As community grows, country flavor remains

Originally published Saturday, September 13, 1997

By JACK HOPKINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

They grow flower bulbs, rhubarb, berries and football players in Puyallup, and once a year they throw a 17-day-long party -- the Western Washington Fair -- that draws more than a million people to their city.

But that's just about all most Seattle-area people know of this once rural community that is rapidly tearing loose from its agricultural roots and becoming a heavily populated part of suburbia.

So far the town has been able to make the transition without losing all of the country flavor and small-town values that marked its beginning.

Cul-de-sacs and blacktop have come to the valley, but Puyallup residents are trying to live up to the name of their city, which comes from an Indian word meaning "the land of generous people."

"I have always thought that personified the spirit of the community," says Bill Stoner, former Puyallup mayor whose father, Sanford Stoner, served as town mayor many years before him.

Bill Stoner, who has lived in Puyallup for all of his 69 years, remembers a far different town than visitors see when they trek to the crowded fairgrounds to wolf down onion burgers and scones while "doing the Puyallup" every September.

"It used to be a small town with a lot of agricultural activity around the periphery -- berry fields and bulb fields,'' says Stoner, who served as a Pierce County councilman after his stint as mayor.

"When I was growing up here it was a sleepy little town of about 7,800. We had the Hunt Brothers cannery down by the railroad track and a lot of people in the town worked there. Across the track was Brew (Manufacturing Co.), a lumber mill that employed a lot of people."

But the big cannery closed down years ago, the lumber mill was phased out after being heavily damaged in a fire and developmental pressures squeezed much of the rest of the agricultural activity out of the community.

Only the rhubarb, some berries and a couple of daffodil and tulip bulb operations remain.

"After the war, a lot of the things started to change," recalls Stoner. "People started commuting. A lot of the employment moved to places like Boeing and it became somewhat of a bedroom community."

Where once there were crops, now there is housing. Lot by lot, block by block, acre by acre, the open space is disappearing.

"We are in the middle of changing from agriculture to a bedroom community with retail services," says Dean Driver, the city's chief financial officer.

Stoner and Driver have got that right. Growth has really come to this once-rural community.

Continued:

• Focus shifts away from agriculture
• One specialty crop remains: UW football stars
• Drawing industry, preserving open space both priorities