This fair ground holds a city in transition

By JOHN IWASAKI
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Nearly 25 years have passed since Adrian Taylor decided to flee the frenzied business pace of urban California and start over in rural Washington.

In San Jose, he managed a huge variety store where doors were open "seven days and six nights -- it was dog-eat-dog." Searching for a quieter spot to open his own smaller store, Taylor scouted communities in several states before visiting the city of Snohomish.

"I saw this sign on a bakery," he recalls. "It said, 'Open Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and maybe Saturday. Never on Sunday. Maybe on Mondays. And we close at 5 p.m.' I said, 'Ahhh. This is what I'm looking for.'"

Taylor couldn't find suitable property in Snohomish, so he opted for nearby Monroe, where the pace of life was even slower.

But that once-sleepy community of Monroe, founded nearly a century ago on the north bank of the Skykomish River in south Snohomish County, is now wide awake.

U.S. Highway 2 -- a lonely stretch of two-lane blacktop across the north side of town just a generation ago -- today is filled with cars and trucks passing by new fast-food restaurants, banks and strip malls.

Monroe's population has exploded, doubling from 5,120 in 1993 to an estimated 10,600 this year. Close to 1,000 new homes built on the city's flat west side in the '90s have attracted young families, workers at local industries and commuters to high-tech jobs in south Snohomish and north King counties.

"Monroe is small and starting to get big, but it's still a friendly community," says restaurant owner Mateo Barajas, giving a typical description of his adopted hometown.

At Ixtapa, his popular Mexican restaurant on Highway 2 that spawned a chain of six eateries from Lake Stevens to Carnation, customers often visit with familiar faces at the next table. "They go table to table sometimes," Barajas says. "A lot of people know each other."

That small-town flavor is changing, however, because of rapid growth and that alarms many residents, particularly those in the hills north of Monroe which the city plans to annex. Meanwhile, businesses in historic downtown Monroe, which old-timers say once had a Norman Rockwell-like quaintness, are striving to retain their Main Street charm and lure customers from the highway.

In the midst of great changes, Monroe's identity for most outsiders remains linked to two local institutions, one welcoming and the other imposing: the 12 fun-and-food-packed days of The Evergreen State Fair in late summer and the tightly guarded state reformatory.

When she meets students from other areas, "They say, 'You're from where? Monroe? Don't you have a prison there?'" says 18-year-old Emily Schultz during a break from class at Monroe High.

Her senior classmate, Brandon Baarstad, also 18, says out-of-town peers crack jokes about "hitting cows" when driving through Monroe, a community surrounded by horse, dairy and agricultural farms.

The teens tend to laugh off the stereotypes, even while expressing the universal teen lament ("There isn't anything to do here") and wishing they didn't have to travel to Woodinville or Everett to see movies.

Still, Schultz says she wouldn't mind returning to Monroe after college. "I love it here," she says, describing her home in the outlying wooded hills. "It's so peaceful."

Tranquility, a bucolic setting and proximity to Seattle -- about 40 minutes in good traffic -- drew many people to Monroe over the years.

"We can go to Mariner games and eat at the Metropolitan Grill (in downtown Seattle) and yet have our own land and our own well and relax and sit in our front yard and not look in our neighbor's face," says Jim Keppler, whose wife, Catherine, owns Broughton's Jewelers.

The store, housed in what was a turn-of-the-century bank in downtown Monroe, opened in 1904 and is the oldest continuing operating business in the city. Keppler, who moved to the Monroe area with her husband in 1976, is the store's fifth owner.