town.

It was first known as Earl after railroad contractor Thomas Earl, then established as the town of Yew by postmaster O.H. Lee, says area historian Elsie Mann. The name was changed to Maltby after early property owner Robert Maltby in 1893, and was "a going town" for the next two decades, Mann says, boasting a hotel, the Maltby Store, even the Maltby Bar.

In later years residents turned to farming, with a poultry and egg association headquartered in the area in the 1930s, with everything from dairy farms to mink ranches.

Lifelong resident Ralph Walster's family moved from Everett to Maltby in 1916 to escape city life and "to get on a little farm," Walster says.

Walster followed in his father's footsteps and ran the 53-acre farm for years, but saw farming decline in Maltby as it had around the country. "It's hard to be a farmer unless you're a big farmer," says his wife, Fran Walster.

There are now 22 homes on the 25 acres where his cattle used to graze, and the couple runs the Walsterway Iris Farm on some of the remaining land.

The flowers, too, are a family legacy.

"We started off because his mother had a patch in the back, with 30 or 40 (iris) varieties," Fran Walster says.

Next door to the iris farm, the 70-acre Flower World nursery is dotted with greenhouses and map-wielding customers and the occasional busload of garden clubs.

Owner John Postema came to Maltby "searching for a nice place to have a nursery" 30 years ago -- just a few years after Maltby's gravel roads were paved.